United Soviet Republics of China and Manchuria
Bao Zhiseng looks around the small coffee shop nervously. It has taken all of my persuasive efforts over two months and those of a cooperative official in the New Misr government, to convince him to meet with me and talk about his experiences before fleeing the Chinese Soviet Republic. I chose the location in the hopes that it would help to calm him down, it’s my experience that people from most cultures become more receptive after a token offer of food or some other sustenance- in modern societies a cup of coffee usually works quite well.
Unfortunately however, Zhiseng still seems to be fighting to contain his unease and grips the proffered mug so tightly his knuckles turn white. Originally from Harbin, the Chinese dissident was unfortunately the only inhabitant or former inhabitant of his country who I was able to interview in my examination of the United Soviet Republics. While I would ordinarily refrain from including a country in this book with so few primary sources, an abundance of secondary ones provided by former visitors or diplomats coupled with the extraordinarily unusual form of government employed by the USR prompted me to address it anyway.
“I hope you understand,” Zhiseng tells me “but even after twelve years I still wake up with nightmares about that place. The paranoia…it’s very ingrained.”
I ask him to explain what life was like.
“If you were one of the
jiangong then it was fine, you had power, control over those beneath you, access to imported luxuries, wealth, news that wasn’t just propaganda. But if you were
nongmin…” His voice trails off. “Imagine living in a place where not only were you completely unimportant and irrelevant but you would never be able to
be more than who you were. No matter how hard you worked or struggled, your personal accomplishments could never lift you out of where you were. The only way to be important or to have a legacy was to be
jiangong, and the only way to be
jiangong was to be born one. There were exceptions, but that was the way it was.”
The former diplomatic clerk’s eyes glaze over as he remembers.
“We were told that to want personal success was selfish because it stole from one’s neighbors. That since the
jiangong were dedicated solely to our welfare and the welfare of the state that anything which benefited them- the enlightened “parents” of the people- benefited all of us.” He shakes his head bitterly. “They were the perfect communists, endowed by the Mandate of Heaven and The Never-Setting Red Sun to care for us and we must help them in their sacred task.”
For a very long time Zhiseng stares at the untouched coffee in his cup. “But I could bear the lies, the oppression. I had a good job as an unimportant clerk- the same job both my father and grandfather had held- and I had my daughter.” He pushes the cup away with a sudden violence that splashes the contents on the table and I see tears in his eyes. “She was my life and my soul since her mother died. And then…” The dissident chokes up and has to try several times before he can continue, “A young
jiangong, the son of the local Party Secretary, saw her when she was on her way home from school. He had his domestic volunteers hold her down while he…”
It is a long time before Zhiseng is able to speak again.
“There was no punishment for him of course, she was just
nongmin and no one cares what a
jiangong does to a young
nongmin girl of only seventeen.” He looks me straight in the eyes, his expression cadaverous, “That was when I knew I had to leave.”
The United Soviet Republics of China and Manchuria was founded as the Soviet Republic of China (a name that it continued to be known by until just 2003) by a branch of the Chinese Communist rebels headed by Mao Zedong inthe year 1931. Just over ninteen years earlier in 1912 the ruling Manchu dynasty of China had been overthrown to be replaced by a shaky republic whose control over the country was limited to areas in the eastern half of China, leaving much of the country in the hands of independent warlords. The situation worsened when the second President of China, Yuan Shikai, declared that the Mandate of Heaven had passed on to him and proclaimed the re-establishment of the Chinese Monarchy under the Hongxian Dynasty. This split China even further between the Monarchists supporting Emperor Shikai the Nationalists under Sun Yatsen who were fighting to bring back the Chinese Republic, the independent warlords, and increasingly the Chinese Communists.
Supported covertly by the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics (Russia), the Chinese Soviet Republic was established in the mountainous Jiangxi province of south-central China where Imperial authority was especially weak. Thanks to the increased stability of the communist areas the local economy boomed, fueling Mao’s powerful Red Army which carried out successful campaigns against the neighboring warlords, greatly expanding the CSR’s reach- and Mao’s influence. In 1932 Party leaders returning from the USSR attempted to assume leadership positions but were successfully resisted and by 1936 he controlled a large portion of southern China stretching from no less than ten miles inland from the South China Sea all the way to Lanzhou with half-a-dozen subordinate Communist regions scattered throughout the country. The remaining warlords held a number of loosely allied fiefdoms in the west while the Nationalists ruled most of the remaining territory south of the Shandong Peninsula. With his capital in Beijing, Emperor Shikai theoretically controlled all of Manchuria, but was little more than a powerless puppet of the Empire of Japan.
Beginning in the summer of 1936 several divisions of the Japanese army began advancing south after an invitation from the Emperor to “restore order”. The move was condemned by the League of Nations (the preeminent international forum and diplomatic body), but the Empire of Japan simply withdrew from the League and ignored it. Caught directly in the path of the IJA the Nationalists crumpled, splintering after the capture and execution of Sun Yatsen into dozens of small guerrilla armies that left the Red Army as the last significant force capable of resisting the Japanese. To do so Mao would have to mobilize every resource at his disposal.
It was then that he conceived of the
jiangong. Literally meaning “Hard Worker” it was granted as reward to those who put out extra effort beyond what was required of them for the war effort, either by their actions in combat or behind the lines supporting the fighting.
Jiangong received special privileges and rewards unavailable to most citizens of the Chinese Soviet Republic. Almost immediately the program began to be abused by party members and influential politicians, but Mao’s confidence in it meant that it was never actually ended.
The war, referred to as the Second Sino-Japanese War by the rest of world or the Great War of Liberation within China, lasted until 1941 when Russian and Chinese troops captured Tokyo and the Empire of Japan agreed to unconditional surrender (what was left of it). In the course of the fighting and the immediate aftermath, the Chinese Soviet Republic was able to unite all of Manchuria and Xinjiang as well as the other autonomous Communist regions.
It was not to last.
In 1942 (according to the Chinese government exactly one year after the peace with Japan was signed) Mao Zedong died of a pulmonary embolism (there is some suspicion he was smothered) and without any clear successor China was plunged into chaos. What began as a simple competition between two different candidates for the position of State Chairman spiraled out of control into a confusing morass with as many as eleven different claimants seeking to gain control of China. The Second Chinese Civil War would continue until 1950 when a Russian brokered ceasefire left China divided into six different states all claiming to be the legitimate continuation of Mao’s vision. The largest and most powerful of them was the Russian backed Chinese Soviet Republic based in Beijing that was controlled by Mao Anying, the son of the original Mao.
It was Mao Anying who shaped the
jiangong system into what it is today. The powerful Communist Party Leadership was already almost entirely
jiangong, but it was Mao Anying who made it a requirement that all officials over a certain level had to be
jiangong while setting out the rigid hierarchy of the
nongmin or “peasants” who comprised most of the Chinese population. Drawing on Confucian teachings melded with Socialist ideology, Anying promulgated an ideology that viewed duty to the family as an extension of Communism, and service to one's family as service to the state. While positions such as seats in the Politburo or the Central Military Commission were never officially made hereditary, they became de facto so under his policies- a practice which was only strengthened over time.
In 1976 Mao Anying passed power on to his son Mao Xinyu who further strengthened the hereditary nature of Maoism by granting increased powers and privileges to the
jiangong while making the status officially passed on by blood. In 1980 Mao Xinyu led the invasion of the Taiwanese Soviet when it began to drift towards democracy, annexing both it and the Chinese legacy state in Hunan. He also helped to spearhead an effort to unite all of Communist Asia under the banner of the Peoples' Union of East Asia. While Xinyu's efforts (supported by Moscow) resulted in the recognition of the superiority of the Chinese State Chairman as Secretary of the PUEA by a number of countries, it never became more than a position of nominal authority over the other Maoist states. Mao Xinyu was succeeded by his son Mao Quimei in 1995 who faced down a brief attempt by elements in the
jiangong to impose a new dynasty. A marriage between Mao Zemin (the oldest son of Mao Quimei) and Hi Yuan (the daughter and only child of the State Chairman of the Manchurian Soviet) secured a personal union between China and Manchuria in 2003 when Mao Quimei resigned in favour of Mao Zemin who became State Chairman of both China and Manchuria simultaneously.
The form of Maoist Communism employed by the United Soviet Republics of China and Manchuria bears a strong resemblance to medieval feudalism with its clearly defined class structure with the powerful
jiangong minority occupying unofficially hereditary positions of power and having almost total control over the
nongmin under them. A
jiangong can legally kill or rape a
nongmin provided they can supply a justification- which is laughably easy to come by.
Nongmin are told that
jiangong are perfectly dedicated to their welfare and that to help ease their burden is the sacred duty of the
nongmin (just like ruling over the
nongmin is the sacred duty of the
jiangong).
Religious rhetoric is also used to justify the state of affairs. Mao Zedong was deified by his personality cult after his death as the “Never Setting Red Sun” who staunchly defends China against the three demons of Imperialism, Feudalism, and Capitalism. It is believed that his picture can expel spirits and bad luck and that it is his will that the
jiangong hold their exalted position.
In order to prevent democratic sentiments from creeping in from the outside, China is one of the most controlled states in the world, with internet and cell phones being illegal for
nongmin and travel to and from the country under strict control. Possession of “Imperialist propaganda” is a capital crime and dissent is strictly kept under control by a large secret police almost exclusively drawn from the ranks of the lesser
jiangong. Dissidents who escape the country are hunted down by assassins- the cause of Zhiseng’s terror. China has almost no contact with the rest of the world since the fall of the Soviet Union other than fellow Maoist governments in Hanian, Xinjiang, Tibet, Korea, Mongolia, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, the Stalinist government in Cuba, and until recently Japan.
The brutal nature of the Chinese state is unfortunately not unique, or even uncommon in the wide range of possibilities that make up the multiverse. The next country in this chapter has its own version of oppression, a different but no less authoritarian system.
