The (Jewish) future of China, according to Sidney Rittenberg

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The future of China, according to Sidney Rittenberg

By Peter Foster World Last updated: September 29th, 2009


Just returned from a talk given by Sidney Rittenberg, the 88-year-old former American Communist who hung out with Mao in Yan'an in the second half of the 1940s when the Red Army was being transformed from a rump force in the million-strong army that would defeat Chang Kai-shek's Nationalists.

His is an amazing life that spans the entirety of the 60 years of Communist rule being celebrated on Thursday, from those 'heady days' in Yan'an to two periods of imprisonment totalling 16 years, including a decade during the Cultural Revolution – the early stages of which Rittenberg took part in before himself falling victim to the witch-hunts.

Personally I can live without the misty-eyed accounts of Yan'an, how 'egalitarian' it was bumping into Mao and Zhou Enlai for a hand or two of Gin Rummy, but Rittenberg gives a real sense of the intoxication of that period.

He spoke movingly of the day when he clapped eyes on the 'elite' troops – only half had guns and most were wearing grass shoes – that Mao had promised would defeat the Nationalists, and the exhilaration when against all expectation they did, 18 months ahead of schedule.

(No mention in this talk of the Yan'an Rectification Campaign and the purging of the writer Wang Shiwei for daring to write an essay denouncing the "dark side of Yan'an", the 'three classes of clothing and five grades of food' allocated to senior officials when 'the sick can't get a bowl of noodles'. Wang was imprisoned and, in 1947 put to death with an axe.)

But to be honest, this is not the moment to start carping about the facts of history. Rittenberg has lived through the last 60 years of China's Communist history, being personally acquainted with China's senior leadership, and that in itself makes what he has to say interesting.

(His connections and experience have enabled him to run a successful consultancy business representing some of the world's biggest brands, such as Intel, Levi Strauss, Microsoft, Hughes Aircraft and Teledesic)

His view – which, fittingly enough in modern China, he addressed a meeting of the European & US Chambers of Commerce – is that the Communist Party has massive material achievements to its name, not least providing food, shelter and education to nearly 1.3bn people.

As someone who saw at first hand the terrible deprivation and starvation while working for the UN Famine Relief programme after the Second World War, the improvements in standards of living over the last 30 years in particular must strike him every day.

He also has immense faith in the cabal of engineers and technocrats that run the modern Communist Party. "They are builders", he says, "with little interest in ideology except in so far as it can aid building".

Reaching back into the history of Chinese thought, he cites the over-riding pragmatism of the Chinese as a people as the key to their success. What he describes as, "a complete lack of interest in what came before creation or what will come after death. There is a complete focus on life as it is today, on the human realities."

He is, however, concerned that the final debauchery of the Mao years which left Mao Zedong Thought "shattered, finished, empty" has left a spiritual and ideological vacuum that the Party is failing to fill.

"The party has the support of the overwhelming majority of the people because it makes life better, but in terms of vision, intellectual and spiritual appeal, it has nothing to offer. Zero."

So on then to the 'million renminbi' question as this 60th anniversary approaches, what does Rittenberg think the future holds for China.

Can the Party adjust to the new pressures created by its own success – the corruption, the demand from an increasingly wealth population to have a say in the society in which they live?

Picking up his crystal ball, Rittenberg predicts that following the last 30 years of momentous change, China stands again on the cusp of another period of "major change", based on ideas "that have been tested over the last few years."

First, he sees an enormous anti-corruption campaign within the CCP in an attempt by the Party to heal itself of (one might argue) inevitable consequence of refusing to submit to any checks and balances on its power.

"What we've seen in Chongqing [where there has recently been a huge corruption crackdown which has led to the arrest of several very senior officials] is only the reconnaissance force. It's going to be very tough and far-reaching".

Second, he sees the move towards internal democracy (a theme of the recent Party Plenum) gathering pace and, ultimately, spilling over into China as a whole.

"The move to bring internal democracy into the party that will see leaders being elected at a local level," he said, "This will be even more difficult than the corruption campaign, but when this happens the will be ready to move out from the party into the wider society and create a kind of Chinese democratic system."

I didn't get the chance to ask if Mr Rittenberg thought he'd be around to see that day for himself, but he looked very spry up there at the lectern, so who's to say...

Tags: china, communism, Mao, red army, sidney rittenberg, ya'an

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/peter ... ittenberg/