Seeking Truth About China: ‘Am I Corrupted or Enlightened by the West?’

I remember the bewildered look on the face of my journalist friend who had just come back from covering the bloody massacre in China when I asked her, “Were you telling the truth?” I was grateful when my friend soon figured out that my real question was, “What is the truth?”

It might seem strange to people who are brought up in a world where access to daily events is taken for granted that I should doubt the truthfulness of news reports on such events. But to me, the true-false judgment seems a naturally endless process whenever it comes to political news, let alone such unbelievable news, about China.

During the time of the democracy demonstrations and the cruel killings, I was weeping for my freedom-fighting brothers and sisters on one hand, while trying on the other to understand the Chinese government’s justification, hoping what it said was true. Each day I had American reporters tell me how hundreds, perhaps thousands, of my innocent countrymen were being killed, whereas I read in the official Chinese newspaper that it was only the ruffians, not the students, who died in the “necessary suppression,” and that Western reporters were distorting the facts to “serve their own interests.” I found my heart torn in opposite directions.

Being bombarded with completely different stories was not all that I had to deal with. From my childhood, I had been taught to love the Communist Party and the People’s Liberation Army. My father is a veteran party member. Both my parents started to work for the party when they were teen-agers, and have been loyal even though they suffered a great deal during the Cultural Revolution. How could I imagine that the government led by the party would use lethal force against unarmed, peaceful demonstrators? How could I believe that the People’s Liberation Army would shoot at the people?

If it is hard to swallow the bitter tears, the fact that I could not find out the real situation from those at home was more painful. In the miserably few letters they sent me, relatives and friends ignored, if not avoided, the topic, or warned me not to listen to the Western side of the story--the “distortion.” “Don’t we who are around know better than the foreigners?” they argued. How can I not ponder the question when it comes from someone whom I’ve always trusted?

Yet there is the possibility that they might not, and will never, know better than the foreigners.

For example, during the 1976 “April 5th Movement” in Tian An Men Square, thousands of people tried to express their anti-government sentiment by gathering to mourn the death of former Premier Chou En-lai. Many were beaten and arrested for speaking in support of Deng Xiaoping, who was at the time labeled “counterrevolutionary,” although it was he who ordered the present crackdown. Even those on the spot in 1976 did not know how many of their co-fighters disappeared, let alone the general public in the huge land. It was only through foreigners that some of us knew of the arrests.

In China, news about “top affairs” that might bring disrespect to the leaders or “disorder” to the country is usually spread through “street rumors” or foreign sources such as the Voice of America and the BBC. The street rumors usually are heard only in Beijing. The VOA and BBC are accessible to less than 10% of the population, but may reach less than that because many are afraid to listen to them openly. Fresh are memories of groups of us students gathering on top of classroom buildings, where radio signals were reasonably clear, to listen to foreign news reports.

The mistrust I have of myself is something else I have to fight, after being brought up to self-criticize any “wrong way of thinking.” Sometimes I am not sure whether I’m “politically corrupted,” as some Chinese officials accuse us of being, or “politically enlightened” by a Western education, when my way of thinking no longer conforms to what it is supposed to be. After being in the United States for three years, I’ve developed a distaste and cynicism for the Chinese “political thoughts” that I used to take for granted. However, I subconsciously examine myself, trying not to be “misled” by bourgeois and capitalist ideas. The tug of war in my mind will probably continue, at least until the pull of my background and experience loosen.