Essay: Gao Yu
security.” Dissident Liu Xianbin, who wrote five articles criticizing the shoddy construction of buildings in Wenchuan, the epicentre of the Sichuan quake, was arrested for the fourth time on suspicion of “inciting subversion of state power.” In the end, the government succeeded in preventing anyone from China from attending the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in Oslo on December 10. 2011 brought an even greater level of social conflict in China. Authorities imposed a heavy prison sentence on Liu Xianbin, arrested Ai Weiwei, and criminalized dissidents Chen Xi, Chen Wei, and Li Tie for exercising their right to free speech, handing them heavy sentences during the Christmas holidays to intimidate society. In October, the Party passed a resolution at the Sixth Plenary Session of the 17th Party Congress to develop “Party culture” and intensify control over ideology-related publishing.
and art work.” The Writer’s Publishing House organized 100 writers, who were each paid ¥1,000, to hand-copy the Talks into a collector’s album. (As a countermeasure, activists launched an online campaign to hand-copy the “Universal Declaration on Human Rights.”) Mao’s “Yan’an Talks on Literature and Art” created a blueprint for brainwashing the Party and people. Mao Zedong republished his “Talks” in 1966 and 1967, when he launched the Cultural Revolution. This year’s Zhongnanhai commemoration is the third time the CCP has recycled Chairman Mao’s Yan’an Talks, and serves as irrefutable evidence of the Chinese regime’s ongoing ideological dictatorship in the age of globalization and the Internet.
Gao Yu is a renowned journalist who spent nearly seven years in prison for her work. She is a member of the Independent Chinese PEN Centre.
The 18th Party Congress will be held this year after a series of events—the Wukan anti-government protests, the Chongqing incident with Politburo member Bo Xilai, the Chen Guangcheng incident—that has exposed an unprecedented social and political crises in the “China pattern” and the “Chinese road.” The response? Premier Wen Jiabao publicly announced that there is a danger that the “Cultural Revolution” could return. A government-sponsored “sing red” campaign in Chongqing was launched to praise Chairman Mao. The purpose of China’s “opening to the outside world” 34 years ago was to reform “Mao Zedong’s socialism”; now an even bigger wave of “sing red” is being pushed by CCP leadership in their Zhongnanhai headquarters. This year, on the 70th anniversary of Mao Zedong’s “Yan’an Talks on Literature and Art,” a forum was held in Zhongnanhai. At that forum, Hu Jintao issued a directive saying that Chairman Mao’s Talks are “a classic document and our Party’s guiding principle in literature
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