The ears of the grain will smash his head

Some people perceive that the absurdness in the era of Chairman Mao is exaggerated by critics. The fact, however, is that the criticisms of Mao, either from the perspective of breadth and depth, of specifics in particular, or from individual empirical study, are far from enough. As to the absurdness in the absurd era, the most incisive castigation is not criticism based on contentless slogans, but on evidences sufficient to demonstrate its preposterousness.

While I don’t agree with many of Li Ao’s claims after Taiwan’s realization of democracy, I do think one of his words is conducive in comprehending the hardships in China after 1949, that is, “I prove you are an asshole instead of cursing you.” It is far more convincing to prove the falsehood and nonsense of the governmental ideology using facts based on detailed materials and empirical methods than simply infuriated words.

The Anti-right struggle in 1957 and the Great Leap Forward (GLF) in 1958 were the direct drivers of three years famine (which should actually be five years from 1958 to 1962); anti-right struggle had killed off the critics and thus paved the way for the lies in GLF in 1958. Once the rational voices had been erased, craziness started flooding; omnipresent making of iron and steel, national folk-song activity, bombastic amount of production etc., combining together, drove the whole society into insanity and fever collectively.

Concerning the national folk-song movement, there should be professional researches on, say, how the competition of folk songs and poetries was initiated and organized; a statistical collection of the authors that participated in; or the statistics of the publishers then as well as the total amount of printing (as complete as including mimeograph and letterpress). All these fundamental researches could provide good grounds for analyzing the role folk-song movement played in the propagandizing and fostering of GLF, as well as in apotheosizing of Mao (even could help make clearer the impact of such apotheosization on the cultural revolution, thereby contributing to restoration of the history. To my knowledge, however, it seems no such research comes out so far; our ambiguous perception of the government is due in part to such insufficient research.

People started to die in 1958 due to starvation, which deteriorated into famine in a large scale in 1959, but the government still kept lying, like the sing orioles and darting swallows. In China, fortunately, we have Mr. Yang Jishen’s book Tombstone exclusively documenting the great famine; outside China, we have Jasper Becker’s Hungry Ghosts: Mao’s Secret Famine. The work done by Backer encompasses the relation and comparison of Mao’s famine with that of Ukraine under governance of Soviet Union, it also covers the situation in Tibetan-inhabited areas. All these are the places that the work of Mr. Yang is relatively weak at, it is recommended, therefore, to refer to both of them so as to grasp a complete picture.

In the years of 1958, especially 1950, the phenomenon of people killed by starvation became very normal, yet the government still exalted the prosperity and printed lots of eulogistic things. The book “1958 poetry”, which is similar to poet yearbook, is nothing but a collection of goose-raising pufferies that were prevalent across the whole country with many races taking part in.

Xu Chi wrote in the preview of 1958 Poetry (August, 1958, 5500 copies printed) that “Everywhere becomes the sea of poems. China has been a country of poems. The poems written by workers, peasants and soldiers are shining brightly. Many factories or plants have emerged with uncountable poems; everywhere turns into an area million-poem; and many military camps are one with million poems.”

“Almost in every county,” he went on, “from the local governors to the people, everyone gets down to writing; everywhere a folk-song fair is held. Competition of poems is so pervasive that all provinces have to do it through wireless radio. Poetries, collection of poems and journals of poems and songs, published in forms of mimeograph and letterpress, are countless. The poems are created on streets, sculptured on stones, posted in plants, building sites and furnaces. Handouts of poems are flying everywhere across the whole country.

“The advent of communes is a big event that calls the global attentions and praises, and also a spectacular theme of many poems.” Accordingly, we had a whole list of people who, then, were professional in singing the praises of the government, to name but a few, Guo Moruo, Li Jishen, Li Ying, Guo Xiaochuan, Yuan Shuipa, Yuan Ying, Zang Kejia, Li Guangtian, Deng Tuo, Guang Weiran, Chen Qitong, He Jingzhi, Li Ji and Xu Chi. Under such crazy circumstance, it is not stunning that such threatening poems like The ears of the grain will smash his head emerged, shown below, in the province of Gan Su in which the amount of death was only third to Sichuan and Henan,

The ears of the grain will smash his head
--Qing Guangyuan, Gan Su province
Streams of clearness flowing day and night,
Crops greening in commune,
Who dare say there is no harvesting of food,
The ears of the grain will smash his head.

Are they winning by amount?

On July 1^st, as the Communist Party celebrates its eighty eight year’s birthday, the government proudly reveals that the party members of Communist have reached 75.931 million, 17 times that of 1949. The amount of people, as a matter of fact, doesn’t by any means represent the validity and legality of an association. In an environment in which one party predominates with little existence of equal competition, in which joining and withdrawing are constrained while the monopolized social resources by power are employed to attract membership, 76 million members out of 1.3 billion could not be an accomplishment that should be proud. Under the condition that there are no competitors—democratic parties in China are nothing but interest-derivatives or parasites of the communist party, rather than rivals, even taking account of them it would not make a big number in front of our total population—the ratio of party membership has barely reached one twentieth for the past sixty years. A party that alleges itself as the best of all in the world, one with the powerful backup of army and tax while without any competition or opposition, is unable to convert all our 1.3 billion people into membership, should it be a failure or not?

To be frank, the government does want to unify all people into party members, the problem, though, is that it is impossible if all were made members. That is because the party is where all the interests converge and where the dividing of loot takes place, the privileges of the party members would not be reflected had every person been part of the loot dividing. It is just like everyone being an official, there would not be any soldiers to serve, which could make the position of official meaningless. That is to say, they could not involve everyone into party member, since it would be too costly if all packed in and, one the one hand, it would get in peril the exploitation of interests by the party or the maximization of governors’ interests at all levels, on the other.

However, there could not be a small amount of people in the loot dividing group, otherwise the power of its competition looks insufficient. Even though with the backup of the authority over the army and tax, a stable victory could not be count on for them. As a result, the plan for dividing the loot should be gradually phased in; the scholars, capitalists and adult students joining in the party in recent years could be an embodiment of the plan. The way that the loot is divided resembles that the officials who commit crimes could only face disciplinary action within the party instead of being sentenced. But, of course, if you are involved in after bribed, you need to adapt yourself to the rules within the party: being a screw under the party constitution or replacing the human nature with party spirit so as to be tied up with the party on the road of dividing the loot.

In accordance with the principles of modernized parties, it is free to join in and withdraw any party, which is to say, if human rights were jeopardized because of admission to a party, especially jeopardy to personal freedom, such admission is tantamount to kidnapping by underground organizations. The current governmental party-admission process that one has to go through holds a pattern—fist up and swearing—that resembles that of old gangster organizations; two introducers needed have nothing different from the recommendation or introduction one needed in order to be admitted to the organizations. Moreover, there is no freedom to publicly quit the party, nor is there any chance the party members could not be loyal to the leaders. Thus, the current ruling party is not a real ruling party in some sense, it is rather a underground organization backed up by army. How could an organization, close to or even being underground organization, exercise a civilized polity and safeguard the interests of its people; except creating an illusion of peace through relying on lying and brainwashing, controlling the media and propaganda, threatening with force which leads to massive panic among the people, there is no real guarantee of the interests of people, let along the realization of freedom and democracy.

There are shared interests for an organization, but pursuit of such shared interests falls back on the organization’s validity, and such validity comes from its obedience to laws and adherence to equality and competition. The current Communist party is not officially registered, first of all, it doesn’t allow for competitions from other parties, second of all; all these are what monopolies do and against the Anti-trust laws. It is unacceptable for the communist party to lift the on ban political parties at present, but it should at least alter the way how members are admitted, such as promoting transparency, unleash the hurdle of quitting, otherwise there is still a long way for the communist party to go before becoming a modernized and civilized political party. Since such gulf still exists, there could not be civilized politics, without which its legitimacy of ruling will always be a dead hole unsatisfactory to its people. People unsatisfied, coupled with imbalance between societal majority and individuals in competing for interests, will put the interests of everyone in peril and jeopardize a stable development of our society. That building a utopia based on the structure of underground organization, with which to fool its people in order to loot their interests, is a malfeasance unforgivable.

If the freedom of quitting and entering is not deprived, now there must be such occurrences; but a party with members more than seventy million is scared of its members quitting publicly, does it make sense? Does the underlying reason involve being afraid of domino effect that could lead up to the eventual collapse? You certainly don’t need to worry, since you don’t have counterparts so far controlling adequate amount of interests that could be offered to your members. It is, however, getting less and less proud for the party members to acknowledge of the membership in the normal life now. There is a well-known saying: you are fucking a party member, you whole family is fucking party members in the sense that, because of acknowledging of the membership, it is tantamount to conceding the injustice of the party as well as relating themselves to many corrupt officials. To those members who controls little power, therefore, it is evident that they start feeling regretted.

In an animal world, there are of course many ways of living and competing; some win by amount and some by quality, but a balance has to be reached in the biological chain or in the biological world. To my limited biology knowledge, there is a strategy of surviving, which is based on unlimitedly proliferative amount to survival due to its poor life instinct or weak competence, such like rat and cockroach. If you think the amount is the kingcraft, thus you need to assign all of your people memberships, which is the most preeminent showing-off. But doing so is too costly and against you will of maximizing looting your people’s interests. That is to say, mimicking the rat or cockroach is too prohibitive to be possible. But you should know this is a world of human being rather than one filled with competing rats or cockroaches (even if it was, you are unable to convert other worlds into the same), any attempt of effort at proving its validity and legitimacy through amount is nothing but ignorant dream.