The increasingly heavy financial burden and the falling prices of agricultural products have made the land, historically cherished as the “life and blood” of the peasantry, turn into a heavy load under which the peasants are reeling; the responsibility system, now deemed by peasants as shackles on their necks. If one is born in a town or city, there is no assessment by person. But every person born in the rural village has to pay hundreds of yuan in assessments. What an injustice!

How much do today’s peasants suffer? You would not understand without direct experience. What is on the minds of today’s peasants? You will not find out without having a genuine dialogue. I am a peasant myself; I know. If someone starts a rebellion today, I will join him! I am not afraid of going to jail, or even execution. What do I have to lose? Except my poverty, my chains, my inferior status! What I really want is decent living conditions, freedom and dignity!

First, the long period in Long Bow Village itself, the lice, the fleas and all the hardships; and eating that terrible gruel out of an unwashed bowl while the young girl lay dying of TB. And then I had all these notes; I carried them for months on my back. We walked out of the Taihang in 1948 all the way to Chengding which was out in the Hebei Plain maybe 150 miles or more with those notes on my back.

Chen Zhiyong, a peasant-worker of Hunan Province, went to Guangdong Province for work. He was heavily injured in an accident during work. But the cruelhearted boss not only refused to compensate for his injury, but also beat him outrageously and forced him out of the work shed. Chen Zhiyong, being cornered and helpless, commited suicide by jumping into a river with unvented bitterness. His wretched wife appealed everywhere she could thought of, but got no answer, the boss being at large……She has to live on collecting junk.

On December 14-15 1996, some 150 participants took part in a highly valuable and quite unique 30th Anniversary Symposium on China’s Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution at the New School for Social Research in New York. The conference was organized by the China Study Group, and co-sponsored by the Economics Students Union of the New School and the Monthly Review Foundation. The unusual character of this meeting reflected the point of view of the primary sponsoring organization, “to critique mainstream perceptions and assessments and offer alternative perspectives on China.” This conference was almost certainly the first in at least two decades in the United States to address the history and legacy of the Cultural Revolution from a largely positive, though by no means uncritical standpoint. It openly challenged the prevailing approach in mainstream media and academic circles of treating that monumental event as little more than a disaster, and as a weapon in the arsenal of “China bashing” and denigrating the accomplishments of the Chinese people under the leadership of Mao Zedong. Due to its nature, the conference drew participants and interest from as far away as Canada, Australia, and Germany.

One year has passed since September 11, and the US is beating its war drum, under the anti-terrorism camouflage,in its preparation for an invasion of Iraq. Those “Over-night Americans” (This is a barbed allusion to a group of pro - US liberal intellectuals in China who have jointly issued an open letter echoing the internationally famous expression of sympathy and support in the wake of the 911 attacks, “Tonight, we are all Americans” - the editor) in China are also busy painting the American hegemonism with angelic colors.