First Published: The Call, Vol. 7, No. 22, June 5, 1978.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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Lies and slanders against socialist China are usually the stock in trade of the capitalist press, the State Department and the Soviet revisionists. It was precisely to correct these distortions and explain China’s policies in the interest of building mutual friendship and understanding that the U.S.-China People’s Friendship Association was formed in 1973 and has grown into a mass national organization with over 5,000 members.
But in recent months, Association members have begun to hear the same slanderous attacks and distortions about China coming from a small faction right inside their own organization, under the leadership of the phony “communists” of Bob Avakian’s Revolutionary Communist Party.
The RCP, which has been torn to shreds by splits since the leadership adopted its anti-China stand, has spent the past year and a half engaging in a “whisper campaign” to attack China’s new leader, Hua Kuo-feng, and support the counter-revolutionary “gang of four. ”
RCP internal documents, authored by Avakian, present the RCP’s views on the present situation in China:
It has been my opinion, since it became clear that in fact the Four had been arrested by Hua Kuo-feng and Co., that this represented a right-wing coup . . . one phrase can put it simply – ’the wrong side won.’
Avakian refers to the constitution adopted at the recently held 11th Congress of the CPC as “fascist” and, in his document, calls on the Chinese people to “wage struggle under very difficult circumstances against the capitalist roaders and plant the seeds of their future overthrow.”
Even Avakian realizes, however, that the USCPFA, based on its Statement of Principles, could not accept the use of the Association as a platform to call for the overthrow of the Chinese government. Therefore, in his paper, he advises RCP followers to form a secret faction to ensure that the Association “is not contributing to building up the current rulers in opposition to the Four.”
Hence the RCP-initiated whisper campaign and, most recently, an open letter to members of the Association by RCPer Aleen Holly. In the letter, Holly claims that “debate within the USCPFA is being stifled” and that the RCP should be able to organize internal Association meetings to spread their attacks on China.
Holly’s letter charges that “China has embarked on a radical departure from its past.” She goes on to list a number of “examples” of this departure, presenting them as “facts” but not backing them up with one shred of evidence.
According to Holly, “revolutionary committees” in China are being replaced by “one person (who will) make decisions, just as they did before the Cultural Revolution, about basic policy in the basic units, rather than a committee of people representing the different groups in the unit.”
And further, Holly claims that Scientists and other intellectuals must “no longer engage in menial labor.” She goes so far as to state that “a basic policy of integration of mental and manual labor has been challenged as inapplicable ...”
It’s easy to see why Holly presents no evidence to back up these assertions – they are, in fact, nothing but a collection of lies that have been and continue to be refuted every day, not only through Chinese publications, but also by the hundreds of USCPFA members who have travelled to China in the past year.
For example, on the charge of the so-called “replacement of revolutionary committees” by “one-person rule,” the role of these committees under the Party’s leadership was spoken to by CPC Vice- Chairman Yeh Chien-ying in his speech at the CP’s 11th Party Congress.
Yeh said, “We must also do a good job of strengthening and building up the revolutionary committees at all levels and revolutionary mass organizations ... to enable them the better to play their respective roles under the Party’s leadership.” Some revolutionary committees – those that aren’t organs of state power – are being disbanded. But these are the committees that were used by the “gang” to undermine the Party and establish their own rule.
RCP’s report that “the integration of manual and mental labor has been challenged as inapplicable” is also a total fraud. A recent article in Peking Review #15 answered the question about whether “open-door” education advocated during the Cultural Revolution would be continued.
“With the ’gang of four’ smashed,” the article noted, “we are now in a better position to implement the principle laid down by Chairman Mao that, for students, while their main task is to study, they should also learn other things: and really combine education with productive labor.”
The article added, “College students now take part in labor that is connected with what they are studying.” Is this a “challenge” to the principle of integrating mental and manual work? Where is the separation of manual and mental labor taking place?
Why do Holly and her fellow RCPers distort developments in China this way? It is clear from these dishonest and splittest tactics as well as from their own internal documents that these people aren’t just raising “questions” or “concerns” about “policy changes” in China at all – they are simply using these tactics as a smokescreen to put across their real views of China – the view that not only capitalism has been restored, but “fascist” dictatorship has been set up.
Getting bolder and bolder, these enemies of China have gone so far as to use the Seattle local of the USCPF A as a public platform from which to launch these attacks. Their attacks on China, including the characterization of the present leadership as “fascist,” were made public at a meeting of the local and were combined with a racist attack on the local’s minority members.
When Association members have rightfully opposed the RCP’s anti-China diatribes and splittist activities in the USCPFA, the RCP used the tactic of labelling all opposition as “anti-communist.”
By forming a secret faction, RCP hopes to convince people that it is not really the RCP saying these things, but rather some independent individuals. By this logic, to reveal RCP’s secret strategy for destroying USCPFA, is supposedly “red-baiting.” The facts go to prove, however, that it is the Avakian gang who are the real anti-communists in the Association. Their unprincipled methods and their slanders of China have done more to promote anti-communism than anything else.
The RCP clique and its anti-China diatribe have no place within an association for friendship between the Chinese and American people. Finding themselves increasingly isolated and opposed within the USCPFA, they have raised the phony cry of “democracy.” But this is just an attempt to convince people that their disruptive efforts have something in common with the necessary internal education and discussion that is increasingly being taken up in the Association about the struggle against the “gang of four” and the present situation in China.
But they are not gaining any ground. In various chapters of the USCPFA the RCP anti-China drive is being rejected by the overwhelming majority of the Association. There is broad sentiment among rank-and-file members to take away accreditation from the RCP-run Seattle chapter. In all likelihood, the Association will show this clique to the door, where they can howl their anti-China chorus to the moon.