Book Review

[I Am a Big Shark]

Review of the entire book:

This book is very good. It is good because it has struggle. A few hundred young people are thrown onto an island for several years, and they manage to create quite a stir. They have to struggle against the Ming government, struggle against pirates, and the young people themselves have to struggle internally. None of this is avoided; it is all written out, and written very vividly. Where there is struggle, there are people who love to read about it. I love to read about it. I think young people will also love to read it. We should encourage them to read it, encourage them to learn to struggle.

The young people’s struggle is not just scholarly idealism, not just embroidering an essay. They also know they need to have guns, grain, and steel. They need to use science and technology. They need more gas and even more steel. A few dozen or a few hundred tons is not enough. Are a few thousand or tens of thousands of tons enough? I think that is not enough either. Eleven million tons is probably not enough either. We produced eleven million tons in ‘57, and it was not enough. Some people are still unhappy about it to this day, afraid of this and that, like a little-footed old lady, swaying as she walks, swaying and swaying until she sways to the right. She hasn’t fallen into the ditch yet, but she’s close. She’s not even as good as the young people. We need to let the young people educate the old lady. Without education, there is no way out.

Some comrades have pointed out that there are some low-class tastes in the book, the Maid Revolution and what not. In short, it is not good, and people should not be allowed to read it, lest they learn bad things. I am not afraid. We must allow young people to make mistakes. How can the tail of the exploiting class be cut off so easily? It is always shrinking somewhere, and if you are not careful, it will stick out again. They ran into the environment of the Ming Dynasty. What kind of environment was that? The great landlords and the literati united to oppress the common people, and the consciousness of the common people was not yet so high, so there was no pressure from struggle, the pressure was not yet so great. In such an environment, even good people learn to be bad. In the final analysis, it is still a matter of insufficient struggle.

There is a Ji Xin in the book who started some kind of native rights protection association. There is no use in doing this. We have a saying where I come from, called “taking off your pants to fart—an unnecessary act.” This protection association is an unnecessary act. What do the rights of the natives need you Elders to protect? They must rely on themselves. Where there is oppression, there is resistance. Once they have consciousness, they must struggle. Once they struggle, their rights will naturally come. Without struggle, they will get nothing at all. They call it the Maid Revolution, but I see it as the masters dividing the spoils. If the maids were to truly rise up in revolution, the Elders would definitely suppress them. You, Ji Xin, would also have to go and suppress them; you would have no choice. This is class struggle; it is not subject to human will.

Some comrades also say that this book is anti-Party. The group of people in the book, the slogans they shout are all copied from the Communist Party, but what they do, to put it bluntly, is still exploitation, still oppression, they still want to be masters. So the influence is very bad, and the common people cannot be allowed to see it. If they see it, they will not believe in our Communist Party.

I would like to ask all the comrades in the Party, do you believe in the people, or are you afraid of the people? We Communists should not be afraid of the people. Throughout history, the people have been the wisest, smarter than any emperor, king, general, or minister. In front of the masses of the people, playing petty tricks and bragging are all useless; you cannot deceive the people. Chiang Kai-shek also had many nice-sounding slogans, many Yue Wumus and what not, but in the end, it was still useless, always useless. The people took one look at your Gold Yuan currency, your “Five Sons Ascending to Office” (nepotism), and your desire to fight a civil war, and they immediately understood and were not fooled. In the final analysis, it still depends on what you do.

On what basis are we, the cadres of the Communist Party, so confident that the people will always trust us? Is it just because our slogans are earth-shattering? I don’t believe it. If you say one thing and do another, if you want to exploit and oppress the people, if you want to be masters, then you are a fake Communist, and the people will certainly not follow you. In ‘49, the people followed you and sent Chiang Kai-shek to Taiwan. What if they don’t follow you in the future? They will send you out just the same. If they can’t send you to Taiwan, I think sending you to Hainan Island would be quite good. Then this Communist Party would be even worse than Chiang Kai-shek, not even as good as a few hundred young people. The young people still have a big ship; the fake Communists don’t even have a pair of underpants. The people will send you on your way naked.

So I am not afraid of this book. Not only am I not afraid, I will also recommend that more comrades in the Party read this book, and read it seriously. It would be even better if the masses of the people are willing to read it. We should invite more of the masses to read it together. We must let the masses understand that fake Communists can also shout slogans, and may even give some small favors, some circulation coupons, some fertilizer and seeds, but in the end, they are still thinking about being masters, about being oppressors. We must carry out a resolute struggle against them. We must overthrow the fake Communists, and also help those true Communists to raise their consciousness. I still have confidence in our Party. Ninety-five percent of the comrades among us are true Communists, or at least can be transformed into true Communists. But we must never be afraid of the people or detach ourselves from the masses. We must sincerely believe in the masses of the people, learn from the masses of the people, and rely on the people to transform our Party. Only then will our Party have hope, and our cause have hope.

The future is bright; the road is tortuous. It is always these two sentences.

[North Dynasty]

Class struggle cannot stop. There are some great rightists among us. They do not push history forward by mobilizing the people, arming the people, and carrying out class struggle. Instead, they are superstitious about gifts falling from heaven. In the past, it was gods and emperors; now, it is Anglo-American imperialism; in the future, it will be Martians, or time travel through cosmic wormholes.

This most fundamental starting point is wrong. Therefore, although they have some ambitions and some abilities, they do not do things that are correctly beneficial to the people. Instead, they escape the real world and go to a place worse than their own, to be the king of the monkeys in a country of dwarfs where there are no tigers.

In that country of dwarfs, without touching their own interests, they can learn from us and do some things that are beneficial to the people. For example, Chiang Kai-shek carried out land reform in Taiwan. But their purpose is still the old set. 500 great rightists are trying to rule a world for thousands and tens of thousands of years, nakedly enslaving and oppressing the masses of the world. Among them, the seizure of power and the counter-seizure of power are also happening at all times. The internal strife between Wen and Ma, the rise of Ma Jia who relies on playing the legal card, the rise of the people’s representative Qiao Liang, are all like this.

This is a living drama and a good textbook that exposes the true faces of careerists, capitalist-roaders, scabs, rightists, and reactionary academic authorities.

It is worthy of our Party’s careful study.