The Party’s Interests Come First

I saw a review of this book in the Economist. It looked interesting and I decided to start reading this.

This is actually an autobiography about Xi Zhongxun, the father of the current Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jing Pin, and the early days of the Chinese Communist Party, written by Joseph Torigian.

I am still in the very early stages in the book but just some initial thoughts. The father was himself a high ranking CCP member. He staunchly believed in communism and started his activities very early on. By 14, he was already in prison for an attempted murder. It struck me how family ties mean very little to them. His father died of a broken heart when his son was sent to prison at such a young age. Yet that seems to have made no impact on him.

Friendship also means nothing to these party members as they are constantly plotting against each other and ratting each one out to gain influence and position for themselves. In fact friendship is discouraged as the party was worried that when they were together as friends, they will speak bad things about the party.

China seems to have been in a state of total chaos in the 1930s and 1940s. Each different region was governed by warlords, bandits, the Nationalistic Party and the Communist Party and each group was killing off the other, including innocent people. No wonder the Japanese went into China so easily. China at that time appears to have been a lawless country with many people having no food most of the time.

As for the Communist Party, there was constant infighting amongst the members, each one trying to outdo the other in proving how pure they are in their thoughts. There are constant purges and the leaders were forcing members to spend a minimum of 2 hours a day studying thoughts and principles to purify their thoughts and minds. There was a constant fear of spies and traitors in their ranks although they were themselves constantly sending their members out to be spies for them. The senior party members were often accusing people of being spies or not being pure in their thoughts and were then forcing them to reflect, repent and confess. So many innocent people confessed to false facts to just get out of this exercise of reflection and repentance. The party leaders were the ones to decide if your confessions are sufficiently sincere for this torture of reflection and repentance to end.

So strange. I wonder how much things have changed since then?