– China, Growing Superpower

China's power, influence are growing
By Tom Nichols

As every high school student of Latin knows, Caesar reported to Rome from his first visit to Gaul (France) that "All Gaul is divided into three parts"

If we look at China today, we can adapt the phrase from Caesar to read, "All China is divided into two parts." That division came with the Cultural Revolution, which broke out 40 years ago and forced China into 10 years of unprecedented turmoil.

Chinese who were teenagers then now are in their 50s and 60s. They were formed into units called Red Guards and were given free reign to terrorize the country.

Schools were closed, and youth fought to make everyone follow the ideas of Chairman Mao Tse-tung. Intellectuals were tormented, forced to quote Mao, and many were disgraced publicly. All western ideas, music, literature were rejected. Members of the Communist Party itself were attacked for not supporting Mao thoroughly.

On one of my tours to China, I had a very perceptive translator-guide who admitted to me that he had been a member of the Red Guard like most Chinese youth. He said he was ashamed at what he did in the frenzy of activities. He did not want to discuss it further, and I did not press.

On another tour to China, I broke away from my group and went exploring by myself, as I like to do. I got off the street car on Chang An street not far from the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square. A young man with wife and young son approached me.

He asked if he could practice his English with me. I said "yes" and we spoke for some time. He said he had been a student of English at a university, but that for the entire time of the Cultural Revolution the school was closed. He had a short- wave radio and listened to the Voice of America, and tried to learn English that way. .

The young man was taking a risk in talking with me openly, and it had probably been illegal for him to have listened to Voice of America. China was and still is a dictatorship of the Communist Party.

Back in the late 1960s as a political science teacher, I was invited to a briefing at the State Department on current international problems. At the end of a formal statement, the spokesman took our questions. One of the first questions was "What does the State Department think is going on in China with this Cultural Revolution."

The reply surprised me. The spokesman said "We don't know and we have asked the British, and they don't know either."

Basically the Cultural Revolution was an effort by Mao to regain some of the political power he had lost as a result of his massive mistake in the mid-1950s with the economic program called the Great Leap Forward. Mao forced the countryside into communes. He ordered backyard furnaces to produce steel without success. The economy was in shambles, and millions starved. Consequently Mao was forced to resign as chairman of the government, but he remained chairman of the party. Then in 1966, he permitted his wife and three officials from Shanghai, (later called the Gang of Four) to run the country for nearly a decade.

Finally, Mao realized the Cultural Revolution was hurting the country and ordered the Red Guards to be dissolved. Deng Xiaoping rose to power after Mao died, and changed China into a system that introduced a market economy with a pragmatic form of communism that remains a dictatorship at the top.

Deng said, "It does not matter if a cat is black or white, so long as it catches mice." And, " to be rich is glorious."

Deng is dead, but his reforms continue. The head of China is Hu Jintao and the head of government is Premier Wen Jinbao, since March 2003.

The Red Guards of 40 years ago now are parents of the modern younger generation. The youth of China are light years different from their parents who participated in the Cultural Revolution.

Today the youth of China live well for the most part. They don't worry about housing, education, food, medicine that are directly or indirectly controlled by the state. The young people of China benefit from their country's industrial growth rate of 27 percent. They have money to burn. They want to be like young people abroad with name brand clothing, shoes. Many of the more than 100 million users of the Internet in China are young.

Some 13 million males and 12 million females reach the draft age of 18 each year. Those drafted served for two years in the People's Liberation Army. No other army in the world has such a human resource.

China has a veto in the United Nations Security Council. It has sent satellites into space, and has a well-established nuclear industrial/military complex. Some 21 percent of all its exports go to the United States, but only 8 percent of its imports come from the United States. Thus China is building up its financial power.

China for both its older and younger generations is growing into an economic, military and regional superpower that is bound to grow stronger in the years to come.

Tom Nichols is a retired college professor who lives in Gainesville; e-mail, wtomnichols@charter.net .