3 July 2011. A World to Win News Service. Following is a report by a correspondent that appeared in Revolution, newspaper of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA (revcom.us), 26 June 2011.
In the wake of the unprecedented, regime-toppling uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East, two conferences titled The Middle East and North Africa – Prospects for Revolution recently took place in Europe. The first was in Paris 28 May, the second in London 30 May. Some 200 people attended altogether.
It is exactly at times of such upsurge as seen in the Arab world that people search for answers to why the world is as it is, and how it can be changed. Igniting hope among many around the world, these uprisings have given heart to all who want to see a radically different one and have dealt a blow to the popular perception that the existing world is eternal.
The conference organizers represented different political forces and opinions. But they shared a felt need to deeply address critical issues and challenges raised by these recent upsurges. What has actually been achieved, and what must be achieved if the aspirations expressed in these revolts are to be fulfilled? And the conferences were seen as an important occasion for learning more about the complexity of the continuing struggles on the ground and the questions they raise, and interacting with a wider circle of revolutionary-minded and progressive people, both Arab and non-Arab.
In recent months, programs in solidarity with the uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa have taken place in Europe. This has been important and must continue – and solidarity was an element of the Paris and London conferences.
But some of the organizers were aiming for something more: to stimulate a deeper level of engagement in the face of a major challenge. If these movements are left to follow their spontaneous path, then sooner or later a new version of the old order will be cemented back into place, and the window of hope opened by these struggles will be slammed shut again.
Efforts were made to frame discussion and exchange around critical questions. Is spontaneous revolt alone enough to achieve genuine liberation? What kind of revolution is needed, not only by the peoples of the Arab countries but all of humanity? Can Western-style democracy play a positive role in societies of extreme repressiveness? What about the role of Islamic fundamentalism in the Middle East and North Africa? Is it possible to achieve a revolution outside the framework of Western imperialist domination and the ideology of Islamic fundamentalism? What is the role of communist science and leadership in the kinds of movements and upsurges that have erupted? Can communist revolution truly transform oppressive institutions, oppressive economic and social relationships and antiquated and enslaving ideas and values?
The line-up of speakers in Paris was Salameh Kaileh, a Palestinian Marxist; Adel Thebat, a representative of the Communist Workers Party of Tunisia (PCOT); Raymond Lotta, political economist and writer for Revolution; Hassan Chatila, Syrian communist (see interview in AWTWNS110516); Shahrzad Mojab, activist, University of Toronto professor, specialist on women and the Middle East, from Iran. Lotta and Mojab went on to speak at the conference in London.
The London conference featured Nawal el Saadawi, the well-known Egyptian novelist and feminist activist, whose books include Woman at Point Zero, God Dies by the Nile, and Memoirs from the Women's Prison. Also speaking were Amir Hassanpour, University of Toronto, from Iran; Sami Ramadani, senior lecturer, London Metropolitan University, from Iraq; and Aitemad Muhanna, researcher in gender issues in Gaza, Palestine.
Several speakers analysed the situation in various countries, pointing out that each has its own particularities, as well as making more generalized comments about the nature and goals of the upsurges. There was discussion of the larger impact these upsurges have had and are having. The US-NATO intervention in Libya was widely condemned. Several speakers drew lessons from the historical experience of communist-led revolutions. At certain points in the conference, there was more direct engagement over differing views and positions. But at other times, the necessary debate over critical questions did not get as sharply focused and systematically pursued as is needed.
At the Paris conference, the PCOT representative described the continuing struggle in Tunisia. He argued that a revolution had taken place. The task now is to safeguard the gains by getting candidates into positions in parliament and to work to create more democratic space in order to achieve liberation at some time in the future, he said.
This position was sharply contested by Raymond Lotta. He argued that Tunisian society was still ruled by exploiting classes and dominated by imperialism, and that in a period of crisis and upsurge like this, the task is precisely to maximize and accelerate revolutionary preparation towards the seizure of power. To do otherwise is to squander the creative energies and heroic determination of the youth and others who took to the streets.
Hassan Chatila talked about the nature of Syrian society, highlighting the extreme oppressiveness and concentration of wealth, and also described aspects of the struggle against the regime of Bashar Assad. The regime is viciously cracking down on protesters, and leftist forces should be mobilizing and leading, but, Chatila noted, there is a shameful history of much of the organized and official Left supporting the regime.
Women made up a large percentage of those attending the conferences. At the London event, the oppression of women was a major focus of discussion.
Shahrzad Mojab spoke from what she described as a revolutionary feminist perspective. She drew out lessons from the experience of the revolutionary upsurge in Iran in 1979 and the consolidation of power by the reactionary mullahs. She pointed out that the imposition of the veil was one of the first and most serious attacks by the mullahs following the overthrow of the Shah. But at the time, progressive forces failed to fully oppose the oppression of women, and to educate and mobilize against the veil. Mojab explained that the attacks and measures against women were not only oppressive in their own right but also key elements of the broader theocratic restructuring of the Iranian state.
One young Muslim woman in the audience insisted that women today are wearing the veil by choice and for moral reasons in an increasingly decadent society. Some in the audience shared this view. Others argued strenuously that the veil is emblematic of a whole patriarchal system and ideology. Lotta raised that both the burkha and the thong symbolize and concentrate chains of oppression bound up with the enslaving forces of Western imperialism and reactionary Islamic fundamentalism, and that both of these forces and outlooks must be opposed.
Nawal el Saadawi argued that the idea of the veil as empowering is a form of brainwashing. She also spoke to the oppression of women in the world at large; she said it is an outrage that people in France are not speaking out and rallying against sexual assaults on women after the arrest of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the French politician and former head of the International Monetary Fund charged with the attempted rape of a hotel worker in New York City.
There was some debate as well about whether there is a positive side to Islamic fundamentalism, since these forces have some contradictions with imperialism and some are involved in grass-roots organizing.
Issues of democracy, revolution, and communism were posed. At the London conference, Sami Ramadani put forth the position that imperialism could not tolerate any kind of democracy in the Arab world, given the Middle East's strategic importance, in terms of resources and geopolitics. Lotta argued that even in third world countries of strategic importance, imperialism can utilize multi-party elections and constitutional change to re-solidify its domination; and that if there is no revolution that expels imperialism and establishes a new state power and economy, then the military, which represents the local exploiting classes and imperialism, will continue to enforce oppressive economic and social relations.
Several speakers held that parliamentary elections and political rights are the best thing that can be achieved now, and that communism is a 20th century concept, no longer relevant. Others disagreed and spoke to the importance of clearly seeing the need for overthrowing the system and breaking free from capitalist-imperialist global relations and all forms of exploitation and oppression.
Amir Hassanpour spoke of the "daring" of going into the streets, but another kind of "daring" as well: posing a revolutionary alternative to the capitalist world order. He talked about the landmark character of the Soviet and Chinese revolutions. Yet these revolutions were defeated, and there is the task of further developing revolutionary theory. Lotta talked about how Bob Avakian has summed up the lessons of the first wave of socialist revolution of the 20th century, and that this summation and the vision Avakian is bringing forward of a vibrant and dynamic socialism marked by intellectual, artistic, and scientific ferment and pulsing with experimentation, debate, and contestation is crucial to launching a new stage of communist revolution and to achieving genuine emancipation in today's world.
Saadawi brought direct experience of the upsurge in Egypt into the proceedings. She had taken part in the protests in Cairo's Tahrir Square and has been in touch with many young activists. But she brought a wider view to bear as well. She stressed that the system we must get rid of is one that oppresses people through capitalist economics... through all forms of religion... and through patriarchy. She challenged the audience with her conviction that any movement for social change requires a spirit and practice of "dissidence and creativity".
On 1 June Saadawi and Lotta engaged in a public conversation at Goldsmiths College of the University of London.
Saadawi elaborated on the conditions in Egypt leading up to the social explosion that toppled President Hosni Mubarak. She and Lotta continued their exchange over the difference between an uprising and a revolution that breaks society out of the grip of imperialism and initiates all-around transformation, and the ways in which US imperialism is still very much in command of Egypt's economy and military. In response to comments from the audience, the two talked about the role of Israel and Zionism in the region, and the unjust, illegitimate, and immoral character of the Israeli settler colonial state. There was discussion of whether Marxism is able to deal with issues of gender. In all, it was a lively, substantive, and respectful exchange. Both speakers expressed a desire to continue their public dialogue.
While the Paris and London conferences did not fully achieve their goals in terms of attendance, and while engagement was uneven over the bigger issues at stake in the uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa, these events represented a necessary first step and promising beginning. Some key issues and challenges were etched out, and new channels for dialogue and debate were opened.
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Mittwoch, 13. Juli 2011
Donnerstag, 25. November 2010
U.S.: New danger to the life of Mumia Abu-Jamal
22 November 2010. A World to Win News Service. Following is an edited excerpt from an article by C. Clark Kissinger that appeared in the 21 November 2010 issue of Revolution, newspaper of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA.
The largest courtroom of the federal Third Circuit Court of Appeals was packed with supporters of Mumia Abu-Jamal as a three judge panel heard the latest oral arguments in his case. Outside hundreds more marched and chanted. People from all over the Eastern United States were there, including a whole history class from Hunter College in New York. There were also delegations from France and Germany.
Mumia Abu-Jamal is one of the best known political prisoners in the world. Forces ranging from people of all walks of life to the European Parliament and Amnesty International have protested his unjust conviction. He has spent 27 years in isolation on death row, after being railroaded in a manifestly bogus trial. In 2001, a federal court refused to grant Mumia a new trial, but overturned his death sentence. Mumia has continued to fight his conviction, and the State of Pennsylvania has attempted in court to get the death penalty reinstated. This hearing was an attempt to reinstate Mumia's death penalty.
People were justifiably angry with the latest turn of events. This same federal appeals court had already thrown out the death sentence on Mumia in 2008 because the instructions given to the jury were in violation of well-established federal law. But now the U.S. Supreme Court, after an appeal by the state of Pennsylvania, had ordered the federal appeals court to reconsider their previous decision.
Casting a shadow over Mumia's whole appeal process has been the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (signed into law by Bill Clinton). A big thrust of this law is making it more difficult for prisoners seeking to overturn illegal state court decisions in the federal courts. Under this law, it is not enough for Mumia to show that his death sentence was obtained through a violation of federal law – he has to show that it was obtained through an "unreasonable application of clearly established federal law." This wording is designed to give state courts "the benefit of the doubt" in pushing through executions.
Mumia was represented at the oral argument by Professor Judith Ritter of Widener University School of Law. Professor Ritter had successfully argued the issue of the jury instructions in the earlier 2008 oral arguments. In a carefully reasoned presentation she asked the court to sustain their previous finding that Mumia's death sentence be overturned as the new case cited by the Supreme Court did not apply.
While progressive legal observers remain hopeful that the Third Circuit panel will hold their ground and resist calls to reverse their previous decision, were that to happen the State of Pennsylvania can still convene a new jury and hold a new sentencing phase for the original conviction, in which Mumia could again be sentenced to death. Ever since Mumia's appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn his conviction was rejected, the State of Pennsylvania has been ferociously determined to execute Mumia.
No matter which way the current ruling goes, the losing side will undoubtedly appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court again. Also, there are still other legal issues concerning Mumia's sentencing that have never been ruled on. This means a considerable road ahead in court, but in a political climate that is much more reactionary than earlier years. A mass movement, reaching far and wide in society and around the world, was a crucial factor in stopping the rulers of this country from executing Mumia Abu-Jamal in the 1980s and '90s. It is ever more important that people must come together behind the demand to free Mumia Abu-Jamal.
The largest courtroom of the federal Third Circuit Court of Appeals was packed with supporters of Mumia Abu-Jamal as a three judge panel heard the latest oral arguments in his case. Outside hundreds more marched and chanted. People from all over the Eastern United States were there, including a whole history class from Hunter College in New York. There were also delegations from France and Germany.
Mumia Abu-Jamal is one of the best known political prisoners in the world. Forces ranging from people of all walks of life to the European Parliament and Amnesty International have protested his unjust conviction. He has spent 27 years in isolation on death row, after being railroaded in a manifestly bogus trial. In 2001, a federal court refused to grant Mumia a new trial, but overturned his death sentence. Mumia has continued to fight his conviction, and the State of Pennsylvania has attempted in court to get the death penalty reinstated. This hearing was an attempt to reinstate Mumia's death penalty.
People were justifiably angry with the latest turn of events. This same federal appeals court had already thrown out the death sentence on Mumia in 2008 because the instructions given to the jury were in violation of well-established federal law. But now the U.S. Supreme Court, after an appeal by the state of Pennsylvania, had ordered the federal appeals court to reconsider their previous decision.
Casting a shadow over Mumia's whole appeal process has been the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (signed into law by Bill Clinton). A big thrust of this law is making it more difficult for prisoners seeking to overturn illegal state court decisions in the federal courts. Under this law, it is not enough for Mumia to show that his death sentence was obtained through a violation of federal law – he has to show that it was obtained through an "unreasonable application of clearly established federal law." This wording is designed to give state courts "the benefit of the doubt" in pushing through executions.
Mumia was represented at the oral argument by Professor Judith Ritter of Widener University School of Law. Professor Ritter had successfully argued the issue of the jury instructions in the earlier 2008 oral arguments. In a carefully reasoned presentation she asked the court to sustain their previous finding that Mumia's death sentence be overturned as the new case cited by the Supreme Court did not apply.
While progressive legal observers remain hopeful that the Third Circuit panel will hold their ground and resist calls to reverse their previous decision, were that to happen the State of Pennsylvania can still convene a new jury and hold a new sentencing phase for the original conviction, in which Mumia could again be sentenced to death. Ever since Mumia's appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn his conviction was rejected, the State of Pennsylvania has been ferociously determined to execute Mumia.
No matter which way the current ruling goes, the losing side will undoubtedly appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court again. Also, there are still other legal issues concerning Mumia's sentencing that have never been ruled on. This means a considerable road ahead in court, but in a political climate that is much more reactionary than earlier years. A mass movement, reaching far and wide in society and around the world, was a crucial factor in stopping the rulers of this country from executing Mumia Abu-Jamal in the 1980s and '90s. It is ever more important that people must come together behind the demand to free Mumia Abu-Jamal.
Mittwoch, 20. Oktober 2010
"The Unknown Cultural Revolution - Life and change in a Chinese village"
Dongping Han grew up in China during the Cultural Revolution and now teaches in the U.S. He is the author of the book The Unknown Cultural Revolution—Life and Change in a Chinese Village. Following is an abridged version of the session at the end of a speech he gave in December 2008 at the New York symposium "Rediscovering the Chinese Cultural Revolution: Art and Politics, Lived Experience, Legacies of Liberation," sponsored by Revolution Books, Set the Record Straight Project and Institute for Public Knowledge-New York University. The full version appeared in the 6 September 2009 issue of Revolution, voice of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA. (revcom.us)
Question: You went back to China in 1986. When did you and others like you start to see that things were different, that China had become very different than what it had been during the Cultural Revolution?
Dongping Han: I think people realized right away. The land was privatized in China in 1983. Many people tend to think that farmers are stupid and ignorant. But I think the farmers are very intelligent people. Many of them realized the implications of private farming right away. That was why they resisted it very hard in the beginning. And in my village and in other villages I surveyed, the overwhelming majority of people, 90 percent, said the Communist Party no longer cares about poor people. Right away they felt this way. The Communist Party, the cadres, no longer cared about poor people in the countryside. The government investment in rural areas in the countryside dropped from 15 percent in the national budget in 1970s to only 3-4 percent in the '80s. So the Chinese public realized that the Chinese government no longer cared about them by disbanding the communes. But I was in college at the time and I didn't start to think about the issue very hard until 1986.
Q: Can you explain a little bit more how the Cultural Revolution came to your village?
DH: The Cultural Revolution started slowly. Before the start of the Cultural Revolution, there was a call to start to study Mao's works. The Chinese People's Liberation Army came to the village to read Chairman Mao's works. They held performances in the village. They came to people's home to teach people to read Mao's three classic articles: "Serve the People", "In Memory of Norman Bethune" and "The Foolish Old Man Who Removed the Mountains". They explained to the villagers what these articles were about. After the PLA soldiers left, many school children, like myself, started to teach villagers about Mao's works as well. When the central government announced the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, high school and middle school students left their schools, and began to write big character posters in the streets. The high school students dragged 20 of their teachers to the marketplace and denounced them publicly and shaved off half their hair in front of a big crowd. I do not think that most people knew what the Cultural Revolution would be like at the beginning.
Many students began to publish newspapers and pamphlets. There were so many pamphlets at the time, criticizing government officials. In the beginning they were mostly written by students. Not long after this, farmers and workers began to write them as well. There was so much information going on at the time. Later on, there was a group of high school and middle school students from my county that travelled all the way to Beijing to see Chairman Mao. When they came back in August 1966, they began to organize into different Red Guard factions. They started to organize mass rallies to criticize the county and commune leaders. All officials were under some kind of popular scrutiny and attack at the time.
Almost everybody, I would say 90 percent of the population, was part of a mass organization.
I was in third grade at that time. Five of my friends and I also organized a Red Guard organization. We designed our Red Guard symbols and began to publish a single page newspaper. We collected enough money to get a hand printer to print our newspaper. In my school there were 13 small newspapers. We would recruit others and write something and go to the marketplace to distribute it to the people. That's how it started. There were big character posters everywhere. The village streets were plastered with big character posters, mostly criticizing village leaders. Before the Cultural Revolution, the village leaders had a lot of power. They normally didn't work in the field and they would eat and drink a lot at the village's expense. And the Cultural Revolution held them to task. That's how it started actually.
In all these activities with the big character posters, all were written by the farmers themselves. And I remember some of the farmers who didn't know how to write. They came to us, they came to the school kids, and we would write it for them. So it was a very mobilizing movement. Everybody in the village was touched by that.
The reason the officials are corrupt today and were not during the Cultural Revolution years is because the masses were really empowered. There was always a mass meeting every night and all the government policies and directives were read to the farmers. And it was required by the government at the time. They were read to the farmers and then the farmers discussed these documents, so everybody knew what was going on and why. The reason why the Chinese people were eager to read and willing to recite Mao's works at the time is because they found what Mao said represented their best interests. And Mao said what they wanted to hear. For example Mao's article "To Serve the People" is only one and a half pages long. But in this short article Mao elaborated on how a communist official should behave. A communist official shouldn't have any self interests. He should work for the people and serve the people. They should care about the poor people and the farmers. They should welcome criticism. If they were not doing something right, they should change it for the sake of the people. This is all something the farmers never heard and they wanted to hear.
Q: Why during that time, during those 10 years of the Cultural Revolution, was there no effort made to purge the Communist Party of the right-wing capitalist roaders?
DH: The Cultural Revolution was not to purge people, it was to educate the people. Many of the capitalist roaders had fought for the revolution and made important contributions to the Chinese revolution. It was an accepted traditional idea that those who fight for the revolution should enjoy the privileges when the revolution succeeded. It was not enough to purge these people. The problem was the old traditional ideas. So the Cultural Revolution was to do away with the traditional ideas and educate the people through mobilizing the farmers and the workers. I think if there was no coup in 1976, I doubt that this government apparatus would have changed by itself. It happened because there was a coup. But I don't think to purge people is a solution either. I remember during the Cultural Revolution there were some high officials in my county who encouraged their own children to work with the farmers and to ask for the most difficult assignments and tasks to build their character. It seemed that these high officials did change with the change of social climate during the Cultural Revolution years. But when the social climate changed, they changed back.
Most people were not aware that there was a coup in 1976. Mao's wife and three other important leaders were arrested. And there was a very extensive purge throughout China. Hundreds of thousands of people who supported the Cultural Revolution were arrested right away. Some people argue that Mao should have killed Deng Xiaoping and a few others to prevent the arrest of the Gang of Four. Maybe he should have, but he did not.
Q: Could you paint a picture comparing what the average daily life was like for you and your family during the Cultural Revolution compared to, on the one hand communism before the Cultural Revolution, and then compared to your family now in capitalist China?
DH: The Cultural Revolution was launched because the Great Leap Forward failed. It failed partly because there was a 100-year natural disaster on the one hand. On the other hand, it failed because communist officials in the villages were not really socialist yet. They ordered farmers to do too much and they themselves didn't want to work hard. There was not enough to eat during the Great Leap Forward because of the natural disasters on the one hand and mismanagement on the other. So the reason I think the Cultural Revolution was launched by Mao was that he realized at the time that the Chinese officials needed to be educated and that the Chinese people needed to be educated through a socialist movement. That's why he mobilized the Chinese farmers to criticize the officials in the village. And of course, I was too young, I don't remember too much about the Great Leap Forward. But during the Cultural Revolution, I remember very well. I was working in the fields with the farmers and at that time in the rural areas, each village had a production brigade, and each brigade was divided into several production teams. In my village there were eight production teams. Each production team had about 40 families. We elected five production team leaders each year. We had a production team head, a woman leader, an accountant, a cashier, and a store keeper. Before the Cultural Revolution these people were appointed by the village leaders and the village leaders were appointed by the commune leaders. It was not democratically elected. During the Cultural Revolution years, these production team leaders were elected by the farmers.
We worked in the fields together. Everybody came out and worked together. And at the end of the day the cashier would record how many people worked that day. And at the end of the year, when the harvest came in, the village accountant, together with the production team accountant, would develop a distribution plan. Seventy percent of the grain was distributed according to how many people you had in your family. Thirty percent was distributed according to how much you worked in the collective. So if you did not work in the fields, you were still entitled to 70 percent of the grain from the collective. That was the distribution on the production team level. There was also distribution at the production brigade level. The village owned many enterprises. After putting away money for a welfare fund, money to purchase new equipment and so on, the village would distribute its income according to how much you had worked in the collective. The collective also produced vegetables, fruits, peanuts and we also raised pigs. These would be distributed to villagers regularly according to the same distribution schedule as grain was distributed. We also purchased fish, wine, cigarettes collectively with the money earned by the village enterprises, and this was distributed to each family on important occasions like Chinese New Year and other holidays. We got almost all our supplies from the collective.
After the Cultural Revolution years, I went to college and my two sisters who used to work for the village, found jobs in a state-owned factory in the early '80s. Now the factory has been sold and my two sisters have been unemployed since 1996. My younger sister is still working in the village, as the village cashier now. My village is doing well compared with other villages. Life has changed dramatically in the countryside. I think for most working class people, life has changed for the worse. Even though they may get more money, they have lost benefits like free medical care and free education of the socialist past. They now have to pay for their education. They have to pay for their medical care. Most farmers cannot afford the medical care. If they are sick for a small problem, they just endure the problem. If they are sick for a big problem, they just wait to die. Many of them say they do not want to leave a big debt for their children by going to the hospital. The medical care is very expensive now and it is beyond the reach of most farmers and working class people in urban areas.
Q: Could you talk a little about what the cultural life was like in your village and how that changed?
DH: Before the Cultural Revolution, Chinese performing arts were mostly about talented young men and beautiful ladies, kings, generals and so on. That's what the Chinese traditional plays were about. During the Cultural Revolution, there was a surge of a new kind of art. Every village at the time had a group of farmer artists and they played instruments, sang revolutionary songs, danced revolutionary dances, and staged revolutionary plays. There was some kind of performance in the village almost every night. These performances became educational tools. Revolutionary ideas spread because of these revolutionary performances. And it was very powerful. But of course today you don't see that any more in the countryside. But if you go to China today, you can still see older people singing the revolutionary songs in parks and public spaces to entertain themselves.
Q: In the movies that we see about China and the Cultural Revolution, there is a representation of people being picked up and tried by popular tribunals and paraded around town, punished. My question is: where does this image come from, did you hear about things like this in China, how widespread was this?
DH: That image was from the Cultural Revolution years. For a few weeks in the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, many Chinese officials were being criticized on the stage. That was very common. I saw it many times. I would say most government officials went through some of that at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution. At the same time, I would argue, many of these people deserved some kind of punishment. They had made mistakes in their work. And because of their mistakes, people suffered. People were looking for ways to air their anger. In the villages, the struggle against village leaders was more gentle and peaceful.
These public struggle sessions to deal with officials who committed crimes and made mistakes were different ways of dealing with these people. After they were struggled with for a day or two, they were allowed to go free. They were taught a lesson by the people. In the U.S. people are sent to prison. I still think this public education during the Cultural Revolution was very effective, not only to educate the village officials, but also everybody else. After the session, they were free. So I don't think that was a bad practice. I think it was a very good practice.
Q: What about the situation in China now, particularly the economic crisis and how you think that's working itself out, especially in the rural areas, but more generally?
DH: The Chinese government is faced with a huge challenge today and the Chinese government officials themselves have admitted that on many occasions. Some people estimate that there are 100 incidents involving more than 100 people challenging the government and 300 incidents involving less than 100 challenging the government each day. I read in a document about an incident in Guangdong province where three police officers stopped a car without a license plate and upon further check they found the driver without a driver's license. But the three people came out the car and yelled that the police are harassing people and about 2,000 people came out. They turned the police car upside down and set it on fire. The government is warning the police to be careful because the tension between the people and the government is very high.
And there are a lot of people in the countryside who are very angry with the township government. I was told by a farmer about an incident in a rural township. The party secretary was taking a nap one day. But about 100 farmers ,who were angry with the township government's decision to move the market to a different place, went to his bedroom. They actually dragged him by his four limbs into the marketplace and threw him up into the air for a half hour. They didn't hit him. They just toyed with him for a half hour. In the end the government had to remove him from office because he had become an embarrassment for the government. This happened last year. There was another government official who was beaten by the farmers. The villagers wanted him to take a patient to the hospital. He refused. He said that not everyone could ride in his car. The farmers almost killed him, but the government didn't punish the people who did it. So I think the government realizes how tense its relationship is with the masses.
In the old days, the Chinese government officials came to the village and worked with the farmers. And today they don't do that. They come to the village in big cars, only to get money from farmers and to enforce the one child policy... I think the government has a legitimacy crisis. The Chinese government was able to survive the challenges of the Great Leap Forward posed by unprecedented natural disasters and mismanagement by its officials because of the socialist legitimacy. I don't think it will be able to survive any challenges close to that of the Great Leap Forward.
Q: Could you talk about what happened during the coup in 1976 and also how that whole period was being understood where you were?
DH: I still remember where I was on 9 September 1976. At 4 o'clock that day, I was walking with my friend outside the village when the loudspeaker said there was a very important announcement. And we immediately realized something was wrong. And they said Chairman Mao had passed away. I don't know how I walked home that day. I remember that everybody around me was crying. Finally I reached home. My father cried all the way home from his factory. When my grandpa died he didn't cry. He gathered the family together and he said, today our poor people's sky has fallen and we do not know what life will be like tomorrow. At the time, I thought, in my heart, how could that be possible? We have built the socialist state. How could the poor people's sky fall just because Chairman Mao died?
It turned out that my father was right. When the Gang of Four was arrested, the Chinese government said the people were really happy. That was not true. In my home town many young people really respected Jiang Qing because of an incident that happened in a neighbouring commune. On Chinese New Year in 1975, the village leader played over the loudspeaker a traditional drama which was criticized during the Cultural Revolution. A young man in the village criticized the village leader for playing that over the loudspeaker. But the village leaders accused him of causing trouble in the village. He called the police and the police took him away. While he was in prison, he wrote a letter to Jiang Qing, and in less than five days, Jiang Qing responded to his letter. Jiang Qing ordered that the person be released. And the village leader was dismissed from office. Young people in my area loved Jiang Qing. When the Gang of Four was arrested a few weeks after Mao died, we knew things were going to be different.
Question: You were saying that the 10 years of the Cultural Revolution were the most exciting of your life. Could you give some examples of that spirit that you felt?
DH: The way that I felt at that time was that I had a strong sense of security. I was not alone in this world. My neighbours, my production team leaders, the village leaders would take care of anybody if they needed help.
In 1998, one of my friends who worked with me committed suicide. When I received the news from my village I cried. The reason I cried was because I felt that if the collective had not been disbanded he would not have died; he would not have committed suicide. And this person was about my age. When he was young, he couldn't get up early in the morning. So every morning my production team leader told me to go to wake him up. When I went to wake him up the first time, he answered me, and got up. The second day, he said, I'll get up but he never got up. So I had to drag him up from his bed. The third day his grandmother was very upset that I woke him up every day. She told me that her grandson needed more sleep. But the production team leader said to me: "Do not mind his grandmother. Wake him up. He needs help." So he came to work with us with my help. He worked every day. He was a very good worker. He was very talented as well. He played the Chinese instrument, the erhu very well and he also painted well. But after the collective was disbanded, nobody went to wake him up anymore. He was able to sleep as much as he wanted. So eventually his wife left him. And by 1996, 1997 he became mentally disturbed. And the last time I saw him was in 1997 when I went back home. I saw him walking naked on the street. He saw me and ran back home. I followed him to his house. I asked him why he walked naked in the streets. He said that life was bad for him. He did not want to live any more. I told him that he had to change his mindset, that he needed to face the challenges. I asked him why he didn't go back to painting if he could not do anything else. I told him that I would be in the village for another 10 days, and I would like to buy a painting from him. He promised that he would do it. But the next day, he came to see me. He said that he could not do it now. He told me that he would do it for me the next year. I told him that it was him that I was interested in not the painting. I wanted to see him stand up and take control of his life. But three months after I left the village, he committed suicide. He hung himself. When I learned of this news from my younger sister, I cried very hard. I felt that if the collective were not disbanded, he did not need to commit suicide. The community was no longer there. Your friends and your neighbours became competitors and strangers to you. The security network had been taken away. For Americans you're used to this kind of competition. But for Chinese farmers who lived under the socialist system before, the change was too dramatic for many people.
Q: The Cultural Revolution sent shock waves around the world. In your village, how much were you aware of the international situation, the influence this was having internationally?
DH: At that time when I was in the village, I really felt we were part of the international revolution. We were young and we were part of a big picture. I remember in 1971 there was a huge drought in our area. The county government held a huge rally in the marketplace. At the rally, government leaders and representatives of farmers and workers said that we were fighting this drought not just for ourselves. We were fighting this in support of the Vietnamese people's fight against U.S. imperialism. We were fighting this drought to support oppressed people in Africa and so on. After the rally, everybody in our school wrote a pledge to join the fight against the drought. The school was closed for two weeks. We went back to the village to fight the drought with the villagers for two weeks. Everybody worked very hard. I felt that I was doing something significant to help the revolution. At that time I didn't really understand what it meant. It was standard language. I believed what we were told by the government that we had friends all over the world. After the Cultural Revolution was over, the Chinese elite told us that it was government propaganda. But it was not simply propaganda. I found this out when I studied in Singapore. When Mao died in 1976, China did not have diplomatic relations with Singapore. So the branch bank of Bank of China decided to hold a memorial service for Mao for three days. Ordinary Singaporeans and seaman from all over the world came to show their respect for Mao day and night. The line was so long, the staff at the Bank of China had to extend the memorial service from three days to ten. I realized then that our fight in China was connected with the struggle of oppressed people all over the world.
Q: I want to step back to your experience in the Cultural Revolution. You were able to go to school, you grew up and became an educated youth in the countryside, and yet there was this political campaign that was going on for 10 years. How did this intersect with you, how much were you continuing to follow it?
Dongping Han: My whole value system was changed very dramatically. Before the Cultural Revolution, my father never allowed me to talk back to him; that's how the Chinese family was. He never allowed me to talk back to him. Whenever there were guests in the house I was never allowed to say a word. But during the Cultural Revolution years that changed. I said, "Chairman Mao said I can talk back to you!" But many people in the U.S. country think that the revolutionary campaign is an interruption of life. No. The revolution did not disrupt most people's lives, particularly in the village. During the day most work continues, and at night people went out to the streets and there was a lot of debate; different groups debate in the streets. My cousin and I went to shops at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution to propagate Mao's ideas. The government-owned shops extended their hours until 10 at night at the time. So we went to the shops to read Mao's teachings and perform the plays, and so on. We loved that.
Maybe I can give you an example to illustrate the change. Before the Cultural Revolution years, people in my area never gave blood to anybody. If you needed a blood transfusion, you went to your family: your wife, your father or your brothers. People thought that if you gave blood to another person, you would lose your own vitality in life. But one day, one of my colleagues was sick and needed a blood transfusion. Most of the factory workers were working in fields harvesting. It was a busy time in the village. Twenty young people who were working in the village went to the hospital. The nurses checked our blood types. I was the only person who qualified to give the blood. I knew at the time any one of the 20 people would give their blood to save my colleague. The village party secretary asked me what to do. I said that we needed to save the patient. They took more than 700 cc from me and after that I couldn't walk and they had to take me home in a wheelbarrow. And the next morning I woke up and my mom and my two aunts were all crying. They actually cried the whole night. They thought I wouldn't be able to get married, nobody would marry me. But life changed, and it wasn't just me. All the people who went to the hospital that day would have happily given blood to that person that day.
Whenever there was a storm, even at midnight people would get up to cover the collective crops. If it snowed we would get up to clean the streets. We did not have bulldozers. Everybody would get out to clean the streets. Another important change in the rural life was that there were almost no crimes during the Cultural Revolution years. For 10 years, we did not have any crime in the village. In my commune of 50,000 people, I did not hear of any serious crime for 10 years. But now, crime has become so common in China.
Q: Could you compare your daily life during the Cultural Revolution to what the daily life would have been like for your grandparents before 1949?
DH: The reason why my father was so supportive of the Communist Party was that he had to work 18 hours a day. He had to pick up the capitalists′ night soil and did household chores beside long hours of work in the workshop. When the communists came to power, the workday became eight hours, so my father's life changed for the better under socialism. My father used to believe in Buddhism. After the communists came to power, he no longer believed it any more. On the Chinese New Year, my mom always asked to kowtow to the gods of the family. My father would always tell me not to do it. He was told that he was suffering because he did something wrong in the previous life. He changed his previous life, but his life suddenly changed for the better with the Communist Party in power.
Both my father and my mom begged before 1949, and were hungry all the time. Both my grandmothers died in their 30s in 1944, without any medical care. But ever since I could remember, I never felt hungry. I always had enough to eat. My father never bought any toys for me when I was young. I often compare my childhood with my son's in the U.S. At the time, we had a lot of kids in the neighbourhood to play with and we made toys for ourselves. We played a lot of games ourselves. We worked on the collective farm during the summer, spring and fall. In winter we played popular games in the streets when there was nothing to do in the fields. And I always ask my son which childhood is better. Of course it's very hard for him to imagine. But I strongly believe that my childhood was much more healthy, much more creative than that of my son who has nothing else but toys and video games. We had community, and we learned how to interact with one another; we learned how to build up leadership skills and things like that. And my son didn't have those skills. When I first came to the U.S, I had a class on the Cultural Revolution. And the professor said that Cultural Revolution education was a disaster, and most students in the class agreed with him. In the end, I told the class that I was a product of the Cultural Revolution education. I challenged the whole class to a competition with me to see who is better educated. Nobody was willing to take on the challenge.
Question: You went back to China in 1986. When did you and others like you start to see that things were different, that China had become very different than what it had been during the Cultural Revolution?
Dongping Han: I think people realized right away. The land was privatized in China in 1983. Many people tend to think that farmers are stupid and ignorant. But I think the farmers are very intelligent people. Many of them realized the implications of private farming right away. That was why they resisted it very hard in the beginning. And in my village and in other villages I surveyed, the overwhelming majority of people, 90 percent, said the Communist Party no longer cares about poor people. Right away they felt this way. The Communist Party, the cadres, no longer cared about poor people in the countryside. The government investment in rural areas in the countryside dropped from 15 percent in the national budget in 1970s to only 3-4 percent in the '80s. So the Chinese public realized that the Chinese government no longer cared about them by disbanding the communes. But I was in college at the time and I didn't start to think about the issue very hard until 1986.
Q: Can you explain a little bit more how the Cultural Revolution came to your village?
DH: The Cultural Revolution started slowly. Before the start of the Cultural Revolution, there was a call to start to study Mao's works. The Chinese People's Liberation Army came to the village to read Chairman Mao's works. They held performances in the village. They came to people's home to teach people to read Mao's three classic articles: "Serve the People", "In Memory of Norman Bethune" and "The Foolish Old Man Who Removed the Mountains". They explained to the villagers what these articles were about. After the PLA soldiers left, many school children, like myself, started to teach villagers about Mao's works as well. When the central government announced the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, high school and middle school students left their schools, and began to write big character posters in the streets. The high school students dragged 20 of their teachers to the marketplace and denounced them publicly and shaved off half their hair in front of a big crowd. I do not think that most people knew what the Cultural Revolution would be like at the beginning.
Many students began to publish newspapers and pamphlets. There were so many pamphlets at the time, criticizing government officials. In the beginning they were mostly written by students. Not long after this, farmers and workers began to write them as well. There was so much information going on at the time. Later on, there was a group of high school and middle school students from my county that travelled all the way to Beijing to see Chairman Mao. When they came back in August 1966, they began to organize into different Red Guard factions. They started to organize mass rallies to criticize the county and commune leaders. All officials were under some kind of popular scrutiny and attack at the time.
Almost everybody, I would say 90 percent of the population, was part of a mass organization.
I was in third grade at that time. Five of my friends and I also organized a Red Guard organization. We designed our Red Guard symbols and began to publish a single page newspaper. We collected enough money to get a hand printer to print our newspaper. In my school there were 13 small newspapers. We would recruit others and write something and go to the marketplace to distribute it to the people. That's how it started. There were big character posters everywhere. The village streets were plastered with big character posters, mostly criticizing village leaders. Before the Cultural Revolution, the village leaders had a lot of power. They normally didn't work in the field and they would eat and drink a lot at the village's expense. And the Cultural Revolution held them to task. That's how it started actually.
In all these activities with the big character posters, all were written by the farmers themselves. And I remember some of the farmers who didn't know how to write. They came to us, they came to the school kids, and we would write it for them. So it was a very mobilizing movement. Everybody in the village was touched by that.
The reason the officials are corrupt today and were not during the Cultural Revolution years is because the masses were really empowered. There was always a mass meeting every night and all the government policies and directives were read to the farmers. And it was required by the government at the time. They were read to the farmers and then the farmers discussed these documents, so everybody knew what was going on and why. The reason why the Chinese people were eager to read and willing to recite Mao's works at the time is because they found what Mao said represented their best interests. And Mao said what they wanted to hear. For example Mao's article "To Serve the People" is only one and a half pages long. But in this short article Mao elaborated on how a communist official should behave. A communist official shouldn't have any self interests. He should work for the people and serve the people. They should care about the poor people and the farmers. They should welcome criticism. If they were not doing something right, they should change it for the sake of the people. This is all something the farmers never heard and they wanted to hear.
Q: Why during that time, during those 10 years of the Cultural Revolution, was there no effort made to purge the Communist Party of the right-wing capitalist roaders?
DH: The Cultural Revolution was not to purge people, it was to educate the people. Many of the capitalist roaders had fought for the revolution and made important contributions to the Chinese revolution. It was an accepted traditional idea that those who fight for the revolution should enjoy the privileges when the revolution succeeded. It was not enough to purge these people. The problem was the old traditional ideas. So the Cultural Revolution was to do away with the traditional ideas and educate the people through mobilizing the farmers and the workers. I think if there was no coup in 1976, I doubt that this government apparatus would have changed by itself. It happened because there was a coup. But I don't think to purge people is a solution either. I remember during the Cultural Revolution there were some high officials in my county who encouraged their own children to work with the farmers and to ask for the most difficult assignments and tasks to build their character. It seemed that these high officials did change with the change of social climate during the Cultural Revolution years. But when the social climate changed, they changed back.
Most people were not aware that there was a coup in 1976. Mao's wife and three other important leaders were arrested. And there was a very extensive purge throughout China. Hundreds of thousands of people who supported the Cultural Revolution were arrested right away. Some people argue that Mao should have killed Deng Xiaoping and a few others to prevent the arrest of the Gang of Four. Maybe he should have, but he did not.
Q: Could you paint a picture comparing what the average daily life was like for you and your family during the Cultural Revolution compared to, on the one hand communism before the Cultural Revolution, and then compared to your family now in capitalist China?
DH: The Cultural Revolution was launched because the Great Leap Forward failed. It failed partly because there was a 100-year natural disaster on the one hand. On the other hand, it failed because communist officials in the villages were not really socialist yet. They ordered farmers to do too much and they themselves didn't want to work hard. There was not enough to eat during the Great Leap Forward because of the natural disasters on the one hand and mismanagement on the other. So the reason I think the Cultural Revolution was launched by Mao was that he realized at the time that the Chinese officials needed to be educated and that the Chinese people needed to be educated through a socialist movement. That's why he mobilized the Chinese farmers to criticize the officials in the village. And of course, I was too young, I don't remember too much about the Great Leap Forward. But during the Cultural Revolution, I remember very well. I was working in the fields with the farmers and at that time in the rural areas, each village had a production brigade, and each brigade was divided into several production teams. In my village there were eight production teams. Each production team had about 40 families. We elected five production team leaders each year. We had a production team head, a woman leader, an accountant, a cashier, and a store keeper. Before the Cultural Revolution these people were appointed by the village leaders and the village leaders were appointed by the commune leaders. It was not democratically elected. During the Cultural Revolution years, these production team leaders were elected by the farmers.
We worked in the fields together. Everybody came out and worked together. And at the end of the day the cashier would record how many people worked that day. And at the end of the year, when the harvest came in, the village accountant, together with the production team accountant, would develop a distribution plan. Seventy percent of the grain was distributed according to how many people you had in your family. Thirty percent was distributed according to how much you worked in the collective. So if you did not work in the fields, you were still entitled to 70 percent of the grain from the collective. That was the distribution on the production team level. There was also distribution at the production brigade level. The village owned many enterprises. After putting away money for a welfare fund, money to purchase new equipment and so on, the village would distribute its income according to how much you had worked in the collective. The collective also produced vegetables, fruits, peanuts and we also raised pigs. These would be distributed to villagers regularly according to the same distribution schedule as grain was distributed. We also purchased fish, wine, cigarettes collectively with the money earned by the village enterprises, and this was distributed to each family on important occasions like Chinese New Year and other holidays. We got almost all our supplies from the collective.
After the Cultural Revolution years, I went to college and my two sisters who used to work for the village, found jobs in a state-owned factory in the early '80s. Now the factory has been sold and my two sisters have been unemployed since 1996. My younger sister is still working in the village, as the village cashier now. My village is doing well compared with other villages. Life has changed dramatically in the countryside. I think for most working class people, life has changed for the worse. Even though they may get more money, they have lost benefits like free medical care and free education of the socialist past. They now have to pay for their education. They have to pay for their medical care. Most farmers cannot afford the medical care. If they are sick for a small problem, they just endure the problem. If they are sick for a big problem, they just wait to die. Many of them say they do not want to leave a big debt for their children by going to the hospital. The medical care is very expensive now and it is beyond the reach of most farmers and working class people in urban areas.
Q: Could you talk a little about what the cultural life was like in your village and how that changed?
DH: Before the Cultural Revolution, Chinese performing arts were mostly about talented young men and beautiful ladies, kings, generals and so on. That's what the Chinese traditional plays were about. During the Cultural Revolution, there was a surge of a new kind of art. Every village at the time had a group of farmer artists and they played instruments, sang revolutionary songs, danced revolutionary dances, and staged revolutionary plays. There was some kind of performance in the village almost every night. These performances became educational tools. Revolutionary ideas spread because of these revolutionary performances. And it was very powerful. But of course today you don't see that any more in the countryside. But if you go to China today, you can still see older people singing the revolutionary songs in parks and public spaces to entertain themselves.
Q: In the movies that we see about China and the Cultural Revolution, there is a representation of people being picked up and tried by popular tribunals and paraded around town, punished. My question is: where does this image come from, did you hear about things like this in China, how widespread was this?
DH: That image was from the Cultural Revolution years. For a few weeks in the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, many Chinese officials were being criticized on the stage. That was very common. I saw it many times. I would say most government officials went through some of that at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution. At the same time, I would argue, many of these people deserved some kind of punishment. They had made mistakes in their work. And because of their mistakes, people suffered. People were looking for ways to air their anger. In the villages, the struggle against village leaders was more gentle and peaceful.
These public struggle sessions to deal with officials who committed crimes and made mistakes were different ways of dealing with these people. After they were struggled with for a day or two, they were allowed to go free. They were taught a lesson by the people. In the U.S. people are sent to prison. I still think this public education during the Cultural Revolution was very effective, not only to educate the village officials, but also everybody else. After the session, they were free. So I don't think that was a bad practice. I think it was a very good practice.
Q: What about the situation in China now, particularly the economic crisis and how you think that's working itself out, especially in the rural areas, but more generally?
DH: The Chinese government is faced with a huge challenge today and the Chinese government officials themselves have admitted that on many occasions. Some people estimate that there are 100 incidents involving more than 100 people challenging the government and 300 incidents involving less than 100 challenging the government each day. I read in a document about an incident in Guangdong province where three police officers stopped a car without a license plate and upon further check they found the driver without a driver's license. But the three people came out the car and yelled that the police are harassing people and about 2,000 people came out. They turned the police car upside down and set it on fire. The government is warning the police to be careful because the tension between the people and the government is very high.
And there are a lot of people in the countryside who are very angry with the township government. I was told by a farmer about an incident in a rural township. The party secretary was taking a nap one day. But about 100 farmers ,who were angry with the township government's decision to move the market to a different place, went to his bedroom. They actually dragged him by his four limbs into the marketplace and threw him up into the air for a half hour. They didn't hit him. They just toyed with him for a half hour. In the end the government had to remove him from office because he had become an embarrassment for the government. This happened last year. There was another government official who was beaten by the farmers. The villagers wanted him to take a patient to the hospital. He refused. He said that not everyone could ride in his car. The farmers almost killed him, but the government didn't punish the people who did it. So I think the government realizes how tense its relationship is with the masses.
In the old days, the Chinese government officials came to the village and worked with the farmers. And today they don't do that. They come to the village in big cars, only to get money from farmers and to enforce the one child policy... I think the government has a legitimacy crisis. The Chinese government was able to survive the challenges of the Great Leap Forward posed by unprecedented natural disasters and mismanagement by its officials because of the socialist legitimacy. I don't think it will be able to survive any challenges close to that of the Great Leap Forward.
Q: Could you talk about what happened during the coup in 1976 and also how that whole period was being understood where you were?
DH: I still remember where I was on 9 September 1976. At 4 o'clock that day, I was walking with my friend outside the village when the loudspeaker said there was a very important announcement. And we immediately realized something was wrong. And they said Chairman Mao had passed away. I don't know how I walked home that day. I remember that everybody around me was crying. Finally I reached home. My father cried all the way home from his factory. When my grandpa died he didn't cry. He gathered the family together and he said, today our poor people's sky has fallen and we do not know what life will be like tomorrow. At the time, I thought, in my heart, how could that be possible? We have built the socialist state. How could the poor people's sky fall just because Chairman Mao died?
It turned out that my father was right. When the Gang of Four was arrested, the Chinese government said the people were really happy. That was not true. In my home town many young people really respected Jiang Qing because of an incident that happened in a neighbouring commune. On Chinese New Year in 1975, the village leader played over the loudspeaker a traditional drama which was criticized during the Cultural Revolution. A young man in the village criticized the village leader for playing that over the loudspeaker. But the village leaders accused him of causing trouble in the village. He called the police and the police took him away. While he was in prison, he wrote a letter to Jiang Qing, and in less than five days, Jiang Qing responded to his letter. Jiang Qing ordered that the person be released. And the village leader was dismissed from office. Young people in my area loved Jiang Qing. When the Gang of Four was arrested a few weeks after Mao died, we knew things were going to be different.
Question: You were saying that the 10 years of the Cultural Revolution were the most exciting of your life. Could you give some examples of that spirit that you felt?
DH: The way that I felt at that time was that I had a strong sense of security. I was not alone in this world. My neighbours, my production team leaders, the village leaders would take care of anybody if they needed help.
In 1998, one of my friends who worked with me committed suicide. When I received the news from my village I cried. The reason I cried was because I felt that if the collective had not been disbanded he would not have died; he would not have committed suicide. And this person was about my age. When he was young, he couldn't get up early in the morning. So every morning my production team leader told me to go to wake him up. When I went to wake him up the first time, he answered me, and got up. The second day, he said, I'll get up but he never got up. So I had to drag him up from his bed. The third day his grandmother was very upset that I woke him up every day. She told me that her grandson needed more sleep. But the production team leader said to me: "Do not mind his grandmother. Wake him up. He needs help." So he came to work with us with my help. He worked every day. He was a very good worker. He was very talented as well. He played the Chinese instrument, the erhu very well and he also painted well. But after the collective was disbanded, nobody went to wake him up anymore. He was able to sleep as much as he wanted. So eventually his wife left him. And by 1996, 1997 he became mentally disturbed. And the last time I saw him was in 1997 when I went back home. I saw him walking naked on the street. He saw me and ran back home. I followed him to his house. I asked him why he walked naked in the streets. He said that life was bad for him. He did not want to live any more. I told him that he had to change his mindset, that he needed to face the challenges. I asked him why he didn't go back to painting if he could not do anything else. I told him that I would be in the village for another 10 days, and I would like to buy a painting from him. He promised that he would do it. But the next day, he came to see me. He said that he could not do it now. He told me that he would do it for me the next year. I told him that it was him that I was interested in not the painting. I wanted to see him stand up and take control of his life. But three months after I left the village, he committed suicide. He hung himself. When I learned of this news from my younger sister, I cried very hard. I felt that if the collective were not disbanded, he did not need to commit suicide. The community was no longer there. Your friends and your neighbours became competitors and strangers to you. The security network had been taken away. For Americans you're used to this kind of competition. But for Chinese farmers who lived under the socialist system before, the change was too dramatic for many people.
Q: The Cultural Revolution sent shock waves around the world. In your village, how much were you aware of the international situation, the influence this was having internationally?
DH: At that time when I was in the village, I really felt we were part of the international revolution. We were young and we were part of a big picture. I remember in 1971 there was a huge drought in our area. The county government held a huge rally in the marketplace. At the rally, government leaders and representatives of farmers and workers said that we were fighting this drought not just for ourselves. We were fighting this in support of the Vietnamese people's fight against U.S. imperialism. We were fighting this drought to support oppressed people in Africa and so on. After the rally, everybody in our school wrote a pledge to join the fight against the drought. The school was closed for two weeks. We went back to the village to fight the drought with the villagers for two weeks. Everybody worked very hard. I felt that I was doing something significant to help the revolution. At that time I didn't really understand what it meant. It was standard language. I believed what we were told by the government that we had friends all over the world. After the Cultural Revolution was over, the Chinese elite told us that it was government propaganda. But it was not simply propaganda. I found this out when I studied in Singapore. When Mao died in 1976, China did not have diplomatic relations with Singapore. So the branch bank of Bank of China decided to hold a memorial service for Mao for three days. Ordinary Singaporeans and seaman from all over the world came to show their respect for Mao day and night. The line was so long, the staff at the Bank of China had to extend the memorial service from three days to ten. I realized then that our fight in China was connected with the struggle of oppressed people all over the world.
Q: I want to step back to your experience in the Cultural Revolution. You were able to go to school, you grew up and became an educated youth in the countryside, and yet there was this political campaign that was going on for 10 years. How did this intersect with you, how much were you continuing to follow it?
Dongping Han: My whole value system was changed very dramatically. Before the Cultural Revolution, my father never allowed me to talk back to him; that's how the Chinese family was. He never allowed me to talk back to him. Whenever there were guests in the house I was never allowed to say a word. But during the Cultural Revolution years that changed. I said, "Chairman Mao said I can talk back to you!" But many people in the U.S. country think that the revolutionary campaign is an interruption of life. No. The revolution did not disrupt most people's lives, particularly in the village. During the day most work continues, and at night people went out to the streets and there was a lot of debate; different groups debate in the streets. My cousin and I went to shops at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution to propagate Mao's ideas. The government-owned shops extended their hours until 10 at night at the time. So we went to the shops to read Mao's teachings and perform the plays, and so on. We loved that.
Maybe I can give you an example to illustrate the change. Before the Cultural Revolution years, people in my area never gave blood to anybody. If you needed a blood transfusion, you went to your family: your wife, your father or your brothers. People thought that if you gave blood to another person, you would lose your own vitality in life. But one day, one of my colleagues was sick and needed a blood transfusion. Most of the factory workers were working in fields harvesting. It was a busy time in the village. Twenty young people who were working in the village went to the hospital. The nurses checked our blood types. I was the only person who qualified to give the blood. I knew at the time any one of the 20 people would give their blood to save my colleague. The village party secretary asked me what to do. I said that we needed to save the patient. They took more than 700 cc from me and after that I couldn't walk and they had to take me home in a wheelbarrow. And the next morning I woke up and my mom and my two aunts were all crying. They actually cried the whole night. They thought I wouldn't be able to get married, nobody would marry me. But life changed, and it wasn't just me. All the people who went to the hospital that day would have happily given blood to that person that day.
Whenever there was a storm, even at midnight people would get up to cover the collective crops. If it snowed we would get up to clean the streets. We did not have bulldozers. Everybody would get out to clean the streets. Another important change in the rural life was that there were almost no crimes during the Cultural Revolution years. For 10 years, we did not have any crime in the village. In my commune of 50,000 people, I did not hear of any serious crime for 10 years. But now, crime has become so common in China.
Q: Could you compare your daily life during the Cultural Revolution to what the daily life would have been like for your grandparents before 1949?
DH: The reason why my father was so supportive of the Communist Party was that he had to work 18 hours a day. He had to pick up the capitalists′ night soil and did household chores beside long hours of work in the workshop. When the communists came to power, the workday became eight hours, so my father's life changed for the better under socialism. My father used to believe in Buddhism. After the communists came to power, he no longer believed it any more. On the Chinese New Year, my mom always asked to kowtow to the gods of the family. My father would always tell me not to do it. He was told that he was suffering because he did something wrong in the previous life. He changed his previous life, but his life suddenly changed for the better with the Communist Party in power.
Both my father and my mom begged before 1949, and were hungry all the time. Both my grandmothers died in their 30s in 1944, without any medical care. But ever since I could remember, I never felt hungry. I always had enough to eat. My father never bought any toys for me when I was young. I often compare my childhood with my son's in the U.S. At the time, we had a lot of kids in the neighbourhood to play with and we made toys for ourselves. We played a lot of games ourselves. We worked on the collective farm during the summer, spring and fall. In winter we played popular games in the streets when there was nothing to do in the fields. And I always ask my son which childhood is better. Of course it's very hard for him to imagine. But I strongly believe that my childhood was much more healthy, much more creative than that of my son who has nothing else but toys and video games. We had community, and we learned how to interact with one another; we learned how to build up leadership skills and things like that. And my son didn't have those skills. When I first came to the U.S, I had a class on the Cultural Revolution. And the professor said that Cultural Revolution education was a disaster, and most students in the class agreed with him. In the end, I told the class that I was a product of the Cultural Revolution education. I challenged the whole class to a competition with me to see who is better educated. Nobody was willing to take on the challenge.
Mittwoch, 21. Juli 2010
Haiti six months after the earthquake – the deadly realities of imperialist aid
19 July 2010. A World to Win News Service. Following is an abridged version of an article that appeared in the issue dated 25 July 2010 o f Revolution, newspaper of the Revolutionary Communist Party , USA (revcom.org) .
It has been six months since a catastrophic earthquake hit Haiti in January. The city of Port-au-Prince is still literally buried in rubble, making transportation difficult and rebuilding nearly impossible. There is little recovery and rebuilding. Why?
First of all, this reflects the fact that Haiti is an impoverished country that has been economically and politically stunted because it has been dominated by imperialism, especially U.S. imperialism. Experts estimate that it would take 1,000 trucks three years to remove all the rubble. So far only 2 percent has been cleared. But the media reports that Haiti only has 300 trucks [working on clean-up].
And then there are the rules of capitalism – in which nothing gets done unless there is a profit to be made. So millions of trucks and other heavy equipment in the U.S. , including tens of thousands of pick-ups and SUVs sitting unsold on car lots because of the depressed economy, are not used to help hundreds of thousands of people in Haiti who are suffering.
There are the huge roadblocks thrown up by capitalist relations of ownership and production in Haiti itself. There have been frequent reports in the media that plans to build better camps are stymied by the failure to get permission from large landowners who control possible sites. In fact, there are many reports of people being evicted from encampments set up after the earthquake because landlords thought they could put even rubble strewn land to more profitable use.
The following is from The New York Times: "[D]ebris… also has a potential monetary value if it is to be reused. 'It's not just the rubble, it's the question of rubble ownership,' Mr Scales [of the International Organization for Migration] said. Most [people on the land to be cleared] are renters, but the rubble technically belongs to the property owners. And sorting out who owns what land, and getting their permission to excavate has proved difficult."
Think about what is being said here: "It's not just the rubble, it's the question of rubble ownership." What is happening here speaks volumes to the utter insanity and brutality of the rules operating in the capitalist system – and the complete inability of this system to even address, much less meet, the basic needs of the people. Some 1.6 million people must live in the streets during hurricane season while the propertied classes determine who should gather profits from the ruins of their former homes!
Only 28,000 people have been placed in permanent or stable temporary shelter. Most people have not even received tents. By official figures, only 97,000 tents have been put up since the earthquake – one for every 16 homeless people – and most of these are now falling apart. Tens of thousands of people do not even have tarps. Most of those who lost their homes still remain in the roughly 1,200 camps around the earthquake zone. Only one fourth of these camps are even being run by organized agencies – which are more likely to provide latrines, lights and perhaps clean water. The rest are pulled together by the masses of people, usually led by a committee of residents, fending for themselves to get food, water and sanitation. Said Menmen Vilase, a nine-months pregnant woman: "I'd love to live under a plastic sheet, but I can't afford it."
The NYT (10 July 2010) described one of these camps built single file along the median strip of a busy highway. Dozens have been injured when cars crashed into their shanties. Latrines were finally built in March by the French group, Islamic Aid, but they are across the road, so many people who are sick with diarrhoea have to dart through traffic to get to bathrooms. A Revolution reporter visited this same shantytown in January – in all this time these latrines are the only substantial aid they have received.
Faced with all this, tens of thousands of people have moved back into homes badly damaged and unsafe, living daily with the terror of being buried alive if the unstable structures collapse, if another earthquake hits. Others have moved into cemeteries, a municipal dump, flooded sports fields. People live amidst rubble still containing human remains; one man said, "It is better to be here with the smell of the dead bodies than to be down at that camp where it stinks of pee."
The NYT reported that UN officials "urge patience… They point to accomplishments in providing emergency food, water and shelter and averting starvation, exodus and violence." Nigel Fisher, deputy special representative of the United Nations secretary general in Haiti told the Times that "What hasn't happened is worth noting. We haven't had a major outbreak of disease. We haven't had a major breakdown in security." (7/10/10)
Now, when people like this talk about "violence" and "breakdowns in security," they are not talking about the security of the masses. They are not talking about the increasing levels of rape of women in the camps or the stealing and selling of children into the international sex trade, or attacks on "squatters" by machete-wielding thugs of large land-owners – all of which has been happening.
What they mean is that there has not, so far, been a major political uprising of the Haitian people against the U.S./UN occupation or against the failure of the imperialists and the subservient Haitian government to meet the most basic needs of the people. When they speak of "avoiding exodus", they are bragging that they have prevented large numbers of Haitians from escaping the desperate conditions there and coming to the United States . To the U.S. and other imperialists (including the UN) millions living on the edge of death is quite fine as long as people are kept from the point of either rising up or flooding into the U.S. where they might be a source of social instability.
What about all those billions of dollars of aid pledged to Haiti ?
There are three realities to look at here. The first reality is that when you read the fine print, the aid pledged to Haiti came with "conditions" , which were basically that Haiti officially give up its national sovereignty.
The "justification" for this outrageous imposition of foreign control is the history and present reality of widespread corruption and "incompetence" of the Haitian government. There is a racist and colonialist sub-text here – the imperialists imply that Haitian people are just too ignorant to handle their own affairs, so it is up to the great powers to "pick up the white man's burden" (as the pro-imperialist British writer Rudyard Kipling once called it) of running their society for them. This "native" corruption and incompetence is a prime justification for imperialist intervention of all kinds, and a prime way of covering up the enormous failures of their system.
Now it has to be said that in the wake of Katrina, the Wall Street debacle, the housing collapse, and the capitalist oil catastrophe in the Gulf, the U.S. should shut up about other nations' incompetence and corruption!
But more importantly, governmental corruption in Haiti (and elsewhere) is very real, but it is directly a product of U.S. domination.
To put it bluntly, the U.S. has been the primary force shaping – often violently – the Haitian state and social and economic structure. And very specifically, the U.S. worked to overthrow any regime that was not thoroughly "corrupt". Why? Because the people the U.S. wants as local power structure in Haiti are those willing to sell out the interests of the people and nation of Haiti to the U.S., in return for prestigious titles, connections and a fat salary.
Yet even so, Haiti now confronts a second reality – that the vast majority of aid that was promised hasn't come through.
The third reality here is that the U.S. plan for Haiti – should it ever actually materialize – is to rebuild it to better serve the needs of U.S. imperialism, and not to help the Haitian people.
According to Ansel Herz writing on HaitiAnalysis. com, "[Hilary] Clinton, along with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, are touting a plan devised by Oxford economist Paul Collier to expand tariff-free export zones around Haiti. Their plan calls for Haiti to lift urban slum-dwellers out of poverty through jobs in textile factories, like the Inter-American Garment Factory…"
In July demonstrations of thousands took to the streets in Port-au-Prince and other Haitian cities. While there were many diverse forces and demands, the unifying theme was to demand the resignation of the government of President Rene Preval. Annessy Vixama, a leader of Tet Kole, one of the major peasant organizations in Haiti , has raised the just demand that "the state has to change from attending to international businesses that are acting against the majority of the people and start attending to the peasants."
The state, in Haiti or anywhere else, is never "neutral"; it does not represent "the people" or "the nation" in general – it arises on the basis of, reflects and serves the underlying economic and political system in a given country. In Haiti the basic system is exploitation and domination by the imperialists (mainly the U.S. ) and by the imperialists' allies within Haiti amongst the large landowning and capitalist classes. This is the system, these are the class forces, that the state was built to serve and which it can only serve. And in fact, if the Haitian state is weak, that is mainly because the imperialists have repeatedly opted to rule directly, through coups, invasions and occupations; in fact, Haiti has been under U.S./UN occupation since President Aristide was kidnapped and taken out of the country in 2004, and most aid and investment bypasses the government and is funnelled through NGOs (generally pro-imperialist "non-governmental organizations" ).
The mounting struggle against this government and demands that it meet the needs of the people are completely just and should be supported by people everywhere. And such struggle has the potential to strengthen and push forward a movement for revolution that is aimed at the fundamental problem of U.S. imperialism and its stranglehold domination of Haiti .
It has been six months since a catastrophic earthquake hit Haiti in January. The city of Port-au-Prince is still literally buried in rubble, making transportation difficult and rebuilding nearly impossible. There is little recovery and rebuilding. Why?
First of all, this reflects the fact that Haiti is an impoverished country that has been economically and politically stunted because it has been dominated by imperialism, especially U.S. imperialism. Experts estimate that it would take 1,000 trucks three years to remove all the rubble. So far only 2 percent has been cleared. But the media reports that Haiti only has 300 trucks [working on clean-up].
And then there are the rules of capitalism – in which nothing gets done unless there is a profit to be made. So millions of trucks and other heavy equipment in the U.S. , including tens of thousands of pick-ups and SUVs sitting unsold on car lots because of the depressed economy, are not used to help hundreds of thousands of people in Haiti who are suffering.
There are the huge roadblocks thrown up by capitalist relations of ownership and production in Haiti itself. There have been frequent reports in the media that plans to build better camps are stymied by the failure to get permission from large landowners who control possible sites. In fact, there are many reports of people being evicted from encampments set up after the earthquake because landlords thought they could put even rubble strewn land to more profitable use.
The following is from The New York Times: "[D]ebris… also has a potential monetary value if it is to be reused. 'It's not just the rubble, it's the question of rubble ownership,' Mr Scales [of the International Organization for Migration] said. Most [people on the land to be cleared] are renters, but the rubble technically belongs to the property owners. And sorting out who owns what land, and getting their permission to excavate has proved difficult."
Think about what is being said here: "It's not just the rubble, it's the question of rubble ownership." What is happening here speaks volumes to the utter insanity and brutality of the rules operating in the capitalist system – and the complete inability of this system to even address, much less meet, the basic needs of the people. Some 1.6 million people must live in the streets during hurricane season while the propertied classes determine who should gather profits from the ruins of their former homes!
Only 28,000 people have been placed in permanent or stable temporary shelter. Most people have not even received tents. By official figures, only 97,000 tents have been put up since the earthquake – one for every 16 homeless people – and most of these are now falling apart. Tens of thousands of people do not even have tarps. Most of those who lost their homes still remain in the roughly 1,200 camps around the earthquake zone. Only one fourth of these camps are even being run by organized agencies – which are more likely to provide latrines, lights and perhaps clean water. The rest are pulled together by the masses of people, usually led by a committee of residents, fending for themselves to get food, water and sanitation. Said Menmen Vilase, a nine-months pregnant woman: "I'd love to live under a plastic sheet, but I can't afford it."
The NYT (10 July 2010) described one of these camps built single file along the median strip of a busy highway. Dozens have been injured when cars crashed into their shanties. Latrines were finally built in March by the French group, Islamic Aid, but they are across the road, so many people who are sick with diarrhoea have to dart through traffic to get to bathrooms. A Revolution reporter visited this same shantytown in January – in all this time these latrines are the only substantial aid they have received.
Faced with all this, tens of thousands of people have moved back into homes badly damaged and unsafe, living daily with the terror of being buried alive if the unstable structures collapse, if another earthquake hits. Others have moved into cemeteries, a municipal dump, flooded sports fields. People live amidst rubble still containing human remains; one man said, "It is better to be here with the smell of the dead bodies than to be down at that camp where it stinks of pee."
The NYT reported that UN officials "urge patience… They point to accomplishments in providing emergency food, water and shelter and averting starvation, exodus and violence." Nigel Fisher, deputy special representative of the United Nations secretary general in Haiti told the Times that "What hasn't happened is worth noting. We haven't had a major outbreak of disease. We haven't had a major breakdown in security." (7/10/10)
Now, when people like this talk about "violence" and "breakdowns in security," they are not talking about the security of the masses. They are not talking about the increasing levels of rape of women in the camps or the stealing and selling of children into the international sex trade, or attacks on "squatters" by machete-wielding thugs of large land-owners – all of which has been happening.
What they mean is that there has not, so far, been a major political uprising of the Haitian people against the U.S./UN occupation or against the failure of the imperialists and the subservient Haitian government to meet the most basic needs of the people. When they speak of "avoiding exodus", they are bragging that they have prevented large numbers of Haitians from escaping the desperate conditions there and coming to the United States . To the U.S. and other imperialists (including the UN) millions living on the edge of death is quite fine as long as people are kept from the point of either rising up or flooding into the U.S. where they might be a source of social instability.
What about all those billions of dollars of aid pledged to Haiti ?
There are three realities to look at here. The first reality is that when you read the fine print, the aid pledged to Haiti came with "conditions" , which were basically that Haiti officially give up its national sovereignty.
The "justification" for this outrageous imposition of foreign control is the history and present reality of widespread corruption and "incompetence" of the Haitian government. There is a racist and colonialist sub-text here – the imperialists imply that Haitian people are just too ignorant to handle their own affairs, so it is up to the great powers to "pick up the white man's burden" (as the pro-imperialist British writer Rudyard Kipling once called it) of running their society for them. This "native" corruption and incompetence is a prime justification for imperialist intervention of all kinds, and a prime way of covering up the enormous failures of their system.
Now it has to be said that in the wake of Katrina, the Wall Street debacle, the housing collapse, and the capitalist oil catastrophe in the Gulf, the U.S. should shut up about other nations' incompetence and corruption!
But more importantly, governmental corruption in Haiti (and elsewhere) is very real, but it is directly a product of U.S. domination.
To put it bluntly, the U.S. has been the primary force shaping – often violently – the Haitian state and social and economic structure. And very specifically, the U.S. worked to overthrow any regime that was not thoroughly "corrupt". Why? Because the people the U.S. wants as local power structure in Haiti are those willing to sell out the interests of the people and nation of Haiti to the U.S., in return for prestigious titles, connections and a fat salary.
Yet even so, Haiti now confronts a second reality – that the vast majority of aid that was promised hasn't come through.
The third reality here is that the U.S. plan for Haiti – should it ever actually materialize – is to rebuild it to better serve the needs of U.S. imperialism, and not to help the Haitian people.
According to Ansel Herz writing on HaitiAnalysis. com, "[Hilary] Clinton, along with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, are touting a plan devised by Oxford economist Paul Collier to expand tariff-free export zones around Haiti. Their plan calls for Haiti to lift urban slum-dwellers out of poverty through jobs in textile factories, like the Inter-American Garment Factory…"
In July demonstrations of thousands took to the streets in Port-au-Prince and other Haitian cities. While there were many diverse forces and demands, the unifying theme was to demand the resignation of the government of President Rene Preval. Annessy Vixama, a leader of Tet Kole, one of the major peasant organizations in Haiti , has raised the just demand that "the state has to change from attending to international businesses that are acting against the majority of the people and start attending to the peasants."
The state, in Haiti or anywhere else, is never "neutral"; it does not represent "the people" or "the nation" in general – it arises on the basis of, reflects and serves the underlying economic and political system in a given country. In Haiti the basic system is exploitation and domination by the imperialists (mainly the U.S. ) and by the imperialists' allies within Haiti amongst the large landowning and capitalist classes. This is the system, these are the class forces, that the state was built to serve and which it can only serve. And in fact, if the Haitian state is weak, that is mainly because the imperialists have repeatedly opted to rule directly, through coups, invasions and occupations; in fact, Haiti has been under U.S./UN occupation since President Aristide was kidnapped and taken out of the country in 2004, and most aid and investment bypasses the government and is funnelled through NGOs (generally pro-imperialist "non-governmental organizations" ).
The mounting struggle against this government and demands that it meet the needs of the people are completely just and should be supported by people everywhere. And such struggle has the potential to strengthen and push forward a movement for revolution that is aimed at the fundamental problem of U.S. imperialism and its stranglehold domination of Haiti .
Abonnieren
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