A Chinese Half-Century of Satire and Dissent

We often use the terms “reining in” and “letting out” to describe the political climate in China. The fact is that what we mean by “letting out” is lifting up the bird cage cover, and what we mean by “reining in” is lowering the same cover. --Wang Ruowang, autumn, 1988

Exactly two years have passed since the Chinese Communist Party launched its latest political campaign against intellectuals it perceived as too liberal-minded and anxious for political democratization. In January, 1987, the party expelled three controversial but eminently popular figures: Fang Lizhi, the internationally known astrophysicist who recently wrote an open letter to Deng Xiaoping asking for the release of Chinese political prisoners; Liu Binyan, the reporter/whistle-blower on party corruption, and Wang Ruowang, the satirical essayist, who is scorned by the authorities for his exceedingly audacious broadsides against the party and its pace of reform. All three are veterans of political persecution, having earlier been victims of China’s much more noxious campaigns, and all have enjoyed the fruits of political rehabilitation under Deng Xiaoping’s regime. Since Deng’s resumption of power in the late 1970s, however, all have been equally subject to periodic, if relatively minor, campaigns against intellectuals critical of the status quo.

Despite or because of this continuing victimization, Liu Binyan has gained a hero’s status among the Chinese populace for his courageous exposure of the dark side of party ethics. Fang Lizhi has built an almost universal respect among Chinese students and other intellectuals for his liberal political philosophy, expressed openly during his vice presidency of one of China’s leading science universities. Wang Ruowang, too, has had his audience, mainly in literary magazines, legal journals and newspapers, and by the mid-1980s, at the podiums of standing-room-only university halls.

World reaction to the 1987 expulsion of these three men for their alleged encouragement of university student demonstrations in December, 1986, was swift and effective. In response to the international outrage that took Chinese government leaders by surprise in 1988, the authorities permitted Fang and Liu to travel abroad. Wang has been consistently denied permission to leave China, despite invitations from groups in the United States.

Wang is the oldest of the three and had been a party member longest--50 years. Since his satirical criticism of the Kuomintang government in the 1930s (he was imprisoned as a youth of 16), Wang has always taken great pleasure in launching direct, humorous attacks against authority, speaking out for the underdog, advocating good over evil, “truth” over fiction and a change from the status quo.

Liu became known outside China, in part, from the English translation of his reportage in the early 1980s by American China scholars, most notably E. Perry Link Jr. of UCLA. Fang was a noted figure to American scientists who worked with him during his 1986 research stint at Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study, among other places. Thus, Chinese leaders felt great pressure to be lenient with these two individuals. Wang, on the other hand, is less a household name to the general China-watcher; although this author has begun to introduce his views to an American audience, Wang’s critical essays and pungent wit have not been given much international exposure.

Wang’s great popularity in China and Hong Kong has protected him from any sort of punishment even mildly resembling the prosecution of the Cultural Revolution. He is living comfortably in Shanghai, free to speak with foreigners and to publish once again, although he must still resort to publishing anything of a political nature outside of China.

What follow are translated excerpts from a lengthy interview Wang recently granted to Chen Yige of the Nineties (a Hong Kong monthly magazine, December, 1988). Here, he dispenses with his usual humor and wit, choosing instead to spell out a no-nonsense critique of the Chinese political and economic scene of the 1980s. The excerpts focus on Wang’s view of the inevitable demise of the Chinese Communist Party and how the present government might even take a lesson from Mikhail S. Gorbachev. Does Wang advocate the demise of the Communist Party? One suspects not, but rather that he puts forth extreme views as a way to prod the Chinese leadership.

Wang Ruowang is now 71 years old. These excerpts suggest that the youthful Wang who poked vicious fun at the nationalist government of Chiang Kai-shek in the early 1930s is very much alive--in his own words, still “the naive” person he has always been, compelled to speak out despite the odds against him and his convictions.

For clarity, I have grouped these excerpts topically; the subtitles are my own.

The Advantages of Capitalist Democracies and the Hypocrisy of Socialism :

Capitalist political democracy is an intelligent and noble system. It has the function of regulating contradictions among different classes and it bestows upon each political party equal rights to free elections and free activities. Yet in socialist countries ruled by proletarian dictatorship, these superior features not only do not exist, they are perceived as reactionary and are summarily rejected.

The character of the Russian and later the Chinese Revolution was not actually proletarian at all. The proletariat in these two countries has not obtained any of the rights accorded to masters of one’s own country, since even the labor unions are run by the state.

Wherever the socialist model of state ownership has been implemented, people have become destitute and the nation backward. We must have the courage to discard this harmful model. Ready-made models are all around us . . . . All we have to do is let go of two premises: that the leadership of the Communist Party is infallible, and that socialism is wonderful.

The Party’s Road to Self-Destruction :

I think the Chinese Communist Party is in the process of accelerating its own decline. Perhaps it’s more accurate to say that it is in a crisis of being down on all fours, neither dead nor alive. There is a new concept, new for China, at least, that asks, “Why should a whole nation and a whole people die because of the degeneration and deterioration of one party?” In a multiparty nation, if a party has lost the support of the people, its organization disintegrates, but this does not affect the everyday political and economic workings of the country. The party doesn’t get elected and no longer participates in politics and that’s the end of it.

Looking back at the wounds left by Mao on modern Chinese history, one must agree that his series of perverse acts and policies paved the way for the death of the Chinese Communist Party. Even today, what we have is the implementation of the Maoist line without Mao Tse-tung. The regime won’t tamper with the Mao-era system of one-party, one-man rule.

One thing that people are very dissatisfied with is the fact that the party leaders can’t be trusted to tell the truth. They say one thing and do another. Take this year’s National Day editorial, for example. Recognizing how alienated they’ve become from the masses, the editorial was entitled “Our strength is in the masses.” On the very same day . . . the Public Security Bureau entered university and college campuses to set up police stations and permanent public-security organizations. This was a clear case of deeds betraying words.

The Problem with the Current Reform Strategy:

To regulate the economic environment without attempting to improve the old political system of one-party dictatorship is like walking on one leg, like sending an isolated force into enemy territory.

After five years of purging within the party ranks, there are still no results. Can corruption be conquered by relying on the Maoist practice of sending down work groups, survey groups, price investigators and the like? Making this a temporary task by ferreting out a few corrupt elements and making a big deal about nabbing one or two major cases and imposing heavy sentences on these few, while not dealing with serious corruption at the roots, only creates the following:

-- Loud thunder, small rain: things get better for a while, then spout up again as soon as the rain tapers off.

-- The bottom gets purged while the top is left alone; a few living targets are nabbed as an example, a few companies whose papers are not complete are decapitated while large powerful companies that perpetrate outrageous crimes go their merry way.

Honest advice is grating on the ears. I suspect that these words from the heart of an expelled former party figure will not sit well with the higher-ups. I would be forever grateful if only they do not censure me for inciting student demonstrations again.

In Reform, Learn From Gorbachev:

I think Gorbachev’s reform strategy is worth emulating. The Soviet Union is under a socialist system whose source is the same as our own. Its bureaucratic system of stagnant cadres, leader worship, extreme leftist thinking and corrupt perversions of the law are particularly deep-seated and are much more serious than our own.

The difficulties of Soviet reforms are much greater than China’s, and they began their reforms six to seven years later than ours. But Gorbachev . . . has clearly laid out the aims of reform and defined the unavoidable ideological struggles. Second, he is purging the top rather than the bottom . . . in stark contrast to our reforms, which have purged those below rather than those at the top--the feet rather than the head.

Third, Gorbachev is stressing political openness and encouraging public participation in policy-making and unrestrained criticism and discussion, relying first on intellectuals and granting large-scale freedom to previously shackled newspapers, television, film, literature and art.

Fourth, he is thoroughly repudiating Stalin’s wholesale murder of Bolsheviks and rehabilitating all wronged victims.

China, too, has rehabilitated the unjustly accused. This good deed cannot be overlooked. But at the same time, we protect the very instigators of these trumped up cases and we do not punish the inhumane accomplices who helped fabricate them to begin with. This perpetrates the impression that bad people are, as always, in the right, and human-rights abuses are nothing to be ashamed of.