A Conversation with a Chinese Person 04 | Why Do Some Young Chinese Defend the Communist Party Harder Than Old Party Members?

"We know it's lying. They think the people who expose the lie are the enemy."

Author / interviewer: Brennan Ruskell

Interviewee: Liu, 65, moved to the United States after retiring

Brennan Ruskell: You're an old Communist Party member. Why did you choose later to move to the United States?

Liu: My parents were Party members. I myself was a Party member for decades. What the Communist Party is, I didn't learn from a few clips of foreign news. I used to think that once our generation got old, and the young had seen more, there would be some change. Then I went online and looked. Some young people defend the Communist Party harder than we old Party members do. That's when I felt I couldn't wait anymore. I don't want my own child to keep waiting, until the next batch of people who shut mouths for the Party become the leaders, and then go teach my grandson that he ought to be grateful.

Brennan Ruskell: The China of your youth, was it like what they imagine?

Liu: When I was young I watched Man from Atlantis, that American show about the man from under the sea. Later my child watched Japanese and American cartoons too. Nobody chased you, just because you liked a foreign cartoon character, to ask if that meant you didn't love the country. Later, online, some people in the forums cursed officials. Some people discussed the system. Google, Wikipedia, YouTube, I used them all. So when someone tells me now that Chinese people don't need these things, I want to laugh when I hear it. The things I have used, what right do you have to decide for me that I don't need them?

Brennan Ruskell: So at the time you thought it would keep opening up?

Liu: Of course I thought about it. Plenty of people around me also felt that the old setup had problems. We had eaten so much bitterness. We couldn't let the children eat it all over again. Then later, just to open websites I used to be able to open, I first learned to edit the hosts file, that little list that tells the computer where a site is. Then I looked for a VPN, the tool that gets you around the block. Later I even had to keep switching VPNs. An old person like me, just to keep seeing things I used to be able to see, had to understand the technology better and better. The country says every day that it is progressing. For me, even opening an encyclopedia got harder and harder. Tell me, this progress is convenient for whom?

Brennan Ruskell: In 1989, did you also think about joining the protests?

Liu: I thought about it. An older colleague at my work unit talked me out of it. He knew how these things get settled in the end. It wasn't that he didn't understand why young people were angry. He had seen the Communist Party first let people speak, then turn around and use what they had said to crush them. In 1957 they encouraged people to offer opinions. Then came the Anti-Rightist Campaign, when they punished people for speaking. For so many people, one true sentence dragged in themselves and their families. You say he was timid. I think he knew what kind of people were on the other side. You can't take a person who has seen through the danger and call that person a coward.

Brennan Ruskell: Why do you distrust this kind of promise so much?

Liu: Because the people who come back to help it, it crushes them all the same. Rao Yutai took a doctorate in physics in America, went back to teach and train students, was persecuted in the Cultural Revolution, those years they wrecked people in the name of politics, and in the end killed himself. Was a person like that coming back to harm China? Today you need knowledge, so you call people back to build the motherland. Tomorrow the political wind changes, and a life spent abroad can become a charge against you. So when I hear "trust the organization, the organization won't treat you badly," the first thing I think is: the people who used to believe those words, who went and picked up their bodies afterward?

Brennan Ruskell: Some young people say the old planned economy was better. What do you think?

Liu: When I was little, you needed coupons to buy things. Only at the New Year could you get one good meal. Having money didn't even mean you could buy anything. How people worked in the state factories, how things got handed out, I saw all of it. They never lived through it, and they miss it more than I do. If you ask me, that old Chinese setup was a beggar's version of the planned economy. A plan is not a boss sitting there making it up as he goes, while nobody below dares say it can't be done. The Soviet Union had all those mathematicians and engineers, and they still couldn't figure it out. What makes those Chinese leaders think that shouting a few slogans can shout grain into existence, shout steel into existence?

Brennan Ruskell: And after Reform and Opening?

Liu: After Reform and Opening, it was a beggar's version of the market economy too. The leaders manage it when they feel like it, and stop it when they feel like it. Once a company gets big, it still has to prove it is politically reliable. You tell me: is the market in charge, or are the leaders in charge? My view is simple. Before, they copied the Soviet Union. Later, they plugged into America's and the West's markets, technology, capital, and orders. Ordinary people worked themselves to the bone, and life got better. Then the Communist Party took all the credit. Before, they leaned on the Soviet Union. Later, they leaned on America. In the end they have us believe that everything was because it was especially capable. Tell me: is it actually good at running an economy, or good at writing itself a letter of praise?

Brennan Ruskell: Did your clash with young people start with TikTok?

Liu: There was one time, around 2020, 2021. TikTok was very hot abroad. People outside questioned it for monitoring users. I said online that TikTok would certainly leak Western users' privacy to the Communist Party. I was a Party member for decades. The Party's way of gathering information and monitoring people, am I not familiar with it? In China it even wants to manage what you think. It gets abroad, and suddenly it respects privacy. Do you believe that? Then a crowd of young people rushed over to curse me. They don't go ask whether their own privacy is being monitored. They're busy protecting the Party's good name for monitoring foreigners. As if me saying the thing out loud was the shameful act.

Brennan Ruskell: In 2022 ByteDance admitted employees had accessed journalists' data. What did they say after that?

Liu: You still expect them to apologize? They weren't necessarily cursing me because they believed there was no monitoring. Some of them hold exactly this feeling: "The motherland is a thug, so I feel safe." They think a Chinese company that can monitor foreigners, that's called capable. You say the thing out loud, that's called not knowing how to behave. Later I understood. What they are defending is not the facts at all. They are showing loyalty. So whether the company admits it or not, what does that have to do with them? What they wanted to shut back then was my mouth, not the company's data hole.

Brennan Ruskell: When you watched Shou Zi Chew, the TikTok boss, testify in the US Congress, what did you notice?

Liu: I noticed which questions he could answer, and which questions he had to dodge. When they asked something sensitive, he steered the talk toward the platform allowing everyone to express themselves. I was a Party member my whole life. The moment I hear that kind of answer, I know there are things he is not willing to touch. And I'll tell you straight. I am an old Communist Party member. One look at Shou Zi Chew and I know he is a spy for the Chinese Communist Party. What the Party needs is these people who are Singaporean on the surface, American, and so on, to work as spies, to lower your guard. The Cold War had no shortage of this dirty business, did it?

Brennan Ruskell: Why are you also so sick of that old fashion of cursing the "public intellectuals"?

Liu: Because once it makes a word stink, it doesn't have to answer what those people said anymore. The public intellectuals, the gongzhi, were the commentators everyone was taught to hate. You talk about rights, and he says you're a public intellectual. You talk about the government's responsibility, and he says you took foreign money. Young people join the jeering too, as if driving the speaker away will make their own lives better. Now they ask again: how come nobody in China speaks for ordinary people? I want to ask: when those people opened their mouths back then, weren't you the ones cursing them and reporting them right alongside the Party? You cleared the room for the people in power. Now you complain that the only people left speaking in the room are the people in power. Have you actually thought this through?

Brennan Ruskell: Do you feel the problem is already more than changing one leader?

Liu: After you change the person, it's still this organization that decides who may speak and who should shut up. It's still whoever obeys who has a future, and whoever asks questions who has a problem. What good is changing the face? What I doubt now is why so many places, so many people's lives, have to be decided forever by one party. Why is its rule called China, and our demanding to decide for ourselves called destroying China? If a country can only keep this arrangement by shutting mouths, monitoring people, and lying, then you have to ask: is the problem some one policy, or does it, from the root, not allow people any other choice?

Brennan Ruskell: Is that why you finally decided to leave?

Liu: Yes. What I fear is not having a few fewer good years after I get old. What I fear is the child spending a whole life inside this thing proving loyalty, and having to watch a crowd of people the same age discipline the child for the powerful. Some young people say every day that they represent China's future. But what are you preparing to leave that future? The moment someone speaks, you report them. The moment someone asks questions, you gang up. Is the biggest ideal letting the master see that you know how to behave? If the next generation still fights for a future by being lackeys for the powerful, why should I spend my own child's whole life waiting for them to get better? And I'll tell you the truth. Do they themselves know how long they can stay in power? In private, they don't know either. Who knows what will happen. A person who knows better doesn't stand under a wall that's about to fall.