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China: Better Dead Than Red by James Yeh But what were they celebrating? Fifty years
of bloody repression and no freedom? Obviously the government
would celebrate — they’ve been living it up for fifty
years, while trampling the people that they’re suppose to be
ruling, all in the name of keeping order. Let’s start from the beginning. On
October 1, 1949, Chairman Mao Tse-Tung declared the founding of
the People Republic of China (PRC) in Beijing. Then the killing
started. It’s estimated that up to a up to a million people
were killed in the Communist’s campaign to rid the land of
landlords. In 1950, in addition to exploding across the
Yalu River, the PRC, in an attempt to “liberate”
Chinese territories, conquered Tibet. After brutally suppressing
a rebellion in 1959, the Reds started a bloody campaign of
eradicating Tibetan culture. The Dalai Lama escaped to India, and
a puppet Lama was installed. People from different parts of the
PRC were forcibly settled in an attempt to have the Tibetan
culture eventually blend in. Today, Tibet is still ruled by
Beijing. Then, in 1958, came the ill-begotten, and
poorly named, “Great Leap Forward.” Chairman Mao,
intent on turning Red China into an industrialized nation,
mobilized the nation’s vast manpower and had them put a
steel furnace in every village. The people enthusiastically
complied, their thinking twisted by Communist propaganda. They
manned their furnaces, and put out a lot of crappy steel. By
calling the masses to work on his little pet project, Mao had
neglected the fields, setting his country up for the greatest
famine in recorded history, with an estimated 43 million people
dead. Of course, the Communists would admit to “only”
20 million dead. In 1966, in an effort to shore up support,
Mao launched the Cultural Revolution. Fanatical Red Guard units
destroyed anything Western, ancestral graves were desecrated,
millions rounded up and sent to re-education centers. The mere
act of scratching your back with your copy of Mao’s little
red book would get you fifteen years at one of these camps. My
Chinese teacher in high school recounted her Cultural Revolution
experience to us in class one day. She was sent to a re-education
center in the south of Red China, and for a while, subsisted on
leaves and bark off trees. Surely she was not alone in suffering
these conditions, and surely many weren’t as lucky. In April of 1989, university students
gathered in Tiananmen Square to mourn the death of Hu Yaobang, a
former Communist Party general secretary with reformist views,
later forced to step down. This led to a pro-democracy
demonstration that lasted for weeks, until the government moved
in with troops and armor, guns blazing. The government has never
admitted the exact number of dead, and furthermore barred local
hospitals from releasing any numbers, but Western estimates range
from hundreds to thousands killed. Last week, the Red Chinese celebrated their
achievements and accomplishments in their 50 years of existence.
And they have every right to. After all, killing an estimated 80
million of your own people between 1949 and 1987 is quite an
accomplishment for any nation. Why does the United States recognize
totalitarian People’s Republic of China, instead of the
democratic Republic of China? Why did we recognize the Republic
of China for thirty years before giving it up to the Reds? It
would be more understandable if the United States had at first
recognized the Reds, and then switched recognition to the
Republic of China after seeing how oppressing the People’s
Republic of China was; having it the other way around boggles the
mind. What made President Jimmy Carter recognize
the Reds? It surely couldn’t have been political. The United
States was an ally of President Chiang Kai-Shek for decades.
President Chiang offered to help the U.S. military numerous times,
including an offer of ground troops for assitance in the Korean
and Vietnam conflicts. Meanwhile, the Reds had stormed across the
Yalu River, pushed United Nations forces down the length of Korea,
and gave North Vietnam arms and technical support. What makes Carter’s decision even more
confusing is his stanch support of human rights. This is the same
man who boycotted the 1980 Summer Olympics just because the
Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979. Chiang was no angel, as
the Republic of China was under martial law until 1987, but his
human rights abuses came nowhere close to those made by the
People’s Republic of China. So was it big business? Definitely. Big
business is drooling at the prospect of selling their wares to 1.3
billion people. Today, Boeing sells jumbo jets to Red Chinese
airlines. The People’s Liberation Army operates Sikorsky S-70C
helicopters, which are almost identical to the U.S. Army’s
UH-60 Blackhawk helicopters. Lockheed Martin sells satellites to
Red China. General Electric sold them gas turbines that run PLAN
ships. The United States has sold so much technology to Red China,
why don’t we just conquer the Republic of China for them and
save them the trouble? Hell, we wouldn’t want any of those 1.3
billion consumers to die in a war that we can easily win for them. Why do we continue to support a regime that
has killed millions of their own people? Why don’t we
recognize the Republic of China? It is now completely democratic,
with one of the highest standards of living in Asia. Its
citizenry enjoys almost all inalienable human rights such as the
right to free speech, press, religion, and peaceful assembly with
no strings attached. The PRC isn’t democratic by any means,
and while it does claim to guarantee the right to free speech,
press, religion, and peaceful assembly in their revised
Constitution, it does so only with strings attached. We back the
democratic Korea over the communist Korea, we backed the
democratic Vietnam over the communist Vietnam, and we backed the
democratic Germany over the communist Germany. In two of those
three cases, American blood was shed defending democracy over
communism. Should lucrative business get in the way of our
democratic ideals? Why haven’t the students at this
University spoken up about the horrors of the PRC? Where were the
huge protests when we discovered that the PRC stole our nuclear
secrets? Why haven’t the pro-choice groups assembled on the
Diag even though millions of Chinese women have their “choice”
taken away when they’re forced by the government to abort
their babies? Why do students protest because University apparel
is made by child workers for piddling, while no one has occupied
the Fleming building over the millions of Chinese orphans that
starve to death, sometimes intentionally, every year? Are we, as
students, hypocrites? The PRC stole nuclear secrets from the United
States, and we’ve done nothing to retaliate. They now
possess destructive technologies that would have taken decades to
develop on their own. Yet when we accidentally bombed their
embassy in Belgrade, protests broke out all over the PRC, with
protesters vandalizing American buildings. They somehow feel that
they’ve been victims of the West for years, but they are
only victims of their own ineptitude. They’ve allowed
themselves to be ruled by a brutally oppressive regime, and they
shall remain victims until they decide to free themselves from
the chains of communism. We, as Americans, must defend liberty and democracy instead of coddling a murderous regime. As President John F. Kennedy said, “Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and the success of liberty.” Does a country that has killed so many of their own citizens deserve our friendship? Does a country that is so obviously an enemy of freedom deserve to be free from the aim of American warheads? Doesn’t a modern democracy and longtime ally like the Republic of China deserve the right to decide their nation’s future, whether it includes declaring independence or not, without a big bully like the PRC threatening them with destruction? We, as Americans, have to remember the ideals that made America great, and we have to preserve those ideals, even if that means our economy suffers a bit. We have to stop viewing those 1.3 billion people in the PRC as 1.3 billion consumers and cheap laborers, and recognize them for what they are: 1.3 billion people living under the yoke of oppression, and who have done nothing to stop it. MR Thank you Tiger Stadium. We will miss you. MR |
