Myths Concerning Mainland China

Not long before I left mainland China, I got a series of angry phone calls from restaurants and shops in Peking. The gist of the calls was always the same: I had either arranged for a large, expensive banquet or ordered a quantity of goods and was now expected to pay for them. I had, of course, not done any such thing and at first ignored the calls as some kind of joke. As they continued, however, I began to suspect that someone was impersonating me in these places; the strange thing was that no one ever attended the banquets or picked up the goods I had supposedly ordered. The matter finally came to the attention of the police. Although they at first would not believe I was not Chinese, since I spoke Chinese, they finally tracked down the impersonator, who turned out to be a 23 year-old female factory employee who had obtained my name card and had been passing herself off as my "secretary."

In many ways, this absurd story sums up my experiences in mainland China. Several years of reading what foreigners had written about the "People's Republic" did not prepare me at all for what I actually found there. Having seen a few carefully selected cities and "communes," these people went home and wrote about how, under the "leadership" of "Chairman" Mao, the mainland Chinese had abolished poverty, injustice, crime, inflation and a host of other ills that plague the rest of the modern world. No one would write such nonsense about Soviet Russia, but the Chinese communists seem to have cast a spell on Americans. This is not new; 19th-century missionaries dreamed of converting the Chinese to Christianity in 30 years, and in recent years businessmen have dreamed that if a few hundred million Chinese all bought toothbrushes or blue jeans, we'd get rich.

But these are all our own delusions. The longer you stay in mainland China, the more you come to understand, but it is still a vast place with more than a billion people; moreover, it is changing all the time. What Edgar Snow wrote about Mao in 1937 may have been true then, but it is no longer a reliable guide to the China of today; similarly, what I am telling you today will no longer be relevant ten years from now. With this in mind, I'd like to discuss some facets of the "China Riddle."

First, how much has mainland China become the classless utopia that Mao was trying to create? Foreigners' first impressions of monotonous blue clothing and streams of bicycles mask the deeper reality of a complex system of ranks for "Party cadres," actors, teachers, workers and nearly everyone else, with large differences in salary between the top and bottom levels (ranging from only US$11 per month to around US$225). But buying power depends more on political rank than on salary in mainland China, because those with higher political rank have access to better goods, housing, medical care, travel accommodations and many other special privileges that are almost unimaginably luxurious to the "masses." But at the other end of the scale, one finds many beggars reduced to fighting over table scraps in restaurants.

Another myth spread by foreign visitors to mainland China is that mainland China is not a "police state," since they could go wherever they liked. But I found that the organs controlling the people are not nearly as relaxed as they think; these controls work from within to penetrate every aspect of people's lives like a kind of invisible radar. The medium they work through is the dan-wei or "unit"; every person in mainland China belongs to one, whether he or she works in a factory, school or office, and the name of one's "unit" is often more important than one's own name in identifying oneself. It not only provides work and housing, but also the ration coupons without which one cannot buy rice, cooking oil, fertilizer or even a bicycle. It also arranges medical treatment and schooling for one's children, and allows them to take over their parent's job when he or she retires. Marriages, divorces, and travel all require the permission of the "unit," which maintains thorough files on its members' class backgrounds, political behavior, and relative worth in the eyes of the "party." In recent years, the "unit" and the "street committee" have also acquired the right to decide which couples may have children under the stringent population-control program, with mandatory abortions for those not in the "quota." The security organs maintain a very close watch on the behavior of all citizens, and the slightest mistake brings swift and often harsh punishment. Contacts with foreigners are an especially sensitive area; the flood of foreign students, businessmen, diplomats and tourists in recent years has made the authorities increasingly nervous about the "pollution" these visitors may bring. This summer a new organ called the "Bureau of State Security" was set up to cooperate with the "Public Security Bureau" in catching foreign spies and Chinese who associate with foreigners.

A third myth about mainland China that I have doubts about is that it is a "revolutionary society." "Revolution" means a redistribution of wealth and power and an opportunity for those at the bottom of the social scale to move up. But mainland China lags far behind America, Japan and Taiwan in such social mobility. Educational opportunities are extremely limited, with room in colleges for only 3% of the youth. Strict social controls make it difficult for peasants to escape their traditional agricultural roles; such opportunities are rarer now than they were before 1949. Indeed, the mainland China of today has become quite conservative: those in positions of authority are mostly from poor agricultural backgrounds with little formal education. They may have had "revolutionary" aspirations back in the twenties and thirties, but reverted to their old peasant outlook once in power. Interested only in preserving their own privileges, they distrust intellectuals and fear foreigners, and are a serious obstacle to any "modernization." They got their power through political loyalty and have no understanding of the technical competence in dealing with these problems. This has resulted in a stifling bureaucracy that pervades all aspects of life.

But my deepest impression of mainland China was the pervasive cynicism and hopelessness of the people there. These are the result of years of political movements, and especially of the "Cultural Revolution," which was the worst of all. People in mainland China say the "Cultural Revolution" lasted from 1966 until the death of Mao Tsetung and the overthrow of the evil "Gang of Four" in 1976; by the time I got to mainland China, the early idealism and near-religious enthusiasm of the Chinese communists had long since disappeared. Everyone I met at the time had had their books and artworks stolen by the rampaging, lawless "Red Guards," but the worst was the political persecution they had all suffered; they were persecuted because of their class background, not for anything they had done. Moreover, the costs in broken lives, lost educations, and destroyed books and artworks are incalculable and difficult for Westerners to imagine. It is even more painful to realize that Mao launched the "Cultural Revolution" in order to attain the lofty goals of eliminating poverty, bureaucratic excesses and class differences, but became so intoxicated with his own delusions and solutions that he was blinded to the wishes of the people who were forced to follow his orders.

I realize that I have painted a darkly realistic picture of mainland China today, but what I am trying to do is to explain the basic situation that the Chinese communists must face: hardships, shortages, the apathy of the masses and the rigidity of the bureaucracy. Some Americans have said my writing is too harshly critical of the Chinese communists, and are afraid that this will anger them and damage America's relations with them. But good journalism, like good historical writing and diplomacy, must be based on honesty and not self-delusion. We cannot temper our criticism of the Soviets just to spare the feelings of the Soviet government, so why should we treat the Chinese communists any differently?

Myths Concerning Mainland China.