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UNITED NATIONS -- Amid the military parades, the slogans, and the pageantry of a dutifully marching proletariat, the People's Republic of China, the world's largest dictatorship celebrated a half century in power. Though Mao's proclamation of the People's Republic in Tiananmen Square fifty years ago has faded into history, the spirits of millions murdered by the PRC communists still haunts the land.
When Mao's communists captured the mainland in 1949, China was reeling from external aggression, famine, and civil war. From 1931 to 1945 she was dismembered and bludgeoned by Imperial Japan; from 1945 to 1949 a ruthless civil war between the ruling Nationalists and the communists ravaged the land. The China inherited by Mao and his minions in 1949 was soon forced into the socialist cookie mold of stark ideological conformity and cultural leveling.
Perpetual purges, political mobilizations and pogroms by the regime took their sanguinary toll; a minimum of 35 million Chinese perished on the altar of PRC rule.
The Economist of London stressed editorially, "Never before in the annals of human history has so much harm been done to so many, with so little remorse. Such has been the toll of the past fifty years of communist rule in China, being `celebrated' in Beijing."
To say that the PRC dictatorship pursued a ghastly and grisly record seems a gentle understatement; the millions murdered directly or indirectly through famine and forced labor camps are usually not part of the sanitized story dutifully recited about People's China's accomplishments "since liberation in 1949." Nor is there much mention of the appalling environmental disaster still proceeding apace across the land.
Instead, many foreign observers while sheepishly confronting the past carnage, then quickly speed up to extol the glorious accomplishments of PRC. Saying that the PRC brought "a new pride to China who during a century of humiliation at the hands of the colonial powers..." is a slogan recited like a Greek chorus. While this may be partially true, one recalls that dictators do--in the short run--rekindle a chauvinistic pride among their subjects--at a price. The cult of Mao infused some Chinese with a patriotic pride later submerged in an irrational tyranny.
The initial pride felt by many Italians and Germans in the early years of Il Duce and Der Fuehrer were soon buried in rubble and swept aside by the generations of guilt following the war.
Twenty years ago, faced with moribund economy and stagnant agricultural production, the PRC's new supremo Deng Xiaoping had no choice but to shelve ideology and allow a bold reform economic reform process. The experiment succeeded beyond anyone's wildest dreams given the hardwork and perseverance of the Chinese people.
Today foreign business executives frolic with the Marxist mandarins of the Forbidden city, egged on by tantalizing expectations of superlative "deals" with wealth generated from the sweat of this socialist state. The chasm between modernizing market reforms and the PRC's atrophied one-party political system seems to be widening.
As the PRC Dynasty celebrates a half century in power, a short interlude in China's vast expanse of history, Beijing's rulers looks warily to the people they claim to represent. President Jiang Zemin's leadership stresses social stability above all else. Free discussion, dissent or democracy are presented as disharmonious luxuries.
The Dragon Throne of the PRC Dynasty straddles the gulf between static socialist stability and evolving political liberalization's. On this balance will hinge Jiang's fate and indeed China's.
John J. Metzler is a U.N. correspondent covering diplomatic and defense issues who writes weekly for World Tribune.com.
