A professor at Peking University, one of the most prestigious institutions of higher education in China, has gone out on a limb in recent remarks in Taiwan, denouncing the Chinese communist political system and saying that he and his colleagues have given up hope in the Communist Party.
Dr. Xia Yeliang, an economics professor, also concluded in the seminar at National Taiwan University on Dec. 18 that the economic reforms of the last 30 years are as far as it is going to go, because the Chinese Communist Party will not willingly relinquish its monopoly on power. There will be no democratic political reform in China under the Party, he said.
“If the people in China want democracy, the society at large need to pressure the CCP,” he said.
“One-party ruling easily leads to a tyrannical government due to the lack of supervision and restraining mechanisms,” he said.
He said that the CCP has meticulously controlled public opinion by monopolizing the media, where all televisions, radios, newspapers, and publishers—in China, and in Hong Kong, and Taiwan to a lesser extent—are transmitting the CCP’s propaganda in one way or another.
All universities in China are public schools directly controlled by the CCP, he said.
The Party also maintains what it calls a “stable society” through what Xia calls “national terrorism,” which cost 570 billion yuan (US$90 billion) last year, more than the country’s entire military expenses. This year the operation is estimated to exceed US$95 billion, he said.
When asked by a member of the audience whether China is a capitalist or socialist country, Xia allowed that there are capitalist themes, but that it is really state monopolistic capitalism, elitist capitalism, and nepotistic capitalism, instead of free market capitalism.
“They adopt whatever is beneficial for them,” he said of Party officials. “They have neither religious belief nor political ideals. They worship money.”
Xia noted that the number of people involved in local protests in China has gone from dozens or thousands in the past to tens of thousands at a time now. The protests take place in one village after another, and desperate people are willing to die for their appeals, having been pushed so far by the regime.
He believes that there will be more widespread and violent social conflicts which, if not diffused, could bring an end to the communist regime. Totalitarian regimes in general, he said, are all bound to end sooner or later. If most of people in the country believe that the regime is corrupt, in decline, and its doings go against the general welfare, then it is only natural that the people will overthrow it, he said. That will take a variety of social forces working over a period of time, he said.
Peking University Professor Says China Reform a Dead End | Business & Economy | China | Epoch Times
