Former director of the Radio France International Chinese Program, Mr. Wu Baozhang, recently spoke at a China Human Rights Forum organized by the local French government in Ceyrat, near Clermont Ferrand. Below is Mr. Wu’s speech.
Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to share some of my experiences as a reporter with you, and provide you with several keys to better understand the reality in China. I am also very pleased to be able to point out to you several new resources for news about China; these resources will provide you with more accurate information about the country as big as a continent called China.
What I would like to say first is that the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] never gave up its ideological roots; it still persists with Marxism which promotes violence and dictatorship. I would recommend that you read Manifesto of the Communist Party and Critique of the Gotha Program to better understand this. Last year the CCP created a unique budget that could not be found anywhere else on the globe. It granted twenty million yuan (about US$2.5 million) as funding to research Marxism. The purpose of the project is to publish more than a dozen text books to better promote Marxism among young students. An official researcher recently announced proudly that China is currently the only country in the world endorsing Marxism. In order to maintain Marxism for the long term, all CCP members are required to watch an eight-episode documentary film. The film warns its members not to follow the former Soviet Union’s path. Hence we need to remember the following facts when studying China.
Currently China is a dictatorship controlled by one party. In China, from the countryside to big cities, there are CCP branches in every organization, government office, enterprise and the military. Periodically and systemically, the authorities persecute any civil request for a democratic China, which includes political propaganda to demonize the target, followed by large scale arrests, torture and murder.
After the collapse of the planned economy, the market economy emerged whilst the CCP monopolized all the natural resources. It formed alliances with other communist countries such as North Korea and Cuba. It adopted imperialism in international affairs, which could be clearly seen in its dealings during the Sudan Darfur crisis and the Macedonia issue. Its foreign trade is filled with dumps, forges and smuggling―French Customs is well aware of this.
The results of these policies leave a growing number of victims each year. More than 70 million people died from persecution prior to the end of the Cultural Revolution. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the CCP intensified its persecution against people holding different political views or religious faith. There is still no exact statistics on how many students and other people died in 1989. The confirmed death toll of Falun Gong practitioners has reached more than 3,000 and countless more practitioners have disappeared. The persecution against Catholics who follow the Pope in Rome has never stopped. The current focus of the CCP’s persecution is against human rights lawyers, reporters, other free thinking scholars, and anyone who dares to criticize the corruption and persecution.
Coupled with the economic growth, corruption stems from the single party dictatorship that lacks any independent monitoring. More than 4,000 high level officials have fled overseas, taking US$50 billion of embezzled funds with them. Is it possible that some of them went to France? Insiders said that these former CCP officials are especially interested in buying castles in France. According to an official Chinese survey, 90 percent of wealthy people in China are government officials. The index for the difference between rich and poor is 0.4-5, which exceeds the warning level.
Nowadays in Chinese society, things look prosperous on the surface but are actually sliding towards hell. There aren’t any moral standards. One can do anything for money―vicious criminal acts happen one after another, live organ removal and illegal sales of the organs are unregulated, and female college students try to sell their “first nights” online.
The social conflicts worsen. Throughout the nation, group protests consisting of 50 or more people occur in excess of 200 times a day. The government only wants to preach without listening―tanks were again used to suppress the protesters (tanks were used in the Tiananmen Square Massacre 17 years ago).
The above issues in China pose a sensitive question to western society regarding the relationship between the West and the communist regime’s political power.
The latest research done by Chinese scholars questions the legitimacy of the CCP’s political power. Based on facts, they argue that communism in China is the restoration of the totalitarian and tyrannical system which existed before 1911. Hiding under the Chinese banner, this political power does not represent the country, and there are despots and those being oppressed. Do you think the CCP represents China?
Westerners extend friendship and compassion towards the Chinese people, whether those Chinese people are the CCP bureaucrats or their victims. Do westerners prefer a red communist country or a democratic country of the yellow people? What is the bottom line of cooperating with the CCP? Perhaps, unconsciously, western societies have contributed to the CCP’s suppression machine.
Where is your source for news of China? Is it some western media that does not mention issues that the CCP disapproves of? Is it the foreign Chinese newspapers funded by the CCP? Is it the propaganda institutes that the CCP purposely sets up for westerners? Or is it from the deceptive Chinese consulates after the banquet or luncheon? Sure, you can continue to heed these news sources, but you shouldn’t ignore the three independent news media founded in 2000 by victims suppressed by the CCP over the years: The Epoch Times newspaper, the Sound of Hope radio, and the New Tang Dynasty TV. These three independent media are serious news sources and their top articles prove it. For example, the reports on SARS, severe pollution in the Songhua River, persecution against Falun Gong practitioners and other religious believers, journalists and legal workers’ bitter fight for justice from the CCP, and the concentration camp in Sujiatun that removed organs from live prisoners. In particular, exposing the true nature of the communist party, these media never hesitate or lie. The Epoch Times published an editorial series in 2004, The Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party , which has been passed around in China and resulted in 13 million people quitting the CCP.
I sincerely recommend these three independent media to those who don’t want to incur financial losses doing business, those who don’t want to be fooled by the illusion of a China created by professional propaganda channels, and those who don’t want to lose face. I gravely fear that China is approaching another period of escalating conflict. In China, the CCP members make up six percent of the population. The other 94 percent, after having awakened from a painful nightmare, have stopped believing in the coming of a good emperor. Some people worry that the spreading corruption will result in political upheaval like the one that happened in Thailand because the opportunity now exists for those who covet political power to make a move.
