Recently, I was offered a full-time job after I successfully defended my doctoral degree. My American friends often ask me, “How do you like your job?” I answer, “I love my job; I feel I am respected as a human being.” My reply seems odd to them, because it is a basic norm in the United States that people respect each other and treat each other with dignity. But for me, there is a sharp contrast, because I have had life experiences in two politically and culturally disparate countries—first China, then America. I am proud of my Chinese heritage and personality traits—humble, friendly and diligent, but I love the United States greatly, for her justice, individualism and high regard for human dignity.
In China, I was treated like dirt, for one reason–refusal to believe in Communism and join the Communist Party. When I received my first college degree in China, the Chinese government massacred thousands of students and citizens who dreamed of and fought for a democratic China, on Tiananmen Square (1989). That year, millions of young people graduated from higher education. But before stepping into our first job, we were collectively forced to confess our “guilt,” the fact that we actively participated in the demonstration for democracy in China. In our brainwashing sessions, we were forced to admit that the democratic movement was anti-China and against people.
Who were the “people” that we were against? I never figured it out, and silent was I always. The whole class of 1989 were not allowed to graduate unless we completed a daily 8-hour brainwashing workshop for at least one month. Prior to the Tiananmen Massacre, I had signed an employment contract with an agency run by the Chinese government, the mission of which was to send politically brainwashed Chinese to foreign companies as employees. Due to the Tiananmen Massacre, many foreign businesses left China. The government agency simply informed me that my employment contract was cancelled, without any severance terms.
My parents and I implored some friends and relatives who were Communist Party members to help me find a job, and finally I got a teaching position at the Capital Medical College. The college was suffering from brain drain. As an instructor/lecturer at a medical college, I was paid about 15 dollars per month for working 45 hours a week. In addition, each week, all employees had to attend a three-hour non-break meeting (i.e., gathering together reading and/or listening to propaganda and indoctrination in Marxism and Maoism). The penalty for failing to attend such meetings was to deduct one tenth of our monthly pay. Because of poverty and government control, newly-graduated employees could not find a place to rent and much less buy an apartment. The dormitory rooms for young college professors were designed for two people sharing one room, eight to ten people sharing one kitchen, and all staff sharing one public shower.
Today’s Chinese Communist Party members not only have accumulated power but also wealth. After three decades, more than 82 million Chinese living in rural areas still have to get by on less than $1 a day in China. In contrast, the net worth of the 153 members of China’s Parliament and its advisory body (the total number is about 3000 and all of them are Communist Party members) surpasses $650 billion. Ironically -or should I say hypocritically- , in international forums, the Chinese government has consistently argued that economic rights should be elevated to the status of civil and political rights.
Sadly, some Western countries buy into the story sold by Communist China. As a matter of fact, China has convinced the UN Human Rights Council to support President Xi Jinping’s core rights concept and pursue “a community of shared future for human beings.”
China leading the UN Human Rights Council; what a joke!