Xiaoping, ni hao!
Jochnowitz, George
I had the pleasure to be a foreign expert at Hebei University in 1984. The opportunity to live in Baoding, to get to know a city I had never even heard of, and to meet Chinese teachers and...
...A beaver works very hard, but he cannot create wealth...
...they are a necessity...
...You have not made the state less threatening...
...There are neighborhood committees to make sure that government control extends to every aspect of life...
...The Chinese insist that this period had no philosophical or political underpinning...
...Billboards with political slogans still are found everywhere...
...If I were to speak to him I would say: Xiaoping, ni hao: (Dear Xiaoping:) You, more than anyone else, have been trying to create a China that will not be plagued by the disorder and destruction of a second Cultural Revolution...
...Perhaps there will one day be a Marxist state that is not brutal...
...169 China has no established, orderly way to change governments...
...But there is a step you have not as yet taken...
...Mao created and institutionalized instability...
...It soon became clear that what I was hearing was not only the heartfelt sentiment of those telling me their histories but also the official position of the Chinese government...
...That is why I am so concerned that you succeed in your efforts to make China a place where people will "seek truth from facts...
...The danger is not so much the people at the top as it is the structure itself—a structure that was designed to control not only acts but thought...
...Yet today, everyone in China maintains that it was nothing more than the personal mistake of a single man...
...They were generally quite bad, not because of the students' failings, but because there were two major gaps in their education: they had not been taught how to do research and they had never learned how to talk about literature...
...As far as I can make out, the official policy on this question is that Mao was indeed responsible for all the bad things that happened in China between 1966 and 1976, but that Mao was nevertheless a great leader who should he admired for the success of his revolution...
...THE GANG OF FOUR IS OFFICIALLY BLAMED for all the bad things that took place during this period...
...I was at first surprised that Chinese citizens felt free to speak with such emotion about something 167 that had happened to them after Liberation, as everyone calls the revolution of 1949...
...And the fonder I grew of the Chinese people, the more negative I became about the country's political structure...
...The apparatus of political education still exists...
...That is the 168 result of our revolution...
...There certainly are Americans— not very many, but one can find them—who think the Cultural Revolution was a good idea...
...But there was one aspect of my experience that left a negative impression...
...The only way the Gang of Four could be smashed was by their arrest...
...It was Chairman Mao himself...
...But we could offer something in addition to our sympathy—security...
...Or take a chance and send us your article...
...But education in China is not designed to produce researchers, outside of science, or thinkers...
...America is not quite capitalist, nor is China entirely communist...
...The fact that this statement appeared in People's Daily is one of the most encouraging pieces of news I have seen in recent times...
...His regime was stable in only one way—its longevity...
...Sooner or later the officials you have appointed will themselves retire...
...And that is why I worry when Chinese people tell me that the Cultural Revolution was an aberration...
...5) We're usually quick in giving editorial decisions...
...But what China needs more than anything else is good political critics...
...On two separate occasions, and in two very different places, total strangers approached us on trains...
...We would never use their words against them...
...Check all your figures, dates, names, etc.—they're the author's responsibility...
...The longer I stayed there, the more I grew to love the country and the people...
...Young teachers told us that when they were students in Hebei University, the food in the student dining rooms was neither as good nor as plentiful as now...
...Even if this no longer occurs, it remains a threat—it may happen again, and the words one utters today may be dangerous in the future...
...The experience of being in China and hearing about nightmare after nightmare reminded me of being in Israel, where so many people have personally survived the Holocaust...
...Quoting a news item in the previous day's People's Daily, it said, among other things, "Marxist theory should be studied as a science rather than a religion...
...A remarkable story appeared in the October 23, 1985, issue of the English-language China Daily...
...6) Please bear with us—we have accumulated quite a backlog of material, and you may have to wait for a few issues before you see your article in print...
...That is an extraordinary development...
...Before I set foot in the People's Republic of China, I had negative views about China's political system, which I considered totalitarian...
...The thought that ideological turmoil might one day return to China is as troubling to me as if I were Chinese myself...
...The students were plainly embarrassed by my question, and finally one young woman said, "Oh, no...
...If there is, you, Xiaoping, will have played a part in its creation...
...It is a trait that added to the pleasure of my life there...
...If there's a delay, it's because a few editors are reading your article...
...The foreign language department at Hebei University has its academic deans, its administrators, and its party deans...
...They have lost the habit of thinking about basic political questions...
...The Chinese no longer know how to ask political questions...
...To Our Contributors: A few suggestions: (1) Be sure to keep a copy of your ms—the mails aren't always reliable...
...To the extent that these do not exist, education is limited, even thwarted...
...Once someone asked me directly, "Is it true that in America friendships exist only for economic reasons...
...Both of these men wanted very much our sympathetic understanding...
...The opportunity to live in Baoding, to get to know a city I had never even heard of, and to meet Chinese teachers and students was an experience I shall treasure forever...
...To begin with, the question implied that citizens of capitalist countries are somehow less than human—that one must be a communist to enjoy something so basic as friendship...
...But my very presence in China was an example of the biggest change of all...
...If a whole nation persists in thinking that the Cultural Revolution was in no way the result of China's political philosophy, then that whole nation is suffering from brain damage...
...No doubt China can afford to live without good literary critics...
...A brain-damaged nation can never be prosperous because it can never be fully educated...
...2) Please don't write to ask whether we're interested in such and such an article—it makes for useless correspondence...
...it is another home...
...The party's hand is everywhere...
...I don't know whether Chinese people today can get into trouble if their friends or relatives report them to the authorities for expressing negative views of communism or of the party...
...The brain damage is being perpetuated, and the danger of another outbreak of ideological fanaticism remains...
...Friends pointed to the wheat growing in the fields east of the city and told us that before the recent agricultural reforms, wheat did not grow so tall, nor did fields look so beautiful...
...This did not happen because I learned so many bad things about China's government while I was there...
...Whether or not this is indeed what Chinese people are supposed to think, it seemed to me that it is what they do in fact think...
...I was offended...
...On the contrary, I discovered more positive features than I had ever expected to find...
...Once, while teaching my Introduction to Linguistics course, during a discussion of euphemism and taboo, I asked my students whether Gang of Four was a euphemism for Chairman Mao...
...And now another man guides the country...
...Today China is undertaking bold new policies without much concern about their ideological content...
...And please remember that we can't return articles unless they're accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed envelope...
...If China had free speech, one could find Chinese with similar opinions...
...Hostile statements about the state are not a threat...
...Most of the people I got to know well at Hebei University sooner or later told me a Cultural Revolution horror story, usually a personal one or one involving an immediate relative...
...If Marxism is to be considered a science and not a religion, it must then be subject to scientific scrutiny and dispassionate evaluation...
...China was opening up, no longer afraid to let foreign experts teach its students...
...My bad feelings about China's system increased while I was in China because the totalitarianism was no longer an abstraction—it was happening to my friends...
...Thirty-six years of controlling thought has taken its toll...
...He had been waiting for the opportunity to meet some anonymous foreigners, who had never seen him before and never would again...
...The difference between communism and capitalism is really not a very important one...
...In 1966, everyone in China said that the Cultural Revolution was a practical application of Marxist theory...
...China is structured so as to enforce another reign of terror...
...The most important task in China today is to build socialism with distinct Chinese characteristics, and a high degree of civilization and democracy...
...THE EDITORS 170...
...As we're not an academic journal, we prefer that they, wherever possible, be dropped altogether or worked into the text...
...3) Type your ms double-spaced, with wide margins...
...I wish you a long, healthy, successful life...
...But China persists in teaching its children that nothing matters but ideology...
...The press must have an adversary relationship with the government...
...That is why China is working to achieve the Four Modernizations: agriculture, industry, science and technology, and national defense...
...Look at our last few issues to see if your idea fits in...
...These were good students...
...Instability has been a chronic problem...
...What I never came across was a person who thought something good might have come from the Cultural Revolution...
...When I taught at Hebei University, I was very favorably impressed with the brightness and industry of my students...
...Although I will grant that there is indeed nothing positive to be said about that tragic decade, there must be someone somewhere in China who is still in favor of Mao's policies...
...For a political system to be strong and stable, criticism must be built into it...
...every work unit in China has its professional leaders and its party leaders...
...Third, in China friend turned against friend, child against parent, husband against wife when the party demanded it...
...Only freedom can lead to progress, because progress needs free thought in order to exist...
...Do you see that rudeness...
...he believed, as most people in China seem to, that human beings are kinder and less selfish in a communist society...
...No one today has any idea who will replace them...
...College students still take courses in Marxism every semester...
...4) Notes and footnotes should also be typed double-spaced, on a separate sheet...
...People in China speak eagerly and freely to foreigners...
...If such a thing were to happen, China would for the first time in its history become a free country...
...The brain, like a muscle, needs to be exercised or it will atrophy...
...I directed fourteen senior theses on various British and American novels...
...Since China is a country I have lived in, it is not merely another place to me...
...He wanted to tell us about all the bad things that had happened to him...
...If victims are once again marched through the streets wearing signs and dunce caps, they will not be strangers but people I know and love...
...So does every other department...
...The changes dated from 1976, when Mao died and the Cultural Revolution ended...
...He lacks imagination and originality, those essentially human qualities...
...The quantity of labor is a minor factor...
...The nature of the horrors in question is quite different...
...Education depends in turn on freedom of inquiry and access to information...
...Fourth and most important, the question showed that its asker had been deliberately and successfully misinformed...
...Outside of class, it was not at all unusual to hear Mao blamed for what had happened...
...At the same time, I am grieved by the resignation of Hu Yaobang, whose voice was the boldest and liveliest among China's leaders...
...Even before I went to Hebei University, I was an admirer of Chinese culture...
...He who does not learn from history is condemned to repeat it...
...China fears that literary critics will turn into political critics...
...But a fifth modernization—education— is the key to the other four...
...The more a nation tolerates and even encourages dissent, the stronger it is...
...I had not known to what extent China was changing until I learned it from my colleagues and students in Baoding...
...Their stories were still a novelty to us, and were no doubt boring to other Chinese...
...But the distinction between totalitarianism and freedom is essential...
...But the student demonstrations that began in December of 1986 show that in spite of everything, thought can triumph over dogmatism...
...This sounded a bit unlikely, but upon my return to the United States, I read in newspapers that in 1984 China produced more wheat than ever before in history...
...The right to criticize officials or policy in China still has not real content, since one may not criticize anything basic...
...Changing leaders is not enough...
...the experience of a country where so many people have lived through something so terrible is the same...
...The source of wealth is not labor but intelligence...
...The first one initiated a conversation by pointing to a slightly disorderly scene of people shoving to get better seats on the train...
...That is true...
...And only freedom can lead to internal harmony, because a free society is not endangered by dissent...
...After all, there had been no Gang of Four in 1966...
...Second, friendships in China may indeed be cultivated so that one can get in through the "back door" (hou mer...
...But the embarrassment, I think, was simply created by the classroom situation...
...The second stranger began by saying, "It wasn't the Gang of Four...
...When dogma clashes with fact, dogma wins...
...The people I met in China include some of the best friends I have in the world...
...he asked in English...
...He did not say "Cultural Revolution...
...I am amazed and delighted by the reforms you have initiated...
...its quality is what is important...
...I wondered whether China had free speech...
...The Chinese people are not simply afraid...
...No ONE IN CHINA EVER SUGGESTED TO ME THAT THE Cultural Revolution had anything to do with the ideology of the state...
...In fact, it sometimes seemed that conversations with foreigners were more open than among the Chinese themselves...
Vol. 34 • April 1987 • No. 2
