Is China's History America's Future? | Interviews

Welcome to Office Hours. I'm Georgia Howe with The Daily Wire. Today, we sit down with senior contributor at The Federalist and author of Confucius Never Said, Helen Raleigh. Helen's new PragerU video is titled, Did Capitalism Save Communist China?, where she explores how China, by allowing free enterprise, lifted itself out of poverty over the course of 30 years, and how in recent years they've begun to revert back to their Maoist past, exerting more and more control over their citizens. Let's jump right in. Helen, thank you so much for joining me. Thank you for having me, Georgia. First, I want to ask you a bit about your personal experience. So something that people don't always realize about communism is how much control is required over the citizens to maintain this collectivist society. And they don't always realize how the citizens really need to fear the government in order for the system to work. Can you talk about that for a minute? So I can share with you the experience that my great-grandparents had through the land reform, which happened right after the communists took over China in 1949. My great-grandparents, they were both hard workers, and they earned the land through their hard work. And the communist party promised all the poor farmers that everybody would own land, you know, you would never have to work for a landowner anymore. So the way they did it was to take land from landowners like my great-grandparents and forcefully took land away from them and distributed it to over 300 million poor farmers. My great-grandparents lost everything overnight. And if anyone dared to resist, they would put you in jail, you know, torture you, sometimes execute you. Between one to two million landowners died during the land reform. So fortunately, my great-grandparents survived, they lost everything. And that just shows you that the government could not have such a tyrannical control if they did not deliver through fear, the fear of death, fears of execution to intimidate the property owners. Did they initially have to threaten people with death, or was that something that developed over time? Oh, they threatened from the beginning, but all in the name of doing good, because they promised the 300 million poor farmers, landless poor farmers, say, hey, if you do this, this is the only way you get to have land, too. Everybody will have equal share of land. But what the government actually planned to do, which showed up a few years later, was because communism fundamentally does not believe in private property rights. So the whole process of land reform, which taken land away from the landowners, distributed to the poor farmers, was just the first step. So in a few years, the government actually took control of all the lands from the poor farmers. So now, even till today in China, the government owns all the land. There's no private land ownership anymore. So what about private homes? Do people own private homes now? Well, so they do not really own home. It's a 70-year lease. So they do not own, for example, in the United States, when we buy a house, you own the land rights, you own the minerals and everything discovered on your property. But in China, you do not own that. When you buy a house, you really buy the right to use it for 70 years. And nobody from the government ever explained what happened after the 70 years. Well, it sounds like the landowners were probably unhappy from the beginning. But how did most people feel when communism arrived? Well, communism, when it first arrived, was very popular with the mass poor populations. Because, again, the promise, the communist promise, was this pie in the sky, this paradise. Nobody has to go hungry anymore. Everybody will have a job. Everybody who wants land will have land. And all the factories will be shared, owned by factory workers. So basically, you're working for yourself. You don't have to work for evil landowners or business owners anymore. So yes, it was very popular at the very beginning. And even for the poor farmers, because they say, hey, the landowners may be miserable, but there are more of us, and we can have land. So they gave the government popular support. Only a few years later, when the government took the land away from the poor farmers, then they finally realized that they were just a stepping stone for the government to nationalize the land ownership. How long did it take for the people in China, including the poor, to become disenchanted with communism? Well, it took less than 10 years. So the land reform started right after the establishment of communist China in 1949. And within the 10 years, the government took over the land ownership. And also, China experienced the worst famine in human history from 1958 to 1962, that an estimate over 20 million Chinese people died in starvation. So that's when people finally turned against communism and realized what a horrible, evil ideology that was. In the video, you talked about how Mao nationalized industry in China. I want to play a clip of that, and then I have a question for you. In 1949, the Chinese Communist Party, aka the CCP, defeated the Nationalist Party in a brutal civil war. The leader of the CCP, Mao Zedong, promised the Chinese people that he would create a new China, a socialist paradise where the benevolent state would take care of every citizen's needs, from shelter to education to employment. Mao launched radical socialist reforms. Industries were nationalized, private businesses were eliminated, and the land was confiscated. For people who haven't taken economics, can you talk briefly about why government-controlled industry results in shortages? Right. Because the government cannot really, you know, for a complex economy, the government bureaucracies cannot really efficiently, also accurately plan what's the demand versus the supply. So when the government nationalized all the industries, they really took away the price signal, make sure business can adjust the demand versus supply. So when they did that, the whole demand and supply curve became very inefficient. And also, you took people's incentive away. When you're not working for yourself, especially for business owners, when they're not working for themselves, when they're not planning for their own businesses, for their own customers, they really have no incentive to work hard. So then you have a situation where there was a shortage of everything, from toilet papers to clothes, the clothes you wear as well. But mostly it's industrial products that were in a great deal of shortages, too. And conversely, why does economic freedom result in more prosperity? Well, because economic freedom, it really matches with, you know, with our human nature. This is a typical, nobody washes their rental car symptom, right? If it's not yours, you don't care for it, you don't want to work hard for it. But when it's yours, that'll make a huge difference, which was the example I gave in the video, that when people are free to make their own choices, and when they know that they get to keep what they earn, that's a huge incentive for people who are willing to take risks, are willing to work hard, because they're working for themselves. And that's human nature. Can you give me a few examples of how the Chinese government is exerting more control over citizens in daily life? Right. So in recent years, China's economic growth has significantly slowed down. And I believe that a lot has to do with the government exerting more control and slow down the pace of reform. So China still has many industries and sectors that are controlled by the government, for example, the financial sectors. And when the government controls the financial sectors, small businesses and also people, it's very difficult for them to get loans, to start a new business, to expand their businesses, and it makes the capital allocations very inefficient. In addition to that, the Chinese government also exerts more control over people's political freedom as well. And the government currently builds this massive surveillance system. There are cameras everywhere. There are facial recognition technologies implemented everywhere. So basically, the big brothers are watching everything you do and say. They also implement a social credit system to measure your behavior according to the government standard, what is a good behavior, what is a bad behavior, and penalizing you. For example, if you criticize the government, then you may not be allowed to fly or to ever travel again. And those kinds of super controlling environments really stifle people's ability to think for themselves as well as to be creative, to want to take risks, to want to be creative, come up with solutions for new products and services to stimulate the economy. So it's a really terrible approach to China's economy as well as to people's well-being. So I've heard, and you can confirm this, that people will lose social credits for going to a church service, for example. Is that accurate? It is accurate because this whole credit system measures you like over a thousand points. And they really measure everything, like the way how you put out the trash, how you treat your pets, whether you visit your parents or not. But it also controls your political beliefs, like you mentioned, whether you go to church, if you believe in Islam or Christianity, or if you criticize the government for their coronavirus response. There's a lot of points collected that will reflect, basically will make sure you'll either be punished or rewarded by the government. And that's really controlling, really such a narrow path for each individual, how the government wants you to behave. They want to shape this, mold this particular citizen according to the government standard. It's very scary. And do you sense that it does successfully control people's thinking? I mean, for example, would you say most citizens are supportive of the government? Or would you say people are just afraid and behave because they just want to maintain their credit score? It's very difficult to engage the true public opinion in China because people were so used to not speak out the truth because speaking the truth will get you in trouble. So it's very difficult to know. But definitely there's a lot of fear. There's actually the fear also expanded to oversee Chinese. For example, many Chinese students who have families back in China, they are afraid to even talk about a subject like Xinjiang, like Tibet in a foreign classroom because some of their classmates may report what they said back home. And it's actually happened to be reported that a student who discussed about those issues, right after the class, he got a phone call from his parents, basically said, hey, we're going to visit from the government because you said such and such in your class. That just showed you the level of control. It's just not just in China. It's actually the lower arms of control extended overseas to the overseas Chinese population as well. I have one more question for you, Helen. Are there things you're seeing here in the United States that remind you of communist China? Oh, absolutely. This is what worries me the most is like the cancel culture. The cancel culture reminds me of the Cultural Revolution in China, that you had to suppress different ideas. And we're starting with digital book burning, we're cancelling great thinkers and great ideas, and we're condemning the entire, not we, but the woke crowd, condemn the entire Western civilization. And I'm very concerned that we're on such a self-destructive path, we're just delight our adversaries and really throwing away what's so great about this country, and what beautiful ideas and great thinkers that we have generated in this civilization. I'm deeply concerned. I never thought in my lifetime, I would have to fight for the right to speak, to freely express myself twice in two different countries. And that's actually very depressing. Helen, you've given us a lot to think about. If you want to hear more from Helen Raleigh, you can go buy her book, Confucius Never Said, or follow her on Twitter at H Raleigh Speaks. Helen, thank you so much for joining the program. Thank you for having me. And that's the end of today's Office Hours. Make sure you tune in next week for our next conversation with a new Prager U presenter. I'm Georgia Howe. Thanks for tuning in.