(The following review appeared in the October 18 issue of the French Trotskyist daily Rouge. The translation is by Intercontinental Press/ Inprecor.]
Each year, several thousand young Chinese flee the People's Republic of China for Hong Kong, Macao, or other border countries. Who are they? Frequently, they are the "young educated," those who "spearheaded the Cultural Revolution," and were then summarily dismissed by Mao and exiled to the countryside.
Jean-Jacques Michel, a former Maoist, had extensive discussions with them. Avoir vingt ans en Chine, the fruit of those discussions, has just been published by Editions du Seuil. In this book, young Chinese speak of their frustrated hopes, their unattainable desires. It's a book that says more about China than any number of academic speeches.
"A few more years, and street sweepers, cooks, everyone will be a student, and will know astronomy and geography." This sentence, tossed out by Mao in 1956, does not appear in Volume 5 of his Selected Works published under the direction of Hua Kuo-feng. More than twenty years have gone by, and reality is still a long way from corresponding to the hopes that were born out of the Chinese revolution. However, the regime's tremendous efforts in the educational realm-compared to its slow economic progress—are what led a large layer of youth to break with the "enlightened leadership of the great proletarian revolution."
1963 was the year of the "great leap forward." It turned out to be no more than a flea-jump but it nonetheless threw China off balance, bringing an economic slump, unemployment in the cities, and the big migration of "intellectuals" toward the countryside. The intellectuals were young high-school graduates who did not come from "good social origins" (ie., whose were not workers or party parents members), and who were not sufficiently gifted to be able to pursue their studies in spite of everything. Several million of these "young educated" went off "with revolutionary enthusiasm" to dedicate to building a "new socialist themselves agriculture."
However, when the Cultural Revolution broke out, the immense majority of these
Avoir vingt ans en Chine [To Be
Twenty Years Old in China]. By
Jean-Jacques Michel. Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1978.
youths took advantage of it to return to the cities. "What other place is better suited to Red Guards whose duty is to give birth to a revolution?"
When Mao no longer needed them, he sent them back to the countryside. The youth-suddenly liberated from the official straitjacket, and acquiring a taste for rights, for democratic for freedom, politics-were becoming dangerous.
"The regime could not come up with a 'soft' solution to this problem," Jean-Jacques Michel explains. "So it was necessary to be cruel. And they were."
In the schools, the reins were tightened Repression was carried out by the army, and by "worker propaganda teams." There was a forced exodus of the youth to the countryside for "reeducation" by the peasants. The "young generals of the revolution" became "stinking intellectuals."
Mass departures took place by the truckload. The authorities, as Deng tells it, had staged the whole setting. Elementaryschool children waved flowers, the band played very loudly, drowning out the shouts and tears of those who were being separated. The "volunteers," several million of them, were off to swell the villages where no one wanted them.
Already overcrowded, the peasants would reject the "youth to be educated." For these youth, the countryside would soon become an ordeal. Targets of harassment and resentment on all sides, the former Red Guards were soon to be transformed, the author says, into a "new type of lumpenproletariat."
"Theoretically, we were entitled to one day off a week and twelve days of vacation a year to visit our families. But very often these leaves were cancelled, Shi explained. "The local authorities were too afraid that the youth would not return." "Five evenings a week were taken
• up with meetings of study groups to combat egotism and criticize revisionism, *examine errors,' 'criticize the errors of others to help them, and so on. Under those conditions," Shi continued, "we had to think about the consequences of each sentence, of each action. Dropping a grain of rice in the cafeteria and not picking it up to eat it could get you criticized and attacked in dazibaos [wall posters]."
All of these young exiles in Hong Kong have a harsh assessment to make of Maoism. Through their accounts, we get a picture of a poor, dull, conformist China, of a people held prisoner by a usurping bureaucracy, of a peasantry mired in traditionalism.
"If China wants progress," Sima says, "real progress, it will first be necessary to raise the peasants' level of consciousness. But the thing is, there's no way they can get to that with the current type of methods, which consist of using ideology to change ideology. What's needed is first to raise the peasants' standard of living. If we don't manage to do that, their way of thinking will never go beyond the bounds of selfishness, of the backwardness they are still trapped in."
"How can you open up to the outside world when breaking a bowl is still a major disaster?"
The ideology of the Chinese Communist Party has been superimposed on the old ideology, rather than driving it out. One proof of this is the role of women in society. While their role in the economy has increased, their political role remains entirely subordinate. "When the hen crows in the morning, the country suffers," a Chinese proverb says. "In my village," Sima says, "when the women elected a representative to be a party cadre, they always chose the most unpopular one.... They thought that being a cadre was a man's job. On the other hand, they always eagerly volunteered to be teachers, medical assistants, and so on, but basically, they remained like women were in the pastuninterested in politics."
As a corollary to this situation, sexual freedom is unknown in China. Sexual relations before marriage are banned. Prostitution has never totally disappeared.
Discouragement was soon to overtake the "young educated." One word crops up frequently: waste-the waste of a young generation that had faith in the revolution. "Before," Sima says, "when the veil of official ideology had not been completely ripped to shreds, we could sincerely work for the people." Today, utter despair has come over these young people.
Suicide-that "counterrevolutionary activity"-has become the solution for some. For others, escape to Hong Kong or Macao, at the risk of their lives, still holds out a hope. Their ingenuity, intelligence, and cunning are thus put to work for their plan. Jean-Jacques Michel's book describes in full detail how travel passes are forged and how rafts are put together, as well as the complicity and solidarity that has grown up among all these young people who want to flee their daily nightmare. Hong Kong? Not one of them has any illusions about the life that awaits them there. Most of them retain their faith in socialism. Besides, thousands of young Chinese have crossed the border illegally to go to Vietnam (up to 1976) or Burma, where they took part in guerrilla warfare with the Burmese CP.
"At that time," Li confides, "I thought I had exhausted all hopes for China, but that leaving to go to a capitalist country was another form of obliteration."
Guatemala-Lucas Yields to Protests
Twelve days of strikes and protests by Guatemalan workers and students against a 100 percent hike in urban transportation fares ended with a partial victory October 12.
Gen. Romeo Lucas Garcia's government ordered private bus companies to roll back the entire fare increase. But the regime also said it would provide subsidies to the bus owners compensating for 70 percent of the fare reduction. Guatemalans will ultimately have to bear the costs of this subsidy, either through taxes or inflation.
The announcement of the fare increase on September 30 had touched off demonstrations by thousands of students in Guatemala City and other towns. Public employees went on strike in the capital on October 2, and the work stoppage was extended to the rest of the country on October 9.
Workers in private companies shut down 100 percent of industry in the city of Amatitlán and 60 percent of plants in the capital. Similar strikes took place elsewhere in Guatemala as well.
Lucas tried to crush the protests with repression before conceding the fare rollback. According to the October 23 issue of the news bulletin Noticias de Guatemala, attacks by police, army troops, and rightwing paramilitary bands left 50 dead and 600 wounded. Some 1,200 persons were arrested during the ten-day upsurge.