OTHER COMMENTARY / EXCERPTS : Get Tougher on China? : HENDRIK HERTZBERG

In China, 40 years of Communist propaganda have had an unintended effect. In the “People’s Republic,” everything was the “People’s this . . . “ and the “People’s that . . . “ Every horror (and every gain) was carried out in the name of the people. What the Communists hoped was what George Orwell feared: that the words would change their meaning, that the language itself would become the slave of the state.

But the words did not change their meaning. What happened instead was the destruction of any basis for legitimacy other than popular sovereignty. The noble words gave birth to the noble crowd. The words the party-state used to buttress its authority have become, thanks to its own actions, its mortal enemy; and the party-state has nothing to substitute for those words. That is why, even beyond the economic consequences of their brutality, China’s shadowy rulers will ultimately prove to have destroyed themselves.