[China Series #1] The Communist Party of China and the Idea of `Evil’
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The Oxford Political Review is conducting a series of contributions from field experts and academics studying China. We are looking to platform a diversity of voices and opinions. This piece is written by Prof. Kerry Brown, Professor of Chinese Studies and Director of the Lau China Institute.
Over the last quarter of a century or more of thinking about, living in and engaging with China, it is a line I have often heard. The problem of the contemporary People’s Republic, it goes, is not with the country, or the people – it is with the ruling party. We love Chinese people, the holder of this line says, we have no truck with them. It is with the force governing them that we take issue.
This then goes in a number of different ways. The Communist Party is evil. Chinese people are good. They are oppressed, downtrodden. It is easy to progress beyond this to the heroic statement that we, outside of China, with our enlightened ways are those who will be key in delivering this salvation. We are on our way. Freedom is nigh.
The neatness of this approach is attractive. Binary, black and white systems are always easy to engage with. It also evades some of the pointier, more complex issues. We have located the single source of the problem – the evil Communist Party. Once that is out of the way, everything will be plain sailing.
Hermann Melville in his great novel `Moby Dick’ stated that the key point was not so much to think extensively, but with subtlety. When one sees such neat divisions between good and bad it should always arouse questions. How comes things are so straightforward? The idea that the Communist Party of China is the source of all bad, that it’s removal would be the solution to all our problems, inside and outside China, belongs to this category of thinking.
Firstly, let’s start with what the Communist Party actually is. We may as well be clear about that before we condemn it. It is currently a membership organisation of 90 million people. It has existed since 1921. Over that period it has varied from a revolutionary party before 1949 to a governing once after that date, when the People’s Republic was founded. Even since 1949 it has changed. From a predominantly quasi-military group whose members were mostly from the countryside, it is now made up more of urban, and college educated people. That is not surprising. This is the general story of Chinese social development over the last seven decades. The Communist Party has simply reflected the society it is in.
Alas, for the great supporters of a neat division between Party and population, the thorny issue is that the Party is part of society, and its members are, unsurprisingly, more often than not typical Chinese people. The elite of 3000 or so powerful central and provincial leaders are a tiny, tiny minority. The rest of the membership are broadly representative of Chinese society. Many more people want to joint than get accepted – perhaps ten times more. That shows that a neat division between people and ruling party is not an easy one to impose. The lines are very blurred.
For sure, there are people in the Party who join for its network. Others may even have been coerced. But out of 90 million people, the safest thing to say is that broad generalisations about why people are in it have to be treated with great caution. There are a mixture of reasons. The Party deliberately sets out to integrate and reach deep into society. The most prudent thing one can say about the relationship between the two is that they are very complex. And if you want to start deploying language like `evil’ about the Party, then you are going to have to start labelling a good number of Chinese people that way to. Party members are Chinese people, after all – not some separate species!
Nor is the Party itself a uniform entity, despite the rigid image it can give to the outside world. In the past there have been deep divisions within it. These may still exist, though in Xi’s more regimented, disciplined era they are less easy to see. Liberals fought against the Leftists in the 1980s. Pro-globalisation figures slogged it out against more nativists ones in the build up to entry to the World Trade Organisation in 2001. There have been more recent fights over the role of rule of law, and even, in the final part of the Hu era up to 2012, a brief moment when democratisation, at least in the Party, was promoted by figures like Wen Jiabao, the premier then.
That lack of uniformity is clear looking back over the Party’s era in power. Under Mao, far from being the source of control, it was frequently more akin to an abused friend or ally, victimised in the Cultural Revolution from 1966 because the Chairman believed it was becoming bureaucratic and ossified. Mao was not just a dictator over Chinese society, but the Communist Party! The anti-corruption battle under Xi has targeted Party actors more often than those outside. Does this mean we have to start dealing with qualifications like `good side’ and `evil side’ of the organisation? Once we do that, then the glorious neatness of the original line of attack starts to rapidly fade away. We are not talking about the evil Party, but the evil part of the Party – a far less arresting and dramatic claim.
Then there is the final issue. Labelling an entity like the Communist Party `evil’ or bad might work polemically. But it ends up doing a massive disservice to the many Chinese still in China who are not members. Some of these are deeply opposed to their government. Some are supportive. Some are in between. It would be hard to characterise what a standard view would be. But the idea that they are silent, suppressed, and without agency is profoundly condescending. Many of them may know their rulers are problematic and often incompetent. They are in good company there with people in Europe and the US. But they are also averse to radical and disruptive change. They have seen enough of that in their own history. Maybe it is just a case of the `devil you know being better than the devil you don’t’. But to frame them as somehow cowed masses waiting for knights in shining armour to come from overseas is a colossal misjudgement. In any case, Europe and America need to save themselves now – not busy themselves fretting about the salvation of others!
In one of those tiresome Twitter clashes that sometimes occur these days, I was accused by someone some months ago of being into `nuance.’ This, they declared, with that lapidary style so common on social media, where so much is asserted, and very little explained, `was the sign of poor analysis. Every. Single. Time.’ Thinking about this afterwards, I concluded that in fact nuance was the point. Especially with something as complex as the state of modern China, and its governance system. There are many things it can be labelled. Autocratic. Sometimes in its decision making inhumane. Too vast in scale. Too laden with history. But the idea that its millions of cadres and actors are busying their lives just working on doing harm is risible. Like government everywhere else, the vast majority most of the time are trying to do their best, for the society they live in and the people they live amongst. Nuance might not be dramatic, but recognising this prosaic fact must get us closer to a better view of the truth. Every. Single. Time.
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I think it is indeed hard to have a fundamental problem with the Chinese government and political system, and not to have one with much of the Chinese public. After all, most of that public displays a strident nationalism that leads it to support its government and system. particularly on the issues that are most controversial abroad – its territorial claims, its policies towards the Uyghurs, its military build-up. The fact is that most of the Chinese public generally appears to share its government’s system of values and goals. I think people who claim to hate the party but then “love the people” are side-stepping this issue.
Perhaps the problem is with labelling anyone “evil”, such a draconian term that is weighed down with religious meaning. Just calling them authoritarian, nationalistic or whatever would be more precise and less loaded, and it wouldn’t be unreasonable to add that many, many Chinese people are in perfect alignment with their government in ways that are problematic.
Just as many, many Americans are in perfect alignment with the Trump administration in ways that are problematic?
Of course, let’s just forget that George W. Bush invaded Iraq on the false pretense of WMDs.
Let’s forget that Edward Snowden was crucified for disclosing America’s mass surveillance and privacy violations.
Let’s forget Vietnam. Please.
And, by the way, what’s wrong with territorial claims and military build up? America never had any?
Having lived and worked in China for eighteen years and having having Chinese friends some of whom are party members and supporters and others who are not, I would just say that basically I agree with the main points you make here. It is all too easy for foreign commentators and politicians to make sweeping statements about “the Chinese” or “the Chinese government” or “the Chinese Communist Party” without much knowledge or understanding. One point that I would make myself is that China is a vast place with many many layers in its society: far too much of the comment seen in the west comes from a very brief scratching of the surface of one tiny part. We in the west should be doing better in our understanding of this complex society.
This is a beautifully written discourse on China and her government. Bravo!
And I agree with you 100 per cent. The only way to understand the Chinese is to understand their history. China’s people and their governance cannot be separated, any more so than in America or Russia.
The CPC cares about their people in its own way. Through the CPC, China uplifted over half a billion people out of poverty and into the middle class over the past several decades. This is the greatest economic achievement in human history!
Through the CPC, China became the world’s second largest economy, soon to eclipse the largest.
Through the CPC, China has become incomparably strong, both economically and militarily. Never again will China be trodden by foreign powers, abused and raped, like she was over a century ago.
The Chinese people have much to be grateful for, thanks to the CPC.
Like all governing states, the CPC is imperfect. It has its strengths and its weaknesses. The same can be said for Western democracies. Neither side is “evil.” The notion of evil arises from our belief in democratic values; it is inherently prejudicial.
Autocracies can be useful. Autocracies can work well for countries. Four thousand years of human history have proven this.
In his 2018 book “What is wrong with China”, Paul Midler places much of the blame on the Chinese population, not the government.
You forgot to add the following:
– Through the CPC, China became the world’s only country to have provoked the death of 20-30 millions of its own citizens in the space of a few years.
“The CPC cares about their people in its own way.”
You wrote it wrong. It should be: “The CPC cares more about staying in power than anything else.”
The CPC cares about staying in power, just like every other government in human history. Why would you expect otherwise?
As for the millions of deaths during Mao’s 27-year reign, yes, that was a very dark time. But it’s hardly fair to tar the modern CPC with it. As Prof. Brown points out, CPC has been continuously evolving throughout its 98-year history.
America’s history has also had some very dark times. And yet, nobody tars modern America with what happened to black civil rights, the Japanese during WWII, slavery, American Civil War, etc. You don’t damn America with her past, and you don’t damn CPC with its past.
Richard, you changed the comment from RAIV, it said ‘the CPC cares more about staying in power than anything else’. This is true of CPC but obviously not true of every other government in human history. democracy allows for peaceful change from one party to another. Taiwan, Japan, S Korea and many others live this way.
America does get damned for her past so does Britain and Germany. Those countries have learned to acknowledge and live with their past. China has not, at lease not post 1949 past. That is the difference and why CPC gets tarred with those events, rewriting history to stay in power at any cost seems to be a full time job for the CPC.
What government doesn’t make staying in power its top priority? I live in Canada and both the Liberals and Conservatives fight tooth and nail to remain in power. Ditto in the US with the Democrats and Republicans. The fact that we democratically elect our leaders doesn’t change this.
CPC most assuredly would rather not be reminded of the Maoist years. Why would they? It was a disastrous time and a stain on Chinese history. That does not mean, however, that CPC won’t use force when necessary to maintain the safety and stability of the country, like when there’s an imminent uprising. We in the West would also do the same because even in a democracy, you do not allow rebellions to disrupt society.
Fighting tooth and nail with a broadly equal opponent in a democratic election is not the same as ‘caring more about staying in power than anything else’ or making remaining in power its top priority.
Kindly explain why you said “The CPC cares about staying in power” when responding to someone who said “The CPC cares more about staying in power than anything else”. Why did you change the words in such a manner? To cover for your untenable argument I suppose. Did you think no one would notice?
> The CPC cares about their people in its own way
Notably by killing them in the tens of millions, incarcerating them by the millions on political grounds, preventing their freedom of movement, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, preventing any political opposition from being voiced, let alone formed, and in general depriving them of the rights it pretends to guarantee them in the constitution.
It cares about its own existence, and that’s all.
> Through the CPC, China uplifted over half a billion people out of poverty and into the middle class over the past several decades.
The Party press release repeated, and the standard Party approach as seen right up to the present day: don’t look at how we caused the problem in the first place, look at what we’re belatedly doing now to solve it (even though we’re not actually doing what we say we are). Decades spent driving the economy into the ground, killing the more successful, locking up the educated, forbidding private enterprise of any kind, denying foreign investment, but praise us now because we actually took the very radical and innovative step of… allowing businesses to open! Although we continue to steal their revenues through our vast corruption, interfere whenever they get too successful, prevent the flow of business information, and starve the start-ups of funding through our mismanagement of an entirely broken banking system. Above all, don’t ask just how much sooner would current standards of living had been reached, and how much higher a level would have been reached (and how many millions would not be dead) had the Party not stood in the way as it continues to do? China’s current successes (immensely flawed–see a GINI coefficient big enough to be seen from space and bigger even then when the so-called party of the people took power, and see environmental degradation and consequent health issues). Even the figures on numbers finally reaching the middle class are entirely fake, are randomly quoted with ever greater hyperbole, are known even when there’s any pretence of accurate counting to be based on Party-pleasing measures not application anywhere else.
As with the misdirection about the economy, so with COVID-19: don’t look at what we did to start with–suppress all information for weeks, play it down when it did get out, conceal human-to-human transmission, delay the arrival of outside experts, introduce partial lockdowns in a manner that allows millions to move around, continually lie about the numbers of deaths–look at what we’re doing now, even though we aren’t doing what we say we are, and it’s all too late.
And what response to we see to anyone who points out these simple facts? The only one the Party apologist has in his or her armoury: the tu quoque fallacy. ‘Well! Look at the US!’ as if there’s any logical connection. If the US government is as bad as the Party then it must equally be criticised. This isn’t an either/or situation, and if I’m taking to court for murdering my defence of ‘Well, look over there! Other people are committing murder’ well not make my own shooting spree go away, or make me any less culpable. The Party must answer for its own actions (and inactions) regardless of the misbehaviour of others.
> Sometimes, human rights take a back seat and that’s okay.
Apologies. If I’d seen this earlier I wouldn’t have bothered to reply. There’s nothing to say to someone whose view amounts to no more than ‘might is right’.
The CPC cares about staying in power, just like every other government in human history. Why would you expect otherwise?
As for the millions of deaths during Mao’s 27-year reign, yes, that was a very dark time. But it’s hardly fair to tar the modern CPC with it. As Prof. Brown points out, CPC has been continuously evolving throughout its 98-year history.
America’s history has also had some very dark times. And yet, nobody tars modern America with what happened to black civil rights, the Japanese during WWII, slavery, American Civil War, etc. You don’t damn America with her past, and you don’t damn CPC with its past.
Regarding COVID-19, China may not have been transparent in December, but nothing they could’ve revealed would’ve caused us to behave responsibly.
By the end of January, we already knew everything we needed. We knew the virus was human-transmissible. We knew the virus had escaped to over a dozen countries. We knew that China had thousands of infected and hundreds of dead. We knew that China had locked down 3 major cities, a loud and clear signal to the rest of the world that the virus was out of control.
And still, we didn’t immediately seal our borders and lock down our countries to prevent the spread of the virus. Had we done so, we could’ve stopped the virus dead in its tracks.
Instead, we waited until f*cking mid-March to lock down!!!
We were irresponsible, inept, and negligent. The disastrous global death toll was entirely on us. China had nothing to do with it.
Here’s the question everybody refuses to answer: What could we have learned in December that we didn’t already know by the end of January? And why would that have made us behave any more responsibly?
China’s lack of transparency by itself doesn’t prove anything.
As for human rights, we in the West also trample on human rights when it’s convenient. Have we already forgotten Edward Snowden? And I’ve mentioned black civil rights, Japanese internment, and so on.
Look, I get it. You favour democratic values. You favour free speech. It’s a big deal for you. What you don’t understand is that it’s not a big deal for everyone. Your argument is highly prejudicial.
On the other hand, I try to be fair and balanced in my viewpoint.
Hello. I really appreciate your comments on CPC and China. I am Chinese and have lived in the country for 26 years. Some non-Chinese might think we don’t have any freedom of western sort but I have been going to the foreign countries for years without any restriction. Many foreigners think China would have been better and will be better without CPC. I don’t think they really have done enough research on the past 100 years or the years since 1840, what we call the beginning of modern Chinese history. CPC has done a lot of wrong things. We are aware of it. But they have achieved so much, to name a few, the life expectancy after 1949 rose from 30 something to 70 something in 1978, and China built a comprehensive industrial system through 1949-1978, these are the cornerstones for the great economic success from 1978 til today. I know many people died during 1959-1961 and people suffered. It’s so unfortunate and worth remembering. But it would be condescending to think a country with 85% of poor peasants could reach a high living standard like the west with a snapshot of moment. The industrialization is NEVER THAT EASY! With no offense, India, African countries and the latin America are still struggling with the industrialization.And India, the biggest democracy today! got independence 1 year before China, without any suffer from wars. With no offense, I really hope Indian people can live a better life as we Chinese do. Very few countries have made it through since WWI, South korea and Singapore made many mistakes and suppressed many people once. The west have come a long way at the expense of many other countries to be honest.
I have to admit that we don’t share so much political freedom yet. I condemn it too. I want more freedom of speech but just because I want it doesn’t mean I blame CPC for everything! And like Borwn said. The line is blurred. You can’t just compare the party to any western-style party. It includes 90 million people and more in the future. Inside the party there are divisions between different parts like the Democrat and the Republican. Many successful businessmen and elite are the party members and have a seat in the Congress. Again it’s easy to make a snap judgement by reading daily news.
That was one of the most accidentally damning indictments of the Chinese people I’ve ever read. If you’re extending the umbrella of inclusion from the leadership to some hundred million people, you must also extend the moral accountability. So now instead of a smallish group of power-hungry anti-democratic technocrats responsible for indisputably unjust actions and ideals, we have innumerable Chinese in opposition to universal suffrage, in support of concentration camps and mock trials and imprisoning people for what they think. You can’t have it both ways.
Why after all those words am I unable to discern if Brown thinks the broader umbrella agrees with the more egregious actions of the Party or not? He clearly says not to accuse them of being duped — even though, what is it, 9 out of 10 students at 北大 and 清华 couldn’t identify the photo of the tank man? Sorry, but that’s being duped — and duped among your elite up-and-coming cadres.
[Side note: Am I missing something, or does the following logic force Brown into a corner of saying that Mao was ‘an abused friend or ally’? “Under Mao, far from being the source of control, it was frequently more akin to an abused friend or ally, victimised in the Cultural Revolution from 1966 because the Chairman believed it was becoming bureaucratic and ossified. Mao was not just a dictator over Chinese society, but the Communist Party!”]
Here’s my advice for Brown: Tell us if he believes the wider umbrella that he says we may be unwittingly condemning is a) absolved of Chinese government-inflicted transgressions, b) morally responsible for them since the are in this group, or c) dupes.
The Party dates back to a ragtag group in 1921, Brown reminds us. The Nazi Party dates back to just a few month before, with also a small group of firebrands. Both parties at their peak comprised roughly the same percentage of their populations. Is it also wrong to say the Nazi Party was bad but the German people were mostly good?
Other than what I’ve noted above, I agree with pretty much everything else Brown says, especially the ‘enlightened westerner’ delusion, and the urgent need for Europe and the U.S. to focus on the increasing fragility of their hard-fought democratic institutions and norms.
Morality is not absolute. You judge the CPC according to your moral values, but in the context of China, which has never had a democracy, the good of the country and its society outweighs such “moral” concerns. Things like national security, socioeconomic and political stability, and public health and safety are deemed more important. Sometimes, human rights take a back seat and that’s okay.
The CPC’s handling of the COVID-19 crisis is far better than America’s because the CPC can act quickly, efficiently, and forcefully. Donald Trump, who was democratically elected into the White House, acted irresponsibly, inconsistently, and disastrously for his country. With only a quarter of China’s population, America has 10X the number of infected and 10X the number of dead.
The CPC uplifted over half a billion people out of poverty and into the middle class over the past several decades. America could never hope to achieve anything comparable. Imagine if she could elevate 38 million poor Americans into the now-hollowed-out middle class. Impossible!
The CPC has made China incomparably strong so that she will never again be trodden by foreign powers like she was over a century ago. This kind of thing was seared into the Chinese psyche.
You may indict the Chinese people all you like, but this is their history, their experience, their way of life since, well, forever.
And it’s worth noting that America would suspend human rights if necessary. And not so necessary in the case of Edward Snowden. Recall the Japanese internment. Recall black segregation. Recall LGBTQ rights.
Morality is a pretty fuzzy concept.
“Recall the Japanese internment. Recall black segregation. Recall LGBTQ rights.”
Indeed: they’re recalled often in media and academia in the USA, and it’s not a crime to discuss those issues openly, or to print and publish books and articles detailing how the government failed the people in those times.
Can a survivor of the Great Leap Forward in the countryside or Tiananmen in 1989 publish an uncensored account of their experiences in China?
Yes, you don’t have free speech in China. China is an autocracy. So what?
Prof. Brown’s balanced account of what the Party is not will be news to many.
An equally nuanced account of what the Party is would be useful, too, since few Western readers understand that its ethos resembles Rotary International’s and its members contribute $1 billion dollars in annual dues and billions of hours of voluntary service.
Prof. Brown’s words are mostly a commonplace to any old China hand, but they definitely bear repeating, especially for the benefit of non-Chinese viewers outside the country. I find the most useful way to think of the CCP is as an institution roughly comparable to the Catholic Church, in which one is finds everything from true believers to cynical opportunists to members who are almost indistinguishable from atheistic humanists.
However, Prof. Brown, seems not to pursue his argument to the bitter end when it comes to the question of complicity in the Party’s crimes. I basically agree with @Tanner Brown when he writes ‘That was one of the most accidentally damning indictments of the Chinese people I’ve ever read’ (though I do not agree with all @Tanner Brown’s arguments). The truth is that the mass incarcertation of the Uyghers could not happen without the tacit acceptance of the majority Han population. Racism and xenophobia may not always be active in China, but they are deeply latent features of its soceity, and as we seen now in the treatment of Africans in Guangzhou, they are bottom-up phenomena rather than top-down ones.
You should read this piece by David Goldman (Kerry Brown seems to agree with him):
https://asiatimes.com/2019/10/you-can-never-be-chinas-friend-spengler/
“The single biggest misconception is that you have a wicked [Chinese] government and good [Chinese] people — The Chinese have had 3,000 years for the government and the people to shape each other. A lot of my American friends say that the problem is the wicked Chinese Communist Party which is oppressing the good Chinese people — that’s
complete nonsense. I see the Communist Party as simply another manifestation of the Mandarin administrative cast which has ruled China since around 300 BC.”
“It was explained to me by my Chinese colleagues that, when you’re in first grade in primary school, you look to your left and right and try to figure out whom you’re going to walk over. In China, you have your family. Outside the family, you only have inferiors and superiors. There are no parallel institutions. No group of people coming together, spontaneously, to do something together as equals. You only have superiors and inferiors.”
Interesting and nuanced article but author also misses a few important distinctions:
1. Members are not the same as the system as whole, while certain members or groups of them may not be blameworthy doesn’t mean the system or party itself is a cause of the problems.
2. Perhaps a larger proportion of blame goes to the central leadership, which is fair. But how is that leadership supported, does it not operate from the party and indeed selected by it? There’s a certain logic to the party in its need to preserve dominance. It would seem that something is missing from the picture if you just describe the behavior because of the political leader without the party as a system and whole as a basis.
3. There is a reason why some people want to distinguish people and party. That is, precisely because they don’t want to blame the good people of a culture or society, if anything is much more nuanced than just blaming a nation which is actually a much more problematic rhetorical issue compared to this one, at least in the broader public sphere.
Using the term evil may be the wrong one, but the author is also strawmanning in a way — the word they are meaning is something like deeply problematic.
Indeed, are things very different in China than from in various sorts of democracy?
In those we often see a party of greater self-interest (let’s call it the GSP) alternating in power with a party of lesser self-interest (LSP). At its most extreme the GSP is made up of people who have no interest in the wellbeing of anyone except themselves and who think failure to join them at the top table shows nothing more than a lack of will and deserved failure. In the middle the GPS has people who think that once their own banqueting is assured crumbs from their table will fall to those below, and at the less extreme end there are those who genuinely plan to help others with far more than crumbs, but which they feel will be possible only when they are comfortably seated with the carving knife and fork in their own hands; and those who do care about others and do as much as they can, but who are principally concerned about the welfare of themselves and their families.. To broadly condemn the GSP is to condemn all off these people, which seems to be the only point that Prof. Brown really has to make about the Party (the CCP).
In the LSP, meanwhile, at one extreme we have those who wish to level everything out by more or less extreme measures, while making sure that they retain some sort of self-interested control of the process, and those who simply see some sort of turmoil or revolution as a way to get themselves to the top over the dead bodies of everyone in their way. In the middle there are those who simply understand that the best way to get on is if everyone is taken care of–you may be an investment banker, but you still need clean streets, incorrupt police officers, and other myriad people to play their parts in the economy and live as happy and fulfilled lives as possible. Everyone benefits. And at the other end there are those who just think that there shouldn’t be yawning gulfs in opportunity, and no one should be left too far behind. Again, to broadly condemn the LSP just for the behaviour of one segment of it is questionable.
But the Party (the CCP) is the ultimate vehicle for the self-interested. In times of shortage (which has been permanently since 1949, thanks to a large degree to the Party’s own self-interested policies and general incompetence) its members are those who suffer least. Shortages create self-interested societies, or allow existing self-interest to come to the fore. We see this every day and everywhere under COVID-19: the mere idea that there will be a shortage of flour or toilet paper makes people buy more than they need and leave none for others. In China it’s always been the case that to be a Party official is to see your own needs cared for before those of people who are not Party members.
The stereotypical figure of a cadre was always the only person in the room who was plump; the person for whom favours needed to be done in order even to get decisions made or access to services for which there was anyway an established right; the person who had as a result of their more productive guanxi access to a greater choice of sexual partners even, due to better access to the means of survival and such comforts as might be available. In short it’s long been the case that joining the Party was the quickest way, and at periods the only way, to (relative) food and financial security, as well as anything resembling a luxury–e.g., not very long ago, a bicycle, and later the unfettered personal use of the work unit’s car, housing allocations, etc. And, of course, there was always the opportunity not only to have first call on the grain store but to make a small fortune through corruption.
No wonder, then, that many might swallow their morals, and, in danger of drowning in the bitter sea, reach for the only lifebelt available despite the knowledge that being allowed to hang on to that lifebelt depends upon helping to ensure that the Party never faces criticism or competition, upon mouthing falsehoods about its achievements, upon shouting about how many lives the Party’s lifebelts had saved while ignoring who drove the ship onto the rocks in the first place.
This is not hard to understand. We see now in some parts of the world an increasing rick of violence on the streets and increasing theft as COVID-related lockdowns deprive the have-little of even enough to feed their children. Robbery is to be condemned, but when the alternative is starvation because the existing system is unable to provide any support, it’s not hard to find a little understanding or even feel a sneaking sympathy amid the distaste.
Of course many join the Party these days not because there’s a fear of starvation, but because it’s a route to getting plumper, or it offers some dubious assurance that a private business will survive relatively unmolested. For some it’s just greed. As court eunuchs risked death from a bloody operation, and if they survived that gave up the ability to reproduce, in order to benefit from secure employment in the Palace and gain vast opportunities for graft, so many feel today feel they have no choice but to perform a moral castration and join the Party.
But none of this excuses the Party in any way for creating this subversive mechanism which supports the self-interested to the complete exclusion of any others except as an accidental side-effect. What benefits Chinese society has gained in recent years–always mendaciously overstated and with all the accruing costs never mentioned–has been the result not of Party actions but of the effort of ordinary people *in spite of* the Party’s depredations.
So yes, it is right comprehensively to condemn the Party as a naked self-perpetuating dictatorship as well as those who support it. Despite the flaws in many other systems of government it is hard to conceive of one that could serve the Chinese people less well or cause them more harm. The Chinese people would certainly have an opinion on this if asked, and that the Party perpetually prevents the question from being raised is all by itself a good enough reason to condemn all its supporters.
You should read ‘Chaos and Grime: A Year in the Life of a Chinese City’ (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B083D7WV9J), published about three and a half months ago, just as the virus was breaking out in Wuhan. It is a memoir/chronicle of the experiences of the author (a scholar) in Wuhan, where he got himself into some trouble. (I read this and reviewed it on Goodreads.) It is an incredibly provocative book with a lot going on, and one of the many things that I got out of it was an idea of the day-to-day lying, corruption, and coverups that the Chinese people engage in without any direction whatsoever from the government most of the time, although of course sometimes this is the case. The amount of dishonesty there is truly mind-boggling. Check it out.
Xinjiang religious leader: U.S. should get facts straight (1 minute video)
https://youtu.be/5B1X8Vy9WLM
https://worldaffairs.blog/2019/07/05/xinjiang-and-uyghurs-what-youre-not-being-told/ (5-minute read)
http://ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2020/march/07/inside-the-world-uyghur-congress-the-us-backed-right-wing-regime-change-network-seeking-the-fall-of-china/
China detaining millions of Uyghurs? Serious problems with claims by US-backed NGO and far-right researcher ‘led by God’ against Beijing (10-minute read)
https://thegrayzone.com/2019/12/21/china-detaining-millions-uyghurs-problems-claims-us-ngo-researcher/
January 2020 report on Xinjiang by U.S. Congressional team:
https://www.blackagendareport.com/my-trip-china-exposed-shameful-lies-peddled-american-empire
4-min video in English: China has 3 times the number of Mosques per capita of Muslim population, than any other country.
https://www.facebook.com/chuin.loon/videos/10157650711477713/
One Million Uyghurs in detention – source found:
https://youtu.be/A8uZZjB4kfM
Truth about Uygur graves.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXBIeKpUq_c
In-depth report of historical facts:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Sino/wiki/faq/xinjiang-tibet
Statistics on Muslims in China.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7WiGsLM5Bg
https://thegrayzone.com/2018/08/23/un-did-not-report-china-internment-camps-uighur-muslims/
Pics used by BBC as Muslim concentration camps are schools for embroidery (females) and outdoor exercises for Muslim males.
https://twitter.com/XinjiangCamp/status/1201512647901859840
https://www.reddit.com/r/Sino/wiki/faq/xinjiang-tibet
Grayzone author Ajit Singh on misinformation about Xinjiang
https://youtu.be/1_JBEb6OMiw
50-minute documentary on Xinjiang terrorism
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4cYE6E27_g&
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2019-12-05/Fighting-terrorism-in-Xinjiang-MaNLLDtnfq/index.html
In-depth report:
https://www.unz.com/avltchek/march-of-the-uyghurs/
Huge collection of links:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1XiHrkJ_zudQZP1hBIBCgJKKAfAILxEG0cmQGrNH8pIU/mobilebasic
History and ties to NED – regime change network
https://thegrayzone.com/2020/03/05/world-uyghur-congress-us-far-right-regime-change-network-fall-china/#more-21707
https://thegrayzone.com/2019/12/21/china-detaining-millions-uyghurs-problems-claims-us-ngo-researcher/
https://medium.com/@rsahthion/a-case-study-in-racist-anti-chinese-sentiment-fuelled-by-american-bots-and-western-propaganda-f0a69978d568
https://list.ly/list/4920-truth-about-uyghurs-in-china
I would agree with most of the points made by professor Brown that subtlety and nuance is key in evaluating and analysing Chinese policy or even any policy or shaping any judgement for that matter.
That being said, the author isn’t actually taking any particular stance or engaging with any argument. It would seem that people who have such draconian perspectives on China and its policies as the ones mentioned by the author, are simply attempting to judge how to react, albeit in an uniformed and unconstructive way, when faced with newcomers that affect their way of life.
It also wasn’t specified if the criticisms (good and bad) were geared towards the overarching philosophy of the Chinese communist party. The CCP may have 90 million members who represent the 1.3 billion people in the PRC and have diverging opinions. Just as the UN has 193 member states representing the vast majority of the worlds population and has diverging opinions. That being said, every member state of the UN has signed the UN charter and the values that it represents are the values of the majority of the worlds population. In the PRC, the 90 million being part of the communist party must abide to the constitution of the CCP which may very well have diverging values from the majority of the Chinese population. In other words, 90 million people dont necessarily represent the majority in a population of 1.3 billion. Furthermore being free members who simply have to abide to a constitution written by an even smaller minority is no objective way to legitimately claim authority over an entire population. So there may be good or bad within the party but there is space also to argue altogether for or against the CCP if you fundamentally disagree with the foundations the party rests on.
@Jeremy Assous: A bug on this website caused my comment to go to the wrong place. Here it is again:
Basically, you’re saying that China is an autocracy, but everyone knows this.
“…no objective way to legitimately claim authority over an entire population.” The word “legitimately” implies that there is a higher authority who can pass judgement on whether a nation’s state should be permitted to rule. To whom should China answer for her governance?
You are free to disagree with the foundation that CPC is based on, but that does not mean CPC is an illegitimate government, nor that CPC is bad for the Chinese people. Indeed, I’ve made the argument in one of my comments here that CPC has been very, very good for China. CPC is the right kind of government at the right time for the people.
Basically, you’re saying that China is an autocracy, but everyone knows this.
“…no objective way to legitimately claim authority over an entire population.” The word “legitimately” implies that there is a higher authority who can pass judgement on whether a nation’s state should be permitted to rule. To whom should China answer for her governance?
You are free to disagree with the foundation that CPC is based on, but that does not mean CPC is an illegitimate government, nor that CPC is bad for the Chinese people. Indeed, I’ve made the argument in one of my comments here that CPC has been very, very good for China. CPC is the right kind of government at the right time for the people.
Liked the article very much. Different people will fill it in with different specific content, whether positive or harshly critical of the CP. I think most experienced China watchers in the West are concerned about the XiJinping “cult of personality” and domestic hard line on free speech. The fact that Xi represents perhaps the last connection to the generation of CP founders who were themselves victimized in the Cultural Revolution, that the educated party members were targets of that dark period, before fighting their way back into power, all shows the complexity of the party’s history. Every Chinese generation since DengXiaoPing’s return to power has lived extraordinarily different lifestyles, yet the Party remains. It certainly has deep cultural roots, but I think the issue isn’t yet decisively resolved whether the present nationalist retrenchment under XiJinping is fundamental, or mainly a reaction against felt Western threats and fears of internal anarchy. In any case, despite the corruption and cynicism among many Party elements, and in society as well, there remains a level of social solidarity and even idealism that the Party can mobilize in a crisis, which I think we saw during the Covid-19 pandemic. I confess I would dearly love to see the Xi regime overthrown and a more democratic leadership replace it. But we saw, I think with BoXilai, that there are potentially worse factions lurking in Chinese society and the CP, ready and willing to take power. For now, I think the framework Professor Brown outlines for understanding the CP and its relationship to Chinese society is still valuable, especially for Westerners who see things in black and white terms.
While I appreciate that the paper by Prof Kerry Brown was penned as a response to uninformed criticisms of the CCP (or CPC) as an ‘evil’ institution, it does come across to this reader (at least) as apolegetics for the authoritarian state model, which is probably not the intention. Its members are ordinary people; I accept that fact, and I know many of its members personally. Many others are members of the CCP because it is expedient to do so. Once a member one is locked in the ideological system; it doesn’t mean you have more agency to speak out. And while I would concur that the CCP is good for the vast majority of the people in PR China most of the time, the good comes with survelliance and denial of free speech, combined with a hierarchical cultural tradition of deference inherited from Confucianism that alllows the leadership to do things to its people that are a contravention of human rights (according to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights). Is surveillance and denial of free speech the best system for PR China, today? Probably. Is it the best system for Hong Kong SAR and Taiwan? No, according to most of the people in HK and Taiwan, if the reports are true. Is there more trust in government in PR China than in the US? In the liberal west, people have inherited a dualistic philosophical Cartesian tradition of black and white, right and wrong. Brown takes some issue with this binary system and I agree it can lead to poor judgement. We want to take a side, not sit on the fence. So people in the west will generally distrust government (and politicians) as the default position especially if they didn’t vote them in. But people like to believe they can change the world, and their governments. This is not part of the Chinese Dream. There is little choice but to trust.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights originated in the West and and is based on Western thinking. It is important to acknowledge and appreciate that other societies may have equally valid alternative conceptions of human rights.
No ‘other societies’ have ‘valid’ alternative conceptions of human rights. Only some governments claim they do.
To claim that the Chinese collectively don’t want to have a say in who leads them, and don’t want to be able to hold both individual corrupt cadres and the Party as a whole to account, is simply, out of self-interest, to fly in the face of the facts, as well as patronising to Chinese in the extreme. It is a claim only ever heard by people who want to retain power in their own hands regardless of the interests of anyone else.
In fact, and despite the dangers of doing so, the Chinese are out on the streets protesting against Party misrule in over 100,000 ‘mass incidents’ a year, as even the Party admits. The million Uighurs under lock and key aren’t there because of their mass acquiescence to Party rule. And, setting aside democratic Taiwan and such voting opportunities as have been given to Hong Kong in the closing years of British rule, when some pretence at democratic elections is given to villages in mainland China the villagers grab the opportunity with both hands, and express their frustration when the Party then thwarts any choice that it doesn’t itself condone.
The Chinese aren’t heartless automata. They want freedom of speech, of assembly, of religion, just as the Party-created constitution guarantees them because even the Party recognises the universal appeal of these ideas and originally lied its way into power with the promise of democracy, which it never delivered. Just as it fails to deliver all the human rights it put into the constitution.
> While I appreciate that the paper by Prof Kerry Brown was penned as a response to uninformed criticisms of the CCP (or CPC) as an ‘evil’ institution, it does come across to this reader (at least) as apolegetics for the authoritarian state model
Whereas
> Is surveillance and denial of free speech the best system for PR China, today? Probably.
comes across as nothing of the kind, of course.