Fat Years - Chan Koonchung [103]
“The situation at the time was as follows: except for incidents involving conflict between Han and minority ethnic nationalities, in general most of the major protests involved a confrontation between the masses and the government. For years many of the common people had long made up their minds and believed that the only way to solve their problems was to create a disturbance. The smallest thing, the pettiest grievance, was enough to set off a collective protest.
“If mass protest riots broke out at the same time all over the country, and all the criticism and resentment were aimed at the government, the machine of state would have collapsed.
“On the other hand, as long as all the complaints were not aimed at the government, mass protests would be difficult to start. A few lawless elements stirring up trouble would be insufficient to start a series of mass protests.”
“So what did the leadership do to prevent the popular masses from aiming all their resentment and criticism at the government?” asked Fang Caodi.
“Well, after considering the situation from every angle, the leadership decided to allow the Chinese people to frighten themselves, let them be afraid of the government abandoning them, afraid of anarchy. The condition of anarchy is what Thomas Hobbes called ‘the war of all against all.’ In an anarchic state of nature, to quote his book The Leviathan, the ‘life of man’ is ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.’ To have no security for their life and property is, indeed, the people’s ultimate terror. And because they are afraid of anarchy and chaos, everyone is willing to bow down voluntarily before the power of a really quite unlovely Leviathan. Only this Leviathan of a government can guarantee their lives and property. That means the party-state can win only by making the people feel that our Communist Party is their only hope in a major crisis, that the party-state is the only power great enough to concentrate our resources to do big things.”
“Now you’re talking about having a government or having anarchy,” Little Xi needled He Dongsheng. “Nobody said that the government has to be your Communist Party!”
“It’s fruitless to argue that,” said He Dongsheng. “The government and the Party are one and the same.”
“After you created a state of anarchy,” asked Little Xi, “and fooled everyone so that even the people of Beijing filled the streets to welcome the People’s Liberation Army into the city, what did you want to do then? Why did you have to have a crackdown? Do you know how many people die every time there’s a crackdown?”
“I was almost executed in that crackdown,” said Fang Caodi.
“In good faith, I also hope that this was our last crackdown,” said He Dongsheng. “But the government in power at the time had no other choice but to take a hard line in the face of the upcoming transfer of power.
“With the global economy in a deep freeze, China had to save itself. That required administering strong medicine to the economy, but the government might lose control of society, its orders might be distorted, and the people might protest. The government had to have complete control over society and tame the masses; everybody had to be submissive to government orders. But how does the Chinese government usually tame the masses? In 1983, when the market economy experienced turmoil, didn’t Old Deng order a crackdown? And June 4, 1989, was another big crackdown. Do you see? Sacrifices are inevitable if we want to accomplish something big and important.”
Little Xi and Fang Caodi felt He Dongsheng was being unreasonable and they were anxious to refute his arguments, but he motioned for them to let him finish first.
“In 1816, the year after the end of the Napoleonic Wars,” He Dongsheng went on, “the effects of the war faded and Britain suffered