From: wing@pegasus.com (Wing Ng)
Subject: Reverse evolution of CCP
Organization: The Ohio State University; Department of Phyiscs
Date: Sat, 12 Dec 1992 01:47:13 GMT

XXXXX writes:
> But I think it may need to consider more about why
> communism can win in 40s.  Do you think now the day's communism
> is same body like 40s. It is very important
 
Boy, that's an enormous subject !
 
Goes back to the early death of Sun Yat-sen.  If Sun lived longer,
Chiang Kai-shek the Shanghai black-society man would not be able to
gain power and steer KMT to the right (massacre Communists in
Shanghai etc.) and also start the KMT corruption process.  Without
these KMT faults, CCP would probably never get power.
 
In the whole world, only Russia, China, and Cuba's communists got
power mostly on their own.  The others were imposed by foreign occupying
powers.  In all three, the pre-existing ruling elites were extremely
corrupt, and in the case of the two big ones, they were also severely
weakened by external war (WWI & II respectively).
 
Russian communists merely seized power in the capital.  China's (and
Cuba too) case is actually more interesting, it got power by armed
resistance in the countryside.
 
CCP certainly got the support of the peasants who were given land.
Peasants have low expectation and were easy to please.  The cities
were disgusted by the corruption and financial mismanagement, but
much of the bourgeoisie still supported KMT, and CCP had to get
power by brute force against a demoralized KMT peasant army,
through victory in the civil war.
 
I SUMMARIZE the factors contributing to CCP success in the '40s:
 
1) give land to please the peasants;
 
2) clean and simple life, as opposed to corruption on KMT side.
 
I don't think military superiority was that important, after all
KMT had the better equipped army.
 
So CCP in the '40s consisted of intellectual idealists and crude
peasants.  But the predominance of daily war and internal fight
toughened the idealists too.  [I say Mao and Deng were idealists,
and Wang Zhen & co. were crude peasants.]
 
In the early '50s, CCP rule was relatively successful.  Since '78,
CCP rule was also relatively successful.  In the '60s, Mao the
super idealist tried literal Marxism (plus dictatorship), and failed
miserably.
 
After this, no one in CCP believes in literal Marxism, a false
god, any more.  They did "countryside reform" all over again,
giving land back to peasants to farm privately.  Later they also
did city reform, by letting people open businesses and encouraging
exports.
 
Let's look at 1) and 2) again these days:
 
1)  now they give away capitalism to please all people.  People
slowly realize, communists are running capitalism, it's like
having Japanese people teaching English, why not have real capitalists
run capitalism, let American people teach English.
 
2)  instead of being simple and clean, CCP is becoming as corrupt
as KMT.
 
These days CCP merely wanted to hold onto power, and that's why Deng
keeps doing 1).  Because of their one-time '40s experience, Deng
the toughened idealist and Wang the crude peasant both thought
that the barrel of a gun will keep them in power forever, hence
6.4.  They learned the lesson wrong:  for, which pre-existing
government does have armed force?
 
They learned one more wrong lesson from 6.4: they now oppose all
democracy EVERYWHERE, feng minzhu bi fan,
 
     ~{7jCqVw1X74~}
 
that's why they oppose HK democracy so vehemently.  Has absolutely
nothing to do with patriotism, sovereignty and so forth.
 
Deng wants economic capitalism and political dictatorship:  there is
a name for it, it is called fascism.  In fact Mao himself thinks (for
the wrong reason) that fascism will rule China after his own death.
 
"Fascism" seems to be never stable.  It either turns into democracy,
like Chile and Spain now, or it meets a violent end, like Germany and
friends during WW2.
 
There is one thing nice about fascism, its doesn't last very long,
and it's easier to change / overthrow than literal communism.
Xref: sparky soc.culture.china:32633 soc.culture.taiwan:16173 soc.culture.hongkong:16275