When I graduated from college, my parents had more concerns than pride. My mother worried that I would be a real “bachelor(ette).” She complained that my height was less than desirable and my skin was not silky. According to my mother, my “less-than-desirable” look was caused by the Great Famine during Mao’s time. When she was pregnant, she could not find even the smallest, “ugliest” apples in grocery stores; the Chinese government claimed that the big “pretty” apples were used to pay the country’s foreign debts. My mother believed that if she had eaten enough apples, I would have had sexy skin.
My mother came to the capital city from a poverty-stricken village where farmers endured bad harvests for generations because of the acidic soil. The Communist Party took power in 1949, promising to give people free meals, free houses, free healthcare, free education, and an affluent life. But after just one decade, the greatest manmade disaster in history happened. The Chinese government told the people that China needed to be self-sufficient and rejected all foreign aid. The famine created by the Communist Party from 1959 to 1961 killed up to 45 million people in China and seriously affected the health of at least the next two generations.
According to my mother, during the famine, her dinners usually were a the mixture of soy sauce and hot water in a big bowl. She told me she had that awful drink every night before going to bed; otherwise she could not sleep because of hunger pangs. But her legs were swollen as a result of drinking that watery concoction every night. She worked in a steel mill; everyday on her way to work, she witnessed how someone in front of her would suddenly collapse to the ground and die of starvation. Today, we see a similar tragedy happening in Venezuela.
Ah… XXI Century Socialism with Venezuelan characteristics!
Communism keeps control through totalitarian dictatorship. It is a disease. Although Communism fell apart after the fall of the Berlin Wall, its remains still exist. The current totalitarian trend of these regimes is to call themselves “socialism with national characteristics,” e.g., socialism with Chinese characteristics, socialism with Venezuela characteristics, or socialism with Korean characteristics.
Socialism with Chinese characteristics is a very misleading term and it is very different from the Democratic Socialism practiced in Western countries. The Chinese government controls the lives and even the minds of all citizens, and deprives them from basic human rights such as freedom of speech and religious freedom. On the other hand, the Chinese government uses so-called “Chinese characteristics” as an excuse to elude the judgement of the international community when it commits crimes against its people.
In 2018, one million Uighurs were detained in “reeducation centers” and forced to undergo psychological indoctrination programs – like studying communist propaganda and giving thanks to Chinese President Xi Jinping. At the same time, more than 800 Chinese were jailed as political prisoners, including human rights defenders, lawyers and Christians. It was also reported that Uighurs and political dissidents were subject to torture and abusive treatment in prison.
Socialism, whether Chinese, Cuban, Venezuelan or Korean is a disease that, if not contained and controlled, can become an epidemic. As dramatic news from Venezuela has been reaching us lately, and I watch on TV Venezuelans turning to trash for food, I can feel their hunger and despair. I remember, as a child, following my grandma to pick cabbage leaves and discarded pieces of carrots in the trash bins. I still remember the simple “happiness” that I felt every time grandma told me, “We have dinner tonight.”
I grew up in China under the indoctrination that “Socialism is the primary stage of Communism and our final goal is Communism.” Given my own experience and the glaring failure of Socialism/ Communism anywhere it has been tried, it never ceases to amaze me how younger generations in the United States and other Western countries are falling for the siren songs of “free education, free healthcare”, free this, free that, even guaranteed income for people who cannot or are unwilling to work. In China, we were promised free education, free healthcare and many other free things; in the end, we paid dearly; we paid with our freedom.
Freedom is not free!!
“America Will Never Be A Socialist Country”; “We Were Born Free And We Will Stay Free”