Saturday, October 15, 2011

SOS China Chapter 8

I. Land Reform—Eliminating the Landlord Class

Barely three months after the founding of communist China, the CCP called for the elimination of the landlord class as one of the guidelines for its nationwide land reform program. The party’s slogan “land to the tiller” indulged the selfish side of the landless peasants, encouraged them to struggle with the landowners by whatever means and to disregard the moral implications of their actions. The land reform campaign explicitly stipulated eliminating the landlord class, and classified the rural population into different social categories. Twenty million rural inhabitants nationwide were labeled as “landlords, rich peasants, reactionaries, or bad elements.” These new outcasts faced discrimination, humiliation, and loss of all their civil rights. As the land reform campaign extended its reach to remote areas and the villages of ethnic minorities, the CCP’s organizations also expanded quickly. Township Party committees and village Party branches spread all over China. The local branches were the mouthpiece for passing instructions from the CCP’s Central Committee and were at the frontline of the class struggle, inciting peasants to rise up against their landlords. Nearly 100,000 landlords died during this movement. In certain areas the CCP and the peasants killed the landlords’ entire families, disregarding gender or age, as a way to wipe out completely the landlord class.

In the meantime, the CCP launched its first wave of propaganda, declaring that “Chairman Mao is the great savior of the people” and that “only the CCP can save China.” During the land reform, landless farmers got what they wanted through the CCP’s policy of reaping without laboring, robbing without concern for the means. Poor peasants credited the CCP for the improvement in their lives and so accepted the CCP’s propaganda that the Party worked for the interests of the people.

For the owners of the newly acquired land, the good days of “land to the tiller” were short-lived. Within two years, the CCP imposed a number of practices on the farmers such as mutual-aid groups, primary cooperatives, advanced cooperatives, and people’s communes. Using the slogan of criticizing “women with bound feet”—i.e., those who are slow paced—the CCP drove and pushed, year after year, urging peasants to “dash” into socialism. With grain, cotton, and cooking oil placed under a unified procurement system nationwide, the major agricultural products were excluded from market exchange. In addition, the CCP established a residential registration system, barring peasants from going to the cities to find work or dwell. Those who are registered as rural residents were not allowed to buy grain at state-run stores and their children were prohibited from receiving education in cities. Peasants’ children could only be peasants, turning 360 million rural residents of the early 1950s into second-class citizens.

Beginning in 1978, in the first five years after moving from a collective system to a household contract system, some among the 900 million peasants became better off, with their income increasing slightly and their social status improving somewhat. However, such a meager benefit was soon lost due to a price structure that favored industrial commodities over agricultural goods; peasants plunged into poverty once again. The income gap between the urban and rural population has drastically increased, and economic disparity continues to widen. New landlords and rich peasants have re-emerged in the rural areas. Data from Xinhua News Agency, the CCP’s mouthpiece, show that since 1997, the revenue of the major grain production areas and the income of most rural households have been at a standstill, or even declined in some cases. In other words, the peasants’ gain from agricultural production did not really increase. The ratio of urban to rural incomes has increased from 1.8 to 1 in the mid 1980s to 3.1 to 1 today.

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II. Reforms in Industry and Commerce—Eliminating the Capitalist Class

Another class that the CCP wanted to eliminate was the national bourgeoisie who owned capital in cities and rural towns. While reforming China’s industry and commerce, the CCP claimed that the capitalist class and the working class were different in nature: the former was the exploiting class while the latter was the non-exploiting and anti-exploiting class. According to this logic, the capitalist class was born to exploit and wouldn’t stop doing so until it perished; it could only be eliminated, not reformed. Under such premises, the CCP used both killing and brainwashing to transform capitalists and merchants. The CCP used its long-tested method of supporting the obedient and destroying those who disagreed. If you surrendered your assets to the state and supported the CCP, you were considered just a minor problem among the people. If, on the other hand, you disagreed with or complained about the CCP’s policy, you would be labeled as a reactionary and become the target of the CCP’s draconian dictatorship.

During the reign of terror that ensued during these reforms, capitalists and business owners all surrendered their assets. Many of them couldn’t bear the humiliation they faced and committed suicide. Chen Yi, then mayor of Shanghai, asked every day, “How many paratroopers are there today?” referring to the number of capitalists that had committed suicide by jumping from the tops of buildings that day. In only a few years, the CCP completely eliminated private ownership in China.

While carrying out its land and industrial reform programs, the CCP launched many massive movements that persecuted the Chinese people. These movements included: the suppression of “counter-revolutionaries,” thought reform campaigns, cleansing the anti-CCP clique headed by Gao Gang and Rao Shushi, and probing Hu Feng’s [3] “counter-revolutionary” group, Three Anti Campaign, Five Anti Campaign, and the further cleansing of counterrevolutionaries. The CCP used these movements to target and brutally persecute countless innocent people. In every political movement, the CCP fully utilized its control of government resources in conjunction with the Party’s committees, branches, and sub-branches. Three party members would form a small combat team, infiltrating all villages and neighborhoods. These combat teams were ubiquitous, leaving no stone unturned. This deeply-entrenched Party control network, inherited from the CCP’s network of “Party branches installed within the army” during the war years, has since played a key role in later political movements.

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III. Crackdown on Religions and Religious Groups

The CCP committed another atrocity in the brutal suppression of religion and the complete ban of all grass-roots religious groups following the founding of the People’s Republic of China. In 1950, the CCP instructed its local governments to ban all unofficial religious faiths and secret societies. The CCP stated that those “feudalistic” underground groups were mere tools in the hands of landlords, rich farmers, reactionaries, and the special agents of the KMT. In the nationwide crackdown, the government mobilized the classes they trusted to identify and persecute members of religious groups. Governments at various levels were directly involved in disbanding such “superstitious groups” as communities of Christians, Catholics, Taoists (especially believers of I-Kuan Tao), and Buddhists. They ordered all members of these churches, temples, and religious societies to register with government agencies and to repent for their involvement. Failure to do so would mean severe punishment. In 1951, the government formally promulgated regulations threatening that those who continued their activities in unofficial religious groups would face a life sentence or a death penalty.

This movement persecuted a large number of kind-hearted and law-abiding believers in God. Incomplete statistics indicate that the CCP in the 1950s persecuted at least three million religious believers and underground group members, some of whom were killed. The CCP searched almost every household across the nation and interrogated its members, even smashing statues of the Kitchen God that Chinese peasants traditionally worshipped. The executions reinforced the CCP’s message that communist ideology was the only legitimate ideology and the only legitimate faith. The concept of “patriotic” believers soon emerged. The state constitution protected only “patriotic” believers. The reality was whatever religion one believed in, there was only one criterion: you had to follow the CCP’s instructions and you had to acknowledge that the CCP was above all religions. If you were a Christian, the CCP was the god of the Christian God. If you were a Buddhist, the CCP was the Master Buddha of the Master Buddha. Among Muslims, the CCP was the Allah of the Allah. When it came to the Living Buddha in Tibetan Buddhism, the CCP would intervene and itself choose who the Living Buddha would be. The CCP left you no choice but to say and do what the CCP demanded you to say and do. All believers were forced to carry out the CCP’s objectives while upholding their respective faiths in name only. Failing to do so would make one the target of the CCP’s persecution and dictatorship.

According to a February 22, 2002 report by Humanity and Human Rights online magazine, twenty thousand Christians conducted a survey among 560,000 Christians in house churches in 207 cities in 22 provinces in China. The survey found that among house church attendees, 130,000 were under government surveillance. In the book How the Chinese Communist Party Persecuted Christians (1958), it is stated that by 1957, the CCP had killed over 11,000 religious adherents and had arbitrarily arrested and extorted money from many more.

By eliminating the landlord class and the capitalist class and by persecuting large numbers of God-worshipping and law-abiding people, the CCP cleared the way for Communism to become the all-encompassing religion of China.


Thursday, October 13, 2011

SOS Chapter 7

Foreword

When speaking about tyranny, most Chinese people are reminded of Qin Shi Huang (259-210 B.C.), the first Emperor of the Qin Dynasty, whose oppressive court burnt philosophical books and buried Confucian scholars alive. Qin Shi Huang’s harsh treatment of his people came from his policy of “supporting his rule with all of the resources under heaven.” [1] This policy had four main aspects: excessively heavy taxation; wasting human labor for projects to glorify himself; brutal torture under harsh laws and punishing even the offenders’ family members and neighbors; and controlling people’s minds by blocking all avenues of free thinking and expression through burning books and even burying scholars alive. Under the rule of Qin Shi Huang, China had a population of about 10 million; Qin’s court drafted over 2 million to perform forced labor. Qin Shi Huang brought his harsh laws into the intellectual realm, prohibiting freedom of thought on a massive scale. During his rule, thousands of Confucian scholars and officials who criticized the government were killed.

Today the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s violence and abuses are even more severe than those of the tyrannical Qin Dynasty. The CCP’s philosophy is one of “struggle,” and the CCP’s rule has been built upon a series of “class struggles,” “path struggles,” and “ideological struggles,” both in China and toward other nations. Mao Zedong, the first CCP leader of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), put it bluntly by saying, “What can Emperor Qin Shihuang brag about? He only killed 460 Confucian scholars, but we killed 46,000 intellectuals. There are people who accuse us of practicing dictatorship like Emperor Qin Shihuang and we admit it all. It fits the reality. It is a pity that they did not give us enough credit, so we need to add to it.” [2]

Let’s take a look at China’s arduous 55 years under the rule of the CCP. As its founding philosophy is one of “class struggle,” the CCP has spared no efforts since taking power to commit class genocide, and has achieved its reign of terror by means of violent revolution. Killing and brainwashing have been used hand in hand to suppress any beliefs other than communist theory. The CCP has launched one movement after another to portray itself as infallible and godlike. Following its theories of class struggle and violent revolution, the CCP has tried to purge dissidents and opposing social classes, using violence and deception to force all Chinese people to become the obedient servants of its tyrannical rule.


Tuesday, October 11, 2011

SOS China - Chapter 6

III. Demonstrating Evil Traits

Eternal Fear Marks the Party’s History

The most prominent characteristic of the CCP is its eternal fear. Survival has been the CCP’s highest interest since its inception. Such interest managed to overcome the fear hidden underneath its ever-changing appearance. The CCP is like a cancer cell that diffuses and infiltrates every part of body, kills the surrounding normal cells and grows malignantly beyond control. In our cycle of history, society has been unable to dissolve such a mutated factor as the CCP and has no alternative but to let it proliferate at will. This mutated factor is so powerful that nothing within the level and range of its expansion can stop it. Much of society has become polluted, and larger and larger areas have been flooded with communism or communist elements. These elements are further strengthened and taken advantage of by the CCP and have fundamentally degraded the morality and society of humankind.

The CCP doesn’t believe in any generally recognized principle of morality and justice. All of its principles are used entirely for its own interest. It is fundamentally selfish, and there are no principles that could restrain and control its desires. Based on its own principles, the Party needs to keep changing how it appears on the surface, putting on new skins. During the early period when its survival was at stake, the CCP attached to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, to the KMT, to the KMT’s governing body, and to the National Revolution. After capturing power, the CCP attached itself to various forms of opportunism, to the citizens’ minds and feelings, to social structures and means—to anything it could put its hands on. It has utilized every crisis as an opportunity to gather more power and to strengthen its means of control.

Steadfast Pursuit of Evil Is the CCP’s “Magic Weapons”

The CCP claims that revolutionary victory depends on three “magic weapons”: the Party’s construction, armed struggle, and united fronts. The experience with the KMT offered the CCP two more such “weapons”: propaganda and espionage. The Party’s various “magic weapons” have all been infused with the CCP’s nine inherited traits: evil, deceit, incitement, unleashing the scum of society, espionage, robbery, fighting, elimination, and control.

Marxism-Leninism is evil in its nature. Ironically, the Chinese Communists do not really understand Marxism-Leninism. Lin Biao [21] said that there were very few CCP members who had really read the works of Marx or Lenin. The public considered Qu Qiubai [22] an ideologue, but he admitted to have only read a very little of Marxism-Leninism. Mao Zedong’s ideology is a rural version of Marxism-Leninism that advocates the rebellion of peasants. Deng Xiaoping’s theory of the primary stage of socialism has capitalism as its last name. Jiang Zemin’s “Three Represents” [23] was pieced together out of nothing. The CCP has never really understood what Marxism-Leninism is, but has inherited from it the evil aspects, upon which the CCP has foisted off its own even more wicked stuff.

The CCP’s united front is a conjunction of deceit and short-term pay-offs. The goal of unity was to strengthen its power, to help it grow from a loner to a huge clan and to change the ratio of its friends to its enemies. Unity required discernment—identifying who were enemies and who were friends; who were on the left, in the middle, on the right; who should be befriended and when, and who should be attacked and when. It easily turned former enemies into friends and then back to enemies again. For example, during the period of the democratic revolution, the party allied with the capitalists; during the socialist revolution it eliminated the capitalists. In another example, leaders of other democratic parties such as Zhang Bojun [24] and Luo Longji, [25] co-founders of “China Democratic League”, were made use of as supporters of the CCP during the period of seizing state power, but later were persecuted as “rightists.”

The Communist Party Is a Sophisticated Professional Gang

The Communist Party has used two-sided strategies, one side soft and flexible and the other hard and stern. Its softer strategies include propaganda, united fronts, sowing dissension, espionage, instigating rebellion, double-dealing, getting into people's minds, brainwashing, lies and deception, covering up the truth, psychological abuse, and generating an atmosphere of terror. In doing these things, the CCP creates a syndrome of fear inside the people’s hearts that leads them to easily forget the Party’s wrongdoings. These myriad methods could stamp out human nature and foster maliciousness in humanity. The CCP’s hard tactics include violence, armed struggle, persecution, political movements, murdering witnesses, kidnapping, suppressing different voices, armed attacks, periodic crack-downs, etc. These aggressive methods create and perpetuate terror.

The CCP uses both soft and hard methods concurrently. Sometimes they would be relaxed in some instances while strict in others, or they would be relaxed on the outside while stiff in their internal affairs. In a relaxed atmosphere, the CCP encouraged the expression of different opinions, but, as if luring the snake out of its hole, those who did speak up would only be persecuted in the following period of strict control. The CCP often used democracy to challenge the KMT, but when intellectuals in the CCP-controlled areas disagreed with the Party, they would be tortured or even beheaded. As an example, we can look at the infamous “Wild Lilies incident,” in which the intellectual Wang Shiwei (1906-1947) who wrote an essay “Wild Lilies” to express his ideal of equality, democracy and humanitarianism was purged in the Yan’an rectification movement and hacked to death with axes by the CCP in 1947.

A veteran official who had suffered torments in the Yan’an Rectification movement recalled that when he was under intense pressure, dragged and forced to confess, the only thing he could do was to betray his own conscience and make up lies. At first, he felt bad to be implicating and framing his fellow comrades. He hated himself so much that he wanted to end his life. Coincidentally, a gun had been placed on the table. He grabbed it, pointed it at his head and pulled the trigger. The gun had no bullets! The person who investigated him walked in and said, “It’s good that you admitted what you’ve done was wrong. The Party’s policies are lenient.” The Communist Party would know that you had reached your limit, know that you were “loyal” to the Party, so you had passed the test. The CCP always first puts one in a deathtrap and then enjoys one’s every pain and humiliation. When one reaches the limit and just wishes for death, the Party would “kindly” come out to show one a way to live. It is said “better a live coward than a dead hero.” One becomes so grateful to the Party as one’s savior. Years later, this official learned about Falun Gong, a Qigong and cultivation practice that started in China. He felt the practice to be good. When the persecution of Falun Gong started in 1999, however, his painful memories of the past revisited him, and he no longer dared to say that Falun Gong was good.

The experience of China’s last Emperor Puyi [26] was similar to this officer’s. Imprisoned in the CCP’s cells and seeing people killed one after another, he thought that he would die soon. In order to live, he allowed himself to be brainwashed and cooperated with the prison guards. Later, he wrote an autobiography The First Half of My Life, which was used by the CCP as a successful example of ideological remolding.

According to modern medical studies, many victims of intense pressure and isolation fall prey to an abnormal sense of dependency on their captors known as the Stockholm Syndrome. The victims’ moods—happiness or anger, joy or sorrow—would be dictated by those of their captors. The slightest favor for the victims will be received with deep gratitude. There are accounts in which the victims develop “love” for their captors. This psychological phenomenon has been long used successfully by the CCP both against its enemies and in controlling and remolding the minds of its citizens.

The Party Is the Most Wicked

A majority of the general secretaries of the CCP have been labeled anti-communists. Clearly, the CCP has a life of its own, with its own independent body.The party runs the officials and not the other way around. In the “Soviet areas” of Jiangxi province, while the CCP was encircled by the KMT and could hardly survive, it still conducted internal cleansing operations in the name of cracking down on the “Anti-Bolshevik (AB) Corps,” executing its own soldiers at night or stoning them to death to save bullets. In northern Shaanxi province, while sandwiched in between the Japanese and the KMT, the CCP began the Yan’an rectification movement of mass cleansing, killing numerous people. This type of repetitive massacre on such a massive scale did not prevent the CCP from expanding its power to eventually rule all of China. The CCP expanded this pattern of internal rivalry and killing one another from the small Soviet areas to the whole nation.

The CCP is like a malignant tumor: in its rapid development, the center of the tumor has already died, but it continues to diffuse to the healthy organisms on the outer edges. After the organisms and bodies are infiltrated, new tumors grow. No matter how good or bad a person is to start with, after joining the CCP, he or she would become a part of its destructive force. The more honest the person is, the more destructive he would become. Undoubtedly, this CCP tumor will continue to grow until there is nothing left for it to feed upon. Then, the cancer will surely die.

The founder of the CCP, Chen Duxiu, was an intellectual and a leader of the May Fourth student movement. He showed himself not a fan of violence, and warned the CCP members that if they attempted to convert the KMT to the communist ideologies or had too much interest in power, that would certainly lead to strained relationships. While one of the most active in the May Fourth generation, Chen was also tolerant. However, he was the first to be labeled a “right-wing opportunist.”

Another CCP leader, Qu Qiubai, believed that the CCP members should engage in battles and fighting, organize rebellions, overthrow authorities, and use extreme means to return the Chinese society to its normal functioning. However, he confessed before his death, “I do not want to die as a revolutionary. I had left your movement a long time ago. Well, history played a trick, bringing me, an intellectual, onto the political stage of revolution and keeping me there for many years. In the end, I still could not overcome my own gentry notions. I cannot become a warrior of the proletariat class after all.” [27]

The CCP leader Wang Ming, at the advice of the Comintern, argued for unity with the KMT in the war against the Japanese, instead of expanding the CCP base. At the CCP meetings, Mao Zedong and Zhang Wentian [28] could not persuade this fellow comrade, nor could they reveal the truth of their situation: according to the limited military strength of the Red Army, they would not be able to hold back even a division of the Japanese by themselves. If, against good sense, the CCP would have decided to fight, then the history of China would certainly be different. Mao Zedong was forced to remain silent at the meetings. Later, Wang Ming was ousted, first for a “left wing” deviation and then branded an opportunist of the right wing ideology.

Hu Yaobang, another party Secretary, who was forced to resign in January of 1987, had earned back Chinese people’s support for the CCP by bringing justice to many innocent victims who had been criminalized during the Cultural Revolution. Still, he was kicked out in the end.

Zhao Ziyang, the most recent fallen Secretary [29], wanted to help the CCP in furthering reform, yet his actions brought him dire consequences.

So what could each new leader of the CCP accomplish? Truly to reform the CCP would imply its death. The reformers would quickly find their power taken away by the CCP. There is a certain limit on what the CCP members can do to transform the CCP system. So there is no chance for CCP to succeed in reformation.

If the Party leaders have all turned into “bad people,” how could the CCP have expanded the revolution? In many instances when the CCP was at its best—also the most evil, their highest officials failed in their positions. This was because their degree of evil did not meet the high standard of the Party, which has, over and over, selected only the most evil. Many Party leaders ended their political life in tragedy, yet the CCP has survived. The CCP leaders who survived their positions were not those who could influence the Party, but those who could comprehend the Party’s evil intentions and follow them. They strengthened the CCP’s ability to survive while in crisis, and gave themselves entirely to the Party. No wonder Party members were capable of battling with heaven, fighting with the earth, and struggling against other human beings. But never could they oppose the Party. They are tame tools of the Party, or at most symbiotically related to the Party.

Shamelessness has become a marvelous quality of today’s CCP. According to the Party, its mistakes were all made by individual Party leaders, e.g., Zhang Guotao [30] or the Gang of Four [31]. Mao Zedong was judged by the Party as having three parts mistakes and seven parts achievements, while Deng Xiaoping judged himself to have four parts mistakes and six parts achievements, but the Party itself was never wrong. Even if the Party was wrong, well, it is the Party itself which has corrected the mistakes. Therefore, the Party tells its members to “look forward” and “not to be tangled in past accounts.” Many things could change: The Communist paradise is turned into a lowly goal of socialist food and shelter; Marxism-Lenenism is replaced by the “Three Represents.”People should not be surprised to see the CCP promoting democracy, opening up the freedom of belief, abandoning Jiang Zemin overnight, or redressing the persecution of Falun Gong, if it deems doing so necessary to maintain its control. There is one thing that never changes about the CCP: The fundamental pursuit of the Party’s goals—survival and maintenance of its power and control.
The CCP has mixed violence, terror and high-pressure indoctrination to form its theoretical basis, which is then turned into the Party nature, the supreme principles of the Party, the spirit of its leaders, the functioning mechanism of the entire Party, and the criteria for the actions of all CCP members. The Communist Party is as hard as steel, and its disciplines are as solid as iron. The intention of all members must be unified, and the actions of all members must completely comply with the Party’s political agenda.

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Conclusion

Why has history chosen the Communist Party over any other political force in China? As we all know, in this world there are two forces, two choices. One is the old and evil, whose goal is to do evil and choose the negative. The other is the righteous and good, which will choose the right and the benevolent. The CCP was chosen by the old forces. The reason for the choice is precisely because the CCP has gathered all the evil of the world, Chinese or foreign, past or present. It is a typical representative of the evil forces. The CCP took the greatest advantage of people’s inborn innocence and benevolence to cheat, and, step by step, it has prevailed in gaining today’s capacity to destroy.
What did the Party mean when it claimed that there would be no new China without the Communist Party? From its founding in 1921 until it took political power in 1949, the evidence clearly shows that without deceit and violence, the CCP would not be in power. The CCP differs from all other types of organizations in that it follows a twisted ideology of Marxism-Leninism, and does what it pleases. It can explain all that it does with high theories and link them cleverly to certain portions of the masses, thus “justifying” its actions. It broadcasts propaganda every day, clothing its strategies in various principles and theories and proving itself to be forever correct.
The development of the CCP has been a process of the accumulation of evil, with nothing glorious at all. The history of the CCP tells us precisely its illegitimacy. The Chinese people did not choose the CCP; instead, the CCP forced Communism, this foreign evil specter, onto the Chinese people by applying the evil traits that it has inherited from the Communist Party—evil, deceit, incitement, unleashing the scum of society, espionage, robbery, fighting, elimination, and control.


Saturday, October 8, 2011

SOS China - The Truth Chapter 5

The First KMT and CCP Alliance—A Parasite Infiltrates to the Core and Sabotages the Northern Expedition [14]

The CCP has always taught its people that Chiang Kai-shek betrayed the National Revolution movement [15], forcing the CCP to rise in armed revolt.

In reality, the CCP is a parasite or possessing specter. It cooperated with the KMT in the first KMT-CCP alliance for the sake of expanding its influence by taking advantage of the national revolution. Moreover, the CCP was eager to launch the Soviet-supported revolution and seize power, and its desire for power in fact destroyed and betrayed the National Revolution movement.

At the Second National Congress of the CCP in July 1922, those opposing the alliance with the KMT dominated the congress, because the party members were anxious to seize power. However, the Comintern vetoed the resolution reached in the congress and ordered the CCP to join the KMT.

During the first KMT-CCP alliance, the CCP held its Fourth National Congress in Shanghai in January 1925 and raised the question of leadership in China before Sun Yat-sen [16] died on March 12, 1925. Had he not died, he, instead of Chian Kai-shek would have been the target the CCP aimed at in its quest for power.

With the support of the Soviet Union, the CCP wantonly seized political power inside the KMT during its alliance with the CCP. Tan Pingshan (1886-1956, one of the early leaders of CCP in Guangdong province) became the minister of the Central Personnel Department of the KMT. Feng Jupo (1899-1954, one of the early leaders of CCP in Guangdong province), secretary of the Ministry of Labor, was granted full power to deal with all labor-related affairs. Lin Zuhan (or Lin Boqu, 1886-1960, one of the earliest CCP members) was the Minister of Rural Affairs, while Peng Pai (1896-1929, one of the CCP leaders) was secretary of this Ministry. Mao Zedong assumed the position of acting propaganda minister of the KMT Propaganda Ministry. The military schools and leadership of the military were always the focus of the CCP: Zhou Enlai held the position of director of the Politics Department of the Huangpu (Whampoa) Military Academy, and Zhang Shenfu (or Zhang Songnian, 1893-1986, one of the founders of CCP who introduced Zhou Enlai to join the CCP) was its associate director. Zhou Enlai was also Chief of the Judge Advocates Section, and he planted Russian military advisers here and there. Many Communists held the positions of political instructors and faculty in KMT military schools. CCP members also served as KMT Party representatives at various levels of the National Revolutionary Army. [17] It was also stipulated that without a Party representative’s signature, no order would be deemed effective. As a result of this parasitic attachment to the National Revolution movement, the number of the CCP members increased drastically from less than 1000 in 1925 to 30,000 by 1928.

The Northern Expedition started in February of 1926. From October 1926 to March 1927, the CCP launched three armed rebellions in Shanghai. Later, it attacked the Northern Expedition military headquarters but failed. The pickets for the general strikes in Guangdong province engaged in violent conflicts with the police every day. Such uprisings caused the April 12 purge of the CCP by the KMT in 1927. [18]

In August 1927, the CCP members within the KMT Revolutionary Army initiated the Nanchang Rebellion, which was quickly suppressed. In September, the CCP launched the Autumn Harvest Uprising to attack Changsha, but that attack was suppressed as well. The CCP began to implement a network of control in the army whereby “Party branches are established at the level of the company in the army,” and it fled to the Jinggangshan Mountain area in Jiangxi Province, [19] establishing rule over the countryside there.

The Hunan Peasant Rebellion—Inciting the Scum of Society to Revolt

During the Northern Expedition, when the National Revolutionary Army was at war with the warlords, the CCP instigated rebellions in the rural areas in an attempt to capture power.

The Hunan Peasant Rebellion in 1927 was a revolt of the riffraff, the scum of society, as was the well-known Paris Commune of 1871—the first Communist revolt. French nationals and foreigners in Paris at the time witnessed that the Paris Commune was a group of destructive roving bandits with no vision. Living in exquisite buildings and large mansions and eating extravagant and luxurious meals, they cared only about enjoying their momentary happiness and worried about nothing ahead. During the rebellion of the Paris Commune, they censored the Press. They took as hostage and later shot the Archbishop of Paris, Georges Darboy, who gave sermons to the King. For their personal enjoyment they cruelly killed 64 clergymen, set fire to palaces, and destroyed government offices, private residences, monuments, and inscription columns. The wealth and beauty of the French capital had been second to none in Europe. However, during the Paris Commune uprising, buildings were reduced to ashes and people to skeletons. Such atrocities and cruelty had rarely been seen throughout history.

As Mao Zedong admitted,

It is true the peasants are in a sense ‘unruly’ in the countryside. Supreme in authority, the peasant association allowed the landlord no say and sweeps away his prestige. This amounts to striking the landlord down to the dust and keeping him there. The peasants threaten, “We will put you in the other register [the register of reactionaries]!” They fine the local tyrants and evil gentry, they demand contributions from them, and they smash their sedan-chairs. People swarm into the houses of local tyrants and evil gentry who are against the peasant association, slaughter their pigs and consume their grain. They even loll for a minute or two on the ivory-inlaid beds belonging to the young ladies in the households of the local tyrants and evil gentry. At the slightest provocation they make arrests, crown the arrested with tall paper hats, and parade them through the village, saying, “You dirty landlords, now you know who we are!” Doing whatever they like and turning everything upside down, they have created a kind of terror in the countryside. [2]

But Mao gave such “unruly” actions a full approval, saying,

To put it bluntly, it is necessary to create terror for a while in every rural area, or otherwise it would be impossible to suppress the activities of the counter-revolutionaries in the countryside or overthrow the authority of the gentry. Proper limits have to be exceeded in order to right a wrong, or else the wrong cannot be righted... Many of their deeds in the period of revolutionary action, which were seen as going too far, were in fact the very things the revolution required. [2]

Communist revolution creates a system of terror.

The “Anti-Japanese” North-Bound Operation—The Flight of the Defeated

The CCP labeled the “Long March” as a northbound anti-Japanese operation. It trumpeted the “Long March” as a Chinese revolutionary fairy tale. It claimed that the “Long March” was a “manifesto,” a “propaganda team” and a “seeding machine,” which ended with the CCP’s victory and their enemies’ defeat.

The CCP fabricated such obvious lies about marching north to fight the Japanese to cover its failures. From October 1933 to January 1934, the Communist Party suffered a total defeat. In the fifth operation by the KMT, which aimed to encircle and annihilate the CCP, the CCP lost its rural strongholds one after another. With its base areas continually shrinking, the main Red Army had to flee. This is the true origin of the “Long March.”

The “Long March” was in fact aimed at breaking out of the encirclement and fleeing to Outer Mongolia and Soviet Russia along an arc that first went west and then north. Once in place, the CCP could escape into the Soviet Union in case of defeat. The CCP encountered great difficulties when en route towards Outer Mongolia. They chose to go through Shanxi and Suiyuan. On the one hand by marching through these northern provinces, they could claim to be “anti-Japanese” and win people’s hearts. On the other hand, those areas were safe as no Japanese troops were deployed there. The area occupied by the Japanese army was along the Great Wall. A year later, when the CCP finally arrived at Shanbei (northern Shaanxi province), the main force of the Central Red Army had decreased from 80,000 to 6,000 people.

The Xi’an Incident—The CCP Successfully Sowed Dissension and Latched onto the KMT a Second Time

In December 1936, Zhang Xueliang and Yang Hucheng, two KMT generals, kidnapped Chiang Kai-shek in Xi’an. This has since been referred to as the Xi’an Incident.

According to the CCP’s textbooks, the Xi’an Incident was a “military coup” initiated by Zhang and Yang, who delivered a life or death ultimatum to Chiang Kai-shek. He was forced to take a stance against the Japanese invaders. Zhou Enlai was reportedly invited to Xi’an as a CCP representative to help negotiate a peaceful resolution. With different groups in China mediating, the incident was resolved peacefully, thereby ending a civil war of ten years and starting a unified national alliance against the Japanese. The CCP history books say that this incident was a crucial turning point for China in her crisis. The CCP depicts itself as the patriotic party that takes the interests of the whole nation into account.

More and more documents have revealed that many CCP spies had already gathered around Yang Hucheng and Zhang Xueliang before the Xi’an Incident. Liu Ding, an underground CCP member was introduced to Zhang Xueliang by Song Qingling, wife of Sun Yat-sen, a sister of Madame Chiang and a CCP member. After the Xi’an Incident, Mao Zedong praised that, “Liu Ding performed meritorious service in Xi’an Incident.” Among those working at Yang Hucheng’s side, his own wife Xie Baozhen was a CCP member and worked in Yang’s Political Department of the Army. Xie married Yang Hucheng in January of 1928 with the approval of the CCP. In addition, CCP member Wang Bingnan was an honored guest in Yang’s home at the time. Wang later became a vice minister for the CCP Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It was these CCP members around Yang and Zhang who directly instigated the coup.

At the beginning of the incident, the leaders of the CCP wanted to kill Chiang Kai-shek, avenging his earlier suppression of the CCP. At that time, the CCP had a very weak base in northern Shaanxi province, and had been in danger of being completely eliminated in a single battle. The CCP, utilizing all its acquired skills of deception, instigated Zhang and Yang to revolt. In order to pin down the Japanese and prevent them from attacking the Soviet Union, Stalin personally wrote to the Central Committee of the CCP, asking them not to kill Chiang Kai-shek, but to cooperate with him for a second time. Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai realized that they could not destroy the KMT with the limited strength of the CCP; if they killed Chiang Kai-shek, they would be defeated and even eliminated by the avenging KMT army. Under these circumstances, the CCP changed its tone. The CCP forced Chiang Kai-shek to accept cooperation a second time in the name of joint resistance against the Japanese.

The CCP first instigated a revolt, pointing the gun at Chiang Kai-shek, but then turned around and, acting like a stage hero, forced him to accept the CCP again. The CCP not only escaped a crisis of disintegration, but also used the opportunity to latch onto the KMT government for the second time. The Red Army was soon turned into the Eighth Route Army and grew bigger and more powerful than before. One must admire the CCP’s unmatchable skills of deception.

Anti-Japanese War—The CCP Grew by Killing with Borrowed Weapons

When the anti-Japanese war broke out in 1937, the KMT had more than 1.7 million armed soldiers, ships with 110,000 tons displacement, and about 600 fighter planes of various kinds. The total size of the CCP’s army including the New Fourth Army which was newly grouped in November of 1937, did not exceed 70,000 people.Its power was weakened further by internal fractional politics and could be eliminated in a single battle. The CCP realized that if it were to face battle with the Japanese, it would not be able to defeat even a single division of the Japanese troops. In the eyes of the CCP, sustaining its own power rather than ensuring the survival of the nation was the central focus of the emphasis on “national unity.” Therefore, during its cooperation with the KMT, the CCP exercised an internal policy of “giving priority to the struggle for political power, which is to be disclosed internally and realized in actual practice.”

After the Japanese occupied the city of Shenyang on September 18, 1931, thereby extending their control over large areas in northeastern China, the CCP fought shoulder to shoulder with Japanese invaders to defeat the KMT. In a declaration written in response to the Japanese occupation, the CCP exhorted the people in the KMT-controlled areas to rebel, calling on “workers to strike, peasants to make trouble, students to boycott classes, poor people to quit working, soldiers to revolt” so as to overthrow the Nationalist government.

The CCP held up a banner calling for resistance to the Japanese, but they only had local armies and guerrilla forces in camps away from the front lines. Except for a few battles, including the one fought at Pingxing Pass, the CCP did not make much of a contribution to the war against the Japanese at all. Instead, they spent their energy expanding their own base. When the Japanese surrendered, the CCP incorporated the surrendering soldiers into its army, claiming to have expanded to more than 900,000 regular soldiers, in addition to 2 million militia fighters. The KMT army was essentially alone on the frontlines while fighting the Japanese, losing over 200 marshalls in the war. The commanding officers on the CCP side bore nearly no losses. However, the textbooks of the CCP constantly claimed that the KMT did not resist the Japanese, and that it was the CCP that led the great victory in the anti-Japanese war.

Rectification in Yan’an—Creating the Most Fearsome Methods in Persecution

The CCP attracted countless patriotic youth to Yan’an in the name of fighting against the Japanese, but persecuted tens of thousands of them during the rectification movement in Yan’an. Since gaining control of China, the CCP has depicted Yan’an as the revolutionary “holy land,” but has not made any mention of the crimes it committed during the rectification.

The rectification movement in Yan’an was the largest, darkest and most ferocious power game ever played out in the human world. In the name of cleansing petty bourgeoisie toxins, the Party washed away morality, independence of thought, freedom of action, tolerance, and dignity. The first step of the rectification was to set up, for each person, personnel archives, which included: 1) a personal statement; 2) a chronicle of one's political life; 3) family background and social relationships; 4) autobiography and ideological transformation; 5) evaluation according to Party nature.

In the personnel archive, one had to list all acquaintances since birth, all important events and the time and place of their occurrence. People were asked to write repeatedly for the archive, and any omissions would be seen as signs of impurity. One had to describe all social activities they had ever participated in, especially those related to joining the Party. The emphasis was placed on personal thought processes during these social activities. Evaluation based on Party nature was even more important, and one had to confess any anti-Party thoughts or behavior in one’s consciousness, speech, work attitudes, everyday life, or social activities. For example, in evaluation of one’s consciousness, one was required to scrutinize whether one had been concerned for self-interest, whether one had used work for the Party to reach personal goals, whether one had wavered in trust in the revolutionary future, feared death during battles, or missed family members and spouses after joining in the party or the army. There were no objective standards, so nearly everyone was found to have problems.

Coercion was used to extract “confessions” from cadres who were being inspected in order to eliminate “hidden traitors.” Countless frame-ups and false and wrong accusations resulted, and a large number of cadres were persecuted. During the rectification, Yan’an was called “a place for purging human nature.” A work team entered the University of Military Affairs and Politics to examine the cadres’ personal histories, causing Red Terror for two months. Various methods were used to extract confessions, including extemporaneious confessions, demonstrative confessions, “group persuasions,” “five-minute persuasions,” private advice, conference reports, and identifying the “radishes” (i.e., red outside and white inside). There was also “picture taking”—lining up everyone on the stage for examination. Those who appeared nervous were identified as suspects and targeted as subjects to be investigated.

Even representatives from the Comintern recoiled at the methods used during the rectification, saying that the Yan’an situation was depressing. People did not dare interact with one another. Each person had his own axe to grind and everyone was nervous and frightened. No one dared to speak the truth or protect mistreated friends, because each was trying to save his own life. The vicious—those who flattered, lied, and insulted others—were promoted; humiliation became a fact of life in Yan’an – either humiliate other comrades or humiliate oneself. People were pushed to the brink of insanity, having been forced to abandon dignity, a sense of honor or shame, and love for one another in order to save their own lives and their own jobs. They ceased to express their own opinions, but recited party leaders’ articles instead.

This same system of oppression has been employed in all CCP political activities since it seized power in China.

Three Years of Civil War—Betraying the Country to Seize Power

The Russian Bourgeois Revolution in February 1917 was a relatively mild uprising. The Tsar placed the interests of the country first and surrendered the throne instead of resisting. Lenin hurriedly returned to Russia from Germany, staged another coup, and in the name of communist revolution murdered the revolutionaries of the capitalist class who had overthrown the Tsar, thus strangling Russia’s bourgeois revolution. The CCP, like Lenin, picked the fruits of a nationalist revolution. After the anti-Japanese war was over, the CCP launched a so-called “War of Liberation” (1946-1949) to overthrow the KMT government, bringing the disaster of war to China once more.

The CCP is well known for its “huge-crowd strategy,” the sacrifice of massive casualties and deaths to win a battle. In several battles with the KMT, including those fought in Liaoxi-Shenyang, Beijing-Tianjin, and Huai Hai [20], the CCP used these most primitive, barbarous, and inhumane tactics that sacrificed huge numbers of its own people. When besieging Changchun city in Jilin Province in Northeast China, in order to exhaust the food supply in the city, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) was ordered to forbid ordinary people from leaving the city. During the two months of Changchun’s besiegement, nearly 200,000 people died of hunger and frost. But the PLA did not allow people to leave. After the battle was over, the CCP, without a tinge of shame, claimed that they had “liberated Changchun without firing a shot.”

From 1947 to 1948, the CCP signed the “Harbin Agreement” and the “Moscow Agreement” with the Soviet Union, surrendering national assets and giving away resources from the Northeast in exchange for the Soviet Union’s full support in foreign relations and military affairs. According to the agreements, the Soviet Union would supply the CCP with 50 airplanes; it would give the CCP weapons left by the surrendered Japanese in two installments; and it would sell the Soviet-controlled ammunition and military supplies in China’s Northeast to the CCP at low prices. If the KMT launched an amphibious landing in the Northeast, the Soviet Union would secretly support the CCP army. In addition, the Soviet Union would help the CCP gain control over Xinjiang in Northwest China; the CCP and the Soviet Union would build an allied air force; the Soviets would help equip 11 divisions of the CCP army, and transport one-third of its US-supplied weapons (worth $13 billion) into Northeast China.
To gain Soviet support, the CCP promised the Soviet Union special transportation privileges in the Northeast both on land and in the air; offered the Soviet Union information about the actions of both the KMT government and the US military; provided the Soviet Union with products from the Northeast (cotton, soybeans) and military supplies in exchange for advanced weapons; granted the Soviet Union preferential mining rights in China; allowed the Soviet Union to station armies in the Northeast and Xinjiang; and permitted the Soviets to set up the Far East Intelligence Bureau in China. If war broke out in Europe, the CCP would send an expeditionary army of 100,000 plus 2 million laborers to support the Soviet Union. In addition, the CCP promised to merge some special regions in Liaoning province into North Korea if necessary.


Thursday, October 6, 2011

SOS China - The Truth Chapter 4

II. The CCP’s Dishonorable Foundation

The CCP lays claim to a brilliant history, one that has seen victory after victory. This is merely an attempt to prettify itself and glorify the CCP’s image in the eyes of the public. As a matter of fact, the CCP has no glory to advertise at all. Only by using the nine inherited evil traits could it establish and maintain power.

Establishment of the CCP—Raised on the Breast of the Soviet Union

“With the report of the first cannon during the October Revolution, it brought us Marxism and Leninism.” That was how the Party portrayed itself to the people. However, when the Party was first founded, it was just the Asian branch of the Soviet Union. From the beginning, it was a traitorous party.

During the founding period of the Party, they had no money, no ideology, nor any experience. They had no foundation upon which to support themselves. The CCP joined the Comintern to link its destiny with the existing violent revolution. The CCP’s violent revolution was just a descendent of Marx and Lenin’s revolution. The Comintern was the global headquarters to overthrow political powers all over the world, and the CCP was simply an eastern branch of Soviet Communism, carrying out the imperialism of the Russian Red Army. The CCP shared the experience of the Soviet Union’s Communist Party of violent political takeover and dictatorship of the proletariat and followed the Soviet Party’s instructions on its political line, intellectual line and organization line. The CCP copied the secret and underground means by which an external illegal organization survived, adopting extreme surveillance and control measures. The Soviet Union was the backbone and patron of the CCP.

The CCP constitution passed by the First Congress of the CCP was formulated by the Comintern, based upon Marxism-Leninism and the theories of class struggle, dictatorship of the proletariat and party establishment. The Soviet party constitution provided its fundamental basis. The soul of the CCP consists of ideology imported from the Soviet Union. Chen Duxiu, one of the foremost officials of the CCP, had different opinions from Maring, the representative from the Comintern. Maring wrote a memo to Chen stating that if Chen were a real member of the Communist Party, he must follow orders from the Comintern. Even though Chen Duxiu was one of the CCP's founding fathers, he could do nothing but listen and obey orders. Truly, he and the Party were simply subordinates of the Soviet Union.

During the Third Congress of the CCP in 1923, Chen Duxiu publicly acknowledged that the Party was funded almost entirely by contributions from the Soviet Comintern. In one year, the Comintern contributed over 200,000 yuan to the CCP, with unsatisfactory results. The Comintern accused the CCP of not being diligent enough in their efforts.

According to incomplete statistics from declassified Party documents, the CCP received 16,655 Chinese yuan from October 1921 to June 1922. In 1924, they received USD $1,500 and 31,927.17 yuan, and in 1927 they received 187,674 yuan. The monthly contribution from the Comintern averaged around 20,000 yuan. Tactics commonly used by the CCP today, such as lobbying, going through the backdoor, offering bribes, and using threats, were already in use back then. The Comintern accused the CCP of continuously lobbying for funds.

“They take advantage of the different funding sources (International Communications Office, representatives for the Comintern, and military organizations, etc.) to get their funds, because one organization does not know that the other organization has already dispersed the funds…the funny thing is, they not only understand the psychology of our Soviet comrades. Most importantly, they know how to treat differently the comrades in charge of dispersing funds. Once they know that they won’t be able to get it through normal means, they delay meetings. In the end they use the crudest means to blackmail, like spreading rumors that some grass-root officials have conflicts with the Soviets, and that money is being given to warlords instead of the CCP.” [13]

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

SOS Age of Delevering

Interest rates close to zero and all the related issues are relatively new in the U.S. and Europe, but they’ve been around in Japan for two decades. So, many wonder if the U.S. is headed for Japan’s 20-years-and-running deflationary depression. And regardless, what does the Japanese experience tell us about living in this atmosphere?

The Japanese bubble economy was cruisin’ for a bruisin’, and its demise was aided by the Bank of Japan’s hike in interest rates, starting on May 31, 1989. Soon, exuberant real estate prices collapsed as did stock prices and economic growth nearly ceased. Lately, the earthquake and tsunami have added to Japan’s woes, at least on a short-term basis. Real GDP fell 1.3% in the second quarter from a quarter earlier at annual rates, following the 3.6% drop in the first quarter and the third quarter in succession to decline.

Similarities



Gallery: Gary Shilling's 10 Investments To Buy There are a number of similarities that suggest that America is entering a comparable long period of economic malaise. The Age of Deleveraging forecasts a similar decade, at least quite a few years, of slow growth and deflation as financial leverage and other excesses of past decades are worked off. The recent downgrade of Treasurys by S&P parallels the first cut in Japanese government bond ratings in 1998, followed by S&P’s cut to AA-minus early this year and Moody’s reduction from Aa2 to Aa3 last month.

The recent slow growth in the U.S. economy—real GDP gains of 0.4% in the first quarter and 1.0% in the second—looks absolutely Japanese. Furthermore, the prospects of substantial fiscal restraint in the U.S. to curb the federal deficit is reminiscent of tightening actions in Japan in the mid- 1990s. The economy was growing modestly, but deficit- and debt-wary policymakers in 1997 cut government spending and raised the national sales tax to 5%. Instant recession was the result.

Big government deficits in recent years are another similarly between these two countries.


The U.S. net federal debt-to-GDP ratio is also headed for the Japanese level.



Japan’s gross government debt last year was 226% of GDP, far and away the largest ration of any G-7 country. All governments lend back and forth among official entities so their gross debt is bigger than the net debt held by non-government investors, and Japan does more of this than other developed lands. Still, on a net basis, its government debt-to-GDP is only rivaled by Italy’s and leaped from a mere 11.7% in 1991 to 120.7% in 2010. Is the U.S. far behind?




Japan, in reaction to chronic economic weakness, has spent gobs of money in recent years, much of it politically motivated but economically questionable, like paving river beds in rural areas and building bridges to nowhere. Is that distinctly different than the U.S. 2009 $814 billion stimulus package that was supposed to finance shovel-ready infrastructure projects when, in reality, the shovels had not even been made yet?



A key reason for the 2009 and 2010 U.S. fiscal stimuli and continuing deficit spending in Japan is because aggressive conventional monetary ease did not revive either economy. Zero interest doesn’t help when banks don’t want to lend and creditworthy borrowers don’t want to borrow. Both central banks found themselves in classic liquidity traps, so both resorted to quantitative ease, without notable success.
But Differences, Too

There are, then, many similarities between financial and economic conditions in the U.S. and Japan. Nevertheless, there are considerable differences that make Japan’s experience in the last two decades questionable as a model for America in future years. Note, however, that every time I visit Japan, I return convinced that I understand less about how they function than I did on the previous trip. I’m sure they behave rationally, but it’s a different rationale than in the West, or at least the one I understand.

The Japanese are stoic by nature, always looking for the worst outcome while Americans are optimistic—not as optimistic as Brazilians, but still prone to look on the bright side. Otherwise, why would the Japanese voters stand for two decades of almost no economic growth? Japanese are comfortable with group decision-making while Americans revere individual initiative, something the Japanese disdain. The nail that sticks up will be pounded down, is a favorite expression there. Perhaps because of this, the government bureaucracy in Japan is much stronger than in the U.S. while elected officials have less control and room for initiative.

Despite little economic growth, the Japanese enjoy high living standards.



And the Japanese are an extremely homogenous and racially-pure population. In a related vein, immigration visas don’t exist in Japan, so there’s nothing in Japan like the chronic shift of U.S. income to the top quintile. Nothing like the two-tier economic recovery that benefited top-tier stockholders in 2009-2010, but left the rest struggling with collapsing prices for their homes and high unemployment.

Fertility rates in Japan are about the lowest in the world and life expectancy is high. So the rapidly aging and declining population lack the innovation and dynamism of more youthful populations in the U.S. where immigration, legal and illegal, is high as are fertility rates.


Export-Led

Japan in the post-World War II era has been an export-led economy. “Export or die,” is the watchword. The result of robust exports and weak imports linked to anemic domestic spending is its perennial current account surpluses, which, along with earlier high saving by households and now by businesses, allow it to finance its huge government deficits internally, with foreigners owning only 5%. As a result, Japna’s government bond yields are extremely low.



In contrast, the U.S. is a chronic importer with a chronic current account deficit. So foreigners have perennially bought Treasurys with the resulting dollars they earn, and they now own about 50% of them. And Treasury note and bond yields are much more controlled by global forces and higher as well than in Japan. The U.S. is largely an open economy but Japan’s, except for her formidable export sector, is largely closed to the outside world.

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Gallery: Gary Shilling's 10 Investments To Buy Another big difference is the chronic strength in the yen and long-time weakness in the dollar, resulting in part from the difference between Japan’s chronic current account surplus and America’s chronic deficit. Even near-zero short-term rates and 10-year government bond yields of about 1% do not deter those who lust for the yen. Of course, in a zero interest rate world where interest returns have dropped close to traditionally low Japanese levels in the U.S. and elsewhere, Japan at present does not have much of a competitive disadvantage.

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The yen’s strength has led to Japanese manufacturers moving much of their production to lower-cost areas, but deflation in Japan has offset some of the difference. Corrected for deflation and on a trade-weighted basis, including trading partners such as Switzerland with robust currencies, the yen has been relatively flat since the 1980s, according to a Bank of Japan analysis.

Nevertheless, the government has intervened in currency markets numerous times, most recently spending $13 billion in early August, to arrest the yen’s climb vs. the greenback. And, of course, a government intervening against its own currency can’t run out of ammunition since it can easily create more of its own currency to sell on the open market. Still, intervention success has been limited, short-lived and expensive. Even a determined government with unlimited ammo has not been able to overcome the gigantic global currency markets that trade trillions of dollars daily.

Deflation

Japan, of course, is mired in deflation, and while we continue to believe America is headed there as well, the U.S. CPI is still rising. In fact, many in and out of the Fed believe serious U.S. inflation is in the wings. As shown earlier, the spread between 10- year Treasurys and TIPS implies an annual CPI rise of about 2% over the next decade. A similar measure in Japan reveals expectations of continuing deflation over the next 10 years.

MyView

One of the better economist forecaster to follow. He mentioned S&P 800, wow!



What’s Left To Be Done?

I conclude that the differences between the U.S. and Japan are too great to use the Japanese economic experience in the last two decades as a template for the U.S. in coming years. Still, as discussed in The Age of Deleveraging, I expect a similar lengthy period of slow growth and deflation as the economy delevers. In any event, can policymakers do much to forestall this outlook? I argue in The Age of Deleveraging that they can’t any more than the Japanese have been able to generate robust economic growth.

A decade ago, the Fed was worried about deflation infecting the U.S. and assigned a dozen of its top economists to study Japan to see how chronic falling prices could be avoided. Their conclusion: Institute massive monetary ease early before deflation becomes a well-established and anticipated phenomenon.

Now-Fed Chairman Bernanke in earlier years also believed the Bank Of Japan activities were too little, too late, and that then the Japanese central bank pulled back when the economy seemed to be reviving. Its holdings of government bonds jumped from ¥45.7 trillion in 2001 to ¥67.2 trillion in2004, but aren’t much higher today at ¥86.0 trillion. The BOJ’s securities-buying program earlier this year of ¥5 trillion, or around $65 billion, is only about 10% of the Fed’s $600 billion QE2 program. Note, however, that the Fed’s much larger quantitative easing hasn’t been a great success either, as discussed earlier.

Furthermore, the U.S. central bank’s fear of a self-feeding deflationary spiral has not occurred in Japan. That takes place when lower prices encourage potential buyers to wait for still-lower prices, which are then induced by mounting inventories and excess capacity. So those buyers wait even further, etc., in a self-feeding downward price spiral. In Japan, deflation has been an on-and-off phenomenon for 20 years with no cumulative downward spiral in prices. This graph also reveals that M2 money supply growth of about 3% annually in the last two decades has not prevented periodic price declines. Again, Japan has been and the U.S. now is in a classic liquidity trap.

Saturday, October 1, 2011

SOS China - The Truth Chapter 2


I. The CCP Grew by Steadily Accumulating Wickedness

It is not an easy task to introduce a foreign and evil specter such as the Communist Party, one that is totally incompatible with the Chinese tradition, into China, a country with a history of 5,000 years of civilization. The CCP deceived the populace and the patriotic intellectuals who wanted to serve the country with the promise of the “communist utopia.” It further distorted the theory of communism, which had already been seriously distorted by Lenin, to provide a theoretical basis for destroying all traditional morals and principles. In addition, the CCP’s distorted theory of communism was used to destroy all that was disadvantageous to the CCP’s rule and to eliminate all social classes and people that might pose threats to its control.The CCP adopted the Industrial Revolution’s destruction of belief as well as the more complete atheism of communism. The CCP inherited communism’s denial of private ownership, and imported Lenin’s theory of violent revolution. At the same time, the CCP inherited and further strengthened the worst parts of the Chinese monarchy.

The history of the CCP is a process of its gradual accumulation of every single wickedness, domestic and foreign. The CCP has perfected its nine inherited traits, giving them “Chinese characteristics”: evil, deceit, incitement, unleashing the scum of society, espionage, robbery, fighting, elimination, and control. Responding to continuous crisis, the CCP has consolidated and strengthened the means and extent to which these malignant characteristics have been playing out.

First Inherited Trait: Evil—Putting on the Evil Form of Marxism-Leninism

Marxism initially attracted the Chinese Communists with its declaration to “use violent revolution to destroy the old state apparatus and to establish a dictatorship of the proletariat.” This is precisely the root of evil in Marxism and Leninism.

Marxist materialism is predicated on the narrow economic concepts of forces of production, production relations, and surplus value. During the early, underdeveloped stages of capitalism, Marx made a shortsighted prediction that capitalism would die and the proletariat would win, which has been proven wrong by history and reality. Marxist-Leninist violent revolution and dictatorship of the proletariat promote power-politics and proletarian domination. The Communist Manifesto related the Communist Party’s historical and philosophical basis to class conflict and struggle. The proletariat broke free from traditional morals and social relations for the sake of seizing power. Upon their first appearance, the doctrines of communism are set in opposition to all tradition.

Human nature universally repels violence. Violence makes people ruthless and tyrannical. Thus, in all places and all times humanity has fundamentally rejected the premises of the Communist Party’s theory of violence, a theory that has no antecedent in any former systems of thought, philosophy, or tradition. The communist system of terror fell upon the earth as if from nowhere.

The CCP’s evil ideology is built on the premise that humans can conquer nature and transform the world. The Communist Party attracted many people with its ideals of “emancipating all mankind” and “world unity.” The CCP deceived many people, especially those who were concerned about the human condition and were eager to make their own mark in society. These people forgot that there is a heaven above. Inspired by the beautiful yet misguided notion of “building heaven on earth,” they despised traditions and looked down upon the lives of others, which in turn degraded themselves. They did all of this in an attempt to provide the CCP with praiseworthy service and gain honor.

The Communist Party presented the fantasy of a “Communist paradise” as the truth, and aroused people’s enthusiasm to fight for it: “For reason thunders new creation, `Tis a better world in birth.” [1] Employing such an absolutely absurd idea, the CCP severed the connections between humanity and heaven, and cut the lifeline that connects the Chinese people to their ancestors and national traditions. By summoning people to give their lives for communism, the CCP strengthened its ability to do harm.

Second Inherited Trait: Deceit—Evil Has to Cheat to Pretend to Be Righteous

Evil must lie. To take advantage of the working class, the CCP conferred upon it the titles of “the most advanced class,” “selfless class,” “leading class,” and “pioneers of the proletarian revolution.” When the Communist Party needed the peasants, it promised “land to the tiller.” Mao applauded the peasants, saying, “Without the poor peasants there would be no revolution; to deny their role is to deny the revolution.”[2] When the Communist Party needed help from the capitalist class, it called them “fellow travelers in the proletarian revolution” and promised them “democratic republicanism.” When the Communist Party was almost exterminated by the KMT, it appealed loudly, “Chinese do not fight Chinese” and promised to submit itself to the leadership of the KMT. As soon as the anti-Japanese war (1937-1945) was over, the CCP turned full force against the KMT and overthrew its government. Similarly, the CCP eliminated the capitalist class shortly after taking control of China, and in the end transformed the peasants and workers into a truly penniless proletariat.

The notion of a united front is a typical example of the lies the CCP tells. In order to win the civil war against the KMT, the CCP departed from its usual tactics of killing every family member of the landlords and rich peasants and adopted a “temporary policy of unification” with its class enemies such as the landlords and rich peasants. On July 20, 1947, Mao Zedong announced that “Except for a few reactionary elements, we should adopt a more relaxed attitude towards the landlord class…in order to reduce hostile elements.” After the CCP gained power, however, the landlords and rich peasants did not escape genocide.

Saying one thing and doing another is normal for the Communist Party. When the CCP needed to use the democratic parties, it urged that all parties “strive for long-term coexistence, exercise mutual supervision, be sincere with each other, and share honor and disgrace.” Anybody who disagreed with or refused to conform to the Party’s concepts, words, deeds, or organization was eliminated. Marx, Lenin and the CCP leaders have all said that the Communist Party’s political power would not be shared with any other individuals or groups. From the very beginning, communism clearly carried within it the gene of dictatorship. The CCP is despotic and exclusive. It has never coexisted with any other political parties or groups in a sincere manner, whether when it attempted to seize power or after it gained control. Even during the so-called “relaxed” period, the CCP’s coexistence with others was at most a choreographed performance.

History tells us never to believe in any promises the CCP makes, nor to trust that any of the CCP’s commitments will be fulfilled. To believe the words of the Communist Party in whatever issue, that would be the issue that would cost one’s life.

Third Inherited Trait: Incitement—Skillfully Stirring up Hatred and Inciting Struggle among the Masses

Deceit serves to incite hatred. Struggle relies on hatred. Where hatred does not exist, it can be created.

The deep-rooted patriarchal clan system in the Chinese countryside served as a fundamental barrier to the Communist Party’s establishment of political power. The rural society was initially harmonious, and the relationship between the landowners and tenants was not entirely confrontational. The landowners offered the peasants a means to live, and in return the peasants supported the landowners.

This somewhat mutually dependent relationship was twisted by the CCP into extreme class antagonism and class exploitation. Harmony was turned into hostility, hatred, and struggle. The reasonable was made to be unreasonable, order was made to be chaos, and republicanism made to be despotism. The Communist Party encouraged expropriation, murder for money, and the slaughter of landlords, rich peasants, their families and their clans. Many peasants were not willing to take the property of others. Some returned at night the property they took from the landlords during the day, but they were criticized by CCP work teams in rural regions as having “low class consciousness.”

To incite class hatred, the CCP reduced the Chinese theater to a propaganda tool. A well-known story of class oppression, the White-Haired Girl [3], was originally about a female immortal and had nothing to do with class conflicts. Under the pens of the military writers, however, it was transformed into a “modern” drama, opera, and ballet used to incite class hatred. When Japan invaded China during World War II, the CCP did not fight with the Janpanese troops. Instead, it attacked the KMT government with accusations that the KMT betrayed the country without fighting against Japan. Even at the most critical moment of national calamity, it incited people to oppose the KMT government.

Inciting the masses to struggle against each other is a classic trick of the CCP. The CCP created the 95:5 formula of class assignment: 95 percent of the population would be assigned to various classes that could be won over, while the remaining 5 percent would be designated as class enemies. People within the 95 percent were safe, but those within the 5 percent were “struggled” against. Out of fear and to protect themselves, the people strived to be included in the 95 percent. This resulted in many cases in which people brought harm to others, even adding insult to injury. The CCP has, through the use of incitement in many of its political movements, perfected this technique.