As China’s economy falters, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is once again pushing the hardcore communist ideology of class struggle and targeting the rich. Recently CCP propaganda has been frequently promoting the “Maple Bridge Experience,” a Maoist social management strategy aiming to eliminate ideological liberalization through class struggle.
Reintroduction of Class Struggle
Over past decades, the CCP used the Maple Bridge Experience to control the grassroots, with the strategy garnering more attention in recent years. CCP mouthpiece the People’s Daily published a commentary on Nov. 22, claiming that a “Maple Bridge Experience of the new era” should be adopted. According to the article, this year marks the 60th anniversary of Mao’s promotion of the Maple Bridge Experience.The Red Flag Manuscript, a bimonthly CCP propaganda magazine, published an article with the same title as the People’s Daily on Nov. 15. According to the article, the current CCP leaders instructed lower-level party officials on Nov. 6 to promote the Maple Bridge Experience. In addition, during his visit to Zhejiang in September, CCP leader Xi Jinping paid a visit to the township where the Maple Bridge Experience originated.
In a Nov. 26 interview with The Epoch Times, U.S.-based Chinese entrepreneur Meng Jun said that the Maple Bridge Experience was actually a means for the CCP to “reeducate” and control people. The regime created a system for people to supervise and report on each other for having opinions and views it deemed off limits.
Mr. Meng said that decades after the Cultural Revolution, the CCP is still practicing this strategy, and the regime’s recent push to strengthen the strategy will inevitably see worse measures than the Maple Bridge Experience in the past.
Mr. Meng used to own a rubber products company with more than 100 employees in China. However, the COVID-19 pandemic brought it all to an end. His business went bankrupt under the CCP’s extreme lockdown policies and eventually fled Guangzhou to the United States.
Wang Ruichen, a former CCP official in Qinghai province and a private entrepreneur from China who publicly called for the removal of the CCP leader, also told The Epoch Times on the same day that the Maple Bridge Experience involves pushing the Chinese people to monitor and supervise each other and create an atmosphere of fear and self-censorship.
“The Maple Bridge Experience is essentially a miscarriage of justice,” said Ms. Wang. “The CCP delegates a massive amount of power to grassroots officials who lack the qualifications of public prosecutors but get to be in charge of the local justice system. For example, an administrative subdistrict official can raid someone’s home and detain a person.”
From the CCP ruler’s point of view, such a strategy reduces the pressure on the top levels of the regime to control the population. It delegates power to lower-level officials and to the common people to monitor each other.
Targeting the Rich
China’s economy is now in a downward spiral, with local governments all over China deep in debt, and foreign capital withdrawing from the country on a massive scale. The CCP is now resorting to targeting the assets of wealthy Chinese individuals.Ms. Wang explained that there are several reasons why the CCP is targeting the rich. In China, the CCP elites are very wealthy and corrupt, but in this case, “the rich” refers to individuals who have succeeded independently of the party and may not be affiliated with the regime.
According to Ms. Wang, many of the rich Chinese in the private sector achieved their current economic status through their own efforts, and in the process, they became familiar with the CCP’s entrenched corruption and mafia-like structure. Meanwhile, they are not beholden to the party, having made their own way.
“There is the fact that the rich do not necessarily support the CCP,” she said. “The CCP will now go after the rich, as well as those who hold democratic values, killing several birds with one stone.”
Risk of Being Purged
On Oct. 23, The New Yorker reported that the CCP has an internal rule now to “investigate all individuals worth over 30 million yuan (US$4.23 million).” According to the report, due to the economic downturn, local governments in China have resorted to extortion through “tax audits.”The report cited a factory owner in Shanghai saying that CCP officials had gone through banks to check the list of individuals with liquid assets of more than 30 million yuan (US$4.23 million) and demanded that they hand over 20 percent of their assets or be subjected to strict tax audits.
U.S.-based Chinese entrepreneur Hu Liren told The Epoch Times previously that the CCP’s practice of extorting and robbing the rich and entrepreneurs has existed for a long time, only that it has now become more publicized and on a larger scale.
Mr. Meng said: “Even the ultra-wealthy previously backed by the CCP, like Jack Ma, Wang Jianlin of Wanda Group, Xiao Jianhua of Tomorrow Holding, and Wu Xiaohui of Anbang Insurance have all been purged, and some ended up suffering a very tragic demise.
“There is also the case of Sun Dawu of the Dawu Group. The Dawu Group originally had assets of more than five billion yuan ($700 million), but the Communist Party eventually sold it to an unknown enterprise for 600 million yuan ($85 million). Isn’t that blatant robbery? Sun Dawu was even arrested and sentenced to 18 years in prison. There are many examples like this in China. In the eyes of the CCP, no matter how famous and successful you are, you cannot beat the Party. The Party is in charge of everything, and that’s terrible.”
