It continues: “No other goal — be it economic, military, diplomatic or nationalistic — trumps this aim. Indeed, the recent economic downturn is of great concern to the CCP precisely because it threatens the party’s hold on power.”
Among the population at large, there is a “fear-induced self-censorship.”
The study explains: “In Mao’s day, expression had to stay within certain bounds, while everything outside was forbidden.”
“Today, one can explore anything beyond certain forbidden topics: the 1989 Tiananmen Massacre, the Falun Gong movement, the China Democratic Party, Taiwan independence, Tibetan or Uighur autonomy, the Great Leap famine, corruption among top leaders and certain other incorrect views on national or international affairs,” it adds.
Young Chinese today, says the study, may be well educated in mathematics, engineering, or languages and yet live with badly warped understandings of their nation’s past.
“Even worse, they could remain entirely unaware of how they have been cheated,” the study says.
Textbooks stress that certain people in Taiwan want to “split the motherland” and the true history of the Mao era — including the histories of Tibet, Taiwan, World War II and the CCP itself — is routinely omitted.
The study says: “The CCP sometimes fabricates or exaggerates national-level fears precisely for the purpose of distracting attention. Most Chinese people, left to themselves, care much more about their own daily lives than about distant places like Taiwan or Tibet. They wake up in the morning worried more about a corrupt local official than about the Dalai Lama.”
propaganda
“But when CCP propaganda tells them repeatedly that the wolf-hearted Dalai Lama is splitting the motherland, they tend to embrace the view that it is bad to split the motherland and that the CCP is the standard-bearer in opposing the splitting,” it says.
“The stimulation of a fear that did not previously exist has less to do with actual danger than with the CCP’s need to strengthen its popular image and divert attention from popular complaints. In recent years the CCP has used incidents involving Japan, Tibet, Taiwan and the United States for this purpose. In the case of Tibet there is evidence that the triggering incidents themselves have been manufactured for the cause,” it says.
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