BANNEDTHOUGHT.NET
Restrictions of Freedom of Speech in China, and
Suppressed Documents About China, Past and Present
China is a country that has very strong restrictions on the freedom of speech, especially with regard to revolutionary ideas. With the overthrow of people’s power after the death of Mao Zedong, China became a bourgeois state. There are two main types of bourgeois state: bourgeois democracy and fascism. China is definitely not a bourgeois democracy! However, it is also not quite a fascist state of the Nazi type, but rather what might be called “soft fascism”. That is, the people are mostly not persecuted unless and until they do anything to try to change the social system. No publications are allowed which try to educate and organize the people in the necessity of retaking power from the new bourgeoisie. The Internet is severely censored, as are foreign publications, films, etc. Even mild reformist criticism of the ruling class and its policies is usually suppressed. Moreover, the Chinese rulers also try to prevent information about injustices in China from being made known in other countries.
In dealing with a country so devoid of a free press and free communications as China, it is hard for BANNEDTHOUGHT.NET to even know where to start. We will simply have to post news of specific outrages, big or small, as we learn of them. We will also attempt to post information about social struggles and rebellions of the Chinese masses; about the beginning developments of a new Maoist revolutionary sentiment in China; and about the development of Chinese capitalism into a new imperialist power.
Contact us at: freespeech@bannedthought.net
Suppression of News and Ideas in China
- “China’s Defiance Stirs Fears for Missing Dissident”, New York Times, Feb. 3, 2010, 3 pages. About the arrest and disappearance of human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng. PDF Version (142 KB); MS Word (47 KB)
- “Google, Citing Attack, Threatens to Exit China”, New York Times, Jan. 13, 2010, 3 pages. PDF Version (137 KB); MS Word (47 KB)
- “Furious Google Throws Down Gauntlet to China Over Censorship”, Ars Technica, Jan. 12, 2010, 4 pages. PDF Version (325 KB); MS Word (247 KB)
- “Trial in China Signals New Limits on Dissent”, New York Times, Dec. 24, 2009, 3 pages. About the trial of Liu Xiaobo, an advocate of bourgeois democracy. PDF Version (153 KB); MS Word (45 KB) [A follow-up NY Times article reporting the harsh 11-year sentence handed down by the court is available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/25/world/asia/25china.html?th&emc=th.]
- “Filmmakers Barred From Chinese Festival”, New York Times, Sept. 2, 2009. PDF Version (121 KB); MS Word (33 KB)
Chinese Capitalism and Developing Imperialism
“The Rise of China and Its Implications”, by Fred Engst, University of International Business and Economics, Beijing. This is the edited and approved version of this important essay, parts of which were presented at the ILPS 4th International Assembly in the Philippines on July 9, 2011. 15 pages. PDF Version (204 KB); MS Word Version (60 KB)
- “China’s ‘State Capitalism’ Sparks a Global Backlash”, Wall Street Journal, Nov. 16, 2010, 7 pages. PDF Version (284 KB); MS Word Version (972 KB)
- “Chinese Military Seeks to Extend Its Naval Power”, New York Times, April 23, 2010, 5 pages. PDF Version (211 KB); MS Word Version (481 KB)
- “China Emerges as a Major Exporter of Capital”, by John Chan, World Socialist Web Site, May 19, 2009, 3 pages. [Note: While this article is from a Trotskyist publication, it seems accurate and quite useful to us.] PDF Version (191 KB); MS Word Version (38 KB)
- “China-India Maritime Rivalry”, by Cdr. Gurpreet S. Khurana, Indian Defence Review, Oct.-Dec. 2009, 8 pages. PDF Version (369 KB); MS Word Version (90 KB)
- “The Realities of China Today”, by Martin Hart-Lansberg, Against the Current, #137, Nov.-Dec. 2008, 15 pages. Though the author is not a Maoist, and makes at least one very unsupported and unjustified criticism of Maoist economic policies, overall this article strongly debunks the notions of some people on the “left” today that China is still a socialist country, or that it at least is supposedly advancing the welfare of the Chinese masses. It shows that nothing could be further from the truth! PDF Version (183 KB); MS Word Version (81 KB)
Mass Struggles in China
- “Workers, Police Clash in China’s Yanan; 100 Injured”, Hong Kong Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy (via BBC), May 7, 2010, 2 pages. PDF Version (65 KB); MS Word (29 KB)
- “They’re Not Going to Take It: China’s women, facing pervasive discrimination, decide to fight for their rights”, Newsweek, Aug. 1, 2009, 3 pages. PDF Version (161 KB); MS Word (39 KB)
- “Chinese Workers Beat Manager to Death; Farmers Block Highway”, Asia News, July 27, 2009. PDF Version (131 KB); MS Word (29 KB)
- “A New Revolution? Chinese Working Classes Confront Globalized Economy”, by Robert Weil. Policy Brief, Summer 2006. http://www.oaklandinstitute.org/?q=node/view/371
Pro-Maoist Sentiment in Contemporary China
- “Yu Quan-yu, A Truly Unforgettable Committed Revolutionary in Our Era”, by Li Zhen-cheng. A remembrance of a Maoist revolutionary who was falsely labeled as a “rightist” back in the 1950s, but who remained a revolutionary nevertheless. In both Chinese and English translation. Aug. 17, 2010, 11 pages. PDF Version (763 KB); MS Word Version (52 KB)
- “A Memorial Meeting for Chairman Mao and Other Martyrs”, at Luoyang City, Henan Province. Posted on the “Utopia” website (www.wyzxsx.com) on April 14, 2010. Includes a link to the video of the original memorial speech in Chinese. PDF Version (133 KB); MS Word Version (30 KB)
- “Economic Bust is Big Boom for Mao”, an article in the Toronto Star about the Utopia Bookshop in Beijing, a center for Maoist books and magazines. March 25, 2009, 4 pages. PDF Version (115 KB); MS Word Version (95 KB)
- “Some Thoughts Regarding Our Future Revolution, by a Revolutionary Old Guard”, by Wei Wei, 5 pages. This article was distributed on the Maoist Revolution email list in the U.S. on Nov. 9, 2008, along with the notice that it was translated from Chinese from the www.hongqiwang.com web site. The author seems to take a fairly strong nationalist line, and views the current regime as that of a bureaucrat and comprador bourgeoisie (rather than a national bourgeoisie). But he also is a strong supporter of Paris Commune style democracy. PDF Version (81 KB); MS Word Version (46 KB)
- “China: Signs of Ultra-Leftist Support to Maoists of India and Nepal”, by D. S. Rajan, Oct. 5, 2005. PDF Version (164 KB); MS Word Version (43 KB)
- “On December 24, 2004, Maoists in China Get Three Year Prison Sentences for Leafleting: A Report on the Case of the Zhengzhou Four”, Monthly Review, Jan. 2005, 5 pages. PDF Version (299 KB); MS Word Version (45 KB)
- “Without Rejection, There can be No Rebirth”, My Declaration of Withdrawal from the Party, by Zhang Lushi, an old Chinese Communist Party member, July 19, 2001, 5 pages. A very powerful and touching letter. PDF Version (180 KB); MS Word Version (42 KB)
Items about (or from) the Maoist Period
- Articles from Peking Review: http://www.massline.org/PekingReview/
- “Evaluating the Cultural Revolution in China and its Legacy for the Future”, by the MLM Revolutionary Study Group in the U.S. (85 pages, March 2007) What does it mean to embark on, and wage a determined revolutionary struggle to stay on, the socialist road to communism? This comprehensive paper describes the sweep of the Cultural Revolution from 1966-1976; its theoretical foundations; its many achievements in the areas of culture, education, industry, agriculture and the liberation of women; the serious obstacles it faced and its shortcomings in a number of areas; and why future revolutionary movements and socialist states must stand on its shoulders. An extensive bibliography on the Cultural Revolution is included. PDF Format (847 KB); MS Word Format (1,087 KB)
- “Chinese Foreign Policy during the Maoist Era and its Lessons for Today”, by the MLM Revolutionary Study Group in the U.S. (40 pages, January 2007) All socialist states face a continuing, and at times acute, contradiction between the necessity of defending the socialist country—including through making agreements with imperialist and reactionary states—and the goal of promoting and supporting the world revolution. This paper examines how socialist China handled this tension during four periods between 1949 and 1976. It contrasts the strong internationalist support given to the Korean people and to the Vietnamese and other struggles for national liberation in the 1960s, with the development of bourgeois nationalist lines around the 1955 Bandung Conference and the reactionary “three worlds theory” of the early 1970s. This paper also takes on the view that nationalist governments and their leaders, not revolutionary people’s movements, are the most important challenge to imperialism in the world today. PDF Format (1,208 KB); MS Word Format (200 KB)
- “The Political, Military and Negotiating Strategies of the Chinese Communist Party (1937-1946) and Recent Developments in Nepal”, by the MLM Revolutionary Study Group in the U.S. (February 2007, revised April 2009. 17 pp.) The most germane experience in assessing recent developments in a semi-feudal, semi-colonial country like Nepal is the military and political strategy and tactics of the Chinese revolution. A close look at the CCP’s integrated political-military strategy and negotiating tactics from 1937-1946—which served to advance China’s protracted people’s war to final victory—can yield important lessons for the revolution in Nepal and other countries, for how revolutionaries should be “firm as a pine and flexible as a willow.” PDF Format (301 KB); MS Word Format (86 KB)