He Yanling, who was a journalist at the People’s Daily, recalls how his hopes for the future were wrecked

He Yanling was full of hope for a “new China” in 1949. On the eve of the ceremony marking establishment of the People’s Republic on 1 October that year, the then 27-year-old page editor at the People’s Daily worked through the night to ensure the paper would come out without a glitch. The next day he joined the celebrations with his colleagues, while his wife stayed at home with their baby.

The streets were filled with the sound of people chatting and singing. With the five-star red national flags billowing, hundreds of thousands of people waited for hours before Mao Zedong appeared on the balcony of the Gate of Heavenly Peace to announce the founding of the PRC. “We were so excited. We thought: at last, the Chinese people are united,” said He, now 97. His first article after the founding day was headlined “From darkness into brightness”.

“We had a decade of civil war before ... so we were looking forward to building a democratic and peaceful China under a coalition government,” he said.

On Tuesday, China will mark the 70th anniversary of the founding of the communist regime with fireworks and a massive military parade to showcase legions of troops and its latest weaponry, much like the one attended by the young journalist. But for He the show of national strength will lead to reflections on his lost dreams of a democratic China.

The early years of the PRC’s coalition government consisted of several political parties under the leadership of the Communists guided by the principle of Mao’s “new democracy”. During that phase the Communist party was supposed to share power before advancing on to socialism and finally communism. “The ideas of the Communist party’s new democracy and a coalition government won over us,” said He, with a tinge of sadness in his voice. “We really had great hopes for new China, but the result wasn’t quite what we expected,” said He.

As a teenager, He had loathed the corrupt and dictatorial rule under the Nationalist party before 1949. With ideals of fraternity, freedom and equality in mind, he and many other young people saw the Communists as the answer to the salvation of China, as championed by Mao and the party propagandists in the 1940s.

From 1943 to 1946, the Communist party mouthpiece Xinhua Daily had an editorial every year on 4 July, America’s Independence Day, praising democratic ideals. In interviews with foreign journalists, Mao praised President Franklin Roosevelt’s advocacy of four freedoms, particularly the freedom from fear and freedom of speech.

“We thought when the Communist party was in power it would follow the US democratic path. We genuinely believed that Mao would implement it,” he said. “But after people gain power, it’s easy to become dictatorial.”

He got involved with the Communist party because of his democratic ideals. Under the National party, when communist sympathisers were harshly oppressed, 18-year-old He and his friends formed an underground reading group to study pro-democracy publications. After he went to study journalism in 1943 at the prestigious Fudan University, then based in the southwestern city of Chongqing during the Sino-Japanese war, he and his girlfriend (who became his wife) helped set up a student newspaper which acted as a front for clandestine communist activities.

After their names got on the Nationalist government’s blacklist, they escaped to the nearest communist base in July 1946, where they joined the newly founded People’s Daily – then operating secretly in the rural part of the northern province of Hebei. They even changed their names to protect their families – to this day, he still uses He Yanling, his adopted name. They became party members a year later.A few years after the regime took over, Mao began to abandon his new democracy principles. Political movements such as the “thought reform” campaign and anti-rightism of the 1950s, which attacked intellectuals as bourgeois class enemies, the Great Leap Forward in 1958 – a radical agricultural campaign that led to 40 million people starving to death – and the Cultural Revolution of 1966-1976 blighted the lives of millions of ordinary people.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Tiananmen Square, June 1989. Photograph: Jeff Widener/AP

He and his wife, Song Zheng, were implicated in 1959 in the “anti-right opportunist campaign” for having reported about people starving to death and party cadres’ abuse of power during the Great Leap Forward in rural China. In the Cultural Revolution, he was castigated as a “counter-revolution revisionist” and “capitalist roader” and put under detention. “For more than two decades, there was no productivity and no improvement of people’s lives – that wasn’t socialism,” He sighed.

“Mao had a big ego and wouldn’t admit to his mistakes. He suppressed voices of discontent to uphold his ruling position. He launched class struggles, and people who disagreed with him were cast as dissidents from hostile classes. Things developed into the Cultural Revolution, and even he lost control over that.”

Mao died in 1976, and the tumultuous decade of chaos came to an end. In 1978 the reformist leader Hu Yaobang began to rehabilitate political victims and the party began a programme of political and economic liberalisation. Hu’s death sparked the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy movement, which ended in a bloody military crackdown on 4 June 1989.

He said he “almost completely lost hope” over the brutality of the crushing of students and ordinary people who were calling for democracy, but was also worried about the future of political and economic reforms. “But I didn’t lose hope completely, because most people in the party were opposed to it,” he said.

After He and his wife retired, they and two other retired state media journalists spent nearly two decades researching historical archives and interviewing people like themselves who risked their lives as idealistic students under the Nationalist party to advocate communism before 1949.

This resulted in three volumes of books, with the last volume unable to be published in China because of the candid chronicling of the tragic fates of former underground party members who suffered in countless political movements under the Communist regime. Many intellectuals were banished to hard labour in the countryside for their “bourgeois” and “counter-revolutionary” political stance.

Reflecting on his life, He said he didn’t feel cheated by the Communist party, like some people from his generation. He said he and many in the party had been shocked when Mao abandoned his New Democracy principles in 1952, but he had gone along with it and had even believed that some sacrifices of freedoms under Mao’s “socialist transformation” drive were justified.

“I too had doubts … but Mao enjoyed a supreme status in new China and the cult of personality was strong. People who expressed doubts were seen as ‘lagging behind’,” He said.

Seventy years on, He is philosophical about his lost dreams of democracy and freedom. While he does not like the tightening of ideological control that has happened over recent years, He feels it is the authorities’ response to China finding itself in an increasingly complex international order.

In view of the rise of nationalism and unilateralism, as well as economic crises in the west, which young idealists like him looked up to for democratic inspiration in the 1940s, He believes its “initial glitz of democratic spirit has been slowing and tarnishing” while China’s power has been rising. “As to what is genuine freedom and democracy,” he said, “the absolute standard has been lost.”

Seventy years of turbulence



1949 Mao Zedong proclaims the founding of the People’s Republic of China.

1950-51 The campaign to suppress counter-revolutionaries begins.

1953-1956 Mao implements socialist transition, abandoning his promises of “new democracy”.

1957 The “anti-rightist movement” purges at least 550,000 people, mostly intellectuals with liberal economic and political views.

1958-1961 The Great Leap Forward leads to 40 million people starving to death.

1966-1976 The Cultural Revolution produces massive upheaval and unleashes unprecedented brutality. Up to two million people are killed.

1976 Mao dies. The cause of his death is not known.

1978 Political and economic liberalisation. Tens of thousands of Cultural Revolution victims are rehabilitated.

1989 Pro-democracy protests by students and workers in Tiananmen Square in Beijing end on 4 June after a military crackdown that kills an estimated 10,000.

2008 Protests erupt across Tibet, triggering a crackdown.

2012 Xi Jinping takes over as Communist party chief and assumes the presidency in March 2013.

2014 Hong Kong’s “umbrella movement” protests against Beijing’s plans to vet candidates for elections in 2017.

2015 China ends the one-child policy imposed in the 1970s.

2018 China’s National People’s Congress votes to remove a two-term limit on the presidency from the country’s constitution, allowing Xi Jinping to remain in office indefinitely.

2019 A controversial extradition bill sparks a wave of anti-government protests in Hong Kong.