A HISTORY OF MASSACRES IN CHINA What Makes the Chinese Such Lovers of Murder? SEKI Hei 0 This book is dedicated to the young comrades of my heart who fell as victims to the bullets of the Army of the Chinese Communist Party 18 years ago. 1 PREFACE: DOES THE PRESENT CHINESE GOVERNMENT HAVE A RIGHT TO CONDEMN "NANKING"? This year (2007) marks the 70th anniversary of the occurrence of the "Nanking Incident." Just as I had expected, the Chinese Communist regime has taken advantage of the opportunity afforded by the occasion and is attempting to carry out a long-awaited anti-Japanese campaign on a massive scale. The "Massacre Memorial Museum," which is currently in the process of being expanded, is scheduled for reopening to great fanfare on December 13, in line with the commemoration of the fall of Nanking. A number of movies on the subject of the "Nanking Incident" are now being made and are to be screened one after another. One such movie, entitled Nanking Nanking, is intended to serve as a "panoramic reproduction of the cruel history of the massacre and the atrociousness of the Japanese Army." On top of this type of limited-period anti-Japanese campaign, the dissemination of anti-Japanese education under the rubric of the "Nanking Incident" has long been commonplace in China. In history lessons at middle and high schools, teaching the "Nanking Massacre" is a "priority program." When teachers talk about the brutal acts of the Japanese Army in Nanking, they are always overcome with emotion and collapse in tears. Excited students scream, smash their textbooks against the blackboard, turn their desks upside down and fall into mass hysterics. When the class has calmed down, an ecstatic sense of unity reportedly fills the classroom with an intense hatred against Japan that has been generated. Li Zhaoxing, the former Foreign Minister of China nicknamed the "Red Guard diplomat," also used the "Nanking Massacre" as his grounds when he criticized a Japanese prime minister's visits to Yasukuni Shrine by lumping the "Class A war criminals" in the same category as Adolf Hitler. The "Nanking Massacre" is the "flagship" of anti-Japanese propaganda and anti-Japanese education led by the Chinese Communist regime and serves as a perfect weapon with which to bash Japan. That is why high officials of the regime, government scholars and the media constantly mention "Nanking" as if it were all they knew. When uttered from the mouths of such people, however, this word never fails to arouse my disdain. And when I contemplate how they could ever have a right to say 2 such a thing, I am gripped by a deep revulsion of their odiousness. The credibility of the claims of an alleged "Nanking Massacre" of 70 years ago is quite questionable. But only 18 years ago, a real massacre was undoubtedly carried out in China: a "Beijing massacre" called the "Tiananmen Incident." Who executed the indiscriminate slaughter of unarmed students and civilians who were peacefully appealing for democratization in the early summer of 1989 by randomly firing machine guns and even going as far as to send tank regiments? No one else but the Chinese Communist regime. The Communist Party is a genuine murderer. To cover up its own crime of massacre, however, the Communist Government made a heinous criminal out of Japan and began a major anti-Japanese propaganda effort in the1990s following the Tiananmen Incident. Above all, the "Nanking Massacre" has been brought forth as compelling evidence that proves the "crime" committed by Japan and provides fuel to add to the hatred against the Japanese. In other words, the Communist Government, a really murderous entity, is trying to erase the bloodshed in Beijing from history by making loud noises about a "massacre" in Nanking. The regime is attempting to divert the grudge directed at itself by imbuing the Chinese public with a strong sense of hatred against Japan. Remarkably, the massacre at Tiananmen Square in Beijing has now vanished from the memory of the Chinese people. The traces of brilliance and the glorious struggles of my comrades who sacrificed their young lives for the democratization of China are about to be concealed in the darkness of history. For me, who was once committed to the pro-democracy movement together with my comrades of Tiananmen, this is absolutely unacceptable. In China, there is an age-old phrase, zei han zhuo zei, which means he who cries "Stop the thief" is the thief himself. The Communist Government's resort to zei han zhuo zei in their attempt to whitewash "Tiananmen" by bringing up "Nanking" is something that truly arouses the spirit of righteous anger in me. This being the case, why don't I thoroughly reveal what great massacres this same Communist Government has carried out during its history, including the bloodshed at Tiananmen? This is the basic idea behind my resolution to write this book. I would like to uncover the truths of history for the sake of my comrades who met their glorious fate as well as for the hundreds of millions of my fellow Chinese who were killed in cruel ways. Of course, to dig down to uncover the deeper causes of the great many massacres committed by the Chinese Communist Party, it is also necessary to trace the history and traditions of China that gave birth to this murderous regime and to clarify how the 3 notion and logic of "massacre" were originally spawned and how they have been handed down since. Accordingly, this book provides a compilation of detailed studies of the "history of massacres in China" since the time of the First Emperor Qin Shi Huangdi with the history of massacres by the CCP covered in detail. In compiling it, I have attempted to cast some light on some dark corners of history that have generally been ignored. Alternately, the book can be seen as another account of the history of China with the focus on "massacres." Nothing would give me greater pleasure if this writing could be of any help to readers in coming to an understanding of the essence of the "Nanking issue" and the characteristics of the Chinese Communist Government. 4 CONTENTS PREFACE: DOES THE PRESENT CHINESE GOVERNMENT HAVE A RIGHT TO CONDEMN "NANKING" 2 CHAPTER 1: HOW THE CHINESE COMMUNIST PARTY AROSE OUT OF MASS KILLING 7 Revolution is "Killing in Conspiracy with Scoundrels" 7 The Horrendous Reality of Yicun Yishao Yisha 11 To Kill the "Enemy," Start with a Friend 14 The "Great Purge of the Red Army"—The Execution of 10,000 Men by Mao 18 How 70,000 "Revolutionary Comrades" were Slaughtered 22 "Starvation Tactics" that Caused 330,000 Residents of Changchun to Die of Hunger 23 CHAPTER 2: THE COMMUNIST GOVERNMENT AMUSING ITSELF BY SLAUGHTERING ITS OWN PEOPLE 26 "Land Reform Activity" That Took the Lives of Two Million People 26 The Zhenfan Massacre Involving the Immediate Execution of 710,000 People 27 The Sad Fate of a University Professor Shot to Death for a Preposterous Reason 32 The Sufan Campaign—Slaughter as "Entertainment" 35 The Great Famine Claiming Tens of Millions of Lives Caused by a "Policy" 38 "Food Exportation amid Starvation"—the Crime of the Century 42 CHAPTER 3: HOW THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION PERIOD CREATED A "MURDERER'S PARADISE" 47 Mao Zedong's Last "Dipi Liumang Revolution" 47 Pohai Zhisi—Mass Slaughter on a National Scale 49 Middle School Teachers Beaten to Death 52 Pre-Holiday "Murder Festivals" Became Customary 55 Mass Murder of Incidents for the Sake of Exterminating "Class Enemies" 61 CHAPTER 4: CRUEL TALES OF MASSACRES MAKING THE PAGES OF THE IMPERIAL HISTORY OF CHINA 66 The Tyranny of the Qin Empire That Carried out "Three Types of Massacres" 66 5 The Han Empire's 400-year History Filled with Intrigue and Killings 70 Bloodthirsty Power Holders in Turbulent Times 77 Great Blood Purges Reiterated in the Ming Empire 84 CHAPTER 5: BLOODCURDLING INDISCRIMINATE MASSACRES IN THE HISTORY OF CHINA 89 The "Great Sichuan Massacre" Began with the Killing of a Million People 89 "Murder Competition" Within Zhang Xianzhong's Army Brought About the Annihilation of the Population 93 The Manchus' War of Conquest Garnished with "Castle Slaughter" 99 The Taiping Rebellion and the Genuine "Nanking Massacre" 105 The Tiananmen Incident: A "Beijing Massacre" of Only 18 Years Ago 108 AFTERWORD: THE LOGIC OF MASSACRE BORN OUT OF THE CHINESE DYNASTIES 114 6 CHAPTER 1: HOW THE CHINESE COMMUNIST PARTY AROSE OUT OF MASS KILLING Revolution is "Killing in Conspiracy with Scoundrels" In July 1921, the Chinese Communist Party held the First Congress in Shanghai and was inaugurated as the China branch of the Comintern. This marked the dawn of the longest period of the largest-scale of violence and bloodshed in Chinese history. According to the Leninist-Stalinist theory of revolution, "evil" capitalist society is a system in which the tiny capitalist class employs a violent power apparatus to exploit the working class. To demolish this unreasonable system and liberate the working class, the working class itself must first become organized. Then the "apparatus of violence" must be destroyed by means of violence. In other words, revolution is the "destruction of violence with violence." Of course the Communist Party, or the vanguard of the working class, is also an elite unit of this revolution by force and is afforded the privilege of exercising violence to the fullest extent. This extreme theory of revolution provided endorsement of the heightened level of violence of the revolution and of the tyranny of the Communist Party. Lenin's Russian Revolution, which cost the lives of tens of millions of people and is known for its unprecedented atrocities, was the first "experiment in revolution by force" in human history.