I grew up in China during the Cultural Revolution. Back then, we needed permission from the government for every aspect of life: How much food we could have. (For my family, it was one pound of meat per person per month, and we were the lucky ones.) Where we could live. To which school we could go. Where we could work. When we could get married. When we could have children. How many children we could have – only one per couple. The government had its say in every aspect of life. Every adult had an identification booklet in which his or her class affiliation was recorded. You needed it for traveling, booking a hotel, getting rations, getting married, and on and on and on…
We were slaves. Yet, none of us knew that. We thought that we lived in the best country in the whole world. They said we were lucky to live under the greatest savior in human history, Chairman Mao. Our purpose in life was to realize the Communist Utopia and liberate the proletariat in capitalist countries from exploitation.
How did the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) manage to enslave more than one billion people for more than 70 years? Below are some of their tactics, but the CCP did not invent them. They just followed the blueprint of Mussolini, Hitler, and Stalin.
