SO
PARTISAN REVIEW
When we got back to America a week after the Tiananmen Massacre,
all our Chinese friends in New York were pro-student and anti-govern–
ment. Things have changed . Many of my friends who were pro-student
in
1989
have since decided that Deng Xiaoping did the right thing in
crushing the demonstration. Ai Heshui is one of them. He no longer
supports the movement he risked his life for. I haven't been back to
China, but people I know who have gone there tell me that public opin–
ion in China has changed . Now people seem to be saying they want sta–
bility, not democracy. They remember the days of the Cultural
Revolution, when gangs of Red Guards entered people's homes search–
ing for books, paintings, or musical instruments, all of which were ille–
gal at that time. They say that they need stability to prevent a return of
the Red Guards. Somehow they don't realize that it was Chairman Mao
himself who invented the Cultural Revolution and inspired the Red
Guards. There are very few people in the world who know that democ–
racy is the most stable form of government.
Deng Xiaoping said, "To get rich is glorious." Friends and former
students I knew in China who have visited the United States recently
have told me that nothing is more beautiful than money, and that they
are interested in money, not politics. "Compact Affordable Car Revs Up
for Sale" says a front-page headline in the December
13,
2000,
issue of
China Daily,
an English-language newspaper published in Beijing. At
least some people in China are indeed getting rich.
In the days of Chairman Mao, nobody talked about money.
It
was
assumed that what is good for a particular person is necessarily bad for
the People. The world was viewed as a zero-sum society where good
luck for an individual was considered bad luck for the masses. Self-inter–
est was thought to be anti-social-especially if money was involved. The
People was at war with people.
This view grew out of the line in
The Communist Manifesto:
"The
history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles."
In a class struggle, there are class enemies, and Chairman Mao had
divided people into the
hong wu lei,
the five red (good) categories–
workers, soldiers, peasants, revolutionary martyrs, and Communist
Party officials- and the
hei wu lei,
the five black (bad) categories-land–
lords, rich peasants, rightists, counterrevolutionaries, and bad elements .
No one wanted to risk being classified as rich and therefore a member
of one of the five black categories.
The acceptance of the legitimacy of wanting to be rich is perhaps the
biggest change in China since the death of Mao. Everywhere in the
world, people want to be rich. Money is needed not only for food, cloth-
