Column of the Day They tread gigantic, creep atomic
They tread gigantic, creep atomic
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- Published on Thursday, 08 November 2012 00:00
- Written by BERNARD KARGANILLA
By A Web design Company
‘The Communist Party of China has made forceful revolutionary politics a synonym for power plays.’
And so they meet to plan their next five years of running the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, er ah proletariat, in the Land of the Dropa.
Theirs is the party of Ch’en Tu-hsiu, Liu Jen-ching, P’eng Shu-chih, Ch’ü Ch’iu-pai, Li Li-san, Lo Chang-lung, Wang Ming, Chang Kuo-t’ao, Kao Kang and Jao Shu-shih, P’eng Te-huai, Liu Shao-ch’i and Lin Piao. [Mao Tse-tung, “Talks With Responsible Comrades At Various Places During Provincial Tour,” August-12 September 1971]
Theirs is the party that “devised a whole series of transitional forms of state capitalism” and “eventually realized the peaceful redemption of the bourgeoisie” but also harbored the likes of Jiang Qing and Kang Sheng and perpetrated a Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. [“Resolution on certain questions in the history of our party since the founding of the People’s Republic of China,” Adopted by the Sixth Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on June 27, 1981]
To win power, they had to send the Northern Expedition against the warlords in 1924-1927 and wage the Agrarian Revolutionary War (1927-37), the War of Resistance Against Japan (1937-45) and the nationwide War of Liberation (1946-49). To avoid extermination by their rivals, they had to endure a 25,000-li Long March. To tame the Changjiang, Huanghe, Huaihe, Haihe, Zhujiang, Liaohe, Songhuajiang and other rivers, they conducted dramatic experiments like the Great Leap Forward.
And to maintain their grip on the playground of the Giant Pandas, they alternately supported and suppressed the series of outbursts at Tian An Men Square.
The Communist Party of China has made forceful revolutionary politics a synonym for power plays. No less than Mao Zedong stressed this point: “Those landlord or bourgeois groupings or parties which have guns have power, and those which have more guns have more power. Placed in such an environment, the party of the proletariat should see clearly to the heart of the matter.”
Again and again. “Communists do not fight for personal military power (they must in no circumstances do that, and let no one ever again follow the example of Chang Kuo-tao), but they must fight for military power for the Party, for military power for the people.”
“Every Communist must grasp the truth, ‘Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.’...having guns, we can create Party organizations...Experience in the class struggle in the era of imperialism teaches us that it is only by the power of the gun that the working class and the labouring masses can defeat the armed bourgeoisie and landlords; in this sense we may say that only with guns can the whole world be transformed.” [Mao Zedong, “Problems Of War And Strategy,” November 6, 1938]
It is the politics of big arms that they play. “A mature Chinese TBM (Theater Ballistic Missile) capability, without a countervailing U.S. and allied TBM capability and TBM Defense, may alter the balance of power that underwrites the status quo in the region, and provide China with a perceived ‘window of opportunity’ to achieve its objectives to reunify with Taiwan, consolidate its maritime claims in the South China Sea and establish itself as the dominant regional power.” [Patricia J. Battin, Captain, JAGC, USN, “Will A Mature People’s Republic Of China Theater Ballistic Missile Capability Encourage Military Solutions In The East Asia- Pacific Region?” Naval War College, Newport, R.I., 13 May 2002]
So big that they have gone into Earth’s orbit. “Space capabilities enable the PLA (People’s Liberation Army) to conduct military operations at increasingly greater distances from Chinese shores...Over the next 10-15 years, more advanced precision strike assets, integrated with persistent space-based surveillance, a single integrated air and space picture, and survivable communications architecture, could enable greater confidence in contesting a broader range of sovereignty and territorial claims around China’s periphery. Within an emerging concept of a ‘national aerospace security system,’ China’s interest in space also is driven by a requirement to field countermeasures against advanced U.S. long-range precision strike capabilities expected to be in place over the next 10-15 years.” [Mark A. Stokes with Dean Cheng, “China’s Evolving Space Capabilities: Implications For U.S. Interests,” Prepared for the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission by the Project 2049 Institute, April 26, 2012]
From outer space to cyber-space. “Guided by a 15-year (2006-2020) development strategy, a priority of the Chinese Communist Party and PRC government is the informatization of its national civilian and military infrastructure as a means to ensure sustained economic growth, compete globally in the ICT realm, and ensure national security. Information dominance, whether for political, economic, or military purposes, requires mastery of both the electromagnetic spectrum and the global cyber sphere. The PLA GSD Third Department and Fourth Department are considered to be the two largest players in China‘s burgeoning cyber-infrastructure.” [Mark A. Stokes, Jenny Lin and L.C. Russell Hsiao, “The Chinese People’s Liberation Army Signals Intelligence and Cyber Reconnaissance Infrastructure,” Project 2049 Institute, November 11, 2011]
A far cry from the days of yore when “astronomy with them consists entirely in a certain jargon of judicial astrology,” with commoners and aristocrats alike sounding their “drums, clarions and trumpets, under the notion that, by their shrill and loud noise, they might assist” the Moon Goddess in escaping the hungry dragon. [John Barrow. “Travels in China: Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey through the Country from Pekin to Canton.” London: T. Cadell And W. Davies, In The Strand, 1804]
The China that the Party inherited, the China of the Great Wall and the Grand Canal, the China of the Canton Ulcer and foot-bound women, whined for revolution “because Chinese civilization had exhausted itself that a new conception of government had to be called in to renew the vitality of the people.” [Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale. “The Fight For The Republic In China.” London: Hurst & Blackett, Ltd., 1918]
The China of the 21st century is no longer a sleeping dragon but a kung-fu panda, which had drunk six mugs of coffee and gorging itself with the Earth’s harvests. The China whose Communist Party orchestrates adhering to the socialist road and Mao Zedong Thought as two of the Four Cardinal Principles.
