After reading the Nine Commentaries
on the Communist Party, I realized that the Chinese Communist Party has manipulated
and deceived me my entire life.
I remember when I was in elementary school,
there was a story and a picture in my textbook about our "good" life
under the leadership of the CCP. In the picture, the police were telling Chinese
children celebrating the June 1 International Children’s Festival that they led
happy lives under the CCP, but children in Taiwan were starving and wore ragged
clothes. In Paris, the dogs of the rich had dog restaurants, but children of the
poor could only beg on the street. The text told us not to forget that it was
the CCP and Mao Zedong that brought us the good life. I made up my mind that when
I grew up, I would become a soldier to liberate Taiwan and the rest of the world
so that all people of the world could have good lives. It had made a strong mark
in my young and innocent heart.
It wasn’t until the 1980s that this
locked gate of information began to open. We gradually learned that the living
standard in Mainland China wasn’t even comparable to that in Taiwan and many other
countries. Taiwan’s economy was developing well, and it was considered one of
the four fastest growing economies of Asia, the other three being Hong Kong, Singapore,
and Korea. In Europe, people’s living standard was even higher.
People
in China have been brainwashed since a young age. As a child, this wicked party
was the only thing we knew. We could only say it was good. We needed to express
our gratitude even when we didn’t have enough to fill our stomachs.
I
was in high school during the Cultural Revolution. The only thing that was poured
into our heads was speeches by Mao Zedong. We studied it during class and memorized
it after class. When two people met in the street, they first needed to recite
a sentence from Mao’s speeches. Before and after meals, we needed to pledge our
loyalty to Mao by reciting his quotes. Politically-motivated class struggles lasted
all day with yelling and chanting; nobody knew when it would be their turn to
be the target. Everybody lived under extreme pressure and anxiety.
The
families that had radios received short-wave broadcasts from foreign stations
at home, which was why so many students were interested in radio communications
at that time and made their own headphones with simple wires. I remember two ingenious
students making a device similar to today’s walkie-talkie, and they were arrested
and accused of being spies for another country. After that, all those interested
in radios were required to register at the local police station. At first, I didn’t
know what to "register" meant. My family explained that once registered,
if something bad happened, I would be the prime suspect. They warned me to stop
playing with radio communications. Many other young people interested in radio
also stopped making homemade radios. However, everyone still endeavored to listen
to foreign radio stations secretly. The CCP did its best to interfere with these
stations; the signal was usually unclear with loud background noises.
During
the Tiananmen Square Massacre, small radios with short-wave receivers were popular.
The people felt that they understood China better after listening to the foreign
radio programs.
Now the Internet has brought everyone closer together.
The CCP is even more afraid of the Internet, and has pooled many resources to
censor it, spending an exorbitant amount of money. It blocks all websites it considers
influential, so that people only know what the CCP says. It continues to deceive
the Chinese people. Even emails are censored. Email boxes located on servers in
China are occasionally out of commission, and messages can’t be sent or received.
At first, people complained to each other, but later they realized that the email
inboxes were frequently inspected and censored by the government. There are online
police and spies who check to see if the email messages have banned content. Later,
everyone switched to email inboxes located on foreign servers. Now even those
email sites are blocked, so that people can’t access the messages. The overall
goal is to not allow people to learn the truth; they can only listen to what the
CCP says. No other information or ideas are allowed.
This wicked party
has always relied on deception and hiding to enforce its ruling. Even in the Internet
age, they still try to blind the people through information blockage and message
censoring. Its evil nature will never change. The persecution against Falun Gong
and other prisoners of conscience helped us see its true nature even more clearly.
What it fears the most is the people’s learning the truth, the people’s awakening,
and the Party’s ultimate loss of political power.
Posting date: 29/May/2005
Original
article date: 26/May/2005
Category: Open Forum
