A Conversation with a Chinese Person 02 | The Communist Party Promised the Future, and the Young Pay for It Their Whole Lives

"Reform and Opening was a choice it made so it could stay alive. How did that end up as a favor we owe it for the rest of our lives?"

Interviewee: Zhou, 25

Brennan Ruskell: Did you believe in the Communist Party when you were a kid?

Zhou: Of course I did. Grown-ups said we'd caught a good time. Teachers said life getting better and better was all the Party's doing. I figured if I studied hard and worked hard, I'd live better than my parents for sure. Later I found out the home is for me to buy, the pension is for me to pay into, the debt is for us to pay back, and the children are still for us to have. The moment we say jobs are hard to find and life won't hold up, they say young people can't take hardship. So I want to ask: you've already taken the good part. Why do I still have to prove that the way you set things up was right?

Brennan Ruskell: When did you start doubting those history stories?

Zhou: When I was little, I heard the grown-ups say America and South Korea wanted to fight their way into China, so we went off to the war they call Resist America and Aid Korea. Later I checked. North Korea invaded South Korea first. Kim Il-sung had Stalin's go-ahead beforehand, and he had Mao Zedong's agreement too. China sent troops in after that and helped the North keep its government. You back somebody going over to hit the other side, and then you tell the whole thing as if they were coming to hit you. So many people died, and you still want the next generation to keep hating from your version. Isn't that Party propaganda just bullshit?

Brennan Ruskell: Did the great famine make you doubt in the same way?

Zhou: What "three years of natural disaster"? Bad weather explains why the grain was taken by force, why the harvest numbers were made up, why people who told the truth got crushed? The farmers were starving and still couldn't decide how the grain was shared? The Party was running the Great Leap Forward out there. Each level lied to the one above. Down below, to show loyalty, they reported the numbers up. Up top, to save face, they kept at it. In the end that many people starved to death, and they stuck the words "natural disaster" out in front. God can't come out and hold a press conference, so of course every bit of blame can be pushed onto the weather. They're really fucking good at finding an excuse.

Brennan Ruskell: So how do you see Reform and Opening, the thing that came after?

Zhou: The Communist Party talks communism every fucking day. Early on it grew on support from the Communist International and the Soviet Union. The Communist International was the network Moscow ran so it could build communist parties in other countries. Later the Party fell out with the Soviets, and then it got on better terms with America, the country it had cursed for so many years. At home it thrashed around for decades, left ordinary life in ruins, and only then had to change, to find itself a way to stay alive. Betraying the Soviet Union and going over to America: that's how I see that turn. But later it told its own scramble to survive as a favor it was doing us. Like being allowed to work, being allowed to run a business, was some special kindness. The thing is, all through Reform and Opening, Chinese people never got the political freedoms Japanese people have, or that South Koreans got after they became a democracy. You leave a few doors less shut, and the people still locked in have to thank you for the rest of their lives?

Brennan Ruskell: Why do you say the Communist Party is like a labor contractor?

Zhou: Because the way I see it, it's one big labor contractor, one big middleman. The orders come from outside. Chinese people do the work. It holds the land, the banks, and the gate you have to get through to start a business, and it won't let workers organize and bargain with it. Other people pay the money. We do the work. It decides how the money is split and how the rules are set, and it still says everyone having food to eat is its achievement. Now the orders and the chances from outside are taking a hit, and it's eyeing the money people saved before. What I fear most is this. The contractor isn't making what he used to, so he turns around and starts going through the workers' pockets.

Brennan Ruskell: If opening up is how it makes money, why does it wreck the conditions that opening needs?

Zhou: Because Chinese people aren't all fools. Somebody is always going to think: we get the orders because someone is willing to buy what we make. Why does the Communist Party have to sit in the middle? Roads cost money. Police keeping order cost money. We can pay taxes and keep public services going. What does that have to do with feeding a party we're not allowed to watch, a party that decides every day who we're supposed to hate? I think what it fears is people thinking this through. They need a government to get things done. They don't need the Communist Party sitting on their heads forever. Then it can't scare people anymore with "without me, you're nothing."

Brennan Ruskell: So you also see the shifts in how it deals with other countries as squeezing young people?

Zhou: Yeah. I think it enjoyed doing business with the West, and it won't accept that Chinese people then have more choices. After the relationship goes bad, it still wants us to treat the loss as the price of loving the country. Fewer jobs, we put up with it. Pay doesn't rise, we put up with it. The good life they promised when we bought the home never came, and we keep putting up with it. In the end it tells us the whole thing is America's fault, Japan's fault, and other foreigners' fault. You didn't ask me when you made the decision. When it's time to carry what comes of it, why do I have to stand with you?

Brennan Ruskell: What do you think the generation before hid?

Zhou: They tell the chances they caught as if it was some huge ability of their own, and they won't tell their kids that back then China was just linking up with the outside, the market was getting bigger, a lot of things were only starting to have someone doing them, and a home didn't cost what it costs today. Ma Yun, Ma Huateng, Duan Yongping, of course they're capable. But put them back in their twenties today, no money, no connections, starting over from nothing. Would the chances still be the same? Some people in that generation built their wealth on the times and on the price of what they owned going up, and at the same time they lecture the young: I had it hard back then too, so why can't you manage? What disgusts me most is that look. They count luck as ability, and they count someone else's bind as laziness.

Brennan Ruskell: But parents are also using their savings to help their kids buy a home.

Zhou: That's why I said earlier the Party isn't only eyeing our wages. It's also eyeing the money the last generation saved across those decades of Reform and Opening. You can't put up the down payment yourself, so your parents pay it. They go through the savings, and then you spend the next few decades of income paying off the loan. The way I see it, that's using the home to tie up a family's past money and future money together. Then the whole family doesn't dare have anything go wrong. Doesn't dare lose a job. Doesn't dare change how they live. And your parents still have to remind you every day not to say the wrong thing. Once that home is bought, did you get some security, or did someone tie you down tighter?

Brennan Ruskell: Why count even children who haven't been born into this bill?

Zhou: Because pensions need the people who come later to pay in. Money borrowed in the past needs the people who come later to earn it and pay it back. A lot of the plans count on China still having enough people later to work, pay taxes, and buy homes. There aren't that many children now, and those promises and debts don't disappear along with them. In the end the people left have to carry more. Work longer, pay in more, take a bit less. Whatever it is, the people who come after are the ones who adjust. When I say a child is born already owing money, I mean the child doesn't even know what those decisions were, and is already counted as the one who pays the bill. The child grows up, asks why, and still gets lectured about having no sense of responsibility.

Brennan Ruskell: What about the generation before can you least stand?

Zhou: The people who already have the property, the benefits, and the positions, and they still won't let young people have another road. They themselves got a good life off the opening. When their own kid wants to go live outside, they say foreign countries are so awful, and leaving means you've forgotten where you came from. Some of them clearly have the means to arrange study abroad, papers to stay, and a way out for their own child. Then they turn around and teach other people's children to stay, take the hardship, and serve the country. I just want to ask: when you were lining up your own way out, how come you didn't talk about sacrifice? When it's us who want to leave, suddenly you've got all these grand principles?

Brennan Ruskell: And if that demand ends as a war?

Zhou: Then it's still young people at the front. Are the people shouting for a fight every day ready to go themselves? In peacetime they have us buy homes, pay in, and pay back the debt. If a real war starts, they have us pay with our lives. How the people who decide to start the war protect their own children, we may not even get to ask. What chance has the Communist Party ever given me? A walk in the prison yard? I feed myself by my own work. I pay my tax and I still have the home loan to pay. Now it wants me to go die for it? If you've got the guts, give every Chinese person a gun. Let's see whether those guns end up pointed at the Communist Party, or at the enemies it assigns us every day.