Great Rejoinder

Documented by Jay Nordlinger:

Every now and then, Erping faces Chinese students in America, who are still proud Communists (or at least defensive of the PRC). Most strongly, they decry "Western influence" in their country.

Erping delivers a jolting line to them. It goes something like this: "I, too, decry Western influence on China. I think it's a very bad thing. And, at present, there is only one Western ideology that is legal in China: and that is Communism. Communism has nothing to do with us, nothing to do with China. This is an ideology born in Europe, first practiced in Russia and elsewhere. There is nothing in our traditions or history like Communism. We have a 5,000-year-old civilization, and Communism has been with us for less than 60 years. Other countries, such as Germany and Russia, have discarded it. Why shouldn't we?

"So, again, I agree with you: We must eradicate foreign influence in China. And the biggest such influence is Communism."