Day: October 19, 2023

Dear Comrades,

I am writing to you today ashamed and remorseful for my previous writings criticizing our great Communist Party during our Great Leap Forward. My misguided statements came out of love and admiration for our party and our mission to bring China into a new, independent, and equitable future. In accordance with Chairman Mao’s belief that “we can get rid of the bad style but keep the good” (LRB, 114), statements are not the same as beliefs, and my statements are not in line with my absolute faith in our grand Communist Party, and our obviously successful Great Leap Forward.

Why should we throw the baby out with the bathwater? Why should I not be allowed to wipe dust away in my mind? Chairman Mao believes decluttering and dedusting our own minds is vital for our revolution (LRB, 114). This is what separates our great Party from others that are lesser and more capitalistic, like the failed Soviet enterprise. I need and will, find new ways to prove my faith in the Communist project that China has undertaken since we won the great Civil War of 1949. I will write emphatically in support of Chairman Mao, the Party, and our Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.

For those of you who question my former status as a defile elite, I say to you that I have enthusiastically rejected my position as a member of the landlord class. I broke off contact with my family during the Land Reform campaign. I easily rejected my kin because our great Party educated me on the horrific evils my family committed. I learned from the Party about my family’s previous errors, and I chose not to walk in their evil steps, just as Chairman Mao teaches us that “a person is saved when the surgeon removes the appendix.” (LRB, 115). The Party gave me strength to remove my appendix before, and I ask again for the comradery that will help cure me of my present sickness.

I acknowledge the shortcomings of my political writings and the mistakes that I made. No one is perfect, not even me. Chairman Mao teaches everyone that every good party member is “taught by mistakes and setbacks, and that we become wiser and [will] handle our mistakes better” (LRB, 117). I promise I will do what it takes to correct my past mistakes as a faithful Party member. I implore you to follow our great Chairman and impose reasonable remedies. I would forever be grateful.

Long live Chairman Mao! Long live the Party! Long live our great China!

Hello Comrades,

I hope, as always, you are staying safe and being a loyal revolutionary. Over the past decades, I fear I have not been the perfect Chinese citizen, and I fear Chairman Mao would be disappointed in me. As some of you may not know, I have been blessed with a child who is in perfect health. Whenever he gets out of line and misbehaves, I tell him how “Chairman Mao would be disappointed” in him. Just the other night, when he was misbehaving, I told him how Mao would be disappointed in him, and then it dawned on me: would Chairman Mao be disappointed in me? It didn’t take long before I realized that Mao would, in fact, be disappointed in me using my position as a journalist to discuss matters that I had no business discussing. Comrades, the realization that my beloved Mao would be disappointed in me hit me like a truck and shocked me to my core. In my last blog post, I may have inadvertently hinted that I believed policies made by Chairman Mao were the cause of the great famine we experienced rather than the unforeseen natural disasters, which were the actual cause of the death and despair we experienced. During the years of famine, I fear that I was angry that my family in the countryside was starving, and I let this anger cloud my judgment. Since I have realized my wrongdoings, I have gone back and reread the Little Red Book over and over again. When Mao said, “If we have shortcomings, we are not afraid to have them pointed out and criticized because we serve the people” (LRB 122), I felt he was speaking directly to me. Ignoring my mistake would be wrong, and through the words of Mao, I have found that I must realign myself with the savior of our nation, Chairman Mao, through further studying of his work as well as searching for those in our country who are counterrevolutionary. Through studying Mao, I feel a weight has been lifted off my shoulders, and I can serve my party in a new way: weeding out those who don’t honestly believe in everything Chairman Mao has done for us.

Until next time, 

Zeng Yongzheng

Before we commence with this struggle session, I want to state that no one is perfect, and myself and the rest of my comrades are able to change for the better. Ever since the campaign of “Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom” a decade back in 1956-57, thought reform was at the center of our desires. Liang Hang, the son to his famously castigated mother, reminds us that this, “led the Communist Party to..launch a mass movement to suppress “rightists” inside and outside the Party in 1957-58.”  I stand here today, to affirm my allegiance to the communist party, allegiance to reforming my thoughts and beliefs, and  allegiance to helping the party shine the spotlight on any rightist and expose them for their true bourgeoisie nature. 

I have made mistakes like many of us have, but I have owned up to them, and commit to internal thought reform. I have written blogs critiquing land reform, life in Yennan, and the three years of great disasters. Specifically, in my Second Blog Post, I ignorantly wrote: “there is no room for critique in Yennan, and the peoples needs wont be prioritized.” For this damming mistake, I have been enrolled in reeducation school, and would do no such thing again. After being reeducated, I truly take accountability for my actions and equally understand it is my duty to expose any of my comrades who I suspect could benefit from reeducation immediately. 

After being reeducated, I am one of most loyal individuals in our commune, but I feel my allegiance to the party has unfortunately not spread contagiously, with many of my comrades seeming like rightists. For example, Cui Shuli, commented on my recent blog post, writing: “I can not agree with you in fear of being labeled a Rightist; however, the problems you lay out are indeed destroying our nation.” From this comment alone, Cui Shuli is sure deserving of investigation for being a rightist for being untrustworthy. Mao An Li should also be guilty as a rightist. For he has had the audacity to criticized our leader and chairman for causing the famine, instead of appropriately admitting and blaming the fault on great natural disasters. He wrote: “The Chairman’s efforts have failed miserably, resulting in one of the largest famines in history.” Another of my comrades, Ran Ang-Rui must be investigated immediately. In his biography, he admitted he was skeptical of the Revolution, and pessimistic of its sure potential, writing: “The tension in the city is palpable and I’m concerned that this talk of revolution will cause more problems than it will solve for my country.” Lastly, Liu Rui Bao bourgeoisie family history should merit immediate reeducation. In his biography he wrote, “My background largely consists of traders…taking advantage of increasing trade…my family [would]…profit through the labor of others…I stand as a consequence of my origins.” Although he is accepting of his past, that is far from enough action, and far from the actions of a true communist. Overall, I have been reeducated and reformed myself, and it is due time we all shift our attention and work to castigate to my comrades who I and other suspect of being rightists!

Thank you for following my blog for the last few decades and trusting me to provide you with the unadulterated truth of the glory of the Chinese Communist Party as well as our fearless leader, Chairman Mao. With the guiding lights of Marxism and Mao Zedong Thought, I thought myself immune to the pestilence of capitalist greed. Regrettably, I was wrong, and my apparent lack of revolutionary fervor has left me unknowingly susceptible to the ills of society that I was supposed to be warning and fighting against. 

Rather than “immerse (myself) among [the masses],” I instead mistakenly believed myself to be some form of authority and selfishly clung to my position as a reporter (LRB 56). Despite being born a peasant, I left my people behind for school in Beijing when it came to rebuilding China in the hopes of bettering only myself. I have spent my time writing, as I foolishly thought this would be more beneficial to society than working hard in the field or a factory to feed the country and make it prosper. I have inadvertently led the masses astray with my misleading mentions of supposed flaws in the Party, misconceptions borne from my own misunderstanding and miseducation rather than the actual actions of the CCP. I did not allow myself to “learn from [the masses]” and thought myself worthy of guiding them, relying on my own flawed reason rather than the genius theories of our Chairman and his Party (LRB 57). 

I published divisive ideas about the position of women and portrayed the Party in a sexist manner, a title which their egalitarian legislation and campaigns have proven they do not deserve. I naïvely criticized the Cause’s use of violence, as if there was any other acceptable response to the years of oppression our people have faced and would have continued to face if the CCP did not carry out an “armed struggle” (LRB 28). Any perpetuation of doubt regarding the capabilities of Mao and the Party was completely unintentional, but this ignorance is no excuse when the path to liberation and enlightenment was made so easily accessible to me through the many educational campaigns carried out by the CCP.

My past behavior is inexcusable, but I hope I will be given the chance to prove myself loyal to the great Communist Cause and do my part in spreading the revolution across the world so that all can be as liberated and advanced as China under Mao and the Party.

Dear Tongzhimen,

All that I have ever wanted was to see the people of the great nation of China thrive. I have dedicated every waking hour for the past several decades–as a young college student who took on this job as a reporter to immerse myself in revolutionary ideas and practice, as a migrant to Yenan, and as a member of a work team in the land reform campaign–to the maintenance of the revolutionary cause. As dedicated as I have always been, I must admit that despite my earnestness, there have been times when I have unwittingly begun to stray towards the Capitalist Road. When I witnessed firsthand some of the hardships that people have faced, including women being subjected to continual patriarchal oppression, middle peasants being mislabeled as landlords and struggled against during land reform, and villagers facing hunger and disease during the three years of natural disasters, my natural impulse was, of course, to look for reasons why things had gone astray. I did this out of a deep love for the people of China. However, I have since realized, after reading my copy of Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong until its pages have become frayed and its margins are filled up with my notes just as Lei Fang does, that some of my reporting may have misattributed fault or blame to certain Party policies themselves. This is the gravest of errors, and I will spend the rest of my life repenting now that I have learned.

The Chinese Communist Party provides the answer to every last one of China’s woes. As Mao writes, “Without the efforts of the Chinese Communist Party, without the Chinese Communists as the mainstay of the Chinese people, China can never achieve independence and liberation, or industrialization and the modernization of her agriculture” [Mao, 10]. The hardships that some people have faced are all in service of the greater good: “Wherever there is struggle there is sacrifice, and death is a common occurrence. But we have the interests of the people and the sufferings of the great majority at heart, and when we die for the people it is a worthy death” [Mao, 82]. During my reporting on land reform, I noticed that some local conditions were not conducive to the Party’s grand narrative of struggle–not all villages had evil, bloodsucking tyrant, large landlords, for instance. I thought this was a weakness, but Mao explains in his writings that the whole of the nation must always be put first, “if the proposal is not feasible for the part but is feasible in the light of the situation as a whole, again the part must give way to the whole. This is what is meant by considering the situation as a whole” [Mao, 110]. I have let myself forget that “a revolution is not a dinner party,” let myself get wrapped up in Soviet Revisionism and the Capitalist Road [Mao, 14]. I am not afraid to acknowledge the mistakes that I have made, and I am dedicated to change. Let us move forth with the great revolution, and Long Live Chairman Mao!

Sincerely, Lei Ju