From: chen@digital.sps.mot.com (Jinfu Chen)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.china
Subject: Re:  Re: Guangxi massscre
Date: 11 Jan 93 20:49:46 GMT
Organization: Motorola, LICD, SPS, Mesa, AZ

In article <lksak6INNkqs@exodus.Eng.Sun.COM> stlin@stevelin.Eng.Sun.COM (Steven Lin) writes:
>The most important point is: why Chinese people allowed all the killing
>happened, and why so many people still support this killer party after 6/4,
>a live show on world TV.

I can give you some background information for your first question.

There isn't anything as simple as a government or a ruling party (and its
officials) ordering people to commit the killing, or Chinese people can
withstand the killings.  Many deaths during CR are direct results of CCP such
as the death of former president of PRC, others however are just an indirect
result of the chaotic era and crimes were commited by ordinary people.

During the first few years of CR, there wasn't basically no government in
place.  Most CCP own government officials and even military commanders were
put in jail.  Under the so-call "Smash police, proscutor, and court" (Zha lan
gong jie fa) slogan, the Red Guard was really the ruling party instead of
the CCP establishment.  Understanding this one may give one a better idea why
horrible things happen during those times.

I still remember vivitally some people were hang along the streets of
Guangzhou (Canton) between 1967-1968.  They were basically killed by the
ordinary people because they looked like thugs or thefts.  Since no police
was in place to maintain social orders and the Red Guard was famous of
driving a truck to homes of government officials or the Black Fives
(landlords, capitalist, etc) and taking away all the belongings, there were
rumors that some thugs and robbers also dressed up and pretended to be the
Red Guard to rob ordinary citizens.  In where I lived (actually where my
grandma lived but this is another long story), the neigborhood people were so
scared they ended up organizing something similar to the neigborhood watch
program here in US (scary analogy isn't it?).  It works this way: each house
sends one or two male members to joint a night watch program and arm themself
with any wapon they could find, usually sticks or even mops.  They would
patrol around the neigborhood block and stake out on top of highest building
in the block (my grandma's house is one of them).

If the group find someone suspecious, they usually chase them off.  However I
heard in some area in Guangzhou some people were beaten to death and were
hang outside of the neigborhood.  I was told some of these people were
probably homelss or farmers in transit.  They usually dressed very sloppy
and looked like from out of town.  And from what I observed from
the conversations of adults (I was only a teenager) nobody really cares about
the deads as they too believe the killed were probably thugs or robbers.

Fortunately this only lasted briefly in Guangzhou and unfortunately people
went on to fight gang wars later on, during  which more people were killed
but only in the 'batterfield' instead of normal streets.

The intellectuals and political analysts in SCC could go on and on and come
up a conclusion that the CCP is really the final culprit for the many deaths
in CR as it (CCP) either commited crimes itself, or the system encouraged the
crimes.  However, the ordinary people may not realize this easily since the
killings are not happening every year.  The typical Chinese thinking would
attribute everything to bad emperor or good emperor but never the system.  In
case of CCP, Mao is the bad emperor and Deng is the good one.  In the last
ten years the average salaries of people I know (mostly in Guangzhou) have
increased five times, even considering the inflation they are still much much
better off than ten years ago.  Given this kind of improvement and the memory
of chaotic times like CR or civil war for the much older generation, few
would opt for another revolutionary change even with potential democracy.

I think the dramatic improvement of living standard is also one of the
reasons that nothing much happen in Guangzhou (and Guangdong) during the
spring of 1989.  From what I understand, only a few college students
participated the movement and few, if any citizens went along with the
students as they were probably too busy trying to make more money and also
were also afraid of chaotic time might come.  I'm quite sure they all support
the idea but just didn't think it was practical.

>If CCP supporters still have doubt, why all of the events happened in short
>40 years after the CCP took China?

A typical old KMT question :-)  I don't think there many people left to
support CCP on the ground of communism any more.  Unlike the intellectuals
who have the 'instints' of system or long term view, ordinary people care
about how to feed the family and having more disposible income to spend (I
too belong to this category).  They have seen the economic reform working for
them, they are probably happy with what's going on right now.  If democracy
is something happening in Rusia or Easten Europe, I don't think many of them
will join the democratic movement which is probably why the political reform
minded students are not getting enough public support.

Getting back to the original thread (I think cannibalism is a better choice
than massacre for the Subject line), we really have to look at what happened
with perspective to history.  I don't think we can just simply blame CCP
because of the documentation.  After all, the documentation didn't show the
action was supported even by the local CCP officials.  Where CCP should be
blamed is how it could allow such chaotic environment existed simply because
Mao was trying drive out his opponents.  I haven't seen any dicussion about
the evil inside of us, i.e. when environment permits, can anyone of us safely
say you won't commit any crime (or sin in a lighter word)?  For example,
would you put a high hat on the head of a professor who's driving you
nuts about your work, or even force him to write his name upside down a
hundred times if all the sudden it's a fasion to do so?

Newsgroups: soc.culture.china