The People's Democratic Dictatorship, Pt 2: Commuwhat?

One of my biggest pet peeves here is hearing people say, “that’s just communism.” I can see where they get the impression. There’s a Stalinist power-structure in place that calls itself the Chinese Communist Party that certainly has Marxist roots, but it has about as much a connection to communism today as the Republican Party has to the ideals of the old Roman Republic. Tenuous, at best. Not even very superficial really. One thing I’ll give credit to The Party for is not pretending to be something it’s not. Doublespeak is not a fixture in Chinese politics. Typically, the leadership says what they mean and means what they say and they say the revolution's dead, folks. They sent the memo in ’78, didn’t you get it?

Mao did create a communist society for a short while. During the Great Leap Forward in ’58 the villages were all leveled and rebuilt as communes. This might have actually worked except that alongside this came the remarkable idea that China was going to match England’s steel production in eight years. Wait, no, 4! Wait! Two years! We can do it in two! Someone said two months? Let’s do it guys! Just melt your shovels, hoes, rakes, plows, and jewelry in backyard steel mills! And then, you know, watch your crops die with thirty million dead peasants following. That's a tenth of the the current US population, by the way.

That didn’t work out so hot and his power slipped a bit. Plan B. Anarchy with communist characteristics. Ten years of it during the Cultural Revolution. Class struggle as defined by neighbors “struggling” against that bastard whose father was a rich peasant or whose brother served in Kuomintang along with your generic book burning, banning anything but revolutionary music, and sending anyone with an education to work as a farmer in the countryside. The general consensus is that it was Mao making a last ditch effort regain power and solidify his historical role as not just The Great Helmsman, but God Amongst Chinamen. Mao died. Happens to everyone, right?

Things changed very, very quickly after that. Deng Xiaoping, probably the most pragmatic political leader I’ve ever read about, came back from his small engine repair shop where he was exiled during the Cultural Revolution. He had a few ideas. The first, and most important today, was that “poverty is not communism.” Maybe sending educated people to the countryside for a few years can have a positive effect after all.

Well… turns out maybe poverty is communism when there’s not a lot of wealth to be shared. What’s a pragmatist to do? Rename communism, that’s what! But what to call it, what to call it… teacher! Pick me, pick me! If you said “socialism with Chinese characteristics,” you won! What does it mean? Well, whatever the hell it needs to mean. That’s its beauty. Did you notice how well the word “socialism” kept the relevance of the “communist” party. Didja also note that “Chinese characteristics” could mean anything? It’s kinda like saying Trey-style Chinese Cooking.

For Deng, it meant two things. Take notes, this well be on the test. First was that “to get rich is glorious.” Hmmm, interesting. That’s a bit of a change from the class-struggling fervor of Mao’s Little Red Book, the only literature allowed only five years earlier. The second was the pragmatic counter-weight, that “some must get rich before others.”

Right there communism died in China and the Chinese Communist Party was given a second chance to prove itself useful to the Chinese people before things got nasty. Nothing but pain came from the previous two decades of rule. While Mao started off on the right foot, The Party and its army was on its best red behavior while running from and fighting off the worse than useless KMT in China’s heartland, he left psychic and physical scars on this nation that will never be healed. Try to find a temple older than your grandfather in this ancient land.

So if China isn’t communist... what is it? That's for Part III: Survivalism.

People's Democratic Dictatorship, Pt. 1: My Bias and Observations

This might be taking it too far, but here goes. I'm reading a lot on the subject and really want to express my thoughts. There's a right way to do it and a wrong way to do it here and after talking with a friend in the Party I think I know where the lines are. Here's hoping I still have a visa next week.

Democracy. China. There... cat's out of the bag. Let's chat. For a censor reading this, please note this is an attempt to explain a situation to the Western reader and not some foreigners idea of how to change China.

I'll start with my own bias and ground observations. Liberty, fairness, and responsiveness are more important to me than the tools of democracy like elections. I'm inclined to think that elections are the most efficient ways of delivering those values to the people, but it's not a universal. Hong Kong is a good example of a place that never really had elections through most of it's modern history and today only grants the right to vote to a few millionaires and academics. Hong Kong citizens experience a great deal of liberty, fairness in law, and have an extremely responsive government.

Compare that to a place like Manila where elections are common but so are troops to harass socialist leaning parties wanting to represent the squatters and poor. Corruption is even more rampant in the Philippines than in China. Lonely Planet, in fact, advices backpackers to not report crimes to the police. You'll somehow loose important belongings before you leave their offices. Elections do not cure everything.

Liberty does exist in China in a limited form. People aren't terrified of talking politics and dissing old leaders like Mao in private. I've heard people in very high positions tell me they're not a member of The Party because they "don't believe communism will be actualized." Where it stops is the right to go into the street with a big sign that says that. Or march on Tiananmen Square. Or try to convince people of your ideas in public forums. There are no North Korea-style microphone systems hidden in people's homes that send the Gestapo in to throw you into re-education camps for bringing up your ideas inside your home or even office.

Fairness and responsiveness are two things the government in Beijing openly discuss and the leaders frequently cite as major policy goals. They know theres a fire brewing in the countryside and they know that it poses the greatest threat to the future of The Party. The cities are content if not happy as a whole. There's education, health care, jobs, and smart people can potentially make a much better life for themselves. None of that can be said of the countryside. Instead they deal with rampant corruption and stagnant incomes while the coastal cities boom.

Corruption isn't just about having to pay off the local cop to get out of a traffic ticket. It's about having your small plot of land appraised at a certain value. The developer gives the local government the appraised amount to buy the land from the farmer. The farmer maybe gets ten percent of that appraised amount, then the land is resold for tens or even hundreds of times more than the appraised amount [of which the farmer only got the sliver of]. This happens all day, every day. Add to this steep taxes on produce that are only now being revoked and you have a land of very edgy farmers that have been known to tear apart government offices.

Officials reported 74,000 demonstrations, or "mass incidents," in China in 2004, up from 10,000 in 1994, with the number of participants rising to 3.8 million from 730,000. - UPI

What's happening now is Beijing knows this problem needs to be addressed but there's no clear solution to it. The corruption isn't necessarily happening because of bad people in administration. It's happening in large part because bureaucracies are both bloated and underfunded. The previous president tried subsidizing rural administration payrolls and quickly learned it would bankrupt the national government. Cutting back on the bloating has serious political consequences within the party, as it creates more work and removes layers of separation between cadres and the unruly peasants.

Limited democracy had been one of their approaches. Contrary to popular belief, there are some relatively free elections in China to small assemblies for townships. Even non-Party members can run and often win. In effect it's giving a blow-off valve to the most disaffected without seriously disrupting power structure. It gives voice without much authority. And