Andrei Kuznetsov
1st September 2009, 20:47
Nuclear Fallout in Maoist China: What Does That Reveal? (http://mikeely.wordpress.com/2009/06/18/speaking-out-about-nuclear-fallout-in-maoist-china-then-and-now/)
By Nando Sims
www.kasamaproject.org/ (http://www.kasamaproject.org/)
I was provoked to write this by some details given in an article in Scientific American (http://www.scientificamerican.com/). (”Blasts from the Past,” Zeeya Merali, July 2009, not online) — because the dexporations of nuclear testing in China reveal things about the state of socialist democracy.
Scientific American’s article sketches some investigations into the health impact of the crash program to develop nuclear weapons in Maoist China — particularly the open air testing of very large nuclear weapons during the 60s and 70s in China’s western Xinjiang province. Like the similar U.S. open air tests in Nevada, these Chinese tests caused fallout to contaminate large areas, exposing many people to radiation.
The article quotes a Japanese physicist Jun Tanaka who, based on extensive empirical research from nearby parts of Central Asia, estimates that about 194,000 people would have died as a result of radiation exposure, and around 1.2 million received doses high enough to cause cancers and birth defects. “My estimate is a conservative minimum,” Takada says.
This is a sobering discussion — since it suggests a scale of human cost to defense preparations by a socialist China — and this is true even if we don’t necessarily embrace the specific estimates of Takada.
At the time China (and much of the world) was under heavy nuclear threat. It came first from the United States (which used nukes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and threatened revolutionary China with nuclear destruction very directly during the Korean war.) And then it came from the Soviet Union — which after China’s break in the early 1960s mobilized massive military force on China’s borders. It was a VERY big deal in the 1960s when China exploded its first nuclear device. China was the first third world country to develop the means of deterrence, and it was an event that weakened the ability of the U.S. (and powers like France, Britain and the USSR) to threaten people around the world. And it was an achievement that made it much harder for any of the hostile powers to contemplate new wars or invasions against socialist China. And those are important things.
But it is sobering to start to learn about the possible cost of this for the people of China (and specifically the Uygur minority nationality region of western China). And it is sobering to think about why the casualties had to be so large and why the population wasn’t informed about the ongoing dangers. And why the story is just coming out now.
The article describes an account by someone growing up in the test zones, and how, as a child, he was taught not to worry about the flakes of dirt that fell from the sky for three days in 1973 from a 10 megaton test.
This brings me back to the discussion of socialist democracy — and of a realistic and honest appraisal of the experience of the twentieth century.
This SA article talked about the experience of this survivor Enver Tohti after experiencing the fallout as a child.
“…as a teenager, he was proud that his province was chosen for tests marking China’s technological and military progress. His view changed when he became a physician and saw a disproportionate number of malignant lymphomas, lung cancers, leukemia cases, degenerative disorders and babies born with deformities. ‘Many doctors suspected this was connected to the tests, but we couldn’t say anything,’ Tohti recalls. ‘We were warned away from researching by our superiors.’”
What does this say about the norms of open debate and ”whistle blowing” (and about the conditions of power) in socialist China?
“Many doctors suspected this was connected to the tests, but we couldn’t say anything,’ Tohti recalls. ‘We were warned away from researching by our superiors.’”
Does anyone doubt that such conditions of silencing were not rare in socialist China?
There were great upheavals and revolutionary changes — land reform, military resistance to the U.S. in Korea, conflict over transforming old culture, replacement of feudal norms by new norms. So there was clearly great debate, ferment and change in socialist China. But still, does anyone doubt that there weren’t many places where it was maddenly dangerous to speak out against real problems?
Nuclear and other military matters obviously require secrecy (even under socialism) — but the health concerns of whole populations require casual and routine transparency.
And more: socialism itself (its survival and advancement) requires an ability of people to speak out against continuing or restored injustices.
What About Democracy, Though?
This brings me to a piece Ray Lotta just wrote ( Socialism in the 20th Century (http://revcom.us/a/167/Ray_Lotta_Part_2-en.html)) — which, I believe, fudges some hard questions. Here is what Ray said on this question of democracy. (I’m including his full response in order not to misrepresent it.)
Question: What about democracy, though?
Raymond Lotta: I want to emphasize two aspects of this. First, the socialist state guaranteed the rights of the masses. In China, during the Cultural Revolution, there was democracy for the masses on an unprecedented scale. Nowhere before or since did the masses not only have formal rights of free speech and press, etc., but actually use them on such a scale to examine and debate all aspects of political life. One well-known example is the widespread use of what were called “big-character posters” in the schools, factories, and other institutions where constant debate and struggle took place by posting large wall posters on every available surface. It was forbidden to tear down a big-character poster, and every institution was required to make materials—paper, paint, and brushes—freely available.
The ability of the masses to hold meetings to criticize top party leaders, the freewheeling debates large and small…all of this was democracy on a scale not even imaginable in even the “most democratic” of capitalist states. The Cultural Revolution institutionalized what were called the “four bigs”—big character posters, big debates, big contending, and big blooming (of ideas). And if you think this was just cosmetic formality, the new capitalist rulers of China who came to power in 1976 understood that this was in the service of arousing and motivating the masses; they vilified and banned these practices.
But there is another aspect of democracy under the dictatorship of the proletariat that’s important. Forms were being developed, especially through the Cultural Revolution, through which the masses were increasingly able to take greater responsibility for the direction of society—like the revolutionary committees, which were new institutions of power. These involved combinations of representatives of the masses; from different professional, technical, intellectual-cultural strata (depending on the particular base-level institutions in question, like hospitals or schools); and party cadre. Through these organs of power, meaningful decision-making responsibility was being put in the hands of the masses.
Compare this to the electoral ritual of bourgeois democracy, where the masses are asked to choose between this and that representative of the ruling class, and through which the agendas of different fractions of the ruling class are legitimized.
It is true, as Ray says, that there are two different issues here: rights and power. But reading this, I couldn’t help ask: Is this picture really true? Is this really sufficient? And it is true that “during the Cultural Revolution” there was (at some times and in many places) unprecedented and free-wheeling debate amid the power struggles. There was widespread criticism and deposing of leadership — at virtually all levels. Communist Party members (and leaders) were required to go “through the gate” of public criticism and evaluation. There were great movements of placing criticism and complaints on public posters. There were newspapers, flyers, and whole movements of re-evaluating past practices. The youngest, the poorest and most “lowly” were all encouraged to play spearhead roles in all that. This is true. And important. And something to build on.
However….
I also think that it has to be asked how true it is that through new organs of power “meaningful decision-making responsibility was being put in the hands of the masses.”
Certainly there were “advanced experiences” — however temporary. Certainly this was something being fought for by the best forces within Mao’s party and socialist society. But to what degree was it actually true? How widely? How much was society marked by this? Where?
And certainly we can’t imply that this was generally true, without confronting immediately the fact that capitalism was rather soon (and rather quickly) restored in China without very much mass resistance at all.
Isn’t it more true that this was attempted and desired (putting meaningful decision making responsibility “in the hands of the masses”) — and that it happened through struggle, but that this was very uneven, and probably not actually achieved yet in a general or defining way? And that many places were run like water-tight kingdoms by layers of bosses and small overlords (and their various political apparatuses)? Where “superiors” could tell doctors to shut up about a cancer epidemic with potentially explosive political implications?
Don’t we need to present realistic pictures of the tissue and operations of previous socialist societies? Both in terms of how power worked, and in terms of what the rights of the people actually were.
For example: It is important to point out that Mao upheld the right to strike (for example) — just as it is important for us to uphold the right to stike. And there were obviously strikes in China. But that isn’t the full story. Wasn’t it shocking when Mao proposed inserting the right to strike into foundational documents (almost two decades after the revolution)? And to what extent did that right to strike exist (on the ground, in factories and farms)? To what extent was it contested? In other words, to what extent were work stoppages considered criminal or counterrevolutionary — and who made those decisions?
And it is worth thinking through: Why was there such a stubborn gap between the desires of the core revolutionary forces and the actual functioning of society in so many places?
Fallout in Context
The people exposed to nuclear fallout in the U.S. were also lied to and silenced, and their suffering denied for decades. I once spent a day with a former Army grunt who had been exposed to U.S. nuclear fallout in the Nevada desert during the 1950s. While struggling with his fatal leukemia he worked as a safety trainer for a coal company — and I heard first hand from him many many examples of how this criminal exposure was conducted and then denied.
In addition, the U.S. and France did a lot of their open air testing in Polenesia — and there is a whole story to tell about the destruction of cultures and lives in that process. And there is a whole analysis to be shared of how the whole history of nuclear testing took place on the lands of indigenous and minority peoples — Native peoples in the U.S. west, Polenesian people in the French and American colonies, Uygur people in China, Central Asian people in the USSR etc.
And so, the point here is not to take the claims of this one Scientific American article at face value, or to (somehow) think that the nuclear exposure was specific to socialist China.
But it is worth asking, as revolutionaries and communists: What does this example reveals about what the actual experience with socialism, and specifically the actually exercised “rights of the people” under socialism?
It is true that “socialism really is different and better than capitalism.” But this is not a simple, or uniform, or obvious matter — if you actually dig into the experience. Mao famously said socialism is a checkerboard, and that in many ways it is NOT that different from capitalism. And that is not easy to understand.
Isn’t there a connection between the inability of doctors to point out a cancer epidemic and the larger inability of a people to prevent the wholesale restoration of capitalism?
By Nando Sims
www.kasamaproject.org/ (http://www.kasamaproject.org/)
I was provoked to write this by some details given in an article in Scientific American (http://www.scientificamerican.com/). (”Blasts from the Past,” Zeeya Merali, July 2009, not online) — because the dexporations of nuclear testing in China reveal things about the state of socialist democracy.
Scientific American’s article sketches some investigations into the health impact of the crash program to develop nuclear weapons in Maoist China — particularly the open air testing of very large nuclear weapons during the 60s and 70s in China’s western Xinjiang province. Like the similar U.S. open air tests in Nevada, these Chinese tests caused fallout to contaminate large areas, exposing many people to radiation.
The article quotes a Japanese physicist Jun Tanaka who, based on extensive empirical research from nearby parts of Central Asia, estimates that about 194,000 people would have died as a result of radiation exposure, and around 1.2 million received doses high enough to cause cancers and birth defects. “My estimate is a conservative minimum,” Takada says.
This is a sobering discussion — since it suggests a scale of human cost to defense preparations by a socialist China — and this is true even if we don’t necessarily embrace the specific estimates of Takada.
At the time China (and much of the world) was under heavy nuclear threat. It came first from the United States (which used nukes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and threatened revolutionary China with nuclear destruction very directly during the Korean war.) And then it came from the Soviet Union — which after China’s break in the early 1960s mobilized massive military force on China’s borders. It was a VERY big deal in the 1960s when China exploded its first nuclear device. China was the first third world country to develop the means of deterrence, and it was an event that weakened the ability of the U.S. (and powers like France, Britain and the USSR) to threaten people around the world. And it was an achievement that made it much harder for any of the hostile powers to contemplate new wars or invasions against socialist China. And those are important things.
But it is sobering to start to learn about the possible cost of this for the people of China (and specifically the Uygur minority nationality region of western China). And it is sobering to think about why the casualties had to be so large and why the population wasn’t informed about the ongoing dangers. And why the story is just coming out now.
The article describes an account by someone growing up in the test zones, and how, as a child, he was taught not to worry about the flakes of dirt that fell from the sky for three days in 1973 from a 10 megaton test.
This brings me back to the discussion of socialist democracy — and of a realistic and honest appraisal of the experience of the twentieth century.
This SA article talked about the experience of this survivor Enver Tohti after experiencing the fallout as a child.
“…as a teenager, he was proud that his province was chosen for tests marking China’s technological and military progress. His view changed when he became a physician and saw a disproportionate number of malignant lymphomas, lung cancers, leukemia cases, degenerative disorders and babies born with deformities. ‘Many doctors suspected this was connected to the tests, but we couldn’t say anything,’ Tohti recalls. ‘We were warned away from researching by our superiors.’”
What does this say about the norms of open debate and ”whistle blowing” (and about the conditions of power) in socialist China?
“Many doctors suspected this was connected to the tests, but we couldn’t say anything,’ Tohti recalls. ‘We were warned away from researching by our superiors.’”
Does anyone doubt that such conditions of silencing were not rare in socialist China?
There were great upheavals and revolutionary changes — land reform, military resistance to the U.S. in Korea, conflict over transforming old culture, replacement of feudal norms by new norms. So there was clearly great debate, ferment and change in socialist China. But still, does anyone doubt that there weren’t many places where it was maddenly dangerous to speak out against real problems?
Nuclear and other military matters obviously require secrecy (even under socialism) — but the health concerns of whole populations require casual and routine transparency.
And more: socialism itself (its survival and advancement) requires an ability of people to speak out against continuing or restored injustices.
What About Democracy, Though?
This brings me to a piece Ray Lotta just wrote ( Socialism in the 20th Century (http://revcom.us/a/167/Ray_Lotta_Part_2-en.html)) — which, I believe, fudges some hard questions. Here is what Ray said on this question of democracy. (I’m including his full response in order not to misrepresent it.)
Question: What about democracy, though?
Raymond Lotta: I want to emphasize two aspects of this. First, the socialist state guaranteed the rights of the masses. In China, during the Cultural Revolution, there was democracy for the masses on an unprecedented scale. Nowhere before or since did the masses not only have formal rights of free speech and press, etc., but actually use them on such a scale to examine and debate all aspects of political life. One well-known example is the widespread use of what were called “big-character posters” in the schools, factories, and other institutions where constant debate and struggle took place by posting large wall posters on every available surface. It was forbidden to tear down a big-character poster, and every institution was required to make materials—paper, paint, and brushes—freely available.
The ability of the masses to hold meetings to criticize top party leaders, the freewheeling debates large and small…all of this was democracy on a scale not even imaginable in even the “most democratic” of capitalist states. The Cultural Revolution institutionalized what were called the “four bigs”—big character posters, big debates, big contending, and big blooming (of ideas). And if you think this was just cosmetic formality, the new capitalist rulers of China who came to power in 1976 understood that this was in the service of arousing and motivating the masses; they vilified and banned these practices.
But there is another aspect of democracy under the dictatorship of the proletariat that’s important. Forms were being developed, especially through the Cultural Revolution, through which the masses were increasingly able to take greater responsibility for the direction of society—like the revolutionary committees, which were new institutions of power. These involved combinations of representatives of the masses; from different professional, technical, intellectual-cultural strata (depending on the particular base-level institutions in question, like hospitals or schools); and party cadre. Through these organs of power, meaningful decision-making responsibility was being put in the hands of the masses.
Compare this to the electoral ritual of bourgeois democracy, where the masses are asked to choose between this and that representative of the ruling class, and through which the agendas of different fractions of the ruling class are legitimized.
It is true, as Ray says, that there are two different issues here: rights and power. But reading this, I couldn’t help ask: Is this picture really true? Is this really sufficient? And it is true that “during the Cultural Revolution” there was (at some times and in many places) unprecedented and free-wheeling debate amid the power struggles. There was widespread criticism and deposing of leadership — at virtually all levels. Communist Party members (and leaders) were required to go “through the gate” of public criticism and evaluation. There were great movements of placing criticism and complaints on public posters. There were newspapers, flyers, and whole movements of re-evaluating past practices. The youngest, the poorest and most “lowly” were all encouraged to play spearhead roles in all that. This is true. And important. And something to build on.
However….
I also think that it has to be asked how true it is that through new organs of power “meaningful decision-making responsibility was being put in the hands of the masses.”
Certainly there were “advanced experiences” — however temporary. Certainly this was something being fought for by the best forces within Mao’s party and socialist society. But to what degree was it actually true? How widely? How much was society marked by this? Where?
And certainly we can’t imply that this was generally true, without confronting immediately the fact that capitalism was rather soon (and rather quickly) restored in China without very much mass resistance at all.
Isn’t it more true that this was attempted and desired (putting meaningful decision making responsibility “in the hands of the masses”) — and that it happened through struggle, but that this was very uneven, and probably not actually achieved yet in a general or defining way? And that many places were run like water-tight kingdoms by layers of bosses and small overlords (and their various political apparatuses)? Where “superiors” could tell doctors to shut up about a cancer epidemic with potentially explosive political implications?
Don’t we need to present realistic pictures of the tissue and operations of previous socialist societies? Both in terms of how power worked, and in terms of what the rights of the people actually were.
For example: It is important to point out that Mao upheld the right to strike (for example) — just as it is important for us to uphold the right to stike. And there were obviously strikes in China. But that isn’t the full story. Wasn’t it shocking when Mao proposed inserting the right to strike into foundational documents (almost two decades after the revolution)? And to what extent did that right to strike exist (on the ground, in factories and farms)? To what extent was it contested? In other words, to what extent were work stoppages considered criminal or counterrevolutionary — and who made those decisions?
And it is worth thinking through: Why was there such a stubborn gap between the desires of the core revolutionary forces and the actual functioning of society in so many places?
Fallout in Context
The people exposed to nuclear fallout in the U.S. were also lied to and silenced, and their suffering denied for decades. I once spent a day with a former Army grunt who had been exposed to U.S. nuclear fallout in the Nevada desert during the 1950s. While struggling with his fatal leukemia he worked as a safety trainer for a coal company — and I heard first hand from him many many examples of how this criminal exposure was conducted and then denied.
In addition, the U.S. and France did a lot of their open air testing in Polenesia — and there is a whole story to tell about the destruction of cultures and lives in that process. And there is a whole analysis to be shared of how the whole history of nuclear testing took place on the lands of indigenous and minority peoples — Native peoples in the U.S. west, Polenesian people in the French and American colonies, Uygur people in China, Central Asian people in the USSR etc.
And so, the point here is not to take the claims of this one Scientific American article at face value, or to (somehow) think that the nuclear exposure was specific to socialist China.
But it is worth asking, as revolutionaries and communists: What does this example reveals about what the actual experience with socialism, and specifically the actually exercised “rights of the people” under socialism?
It is true that “socialism really is different and better than capitalism.” But this is not a simple, or uniform, or obvious matter — if you actually dig into the experience. Mao famously said socialism is a checkerboard, and that in many ways it is NOT that different from capitalism. And that is not easy to understand.
Isn’t there a connection between the inability of doctors to point out a cancer epidemic and the larger inability of a people to prevent the wholesale restoration of capitalism?