Premier Zhao Ziyang was showered with enormous press coverage on his recent visit to the United States, most of it friendly and respectful, giving the impression that Red China is our friend and trading partner as a member of the “family of nations.” But, will the real Red China please stand up?
The Guinness Book of World Records lists Comrade Mao Tse-tung as probably the greatest mass murderer in all history. Official estimates place the number of Chinese murdered by the Mao regime at a staggering 50 million.
The Cardinal Mindszenty Foundation’s publication “The Red Line,” which monitors Communist and foreign publications, has concluded that the Zhao government may be seeking the dubious honor of second place. Chinese broadcasts and foreign newswire reports since August 1983 reveal an increasing number of executions in mainland China for such crimes as “opposing the socialist system” and “attempting to leave the country.”
A UPI dispatch from Peking of last August 23 stated: “The Communist authorities in Metropolitan Peking anticipate a total of 30,000 arrests.” London’s Financial Times reported last September 5: “Peking anticipates that by January next year it will meet its target of 100,000 to 150,000 arrests; the target for the Peking area alone being 30,000 arrests.”
UPI also reported from Peking on September 8, 1983 that 21 persons were executed on that day without explanation. It is curious that we don’t seem to read much about these arrests and executions from journalists who profess such tearful concern for “human rights” in El Salvador and other anti-Communist countries.
The love affair of U.S. liberals with Red China has spanned nearly half a century.
In the 1940s, they told us that Mao was just an “agrarian reformer” and a “Jeffersonian Democrat.” Theodore White, long touted by the liberals as a leading expert on China, wrote in his 1946 book “Thunder Out of China” that Communist China was “the dream world of a future” brilliantly led by Mao, who was “vigorous and dynamic,” a “great humanitarian,” and a “dedicated land reformer.”
Last year, Time magazine resurrected White to do a 13-page whitewash of the current regime. He no longer defends Mao, but claims that his successors are benevolent and China is becoming ever more democratic. Wages are up, he said; the marketplaces are “full of sweets,” the people have a “ruddy vitality,” and “gurgling babies pleasure the eye.”
The U.S. liberal media, which have been supportive of China’s population control policies, grew very silent (but not critical) in 1983 when evidence surfaced that these policies included forced abortions, infanticide, and other atrocities. Two Chinese students, writing in the New York Times, described in detail Red China’s government policy which allows only one child per married couple.
If a second child is born, the family must pay penalties, lose food ration coupons, give up medical services, and other government-supplied necessities. Every pregnancy must have the approval of the mother’s work unit. As a result, “large numbers of female infants have been butchered, drowned, or left to die.”
The Canton correspondent for the Asian Wall Street Journal reported that “pregnant women were herded into vehicles and taken to hospitals for abortions. Some pregnant women reportedly were handcuffed, tied with ropes, or placed in pig’s baskets. There are even reports of infanticide in city hospitals, with doctors killing babies immediately after birth.”
These are not just occasional miscarriages of justice, but implementations of official government policy. The People’s Broadcasting Station of Kweichow gave the orders on August 31, 1983: “Implement birth control measures pragmatically, disseminate the policy and demand that each couple have only one child, and strictly regulate any second children. To proceed in this direction, we can allow no wavering. Construct a skilled surgical corps who understand government policy. As to criminal elements who wreck birth control work, we must have recourse to the law and severely punish them.”
To conceal their totalitarianism, Chinese officials are skilled in the Orwellian art of double-speak. Addressing a group of students in Japan on November 27, 1983, Hu Yaobang was asked about elections in China. According to the New York Times, Hu paused, then said, yes, there were elections in China; “what we have is what you would call indirect elections and not direct elections that you have in your country.”
