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The Empire of Lies: The Truth About China in the Twenty-First Century

Dr. M. V. Kamath

In past months there has been so much said about the ‘progress’ made by China in many fields of activity that the point is made that it has already reached Super Powerhood, like it or not. Judging from media reports that flood our newspapers and journals, China’s status is unchallengeable. Are reports on China’s progress so much hype that must be taken with more than the proverbial pinch of salt? Has China grown into a Super Power with its credentials unchallenged and unchallengeable? There have been, in the past, many books on the country’s progress, no doubt accurate in their assessment, but many sceptics have often been wondering what the truth is, about China. Is it a case of the half-full glass feted and the half-empty space conveniently forgotten? Truth has many faces. Guy Sorman has sought to reveal the real picture of China as it is- and it is not a pleasant one. Sorman is a Frenchman who has been a regular visitor to China in the past forty years. He has traveled widely throughout the length and breadth of the country and in just the last three years explored China’s teeming cities and remotest corners, talking to people from various walks of life. In other words, Sorman speaks with authority, considering the tremendous amount of first hand research he has done which cannot be dismissed as mere hearsay or a deliberate and vicious attempt to belittle China. Reading him one is reminded of the shocking backwardness of the Chinese people, their endless suffering at the hands of party cadres and the unbridled capitalism prevailing in China together with political despotism. We learn how a billion people remain among the poorest and most exploited people in the world, lacking even minimal rights and public services. We learn how family planning has been enforced on Chinese women and realise the extent of cruelty perpetrated on them to the extent of 7 to 8 months foetuses being immersed in boiling water. Cruelty, apparently, is part of the Chinese psyche. Sorman recalls that at the Tienanmen Square demonstration on June 4, 1989, over 3,000 people were gunned down. Dissidents even now get short shrift. In the past, Sorman recalls further, there were 20 million deaths during the so-called Great Leap Forward from 1959 to 1962 and 30 million dead on account of the Cultural Revolution between 1966 and 1976- all facts with held by the party. Revealing them is to invite severe punishment. Corruption is present to an unbelievable extent, probably besting India at it. According to Government’s own estimates, 40 per cent of taxes taken from the peasants had no legal basis and never went to public coffers. In villages parents have to contribute to setting up of schools; teachers earn a pittance and their accommodation consists of a single unheated room. No matter what the emergency, all hospitals in China ask for an 800 yuan (Rs 4,000) deposit before a patient is admitted. Medical care hardly exists for the rural masses. The country comes first, then the villages. As soon as girls and boys turn sixteen, they are urged to leave their villages and sell their labour in urban areas. When the Great Leap Forward failed, 20 million young people were sent back to their villages, unemployed and unemployable. One third of Shanghai’s 17 million inhabitants are migrants, providing cheap labour. 20 per cent of the Chinese are unemployed and two thirds of China’s engineers and university degree holders cannot find work commensurate with their high qualifications. Terrorism of the peasants is part of administrative proceedings. In May 2005, at Shengyou Province, a militia squad of the local government expelled a hundred peasant families who had refused to give up their land without compensation for the construction of a power plant. Armed with pitchforks, the peasants resisted. Twelve were killed. That ended the matter. According to Sorman "such revolts are an everyday occurrence all over the countryside. But there are usually no witnesses, and when there are, they are unwilling to talk." The party is always right. Whenever the brutality of its methods are criticised, the Communist leadership is quick to point out that all developed coun
tries have similarly gone through a stage of massive rural migration to urban industry". Asks Sorman: "will China gain the supremacy that its leaders are dreaming of, not just in Asia but across the world?" His answer is: "If Shanghai is any indication, that prospect seems improbable". Apparently the stock market in Shanghai is weak and has "ruined millions of small investors". Half of the city’s 17 million population has no proper sanitation as the colour of the River Huangpu makes plain". China is immensely dependent on western capital. For an alleged communist country, this is a big joke. But when foreign investors are asked about the profitability of their Chinese ventures, Sorman says "CEOs or their bankers maintain a studious silence." Says Sorman: "Economic development in China is not miracle, but an illusion". And he adds: "Getting a loan and not repaying it is a specifically Chinese way of amassing wealth. Loans are easily available for those who have connections….. A 5% commission has to be paid to the people at the bank and 15% to the local party cadres for getting the loan approved "The debtors don’t have to repay anything as long as they continue to enjoy the Party’s patronage." This book has to the read to be believed. Nobody in the past seems to have had the courage to expose Chinese pretensions. Sorman is almost the first one to do so. He says: Corruption, violent deaths, hush money, jail, scape-goating - this is life in China under the enlightened despotism of the party. Asks Sorman: "Instead of worrying about China’s invasion of the free world,- the danger is theoretical and remote-we should ask why the free world has chosen to support a communist-military complex that is holding 1.3 billion people hostage". It is a good question. In contrast to China, India is paradise. And it received Sorman’s fulsome praise towards the end.