Mark your calendars. Sometime toward the end of this week, the ten-millionth Chinese national will sign onto a special website set up by The Epoch Times and renounce his or her membership in the Communist Party and the organizations affiliated with it, such as the Communist Youth League and the Young Pioneers. After that, another will do the same, and another, and another.
The trend of resignations makes one thing clear—communism in China is fast on the way out.
But you wouldn't know it by picking up the daily newspaper or by watching the evening news. That's because this massive battle for freedom is not being fought by armed rebels in the streets. It's being fought over the Internet, via fax, email, phone, and even messages written on banknotes, one person at a time.
It started in late 2004 with a series of editorials on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) published by the Chinese-language edition of The Epoch Times . The Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party began a movement to quit the CCP. Fast-forward to the present, and the number of CCP renunciations is poised to reach 10 million.
The Hole in the Firewall
The largest number of resignations has been made possible by a special technology called DynaWeb. This is a tool that lets Internet users get past Communist China's web of censorship.
From the ground-up, China's Internet was built with information control and censorship as the cornerstone. Political debate was not to be allowed.
But Bill Xia, CEO of Dynamic Internet Technologies (DIT), says his products can get past all of this, and they are.
For years, DIT has helped the U.S. government-funded Voice of America and Radio Free Asia get their message heard in China. Deftly dodging censorship, DIT sends millions of emails per day to China for the two companies.
Now, DIT's DynaWeb offers a portal for Internet users in China to reach the outside themselves. By visiting URLs provided by DynaWeb, users in China can break through and reach the rest of the World Wide Web, without the shackles of censorship.
DynaWeb has proved to be the leading avenue for Chinese to renounce the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), according to studies Xia has carried out.
"We found out that more than half of the renunciations were posted through DynaWeb," Xia told The Epoch Times. That is, more than five million of them.
The largest number of these—roughly 10 percent—came from Beijing. But the use of DynaWeb to quit the CCP is a nationwide phenomenon, according to Xia.
Renunciations using DynaWeb have come from "basically every [Chinese] province, including those remote provinces with very few people, like Tibet or Xinjiang," he says.
Xia estimates that there are currently "hundreds of thousands" of regular DynaWeb users, with a hundred thousand users on any given day. Xia surmises that users have also helped relatives and friends to post their renunciation statements to the Internet.
DynaWeb is not the only avenue for resigning from the CCP. For less tech-savvy Chinese, sending emails, faxes, and phone messages have been the preferred methods.
'Thoroughly Reviewed'
Ms. Cathy Jiang is coordinator of the Epoch Times special website for quitting the CCP. She oversees 50 volunteer editors who process the resignations and an additional staff of 30 who are responsible for checking emails. The volunteers are spread out around the globe, allowing for 24-hour coverage, although most resignations are received during daytime in China.
"Every single [resignation] has been thoroughly reviewed by our workers," says Jiang. "There are scenarios where one person represents multiple people quitting. We have to calculate according to each situation. If we don't have the names of every person and the relationship between them, we will only count it as one. We would rather go with less [we are sure of] than have something more."
Jiang's team is kept busy ensuring each resignation submitted is processed the same day. They also review the resignations to check for errors.
"Exaggerations mainly come from repeated fake declarations intended to disrupt us," she says. "Sometimes we don't have enough manpower. If we cannot post a declaration quickly, sometimes the person who declared it cannot wait and will post it again. Now technically, we can block most of the repeated real or fake ones. Every volunteer and editor has tried the best to watch the doors, using user IP checking, searching and filtering out disruptions and repeated posts."
'The Chance to Know the Truth'
It's hard to imagine that a series of editorials led to all this. After all, the CCP has been criticized since its birth. What is it about the Nine Commentaries that has sparked this exodus?
Supporters say the Nine Commentaries exposes the CCP with unprecedented clarity and depth.
"There were not many people who did research in this way because it is kind of hard," says Xue Sheng, an award-winning Chinese journalist based in Toronto. Sheng witnessed students being gunned down by the government in Beijing in 1989 and has been a long-time advocate for Chinese democracy. She feels the Nine Commentaries is unique.
"I think it is wonderful," she says. "Because when we were in China, of course, we didn't have a chance to learn the truth. Even when we are here [Canada] we don't really have the chance to know the truth about the Communist Party. The Nine Commentaries really opened the door for people to look out and see the truth."
The Nine Commentaries is not just a chronology of the Communist Party's repressive campaigns. The editorial series lends significant ink to discussing the nature of the Party itself and what it has done to the morality of the Chinese people and to China's national treasure — 5000 years of traditional culture.
Judging by the resignation statements found on the Internet, this information has struck a chord with the Chinese people.
From a resident in Beijing who quit the CCP: "I have always known that if the entire society declines, everyone will have to pay the cost. People ignore the consequences out of weakness and selfishness. Actually, the changes in the environment and food are not the worst. The worst is the change in people's hearts, which permits and consents to the ugly behavior in society."
From a retired soldier in Sichuan: "In 1989, I participated in the so-called 'rebel suppression' in Tibet, where I almost lost my life. During the suppression, the 'People's Liberation Army' treated the Tibetans cruelly. Some arrested Tibetans were put into bags and tossed into rivers from airplanes. At that time, we were told that it was to punish rebels; now I understand that it was a crime against the Tibetans and the Chinese people. Heaven will soon eliminate the CCP. I hereby sincerely announce my withdrawal from all CCP-controlled organizations, including the Young Pioneers, the Youth League, and the CCP itself."
From a migrant worker: "I work 10 to 13 hours a day, seven days a week, all through the year without weekends or holidays. My days are occupied with work, and life to me has no joy. After reading the Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party , I realized that the CCP has brought much of the pain in our lives. It not only exploits us, but also uses numerous lies to deceive us. I hereby solemnly declare: I am quitting the CCP's criminal organizations, including the [Communist] Youth League. Although I can not make much difference in the world, at least I can be a righteous person myself!"
The movement has not been limited to common Chinese. China's first Olympic swimming medalist, Xiaomin Huang, has also renounced her Party membership. Other notables include a retired high-ranking official in the propaganda department and one of China's top-ranked lawyers, Gao Zhisheng.
Repression
The Communist Party has tried vigorously to block the spread of the Nine Commentaries .
The editorial series quickly became the number one censored item on the Chinese Internet, according to a joint study carried out by Harvard, Cambridge, and the University of Toronto.
Chinese caught carrying the Nine Commentaries are arrested. Guo Lifang, a 54-year-old woman and Falun Gong practitioner from Xingtan City, was found with a copy of the Nine Commentaries . She was tortured to death in custody. The danger of reprisal has led most Chinese to use an alias when quitting the Party.
At the same time, the CCP launched the "Maintaining Advancement" campaign, forcing Party members into study sessions where they would retake their CCP oaths.
The Party has also launched a new campaign to promote Marxism, in hopes of uniting the public under the ideology.
'Money Talks' Takes On New Meaning
In the face of all this, grassroots efforts have continued, and they are proving to be more than the communist regime can repress.
In the last month, slogans like "Heaven is eliminating the CCP," "Quit the CCP to save yourself," "Hurry up and read the Nine Commentaries ," and "Over nine million people have withdrawn from the CCP," began appearing on banknotes throughout China. At least one bank called in the Chinese police wondering what to do with the notes.
The messages on banknotes have stirred talk about the commentaries. Recently, Chinese using a U.S.-based hotline to quit the Communist Party have mentioned seeing such phrases on Chinese currency.
In March 2005, a statement announcing withdrawing from the CCP appeared on a bulletin board on the wall of the county government building in Nongan County, Jilin Province. Since then, such statements have appeared throughout China on bulletin boards, telephone poles, bridges—wherever a piece of paper can be taped or glued.
The rate of those withdrawing from the communist organizations continues to increase, reaching a peak of over 40,000 a day in February. The Chinese people are coming to understand the conclusion of the Nine Commentaries , that "Only without the Chinese Communist Party does China have hope."
CCP spokespeople continue to deny the withdrawals. On March 29 Xinhua quoted a Party spokesperson as saying, "Wouldn't the CCP have collapsed if so many Party members had quit?"
The resignations are happening. The collapse of the CCP is not far behind.
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