Awake from Communist Brainwashing

 

Before I came to the U.S. for graduate school, I grew up in an education system filled with communist propaganda. In 1995, as a Ph.D. student at the California Institute of Technology, I argued with my colleagues, insisting that the Tiananmen Massacre never happened. After they showed me pictures and videos, I broke down in tears.

As a high school student in China, the official message I received about 1989 was that students were "anti-China." and killed many soldiers. We even saw pictures of Chinese soldiers' burnt bodies on all TV programs and newspaper pages. I believed every word the Chinese government said. Ever since I had a memory, people told me that the Party loved me more than my parents did.

Just a couple of weeks after June 4th, 1989, I came home seeing my Dad shouting at the TV, "You said nobody died, what about those red marks on the Square?" He was trembling with anger. The moment he saw me, he kept his mouth shut and left the room. My parents never told me what they thought, nor did I ask.

Two years later, I was already a sophomore at a university in another province. At one of the dorm parties, I accidentally mentioned that "No one died on Tiananmen Square." Two girls sitting next to me were from Beijing. They looked at each other with a shocked expression, then looked at me without saying a word.

I will never forget their facial expression. My parents did not tell me, nor did my dormmates tell me. They did not trust me because I was a deeply brainwashed youngster. I could have reported them to the police, as the Party required it.

Thanks for the help of my American friends. I was finally able to question if what I learned in China was true. It took five years for me to awake from the propaganda. In 2000, I decided to speak out for human rights and be a voice for the voiceless.

Nowadays, students in China are still not aware of the atrocities caused by the Communist Party. Most of them have never seen the picture of the Tankman. Their textbook claimed that Americans started the Korean War to invade China. The Great Firewall on the Internet blocked them from accessing outside information. Even after they came to study or work in the U.S., they still have a "wall" in their minds. This "wall" blocked them from reading or listening to different opinions. Some of them actively defend the Chinese government and spread the lies to Americans. I was surprised to find out that some Americans believed these lies from their Chinese co-workers.

It is sad to see that many Chinese people, deceived by the Communist Party, participated in the persecution of Falun Gong, Christians, and Uyghurs. When they spread the propaganda to naive Americans, it damages American freedom.

My American friends helped me to be awake from the Communist brainwashing. You can do the same.

 

(Photo Credit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tank_Man#/media/File:Tianasquare.jpg)