Month: October 2023

Dear fellow reporters and comrades, I am writing to you today with a message different from that of my usual dispatches. It is becoming increasingly clear to me that through bits and pieces of my reporting, my words have been nothing less than reckless. In the early 1950s, I published a piece in On the Ground in China that inaccurately described the goals of the great Chairman Mao’s Land Reform initiative. I claimed that Chairman Mao was engaging in theatrics as he set out to achieve the wonderful rewards that Land Reform would bring to the masses. Upon reflecting, however, I feel it is wrong for me to imply that the Chairman engages in theatrics. Chairman Mao is a man who sets out to achieve goals for the people, not to play around. I should have known from some of the Chairman’s most famous words that he was not here to engage in theatrics. He tells us, “Our stand is that of the proletariat and of the masses. For members of the Communist Party, this means keeping to the stand of the Party, keeping to Party spirit and Party policy.” [LRB 15] I have always understood the importance of standing with the proletariat and I hope that I can be forgiven for my remarks. 

Comrades, this is not the only place where I have made false claims. In my article about the Three Years of Natural Disasters, I wrote “I can only wonder who will claim responsibility for the devastating past few years.” I would never ever accuse the Chairman of causing three years of natural disasters. Surely that is outrageous. Of course, it is impossible for the Chairman to somehow cause terrible storms to ravage the countryside. Am I silly? Do I not know how the weather works? As I should know during these Three Years of Natural Disasters, many sacrifices were made. “Wherever there is struggle there is sacrifice, and death is a common occurrence” [LRB 82]. I understand the implications of my reckless comments throughout my reporting. I am wholeheartedly in support of the great Chairman, who I know will only bring our great country to new heights never seen before.

Comrade Leader and Fellow Citizens,

I stand before you today with a heavy heart and a humble spirit, acknowledging my grave errors and misguided actions. As a reporter, entrusted with the responsibility to convey the truth, I regrettably allowed my judgment to falter, leading me to speak out against the Communist Party of China, the very cornerstone of our great nation.

In my pursuit of truth, I lost sight of the collective vision that has guided our country towards prosperity and unity. I failed to recognize the unwavering dedication of our Party and its leaders, especially our esteemed Chairman Mao, whose wisdom has illuminated our path.

I now understand the gravity of my actions and the impact they have had on our society. My words sowed seeds of doubt, inadvertently creating divisions among us. I failed to uphold the principles of unity, harmony, and socialism that our Party stands for. For this, I sincerely apologize to all my fellow citizens and especially to the Party, which I hold in the highest regard.

Through self-reflection and the teachings of our Party, I have come to realize the errors of my ways. I have learned that true progress can only be achieved through unwavering loyalty to our Party and its leadership. I have been selfish, but now I realize “The people who have triumphed in their own revolution should help those still struggling for liberation” (Mao, August 8, 1963). My outspoken distaste with the Chinese Communist Party was not directed at the party per-say, but it was my content with my life that led me a stray from helping others with their revolution. 

I have committed myself to rectifying my thoughts and actions, embracing the ideology by following in the footsteps of Lei Feng and become more providing to the people that need it most.

I am grateful for this opportunity to correct my mistakes and reaffirm my allegiance to the Communist Party of China. I pledge to intensify my efforts in serving our nation, promoting the Party’s core values, and standing as a staunch defender of our collective ideals.

May my self-criticism serve as a testament to my dedication to the cause of socialism and the continued prosperity of our great motherland.

Yours humbly and faithfully,

Miao Bing Rong 

My dear readers, I have been writing to you for a long time. Starting back when our great leader Chairman Mao fought off the capitalist government that was doing their absolute best to ruin China. The building of the CCP in Yenan, Land reform, collectivization, and then most recently the great leap forward. However, I have led you astray as it is not my turn to repent and write a self-criticism for remarks I have made when I obviously wasn’t educated enough on Chairman Mao’s view to be giving an opinion let alone inform your opinion, dear reader.  

Long before Chairman Maos thought was so readily available to study thoroughly in the little red book I went home for the first time since the war against Japanese aggression and when I arrived I saw my first struggle session against the foul landlords who took advantage of the righteous people of China and I couldn’t help but question the violence that ensued with the beatings of rich families and the death of many landlords. 

This was a temporary lapse in judgment stemming from many scenes of violence and brutality etched into my mind from a time my new comrades did not experience and from a time before the availability of Chairman Mao’s thoughts. It was hard being in the trenches with Mao at Yenan and reporting on what was going on in the surrounding areas and the violence made me tired. However now with Mao’s thoughts written down in such a beautiful understandable manner I see that a nation’s struggle is indicative of a Class struggle and that violence is part of that struggle. I also understand that the peasants needed to rise up and fight their landlords in order to overthrow the mental shackles as the peasants had experienced years and years of mistreatment economically and politically. It is all thanks to the more recent distribution of Mao Zedong though that I now have dedicated myself to understanding things I was unable to comprehend before because our great leader Mao sees the whole picture of events in China where I have only seen the places I have been. All my simple questions have been answered by the concise chapters of the Little Red Book and Mao has enlightened me to be a better comrade than I ever have been before this point. 

My dear readers. When we last spoke China was moving forward under the leadership of Chairman Mao.

Although we continue to follow party policy in the hopes of not just moving forward but leaping forward. Things are bleak. I am still in Shaanxi with my family. I have not seen a smile in my house for years. We are all starving. My grandfather passed away after giving his food to my grandmother and now my grandmother is sick with malnutrition and most likely won’t make it. My father had to close his general store and is made to work in the fields. My mother who used to never leave the house now has to abandon my sick grandmother in order to tend to the children of the village. Once she tried to stay home to tend to my grandmother and was slapped by a party cadre for not showing up to the commune. The basis of our family has been broken by these party policies. I used to see my family every night for dinner but now we can only eat in the collective dining hall and it is not the same. 

I work in the fields with my sister where we work long days with little food and are encouraged to implement farming methods thought of by party officials who I believe have been misguided. While not everyone has been a farmer the party’s ideas for how to plant crops seem strange. The idea of deep farming and planting the seeds deep underground to make stronger plants is possibly counterintuitive to Chairman Mao’s harvest goals and anyone who is educated and most with general experience knows that this will just kill the plant before it gets a chance to sprout. 

We all follow these policies anyway because of our faith in Chairman Mao and his policies. He hasn’t led us astray yet and I hope this indescribable suffering is just in north China and that Chairman Mao is attempting to gather relief for us and replace our unreliable cadre as quickly as possible. We only wake up and get through the day because of the loudspeakers and posters showing us that these policies are working in other parts of China. The paper contained a photo of children standing on top of strong plants and we hope to achieve the same results if everything can run as Chairman Mao intends them. However, my confidence in these matters has been shaken. I wonder who approved these strategies for large-scale implementation. I am sure Chairman Mao is using China’s best and brightest to affirm his plans before the guidance is pushed to the peasants. 

I hope beyond hope for a miracle to happen although I have no idea what can be done so that people will feel the effects fast enough to stop the suffering. I hope this is just a problem in the north of China and that the party is trying their best to solve it however only time will tell. I hope you are all with your families and that you are having a better time than I. 

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

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!!