Moreover, as official point man of the Leninist process, Gorbachev had even managed a more accurate reading than the Wise Men of the deep emotions running like a current beneath the surface among the peoples throughout all the nations. The bravura effect of Gorbachev’s U.N. performance traced to that very fact. For he put into words straight out the widely felt, if not always frankly expressed, sentiments among peoples and nations.
As someone who might have been expected to brandish intransigence and threat, Gorbachev spoke instead of solving the problems that beset us all. Assuming an unsurpassed globalist posture, he declared for the world that we have all had enough of those problems. Assuming an almost unique geopolitical posture, he proposed that we face into the erection of international structures and begin to deal with economic repression, to deal with pollution of air and land and water, to deal with starvation and disease and broken lives.
Reading the popular mind of the West as if born to it himself, he proposed an end to mortal fear for our survival as a race. And in that, Gorbachev tapped the deep urge of men and women everywhere to leave behind all the threats of extinction. He held out the hope that the human family can revise—if all goes well, perhaps even shatter—the sense of drifting helplessness that has come to lie like a secret sorrow within our lives.
Finally, that was the glittering attraction of Gorbachevism. Help for all our pain and all our fear lay in perfectly achievable human institutions that would unify society economically; and, ultimately, politically as well.
The bloody history and the present problems of the Soviet Union notwithstanding, within a mere four years as General Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU, Mikhail Gorbachev had forced a redefinition of the terms on which international development will be pursued from now on. And he had left his political peers on the world stage to eat his dust.
During the spring of 1989—that is, in the months between Gorbachev’s U.N. statement of intent and his forays into West Germany and France to begin its implementation—Pope John Paul had an unneeded and unwelcome confirmation that, no matter what the country or the context, the basic principles remain all too accurate by which he judges the Leninist mind as against the mind of the leaders of the capitalist West.
The context this time was China, where another ballet d’invitation—not the first since Mao Zedong’s revolution won the day—was played out in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. While it is true that China’s Leninist regime is not so far along in history’s march as Gorbachev’s Soviet Union and that Chairman Deng Xiaoping is no rival to Gorbachev when it comes to urbanity, the tragic events that began in Beijing on April 21, 1989, took the West through each step of reaction so familiar by now to the Holy See.
Still taken with its own international agenda, the West was first surprised, then fascinated, then mesmerized, then taken in, and finally, it was disappointed—but ready to enter the cycle all over again. And again, the mind of the West could not fathom the attitude of the genuinely Leninist mind. As Western intelligence had failed to predict, analyze correctly or even keep pace with the phenomenon of Gorbachevism, so that intelligence made gross miscalculations about the students who led the Beijing uprising, as well as about the nature of the Chinese government.
With regard to the Chinese students, Western ignorance and illusion passed for reliable information and understanding. There seemed no inkling in the West of student discontent in China until the magnitude of that discontent was clearly manifested by events. And, once their discontent had boiled to the surface, the West had already lost sight of the fact that the students themselves were rockbound in Leninism. They were China’s version of one young French factory worker quoted in The New York Times: “I couldn’t think of not being a Communist,” said that young man. “It’s my life. I don’t make an effort to be a Communist. I live it.”
When the demonstrations began in a smallish way in Tiananmen Square following the funeral of the liberal Party leader Hu Yaobang, the students were asking for an end of “corrupt practices” in the government, and for “significant and meaningful dialogue” between Party leaders and the ordinary people. But they were not calling for an overthrow of the Maoist socialist system.
When some mischief-maker splattered paint on the giant billboard depicting Mao Zedong’s rotund face overlooking the square, the students hastened to clean it, shouting Mao’s sayings, and exclaiming, “Long live Comrade Mao who set us free!”
Nevertheless, Western self-deception persisted, and nourished itself on media reports that displayed what Western reporters described as a homemade statue modeled on Lady Liberty holding freedom’s torch high over New York Harbor. As little as possible was made of the fact that the students did not have the Statue of Liberty in mind, but the “Goddess of Reason.” No doubt the upraised arm and the torch were modeled on Lady Liberty’s. But her name and her Phrygian cap were taken from the French Revolution. And she was greeted by the students with the singing of the “Internationale,” the socialist anthem for all nations.
One commentator, a Belgian, remarked, “Those kids don’t know how many human beings were killed to this tune, and how many democratic rights have been trampled underfoot by singers of that dreadful song.” Perhaps. But it would not be long before hundreds of “those kids” would themselves join many a martyr who had marched into oblivion singing the tune they sang.
With regard to the Chinese Communist government, meanwhile, the ignorance of Western intelligence and analysis passed all bounds of wishful thinking and deficiency, and entered the realm of nescience.
The rapid spread of the students’ demonstrations and of their very vocal discontent into other major cities and even to the Chinese countryside was enough to lead many Western governments and businessmen to make gross miscalculations.
Mesmerized by the way the Chinese had taken to Kentucky Fried Chicken, Coca-Cola, computers and capitalist profits, they failed to take into account either Deng Xiaoping’s obsessive Leninism, or the functional nature of his classically organized Leninist Party-State. What analysis there was appeared to be based on skewed information provided by liberal intellectuals in the Chinese Communist Party (CPC) and the vast Chinese bureaucracy.
About Deng Xiaoping himself, ignorance in the West was profound. People remembered Deng’s visit to the United States, and the news pictures that showed the diminutive Chinese leader wearing a ten-gallon hat at a Texas barbecue. They knew he had been touted as a personal friend of President Bush since Bush’s earlier days as ambassador to Deng’s China. With such pitiful information as their guide—and from the opening shouts to the last rifle shots in what was dubbed by state-controlled Beijing television as the “Beijing happening”—Western analysts echoed a persuasion that bore no resemblance to Pope John Paul’s intelligence.
Commentators present in Beijing, as well as U.S. government statements and even some off-the-cuff remarks by President Bush himself, all seemed to point to the conviction that, in the face of such widespread and peaceful protest by perhaps as many as a million Chinese, the CPC headed by the good old boy Deng Xiaoping would have to make concessions. Democratic concessions.
When the days drew on and no concessions were forthcoming, the illusions about Deng were ringed around with fantasies. Deng was in favor of the students. There was a bitter fight behind the scenes in the CPC Politburo between the soft-liners led by Deng, and the hard-liners led by Li Peng. Deng was ill. Deng was dying. Deng was dead.
In all this, Pope John Paul saw again the deep and universal accuracy of his perception that the West has no means of penetrating the Leninist mind. On the contrary, Deng was seen as a completely Westernized man subject to the influence of compassion, in sympathy with the underdog, horrified by bloodshed, informed by the same vestiges of the Christian civilization that still stir the Western mind and heart. Those Christian remnants may now be called “humanitarian motives.” But, by any name, the West expected Deng to behave according to such norms.
Deng did
not. More, Deng could not. Deng Xiaoping was formed by Mao Zedong. And not only was Mao Zedong formed by Lenin; he was formed within a society that had never been deeply penetrated, as Russia had, by Christian ideals.
The deception and illusion about Deng and about Communist China trace directly back to the time of Mao. When that revolutionary shot his way to the post of Chairman of the CPC, in control of all China, in 1949, the reaction in the West was an almost exact copy of the rosy-eyed adulation that had hallowed the first thirty years of Stalinism in the Soviet Union.
Mao’s China ate well. Mao’s China was orderly. Mao’s China was quiet. Mao’s new China Man and Woman sprang whole and healthy from the Chairman’s wise brow like Athena from Zeus in the ancient Greek myth.
Before any other major Communist leader, Mao Zedong understood the importance of Antonio Gramsci’s basic teaching: You have to transform the culture of the people.
In Mao’s translation, that came out: Cleanse the people’s memory of the past. Teach the people: “Do not think. We will think for you. You will be happy.”
Thus, Mao’s New China Man and Woman rose each morning to the tune of “The East Is Red.” Everyone flung himself into aerobic movements to greet each fine new day in Mao’s land. Everyone worked with no concern for money. Everyone was ecstatic at being a faceless, humble unit in the huge anthill of Mao’s classless society. Everyone wore a copy of the Mao suit in preference to decadent Western dress. And, in preference to decadent Western pornography, everyone read the Party paper and Mao’s Little Red Book of wise and profound sayings. They read little else, however, because—as the Little Red Book itself admonished—“If you read too many books, they petrify your mind.”
In 1966, after fifteen years of “The East Is Red” and the Little Red Book, the ancient Chinese culture Mao sought to eradicate and replace was still very much alive.
Mao pondered his problem. Resting at the exquisite Lu mountain resort of Kuling in the Lushan Highlands of central Kiangsi Province, perhaps he remembered the maxim he had included in his Little Red Book that goes like this: “Revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery. It cannot be so refined, so leisurely and gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous, restrained and magnanimous.”
Gazing out over the vista of gardens, lakes, temples and beetling cliffs, Mao penned one of his more famous poems: “Cold-Eyed, I Contemplate the World.”
When the Chairman came down from the mountain, he launched the devastating “Cultural Revolution” of 1966–76. He sent millions of young men and women out to uproot all traces of China’s ancient culture. Mao’s holocaust of human lives and torture certainly exceeded the European holocaust under Adolf Hitler, and the Ukrainian holocaust under Joseph Stalin.
Included in that holocaust were some of Mao’s oldest and most faithful comrades. Deng Xiaoping—one of the early followers of the Supreme Leader Mao Zedong—was rewarded for his lifelong Leninism and Maoist fidelity by becoming the No. 2 target of Mao’s Cultural Revolution. “No. 2 Capitalist Roader”: that was the scornful title given him. “No. 1 Capitalist Roader,” President Liu Shaogi, was murdered by Mao’s order. Deng, who was to be next, was spared only because, as an exception to the rule, Deng’s son, Pufong, would not bear false witness against his father.
A brilliant physics major at Beijing University, Pufong was tortured, sodomized, beaten to a pulp and thrown out a window by his interrogators. He survived with broken fingers, damaged hearing, internal organs ruptured, and a broken back that left him permanently confined to a wheelchair.
Thanks to his son’s constancy, Deng Xiaoping also survived. Humiliated in public, denounced and spat upon, Deng was imprisoned in Jiangxi military compound to be “reeducated” by a Leninist committee of prison instructors.
Despite the torture and humiliation both he and his son had undergone, Communism remained “a fire of the mind” for Deng. And, in that regard, he was following in a tradition that had long since been hallowed in blood. He was following in the footsteps of the Old Bolshevik Nikolai Bukharin, for example. Before he was shot to death by Stalin’s Firing squad on March 14, 1938, Bukharin pleaded in his last will and testament that the comrades who were about to execute him should remember “that, on the banner which you will be carrying in the victorious march of Communism, there is also a drop of my blood.” He died confessing his “guilt” to charges he knew had been fabricated, and urging on to victory the Party that had decreed his death to please Joseph Stalin. Similarly, Hungarian Communist Imre Nagy went to his hanging on June 16, 1958, protesting, “If my life is needed to prove that not all Communists are enemies of the people, I gladly make the sacrifice.”
The willingness to die in order to show one’s loyalty to the system that is about to end one’s life is the “cold eye” of Leninism at it’s coldest. Still there can be no doubt that Deng was formed and bred in that same tradition. Had he been put in front of a firing squad, or quitely garroted in a secret prison, one can be sure he would have died asserting his loyalty to the ideology of his assassins. Like the students in Tiananmen Square, he would have cried out not for his life, but his loyalty to “Chairman Mao who set us free!”
As it was, when the horrors of the Cultural Revolution were ended and order was restored, Deng was still in one piece; and the same procession into China from the West took place as had wended its way to Stalin’s Soviet Union years before. China was hallowed all over again by a procession of university dons, amiable clergymen, international dogooders, self-appointed world philosophers, drawing room socialists and millionaire Marxists in their private planes.
By the time the United States decided to play the “China card” against the Soviet Union during the Nixon administration, it was easy—it was almost a Western tradition, in fact—to ignore the brutality. To ignore the one million Tibetans killed and the million and a half more driven into exile by the brutal Tibetan genocide by Mao’s China, for example. And to ignore Pakistan’s genocide in Bangladesh, because it was Pakistan that had opened Mao’s front door for the West. Any dislike of the Chinese was confined with some care to Chiang Kai-shek’s “corrupt” Kuomintang in Taiwan.
· · ·
As things turned out, Deng Xiaoping’s unremitting Leninist loyalty led him to a fate far different than Nikolai Bukharin’s or Imre Nagy’s. The year 1982 found him not in a martyr’s grave or even in a military compound, but in Mao Zedong’s place as Chairman of the Central Committee of the CPC.
Once again, the ignorance gap between the Leninist and Western mind led many to believe that, because Deng had suffered so terribly during the Cultural Revolution, his rise to the top power spot would surely mean the dawn of a different day. His would be a more humane outlook and a more open regime. The fact was, however, that Deng was what he had always been and what he remains today—a bone-bred Leninist in the pattern of Mao Zedong.
Under Deng’s chairmanship, his son, Pufong, was made director of the China Welfare Fund for the Handicapped (CWFH), and he founded the Kanghua Company (KC). The plan was for the KC to see to financial backing for the CWFH. In practice, however, the scheme seems to have aroused Pufong’s entrepreneurial instincts; the funds he collected through the KC’s activities never reached the CWFH, but were transmitted instead to the KC branch in Shensen, near Hong Kong. So blatant was Pufong’s activity that it contributed to the public sense of corruption in high places, and Deng had to reprove his son in public for “allowing himself to be exploited by others.”
What went largely unremarked, and was probably little understood in the West, was the fact that the entire CPC is a close network of interwoven family relationships. Entrepreneurial corruption there surely was, for that is as endemic to the Party-State as to the capitalist system. But curiously, that does not dilute a highly orthodox sense of Marxist ideology. And, above all, even the lure of profit does not dilute the drive to protect the Party-State from activities that might endanger its Leninist control over th
e people. In that, as in all essential things, Deng could not be expected to bend.
When the Chinese student demonstrations began in April of 1989, Western analysts may have known of Deng Xiaoping’s secret speech to top party officials in which the Chairman warned, “We can afford to spill a little blood” if necessary to arrest the student movement. But, if they did, they seemed taken nonetheless with the public charade of permissiveness played out by the eighty-two-year-old Chinese president, Yang Shang-kun, aided by the security apparatus chief, sixty-five-year-old Qiao Shi.
Western media personnel was beefed up at just about this time in preparation for a visit from the ubiquitous Mikhail Gorbachev, who was to arrive for a kind of Soviet-Chinese summit of rapprochement that had been arranged some time before. It is fair to say, therefore, that at a critical moment, most reporters and commentators on the scene were not part of the tiny corps of more experienced China-watchers.
Thus, at a crucial moment, it was probably a little easier to create the illusion not only that the control of the CPC was in shambles, but that the aging regime led by Chairman Deng Xiaoping was disintegrating. As Edgar Marin, director of the National Council of Scientific Research, put the case, “The disintegration of the hope for earthly salvation by Communist revolution among its believers brings regeneration of the rights of man and the idea of democracy.”
Most Western analysts seemed unaware that President Yang had himself been secretary general of the CPC’s Military Commission; or that Yang’s youngest brother was then chief commissar for the army; or that Yang’s son-in-law was chief of staff; or that another Yang relative was commander of the 27th Army Unit.
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