Loyal readers may be familiar with this character, “The Eastwood Is Red” Dude, after the Chinese revolutionary tune, The East is Red, and Eastwood shopping center, in Sydney. We would love to meet him. The following story bears no resemblance to the truth unless by coincidence.
His Great Grandad was in the Long March, escaping the KMT forces and retreating to YanAn. His Grandparents lived in a big coastal city after “Liberation” in 1949 and avoided the worst of the Great Leap Forward that brought misery to the countryside. They navigated the wacko politics and frenzied extremism of the cultural revolution. They denounced others before being denounced by them, picked the right factions, and cruised into the reform era of the 80’s and 90’s in positions of authority, got the best education and opportunities for their kids, and used their privileges to clean up commercially, park cash in Australia, and move the family out of China altogether.
“The Dude” grew up in a privileged pro-party family and social environment in China, and then moved to a modest mansion in Hunters Hill, Northern Sydney, next to Cate Blanchette’s old house. He finished high school at The Kings School, Parramatta. He studies IT and 18th century Russian poetry at Macquarie University.
This year, he met a girl and fell in love; enter stage right, Juliet.
Juliet is a stunning blonde in her early twenties who grew up in Sydneys North Shore. She attended Ravenswood Girls school, which has a great Confucius Classroom. She was just a primary school girl on the day the Ravenswood Confucius Classroom was opened in 2014. She saw Madame Peng Li Yuan, attending the ceremony. She was so nice, and famous for singing songs to the brave soldiers who put down the western inspired rebellion in Beijing in June 1989, raising their spirits while they were having a rest between shooting unarmed civilians.
Peng Li Yuan with student, 2014
Peng Li Yuan with soldiers, June 1989
Juliet’s family are rather wealthy - old money going back several generations to an English opium trader who cleaned up on the China trade and then came to Australia, pegged out large slices of terra that looked pretty nullius to him, ignoring the occasional cynic who called him a “squatter” or aboriginals who acted like it was their land. After turning it into wheat land by tapping into aquifers below the land surface, he found the soil turned salty and nothing would grow, but then discovered coal and sold the land to a mining company for a killing, later moving to Sydney where the family has lived for generations since.
Juliet is an all weather girl - girls think she is cool, boys think she is hot - but are too shy to let her know. She studies - guess where - Macquarie University - Law and a minor in - you guessed it - 18th century Russian poetry !
She thought her perfect life could not get perfecter, until…..
It was 2022, and the summer of love, … except really rainy and drab actually, and March doesn’t really count as summer but Uni had begun first term back in person from Covid and she couldn’t find the right lecture theatre for 18th century Russian Poetry, and neither could Hong, and they were both in a rush, and he was turning left and she was turning right around the same corner from the opposite sides of the wall, AND SMACK BAM they crashed into each other, both tripping over and falling on the pavement.
Juliet looked up, dazed.
Hong looked up, and then looked for his phone.
And then their eyes met - from above the covid masks - and their lives would never be the same again.
But lately, things have got a bit rocky.
Juliet asks Agony Aunt Agatha, for some relationship advice.
Dear Agatha,
This year I fell in love, for the first time. Like I thought I fell in love a few other times, but this is the first time it is, you know, for real.
My boyfriend, My Hongie, is so sweet and nice to me. His name is Dong Fang, his surname is Hong, but I get confused because he says his name is Hong Dong Fang but on the class name list he is clearly listed as Dong Fang Hong1. Then he would be My Dongie. To avoid confusion when I introduced him to my parents, I persuaded him to agree to be called “Romeo” because it’s easier for them to remember. My last boyfriends name was Romeo too.
We have been so happy together, but every time we are together and hear the news on the radio, or people talk about China, he gets very upset and tells me everything I read or hear about the Chinese Communist Party is a lie, and that Xi Jin Ping is wonderful because he has made Uyghurs and Tibetans and Chinese Christians so happy and improved Hong Kong massively and if it wasn’t for that nasty lady with the cats in Taipei he would fix Taiwan and ….
So I got sneaky. When he was not around I did my own research. Not only that, I talked to people from all these places or with these backgrounds, and all of them say that he is not right, and some of their relatives have been locked up and suffered.
OH MY GOD - AUNT AGATHA - IS MY BOYFRIEND BRAINWASHED ?
Yours as a huge huge fan.
Juliet
Agony Aunt Agatha sees this ALL the time.
Dear Juliet,
You poor dear, so glad you reached out to me before your relationship gets too messy. Where there is love, there is hope. Go on, reach for a Kleenex and give your nose a big squeeze. Cuddle a soft toy from early childhood. You can get through this, I know you can.
I know what you are going through, it seems like an epidemic with young people these days. So much more complicated than when I was growing up. Let’s clear a few things up first:
Technically speaking, your boyfriend is not “brainwashed”.
The term brainwashing derives from translation of the Chinese term 洗脑 (xǐ nǎo) “washing (the) brain” but implies being more like a baptism, the soul being born again. It can involve the imposition of trauma, physical or mental, usually both, to break the spirit with the aim of remoulding the persons behaviours and beliefs. It involves breaking down the self, introducing the possibility of salvation, and then rebuilding the self2. Victims are often very confused about what they really believe or who they feel they are.
Contemporary Chinese brainwashing developed in Yan An, in the late 1930’s, when lots of misguided city slickers tried to join the Communists, and Mao decided to “rectify” the thinking of this new group of people - The Yan An Rectification was basically a mass brainwashing exercise involving torture, murder and mutual denunciations. it was a huge experiment that helped develop the initial, if crude, processes of changing peoples minds - against their will.
The outside world became aware of brainwashing as a process after the Korean War, when captured US and UK soldiers were repatriated. Since then, the Chinese Communist government have experimented on ethnic minorities, members of religious groups, and political opponents. We can only guess, but the process is probably improving due to the length of time they have been perfecting it and the large scale they have tried recently as a measure for pre-emptive terrorism prevention in Xinjiang. The Chinese ambassador even said it could be applied in Taiwan after “liberation”.
Brainwashing is about using violence and coercion to change the thinking, choices and behaviour of a person against their conscious will.
This is unlikely to have happened to your Dongle, sorry, Hongie. But what he has grown up with, is, nonetheless, quite disturbing, and has big implications for your relationship.
People everywhere have their thinking and behaviour shaped by the forces around them - based intellectually on the information they have at hand, and emotionally, based on relationships, wanting to fit in socially, please parents, and progress within their society. What makes China different is that North, South, East, West and centre too, the party rules over all. There is no competing information source, no debate, no challenging of views and no competing social life.
Let’s break this down into component parts. It’s a lot to digest, I know.
The education system he experienced before coming to Australia included not only obvious propaganda in classes on history or “politics” but also political ideas weaved into in other classes as well.
Even dictionary definitions are twisted for cynical propaganda purposes:
The purpose of news on Chinese TV or in print, is to know what to say, or think. Xi Jin Ping literally meets with the media workers to lecture them about 新闻舆论管理 / 新闻舆情管理 （xīnwén yúlùn guǎnlǐ /xīnwén yúqíng guǎnlǐ) public opinion guidance and public feeling management. These meetings are not secret, they are reported in the People’s Daily and treated as normal !
WeChat, Weibo, TikTok, are not merely censored. The owners of these companies are all required to perform public opinion management by the same criteria as other media, to censor opinions they don’t want and boost what suits the CCP narrative. Thus if Kevin Rudd’s Weibo reinforces Chinese policy, they will allow it. If Scott Morrison becomes a follower and makes comments they don’t like, Weibo will delete them. How much time does Hong spend on WeChat ? Where does he get his news ?
Movies and TV generally reinforce political themes. Chinese TV abounds with plenty of shows about fighting the Japanese, false history soapy versions of Mao’s life, being an undercover spy, and even a romantic comedy about a military brigade protecting Xinjiang from the Japanese in WW2, which is an absurd distortion of history, but reinforces todays propaganda requirements.
Video Games have in the last decade become arms of both propaganda and surveillance, and extend across borders. The Peoples Daily, and the Communist Youth League help to design and market new games with the right messages, like in “Homeland Dream”. Is your sweet love a gamer ?
It’s speculative, but I wonder, could it be that there has been a lack of cognitive development in the parts of the brain that help cope with uncertainty and ambiguity, due to inhibition of these brain functions from an early age ? It sounds far fetched, but it sure feels true.
You cannot continue to 求同存异 (qiú tóng cún yì) which means to “set aside differences and Netflix and chill”3. There is only one way forward my dear. Love, Patience, Forbearance. Listen to what he has to say. Work through what he believes, and make him feel that you trust him, even if you think what he says is lunacy, he’s only reflecting the environment he is from and is still quite embedded in.
Try getting someone who is Chinese to talk sense to him. Some aged over fifty have a more open perspective, coming of age before the post Tiananmen increase in political education. That might work a bit.
Or you could stalk your old boyfriend on snapchat and see if he’s found someone new, and proceed from there.
Good Luck Honey, you’ll need it.
Aunt Agatha.
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