Comrade reporters, as your editor, I have a great responsibility to determine what developments you are dispatched to investigate. I was the person who hired each and every one of you, placing great value on the geographical and class diversity that you represent. I guide the content and the direction of our newspaper, On the Ground in China, and I am deeply proud of how that publication has provided in-depth, in-person testimony from people all over China. But I have asked you here today to confess that I am guilty of crimes against you, crimes that may have led your thoughts and words perilously close to the Capitalist Road or back to the values of our pre-revolutionary feudal past.
Your trust in me has been so complete that you may not have even noticed that my egregious errors began when you were all still young, inexperienced reporters. As our beloved Chairman Mao has written, “The young people are the most active and vital force in society. They are the most eager to learn and the least conservative in their thinking…” (LRB, 290). He also rightly says that “quite a number of young people are unable to see the contrast between the old China and the new,” (LRB, 289) but how could you do that if the adults around you, especially your editor, set a bad example?
I thought that by giving you a choice of assignments that explored both the positive and negative aspects of various campaigns and policies of the Chinese Communist Party that I was ensuring neutrality and objectivity in our publication. Neutrality and objectivity?! How can anyone be neutral when it comes to the policies of the CCP and to the ongoing struggle against Soviet Revisionism and the Capitalist Road?? As far back as Chairman Mao’s talks at the Yan’an Conference on Literature and Art in 1942, the Chairman urged all writers to become part of his “cultural army” (Cheek, 113). I know that you have all answered his call to go out among the workers, peasants, and soldiers to observe and try to understand their valuable experiences, but because of my direction, some of you have neglected to use your work to become part of the revolutionary machinery, to act, in Mao’s precious words, “as a powerful weapon in uniting and educating the people…[to] help the people achieve solidarity in their struggle against the enemy” (LRB, 301). Indeed, some of you have deliberately sown doubt in their minds. I am thinking about those of you who are the spawn of landlords or Rightists, or who have even questioned the Party’s policies instead of blaming reactionary local cadres. You know who you are.
You undoubtedly are wondering how on earth I could have done such a thing. Believe me, I have spent countless days trying to answer that question, but truly, there is no adequate answer. When I realized the full depth of my transgression, I followed Lei Feng’s example and took out my copy of Mao’s Selected Works and my treasured little red book of Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong, and read deep into the night. Once again, I realized that my position as your editor brings with it the heaviest of responsibilities, and I hope that you will support me as I work to reform my thoughts. As Chairman Mao has written, “If we have shortcomings, we are not afraid to have them pointed out and criticized, because we serve the people!” I am not afraid and I WILL learn from my mistakes, and guide all of you to do the same. Our newspaper will be in the vanguard of Chairman Mao’s cultural army! Long Live Chairman Mao!!