On this episode of China Uncensored
Hi, welcome to China Uncensored. You won't catch me Stalin with a pun. I'm Chris Chappell
Well
It's been a hundred and sixty-five years since Karl Marx put out his Communist Manifesto that led the world into the communist utopia
we know today. The shackles of the workers have been cast off and all live in equality
And, oh, what's that?
Communism was a total failure that instead of liberating people killed tens of millions and has all but vanished from the face of the earth?
Looks like Marx was a little off the mark there. Pun number two!
I don't even think that was a minute between.
The 20th century was marred by the fear that
communism would sweep through the world and that there'd be a nuclear Armageddon. One of the most famous guns in the world
the ak-47 was designed by the Soviet Union to be the weapon of revolution. That's why there are anywhere from 100 to 500 million of them in the world today.
That's a gun for about every 14 people.
That wasn't such a good idea.
Of course since guns are banned in China. That's about 1.3 billion people out of the picture, though
So we might have to share a little less. But despite all the Red Terror the Soviet Union turned out to be well
corrupt and broken. The communist bloc
collapsed.
The only significant communist country left now is China and even then its communist leaders tout Marxism on the one hand
But on the other they sneak over to the U.S. to buy a property.
But just as the USSR seemed strong and mighty and then suddenly collapsed overnight the same thing is happening to the Chinese Communist Party.
So while China's economic policies may no longer be purely communism, communism is more than just economic policy.
It's also a culture and something that the party has latched on to the people to ensure its own survival.
But then in 2004, The Epoch Times, NTD's partner media, published the Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party.
It's a book-length series of nine editorial commentaries detailing the history of the CCP and its effects on the Chinese people
So, for example, for decades
the Communist Party has been telling Chinese people that the Party is
China, there can be no China without the Party.
Even when Chinese people criticize the Party they do it in the context of the Party.
That's why the permissible calls for reform are still only calling for reform within the Party rather than an
alternative to it. Take Charter 08
for example. It was a document about the crazy idea that China should have greater freedoms. Nobel Prize-winner
Liu Xiaobo was thrown in jail for 'inciting subversion of state power' for his part in Charter 08.
But even so the document was still only calling for those freedoms under 'one-party' rule
Basically what the CCP was trying to do was establish
Charter 08 as the most extreme form of dissidents because if everyone thinks the most radical ideas for change you can come up with
still has the Communist Party on top, then hey! Great for the Communist Party.
But by detailing all the terrible things that the Party has brought to the Chinese nation that were once kept secret from the public
the Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party has started exactly the kind of movement that the CCP has feared for so long.
One in which the Chinese people are finally saying, "this Party sucks."
It's called Tuidang or withdraw from the Party. From an early age,
Chinese people are made to swear that they'll give their blood to the Party. Tuidang is when they get to say, "Stuff that."
It's been done by the likes of prominent human rights lawyers like Gao Zhisheng. And, boy, did the party strike back hard.
Gao who has also defended Falun Gong practitioners of third-rail issue in China has disappeared was brutally tortured,
reappeared just long enough to say he's giving up the fight before disappearing
once again. In the first year after the Nine Commentaries was published, 1 million people withdrew from the Party. That number today is over
a hundred and forty five million. Now, wait a minute, according to latest figure, there's only around 85 million members of the Chinese Communist Party
What's going on here?
Well, that's because basically the Tuidang movement isn't just about getting those eighty-five million to withdraw membership. Its goal is to get
1.3 billion Chinese people to sever their ties with the Communist Party
The party in China basically consists of three branches: the Young Pioneers, the Communist Youth League, and the Communist Party itself.
So from a young age children are made to swear those blood oaths to the Party.
So even if you never become an official member of the Party, you've been groomed your whole life to be a part of it.
But now, all over China ,messages to withdraw from the Party have been popping up. Now, that's a major embarrassment for the regime.
That's why the Nine Commentaries are banned. But here in Hong Kong and also elsewhere around the world
Mainland visitors are greeted by volunteers helping them withdraw from the Party
One of the reasons why Beijing has tried to wrestle for greater control in Hong Kong
The Tuidang movement is run by volunteers most of whom seem to be affiliated with the persecuted Falun Gong spiritual practice.
A person can give their real name or a pseudonym if they fear reprisal for their actions.
Boy, can there be reprisals. In 2005, dissident author Zhang Lin
from on Anhui Province was sentenced to five years in prison for so-called 'inciting subversion of state power' after he published articles online
praising the Nine Commentaries.
And so while using a pseudonym may sound like a cop-out, when you consider
the goal is to have the person making the decision
recognize in their heart why they want to do it, their name doesn't really matter that much.
Of course the fact that over a hundred million Chinese people have renounced the Chinese government hasn't really made headlines in the West
So if one day you turn on the TV and everyone's reporting that the Chinese Communist Party's suddenly collapsed just like the Soviet Union
just remember, you heard it here first. I'm not Lenin you down. Pun number three!
Thanks for watching. Be sure to check the Facebook and Twitter page
And if you happen to be a member of the Communist Party, join the tens of millions of others and quit.
I'm Chris Chappell. See you next time.