(Minghui.org) The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has managed to brainwash many of its people into believing that it is their savior. One such example is that many believe that it is the Party that enables them to make money when, in fact, they earn the money through their own hard work. Due to their misguided belief in the CCP, many Chinese people fear what would happen to their livelihood if the CCP collapsed.
But is this correct?
Where Do People’s Earnings Come From?
Emperor Taizong of the Tang Dynasty was one of the best emperors in the history of China. He often said that a ruler is like a boat and its citizens are like water, meaning that water can carry the boat along but can also overturn it.
This also applies to today’s China. In other words, it is the citizens that support the CCP by paying taxes, not the other way around as Party propaganda claims. The government itself does not create any wealth and it collects taxes to fund its various functions.
There are 26 types of taxes in China, which can be divided into eight categories: turnover taxes, income taxes (both enterprise and individual), resource taxes, taxes for special purposes, property taxes, behavior taxes, agricultural taxes, and customs duties. Ordinary citizens are unaware of this because the CCP purposefully neglects to educate the public about taxes in its attempt to make people believe that the Party “serves” the people and “financially supports” the people.
The turnover tax alone consists of value-added tax, consumption tax, and business tax. Also known as goods and services tax, the value-added tax (VAT) accounts for up to 60% of total tax revenue in China. At a rate of 13%, it is charged to consumers based on the price of goods or services. Businesses thus collect it and pay it to the government.
These taxes rank China #2 in Forbes magazine’s 2009 Tax Misery and Reform Index. “In China, it’s a widely-held belief that if you make less than 3,500 yuan a month you don’t pay taxes. But that’s wrong. China is full of hidden taxes—whether you’re buying clothing, buying a home, paying rent, or purchasing groceries, you’re always paying taxes, though you might not know it,” according to a 2014 ChinaFile article titled “Hidden Taxes: Many Chinese Are Surprised To Find How Much They Pay.”
An article in Xinmin Weekly in Shanghai analyzed a typical example. Assume that Lan, who make 8,000 yuan a month, and her husband, who makes 10,000 yuan per month, live in Beijing. Their income tax would be 5,885 yuan per year. But the hidden taxes could be 1,887 yuan for food, 860 yuan for clothing, 2,923 yuan for household expenses, and 1,140 yuan for utilities. All these add up to 12,695 yuan per year, even without children, an apartment, or a car.
When selling or purchasing a property, people have to pay deed tax, stamp duty, value-added tax, and others. For a two million yuan apartment, these taxes can easily add 15% of the purchase price, or 300,000 yuan.
The CCP Robs Its Own People
As mentioned above, a significant portion of the wealth created by hardworking citizens goes to the government via taxation. People’s take-home pay is just a fraction of their hard-earned money. Unlike citizens in other countries who usually do not support the ruling party’s own expenses (which are not part of typical government functions), the people of China have the extra burden of feeding the CCP system—a parasitic system that penetrates throughout the government, state enterprises, the media, education—essentially all functions of society, absorbing nutrients (money) from every corner of society while injecting people with the toxin of communist ideology. It is very common for CCP officials to enjoy special privileges without doing any work. “It is also widely noted that a significant number of children and siblings of senior CPC [a.k.a. CCP] leaders live, work, and study in Western countries. The Chinese public has often linked this trend to the large-scale outflow of capital in recent years,” according to a 2013 Brookings report titled “Rule of the Princelings.”
The lack of transparency under the CCP’s totalitarian regime also created a hotbed for corrupt officials. After Zhou Yongkang was investigated in 2014, ill-gotten gains totaling $16.05 billion were found to be connected to him. They included $300 million in cash in his residence (in US dollars, euros, yuan, etc.), 62 cars including military Jeeps and a tourist bus, 55 paintings by famous painters, hundreds of foreign and domestic bank accounts, financial securities (both domestic and foreign), 326 properties all over China, and 42,850 grams of gold, silver, and gold coins, reported a 2015 Business Insider article titled “Here's The Ridiculous Loot That's Been Found with Corrupt Chinese Officials.”
A Communism-Free China
Having been brainwashed by the CCP, many people in China worry that life would be miserable without the Party, since there would be no incomes or pensions. The reality is, although the Chinese work so hard, their reported median annual income in 2011 was only about $4,000, about 10% of that in Western countries without communism. And this number did not take into consideration those 600 million people with a monthly income of less than 1,000 yuan (or $140), as announced by the Chinese premier in May 2020.
This happened because much of China’s fortune has been seized and wasted by CCP officials. A survey in 2007 showed these “public servants” spent 900 billion yuan on travel abroad, cars, and dining that year alone. They spent five times the total budget for healthcare (180 billion yuan) or eight times the budget for education (110 billion yuan) that year.
In summary, without the CCP, the people in China would enjoy a happier life, a higher standard of living, and most importantly, the freedom they deserve.
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Category: News Commentary
