W8 | January 22–28, 2016
EPOCH WEEKEND
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» BRINGING PEACEFUL CHANGE TO CHINA
In November 2004 Epoch Times published the award-winning editorial
series “Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party.” The book provides
an uncensored history documenting the lies and violence the Chinese
Communist Party has used to gain and hold power. This publication has
sparked the most significant grass-roots campaign China has ever seen.
So far over 220 million Chinese have come forward, eager to dissociate
themselves from a regime that has destroyed so many lives. Volunteers
working for the Global Service Center for Quitting the Chinese Communist
Party assist Chinese people in submitting statements in person, by mail,
fax, phone, or email renouncing their association with the CCP and its
affiliated organizations, the Chinese Youth League and Young Pioneers.
Over 700 million Chinese are estimated to have been members of at least
one of these organizations at some time. By renouncing the CCP, Chinese
are aiming at peacefully transforming their troubled nation. Below, we
provide a serialized excerpt from the “Nine Commentaries.”
» A FREE CHINA
225,579,968 Chinese people have quit their association with the
Chinese Communist Party and related organizations.
NineCommentaries.com
Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party
Commentary Seven
The Chinese military displays its equipment during a military parade at Tiananmen Square in Beijing on Sept. 3, 2015. Author and filmmaker
Peter Navarro warns that China may be on the path to war.
China May Be on the Path to War,
Author-Filmmaker Warns
By Joshua Philipp
Epoch Times Staff
COURTESY OF PETER NAVARRO
COURTESY OF PETER NAVARRO
Peter Navarro, author of “Crouching Tiger.” Navarro points to the
circumstances surrounding World
War I and says trade will not protect countries from war.
The cover of “Crouching Tiger,” a
new book from author and filmmaker Peter Navarro.
national Studies, said in the
documentary that she often
calls China “the autistic power,”
as it “just does not seem capable of understanding how its
behavior really scares the rest of
the region.”
For the United States, the
problems with China are also
becoming too numerous for policymakers to ignore—whether
it’s the Chinese regime robbing
U.S. companies with cyberattacks, its takeover of disputed
waters in the South China Sea,
or its use of nefarious methods
to prop up its economy.
“I wouldn’t like to alarm everyone by saying we’re at war
with China, but we certainly
have profound differences,
which they’re prepared to settle
by force,” Stefan Halper, director of American Studies at the
Department of Politics at the
University of Cambridge, says
in the documentary “Crouching Tiger.”
The world is at the crossroads
of how to address these issues,
and Navarro hopes that by presenting historical examples and
detailing the broader picture of
the Chinese regime’s militarization, he can help better educate
the public on what is otherwise
a complex topic.
“My hope in the short term
for the book is that it will be
the handbook for the presidential candidates on an issue that
should be among the top 1, 2, or
3 issues in the presidential campaign,” Navarro said.
In “Crouching Tiger” Navarro
leads readers along an investigation—presenting them with
questions to ask, then showing
them facts that would allow
them to draw their own conclusions.
He also took time to interview
more than 30 of the top experts
on Chinese military issues,
and managed to condense
their analysis into a digestible
package.
In just 300 pages, Navarro
gives a near complete picture
of Chinese militarization and
the deeper ambitions behind
its developments. He has presented in an entertaining way,
and in simple terms, information that would otherwise take
several years to gather and
grasp—and gives a broad picture of Chinese militarization
that is otherwise understood by
only a small handful of experts.
F
or most of Europe, war
seemed ridiculous at the
turn of the 20th century. It was in the budding era
of globalization, and Europe
controlled close to two-thirds
of global trade. It hadn’t seen
a continentwide war for nearly
100 years, since the days of
Napoleon.
Yet, one of the great jokes
that history plays is that everything seems obvious in retrospect. Behind the industrialization and emergence of a global
industry, the gears of politics
and competition were still turning as they always had.
Despite the fact that Great
Britain and Germany were
among the world’s top trading partners at the time, to the
surprise of many, the first world
war—one of the worst wars the
world has ever witnessed—
erupted on July 28, 1914.
Author and filmmaker Peter
Navarro fears that the world
may again be heading in this
direction—again in a new era
of globalization, and again
between two of the world’s largest trading partners.
In his new book, “Crouching
Tiger,” and an accompanying
documentary film series, Navarro tries to answer the question
of “Will there be a war between
the United States and China?”
“That’s the mystery we’re trying to solve,” Navarro said in a
phone interview. “But the reason we’re trying to solve that
mystery is so we can come up
with at least one possible answer
that avoids conflict.”
“Yes, they are our largest trading partner,” he said, yet added
that we can’t think that trade
will protect us from conflict.
“That was the exact philosophy
that got us into World War I.”
An Uncertain Future
There are many powder kegs
that could ignite a serious conflict with China, which Navarro
details in his book.
With its push to control disputed waters in the South and
East China Seas, China has
sparked conflicts with countries including Japan, Vietnam,
and the Philippines. It is now
threatening war against Taiwan, over the newly elected Taiwanese president who opposes
Chinese influence. And China’s
relations with North Korea are
rapidly deteriorating.
Bonnie Glaser, director of
the China Power Project at the
Center for Strategic and Inter-
Navarro holds
that defense
shouldn’t be
looked at just in
terms of military
power.
“What I’m trying to do is
show the links between all
these things, and how they’re
all related,” he said, noting “You
can’t treat those things in an isolated basis.”
Beyond Business
You may be familiar with Navarro’s work. He’s the author of
“Death by China,” and directed
a film by the same name, both
of which analyze unfair trade
practices by China, and their
effects on the United States.
Through methods including currency manipulation
and ignoring free trade agreements, Navarro said the Chinese regime has shut down close
to 50,000 U.S. factories and put
Americans on the unemployment line. But the economic
issue, he notes, can’t be viewed
separately from China’s military ambitions.
“In order for this country
to defend itself, and to help its
allies, it needs to have a strong
ecnomy to generate the tax revenues it needs to build the military it needs, and a manufacturing base for the shipyards
to actually build the systems,”
he said.
“The economic warfare
against the United States of
America by China has led to a
decreasing ability for us to do
what we need to do on the military side,” he said.
He added, “At the same time
we’ve been weakening, the
Chinese economy has been
strengthening—and they’re
pouring this money into their
military.”
The nature of the weapons
the Chinese regime is building
is also of particular concern,
since as Navarro notes in his
book, many of the weapons are
designed specifically to fight the
strengths of the U.S. military.
Among these are its buildup of
anti-ship ballistic missiles, and
its development of anti-satellite
weaponry.
Navarro holds that defense
shouldn’t be looked at just in
terms of military power, and
noted that many strategic problems with China cascade into
other fields.
“American forces are not in
Asia simply to protect allies or
for a moral crusade,” he said,
noting the Asia Pivot strategy,
which has increased U.S. presence in the region. “It’s for our
economic interest.”
Yet if the United States were
to pull away from Asia—as
many experts believe the Chinese regime is pushing for—he
said it’s likely Japan and South
Korea would arm themselves
with nuclear weapons, and the
region would fall into instability.
“You quickly come to the conclusion we need to be there for
economic and strategic reasons,” he said.
“Great nations are not strong
because of just their military—
it’s their economy, their education system, their ability to
innovate, and the ability of their
political system to provide solutions rather than gridlock,”
he said.
And looming over it all,
is a question that John
Mearsheimer, a professor at
University of Chicago, said in
the documentary is “simple and
profound.”
“Can China rise peacefully?”
Mearsheimer asks. “My answer
is ‘No.’”
On the Chinese Communist Party’s History
of Killing
Killing has become one of the most essential ways for the CCP to
maintain power. With the escalation of its bloody debts, laying down
its butcher knife would encourage people to take vengeance for the
CCP’s criminal acts.
Therefore, the CCP not only needed to conduct copious and thorough killing, but the slaughter also had to be done in a most brutal
fashion to intimidate the populace effectively, especially early on, when
the CCP was establishing its rule.
Since the purpose of the killing was to instill the greatest terror, the
CCP selected targets for destruction arbitrarily and irrationally. In every
political movement, the CCP used the strategy of genocide. Take the
Suppression of the Counter-Revolutionary Movement as an example.
The CCP did not really suppress the reactionary behaviors, but the
people whom they called the counter-revolutionaries. If one had been
enlisted and served a few days in the KMT Army but did absolutely
nothing political after the CCP gained power, this person would still
be killed because of his “reactionary history.” In the process of land
reform, in order to remove the “root of the problem,” the CCP often
killed a landowner’s entire family.
Since 1949, the CCP has persecuted more than half the people in
China. An estimated 60 million to 80 million people died from unnatural causes. This number exceeds the total number of deaths in both
world wars combined.
As with other communist countries, the wanton killing done by
the CCP also includes brutal slayings of its own members in order to
remove dissidents who value a sense of humanity over the Party nature.
The CCP’s rule of terror falls equally on the populace and its members
in an attempt to maintain an “invincible fortress.”
In a normal society, people show care and love for one another, hold
life in awe and veneration, and give thanks to God. In the East, people say, “Do not impose on others what you would not want done to
yourself.” i In the West, people say, “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” ii
Conversely, the CCP holds that “The history of all hitherto existing
society is the history of class struggles.” iii In order to keep alive the
“struggles” within society, hatred must be generated. Not only does
the CCP take lives, it encourages people to kill each other.
It strives to desensitize people toward others’ suffering by surrounding them with constant killing. It wants them to become numb from
frequent exposure to inhumane brutality and develop the mentality
that the best you can hope for is to avoid being persecuted. All these lessons taught by brutal suppression enable the CCP to maintain its rule.
In addition to the destruction of countless lives, the CCP also
destroyed the soul of the Chinese people. A great many people have
become conditioned to react to the CCP’s threats by entirely surrendering their reason and their principles. In a sense, these people’s souls
have died—something more frightening than physical death.
I. Horrendous Massacre
Before the CCP was in power, Mao Zedong wrote, “We definitely do not apply a policy of benevolence to the counter-revolutionaries and towards the reactionary activities of the reactionary classes.” iv
In other words, even before the CCP took over Beijing, it had already
made up its mind to act tyrannically under the euphemism of the
People’s Democratic Dictatorship. The following are a few examples.
Suppression of the Counter Revolutionaries
and Land Reform
In March 1950, the CCP announced “Orders to Strictly Suppress Reactionary Elements,” which is historically known as
the movement of Suppression of the Counter-Revolutionaries.
Unlike all the emperors who granted amnesty to the entire country
after they were crowned, the CCP started killing the minute it gained
power. Mao Zedong said in a document, “There are still many places
where people are intimidated and dare not kill the counter-revolutionaries openly on a large scale.” v
In February 1951, the central CCP said that except for Zhejiang Province and southern Anhui Province, “other areas which are not killing enough, especially in the large and mid-sized cities, should continue to arrest and kill a large number and should not stop too soon.”
Mao even recommended, “In rural areas, to kill the counter-revolutionaries, there should be over one thousandth of the total population
killed. … In the cities, it should be less than one thousandth.” vi The
population of China at that time was approximately 600 million, and
this “royal order” from Mao would have caused at least 600,000 deaths.
Nobody knows where this ratio of one-thousandth came from. Perhaps, on a whim, Mao decided these 600,000 lives should be enough
to lay the foundation for creating fear among the people, and thus
ordered it to happen.
See next week’s edition for the next installment.
i
“The Analects of Confucius.”
ii
“Leviticus 19:18.”
iii Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, “The Communist Manifesto” (1848).
iv Mao Zedong, “The People’s Democratic Dictatorship” (1949).
v
Mao Zedong, “We Must Fully Promote [the Suppression of Counter-Revolutionaries] So Every Family Is Informed” (1951).
vi Mao Zedong, “We Must Forcefully and Accurately Strike the Counter-Revolutionaries” (1951).