1959.12 共产主义记录

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The Communist Record
A Texan born in Elkhart in 1907 and educated at Texas Christian University, TILLMAN DURDIN first went to the Orient in 1930 as a reporter on the staff of the Shanghai EVENING POST. He joined the staff of the New York TIMES in 1937, rose to be its chief Southeast Asia correspondent, and today has his headquarters in Hong Kong.

By Tillman Durdin
DECEMBER 1959 ISSUE
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ANY assessment of the first ten years of Communist rule in China is a problem in weighing both methods and material results.

Methods have been ruthless, devious, and destructive of traditional human values. The most serious political weaknesses and tensions in China today stem from the means the Communists have used to establish their system and maintain their power.

Material results, on the other hand, have been remarkable and impressive. By Draconian controls and pressures, the regime has forced, and sometimes inspired, the masses of China into productivity and social change on a scale unsurpassed, in similar circumstances, by any other country.

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In 1949 the Communists took over a country devastated by more than eight years of Japanese invasion and three decades of civil war. Only one third of the nation’s railways and highways were usable. Many cities were still littered with war rubble; in the countryside, neglected river-control systems gave way every year before floodwaters that ruined vast areas of fertile crop land. Agricultural output had slumped, and famine was endemic. Uncontrolled inflation had impoverished new sections of the population and made economic rehabilitation impossible. The few industries — fewer still after Russian occupation forces had removed much of the machinery from Manchuria, the country’s main industrial base — functioned only sporadically.

Today, the shambles of 1949 have long since been repaired. This year, Communist China will become an important producer of steel, with a scheduled output of twelve million tons of industrial-grade steel, thirteen times the peak output in 1943. Today, the country mines four to five times more coal annually than during the best preCommunist year and claims to have surpassed the output of the United States. The regime maintains that Shanghai alone now turns out more textiles than all of the United Kingdom. Communist Chinese factories make industrial chemicals, locomotives, power generators, machine tools, automobiles, steel plants, airplanes, ships, electronic equipment — a wide range of the products of an industrialized economy.

This year, the Chinese Communists plan — with reasonable prospects of success — to double the grain crop of 1936, the best year for total agricultural output before 1949. By the end of 1959, Peking claims, total industrial output will have increased 10.7 times and total agricultural production 1.5 times over the 1949 level. The government trumpets the goal of achieving a higher productive capacity than Britain within, at the least, ten years.

Operating railway and highway mileage has been tripled since 1949. Airlines and telephone links now bind together almost all parts of the country, including regions that ten years ago were accessible only on foot. Old cities have doubled in population; Peking today has six million people, Shanghai, ten million. Scores of places that were only little towns and villages ten years ago are now crowded metropolises — steel-making Paotow in Mongolia, oil-producing Karamai in Sinkiang, and the big new Kwangtung port of Chankiang, for example.

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Physical achievements also include vast control works along rivers whose potential for watering crops, but also for devastatingly flooding them, has often decided the rhythm of Chinese history. Vast new installations — including the huge Sanmen Gorge dam and hydroelectric station, among the biggest of their kinds in the world — have virtually tamed the terrible Yellow River, formerly called “China’s Sorrow” because of its unpredictable periods of destructiveness. The mighty Yangtze and the treacherous Huai have also been curbed with dams, canals, and embankments. Nationwide irrigation and flood-control facilities have been developed to the stage where crop damage of the kind and extent that formerly led to widespread famine no longer exists.

Through the work of millions of new settlers from the overpopulated coastal provinces, agricultural and industrial developments are creating a new economic empire in China’s Northwest. From Inner Mongolia to Sinkiang province, men are plowing new land, building new factories, and planting shrubs and forest belts to push back the desert and curb the damage of wind and flood. A new line through Sinkiang this year linked this vast, rich province by rail with Russia to the west and with coastal China to the east.

By their recent admission that they appreciably overstated 1958 production totals, the Chinese Communists have themselves acknowledged that their statistics are unreliable. However, Western economists accept as roughly correct Peking’s claim to have achieved an annual rate of economic growth of 8 or 9 per cent during the first Five Year Plan, 1952 to 1957. The “great leap” years of 1958 and 1959 have brought claims of a still more rapidly accelerated development. Even after its recent downward revision of outputs and targets, Peking estimates 1958 agricultural production at 25 per cent above 1957 and has scheduled a further 10 per cent rise in 1959. The Communists claim to have expanded heavy industry 103 per cent in 1958 and have targeted another 25.9 per cent of growth for all types of industry in 1959.

Allowing for Communist exaggerations, it is still possible, on the basis of known factors, to put China’s rate of economic growth in the last two years above first Five Year Plan achievements. This would establish a rate of economic expansion for Communist China as high as any other nation has ever attained, possibly higher. The record is especially remarkable in view of the country’s low level of technical capability and experience ten years ago.

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COMMUNIST China can cite other striking attainments. A nation that was less than 20 per cent literate in 1949 now claims that three quarters of its citizens can read and write. From primary classes to university, 100 million students are in schools of some kind — four times the 1949 total. Universities and other institutions of higher education now graduate nearly 100,000 students annually, compared with a few tens of thousands in 1949. Fourteen thousand students have been sent for advanced training in Russia alone; of these, 8500 have completed their courses and are back serving as experts in their homeland.

Foreign-trained and domestically trained Chinese engineers, scientists, and managers — far from numerous in pre-Communist China — are rapidly taking over the specialized tasks of the country; the consultants from Russia and other nations, who in the first years of the Chinese Communist regime were counted in the thousands, are now numbered by the hundreds. Communist China has an atomic reactor and a program of nuclear energy and general scientific development on a massive scale.

Welfare amenities such as sanitation, housing, and health services have been subordinated, as far as state expenditure is concerned, to capital construction and production. But great progress has, nevertheless, been made in these fields, largely through mobilization of mass effort. Athletics, popular drama, newspapers, pamphlets, magazines, books — useful for propaganda and increased productivity — have been extensively developed. The whole world knows by now of China’s dogged, never-ending, and partially successful campaign to eradicate four pests — flies, mosquitoes, rats, and grain-eating sparrows.

It should not be assumed, because of the great emphasis in Peking on material accomplishments and the multiplication of facilities for the masses, that achievement in these spheres has been the exclusive or even the main preoccupation in the first ten years of the Communist regime in China. Production and social programs have been only a part of a more fundamental concern with consolidation of Communist political power and the new, all-embracing Communist system. This has meant uprooting the ideas, relationships, and privileged classes in the old society, remolding minds by the hundreds of millions, establishing the full geographical unity of the country, and reasserting its long-lost military power and international influence.

COMMUNISM came to power in China through force and the effective use and mobilization of the massive discontent felt by peasants, bourgeoisie, and intellectuals. Its triumph derived, in a sense, from revulsion against the chaos that characterized the final, ineffective efforts of the Kuomintang rule. It was also the instrument of a bitter, resentful nationalism bred among sensitive and proud Chinese by a century of Western and Japanese aggression and economic exploitation.

The process of Communist consolidation was, therefore, at once political, military, and xenophobic. Red armies swept to the farthest reaches of territory that had once been Imperial China (with the exception of those Mongolian and Siberian regions under Soviet domination) and brought unity to the land mass stretching from the Amur River and the China Sea through Tibet and Sinkiang to Russian Turkestan, for the first time since the rule of Emperor Kang Hsi.

The momentum of this Communist-led upsurge was finally checked by United States and allied troops in Korea and by American and Kuomintang Chinese resistance in the Formosa Strait, leaving the island of Taiwan outside Communist China. The strong nationalist fervor generated by reunification and resurgence of Chinese power under the Communists has been a major factor in their appeal to the people of China and in their ability to enforce Communist rule.

“The army is the chief component of the political power of the state,” Mao Tse-tung has said. In the first decade of Chinese Communist rule, Mao and his colleagues have carefully nurtured military power and given the Communist armed forces special treatment to keep them a loyal instrument of the Party and of its domestic and foreign policy. Communist China’s military force — a regular army of 2.5 million men, a navy, and an air force, all backed by a semimilitarized adult population providing 200 million militia men — is today one of the world’s most formidable. For the Communists, it is a principal manifestation of China’s return to greatness, an instrument of strength in foreign policy and of defiance of foreign powers that had previously humiliated the Chinese nation.

Peking has, at the same time, one of the world’s most multifaceted armies. It has been used to pioneer, control, and develop sparsely inhabited and often rebellious border areas; to build networks of irrigation and communications; to write plays and poetry; to perform “shock" jobs like collecting manure, harvesting grains, and “tidying up” the communes. It has also been an important police and power instrument to help Peking enforce its political pattern and policies.

The Chinese Communists have developed their system by methods combining great harshness with subtlety and flexibility. They have carried out main programs and policies by a succession of nationwide, high-pressure, mass campaigns and have enforced individual and group conformity and obedience by continuous thought control and surveillance.

In the first great campaign of 1950—1951, which linked distribution of lands to peasants with liquidation of landlords and all other individuals considered actually or potentially counterrevolutionary, Communist cadres aroused the rural and urban masses into vengeful mobs, or people’s courts, that condemned millions to either death, imprisonment, or the status of propertyless pariahs.

In subsequent campaigns — such as those to brainwash intellectuals, to eliminate private business and indoctrinate businessmen, to build massive irrigation facilities, to liberate women and repudiate old social customs, to achieve high production targets, to collectivize farms, to rectify the Party and reindoctrinate and rediscipline the whole people, to enforce the recent economic great leap forward, and to form the communes — the Communists have used somewhat less terror and depended on more refined forms of pressure and exhortation. But sentences to forced labor or loss of income and status are still frequent penalties for noncooperation. Individuals judged to be engaged in actual counterrevolutionary subversion sometimes still receive death sentences after mass trials.

It is Chinese Communist tactics to carry most campaigns to excess, a process heightened sometimes by local cadres who are anxious to avoid the charge of lack of zeal. Many of these campaigns have distorted and delayed progress instead of helping it. However, Chinese Communist leaders have been astute in gauging the ultimate endurance level of the population and recognizing mistakes in time to pause before disaster and modify the program — the famous Leninist “two steps forward and one step back.” The initial great purge of 1950-1951 eventually caused such nationwide revulsion that Mao Tse-tung himself admitted it had gone too far. He called a halt, but not until the movement had achieved an initial brutal shattering of the old society and established an all-pervasive atmosphere of fear that has never been dissipated.

Ten years after its establishment, the Communist regime still has no definitive code of laws, no real civil liberties. Courts are instruments of current policies and programs; court functionaries often go into fields and factories to investigate and try noncooperative individuals, sometimes in supervised group discussions that provide indoctrination for the masses and discipline for the accused. The government controls occupation, travel, and place of residence; all mass communication media are instruments of propaganda for whatever line the regime wishes to emphasize at any given moment.

While giving lip service to freedom of religion — particularly Asian religions — the Communists have forced Buddhists, Muslims, and Christians into officially dominated associations intended mainly to serve production and facilitate state control. Believers must affirm acceptance of Communist doctrines and state policies, which frequently run directly counter to their faith.

As with religious groups, the 35 million minority peoples — fifty-two varieties, including the large Muslim Turki and Hui communities, the Buddhist Mongols and Tibetans, the Chuangs, Miaos, Shans, Thais, and Koreans — have been subjected to Communist ideology and regimentation. The “autonomous” minority areas, covering 60 per cent of the territory of China, with many of its richest mineral deposits, have considerably less real autonomy than the minority groups in Russia. While preserving tribal art and folkways as relics in museums, books, and cultural troupes, the Communists are, in fact, rapidly wiping out old beliefs and customs and turning the minority areas into communized hans, ruled as directly from Peking as is any other part of the country.

Overturning the old social order, based on Confucian precepts of family loyalties, filial piety, respect for age, supremacy of male over female, and veneration for ancestors and tradition, the Communists have reshaped China’s millions into groupings determined by occupation, age, sex, political relationships, and place of housing. They have put the Chinese people under constant pressure to subordinate all other loyalties and acknowledge allegiance only to the Party and state.

In a calculated effort to create a new, loyal, Communist-minded generation, the Communists have given youth special attention and privilege. Private property has been swept away, and a nation of peasant cultivators, landlords, and entrepreneurs forced into the characteristic Communist framework of state-run and state-controlled enterprise.

THE formal structure of the Chinese regime today is the typical monolithic, highly centralized Communist system, patterned after the Soviet Union, with a cabinet, or executive branch, under Premier Chou En-lai and a chief of state, or chairman, now Liu Shao-chi. Above all and within all is the Party, under Chairman Mao Tse-tung, with its twelve million members, its Communist Youth League, Young Pioneers, and satellite groupings such as the Labor Federation, Women’s Federation, and so on.

With politics in command, as Communist spokesmen incessantly emphasize, the nearly 650 million minutely controlled Chinese devote themselves, first, to conformity within the new political and administrative pattern and, second, to production. Peking’s economic policy is predicated on creating as quickly as possible a powerful industrialized state. Therefore, the preponderance of investment has gone into heavy industry, and heavy industrial production has forged ahead far faster than agriculture or light industry. Yet, through their internal use and export, it is the products of agriculture, of minerals, handicrafts, and light industry that have largely financed economic expansion.

During this last ten-year period, Communist China has had less than the equivalent of 500 million American dollars in foreign credits to assist in its economic upbuilding. The remainder of the capital goods used in its economic program has been paid for out of exports. The exchange of products with Russia, the source of 50 per cent of Communist China’s imports, accounts for an average annual total of $200 million in Russian materials and technical personnel.

The burden on China’s agricultural sector is thus enormous. This was a major reason for the formation of the communes, the 26,000 new social-political-economic units in rural areas organized in 1958 from the merger of 750,000 collective farms.

As with other Communist campaigns, the drive to organize communes exceeded original directives and led to overcentralization of control and an extreme regimentation of China’s peasant population of 500 million. Members of farm families became hardly more than units in work gangs, fed in communal kitchens, shifted capriciously from place to place, with wives separated from husbands and children put in nurseries, kindergartens, and often boarding schools.

The “tidying up” of 1959, carried out with army participation and supervision, has turned back most production and the control of individual incomes to subordinate units of the communes - the production brigades, roughly equivalent to the former collective farms. Eating at mess halls and sending children away from home have been made voluntary, although strong pressures are still exercised to induce people to use the communal restaurants and put younger children in communal establishments so that women can be free for full-time farming and other labor outside the home. Small family plots, taken away in last year’s organization rush, have been restored; peasant families can grow vegetables and raise pigs and chickens for sale to the state and for a rehabilitated free market of a limited, supervised nature. The central commune committees, however, still dispose of labor for commune-wide projects, get a proportion of production brigade earnings, and supervise overall production plans. Commune members last year were put into military-type units, and able-bodied adults, at least nominally, made members of the militia. In this year’s reorganization, militarization has been modified and de-emphasized. A revised income system puts more importance on individual work capacity, permitting higher earnings for greater effort.

Despite the confusion attending its organization and the bitter opposition to it on the part of the farm population, the modified commune system now seems to be operating with considerable effectiveness, at least in terms of production. Khrushchev has said that Russia tried it once and found the system unsuitable. But Chinese leaders show no signs of abandoning it. Indeed, they still speak of eventually returning to centralization, extending the commune system to the cities and making the communes the basis for a Communist, as distinct from the present Socialist, pattern of society.

THE bold, seemingly inexorable experiment that is Communist China, with all its strength, has permanent undertones of weakness. The forced pace of economic expansion, falling most heavily on the sectors of agriculture and light industry, has prevented any considerable rise in individual living standards. Today, basic foods and clothing are still severely rationed, and the refugees that escape constantly into Hong Kong tell stories of chronic undernourishment, food queues, and general shortage of goods.

The Communists claim that they have kept availability of consumer goods far ahead of population pressures and, indeed, that by putting everybody to work they have made an asset of China’s huge manpower resources. As mechanization proceeds, however, China’s rapidly expanding population must become an increasingly serious problem.

The very determination of Chinese Communist leaders to build in a hurry is dangerous. Extravagant planning in 1956 led to inflation and a serious unbalance and drop in production in 1957. The excesses of the great leap and the communes in 1958 resulted in 1959 in the confession of missed targets and distorted development.

Pressures fall hardest on the local cadres in case of any failures. There is much evidence that local cadres are weary, not only from expending almost superhuman effort but from being blamed when anything goes wrong. The 1959 campaign against rightist opportunists may be aimed against the cadres’ and local Party members’ discontent; this discontent may also extend to high Communist personalities basically opposed to the impetuosity of the great leap and to policies that reserve material rewards for the hard-working people to a distant future.

The recent shift in leadership of the armed forces from Marshal Peng Teh-huai to Marshal Lin Piao seems also to reflect dissatisfaction in army ranks — caused possibly by the extensive use of army troops as a work force. There is a feeling of humiliation among higher officers compelled to serve for periods in the ranks, and discontent among the army rank and file, which has been largely recruited from the peasantry.

No really grave rift has occurred in the Chinese Communist leadership since the Communists conquered mainland China in 1949. There still appears to be effective collective solidarity, but Mao Tse-tung is aging. A crisis of unity cannot be ruled out. The extreme control of the people by the Peking regime makes popular revolt unlikely. The most probable way in which disruption could occur would be through a split among leaders or between power groups. At present, however, the government of Communist China seems firmly in power.

Complacent Westerners should not forget that, for many centuries before modern times, this giant nation — the Middle Kingdom — excelled all countries in cultural attainments, political stability, military prowess, and economic wealth. Today, the natural resources of the second greatest national land mass on the globe and the industriousness and creative genius of a people that make up one quarter of the world’s population still exist.

If unity and the rate of economic expansion continue, this ancient land will rank, within ten to twenty years, with the United States and Russia among the great powers.



共产主义记录
蒂尔曼-杜尔丁1907年出生于埃尔哈特，在德克萨斯基督教大学接受教育，1930年首次前往东方，担任上海《晚报》的记者。他于1937年加入《纽约时报》，升任该报的东南亚首席记者，如今他的总部设在香港。

作者：蒂尔曼-德丁
1959年12月号
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对中国共产党统治的头十年的任何评估都是一个权衡方法和物质成果的问题。

方法是无情的、狡猾的、对人类传统价值的破坏性。今天中国最严重的政治弱点和紧张局势源于共产党人用来建立其制度和维持其权力的手段。

另一方面，物质方面的成果也很显著，令人印象深刻。通过严厉的控制和压力，该政权迫使，有时甚至激励中国群众进行生产力和社会变革，其规模在类似情况下是任何其他国家无法比拟的。

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1949年，共产党人接管了一个被八年多的日本入侵和三十年的内战破坏的国家。全国只有三分之一的铁路和公路可以使用。许多城市仍然堆满了战争废墟；在农村，被忽视的河流控制系统每年都会在洪水面前退缩，毁掉大片肥沃的农田。农业产量下降，饥荒盛行。不受控制的通货膨胀使新的人口阶层陷入贫困，使经济恢复成为不可能。为数不多的工业--在俄罗斯占领军从该国主要工业基地满洲里移走大部分机器后，这些工业就更少了--只能零星地运作。

今天，1949年的残局早已被修复。今年，共产党中国将成为一个重要的钢铁生产国，计划生产1200万吨工业级钢铁，是1943年最高产量的13倍。今天，中国每年开采的煤炭比共产党之前最好的年份多四到五倍，并声称已经超过了美国的产量。该政权认为，现在仅上海一地的纺织品产量就超过了整个英国。中国共产党的工厂制造工业化学品、机车、发电机、机床、汽车、钢铁厂、飞机、船舶、电子设备--一个工业化经济的广泛产品。

今年，中国共产党人计划--有合理的成功前景--将1936年的粮食收成翻一番，这是1949年之前农业总产量最好的一年。北京方面声称，到1959年底，工业总产值将比1949年的水平增加10.7倍，农业总产量增加1.5倍。政府大肆宣扬至少在十年内达到比英国更高的生产能力的目标。

自1949年以来，铁路和公路的运营里程已经增加了两倍。现在，航空和电话连接几乎将全国所有地区连接在一起，包括十年前只能靠步行的地区。老城市的人口增加了一倍；北京今天有六百万人，上海有一千万人。十年前还只是小城镇和村庄的几十个地方现在已经成为拥挤的大都市--例如，蒙古的炼钢厂Paotow，新江的石油生产地Karamai，以及关东的新大港Chankiang。

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物质成就还包括沿河的巨大控制工程，其浇灌农作物的潜力，但也有破坏性的洪水，往往决定着中国历史的节奏。巨大的新设施--包括巨大的三门峡大坝和水电站，是世界上最大的同类设施之一--实际上已经驯服了可怕的黄河，以前由于其不可预测的破坏性时期而被称为 "中国的悲哀"。强大的长江和险恶的淮河也被大坝、运河和堤坝所遏制。全国范围内的灌溉和防洪设施已经发展到一个阶段，以前导致广泛饥荒的那种作物损失和程度已经不复存在。

通过数百万来自人口过多的沿海省份的新移民的工作，农业和工业发展正在中国的西北地区创造一个新的经济帝国。从内蒙古到新江省，人们正在耕种新的土地，建造新的工厂，并种植灌木和林带，以推回沙漠并遏制风和洪水的破坏。今年，一条穿过新江的新线路通过铁路将这个巨大而富有的省份与西边的俄罗斯和东边的中国沿海地区联系起来。

中国共产党人最近承认他们明显夸大了1958年的生产总量，他们自己也承认他们的统计数据是不可靠的。然而，西方经济学家认为北京方面声称在1952年至1957年的第一个五年计划期间实现了8％或9％的年经济增长率是大致正确的。1958年和1959年的 "大跃进 "年份带来了更快速的发展的说法。即使在最近下调了产出和目标之后，北京估计1958年的农业生产比1957年高出25%，并计划在1959年再提高10%。共产党声称在1958年将重工业扩大了103%，并计划在1959年使所有类型的工业再增长25.9%。

考虑到共产党的夸大其词，根据已知因素，仍有可能将中国过去两年的经济增长率置于第一个五年计划成就之上。这将确定共产党中国的经济扩张速度与任何其他国家所达到的速度一样高，可能更高。鉴于十年前中国的技术能力和经验水平较低，这一记录尤其引人注目。

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共产党中国还可以举出其他引人注目的成就。一个在1949年识字率不到20%的国家现在声称其四分之三的公民能够阅读和书写。从小学到大学，有一亿名学生在某种类型的学校学习--是1949年总数的四倍。大学和其他高等教育机构现在每年有近10万名学生毕业，而1949年只有几万名。仅在俄罗斯就有1.4万名学生被送去接受高级培训；其中8500人已经完成了课程，并回到祖国担任专家。

受过外国培训和国内培训的中国工程师、科学家和管理人员--在共产党执政前的中国远远不够多--正在迅速接管国家的专门任务；来自俄罗斯和其他国家的顾问，在中国共产党执政的最初几年有数千人，现在则有数百人之多。共产党中国有一个原子反应堆和一个大规模的核能和一般科学发展计划。

就国家开支而言，卫生设施、住房和保健服务等福利设施已经从属于基本建设和生产。但是，在这些领域还是取得了巨大的进步，主要是通过动员群众的努力。运动会、大众戏剧、报纸、小册子、杂志、书籍--对宣传和提高生产力有用--得到了广泛的发展。全世界现在都知道中国坚持不懈、永无止境、部分成功的消灭四害的运动--苍蝇、蚊子、老鼠和吃粮食的麻雀。

我们不应该认为，由于北京对物质成就和为大众提供更多设施的高度重视，这些领域的成就是中国共产党政权头十年的唯一甚至是主要的关注点。生产和社会计划只是对巩固共产党的政治权力和新的、全面的共产主义制度的更基本关注的一部分。这意味着铲除旧社会的思想、关系和特权阶级，重塑数亿人的思想，建立国家的全面地理统一，并重新确立其久违的军事力量和国际影响力。

共产主义通过武力以及有效利用和调动农民、资产阶级和知识分子的大量不满情绪在中国取得了政权。从某种意义上说，它的胜利来自于对国民党统治的最后无效努力所带来的混乱的反感。它也是一个世纪以来西方和日本的侵略和经济剥削在敏感而骄傲的中国人中滋生的痛苦、怨恨的民族主义的工具。

因此，共产党的巩固过程同时具有政治、军事和排外的特点。红军席卷了曾经属于帝国中国的最远领土（除了那些在苏联统治下的蒙古和西伯利亚地区），并使从阿穆尔河和中国海经西藏和新疆到俄罗斯突厥斯坦的这片土地统一起来，这是康熙皇帝统治以来的第一次。

这场由共产党领导的高潮的势头最终被美国和盟军在朝鲜的军队以及美国和中国国民党在福尔摩沙海峡的抵抗所遏制，使台湾岛处于共产主义中国之外。在共产党人的领导下，统一和中国力量的重新崛起所产生的强烈的民族主义热情，是他们对中国人民的吸引力和他们实施共产主义统治的能力的主要因素。

"军队是国家政治力量的主要组成部分，"毛泽东曾说。在中国共产党统治的第一个十年里，毛泽东和他的同事们精心培育了军事力量，并给予共产党的武装部队特殊待遇，使他们成为党和党的国内和外交政策的忠实工具。共产党的军事力量--一支由250万人组成的正规军、一支海军和一支空军，全部由提供2亿民兵的半军事化成年人口支持--今天是世界上最强大的军队之一。对共产党人来说，它是中国恢复强大的主要表现，是外交政策中的力量工具，是对以前羞辱过中华民族的外国势力的蔑视。

与此同时，北京还拥有世界上最多面的军队之一。它被用来开拓、控制和发展人烟稀少且经常发生叛乱的边境地区；建立灌溉和通信网络；编写戏剧和诗歌；从事 "冲击 "工作，如收集粪便、收获谷物和 "整理 "公社。它也一直是一个重要的警察和权力工具，帮助北京实施其政治模式和政策。

中国共产党人通过将巨大的严酷性与微妙的灵活性相结合的方法来发展其制度。他们通过一系列全国性的、高压的、群众性的运动来实施主要的计划和政策，并通过持续的思想控制和监视来强制个人和团体的服从和顺从。

在1950-1951年的第一次伟大运动中，将土地分配给农民与清算地主和所有其他被认为是实际或潜在的反革命的个人联系起来，共产党干部将农村和城市群众唤醒，组成复仇的暴民或人民法庭，将数百万人判处死刑、监禁或成为无财产的贱民。

在随后的运动中--例如对知识分子进行洗脑，消灭私营企业并对商人进行灌输，建设大规模的水利设施，解放妇女并摒弃旧的社会习俗，实现高产目标，使农场集体化，整顿党并重新灌输和重新约束全体人民，实施最近的经济大跃进，以及组建公社--共产党人使用的恐怖手段有所减少，并依靠更精细的压力和劝告形式。但是，强迫劳动或丧失收入和地位的判决仍然是对不合作的频繁惩罚。被判定实际从事反革命颠覆活动的个人有时在大规模审判后仍被判处死刑。

中国共产党的策略是将大多数运动进行得过火，这个过程有时会因为地方干部急于避免被指控缺乏热情而变得更加激烈。许多这样的运动扭曲和拖延了进展，而不是帮助它。然而，中国共产党的领导人一直很精明地衡量民众的最终耐力水平，并及时认识到错误，在灾难之前暂停并修改计划--著名的列宁主义 "前进两步，后退一步"。1950-1951年最初的大清洗最终引起了全国范围内的反感，以至于毛泽东本人承认它走得太远了。他叫停了，但直到运动初步实现了对旧社会的残酷粉碎，并建立了一种无处不在的恐惧气氛，这种气氛一直没有消散。

共产党政权建立十年后，仍然没有明确的法律准则，没有真正的公民自由。法院是现行政策和计划的工具；法院的工作人员经常深入田间地头和工厂，调查和审判不合作的个人，有时在监督下进行小组讨论，为群众提供灌输，为被告提供纪律约束。政府控制职业、旅行和居住地；所有的大众传播媒体都是宣传工具，宣传政权在任何特定时刻想要强调的路线。

虽然口口声声说宗教自由--特别是亚洲宗教--但共产党人强迫佛教徒、穆斯林和基督教徒加入官方主导的协会，主要目的是为生产服务，方便国家控制。信徒们必须确认接受共产主义教义和国家政策，而这些教义和政策往往直接违背了他们的信仰。

与宗教团体一样，3500万少数民族--五十二个品种，包括庞大的穆斯林土尔其和回族社区、佛教徒蒙古人和藏族、川族、苗族、山族、泰族和朝鲜族--都受到了共产主义意识形态和制度的约束。占中国领土60%的 "自治 "少数民族地区，拥有许多最丰富的矿藏，其真正的自治权大大低于俄罗斯的少数民族群体。虽然在博物馆、书籍和文化团体中保留了部落艺术和民俗，但事实上，共产党人正在迅速消灭旧的信仰和习俗，并将少数民族地区变成公社化的汉族，像国家的任何其他地区一样由北京直接统治。

共产党人推翻了以儒家的家庭忠诚、孝道、尊重年龄、男尊女卑、崇尚祖先和传统等戒律为基础的旧社会秩序，将中国的数百万人重新塑造成由职业、年龄、性别、政治关系和居住地决定的群体。他们把中国人民置于不断的压力之下，让他们服从所有其他的忠诚，只承认对党和国家的忠诚。

为了创造新的、忠诚的、具有共产主义思想的一代人，共产党人给予青年特别的关注和特权。私有财产已被扫除，一个由农民、地主和企业家组成的国家被强迫纳入国有企业和国家控制企业的共产主义框架中。

今天中国政权的正式结构是典型的一元化、高度集中的共产主义制度，以苏联为模式，有一个内阁，或行政部门，由周恩来总理领导，有一个国家元首，或主席，现在是刘少奇。最重要的是在毛泽东主席领导下的党，有1200万党员，有共产主义青年团、少先队，以及劳工联合会、妇女联合会等附属团体。

正如共产党的发言人不断强调的那样，在政治的指挥下，近6.5亿被控制的中国人首先致力于在新的政治和行政模式中保持一致，其次致力于生产。北京的经济政策是以尽快建立一个强大的工业化国家为前提的。因此，大部分投资都进入了重工业，重工业生产的发展速度远远超过了农业和轻工业。然而，通过内部使用和出口，是农业、矿产、手工业和轻工业的产品在很大程度上为经济扩张提供了资金。

在过去的十年中，共产党中国只有不到相当于5亿美元的外国信贷来帮助其经济建设。其经济计划中所使用的资本货物的其余部分都是由出口支付的。与俄罗斯的产品交换，是共产党中国50%的进口来源，平均每年有2亿美元的俄罗斯材料和技术人员。

因此，中国的农业部门的负担是巨大的。这是组建公社的一个主要原因，公社是1958年由75万个集体农庄合并而成的农村地区26000个新的社会政治经济单位。

与其他共产主义运动一样，组织公社的运动超出了最初的指示，导致控制权过度集中，中国5亿农民人口被极端地控制起来。农民家庭的成员几乎成了工作小组的成员，在公共厨房里吃饭，被任意地从一个地方转移到另一个地方，妻子与丈夫分开，孩子被送进托儿所、幼儿园，而且往往是寄宿学校。

1959年在军队参与和监督下进行的 "整顿"，将大部分生产和个人收入的控制权交还给了公社的下属单位--生产大队，大致相当于以前的集体农庄。在食堂吃饭和把孩子送出家门都是自愿的，尽管仍有强大的压力促使人们使用公社的餐厅，并把年幼的孩子送进公社的机构，以便妇女能够自由地从事全职农业和其他家庭以外的劳动。在去年的组织大潮中被剥夺的家庭小块土地已经恢复；农民家庭可以种植蔬菜，养猪和养鸡，以出售给国家和恢复的有限的、受监督的自由市场。但是，中央公社委员会仍然为公社范围内的项目安排劳动力，获得生产队收入的一部分，并监督整个生产计划。去年，公社成员被编入军事类型的单位，身体健康的成年人至少在名义上成为民兵成员。在今年的改组中，军事化被修改并不再强调。修订后的收入制度更加重视个人的工作能力，允许以更大的努力获得更高的收入。

尽管在组织上出现了混乱，而且农场居民对它有激烈的反对意见，但修改后的公社制度现在似乎在相当有效地运作，至少在生产方面是这样。赫鲁晓夫曾说过，俄罗斯曾尝试过一次，发现这个制度不适合。但中国领导人没有显示出放弃它的迹象。事实上，他们仍然谈到最终要回到中央集权，将公社制度扩展到城市，并使公社成为共产主义社会模式的基础，而不是目前的社会主义社会。

共产主义中国这个大胆的、似乎不可阻挡的试验，虽然有其所有的力量，但却有着永久的弱点。强制的经济扩张速度，最严重地落在农业和轻工业部门，阻止了个人生活水平的任何显著提高。今天，基本的食物和衣服仍然被严重配给，不断逃到香港的难民讲述了长期营养不良、食物排队和货物普遍短缺的故事。

共产党人声称，他们已经将消费品的供应远远领先于人口压力，而且，通过让每个人都工作，他们已经将中国的巨大人力资源作为一种资产。然而，随着机械化的发展，中国迅速增长的人口必须成为一个日益严重的问题。

中国共产党领导人急于建设的决心本身就很危险。1956年的奢侈计划导致了通货膨胀和1957年的严重失衡和生产下降。1958年的大跃进和公社的过度导致1959年承认错过了目标和扭曲的发展。

在任何失败的情况下，压力最大的是地方干部。有很多证据表明，地方干部很疲惫，不仅因为花费了几乎是超人的努力，而且因为出了问题就被指责。1959年的反右倾机会主义运动可能是针对干部和地方党员的不满情绪；这种不满情绪也可能延伸到基本上反对大跃进的急躁情绪的共产党高层人士，以及把对勤劳人民的物质奖励保留到遥远的未来的政策。

最近，武装部队的领导权从彭德怀元帅转移到林彪元帅手中，似乎也反映了军队中的不满情绪--可能是由于广泛使用军队作为工作力量造成的。被迫在部队中服役一段时间的高级军官有一种屈辱感，而主要从农民中招募的军队官兵也有不满情绪。

自1949年共产党征服中国大陆以来，中国共产党的领导层没有发生过真正严重的裂痕。似乎仍有有效的集体团结，但毛泽东正在衰老。不能排除出现团结危机的可能。北京政权对人民的极端控制使民众不可能造反。最有可能发生混乱的方式是通过领导人之间或权力集团之间的分裂。然而，目前，中国共产党政府似乎牢牢掌握着权力。

自鸣得意的西方人不应该忘记，在现代之前的许多个世纪里，这个巨大的国家--中原王朝--在文化造诣、政治稳定、军事力量和经济财富方面超过了所有国家。今天，这个全球第二大国土面积的自然资源以及占世界人口四分之一的民族的勤劳和创造天才仍然存在。

如果团结和经济扩张的速度继续下去，这片古老的土地将在10到20年内与美国和俄罗斯并列成为大国。