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Why don’t the Chinese overthrow the communist rule?
Shou’en Li
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September 17

Because even as a non-CPC member, I feel gratitude towards the Chinese government led by CPC.

I was born in the 1970s in the suburb of Changsha, the capital city of central China’s Hunan Province.

I can still remember how hard our life was when I was a little girl.

Looking back, during the 1970s, in the US, most of the families had their private cars, TV sets, fridges, telephones; they could go to the beaches, had endless parties, went for overseas tours; they enjoyed Hollywood movies, Broadway plays, watched Talk Shows; women wore beautiful dresses, high-heels, and lipsticks……You name it.

What did we have? Shabby homes, some even without a home. Electricity? Some never heard of it, especially in the countryside! I can still remember when I was in primary school, I had to finish my homework in the dim light of kerosene lamps. Candles were even luxuries at that time. And remember, I was not in the remote mountainous regions, it’s in the suburb of the capital city of a central province.
New dresses for the little girl who also had a princess dream? I could only wear what my elder sisters left for me when their clothes got too small after they grew taller.

Bread? What is bread? Some might never heard of it. When my dad brought back some bread when he came back for holiday from his work, twice, or at most three times a year, as he worked in the neighboring province of Jiangxi, other kids were so envious of us!

Meat? Yes, but only occasionally, on the important traditional festivals, for example, the Spring Festival, the Dragon Boat Festival, or the Mid-Autumn Festival, or on one’s birthday. And I remember I had to walk several kilometers away to buy meat in the so-called cooperative-stores, and we could only buy meat with meat ration tickets.

Vacation? Or overseas trips? If someone ever knew these ideas and tried to talk with others about an overseas trip, he/she might be thought of as a dreamer or his/her brain went wrong!

And my own first furthest trip as a little girl was to go into the downtown of Changsha, to attend a wedding of one of my elder cousins, and later on to visit my relatives, my aunts who got married to men in the city, and their families.

Later on, another furthest travel was when my family moved to Jiangxi to reunite with my dad. And these can barely be called “trips” or “travels.”

Private cars? I am not sure whether there were so-called private cars even within the whole nation at that time.

And now, after the 30~40 years, under the leadership of the CPC, with China’s reform and opening up, we have to acknowledge that everything has changed, so unimaginably, so rapidly, so amazingly.

Now, I live and work in Beijing, settled down here, with my own family. Not affluent, but rather satisfactory.

We have a big apartment, around 170 square meters, which is sufficient for a family of three. We have two cars, one BMW, one Citreon, not luxury ones, but enough for our own daily use. My husband has his own small business, partnered with his friends, and I work for a big media outlet, both are satisfied with our work. My son is in middle school, though he needs to study fairly hard as the competition is very fierce in China, he also knows this is the best way for him, to live a better life in the future, just as his dad and mom had done.

We won’t hesitate if we want to eat something, domestic or imported; we don’t need to hesitate if we want to buy any daily necessities, for clothes or electronic products, or any other stuff; when my son was little and didn’t need to spend all his time on study, we go travel every year, self-drive to neighboring provinces and regions, fly to faraway destinations, such as Hainan, Yunnan, Guizhou, Fujian, etc. We have traveled to the UK, South Korea, Japan, Thailand, also Hong Kong SAR, not too many overseas destinations yet, but there are many on our to-do list.

And we have enough money to support our parents, because we are far from our hometown and cannot go back to take care of them often, with our support, they can improve their living conditions and live a more comfortable life. And they can come over to visit us whenever they want, since the traffic is so convenient now, with the high-speed railway, it only takes my mom some 6~7 hours to come over from Changsha, which is some 1,500km away. The single way ticket is quite affordable, some 650 yuan, or less than 100 US dollars.

This is only my own experience. There are millions and millions of Chinese families who have similar stories. Maybe some with even more persuading ones, maybe some not so rosy, and we can’t deny there are also some still struggling with their lives.

But keep in mind, 2020 is the year set by the Chinese government to eradicate the “absolute poverty” in the country, even those who are still struggling would get some help from the local governments with various poverty alleviation methods. And China has achieved the major task of poverty alleviation which has helped some 800 million Chinese out of their poverty.

Now tell me, which dynasties along Chinese history have done this remarkable job? Which country in modern human history has accomplished this achievement? Which political party across the world has fulfilled its obligation in this method and scale? Which government has ever really put its peoples’ livelihoods as its first priority like the PRC government?

Now, give me a reason to overthrow the CPC rule. For freedom and democracy? Look at Libya, Iraq, Egypt……, and even today’s USA!

And tell me, what would come next, if we overthrow the CPC rule? Losing all our happy life and going into social turmoils? Losing our developing momentum and going back to the “stone age” as claimed by some US politicians? Losing our peaceful and stable internal environment and going for internal fights and even wars? Losing our sovereign integrity and breaking down into pieces, and even dissolving our nation as the Soviet Union?

NO. If no one can provide a better solution and guarantee its success, then let us keep what it is now. Absolutely most Chinese are satisfied with what it is now.

That said, I don’t mean there aren’t any problems with the CPC or the Chinese government, or the Chinese people. But what’s important is that we know we have problems, we acknowledge the existence of the problems, and we would face them and are working to find correct prescriptions to treat the problems.

As a human being, there is never one who is perfect. As long as one knows he or she is not perfect, and he or she is willing to listen to others’ advice and suggestions and even criticisms, there are always ways to be a better one.

I prefer to give CPC and the Chinese government more time to better themselves, bit by bit. And I have confidence in it.

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