Zhibin Gu: modern China: history, politics, revolution, corruption

What has been going on in Communist China since 1949? What is really behind China's politics, business, economy and international relations? Is China's communist corruption going to ruin the nation in light of global financial crisis? Get powerful reviews from a new posting by provocative Chinese thinker George Zhibin Gu of World Association of International Studies at Stanford University

George Zhibin Gu summarizes the history of China's Communist Dynasty:

(George Zhibin Gu of China is an author of several new books, including: 1. China's global reach, 2. China and the new world order, 3. Made in China.)

The past 60 years of China's Communist history can be divided roughly into two phases.

The first phase, between 1949 and 1978, was this: the Communist bureaucracy had totally destroyed society, the economy and the culture. This was done by a total bureaucratic monopoly over all of nation's wealth, labor, markets, organizations and institutions. Furthermore, it completely destroyed the free press and the law. But this unprecedented bureaucratic domination immediately produced unprecedented man-made disasters in world history, not just China's. The disasters include endless violence and terror, the creation of the state sector and people's communes, the total bureaucratization of media, education, and thought.

In the end, beginning in 1958, the regime wanted to have a total bureaucratic miracle in the so-called Great Leap Forward (1958-60), and record disasters emerged all at once. Record deaths of some 50 million people occurred in the period of 1958-62, killing some 50 million people by an unprecedented famine as well as a record oganized violence.

What is more, these unprecedented miseries turned out to be the very beginning of bureaucratic disasters. Worse than the famine, three bureaucratic wars emerged against society and the people in the period of 1959-78, which ended to destroy countless millions of lives, or even more, by organized violence, not to mention a near total destruction of culture, education, thinking, wealth and all other good things in life.

The second phase took place beginning in 1979 when the reform started. In reality, the regime wants to maintain the traditional bureaucratic supremacy all the way. But things have changed unexpectedly, against the very scheme of the regime over the previous 30 years. Most significantly, three great things have aided the Chinese people to escape their bureaucratic cages:

1. The destruction of Mao's people's commune, which took place by the farmers' own initiative and giant efforts in the period of 1978-84. This act would free 900 million rural people from being trapped in the bureaucratic jungles. For example, farmers have been able to travel freely and work in cities since then, though there are countless man-made barriers still in place today, including a ban on free travel.

2. The unexpected re-rise of the domestic private sector, which has produced well over 50 million private businessmen and street vendors. Their rise means that people want to pursue their own interests and gain prosperity on their own efforts: they are no longer interested in being forced to be servants to the self-appointed bureaucracy.

3. The gradual opening and the rapid ongoing integration of China's economy with the outside world. Today, foreign companies control about 60% of China's international trade, employs over 25 million Chinese and take about one third of China's domestic economy. At the same time, China has risen to become the biggest trader in the world as of this year, in spite of the global financial crisis.

Looking ahead over the next 30 years, the biggest forces will be of these three: entrepreneurship, open society, and global involvement, which would aid China's effort to become a law-based, truly modern society, free from bureaucratic intrusions, though the task remains mighty. For the same self-appointed, inherently self-serving bureaucracy remains in place today. What is more, the political foundations of this political body, the cults and terror, remain to be removed. Otherwise, any talk about a modern China would be empty.

JE comments: I look forward to more "Modern China at 60" postings. My thanks to George Zhibin Gu for getting the ball rolling.

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John Eipper, Editor-in-Chief, Adrian College, MI 49221 USA