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In 2008, distinguished Chinese journalist Yang Jisheng published a book entitled, “Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine, 1958-1962.” In their introduction to the book, Edward Friedman and Roderick MacFarquhar briefly summarized Yang’s thesis:
“’Tombstone’ is about a hierarchical, authoritarian system of concentrated power in which every official is, as Yang puts it, a slave facing upward and a dictator facing downward. At the bottom of the system were the Chinese people, mostly farm households, who suffered under the murderous brutality of the lower-level officials, proving an iron law of bureaucracy: the pettier the bureaucrat, the harsher his rule.”
This is a perfect analysis of China under Mao Zedong. And I can tell you from experience it has not changed one iota under Xi Jinping. Except it isn’t just bureaucrats now who abuse those below them; it is anyone who thinks they can get away with it, especially if they have any authority over other people.
Mao’s “Great Famine” was the most murderous non-war event in human history, far worse than Hitler’s Holocaust or Stalin’s Great Terror. Yang estimated that at least 36 million people died during the famine. He might be lowballing. A demographic fact-finding study in the 1980s put the number at 42-43 million, and recently, historian Frank Dikötter (“Mao’s Great Famine”), after extensive archival research, reckoned 45 million deaths. Chinese people had to make horrendous choices during the famine, including keeping one child alive by starving others, eating relatives who recently died, or by digging up corpses from graves to consume. Some saved their lives by “informing on” innocent neighbors. This is communism in all its glory. Totalitarian atheistic power without one scintilla of conscience or godly respect for human life. We see it in America today (abortion), and it will get worse if Leftism ascends to the throne.
Mao Zedong is the greatest mass murderer in human history. Historians estimate his total number of innocent deaths as between 60-70 million from his accession to power in 1949 until his death in 1976. That is an average of over 6,000 people PER DAY that he killed. Yet Mao is China’s “god,” if you will, the “Great Leader.” His picture is on every Chinese yuan bill, and to speak against “Chairman Mao” is supreme blasphemy. Many Chinese people do know what he was. I’ve had Chinese friends talk to me (in private, of course) about the land that the communists stole from their family or their knowledge of the number of deaths Mao caused. But, the brainwashing in China is almost as bad as in Leftist America now. People in China are taught to adore Mao Zedong. And Xi Jinping.
As I have mentioned before, I lived ten years in China as a teacher. And I want to say upfront that there are many fine people in China. I have good friends there, decent folk, slaves of the system, the kind of people Yang Jisheng put at the bottom of the totem pole. And, materialistically, at least in the big cities, China is not the wrong place to live today. The countryside is a different matter, as I shall discuss in the future. All is not well in China; the country went into tremendous debt to build the massive skyscrapers and modern conveniences city-dwellers enjoy. They borrowed heavily and stole; they didn’t build their wealth based on a consumer-driven economy. And so Chinese debt is massive, and nobody, not even in China, knows how extensive it is. It might be the reason Xi Jinping hasn’t invaded Taiwan yet. Wars are expensive, and he is already hooked to the hilt. Socialism doesn’t work in more ways than one.
Back to the Yang Jisheng quote at the beginning of this article. During the first eight years I was in China, I worked for Western schools or companies and never had a complaint about how they treated me. The last two years I was there, I worked for Chinese companies and was robbed blind by my Chinese employers. When I asked the American embassy for help, they did nothing, of course, and when I sued my first boss for extortion, blackmail, and theft (easily provable), the Chinese judge rendered in his favor (that didn’t surprise me either). Such theft happens all over China—and not just to foreigners. I know more than one Chinese friend who had to leave his/her job because their boss wouldn’t pay them. One Chinese employer asked all his employees to continue to work long hours, even though he wouldn’t pay them anything. My best friend here in Thailand has a Chinese girlfriend whose boss, who drives a BMW, said she didn’t have the money to pay her employees. Anyone in China—not just bureaucrats—who have a sliver of power or authority thinks everyone below them is a slave who can be abused and exploited for the master’s benefit. Thieves exist everywhere, but it’s endemic in China now.
That’s the Chinese system. That’s communism. That’s what Mao Zedong taught his people. And many Chinese have learned that lesson very well.
Another recent example. Not long ago, I was contacted by a former student who claimed she was sick and wanted to borrow 200 yuan. She said she would pay me back that afternoon. In order to test my “thieving Chinaman” theory, I sent her the money (less than $30). Of course she didn’t pay me back, and even lied to me a few days later, saying she had never borrowed the money in the first place. That is what young people are learning there.
Americans have no clue how wonderful their country has been to them—and how the Democratic Party is trying to take that away to give America a Chinese-style system. Believe me, when people get desperate, they will do anything—including eating grandpa or their own children. We are utterly deluded if we think it can’t happen in America.
Be warned.
*
Let me tell you some more stories about China, the country the Democrats want America to mimic.
I still talk to a lot of people in China, mostly former students (I lived there from 2011-2022). One of them recently told me that after she finished her Master’s degree this summer, she wanted to take the Civil Service exam to get a government job. The government wouldn’t let her take the exam because her father (not her) was a member of a Christian prayer group. The Chinese government claims all religious believers are “afflicted with thought viruses.” Matters have “significantly deteriorated since last year,” said Nury Turkel, chair of the U.S. Commission of International Religious Freedom. Religious groups in China have been “ruthlessly persecuted.”
That’s a Leftist, totalitarian government.
Personally, I was twice denied a work visa renewal. Both schools I worked for wanted me to stay and there was no reason, health or otherwise, why I should leave. The government, arbitrarily, wanted me gone. So gone I was. Why I went back to other jobs the gods only know.
That is a Leftist, totalitarian government.
The last year I was in China (2022), Covid was still being used to control people. I had to get a (required) physical checkup to extend my visa. I went to the hospital to do it, but something was amiss with the Covid health code on my cell phone, and the guard at the gate wouldn’t let me in. Hospitals in China were gated with guards.
I couldn’t get into the hospital unless I could prove I wasn’t sick.
That is a Leftist, totalitarian government.
My situation wasn’t the worst. A young woman, 8-months pregnant, had early labor pains and was bleeding. She went to her local hospital, but they wouldn’t let her in, either, because she didn’t have the right Covid health code. She lost her baby.
The last six months I was in China, the police came to my school three times (twice to my apartment) just to hassle me. I had done absolutely nothing wrong, they just like to badger foreigners. I left the country at the end of that semester even though I had another year and a half left on my contract. Well, the company I was working for was stealing from me anyway, so it was time to go. For good.
That is a Leftist, totalitarian government. Isn’t that just what we want in America? Vote Democrat if you do.
I mentioned in my previous column how the only two Chinese employers I had stole incessantly from me, and the Chinese government did nothing to help me though my evidence was overwhelming. Undeniable. But the Chinese steal from each other, too. Recently, I was talking to a friend who has a new job. “My boss wants me to work overtime, but I’m too tired,” she told me. So I asked a question I already knew the answer to: “Would he pay you overtime?” Her response: “Of course not…There are many bosses like this.” All of them that I’ve heard about. That is theft, of course, but that’s China.
China has had a master-slave society forever, but it’s been exacerbated under Marxism. Anything goes, anything to survive, no morality. Mao Zedong had none, neither does Xi Jinping or any other government official. The people learn well, though as I have said, not all Chinese are lying, thieving scum. Just most of the bosses and all the government officials. And lots of the common people are following suit now, too.
These are just anecdotes, of course, and prove only what has happened to me and what I heard. But if these are tales of just one person, imagine the stories that could be told by the millions. I have a lot more, but this is sufficient.
As mentioned, I still talk to a many people in China, those who appreciate my attempts to help them. (Incidentally, in my ten years in China, I never had one Chinese bureaucrat or one Chinese administrator at a school thank me for sacrificing my time, effort, money, etc. to go to China to help their children. Not one. Well, I’m a “hairy foreign devil,” they owed me nothing. I should have been grateful to serve the Master Race. Hitler had nothing on these people, and current Americans know nothing about true racism.) The average recent college graduate I have talked to is struggling to get a job, and when they do, they are paid a little over $1,000 per month (before taxes)—with, of course, no overtime pay. They can only find employment in big cities where housing costs are exorbitant. They either rent a small, cheap apartment (usually shared), maybe the size of a hotel room (I had to do that once), or their parents help them buy a place (if they are lucky). China is less expensive than America, but $1,000 isn’t much, wherever you are. Not if you want to get ahead in life.
It’s worse, far worse, in the countryside. Li Keqiang, who served as Premier of China from 2013 until his recent retirement, was honest enough to admit (in other words, he was talking to his own people and it accidentally leaked out) that 600,000,000 people living in Chinese rural areas subsist on about $140 per month. That wouldn’t rent an apartment in a major city. Only about one in three can attend high school, and (I’ve heard) some students must carry their own desks to school with them. That’s almost half the people living in poverty.
China’s socialist “economic miracle” indeed. It sounds to me more like a Leftist, totalitarian government full of lying propagandists covering up the true situation in their barbarian country.
All is not well in China. I want to talk about China’s “economic miracle” in a subsequent article. Until then, believe absolutely nothing their lying media say. Xinhua is almost as bad as MSNBC.
I’ve never been to China, nor have I ever wanted to go there, but I have no doubt that all of this is true. Before the Russian Soviet Dictatorship collapsed the communist sympathizers in the MSM and the universities had the West convinced that the Russian Soviet Slave-Pen was superior even to the American military.
When the Soviet Slave-Pen collapsed there was nothing but poverty, misery, and rot revealed behind the Iron Curtain. The same will be revealed when the Bamboo Curtain is pulled back. All the modern technology the CCP Slave-Pen has comes from the West, mostly from America, just as was true in the Soviet Slave-Pen.
Terrorized slaves don’t produce innovative, modern, advanced technology.
“Totalitarian atheistic power without one scintilla of conscience or godly respect for human life.”
Totalitarian Christian power isn’t any better. The Dark and Middle Ages were caused by the stupidity and nihilism of Christian mysticism. But today’s Christians deny it, they will blame anything for the Dark Ages but Christianity or they will have the nerve to claim the Dark Ages were not really dark at all.
The same denial and whitewashing of communism and socialism go on today with the true believers of Marxism.
“The infamous times you call the Dark Ages were an era of intelligence on strike, when men of ability went underground and lived undiscovered, studying in secret, and died, destroying the works of their mind, when only a few of the bravest martyrs remained to keep the human race alive. Every period ruled by mystics was an era of stagnation and want, when most men were on strike against existence, working for less than their barest survival, leaving nothing but scraps for their rulers to loot, refusing to think, to venture, to produce, when the ultimate collector of their profits and the final authority on truth or error was the whim of some gilded degenerate sanctioned as superior to reason by divine right and by grace of a club….
The Middle Ages were an era of mysticism, ruled by blind faith and blind obedience to the dogma that faith is superior to reason.” – Ayn Rand
It is obvious where you get your crackpot ideas. Rand, at least, had the good sense not to openly and constantly bash Christianity as you do. She simply cloaked her hatred of mankind in loftier terms. Perhaps that is why she had a few followers, though, fortunately not enough to influence the mass of humanity.
You, on the other hand, are not subtle, which is why you are simply a cheap, clumsy second rate water carrier for a rapidly declining philosophy.
Red Herring at work.
You know, your previous post was very intelligent and I upvoted it enthusiastically. But this crap about the “Christian dark ages” is just ridiculous, and a repetition of the same lies about the Middle Ages you’ve been spouting forever.
Have you read the Pirenne or Scott books that I long ago recommended, the first being “Mohammed and Charlemagne” and the second (more accessible one) being Emmet Scott’s “Mohammed and Charlemagne Revisited”. I recommend you read the Scott book first as it contains archeological information that was not available in Pirenne’s day.
Get back to me when you’ve read it. I’d love to hear your opinions of the “Christian dark ages” after you have.
I’m presuming you are a monistic materialist as were Rand, Brandon, and currently a good portion of libertarians. It seems to come with the territory regarding the bashing of religion in general.
Given that, I don’t think you have a clue to what the definitions and descriptions of mysticism entail. Why not get ahold of of some DMT and a good pipe and learn by doing.
Then you can reference the APA Mystical Experience Questionaire here and get a score on your experiences: https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Ft58579-000
But even before you do that you can read this paper in ‘Nature’ about what happens to nearly half of materialists who experience multiple exposures to DMT: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-11999-8
DMT is a naturally occuring hormone generated (possibly) in the pituitary gland of mammals. It was (possibly, strictly speculation) involved in the inducement of the mystical vision of the apostle Paul on the road to Damascus.
Thank you for this article. More people need to get a grip on the truth, before the truth gets a grip on them.
Our prosperity in the USA has blinded the masses.
China looms in my mind – and in the minds of many people I know – as a
real and dangerous threat to the United States. It now has the most
powerful navy on Earth – the Belt and Road Initiative of Chinese influence
is spread throughout the world – and those recent spy flyovers of our
country with Biden looking the other way are frightening.
To read an article such as this lifting the veil of what life is really like in
today’s China is therefore fascinating. It is amazing to begin to understand
why the Master-Slave mentality is ingrained in the Chinese people. That’s
over a billion human beings with that mindset. Their employer-employee
relationship – based on their way of looking at and surviving in life – reminds
me of hamsters in a cage uselessly spinning their wheels to get nowhere.
Thank you for the insight as to why the Chinese cities are so shakily
prosperous while the rest of the country people are so desperately poor.
America has never had anything like the recent Chinese history of mass
starvation under Mao Zedong. Millions upon millions of neighbors
resorting to cannibalism and other desperate measures to survive is
unimaginable – yet there are bound to be millions of people who remember
it vividly no matter how the Chinese leaders try to erase it from memory.
I hope Mr. Lewis’ future articles will address not only China’s ‘economic
miracle’ – but also the BRI and how their Social Credit System affects the
people since that particular tyranny will inevitably affect our own.
Even now, in the U.S. some blue states are proposing legislation that will declare parents unfit for disagreeing with a school board or refusing to “affirm” trans ideology. This paves the way for the state to take their children. This is state sponsored slavery. The Democrats want all Americans to be enslaved by the state, as people are in every communist country that has ever existed.
That’s why the American Communist Party has folded itself into the Democrats; the Democrats are now the Communist Party USA.
I am so happy that my Jesus says….” In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again,AND RECEIVE YOU UNTO MYSELF;THAT WHERE i AM THERE YE MAY BE ALSO. And whither I go ye know, and the way ye know. Thomas saith unto him, Lord, we know not whither thou goest; and how can we know the way? Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” ……John 14:2-6
He is coming to ‘fetch His bride’ and we will be outa here. (That’s those who are ‘washed in the blood’ , by the way !
The world can have the crazies that are running this sin sick, Christ rejecting world. “And when ye see these things BEGIN to happen, look up for your redemption draweth nigh”. My citizenship is in Heaven, so I am gonna be outa here . (Soon and very soon).
Maranatha, even so, come Lord Jesus. (This fall) !
Rev. Roy…………<
This is a treasure article. Thank you, Mark. I look forward to reading your comments about China’s economic growth and practices.
My husband has good friends there. They advise him now to not visit because of the possibility of being arrested and forgotten in some terrible facility. One of his older friends passed in 2008. That fellow’s wife had hung herself in their living room because of their lack of food. They lived on the “Farm” outside Shanghai. Their son nearly starved to death. His father, famous sports guy, died we suspect from lack of food. When my husband visited there and had dinner with a group, a member of the CCP always attended the meetings. We believed to keep an eye on things. Friends there advised him to never go near a military base because any foreigner even casually walking near a base will be arrested and disappeared. When Mao’s thug Red Shirts ran wild, they attacked anyone thought to have anything of value – they opened Sun Lutang’s tomb (died 1930 or so) thinking he had been buried with something of value. However, all the Red Shirts found was an old sword, so they just left the tomb open and took off looking to loot someone else. The friend was obviously affected by what happened to his wife. He could bare discuss other topics. He always said he wanted to live longer in order to help stop such a monstrous event to take hold again. Those who cannot learn from history will be condemned to repeat it.
What a heartbreaking story. And if you multiply it by perhaps a billion, perhaps more, well… Lenin said that one death is a tragedy but a million deaths are a statistic. Even if our government were willing to look this in the face honestly, it could not but see a statistic rather than one ruined life at a time.
“A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic” – Joseph Stalin, Not Vladimir Lenin
For 2024; “It’s not the vote that counts, it’s who counts the votes” – Joseph Stalin
According to the article, Falun Gong and its associated media, including the Epoch Times, have engaged in “conspiracy narratives” targeting Democrats and the Chinese Communist Party and of “links” between Joe Biden and the CCP. In fact, a great deal of evidence is emerging in the Comer investigation to show that those links are far from being conspiracy narratives. (See also a 2020 New York Times article, which labels Falun Gong “a leading purveyor of right-wing disinformation.”)
I think the Epoch Times is a terrific source for real news. And I don’t care what the New York Times says about it, as that has nothing to do with real news and has not for over a century.
According to the article, Falun Gong and its associated media, including the Epoch Times, have engaged in “conspiracy narratives” targeting Democrats and the Chinese Communist Party and of “links” between Joe Biden and the CCP. In fact, a great deal of evidence is emerging in the Comer investigation to show that those links are far from being conspiracy narratives. (See also a 2020 New York Times article, which labels Falun Gong “a leading purveyor of right-wing disinformation.”)
My colleague Peter Schweizer’s runaway bestseller, Red Handed: How American Elites Get Rich Helping China Win, first revealed that the Biden family received some $31 million from the highest levels of Chinese intelligence at the same time Hunter was paying the vice president’s bills. Schweizer believes that there is a slam dunk case to indict Hunter Biden.
THE BIDEN KLEPTOCRACY
American people deserve to know what China was up to with Joe Biden, especially when Beijing had already shelled out millions of dollars to Biden family members — including millions in set-asides for “the big guy.” What else is on that infamous Hunter Biden laptop? The conflicted Biden Justice Department cannot be trusted to engage in any meaningful oversight on this issue. We need a special counsel now.
TOM FITTON – JUDICIAL WATCH
Make no mistake, Mao was the most successful disciple of Lucifer in human history.
As you rightly point out, Mr. Lewis, China has always had this slave-master culture Communism has only made it more intense. Every point made in your article is true and then some. One should not have ANY dealings with the PRC or those individuals from the mainland who are living and working abroad unless one is deeply steeped in the Chinese way of seeing others in the world and the Chinese way of doing things…. smile and lie, smile and prevaricate, smile and cloak the truth.
Thank you for a very excellent overview of “Communism with Chinese Characteristics” and Xi’s China Dream (a nightmare for the world).
Senator McCarthy warned us about those Commie Scum balls its time to heed his warning
Generally accurate, but he does not draw the connection to Confucianism, which is completely hierarchical and strongly influences Chinese thinking even today. Confucianism has some safeguards but they are absent in modern China.
One reason why China is pursuing surveillance and social credit scoring is that the CCP is terrified of unrest spreading. They know Chinese history, which is full of corrupt dynasties falling and the vast nation splintering. That’s why they are so adamant about Taiwan.