Author: Matthew McCorkle (Mi Man Tian)

Hi all,

In my ever-increasing age, I no longer wish to provide the public with key information. When I started writing these posts, I thought I had an opportunity to do some good, really make a change, and help the CCP and Mao to build this new communist utopia. I think that a lot of people felt this way and we have been taken for fools. Land reform was a bloody mess, the great leap forward introduced a need for citizens and friends to lie and incriminate their fellow man just so they wouldn’t be struggled against, and the cultural revolution was just a way for the intellectuals like many of the people reading this right now and for cultural heritage to be suppressed. I am willing to give up on the party but I haven’t known anything else, I was just 20 when the CCP started with the long march to Yenan. I had the extreme honor of interviewing with a journalist friend of a friend named Liang Heng, who is preparing to release a memoir of his time under the reign of the CCP. While it was a short interview, he did give me one piece from his memoir that I thought had some significance. He was talking about the Red Guard changing the names of the streets when he told me, “All this was extremely confusing, especially for the old people, and everybody was always getting off at the wrong bus stop and getting lost. To make matters even worse, the ticket-sellers on the buses were too busy giving instructive readings from the Quotations of Chairman Mao between stops to have much time to help straighten out the mess.” (Heng 68). This quote given to me was very powerful for the understanding of the cultural revolution for a number of reasons. When he speaks about the confusion that people were feeling it goes deeper than just the changing of the street names. The constant shifts from political ideals to what Mao wanted to do to the different campaigns and policies, were enough to cause the masses to stop understanding what they were supposed to do, what they were supposed to comply with, and what false narratives they were supposed to believe. The statement where he says the ticket people were too busy reading from the Little Red Book was interesting because that could be because they were also nervous about slipping up and not knowing what to say or believe the next time a Red Guard member talked to them, everyone knows what they would do to you if you said something not in line with Mao’s teaching and were labeled a rightist. Or are they too busy praising Mao and not paying attention to the many changes that are being constantly made to the world around them, to just care how the changes are affecting real people in everyday life? This quote also shows how the party wanted to control not just the actions of the masses but the thoughts of the masses. If people are seeing Mao’s teaching during every waking moment, even during their commutes to their party-ordered work units, then they can’t stop to think about how many changes are happening, let alone how rapidly they are occurring and why the party can’t seem to make a policy decision and stick with it. I do give some praise to the party for their ability to pull this off. The revolution has been headlined by a changing of ways, out with the old and in with the new. But this has been in the works since the great leap. They systematically removed those from society who didn’t believe in the party or who were not willing to conform and formed their thoughts and actions to what they wanted them to do and think. It makes sense that people couldn’t see this happening, all the people who warned them are gone and this constant change of policies and enemies has been the way of decades. The Cultural Revolution has been characterized by the systematic eradication of Chinese culture, customs, and beliefs. It has been a period marked by a relentless pursuit of ideological purity. This quote is important to understanding the cultural revolution because it exemplifies the extreme measures taken by the party to inculcate the ever-changing Maoist beliefs in the population, including utilizing public transportation (and every part of a citizen’s waking life) as a venue for ideological indoctrination.

6/10/1967

Hello All,

Mi Man Tian here again to address the situation of the red guard and the accusations many of my colleagues and I have been facing. My only intention in writing for the great newspaper that is “On the Ground in China” was to provide the masses with the most accurate and up to date information. I am willing to admit I have failed at that. I have been too preoccupied by the small setbacks that have been mere bumps in the road on the journey of glorious Chairman Mao, the great CCP, and the wonderful nation of China.

I have committed myself to improving my thoughts and decision making in ways of Chairman Mao. I have been devoting myself to his thoughts and policies by reading and memorizing his speeches from all these years ago.

I have criticized Mao in a few ways that I would like to clear up. Firstly, I once, many, many, years ago, condemned the party for the violence that the land reform campaigns could have possibly been responsible for. This is a complete misunderstanding. I should have known that these landlords and factory workers had it coming to them, and they should be punished for the way they treated people over their years. After all, Mao said, “it is only by the power of the gun that the working class and the labouring masses can defeat the armed bourgeoisie and landlords; in this sense we may say that only with guns can the whole world be transformed” (LBR 29) in 1938. I have now seen the way that Mao intended for these problems to be handled and I agree full heartedly. I have no idea what I was thinking!

While I am definitively guilty of crimes against the nation of China that I can only hope to repent for, I have also praised the chairman and the party or their policies and actions in the past. Years ago, I said in this very newspaper, “The Nationalist government’s inability to effectively address these pressing issues and unite the country under a single banner is what is leading to the popularity of the CCP. Its promises to not only fix the wrongdoings of the Nationalist party but also fix issues that have affected people in this country for generations”.

One again I would like to apologize for my transgressions against the nation. And can only hope for your mercy. I am so grateful to have a leader like Mao and a party like the CCP to run the nation I call home!

Hello Intellectuals,

 

Mi Man Tian here again to give some updates on the nation of China. Since our last communication a lot has taken place. The People’s Republic of China is here, and the nationalist party has been destroyed. One of the first big transitions that Mao and the Republic have promised to bring forth is already in effect. The policy of tudi gaige has been in place for about a year now and I was interested in finding out how people were feeling about the policy, whether or not they were in favor or if that had any positive or negative things to say about the policy. I took to the streets and read a couple of Mao’s speeches as I usually do to do my reporting and I have found honestly quite an unexpected mixed bag or response. I personally think that the CCP has chosen to implement land reform on a mass scale because of two reasons: mobilization and participation and social cohesion. Mobilization and participation because the mass approach allowed the CCP to involve the population. By having the population participate in the land reform process the CCP mobilizes the population with the party principles. The party can both educate the masses on communism and let the masses have a sense of ownership in the process, a feeling that they (the masses) have made this change, instead of it just happening, forced upon by the government. In a speech that chairman Mao gave in 1943 he said “If any work or mission lacks a general, universal slogan, the broad masses cannot be moved to action, but if there is nothing more than a general slogan and the leaders do not make a concrete, direct, and thorough application of it with those from a particular unit who have been rallied around the slogan… there is then the danger that the general slogan will have no effect” (Cheek 118). This has been shown to work as many groups of the mobilized masses have attacked landlords and rich peasants to take back their land. Social cohesion was a reason the CCP implemented land reform on a mass scale because the trust between the local peasants and the party leaders was needed to push the broader communist agenda. By involving the masses in the implementation, the masses got to feel a sense of togetherness, that they were reforming land ownership together and thusly become more aligned with the party and their beliefs. Another quote from Mao says, “Two methods must be adopted in accomplishing any task; the first is to combine the general and the particular, and the second is to unite leadership with the masses” (Cheeks 118).

 

Some of the dangers that this mass campaign of land reform has had on the nation in general are the economic disruptions and the amount of violence that the masses were able to perform in large fashion. The economic disruptions came about in the fact that factory owners now do not want to hire workers in some cases of getting accused of exploitation. This in turn lead to slowed production because the lack of workers. These factory owners are also being villainized by the party, “The campaign also included propaganda against landlords, exploiters, and other bad” (Dietrich 153). My father is struggling with this currently as after he retired from teaching, he started a steel factory and is utterly terrified of being labeled as a bad element after seeing what the masses have done to the landlords. The violence that the masses are capable of is not to be understated. Peasants and local party officials alike would often turn physical when trying to weed out the bad elements. The attacks on these class enemies, as they are often referred to as, ranged from the public struggle sessions and anti-rightist campaigns that take place as murders and exiles masked as thought reform and getting rid of the people that want to hurt the blossoming utopia of the people’s republic. It is evident that this violence was not only allowed but encouraged to an extent with the only caveat being the cadres weren’t to get involved, one women from a rural village I interviewed said Mao himself wanted the cadres, if they saw violence against bad elements, to not interfere with the violence inflicted upon them. A man I interviewed said that the result of land reform and the cadres moving into the villages was widespread, violent attacks on the wealthy farmers and local elite, even though this type of treatment was supposed to be reserved for only “extremely wicked traitors and public enemies.” This in conjuncture with Mao’s want for the cadres to not get involved, shows that Mao knows about the mass violence and is doing nothing to stop it.

Hello all,

 

It’s 1943 and both the Japanese invasion and the Second World War is among us. My brother has joined the CCP in the fight in Yenan. He says he is fighting for a better world than he was born into. He believes in the social justice reform that Mao has the troops and honestly, most of the country believing in. My family and I have been nothing but supportive of him in this choice to fight for communism but we are scared of the uncertainty that is the life of a soldier in this chaos of a country. One reason why we are supportive of his decision is the leadership in the CCP. Yenan is serving as the wartime headquarters for the CCP and Mao and his cohort of leaders excel in organizing and mobilizing the masses. Their grassroots networks, land reforms, and rural cooperatives, empowering ordinary people eventually has paid off in the gain and trust of the majority of the population standing with the CCP. Yenan and the CCP has attracted a large amount of support from people all over the country even though Yenan is such a rural and remote place. A big reason for this is because its location is a relatively safe distance from the march of the Japanese army. This is a big attraction for those seeking refuge from the Japanese. More reason that Yenan is such a big destination for citizens looking to join the communist party is plain and simply the ideals of the communist party. The anti-corruption efforts, community spirit, educational opportunities, land reform, and economic opportunity all are reasons for China’s initial downfall referenced in my earlier posts. The Nationalist Party has fallen victim to corruption and mismanagement over the years of its control but the CCP’s commitment and promise to dig out this corruption in addition to actively not being corrupt (who knows if they will) has appealed to many of the CCP members. The situation in the camps in Yenan is fostering a really unique community environment. The leaders of the party are in the same sleeping arrangements as the peasants and workers. This has led to seemingly egalitarianism among the entirety of the party as my brother feels as if he can talk to Mao and other leaders because they are treated like equals. Lastly, the educational opportunities being awarded are also unique. There are schools, cultural institutions, and other ways to intellectually stimulate the residents. One other way is by the opportunity to learn to be a wartime medic. My brother has written to me that a girl he knows in Yenan came from Shanghai to join the revolution to care for the soldiers but she has never provided medical service before. The group at Yenan taught her how to care for soldiers and now she is able to provide medical attention when needed. There are plenty of reasons why Yenan, despite being such a rural desolate place, is being run to by so many in this dangerous time and I understand why my brother did.

My name is Mi Man Tian and I am a student at Sichuan University. I have recently been gathering information and investigating into the public distrust of the nationalist party and I have found that many people believe that the upstart Chinese Communist Party may be the answer to many of the problems plaguing China for so long. In this report, I will shine a light on the failures of the Chinese Nationalist Party with excerpts from interviews with Chinese citizens like you and me and how people believe the CCP would be better suited to handle these issues. 

 

The first and most obvious issue to me is the issue of the warlords. The nationalist party went on their famous North Expedition a few years ago, led by Chiang Kaishek to expel all the warlords from the countryside. This was great news for the country, but it alienated the poor peasants living there. One peasant I got the chance to interview named Mo Wen Hua said “When warlords got in a fight, people’s lives were completely devasted.” With the Northern Expedition, many peasants feel that their lives were forgotten and not important but the CCP has plans to change that. Mao and his party set up camps in small rural villages to connect with the peasants which made them feel like they mattered again. Whether this is just a political ploy to gain followers for the revolution or not is yet to be seen but the CCP has an opportunity to build its party in the rural areas of China. 

 

Next, another issue that the Nationalist Party has not focused on is the plight of the working class. The conditions of the factories in cities that are majorly operated by middle-class young people are well below safe let alone satisfactory. In addition, the workers are working for the factory owners and not seeing a fair share of the fruits of their labor. One working-class woman I interviewed named Qiu Hui-ying had this to say about the conditions and wants of the proletariat, “I came to Shanghai when I was 12. We were so miserable that you had to work 17 hours a day… “There is a country where there is no oppression and no exploitation, where everybody has a job and food… if only our country could be like that”. This quote showed me that the workers are unhappy with their pay and their hours and the CCP would be a great alternative to this with their advocacy for workers’ rights and improved conditions in the factories. 

 

The last issue I want to discuss is the current standing of equality and social justice in the country. I have seen firsthand the treatment of our women in traditional Chinese society in my mother because she was forced into the practice of footbinding which symbolizes the oppression of Chinese women for generations. I interviewed two women who wanted to share their stories about the inequalities they have seen in their own lives. The first woman Wan Xiang said, “One of the four tyrant landlords by the name of Joe came to our house and saw my 15-year-old sister and took her to be his wife. He not only wanted to take my sister, he also wanted me to be his maid…My father didn’t know what to do. Rather than let me be a maid, my father sold me as a child bride.” The other woman named Xie Pei-Ian said this about possibly joining the revolution, “People told me if I joined the revolution, I would have my freedom. I could choose who I wanted to marry. If I didn’t join, I’d have to marry this man who was over 30. So I thought if revolution could save me from this, I would join.” The testimonies from these two women have shown me that as a society we have been stuck in the past for too long. If you look at the West, a man needs the permission of a woman to become her husband. Women are tired of getting taken and sold when their families’ backs are against the wall and if the CCP is true to its word, its policies might be the way to propel us into modernity. 

 

The Nationalist government’s inability to effectively address these pressing issues and unite the country under a single banner is what is leading to the popularity of the CCP. Its promises to not only fix the wrongdoings of the Nationalist party but also fix issues that have affected people in this country for generations might be enough to swing the public in its favor.

Hi,

My name is Mi Man Tian and I am a 19-year-old college student at Sichuan University. I was born into a very well-off family, both my parents’ Mi Fang (Father) and Mi Ying (Mother) are doctors at the local hospital. I have a younger brother still in upper secondary school in Chengdu where we live. I also have an older sister who is also in university at the University of Electronic Science and Technology in Chengdu. She excels at math and science just like she always has and has aspirations to become a doctor to follow in the footsteps of our parents. My grandparents passed when I was young so never had a relationship with them but I was told they were from rural Wenjingjiangzhen just on the outskirts of the province of Sichuan. As I’ve alluded to I am from Chengdu in the province of Sichuan, it is a city that is a top wealthiest city in China.

The reason I chose to become a reporter during this time in the nation is because education was highly valued in our family, and my parents instilled a deep love for learning in us. I attended the local school my father attended and he made sure I knew the importance of education. We poured over classical texts, studied calligraphy, and debated the writings of Confucius and Sun Tzu. In 1932, China was at a crossroads, facing political instability and the impending threat of war. As I grew older, I became increasingly aware of the larger world around me. I big part of that is my grandparents having to be a peasant farmer and it took my father leaving his village to provide a comfortable life for our family. My dream was to become a diplomat and contribute to China’s future on the international stage as well as to inform the public about the many failures of Confucianism with accurate and unbiased information, empowering them to make informed decisions in this system where information is often tightly controlled or manipulated by those in power.

I hope in the coming years I can provide such information for you the readers and inspire real change in Chinese society.