SOS Chapter 44 Red Terror

The Red Terror during "Red August" and the Guangxi Cannibalism

After gaining absolute control over the country, the CCP did not end its violence at all. During the Cultural Revolution, such violence became worse.

On August 18, 1966, Mao Zedong met with the Red Guard representatives on the tower of Tiananmen Square. Song Binbin, daughter of communist leader Song Renqiong, put a Red Guard sleeve emblem on Mao. When Mao learned of Song Binbin's name, which means gentle and polite, he said, "We need more violence." Song therefore changed her name to Song Yaowu (literally meaning "want violence.")

Violent armed attacks soon spread quickly to the whole country. The younger generation educated in communist atheism had no fears or concerns. Under the direct leadership of the CCP and guided by Mao's instructions, the Red Guards, being fanatic, ignorant, and holding themselves above the law, started beating people and ransacking homes nationwide. In many areas, all the "five black classes" (landlords, rich farmers, reactionaries, bad elements, and rightists) and their family members were eradicated according to a policy of genocide. A typical example was Daxing County near Beijing, where from August 27 to September 1 of 1966, a total of 325 people were killed in 48 brigades of 13 People's Communes. The oldest killed was 80 years old, and the youngest only 38 days. Twenty-two entire households were killed with no one left.

Beating a person to death was a common scene. On Shatan Street, a group of male Red Guards tortured an old woman with metal chains and leather belts until she could not move any more, and still a female Red Guard jumped on her body and stomped on her stomach. The old woman died at the scene. � Near Chongwenmeng, when the Red Guards searched the home of a "landlord's wife" (a lonely widow), they forced each neighbor to bring a pot of boiling water to the scene and they poured the boiling water down the old lady's collar until her body was cooked. Several days later, the old lady was found dead in the room, her body covered with maggots. � There were many different ways of killing, including beating to death with batons, cutting with sickles and strangling to death with ropes. � The way to kill babies was the most brutal: the killer stepped on one leg of a baby and pulled the other leg, tearing the baby in half. ( Investigation of Daxing Massacre by Yu Luowen) [17]

The Guangxi cannibalism was even more inhumane than the Daxing Massacre. Writer Zheng Yi, author of the book Scarlet Memorial described the cannibalism as progressing in three stages [18].

The first was the beginning stage when the terror was covert and gloomy. County annals documented a typical scene: at midnight, the killers tip-toed to find their victim and cut him open to remove his heart and liver. Because they were inexperienced and scared, they took his lung by mistake, then they had to go back again. Once they had cooked the heart and liver, some people brought liquor from home, some brought seasoning, and then all the killers ate the human organs in silence by the light of the fire in the oven.

The second stage was the peak, when the terror became open and public. During this stage, veteran killers had gained experience in how to remove hearts and livers while the victim was still alive, and they taught others, refining their techniques to perfection. For example when cutting open a living person, the killers only needed to cut a cross on the victim's belly, step on his body (if the victim was tied to a tree, the killers would bump his lower abdomen with the knee) and the heart and other organs would just fall out. The head killer was entitled to the heart, liver and genitals while others would take what was left. These grand yet dreadful scenes were adorned with flying flags and slogans.

The third stage was crazed. Cannibalism became a massive widespread movement. In Wuxuan County, like wild dogs eating corpses during an epidemic, people were madly eating other people. Often victims were first "publicly criticized," which was always followed by killing, and then cannibalism. As soon as a victim fell to the ground, dead or alive, people took out the knives they had prepared and surrounded the victim, cutting any body part they could get hold of. At this stage, ordinary citizens were all involved in the cannibalism. The hurricane of "class struggle" blew away any sense of sin and human nature from people's minds. Cannibalism spread like an epidemic and people enjoyed cannibalistic feasts. Any part of the human body was edible, including the heart, meat, liver, kidneys, elbows, feet, and tendons. Human bodies were cooked in many different ways including boiling, steaming, stir-frying, baking, frying and barbecuing � People drank liquor or wine and played games while eating human bodies. During the peak of this movement, even the cafeteria of the highest government organization, Wuxuan County Revolutionary Committee, offered human dishes.

Readers should not mistakenly think such a festival of cannibalism was purely an unorganized behavior by the people. The CCP was a totalitarian organization controlling every single cell of the society. Without the CCP's encouragement and manipulation, the cannibalism movement could not have happened at all.

A song written by the CCP in praise of itself says, "The old society [19] turned humans into ghosts, the new society turned ghosts into humans." However, these killings and cannibalistic feasts tell us that the CCP could turn a human being into a monster or a devil, because the CCP itself is crueler than any monster or devil.

SOS CHapter 43

Extremely Cruel Ways of Killing

Everything the CCP does serves only one purpose: gaining and maintaining power. Killing is a very important way for the CCP to maintain its power. The more people killed and the crueler the killings, the greater the ability to terrify. Such terror started as early as before the Sino-Japanese War.

Massacre in Northern China during Sino-Japanese War

When recommending the book Enemy Within by Father Raymond J. De Jaegher [16], former U.S. President Hoover commented that the book exposed the naked terror of communist movements. He would recommend it to anyone who was willing to understand such an evil force in this world.

In this book, De Jaegher told stories about how the CCP used violence to terrify people into submission. For instance, one day the CCP required everyone to go to the square in the village. Teachers led the children to the square from school. The purpose for the gathering was to watch the killing of 13 patriotic young men. After announcing the fabricated charges against the victims, the CCP ordered the horrified teacher to lead the children to sing patriotic songs. Appearing on the stage amid the songs were not dancers, but rather an executioner holding a sharp knife in his hands. The executioner was a fierce, robust young communist soldier with strong arms. The soldier went behind the first victim, quickly raised a big sharp knife and struck downwards, and the first head fell to the ground. Blood sprayed out like a fountain as the head rolled on the ground. The children's hysterical singing turned into chaotic screaming and crying. The teacher kept the beat, trying to keep the songs going; her bell was heard ringing over and over in the chaos.

The executioner chopped 13 times and 13 heads fell to the ground. After that, many communist soldiers came over, cut the victims' chests open and took out their hearts for a feast. All the brutality was done in front of the children. The children went all pale due to the terror, and some started throwing up. The teacher scolded the soldiers, and lined the children up to return to school.

After that, Father De Jaegher often saw children being forced to watch killings. The children became used to the bloody scenes and numb to the killing; some even started to enjoy the excitement.

When the CCP felt that simple killing was not horrifying and exciting enough, they invented all kinds of cruel tortures. For example, forcing someone to swallow a large amount of salt without letting him drink any water�the victim would suffer until he died of thirst; or stripping someone naked and forcing him to roll on broken glass; or creating a hole in a frozen river in the winter, then throwing the victim into the hole�the victim would either freeze to death or drown.

De Jaegher wrote that a CCP member in Shanxi province invented a terrible torture. One day when he was wandering in the city, he stopped in front of a restaurant and stared at a big boiling vat. Later he purchased several giant vats, and immediately arrested some people who were against the communist party. During the hasty trial, the vats were filled with water and heated to boiling. Three victims were stripped naked and thrown into the vats to boil to death after the trial. At Pingshan, De Jaegher witnessed a father being skinned alive. The CCP members forced the son to watch and participate in the inhumane torture, to see his father die in excruciating pain and listen to his father's screams. The CCP members poured vinegar and acid onto the father's body and then all his skin was quickly peeled off. They started from the back, then up to the shoulders and soon the skin from his whole body was peeled off, leaving only the skin on the head intact. His father died in minutes.

Chapter 43 Tiananmen Square Massacre

From the Cultural Revolution and Tiananmen Square Massacre to Falun Gong

The Cultural Revolution was formally launched on May 16, 1966 and lasted until 1976. This period was called the "Ten-Year Catastrophe" even by the CCP itself. Later in an interview with a Yugoslav reporter, Hu Yaobang, the former general party secretary said, "At that time nearly 100 million people were implicated, which was one tenth of the Chinese population."

Facts of the Political Campaigns after the Founding of the People's Republic of China reported that, "In May 1984, after 31 months of intensive investigation, verification and recalculation by the Central Committee of the CCP, the figures related to the Cultural Revolution were: over 4.2 million people were detained and investigated; over 1,728,000 people died of unnatural causes; over 135,000 people were labeled as counter-revolutionaries and executed; over 237,000 people were killed and over 7.03 million were disabled in armed attacks; and 71,200 families were destroyed." Statistics compiled from county annals show that 7.73 million people died of unnatural causes during the Cultural Revolution.

Besides the beating of people to death, the beginning of the Cultural Revolution also triggered a wave of suicides. Many famous intellectuals, including Lao She, Fu Lei, Jian Bozan, Wu Han and Chu Anping all ended their own lives at an early stage of the Cultural Revolution.

The Cultural Revolution was the most frenzied leftist period in China. Killing became a competitive way to exhibit one's revolutionary standing, so the slaughter of "class enemies" was extremely cruel and brutal.

The policy of "reform and opening up" greatly advanced the circulation of information, which made it possible for many foreign reporters to witness the Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989 and to air television reports showing tanks chase down and crush college students to death.

Ten years later, on July 20, 1999, Jiang Zemin began his suppression of Falun Gong. By the end of 2002, inside information from government sources in Mainland China confirmed the cover-up of over 7,000 deaths in detention centers, forced labor camps, prisons and mental hospitals, with an average of seven people being killed every day.

Nowadays the CCP tends to kill far less than in the past when millions or tens of millions would be murdered. There are two important reasons for this. On the one hand, the Party has warped the minds of the Chinese people with its Party culture so that they are now more submissive and cynical. On the other hand, because of excessive corruption and embezzlement by CCP officials, the Chinese economy has become a "transfusion type of economy," and depends substantially on foreign capital to sustain economic growth and social stability. The CCP vividly remembers the economic sanctions that followed the Tiananmen Square massacre, and knows that open killing would result in a withdrawal of foreign capital that would endanger its totalitarian regime.

Nevertheless, the CCP has never given up slaughtering behind the scenes, but today's CCP spares no efforts to hide the bloody evidence.

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Chapter 42 The Great Famine

The Great Famine

The highest death toll was recorded during China's Great Famine shortly after the Great Leap Forward. [12] The article "Great Famine" in the book Historical Records of the People's Republic of China states, "The number of unnatural deaths and reduced births from 1959 to 1961 is estimated at about 40 million�China's depopulation by 40 million is likely to be the world's greatest famine in this century." [13]

The Great Famine was falsely labeled a "Three-Year Natural Disaster" by the CCP. In fact, those three years had favorable weather conditions without any massive natural disasters like flooding, drought, hurricane, tsunami, earthquake, frost, freeze, hail or plague of locusts. The "disaster" was entirely caused by man. The Great Leap Forward campaign required everyone in China to become involved in steel-making, forcing farmers to leave their crops to rot in the field. Despite this, officials in every region escalated their claims on production yields. He Yiran, the First Secretary of the Party Committee of Liuzhou Prefecture, fabricated all by himself the shocking yield of "65,000 kilograms of paddy rice per mu [14]" in Huanjiang County. This was right after the Lushan Plenum when the CCP's anti-rightist movement spread out to the entire country. In order to demonstrate that the CCP was correct all the time, the crops were expropriated by the government as a form of taxation according to these exaggerated yields. Consequently, the grain rations, seeds and staple foods of the peasants were all confiscated. When the demand still could not be met, the peasants were accused of hiding their crops.

He Yiran once said that they must strive to get first place in the competition for highest yield no matter how many people in Liuzhou would die. Some peasants were deprived of everything, with only some handfuls of rice left hidden in the urine basin. The Party Committee of Xunle District, Huanjiang County even issued an order to forbid cooking, preventing the peasants from eating the crops. Patrols were conducted by militiamen at night. If they saw light from a fire, they would proceed with a search and raid. Many peasants did not even dare to cook edible wild herbs or bark, and died of starvation.

Historically, in times of famine, the government would provide rice porridge, distribute the crops and allow victims to flee from the famine. The CCP, however, regarded fleeing from the famine as a disgrace to the Party's prestige, and ordered militiamen to block roadways to prevent victims from escaping the famine. When the peasants were so hungry as to snatch cereals from the grain depots, the CCP ordered shooting at the crowd to suppress the looting and labeled those killed as counter-revolutionary elements. A great number of peasants were starved to death in many provinces including Gansu, Shandong, Henan, Anhui, Hubei, Hunan, Sichuan and Guangxi provinces. Still, the hungry peasants were forced to take part in irrigation work, dam construction, and steel-making. Many dropped to the ground while working and never got up again. At the end, those who survived had no strength to bury the dead. Many villages died out completely as families starved to death one after another.

In the most serious famines in China's history prior to the CCP, there were cases in which families exchanged one another's children to eat, but nobody ever ate his own children. Under the CCP's reign, however, people were driven to eat those who died, cannibalize those who fled from other regions, and even kill and eat their own children. The writer Sha Qing depicted this scene in his book Yi Xi Da Di Wan ( An Obscure Land of Bayou ): In a peasant's family, a father was left with only his son and daughter during the Great Famine. One day, the daughter was driven out of the house by her father. When she came back, she could not find her younger brother, but saw white oil floating in the cauldron and a pile of bones next to the stove. Several days later, the father added more water to the pot, and called his daughter to come closer. The girl was frightened, and pleaded with her father from outside the door, "Daddy, please don't eat me. I can collect firewood and cook food for you. If you eat me, nobody else will do this for you."

The final extent and number of tragedies like this is unknown. Yet the CCP misrepresented them as a noble honor, claimed that the CCP was leading people bravely to fight the "natural disasters" and continued to tout itself as "great, glorious and correct."

After the Lushan Plenum was held in 1959, General Peng Dehuai [15] was stripped of his power for speaking out for the people. A group of government officials and cadres who dared to speak the truth were dismissed from their posts, detained or investigated. After that, no one dared to speak out the truth. At the time of the Great Famine, instead of reporting the truth, people concealed the facts about the deaths from starvation in order to protect their official positions. Gansu province even refused food aid from Shaanxi Province, claiming Gansu had too great a food surplus.

This Great Famine was also a qualifying test for the CCP's cadres. According to the CCP's criteria, these cadres who had resisted telling the truth in the face of tens of millions starving to death were certainly "qualified." With this test, the CCP would then believe that nothing such as human emotions or heavenly principles could become a psychological burden that would prevent these cadres from following the Party line. After the Great Famine, the responsible provincial officials merely participated in the formality of self-criticism. Li Jingquan, the CCP Secretary for Sichuan Province where millions of people died from starvation, was promoted to be the First Secretary of the Southwestern District Bureau of the CCP.

Chapter 41

The "Three Anti Campaign" and "Five Anti Campaign"

The suppression of reactionaries and the land reform mainly targeted the countryside, while the subsequent "Three Anti Campaign" and "Five Anti Campaign" could be regarded as the corresponding genocide in cities.

The "Three Anti Campaign" began in December 1951 and targeted corruption, waste and bureaucracy among the CCP cadres. Some corrupt CCP officials were executed. Soon afterwards, the CCP attributed the corruption of its government officials to the temptation by capitalists. Accordingly, the "Five Anti Campaign" against bribery, tax evasion, theft of state property, jerry-building, and espionage of state economic information was launched in January 1952.

The "Five Anti Campaign" was essentially stealing capitalists' property or rather murdering the capitalists for their money. Chen Yi, the mayor of Shanghai at that time, was debriefed on the sofa with a cup of tea in hand every night. He would ask leisurely, "How many paratroopers are there today?" meaning, "How many businessmen jumped out of high buildings to commit suicide?" None of the capitalists could escape the "Five Anti Campaign." They were required to pay taxes "evaded" as early as the Guangxu Period (1875-1908) in the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) when the Shanghai commercial market was initially established. The capitalists could not possibly afford to pay such "taxes" even with all their fortunes. They had no other choice but to end their lives, but they didn't dare to jump into the Huangpu River. If their bodies could not be found, the CCP would accuse them of fleeing to Hong Kong, and their family members would still be held responsible for the taxes. The capitalists instead jumped from tall buildings, leaving a corpse so that the CCP could see proof of their death. It was said that people didn't dare to walk next to tall buildings in Shanghai at that time in fear of being crushed by people jumping from above.

According to Facts of the Political Campaigns after the Founding of the People's Republic of China co-edited by four government units including the CCP History Research Center in 1996, during the "Three Anti Campaign" and "Five Anti Campaign," more than 323,100 people were arrested and over 280 committed suicide or disappeared. In the "Anti-Hu Fang campaign" in 1955, over 5000 were incriminated, over 500 were arrested, over 60 committed suicide, and 12 died from unnatural causes. In the subsequent suppression of the reactionaries, over 21,300 people were executed, and over 4,300 committed suicide or disappeared [11].

SOS Chapter 40

Horrendous Massacre

Before the CCP was in power, Mao Zedong wrote, "We definitely do not apply a policy of benevolence to the reactionaries and towards the reactionary activities of the reactionary classes [7]." In other words, even before the CCP took over Beijing, it had already made up its mind to act tyrannically under the euphemism of the "People's Democratic Dictatorship." The following are a few examples.

Suppression of the Reactionaries and Land Reform

In March 1950, the CCP announced "Orders to Strictly Suppress Reactionary Elements," which is historically known as the movement of "suppression of the reactionaries."

Unlike all the emperors who granted amnesty to the entire country after they were crowned, the CCP started killing the minute it gained power. Mao Zedong said in a document, "There are still many places where people are intimidated and dare not kill the reactionaries openly in a large scale [8]." In February 1951, the central CCP said that except for Zhejiang province and southern Anhui province, "other areas which are not killing enough, especially in the large and mid-sized cities, should continue to arrest and kill a large number and should not stop too soon." Mao even recommended that "in rural areas, to kill the reactionaries, there should be over 1/1000 of the total population killed�in the cities, it should be less than 1/1000. [9]" The population of China at that time was approximately 600 million; this "royal order" from Mao would have caused at least 600,000 deaths. Nobody knows where this ratio of 1/1000 came from. Perhaps on a whim, Mao decided these 600,000 lives should be enough to lay the foundation for creating fear among the people, and thus ordered it to happen.

Whether those killed deserved to die was not the CCP's concern. "The People's Republic of China Regulations for Punishing the Reactionaries," announced in 1951 even said that those who "spread rumors" can be "immediately executed."

While the suppression of reactionaries was being hotly implemented, land reform was also taking place on a large scale. In fact, the CCP had already started land reform within its occupied areas in the late 1920s. On the surface, land reform appeared to advocate an ideal similar to that of the Heavenly Kingdom of Taiping [10], namely, all would have land to farm, but it was really just an excuse to kill. Tao Zhu, who ranked 4th in the CCP afterwards, had a slogan for land reform: "Every village bleeds, every household fights," indicating that in every village the landowners must die.

Land reform could have been achieved without killing. It could have been done in the same way as the Taiwanese government implemented its land reform by purchasing the property from the landowners. However, as the CCP originated in a group of thugs and lumpen proletariat, it only knew how to rob. Fearing it might suffer revenge after robbing, the CCP naturally needed to kill the victims, stamping out the source of trouble.

The most common way to kill during the land reform was known as the "struggle meeting." The CCP fabricated crimes and charged the landowners or rich farmers. The public was asked how they should be punished. Some CCP members or activists were already planted in the crowd to shout "We should kill them!" and the landowners and rich peasants were then executed on the spot. At that time, whoever owned land in the villages was classified as a "bully." Those who often took advantage of the peasants were called "mean bullies;" those who often helped with repairing public facilities and donated money to schools and for natural disaster relief were called "kind bullies;" and those who did nothing were called "still or silent bullies." A classification like this was meaningless, because all the "bullies" ended up being executed right away regardless of what "bully" category they belonged to.

By the end of 1952, the CCP-published number of the executed "reactionary elements" was about 2.4 million. Actually, the total death toll of former KMT government officials below the county level and landowners was at least 5 million.

The suppression of the reactionaries and land reform had three direct results. First, former local officials who had been selected through clan-based autonomy were eliminated. Through suppressing the reactionaries and land reform, the CCP killed all the management personnel in the previous system and realized complete control of rural areas by installing a Party branch in each village. Second, a huge amount of wealth was obtained by stealing and robbing during the land reform and suppression of reactionaries. Third, civilians were terrorized by the brutal suppression against the landowners and rich farmers.

SOS Chapter 39

Foreword

The 55-year history of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is written with blood and lies. The stories behind this bloody history are both extremely tragic and rarely known. Under the rule of the CCP, 60 to 80 million innocent Chinese people have been killed, leaving their broken families behind. Many people wonder why the CCP kills. While the CCP continues its brutal persecution of Falun Gong practitioners and recently suppressed protesting crowds in Hanyuan with gunshots, people wonder whether they will ever see the day when the CCP will learn to speak with words rather than guns.

Mao Zedong summarized the purpose of the Cultural Revolution, "�after the chaos the world reaches peace, but in 7 or 8 years, the chaos needs to happen again." [1] In other words, there should be a political revolution every 7 or 8 years and a crowd of people needs to be killed every 7 or 8 years.

A supporting ideology and practical requirements lie behind the CCP's slaughters.

Ideologically, the CCP believes in the "dictatorship of the proletariat" and "continuous revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat." Therefore, after the CCP took over China, it killed the landowners to resolve problems with production relationships in rural areas. It killed the capitalists to reach the goal of commercial and industrial reform and solve the production relationships in the cities. After these two classes were eliminated, the problems related to the economic base were basically solved. Similarly, solving the problems related to the superstructure [2] also called for slaughter. The suppressions of the Hu Feng Anti-Party Group [3] and the Anti-Rightists Movement eliminated the intellectuals. Killing the Christians, Taoists, Buddhists and popular folk groups solved the problem of religions. Mass murders during the Cultural Revolution established, culturally and politically, the CCP's absolute leadership. The Tiananmen Square massacre was used to prevent political crisis and squelch democratic demands. The persecution of Falun Gong is meant to resolve the issues of belief and traditional healing. These actions were all necessary for the CCP to strengthen its power and maintain its rule in the face of continual financial crisis (prices for consumer goods skyrocketed after the CCP took power and China's economy almost collapsed after the Cultural Revolution), political crisis (some people not following the Party's orders or some others wanting to share political rights with the Party) and crisis of belief (the disintegration of the former Soviet Union, political changes in Eastern Europe, and the Falun Gong issue). Except for the Falun Gong issue, almost all the foregoing political movements were utilized to revive the evil specter of the CCP and incite its desire for revolution. The CCP also used these political movements to test CCP members, eliminating those who did not meet the Party's requirements.

Killing is also necessary for practical reasons. The Communist Party began as a group of thugs and scoundrels who killed to obtain power. Once this precedent was set, there was no going back. Constant terror was needed to intimidate people and force them to accept, out of fear, the absolute rule of the CCP.

On the surface, it may appear that the CCP was "forced to kill," and that various incidents just happened to irritate the CCP evil specter and accidentally trigger CCP's killing mechanism. In truth, these incidents serve to disguise the Party's need to kill, and periodical killing is required by the CCP. Without these painful lessons, people might begin to think the CCP was improving and start to demand democracy, just as those idealistic students in the 1989 democratic movement did. Recurring slaughter every 7 or 8 years serves to refresh people's memory of terror and can warn the younger generation�whoever works against the CCP, wants to challenge the CCP's absolute leadership, or attempts to tell the truth regarding China's history, will get a taste of the "iron fist of the dictatorship of the proletariat."

Killing has become one of the most essential ways for the CCP to maintain power. With the escalation of its bloody debts, laying down its butcher knife would encourage people to take vengeance for the CCP's criminal acts. Therefore, the CCP not only needed to conduct copious and thorough killing, but the slaughter also had to be done in a most brutal fashion to effectively intimidate the populace, especially early on when the CCP was establishing its rule.

Since the purpose of the killing was to instill the greatest terror, the CCP selected targets for destruction arbitrarily and irrationally. In every political movement, the CCP used the strategy of genocide. Take the "suppression of reactionaries" as an example. The CCP did not really suppress the reactionary "behaviors" but the "people" whom they called the reactionaries. If one had been enlisted and served a few days in the Nationalist (Kuomintang, KMT) army but did absolutely nothing political after the CCP gained power, this person would still be killed because of his "reactionary history." In the process of land reform, in order to remove the "root of the problem," the CCP often killed a landowner's entire family.

Since 1949, the CCP has persecuted more than half the people in China. An estimated 60 million to 80 million people died from unnatural causes. This number exceeds the total number of deaths in both World Wars combined.

As with other communist countries, the wanton killing done by the CCP also includes brutal slayings of its own members in order to remove dissidents who value a sense of humanity over the Party nature. The CCP's rule of terror falls equally on the populace and its members in an attempt to maintain an "invincible fortress."

In a normal society, people show care and love for one another, hold life in awe and veneration and give thanks to God. In the East, people say, "Do not impose on others what you would not want done to yourself [4]." In the West, people say, "Love thy neighbor as thyself [5]." Conversely, the CCP holds that "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles [6]." In order to keep alive the "struggles" within society, hatred must be generated. Not only does the CCP take lives, it encourages people to kill each other. It strives to desensitize people towards others' suffering by surrounding them with constant killing. It wants them to become numb from frequent exposure to inhumane brutality, and develop the mentality that "the best you can hope for is to avoid being persecuted." All these lessons taught by brutal suppression enable the CCP to maintain its rule.

In addition to the destruction of countless lives, the CCP also destroyed the soul of the Chinese people. A great many people have become conditioned to react to the CCP's threats by entirely surrendering their reason and their principles. In a sense, these people's souls have died�something more frightening than physical death.

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SOS Chapter 38

The Aspect of Interpersonal Relations

A. A Culture of Jealousy

The party promoted �absolute equalitarianism� so that �anyone who stands out will be the target of attack.� People are jealous of those who have greater ability and those who are wealthier�the so-called �red-eye syndrome.� [87]

B. A Culture of People Stepping Over Each Other

The CCP promoted �struggle face-to-face and report back-to-back.� Squealing on one�s associates, creating written materials to frame them, fabricating facts and exaggerating their mistakes�these devious behaviors have been used to measure closeness to the party and the desire to advance. .

Subtle Influences on People�s Internal Psyche and External Behavior

A. A Culture That Transforms Human Beings into Machines

The Party wants the people to be the �never rusting bolts in the revolution machine,� to be the �tamed tool for the Party,� or to �Attack in whatever directions the Party directs us.� �Chairman Mao�s soldiers listen to the Party the most; they go wherever they are needed and settle down wherever there are hardships.�

B. A Culture That Confounds Right and Wrong

During the Cultural Revolution, the CCP would �rather have the socialist weeds than the capitalist crops.� The army was ordered to shoot and kill in the June 4th massacre �in exchange for 20 years of stability.� The CCP also �Does unto others what one does not want to be done unto oneself.�

C. A Culture of Self-Imposed Brainwashing and Unconditional Obedience

�Lower ranks obey the orders of the higher ranks and the whole Party obeys the Party�s Central Committee.� �Fight ruthlessly to eradicate any selfish thoughts that flash through your mind.� �Erupt a revolution in the depths of your soul.� �Maintain maximum alignment with the Party�s Central Committee.� �Unify the minds, unify the footsteps, unify the orders, and unify the commands.�

D. A Culture of Securing a Flunkey Position

�China would be in chaos without the Communist Party;� �China is so vast. Who else can lead it but the CCP?� �If China collapses, it will be a worldwide disaster, so we should help the CCP sustain its leadership.� Out of fear and self-protection, the groups constantly suppressed by the CCP oftentimes appear even more lefty than the CCP.

There are many more examples like these. Every reader could probably find various sorts of elements of the Party culture from his personal experiences.

People who experienced the Cultural Revolution might still remember vividly the �Model Play� of modern operas, the Songs with Mao�s words as lyrics, and the Loyalty Dance. Many still recall the words from the dialogues in �The White-Haired Girl,� [88] �Tunnel Warfare� [89], and �War of Mines� [90]. Through these literary works, the CCP has brainwashed people, forcibly filling their minds with messages such as �how brilliant and great� the Party is; how �arduously and valiantly� the party has struggled against the enemy; how �utterly devoted to the Party� the Party�s soldiers are; how willing they are to sacrifice themselves for the Party; and how stupid and vicious the enemies are. Day after day, the CCP�s propaganda machine forcibly injects into every individual the beliefs needed by the Communist Party. Today, if one went back to watch the �Epic Poem� of musical dance� �The East is Red,� one would realize that the entire theme and style of the show is about �killing, killing, and more killing.�

At the same time, the CCP has created its own system of speech and discourse, such as the abusive language in mass criticism, the flattering words to sing the praises of the Party, and the banal official formalities similar to the �eight-part essay.� [91] People are made to speak unconsciously with the thinking patterns that promote the concept of �class struggle� and to �extol the Party,� and use domineering language instead of calm and rational reasoning. The CCP also abuses the religious vocabulary and distorts the content of those terms.

One step beyond the truth is fallacy. The CCP party culture also abuses traditional morality to a certain extent. For instance, traditional culture values �faith,� so does the Communist Party. However what it promotes is �faithfulness and honesty to the Party.� The traditional culture emphasizes �filial piety.� The CCP may put people in jail if they do not provide for their parents, but the real reason is that these parents would otherwise become a �burden� to the government. When it fits the Party�s needs, the children are required to draw clear boundaries separating them from their parents. The traditional culture stresses �loyalty.� Nevertheless, �the people are of supreme importance; the nation comes next; last comes the ruler.� The �loyalty� preferred by the CCP is �blind devotion��so completely blind that people are required to believe in the CCP unconditionally and obey it unquestioningly.

The words commonly used by the CCP are very misleading. For example, it called the civil war between the Kuomintang and the Communists the �Liberation War,� as if the people were being �liberated� from oppression. The CCP called the post-1949 period �after the founding of the nation,� when, in reality, China existed long before that. The CCP simply established a new political regime. The three-year Great Famine [92] was called �three years of natural disaster,� when, in fact, it was not at all a natural disaster but, rather, a complete man-made calamity. However, upon hearing these words used in everyday life and being imperceptibly influenced by them, people unconsciously accept the ideologies that the CCP intended to instill to them.

In traditional culture, music is taken as a way to constrain human desires. In the Book of Song (Yue Shu), Volume 24 of the Records of the Historian (Shi Ji), Sima Qian (145-85 BC) [93] said the nature of man is peaceful; sensation of external matters affects one�s emotions and stir up the sentiment of love or hate based upon one�s character and wisdom. If these sentiments are not constrained, one will be seduced by endless external temptations and assimilated by one�s internal sentiments to commit many bad deeds. Thus, said Sima Qian, the emperors of the past used rituals and music to constrain people. The songs should be �cheerful but not obscene, sad but not overly distressing.� They should express feelings and desires, yet have control over these sentiments. Confucius said in the Analects, �The three hundred verses of The Odes (one of the six classics compiled and edited by Confucius) may be summed up in a single sentence, �Think no evil.��

Such a beautiful thing as music, however, was used by the CCP as a method to brainwash the people. Songs like �Socialism Is Good,� �There would be no new China without the Communist Party,� and many others, have been sung from kindergarten to the university. In singing these songs, people have unconsciously accepted the meanings of the lyrics. Further, the CCP stole the tunes of the most melodious folk songs and replaced them with lyrics that praise the Party. This has served both to destroy the traditional culture and to promote the Party.

As one of the CCP�s classic documents, Mao�s �Speech at the Yan'an Forum on Literature and Arts� [94] placed cultural endeavors and the military as �the two battle fronts.� It stated that it was not enough to have just the armed military; an �army of literary arts� was also needed. It stipulated that �the literary arts should serve politics� and �the literary arts of the proletariat class� are the �gears and screws� of the revolution machine.� A complete system of �Party culture� was developed out of this, with �atheism� and �class struggle� being its core. This system goes completely against traditional culture.

The �Party culture� has indeed rendered distinguished service in helping the CCP to win power and control over society. Like its army, prisons, and police force, the Party culture is also a violence machine, which provides a different kind of brutality��cultural brutality.� This cultural brutality, by destroying 5000 years of traditional culture, has diminished the will of the people, and undermined the cohesiveness of the Chinese nationality.

Today, many Chinese are absolutely ignorant of the essence of traditional culture. Some even equate the 50 years of �Party culture� to the 5000 years of Chinese traditional culture. This is a sorrowful thing for the Chinese people. Many do not realize that in opposing the so-called traditional culture they are in fact against the �Party culture� of the CCP, not the real traditional culture of China.

Many people hope to replace the current Chinese system with the Western democratic system. In reality, Western democracy has also been established on a cultural basis, notably that of Christianity, which, holding that �everyone is equal in the eyes of God,� thus respects human nature and human choices. How could the despotic, inhuman �Party culture� of the CCP be used as the foundation for a Western-style democratic system?

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Conclusion

SOS Chapter 37

Aspects of Propaganda

A. A Culture of One Voice

(During the Cultural Revolution, China was filled with slogans such as) �Supreme instructions,� �One sentence (of Mao) carries the weight of ten thousand sentences, each one is the truth.� All media were roused to sing the praises and collectively speak in support of the Party. When needed, leaders from every level of the Party, government, military, workers, youth league and women�s organizations would be brought out to express their support. Everyone had to go through the ordeal.

B. A Culture to Promote Violence

Mao Zedong said, �With 800 million people, how can it work without struggle?� In the persecution of Falun Gong, Jiang Zemin said, �No punishment for beating Falun Gong practitioners to death.� The CCP advocated �total war,� and �the atomic bomb is simply a paper tiger� even if half of the population died, the remaining half would still reconstruct our homeland from the ruins.�

C. A Culture to Incite Hatred

It becomes a fundamental national policy �not to forget the suffering of the (poor) classes, and to firmly remember the enmity in tears and blood.� Cruelty towards class enemies was praised as a virtue. The CCP taught �Bite into your hatred, chew it and swallow it down. Plant the hatred into your heart so that it sprouts.� [83]

D. A Culture of Deception and Lies

(Here are a few examples of the CCP�s lies.) �The yield per mu [84] is over ten thousand jin� during the Great Leap Forward (1958). �Not a single person was killed on Tiananmen Square� during the June 4th massacre in 1989. �We have controlled the SARS virus� in 2003. �It is currently the best time for human rights in China.� and the �Three Represents.� [85]

E. The Culture of Brainwashing

(These are a few slogans that the CCP made up to brainwash people.) �There would be no new China without the Communist Party.� �The force at the core leading our cause forward is the CCP and the theoretical basis guiding our thinking is Marxism-Leninism.� [86] �Maintain maximum alignment with the Party�s Central Committee.� �Carry out the party�s command if you understand it. Even if you do not understand, carry it out anyway and your understanding should deepen while carrying out the orders.�

F. A Culture of Adulation

�Heaven and the earth are great but greater still is the kindness of the Party;� �We owe all our achievements to the Party;� �I take the Party as my mother;� �I use my own life to safeguard the Central Committee of the Party.� �A great, glorious and correct party.� �An undefeatable party,� and so on.

G. The Culture of Pretentiousness

The Party established models and set up examples one after another, and launched the �socialist ideological and ethical progress� and �ideological education� campaigns. In the end, people continued to do whatever they did before each campaign. All of the public lectures, study sessions, and experience sharing have become an �earnest showcase,� and society�s moral standard has continued to take great leaps backward.

SOS Chapter 36

III. The Party Culture

While the CCP was destroying the traditional semi-divine culture, it quietly established its own �Party culture� through continuous political movements. The Party culture has transformed the older generation, poisoned the younger generation and also had an impact on children. Its influence has been extremely deep and broad. Even when many people tried to expose the evilness of the CCP, they couldn�t help but adopt the ways of judging good and bad, the ways of analyzing, and the vocabulary developed by the CCP, which inevitably carry the imprint of the Party culture.

The Party culture not only inherited the essential wickedness of the foreign-born Marxist-Leninist culture, but also skillfully combined all the negative elements from thousands of years of Chinese culture with the violent revolution and philosophy of struggle from the Party�s propaganda. Those negative components include internal strife for power inside the royal family, forming cliques to pursue selfish interests, political trickery to make others suffer, dirty tactics and conspiracy. During the CCP�s struggle for survival in the past decades, its characteristic of �deceit, wickedness and violence� has been enriched, nurtured, and carried forward.

Despotism and dictatorship are the nature of the Party culture. This culture serves the Party in its political and class struggles. One may understand how it forms the Party�s �humanistic� environment of terror and despotism from four aspects.

The Aspect of Domination and Control

A. A Culture of Isolation

The culture of the communist party is an isolated monopoly with no freedom of thought, speech, association, or belief. The mechanism of the Party�s domination is similar to a hydraulic system, relying on high pressure and isolation to maintain its state of control. Even one tiny leak could cause the system to collapse. For example, the Party refused dialogue with the students during the June 4th student movement [80], fearing that if this leak spouted, the workers, peasants, intellectuals and the military would also request dialogue. Consequently, China would have eventually moved towards democracy and the one-party dictatorship would have been challenged. Therefore, they chose to commit murder rather than grant the students� request. Today the CCP employs tens of thousands of �cyber police� to monitor the internet and directly blocks any overseas websites that the CCP does not like.

B. A Culture of Terror

For the past 55 years, the CCP has been using terror to suppress the minds of Chinese people. They have wielded their whips and butcher�s knives�people never know when unforeseen disasters will befall them�to force the people to conform. The people, living in fear, became obedient. Advocates of democracy, independent thinkers, skeptics within the (CCP�s) system and members of various spiritual groups have become targets for killing as a way to warn the public. The party wants to nip any opposition in the bud.

C. A Culture of Network Control

The CCP�s control of society is all encompassing. There are a household registration system, a neighborhood residents� committee system, and various levels of party committee structure. �Party branches are established at the level of the company.� �Each and every single village has its own Party branch.� Party and Communist Youth League members have regular activities. The CCP also advocated a series of slogans accordingly. A few examples are: �Guard your own door and watch your own people.� �Stop your people from appealing.� �Resolutely implement the system to impose duties, guarantee fulfillment of duties, and ascertain where the responsibility lies. Guard and control strictly. Be serious about discipline and regulations and guarantee 24-hour preventive and maintenance control measures.� �The 610 Office [81] will form a surveillance committee to inspect and monitor activities in each region and work unit at irregular intervals.�

D. A Culture of Incrimination

The CCP completely neglected the principles of rule by law in modern society and vigorously promoted the policy of implication. It used its absolute power to punish relatives of those who were labeled �landlords,� �rich,� �reactionaries,� �bad elements,� and �rightists.� It proposed the �class origin� theory [82].

Today, the CCP will �affix the responsibility of the primary leaders and publicly reprimand them, if they fail in their leadership roles to take adequate measures to prevent Falun Gong practitioners from going to Beijing to stir up trouble. For serious cases, disciplinary action will be taken.� �If one person practices Falun Gong, every family member will be laid off.� �If one employee practices Falun Gong, the bonus of every one in the whole company will be detained.� The CCP also issued discriminative policies that classified children into �ones that can be educated and transformed� or �five black classes" (landlords, rich farmers, reactionaries, bad elements, and rightists). The Party promoted complying with the Party and �placing righteousness above family loyalty.� Systems, such as the personnel and organizational archive system and temporary relocation system, were established to ensure implementation of its policies. People were encouraged to accuse and expose others, and rewarded for contributions to the Party.

SOS Chapter 35

Creating the Appearance of Culture by Keeping the Semblance of Tradition but Replacing the Contents

After the CCP adopted economic reform and an open-door policy, it renovated many churches as well as Buddhist and Taoist temples. It also organized some temple fairs in China as well as cultural fairs overseas. This was the last effort of the CCP to utilize and destroy the remaining traditional culture. There were two reasons for the CCP to do so. On the one hand, the kindness inherent in human nature, which the CCP could not possibly eradicate, will lead to the destruction of the �Party culture.� On the other hand, the CCP intended to use traditional culture to apply cosmetics to their [true] face in order to cover up their evil nature of �deceit, wickedness and violence.�

The essence of culture is its inner moral meaning, while the superficial forms have only entertainment value. The CCP restored the superficial elements of culture, which entertain, to cover up its purpose of destroying morality. No matter how many art and calligraphy exhibits the CCP has organized, how many culture festivals with dragon and lion dances it has staged, how many food festivals it has hosted, or how much classical architecture it has built, the Party is simply restoring the superficial appearance, but not the essence, of the culture. In the meantime, the CCP promoted its cultural showpieces both inside and outside of China basically for the sole purpose of maintaining political power.

Once again, temples are an example. Temples are meant to be places for people to cultivate, hearing bells in the morning and drums at sunset, worshiping Buddha under burning oil lamps. People in ordinary human society can also confess and worship there. Cultivation requires a pure heart that pursues nothing. Confession and worship also require a serious and solemn environment. However, temples have been turned into tourist resorts for the sake of economic profits. Among the people actually visiting temples in China today, how many of them have come to contemplate their mistakes with a sincere and respectful heart towards Buddha right after taking a bath and changing their clothes?

Restoring the semblance but destroying the inner meaning of traditional culture is the tactic that the CCP has taken to confuse people. Be it Buddhism, other religions, or cultural forms derived from them, the CCP deliberately degrades them in this way.

Chapter 35 China Destruction of Intellectuals

Reforming Intellectuals

The Chinese characters embody the essence of 5,000 years of civilization. Each character�s form and pronunciation, and the idioms and literary allusions composed of combinations of the characters, all express profound cultural meanings. The CCP has not only simplified the Chinese characters, but also tried to replace them with Romanized pinyin, which would remove all cultural tradition from the Chinese characters and language. But the replacement plan has failed, thus sparing further damage to the Chinese language. However, the Chinese intellectuals who inherited the same traditional culture were not so fortunate as to be spared destruction.

Prior to 1949, China had about two million intellectuals. Although some had studied in Western countries, they still inherited some Confucian ideas. The CCP certainly could not relax its control of them, because as members of the traditional �scholar-aristocracy� class, their ways of thinking played important roles in shaping the thoughts of ordinary people.

In September 1951, the CCP initiated a large-scale �thought reform movement� starting in Peking University among intellectuals, and required to �organize a movement (among teachers in colleges, middle schools and primary schools, and college students) to confess their history faithfully and honestly,� so as to cleanse any counter-revolutionary elements.�[73]

Mao Zedong never liked intellectuals. He said, �They [the intellectuals] ought to be aware of the truth that actually many so-called intellectuals are, relatively speaking, quite ignorant and the workers and farmers sometimes know more than they do.� [74] �Compared with the workers and peasants, the unreformed intellectuals were not clean, and in the last analysis, the workers and peasants were the cleanest people, even though their hands were dirty and their feet smeared with cow-dung�� [75]

The CCP�s persecution of intellectuals started with various forms of accusations, ranging from the 1951 criticism of Wu Xun [76] for �running schools with begged money� to Mao Zedong�s personal attack, in 1955, on writer Hu Feng [77] as a counter-revolutionary. In the beginning, the intellectuals were not categorized as a reactionary class, but by 1957, after several major religious groups had surrendered through the �unified front� movement, the CCP could focus its energy on the intellectuals. The �Anti-Rightist� movement was thus launched.

In the end of February of 1957, claiming to �let a hundred flowers bloom and a hundred schools of thought contend,� the CCP called on intellectuals to voice their suggestions and criticisms to the Party, promising no retaliation. Those intellectuals had been dissatisfied with the CCP for a long time for its ruling in every field even though it was a layman in those fields and its killing of innocent people during the movement to �suppress counter-revolutionaries� in 1950-1953 and to �eliminate counter-revolutionaries� in 1955-1957. They thought the CCP had finally become open-minded. So they began to speak out their true feelings, and their criticism grew more and more intense.

Many years later, there are still many people who believe that Mao Zedong only started to attack the intellectuals after becoming impatient with their overly harsh criticisms. The truth, however, turned out to be different.

On May 15, 1957, Mao Zedong wrote an article entitled �Things Are Beginning to Change� and circulated it among senior CCP officials. The article said, �In recent days the Rightists�have shown themselves to be most determined and most rabid. �The Rightists, who are anti-Communist, are making a desperate attempt to stir up a typhoon above force seven in China�and are so bent on destroying the Communist Party.� [78] After that, those officials who had been indifferent to the �let a hundred flowers bloom and a hundred schools of thought contend� campaign suddenly became enthusiastic and �earnest.� In her memoir The Past Doesn't Disappear Like Smoke, Zhang Bojun�s daughter recounted:

Li Weihan, Minister of the United Front Work Department, called Zhang Bojun in person to invite him to a rectification meeting to offer his opinion about the CCP. Zhang was arranged to sit on a front row sofa. Not knowing this to be a trap, Zhang articulated his criticisms of the CCP. During the whole course, �Li Weihan appeared relaxed. Zhang probably thought Li agreed with what he said. He didn�t know Li was pleased to see his prey falling into the trap.� After the meeting, Zhang was classified as the number one rightist in China.

We can cite a string of dates in 1957 that marked proposals or speeches delivered by intellectuals offering criticisms and suggestions: Zhang Bojun�s �Political Design Institute� on May 21; Long Yun�s �Absurd Anti-Soviet Views� on May 22; Luo Longji�s �Redressing Committee� on May 22; Lin Xiling�s speech on �Criticizing the CCP�s Feudalistic Socialism� at Peking University on May 30; Wu Zuguang�s �The Party Should Stop Leading the Arts� on May 31; and Chu Anping�s �The Party Dominates the World� on June 1. All these proposals and speeches had been invited, and were offered after Mao Zedong had already sharpened his butcher�s knife.

All of these intellectuals, predictably, were later labeled rightists. There were more than 550,000 such �rightists� nationwide.

Chinese tradition has it that �scholars can be killed but cannot be humiliated.� The CCP was capable of humiliating intellectuals by denying their right to survive and even incriminating their families unless they accepted humiliation. Many intellectuals did surrender. During the course, some of them told on others to save themselves, which broke many people�s hearts. Those who did not submit to humiliation were killed�serving as examples to terrorize other intellectuals.

The traditional �scholarly class,� exemplars of social morality, was thus obliterated.
Mao Zedong said,

What can Emperor Qin Shi Huang brag about? He only killed 460 Confucian scholars, but we killed 46,000 intellectuals. In our suppression of counter-revolutionaries, didn�t we kill some counter-revolutionary intellectuals as well? I argued with the pro-democratic people who accused us of acting like Emperor Qin Shi Huang. I said they were wrong. We surpassed him by a hundred times. [79]

Indeed, Mao did more than kill the intellectuals. More grievously, he destroyed their minds and hearts.

SOS Chapter 34

Destruction of Cultural Relics

The ruination of cultural relics is an important part of the CCP�s destruction of traditional culture. In the �Casting Away of the Four Olds,� many one-of-a-kind books, calligraphies and paintings that had been collected by intellectuals were committed to flames or shredded into paper pulp. Zhang Bojun [55] had a family collection of over 10,000 books. The Red Guard leaders used them to make a fire to warm themselves. What was left was sent to paper mills and shredded into paper pulp.

The calligraphy and painting mounting specialist, Hong Qiusheng, was an elderly man known as the �miracle doctor� for ancient calligraphy and paintings. He has mounted countless world-class masterpieces, such as Song Emperor Huizong�s [56] painting of scenery, Su Dongpo�s [57] painting of bamboo, and the paintings of Wen Zhengming [58] and Tang Bohu [59]. Over several decades, most of the hundreds of ancient calligraphy and paintings that he had rescued had become a first class national collection. The calligraphy and paintings that he had spared no pains in collecting were labeled as �Four Olds� and were committed to flames. Afterwards, Mr. Hong said in tears, �Over 100 jin [60] (50 kilograms) of calligraphy and paintings; it took such a long time to burn them!�[61]

�While worldly matters come and go,
Ancient, modern, to and fro,
Rivers and mountains are changeless in their glory
And still to be witnessed from this trail. �� [62]

If today�s Chinese people were still to remember some of their history, they would probably feel differently when they recite this poem by Meng Haoran. The famous mountain and river historical sites have been ruined and have disappeared in the storm of the �Casting Away the Four Olds.� Not only was the Orchid Pavilion, where Wang Xizhi [63] wrote the famous �Prologue to the Collection of Poems Composed at the Orchid Pavilion,� [64] destroyed, Wang Xizhi�s own grave was ruined as well. Wu Cheng�en�s [65] former residence in Jiangsu Province was demolished, Wu Jingzi�s [66] former residence in Anhui Province was smashed, the stone tablet that had Su Dongpo�s handwritten article The Roadside Hut of the Old Drunkard [67] was pushed over by the �young revolutionists,� [68] and the characters on the stone tablet were scraped off.

The essence of Chinese culture has been inherited and accumulated over several thousand years. Once destroyed, it cannot be restored. Yet the CCP has barbarously destroyed it in the name of �revolution� without sorrow or shame. When we sighed over the Old Summer Palace, which is known as the �palace of palaces,� being burned down by the Anglo-French Allied Forces, when we sighed over the monumental work of the Yongle Encyclopedia [69] being destroyed by invader�s flames of war, how could we have anticipated that the destruction caused by the CCP would be so much more widespread, long lasting and thorough than that caused by any invaders?

Destruction of Spiritual Beliefs

In addition to destroying the physical forms of religion and culture, the CCP has also used its utmost capacity to destroy people�s spiritual identity formed by faith and culture.

Take the CCP�s treatment of ethnic beliefs for example. The CCP considered the traditions of the Hui Muslim group to be one of the �Four Olds��old thought, culture, tradition, habit. Therefore, it forced the Hui people to eat pork. Muslim peasants and mosques were required to raise pigs, and each household had to furnish two pigs to the country every year. The Red Guards even forced the second highest Tibetan living Buddha, the Panchen Lama, to eat human excrement. They ordered three monks from Temple of Bliss located in Harbin city, Heilongjiang Province, which is the biggest Buddhist temple built in modern times (1921), to hold a poster board that said, �The hell with sutras�they are full of shit.�

In 1971, Lin Biao [70], the Vice Chairman of the CCP�s central committee, attempted to escape China but was killed when his plane crashed in Undurkhan, Mongolia. Later, in Lin�s Beijing residence at Maojiawan, some Confucian quotations were found. The CCP then started a frantic movement of �Criticizing Confucius.� A writer pen-named Liang Xiao [71] published an article in The Red Flag, the CCP�s banner magazine, entitled �Who is Confucius?� The article described Confucius as a �madman who wanted to turn history backward,� and a �deceptive and shrewd demagogue.� A series of cartoons and songs followed, demonizing Confucius.

In this way, the dignity and sacredness of religion and culture were annihilated.

Endless Destruction

In ancient China, the central government only extended its rule to the county level, below which patriarchal clans maintained autonomous control. So in Chinese history, the destruction, such as the �burning of books and the burying of Confucian scholars� by Emperor Qin Shi Huang [72] in the Qin Dynasty (221-207 BC) and the four campaigns to eliminate Buddhism between the fifth and tenth century by the �Three Wus and One Zong,� all were imposed from the top down, and could not possibly eradicate the culture. Confucian and Buddhist classics and ideas continued to survive in the vast spaces of society. In contrast, the campaign of �Casting Away the Four Olds� by teenage students incited by the CCP was a nationwide grass-roots movement with �spontaneous enthusiasm.� The CCP�s extension to every village through village-level Party branches controlled the society so tightly that the CCP�s �revolutionary� movement extended without end and affected every person on every inch of land in China.

Never in history had any emperor eradicated from people�s minds what they considered to be the most beautiful and the most sacred, using slanderous and insulting propaganda in addition to violence, as the CCP has. Elimination of belief can often be more effective and long-lasting than physical destruction alone.

SOS Chapter 33

Traditional Culture Challenges the Legitimacy of the CCP Rule

Traditional Chinese culture believes in God and the heavenly mandate. Accepting the mandate of heaven means that rulers have to be wise, follow the Tao and be attuned to destiny. Accepting belief in God means accepting that authority over humanity rests in heaven.

The CCP ruling principle is summarized as, �Never more tradition's chains shall bind us, arise ye toilers no more in thrall. The earth shall rise on new foundations; we are but naught; we shall be all.� [27]

The CCP promotes historical materialism, claiming that Communism is an earthly paradise, the path to which is led by the pioneer proletarians, or the Communist Party. The belief in God thus directly challenged the legitimacy of the CCP�s rule.

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II. How the Communist Party Sabotages Traditional Culture

Everything the CCP does serves a political purpose. In order to seize, maintain and consolidate its tyranny, the CCP needs to replace human nature with its evil Party nature, and the Chinese traditional culture with its Party culture of �deceit, wickedness and violence.� This destruction and substitution includes cultural relics, historical sites and ancient books, which are tangible, and such intangible things as the traditional outlook on morality, life and the world. All aspects of people�s lives are involved, including their actions, thoughts and lifestyles. At the same time, the CCP regards insignificant and superficial cultural manifestations as the �essence,� retaining them, and then puts this �essence� up as a fa�ade. The Party keeps the semblance of tradition while replacing the real tradition with Party culture. It then deceives the people and international society behind a fa�ade of �carrying on and developing� Chinese traditional culture.

Simultaneously Extinguishing the Three Religions

Owing to the fact that the traditional culture is rooted in Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism, the CCP�s first step in destroying traditional culture was to extinguish the manifestation of the divine principles in the human world, eradicating the three religions corresponding to them.

All three major religions, Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism, encountered destruction in different historical time periods. Take Buddhism for example. It has suffered four major tribulations in history, which are historically known as the �Three Wus and One Zong� persecution of Buddhist devotees by four Chinese emperors. Emperor Taiwu [28] of the Northern Wei Dynasty (386-534 AD) and Emperor Wuzong [29] of the Tang Dynasty (618-907 AD) both tried to extinguish Buddhism in order to have Taoism prevail. Emperor Wu [30] of the Northern Zhou Dynasty (557-581 AD) tried to extinguish Buddhism and Taoism together, but venerated Confucianism. Emperor Shizong [31] of the Later Zhou Dynasty (951-960 AD) tried to extinguish Buddhism merely to use the Buddha statues to mint coins, and did not touch Taoism or Confucianism.

The CCP is the only regime to extinguish the three religions simultaneously.
Soon after the CCP established a government, it began to destroy temples, burn scriptures and forced the Buddhist monks and nuns to return to secular life. Neither was it any softer in destroying other religious places. By the 1960s, there were hardly any religious places left in China. The Great Cultural Revolution brought even greater religious and cultural catastrophe in the campaign of �Casting Away the Four Olds� [32]�i.e., old ideas, old culture, old customs and old habits.

For example, the first Buddhist temple in China was the White Horse Temple (Bai Ma Temple) [33] built in the early Eastern Han Dynasty (25-220 AD) outside Luoyang city, Henan Province. It is honored as �the Cradle of Buddhism in China� and �the Founder�s Home.� During �Casting Away the Four Olds,� the White Horse Temple, of course, could not escape looting.

There was a White Horse Temple production brigade near the temple. The Party branch secretary led peasants to smash the temple in the name of �revolution.� The over 1,000-year-old clay statues of the Eighteen Arhats built in the Liao Dynasty (916-1125 AD) were destroyed. The Beiye scripture [34] that an eminent Indian monk brought to China 2,000 years ago was burned. A rare treasure, the Jade Horse, was smashed to pieces. Several years later, Cambodian King in Exile Norodom Sihanouk made a special request to pay homage to the White Horse Temple. Zhou Enlai, the Chinese premier at the time, hurriedly ordered the transport to Luoyang of the Beiye scripture stored in the Imperial Palace in Beijing and the statues of the Eighteen Arhats built in the Qing Dynasty from the Temple of Azure Clouds (Biyun Temple) located at the Xiangshan Park [35] in suburban Beijing. With this bogus replacement, a diplomatic difficulty was �solved.� [36]

The Cultural Revolution began in May of 1966. It was in fact �revolutionizing� Chinese culture in a destructive way. Starting in August 1966, the raging fire of the �Casting Away the Four Olds� burned the entire land of China. Regarded as objects of �feudalism, capitalism, and revisionism,� the Buddhist temples, Taoist temples, Buddha statues, historical and scenic sites, calligraphy, paintings, and antiques became the main targets for destruction by the Red Guards. [37] Take the Buddha statues for example. There are 1000 colored, glazed Buddha statues in relief on the top of Longevity Hill in the Summer Palace [38] in Beijing. After the �Casting Away the Four Olds,� they were all damaged. None of them has a complete set of the five sensory organs any more.

The capital of the country was like this, and so was the rest of the country. Even the remote county seats did not escape.

There is a Tiantai Temple in Dai county in Shanxi Province. It was built during the Taiyan time period of the Northern Wei Dynasty 1,600 years ago and had precious statues and frescos. Although it was situated on a hillside quite a distance away from the county seat, the people who participated in the �Casting Away the Four Olds� ignored the difficulties and made a clean sweep of the statues and frescos there. � The Louguan Temple, [39] where Lao Zi gave his lecture and left his famous Tao-te Ching 2,500 years ago, is situated in the Zhouzhi County of Shaanxi Province. Centered around the platform where Lao Zi lectured, within a radius of 10 li [40], there are over 50 historical sites, including the Temple Venerating the Sage (Zongsheng Gong) that Emperor Tang Gaozu Li Yuan [41] built to show respect for Lao Zi over 1,300 years ago. Now the Louguan Temple and the other historical sites have been destroyed, and all Taoist priests have been forced to leave. According to the Taoist canon, once one becomes a Taoist priest, one can never shave one�s beard or have one�s hair cut. However, now the Taoist priests are forced to have their hair cut, take off their Taoist robes, and become members of the People�s communes. [42] Some of them married daughters of the local peasants and became their sons-in-law. � At the sacred Taoist places in Laoshan Mountain in Shandong Province, the Temple of Supreme Peace, the Temple of the Highest Clarity, the Supreme Clarity Temple, the Doumu Temple, the Huayan Nunnery, the Ningzhen Temple, the Temple of Guan Yu, �the statues of the divine, sacrificial vessels, scrolls of Buddhist sutras, cultural relics, and temple tablets were all smashed and burned down�. � The Temple of Literature in Jilin Province is one of the four famous Temples of Confucius in China. During the �Casting Away the Four Olds,� it was severely damaged.� [43]

A Special Way to Destroy Religion

Lenin once said, �The easiest way to take a fortress is from within.� As a group of children and grandchildren of Marxism-Leninism, the CCP naturally and tacitly understands this.

In the �Mahayana Mahaparinirvana Sutra,� [44] Buddha Shakyamuni predicted that after his nirvana, demons would be reincarnated as monks, nuns, and male and female lay Buddhists to subvert the Dharma. Of course, we cannot verify what Buddha Shakyamuni was referring to exactly. However, the CCP�s destruction of Buddhism indeed started with forming a �united front� with some Buddhists. They even sent some underground communist party members to infiltrate the religion directly and subvert it from within. In a criticism meeting during the Cultural Revolution, someone questioned Zhao Puchu, vice president of the Chinese Buddhists Association at the time, �You are a Communist Party member, why do you believe in Buddhism?�

Buddha Shakyamuni attained supreme and complete enlightenment through �precept, concentration, wisdom.� So before his nirvana, he instructed his disciples to �Uphold and observe the Precepts. Do not let them down or violate them.� He also warned, �People who violate the Precepts are abhorred by heaven, dragons, ghosts and the divine. Their evil reputation spreads far and wide. � When their lives end, they will suffer in hell for their karma, and meet their inexorable doom. Then they will come out. They will continue to suffer by bearing the body of hungry ghosts and animals. They will suffer in a circle like this endlessly with no relief.� [45]

The political Buddhist monks turned deaf ears to Buddha�s warnings. In 1952, the CCP sent representatives to attend the inaugural meeting of the Chinese Buddhists Association. At the meeting, many Buddhists in the association proposed to abolish the Buddhist precepts. They claimed that these disciplines had caused the death of many young men and women. Some people even advocated that �people should be free to believe in any religion. There should also be freedom for the monks and nuns to get married, to drink alcohol, and to eat meat. Nobody should interfere with these.� At that time, Master Xuyun was at the meeting and saw that Buddhism was facing the danger of extinction in China. He stepped forward opposing the proposals and appealed for the preservation of the Buddhist precepts and dress. Master Xuyun was then slandered, and labeled as �counter-revolutionary.� He was detained in the abbot�s room, and denied food and drink. He was not allowed out of the room even to use the toilet. He was also ordered to hand over his gold, silver and firearms. When Xuyun answered that he had none, he was beaten so badly that his skull was fractured and bleeding and his ribs broken. Xuyun was 112 years old at the time. The military police pushed him from the bed to the ground. When they came back the next day and found Xuyun still alive, they brutally beat him again.

The Chinese Buddhists Association founded in 1952 and the Chinese Taoist Association founded in 1957 both clearly declared in their founding statements that they would be �under the leadership of the People�s government.� In reality, they would be under the leadership of the atheistic CCP. Both associations indicated that they would actively participate in production and construction activities, and implement government policies. They were transformed into completely secular organizations. Yet the Buddhists and Taoists who were devoted and abided by the precepts were labeled as counter-revolutionaries or members of superstitious sects and secret societies. Under the revolutionary slogan of �purifying the Buddhists and Taoists,� they were imprisoned, forced to �reform through labor,� or even executed. Even religions spread from the West, such as Christianity and Catholicism were not spared.

Based on the statistics given in the book How the Chinese Communist Party Persecutes the Christians published in 1958, even the limited number of documents that have been made public reveal that among the clergymen who were charged as �landlord� or �local bully,� a staggering 8,840 were killed and 39,200 were sent to labor camps. Among the clergymen charged as �counter-revolutionary,� 2,450 were killed, and 24,800 were sent to labor camps. [46]

Religions are a way for people to remove themselves from the secular world and cultivate themselves. They emphasize �the other shore� (the shore of perfect enlightenment) and �heaven.� Shakyamuni used to be an Indian prince. In order to seek mukti [47], a state in which one can obtain peace of mind, higher wisdom, full enlightenment, and nirvana, [48] he gave up the throne and went to a wooded mountain to cultivate by experiencing hardships and toil. Before Jesus became enlightened, the devil brought him to the top of a mountain, showed him all the kingdoms of the world in all their splendor. The devil said, �If you will bow down and worship me, I will give you all these things.� But Jesus was not enticed. Yet the political monks and pastors who formed united fronts with the CCP made up a series of deceits and lies such as �human world Buddhism,� and �religion is the truth, and so is socialism.� They claimed that �there is no contradiction between this shore and the other shore.� They encouraged Buddhists and Taoists to pursue happiness, glory, splendor, wealth and rank in this life, and changed the religious doctrines and their meaning.

Buddhism forbids killing. The CCP killed people like flies during the �suppression of counter-revolutionaries.� [49] The political monks thereupon cooked up the justification that �killing the counter-revolutionaries is an even greater compassion.� During the �War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea� (1950-1953) [50], monks were even sent directly to the front line to kill.

Take Christianity as another example. In 1950, Wu Yaozong [51] formed a �Three-Self� Church, which followed the principles of self-administration, self-support and self-propagation. He claimed that they would break away from �imperialism� and actively join the �War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea.� A good friend of his was imprisoned for over 20 years for refusing to join the Three-Self and suffered all kinds of torture and humiliation. When he asked Wu Yaozong, �How do you regard the miracles Jesus performed?� Wu answered, �I have discarded all of them.�

Not acknowledging Jesus� miracles equates to not acknowledging Jesus� heaven. How can one be counted as a Christian when one does not even recognize the heaven Jesus ascended to? However, as the founder of the �Three-Self� Church, Wu Yaozong became a member of the Political Consultative Conference standing committee. When he stepped into the Great Hall of the People [52], he must have completely forgotten Jesus� words. �Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and greatest commandment.� (Matthew, 22:37-38) �Render therefore unto Caesar the things that are Caesar�s; and unto God the things that are God's.� (Matthew, 22:21)

The CCP confiscated the temple property, forced monks and nuns to study Marxism-Leninism in order to brainwash them, and even forced them to labor. For instance, there was a �Buddhist workshop� in Ningbo city, Zhejiang Province. Over 25,000 monks and nuns were once forced to work there. What is more absurd is that the CCP encouraged monks and nuns to get married so as to disintegrate Buddhism. For example, just before the March 8th Women�s Day in 1951, the Women�s Federation in Changsha city, Hunan Province ordered all nuns in the province to decide to get married in a few days. In addition, young and healthy monks were forced to join the army and were sent to the battlefield to serve as cannon fodder! [53]

Various religious groups in China have disintegrated under the CCP�s violent suppression. The genuine elites of Buddhism and Taoism have been suppressed. Among those remaining, many returned to secular life, and many others were undisclosed Communist Party members who specialized in putting on kesa robes, [54] Taoist robes or pastor�s long gowns to distort the Buddhist Scriptures, the Taoist Canon and the Holy Bible and to look for justification for the CCP�s movements in these doctrines.

SOS Chapter 32

The Evil Communist Theory Opposes Traditional Culture

The �philosophy� of the Communist Party completely contradicts the authentic traditional Chinese culture. Traditional culture respects the mandate of heaven, as Confucius once said, �Life and death are predestined, and wealth and rank are determined by heaven.� [20] Both Buddhism and Taoism are forms of theism, and believe in the reincarnation cycle of life and death, and the karmic causality of good and evil. The Communist Party, on the contrary, not only believes in atheism, but also runs wild in defying the Tao and assaulting heavenly principles. Confucianism values family, but the Communist Manifesto clearly promulgates abolition of the family. Traditional culture differentiates the Chinese from the foreign, but the Communist Manifesto advocates the end of nationality. Confucian culture promotes kindness to others, but the Communist Party encourages class struggle. Confucians encourage loyalty to the monarch and love for the nation. The Communist Manifesto promotes the elimination of nations.

To gain and maintain power in China, the Communist Party first had to plant its immoral thoughts on Chinese soil. Mao Zedong claimed, �If we want to overthrow an authority, we must first make propaganda, and do work in the area of ideology.�[21] The CCP realized that the violent communist theory, which is sustained with arms, is the refuse of Western thoughts and could not stand up to China�s profound 5,000-year cultural history. �In for a penny, in for a pound.� The CCP then completely destroyed traditional Chinese culture, so that Marxism and Leninism could take China�s political stage.

Traditional Culture Is an Obstacle to the CCP�s Dictatorship

Mao Zedong once said, fittingly, that he follows neither the Tao nor heaven. [22] Traditional Chinese culture undoubtedly served as a huge obstacle for the CCP�s defying the Tao and contending with heaven.

Loyalty in traditional Chinese culture does not mean blind devotion. In the eyes of the people, the emperor is a �son of heaven��with heaven above him. The emperor cannot be correct at all times. Therefore there was a need for observers to point out the emperor�s mistakes all the time. The Chinese chronicle system had historians record all the words and deeds of the emperor. Scholastic officials could become teachers for their sage kings, and the behavior of the emperor was judged by the Confucian classics. If the emperor was immoral�unenlightened to the Tao, people might rise up to overthrow him, as was the case when Chengtang attacked Jie, or in King Wu�s removal of Zhou. [23] These uprisings, judged from traditional culture, were not considered violations of loyalty or the Tao. Instead, they were seen as enforcing the Tao on behalf of heaven. When Wen Tianxiang (1236-1283 AD) [24], a well-known military commander in the Song Dynasty, was taken prisoner, he refused to surrender to the Mongolian invaders even when the Emperor tried to persuade him to surrender. This was because, as a Confucian, he believed that �The people are of supreme importance; the nation comes next; last comes the ruler.� [25]

The dictatorial CCP could by no means accept traditional beliefs such as these. The CCP wanted to canonize its own leaders and promote a cult of personality, and so would not allow such long-held concepts such as heaven, Tao, and God to govern from above. The CCP was aware that what it did was considered the most heinous and enormous crime against heaven and the Tao if measured by the standards of traditional culture. They were aware that as long as the traditional culture existed, people would not praise the CCP as �great, glorious, and correct.� Scholars would continue the tradition of �risking their lives to admonish the monarch,� �maintaining justice at the expense of their lives,� [26] and place the people above the rulers. Thus, the people would not become CCP puppets, and the CCP could not force conformity on the thoughts of the masses.

The traditional culture�s respect for heaven, the earth and nature became an obstacle for the CCP�s �battle with nature� in an effort to �alter heaven and the earth.� Traditional culture treasures human life, teaching that �any situation involving human life has to be treated with the utmost care.� Such a perception was a hindrance to the CCP�s mass genocide and rule by terror. The traditional culture�s ultimate moral standard of the �heavenly Tao� interfered with the CCP�s manipulation of moral principles. For these reasons, the CCP made traditional culture an enemy in an effort to bolster its own control.

SOS Chapter 31

Why Did the CCP Want to Sabotage Traditional Culture?

The Long Tradition of Chinese Culture�Based on Faith and Venerating Virtue

The authentic culture of the Chinese nation started about 5,000 years ago with the legendary Emperor Huang, who is deemed to be the earliest ancestor of the Chinese civilization. In fact, Emperor Huang was also credited with founding Taoism�which was also called the Huang-Lao (Lao Zi) school of thought. The profound influence of Taoism on Confucianism can be seen in such Confucian sayings as �Aspire to the Tao, align with virtue, abide by benevolence, and immerse yourself in the arts� and �If one hears the Tao in the morning, one can die without regret in the evening.� [9] The Book of Changes (I Ching), a record of heaven and earth, yin and yang, cosmic changes, social rise and decline, and the laws of human life, was regarded as �Number one among all Chinese classics� by Confucians. The prophetic power of the book has far surpassed what modern science can conceive. In addition to Taoism and Confucianism, Buddhism, especially Zen Buddhism, has had a subtle yet profound influence on Chinese intellectuals.

Confucianism is the part of the traditional Chinese culture that focused on �entering the mundane world.� It emphasized family-based ethics, in which filial piety played an extremely important role, teaching that �all kindness starts with filial piety.� Confucius advocated �benevolence, righteousness, propriety, wisdom and faithfulness,� but also said, �Aren�t filial piety and brotherly love the roots of benevolence?�

Family-based ethics can be naturally extended to guide social morality. Filial piety can be extended to subordinates� loyalty to the monarch. It is said that, �It is seldom that a person with filial piety and brotherly love will be inclined to offend those above.�[10] Brotherly love is the relationship among brothers, and can be further extended to righteousness and justice among friends. Confucians teach that in a family, a father should be kind, a son filial, an older brother friendly, and a younger brother respectful. Here, fatherly kindness can be further extended to benevolence of the monarch toward his subordinates. As long as the traditions of a family can be maintained, social morality can naturally be sustained. �Cultivate oneself, regulate one�s family, rightly govern one�s state and make the whole kingdom tranquil and happy.� [11]

Buddhism and Taoism are the parts of Chinese culture that focused on �leaving the mundane world.� The influence of Buddhism and Taoism can be found to penetrate all aspects of ordinary people�s lives. Practices that are deeply rooted in Taoism include Chinese medicine, qigong, geomancy (Feng Shui), and divination. These practices, as well as the Buddhist conceptions of a heavenly kingdom and hell, the karmic reward of good and the retribution of evil, have, together with Confucian ethics, formed the core of traditional Chinese culture.

The beliefs of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism offered the Chinese people a very stable moral system, unchangeable �so long as heaven remains.� [12] This ethical system offered the basis for sustainability, peace, and harmony in society.

Morality belongs to the spiritual realm; thus, it is often conceptual. Culture expresses such an abstract moral system in language that can be commonly understood.

Take the �Four Chinese Classics,� the four most renowned novels in Chinese culture, as examples. The Journey to the West [13] is a mythical tale. A Dream of Red Mansions [14] starts with a dialog between a spirited stone and the Deity of Infinite Space and the Tao of Boundless Time at the Baseless Cliff of the Great Waste Mountain�this dialog provides clues for the human drama that unfolds in the novel. Outlaws of the Marsh [15] opens with a tale of how premier Hong, in charge of military affairs, accidentally set free 108 demons. This legend explains the origin of the �108 outlaw militants of prowess.� Three Kingdoms [16] begins with a heavenly warning of a disaster, and ends with the inescapable conclusion of God�s will: �The world�s affairs rush on like an endless stream; a heaven-told fate, infinite in reach, dooms all.� Other well-known stories, such as The Romance of the Eastern Zhou [17] and The Complete Story of Yue Fei [18], all begin with similar legends.

These novelists� use of myths was not a coincidence, but a reflection of a basic philosophy of Chinese intellectuals toward nature and humanity. These novels have had a profound influence on the Chinese mind. When speaking of �righteousness,� people think of Guan Yu (160-219 AD) of the Three Kingdoms rather than the concept itself�how his righteousness to his friends transcended the clouds and reached heaven; how his unmovable loyalty to his superior and sworn-brother Liu Bei gained him respect even from his enemies; how his bravery in battle prevailed in the most dire of situations, his final defeat in a battle near the Town of Mai; and, finally, his conference as a deity with his son. When speaking of �loyalty,� Chinese people naturally think of Yue Fei (1103-1141 AD), a Song Dynasty general who served his country with unreserved integrity and loyalty, and Zhuge Liang (181-234 AD), prime minister of the Shu State during the Three Kingdoms period, who �gave his all until his heart stopped beating.�

Traditional Chinese culture�s eulogy of loyalty and righteousness has been fully elaborated in these authors� colorful stories. The abstract moral principles they espouse have been made specific and embodied in cultural expressions.

Taoism emphasizes truthfulness. Buddhism emphasizes compassion, and Confucianism values loyalty, tolerance, benevolence and righteousness. �While their forms differ, their purposes are the same�they all inspire people to return to kindness.� [19] These are the most valuable aspects of traditional Chinese culture based upon the beliefs in Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism.

Traditional Chinese culture is filled with concepts and principles such as heaven, the Tao, God, Buddha, fate, predestination, benevolence, righteousness, propriety, wisdom, faithfulness, honesty, shame, loyalty, filial piety, dignity, and so on. Many Chinese may be illiterate, but they are still familiar with traditional plays and operas. These cultural forms have been important ways for ordinary people to learn traditional morals. Therefore, the CCP�s destruction of traditional Chinese culture is a direct attack against Chinese morality and undermines the basis for peace and harmony in society.

T

SOS Chapter 30

Foreword

Culture is the soul of a nation. This spiritual factor is as important to mankind as physical factors such as race and land.

Cultural developments define the history of a nation�s civilization. The complete destruction of a national culture leads to the end of the nation. Ancient nations who had created glorious civilizations were considered to have vanished when their cultures disappeared, even though people of their races may have survived. China is the only country in the world whose ancient civilization has been passed down continuously for over 5,000 years. Destruction of its traditional culture is an unforgivable crime.

The Chinese culture, believed to be passed down by God, started with such myths as Pangu�s creation of heaven and the earth [1], N�wa�s creation of humanity [2], Shennong�s identification of hundreds of medicinal herbs [3], and Cangjie�s invention of Chinese characters [4]. �Man follows the earth, the earth follows heaven, heaven follows the Tao, and the Tao follows what is natural.� [5] The Taoist wisdom of unity of heaven and humanity has coursed through the veins of Chinese culture. �Great learning promotes the cultivation of virtue.�[6] Confucius opened a school to teach students more than 2,000 years ago and imparted to society the Confucian ideals represented by the five cardinal virtues of benevolence, righteousness, propriety, wisdom, and faithfulness. In the first century, Shakyamuni�s Buddhism traveled east to China with its emphasis on compassion and salvation for all beings. The Chinese culture became more wide-ranging and profound. Thereafter, Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism became complementary beliefs in Chinese society, bringing the Tang Dynasty (618-907 A.D.) to the peak of its glory and prosperity, as is known to all under heaven.

Although the Chinese nation has experienced invasion and attack many times in history, the Chinese culture has shown great endurance and stamina, and its essence has been continuously passed down. The unity of heaven and humanity represents our ancestors� cosmology. It is common sense that kindness will be rewarded and evil will be punished. It is an elementary virtue not to do to others what one does not want done to oneself. Loyalty, filial piety, dignity, and justice have set the social standards, and Confucius� five cardinal virtues of benevolence, righteousness, propriety, wisdom, and faithfulness have laid the foundation for social and personal morality. With these principles, the Chinese culture embodied honesty, kindness, harmony, and tolerance. Common Chinese people�s death memorials show reverence to �heaven, earth, monarch, parents and teacher.� This is a cultural expression of the deep-rooted Chinese traditions, which include worship of god (heaven and earth), loyalty to the country (monarch), values of family (parents), and respect for teachers. The traditional Chinese culture sought harmony between man and the universe, and emphasized an individual�s ethics and morality. It was based on the faiths of the cultivation practices of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism, and provided the Chinese people with tolerance, social progress, a safeguard for human morality, and righteous belief.

Unlike law, which prescribes hard rules, culture works as a soft constraint. The law enforces punishment after a crime has been committed, while culture, by nurturing morality, prevents crimes from happening in the first place. A society�s morality is often embodied in its culture.

In Chinese history, traditional culture reached its peak during the prosperous Tang Dynasty, coinciding with the height of the Chinese nation�s power. Science was also advanced and enjoyed a unique reputation among all nations. Scholars from Europe, the Middle East, and Japan came to study in Chang�an, the capital of the Tang Dynasty. Countries bordering China took China as their suzerain state. �Tens of thousands of countries came to pay tribute to China, even though they might have to be translated multiple times and clear successive customs.� [7]

After the Qin Dynasty (221-207 BC), China was often occupied by minority groups. This happened during the Sui (581-618AD), Tang (618-907AD), Yuan (1271-1361AD) and Qing (1644-1911AD) dynasties and in some other times when ethnic minorities established their own regimes. Nevertheless, almost all these ethnic groups were assimilated to the Chinese ways. This shows the great integrative power of traditional Chinese culture. As Confucius said, �(Thus) if the people from afar are not compliant, bring them around by cultivating (our) culture and virtue.� [8]

Since attaining power in 1949, the CCP has devoted the nation�s resources to destroying China�s traditional culture. This ill intention did not come from the CCP�s zeal for industrialization, nor from simple foolishness in worshipping Western civilization. Rather, it came from the CCP�s inherent ideological opposition to traditional Chinese culture. Thus, the CCP�s destruction of Chinese culture has been planned, well organized, and systematic, supported by the state�s use of violence. Since its establishment, the CCP has never stopped �revolutionizing� Chinese culture in the attempt to destroy its spirit completely.

Even more despicable than the CCP�s destruction of traditional culture is its intentional misuse and underhanded modification of traditional culture. The CCP has highlighted the vile parts from China�s history, things that occurred whenever people diverged from traditional values, such as internal strife for power within the royal family, the use of tactics and conspiracy, and the exercise of dictatorship and despotism. It has used these historical examples to help create the CCP�s own set of moral standards, ways of thinking, and system of discourse. In doing so, the CCP has given the false impression that the �Party culture� is actually a continuation of traditional Chinese culture. The CCP has even taken advantage of the aversion some people have for the �Party culture� to incite further abandonment of the authentic Chinese tradition.

The CCP�s destruction of traditional culture has brought disastrous consequences to China. Not only have people lost their moral bearings, they have also been forcibly indoctrinated with the CCP�s evil theories.