How the Chinese Communist Party dictatorship regime in Beijing will collapse one day without a shot due to people's revolution of fed-up Chinese citizens "living within the truth"

by staff writers with agencies


BEIJING -- When a friend of mine in Boston was 21, long ago, the year was 1989, the month was November, and he was a senior at college, and he remembers very well that one day in his dorm’s dining hall -- ''I’ll never forget this," he told me recently -- a classmate stood on a chair and announced excitedly to the room that the Berlin Wall between West Germany and East Germany was coming down.
  
And it was, and it did, and the students watched it on American TV. The ''Eastern Bloc'' disintegrated before their eyes, miraculously, and more or less without a shot.

“A political earthquake was shattering the frozen topography of post–World War II Europe,” Tony Judt later wrote of those events. “What had once seemed permanent and somehow inevitable would take on a more transient air.” In a mere two years’ time, the USSR itself ceased to exist, and the Cold War nightmare, the only global political reality Americans and Europeans had  ever known, was over.

In a famous essay titled "The Power of the Powerless" (in 1978), the Czech playwright Vaclav Havel -- among the leaders of Prague’s Velvet Revolution November and December of 1978 and the first president of the newly democratic Czechoslovakia -- argued that the most potent form of resistance to a “post-totalitarian” system -- including today's Communist PRC China dicatatorship in 2019 -- built on pervasive falsehoods is what Havel called “living within the truth.”

He wrote: “Because the regime is captive to its own lies, it must falsify everything. It falsifies the past. It falsifies the present, and it falsifies the future.… It pretends to respect human rights.… It pretends to pretend nothing.” In order for the system to function and to maintain its control of society, Havel went on, “Individuals need not believe all these mystifications, but they must behave as though they did, or they must at least tolerate them in silence, or get along well with those who work with them. For this reason, however, they must live within a lie.”

To illustrate his point, Havel set up a hypothetical grocer who decides he can no longer live under a totatlitarian dictatorship like PRC China. One day, Havel wrote, “something in our grocer snaps.… He stops voting in elections he knows are a farce. He begins to say what he really thinks at political meetings. And he even finds the strength in himself to express solidarity with those whom his conscience commands him to support.” In taking this step, the grocer “rejects the ritual and breaks the rules of the game.… His revolt is an attempt to live within the truth.”

For Havel, the effect of such simple acts is radically revelatory: “He has broken through the exalted facade of the system and exposed the real, base foundations of power.” This is “extremely dangerous,” Havel notes, not just for the grocer (as Havel, who went to prison in 1979, well knew) but for the regime, the system itself. In that essay Havel went on, prophetically, to describe the “singular, explosive, incalculable political power of living within the truth.”

"As a 21-year-old," my Boston friend recalled, " I had yet to read any Vaclav Havel (though his plays and essays were available in English), but it didn’t matter -- it was clear enough what was happening. History had been jolted back to life by the explosive, incalculable power of those hundreds of thousands filling the streets and city squares in Germany. My fellow students and I were witnesses to the kind of fundamental, world-changing political action that Hannah Arendt (who was so inspired by the 1956 Hungarian uprising) called 'the one miracle-working faculty of man.' My fellow students at college that day literally came of age as witnesses to revolution. ''

 

As riveting as those scenes were, the revolutions in Eastern Europe and the unimaginable collapse of the Soviet Union were not the only world-altering processes unfolding on planet Earth as my Boston's friend's generational cohort came of age. They also came of age with the increasing awareness of the ruthlessness and brutality of the long dicatorship of the Chinese Communist Party centered in Beijing and began hoping for an end someday to that ugly, brainwashed, mindcontrolled regime.

 

Fast forward to 2019, to 2029, to 2039 at the latest: the people of China are beginning to revolt, quietly at first, then more visibly and noisily.

 

A young American friend in Boston, just 21, and a senior in college, he remembers very well that one day in his dorm’s dining hall -- ''I’ll never forget this," he will say -- a classmate stood on a chair and announced excitedly to the room that Chinese Communist party regime in Beijing had collapsed completely and freedom had finally come to the 1.6 billionChinese people there.

  

The American students watched it on American TV. The Chinese Communist Party regime disintegrated before their eyes on CNN TV, miraculously, and more or less without a shot.

“A political earthquake  shattered the frozen topography of communist China,” a future reporter will write  later wrote of those events. “What had once seemed permanent and somehow inevitable has taken on a more transient air.” In a few year's time, the PRC itself ceased to exist, and the Chinese Communist Party nightmare, the ugly geopolitical reality Americans and Europeans knew well, was over.

Vaclav Havel might just as well have been writing about a potent form of resistance to the Communist PRC China dicatatorship of the late 20th century and early 21st century that was built on pervasive falsehoods and finally challenged by what Havel might have called ''brave Chinese freedom fighters living within the truth.”

He might have written: “Because the communist China PRC regime was captive to its own lies, it had to falsify everything. It falsified the past. It falsified the present, and it falsified the future.… It pretended to respect human rights.… It pretended to pretend nothing.”

In order for the system to function and to maintain its control of China's 1.6 billion people, Havel might have written: “Individuals need not to have believed all those mystifications, but they had to behave as though they did, or they must have acted as though they tolerated them in silence, or got along well with those who worked with them. For this reason, however, they had to live within a lie.”


Havel would set up a hypothetical grocer in PRC China who decides he can no longer live under a totatlitarian dictatorship like PRC China. One day, Havel wrote, “something in our grocer snaps.… He stops voting in elections he knows are a farce. He begins to say what he really thinks at political meetings. And he even finds the strength in himself to express solidarity with those whom his conscience commands him to support.” In taking this step, the grocer “rejects the ritual and breaks the rules of the game.… His revolt is an attempt to live within the truth.”

For Havel, the effect of such simple acts among Chinese citizens challenging the communist dictatorship would have been radically revelatory: “They will have broken through the exalted facade of the system and exposed the real, base foundations of power.” This is “extremely dangerous,” Havel will note, not just for the grocer but for the regime, the system itself.

Havel might go on, prophetically, to describe the “singular, explosive, incalculable political power of living within the truth.”

Could this happen one day inside communist China?

Yes! It will! Patience!