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Cai Xia¹See this excellent Chris Buckley profile of Cai Xia. was a professor of political theory at the Central Party School of the Chinese Communist Party in Beijing between 1998 and 2012. But in late 2020, after her sharp critiques of the Party and its leader, Xi Jinping, began circulating online, she was expelled from the Communist Party. In one talk that leaked online, she said, “This Party is a political zombie.” By that time, though, she was already residing in the U.S., where she remains today, living in exile as a political commentator and dissident. In the following interview, which was conducted long before the 20th Party Congress, Professor Cai talked about growing up a princeling, teaching at the Party School, and Xi Jinping’s consolidation of power. (Her comments were translated from Chinese, in part, by Anne Henochowicz.)

Q: Can you tell us about your background? How did you end up at the Central Party School?

A: I was born into a family of military officers who were members of the Chinese Communist Party. My family, including my parents and my aunts and uncles, were all Party members, and most of them were in the army. They joined the Party at about the same time as my father. I was educated by the Communist Party and grew up in a military base.

How did you eventually get to the Central Party School?

I grew up during the Cultural Revolution, which interrupted my studies. So I joined the army. Not long after the Cultural Revolution, I changed jobs and returned to work in the local area and that placed me in the third tier. 

As a member of the “Third Tier,” [Editor’s note: In the Communist Party system, the first tier involved revolutionaries like Mao; then there was a second tier of high ranking Party officials and then a third tier ranking for Party cadres, still very important and longtime Party members]. I went to the local Party school for my training. When I graduated, many of my classmates became leading cadres in various departments, and later on they were promoted. Because I was studying there and the school needed teachers, they wanted me to teach there after I graduated, and I said yes. At the time, I worked as a teacher at a local Party school in Suzhou. 

After the June 4th incident in 1989, the entire Chinese Communist Party panicked. They didn’t know what to do. The Party had to figure out how to deal with Party members and cadres. How would we instruct them? The Central Party School (CPS) issued a notice to Party schools across the country that said, “If you are interested, you can attend a lecture by a CPS instructor.” They organized a series of short-term courses for Party school teachers. So in October 1989, I went to the Central Party School in Beijing. While I was there, I learned that I could apply for a Master’s degree and PhD, and that the Party School had these types of programs. So at the beginning of 1992 I took the national exam for my Master’s degree. I passed and was admitted in September 1992. I enrolled at the CPS for my Master’s degree. Later, I went on to study for my doctoral degree, and in 1998 I stayed on as an instructor.

Can you explain the importance of the Party School? 

The Central Party School is first and foremost, the highest school of the Communist Party of China. This school is responsible for teaching and training all of China’s leaders, including governors and ministers. [Former Chinese leader] Hu Jintao, for example, was a student of the Central Party School in the 1980s. 

I entered the Central Party School as a teacher in 1998. In my teaching, I have come into contact with people who are currently in leadership positions. I can name a few people: for example, the current deputy secretary of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, Yang Xiaodu. Another student of mine was Qu Qingshan, the director of the Central Party History Research Office. He recently participated in the writing of the third historical resolution. 

The teaching environment and atmosphere of the Central Party School are different during different periods, and  impact on students changes. For example, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, after the Cultural Revolution, Hu Yaobang [General Secretary of the Communist Party during the 1980s] was the executive vice president of the Central Party School. Although he was in the Party School for a short time, his influence was far-reaching. From the 1980s to the 1990s, the school spirit was to emancipate the mind and seek truth from facts, to discuss, study and solve problems. During that period, the Central Party School was the most open-minded institution within the Communist Party of China.

Did the nature of the Central Party School change after Xi Jinping came to power in 2012?

Hu Yaobang had established an ethos of free thought and innovative inquiry at CPS, of innovative approaches to research. This philosophy was carried on at the school through Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao. Before Hu Jintao became general secretary, he was the president of CPS. But when Xi Jinping became president of CPS, he ordered the faculty to fall in line with the Party’s Central Committee. He forbade us from saying anything that contradicted it. He threatened the faculty. Before the summer of 2008, if a student felt that we weren’t using creative approaches to theory or weren’t open-minded, then that was something you had to think about and look into. Afterwards, Xi said that we couldn’t speak out of line with the Central Committee, and if you felt wronged, you’d just have to figure something out.

Some historical materials of the Communist Party of China have always been kept secret, and some internal struggles within the party are kept secret and will not be shown to you.  They will be destroyed, [or] burned.

Xi Jinping changed the Central Party School. There’s a saying, “Eat the meal and smash the pot” — that if you eat the meal that the Party provides, you can’t go and break its pots. Everyone thinks this came along later, but actually Xi said it first, to threaten the faculty at CPS. The first time he said it was in the summer of 2009, when he was addressing the faculty of the Central Party School. [The public] only heard about it later. 

After he became General Secretary, he no longer held the position of president of CPS. From 2013 on, he completely reversed Party ideology. He doesn’t openly oppose democracy, but he does oppose constitutionalism. He says ideology has to be brandished, and that you have to struggle. At that time, everyone knew that he had given “seven don’t talk-abouts” to the universities and the CCP: don’t talk about the Party’s past mistakes, don’t talk about anything he believes is “false history,” don’t talk about constitutional government, [Editor’s note: The “seven don’t talk abouts” were first set forth in Central Document No. 9 of 2013: See here.] This shifted the CCP completely to the left.

Is this one of the reasons the Party has begun to restrict scholars from accessing  the Party’s historical documents?

It’s not that everyone is not allowed to see them. Some of them are used as internal historical materials. Some historical materials of the Communist Party of China have always been kept secret, and some internal struggles within the party are kept secret and will not be shown to you.  They will be destroyed, [or] burned.

There are going to be a lot of [unanswered] questions in future research on the history of the Chinese Communist Party because of this. We will have to rely on other people’s memories, but who can say how accurate those memories will be? There are a lot of things that the CCP doesn’t want people to know in the future. They don’t want the world, the public to know these things.

They do this so that there are some pieces of history where they let you know what they want you to know. The things they don’t want to tell you, they completely skip over those when they make historical resolutions. They never mention it, or they burn the records. When people research these historical periods in the future, they will have to rely on hearsay, just like me, because there will be no first-hand information. Some things are simply lost to history.

Then Xi Jinping came along and steered the Party completely to the left. You couldn’t say anything out of line with the central government; you couldn’t “improperly discuss” the central government.

I’m telling you all this to say that, since Xi Jinping took power, the ideology and the mindset of the entire CCP went backwards, and leftist notions started making a comeback. That’s the main backdrop of the changes at the Central Party School.

In 2013-2014, the school leadership was essentially changed: He Yiting [became] executive vice president, and the status of CPS declined. It used to be that a member of the Standing Committee would be appointed as president of the school, but that changed and CPS increasingly came under the management of the Central Organization Department. The head of the Organization Department is Chen Xi. He is a member of the Politburo, and the head of the Organization Department.

Also, the atmosphere of teaching at the Party School has changed. How did it change? It used to be extremely difficult to lecture at our school, because our evaluations were much stricter than for university professors in China. The way they evaluated us was, at every class, the students would assess you according to six main categories. You were evaluated after every single class. As soon as class ended, the students had an evaluation form specifically for that class, and would start filling them out. Each of them would assess you anonymously. 

At that time, the students were mostly asking that the faculty think [more] freely, probe [more] deeply, and stop talking about what everyone already knew from Central Party documents and the People’s Daily. As long as you were thoughtful, as long as you stuck to major principles — you didn’t oppose the leadership of the Communist Party, you didn’t oppose the socialist system, you didn’t oppose Marxism or Mao Zedong Thought — within this general framework, you could conduct research. 

Then Xi Jinping came along and steered the Party completely to the left. You couldn’t say anything out of line with the central government; you couldn’t “improperly discuss” the central government. They still evaluate the faculty in every class; they still grade them, but now the political grade comes first.

You mean the evaluation form itself changed? 

Yes, the most important thing now is the political score. You can’t say anything that is different from the spirit of the Central Committee’s documents. The political score is very heavily weighted. If students think that you have violated the central government’s current main point of view or spirit, you will fail politically. 

You’ve said that Party School is moving to the left. How is that and why?

When Xi Jinping started to steer the CCP to the left in 2012, the Party School had to follow suit. Let me tell you briefly about teaching under these circumstances. You know that we teach people who work for central [state] organs, the central government, and the central Party system, bureau heads, that is to say at the director level and above, deputy ministers, ministers, Central Committee members. Anyone who wants to be promoted has to go through the Party School: the Chinese Communist Party documents stipulate how you are promoted to the next level. If you don’t study at the Central Party School, you can’t be promoted. That means every single official has this on their CV. They all go to the Party School once or twice, or even three times. Every official has to study at CPS, even if you’re already on the Central Committee, if eventually you make it to the Central Committee, the Central Committee, Politburo. 

You can see how influential the thinking of CPS faculty and CPS lectures are on CCP cadres and officials. They influence the thinking and ideology of the entire Party, because if you add together all of the faculty at CPS and students, they equal all Party cadres. So you see the enormous influence CPS has over the CCP. If they accept some of the new ideas you share with them, they will change some of their own ways of thinking through problems, and this will manifest itself in their work. So what we say has a big influence. 

So why did the CCP publicize my expulsion from the Party? The Central Party School posted a notice about it that spread nationwide. In fact, I had a fairly big impact within the CCP, because I had a lot of students. I have taught in every province and every institution, of course, like Xinhua and the State Council Information Office, the central government’s foreign news office. On top of that, I taught in the Central Organization Department, which is in charge of Party education for grassroots-level Party members. I made a series of recordings for them, because at that time Party ideology was liberated [and] even though some things were off-limits politically, there was still room for free thought. They wanted good teachers, so that’s how it was. 

So what made you stand up and say publicly, ‘I disagree’; to go against the Party and Xi Jinping? 

My parents were among the [more] cultured officials in the CCP. A lot of Party officials, like the Eighth Route Army and the New Fourth Army, fought their way into Beijing and took control of the country, then took off their military uniforms and became leading cadres, but they couldn’t read. They were called worker-peasant cadres. Worker-peasant cadres had no culture whatsoever; only when they joined the CCP did they start to slowly learn to read. People with a third-grade reading level became local leaders. But not my parents, who had gone to private school, putting them among those in the Party with a little bit of culture. They had a bit more experience with the traditional cultural education of the past. 

On top of that, they joined the Communist Party. All those Party sayings, “serve the people with your heart and soul,” “hard work and plain living,” they embodied that. They taught me to think of the interests of the people and the country. I’m not saying I’m so wonderful; [I’m saying that] this forms a concept in your mind. You use this basic concept to judge what is in your own self-interest, and what is better for the country. It’s a basic standard, by which to judge right from wrong. 

When I joined, the atmosphere at the Central Party School was open. The reason my lectures were so well-received is that the CPS encouraged open-mindedness. And also, there was so much news in Beijing, and so many new books to read. As long as you kept on reading and thinking, and your basic mindset wasn’t conservative, your own ability to judge things was an asset to the country and the Party. That’s absolutely how you taught back then. It was the wave of the times and of society. Open-mindedness was at the heart of inner-Party thinking, so officials judged your courses on how open-minded you were, whether you thought independently about issues. This is one reason why I [eventually spoke] up, because I’ve been this way ever since I was young. 

The second reason is that I come from a military family. I’m an army kid. I grew up on an Army base. What does the army do? They fight. I myself served as a soldier for nearly a decade. The army doesn’t equivocate. If you have something to say, just get to the point, because in the army you can’t lie. That’s not to say that the CCP army doesn’t lie. They certainly have committed many falsehoods. But my father and his generation came out of combat, including my mother. People who have been in combat know what it’s like, what the battlefield is like, what you yourself are like. If you don’t tell the truth, you are dead. So people who have been in the army for a long time, including people who grew up on a base such as myself, the children of military cadres, are much more candid than the children of local leading cadres. We’re straightforward. This is the effect the army has on us. That’s why we are better able to express ourselves directly. We don’t equivocate, we didn’t learn how; we didn’t have that environment.

The third reason is that my parents were also CCP officials. And in the Communist Party there is this idea that it’s like a family. It is steeped in traditional Chinese culture. Being raised by your mother is different from being raised by your step-mother. Your whole family is the Communist Party. You are a child of the Communist Party. If a child says something a little offensive to their mother, you are more forgiving. Even though there was this kind of talk at CPS, they never censured this or that. Why? Because the CPS went by Hu Yaobang’s philosophy that the CCP should have a certain level of tolerance for its own people, for the children of its officials. I’m not particularly cultivated as a scholar, but I had the room to speak, I could be bold. 

So your background as the daughter of revolutionaries and a soldier gave you the strength or courage to battle the Party?

My family background gave me a big advantage, it protected me. [But by] 2016, Xi Jinping was already asking who Cai Xia is, because I had spoken up for Ren Zhiqiang [a Chinese property tycoon who was sentenced to 18 years in prison in 2020 after he openly criticized the CCP]. I guess, of course, I have friends who are princelings. They could have told him that Cai Xia was a child of the Communist Party. They had already figured out what kind of person I was. But then everything I said was blocked. I couldn’t let out a peep, but then again, they didn’t throw me in jail. That’s because I was a child of the Communist Party, a teacher, and I wasn’t corrupt. 

But why do you strongly oppose another child of revolutionaries, Xi Jinping, who grew up in the Party?

The more you think about things, the more you come to recognize [Xi Jinping’s] inner nature, his evil and his darkness. When he faced the virus in Wuhan, he concealed the loss of control over the situation. We don’t even know how many people died in Wuhan. Then the virus spread throughout China, then the whole world, and did so much damage. Now, wouldn’t you say Xi Jinping bears [some] responsibility? Why can’t the CCP come out and confirm this? So that private audio recording of me from May 20, 2020, everyone ended up hearing it, right? The words I shared in [that private group] were posted online. Because when you see how grave the situation is, you feel that you can still say something. You can’t stay silent.  

Actually, I was already in the U.S. [when I made those comments]. We were talking online, not in person. I knew I was talking to the children of CCP elders; I knew that some of them were princelings, some of them were members of the Red second generation. We were all children of the Communist Party. In other words, I was talking to people with the same family background. 

Who is the central government? Who is the Party? Xi Jinping. He is one and the same, isn’t he? 

I believe that at the very least, if my mother and father were still alive, they would not recognize the CCP. They thought that following the CCP was for the country, to save the nation. They made sacrifices. I believe in many of the Party elders. The people I was addressing that day, they joined the Communist Party long before my parents did. They also tend to think the CCP needs to reform; that it needs to solve [its] problems. That’s why I spoke so frankly. It was a small space, but then they shared it [online]. After it was spread [online] I was expelled from the Party, because the higher-ups said I was a vile influence on the Party and the country. It was because I spoke freely that they expelled me.

Who leaked the details of your online discussion and your critique of the Party?

I don’t know, but I do know that it was a princeling. The person who invited me to speak to this tiny little group was also a princeling. He told me, “I owe you an apology. I know who did it, and they have already apologized to me. He hadn’t thought of the repercussions,” but he also told me, “I won’t tell you who did it. I respect him.” Since he doesn’t want to tell me, and what’s done is done, I don’t need to ask who did it. 

What are the basic views of this group you were talking with in terms of the state of the Party?

They are hopeful the Party can resolve its problems, that it can reform and move towards democracy. Our group wants to move towards constitutional democracy. They are princelings and much higher up than my parents were; the Party protects these children first and foremost. There are some rebels among them, but they have no idea how vicious the Party can be, because they’ve never been punished. They didn’t anticipate the consequences of sharing a recording. So that’s how it is. 

Why aren’t other members of this so-called red second generation, or princelings, challenging Xi Jinping? Is he getting support from this group? 

Since Xi Jinping came to power, he has changed the system at the top level of leadership in the CCP. You know that the CCP has democratic centralism. Party committees are led by collective leadership. Even though the committee secretaries and general secretary have more decision-making power, you have to listen to everyone’s opinion. 

Before Xi Jinping, everyone thought of Hu Jintao as a weak leader. There was this saying, “Nine dragons guarding the water.” Each of the nine members of the Politburo Standing Committee guarded their share, while the general secretary had control over no one. Hu wasn’t able to push through the reforms he wanted. He didn’t have that ability or that kind of influence, because he was a weak leader. 

Once Xi Jinping came to power, he wanted to be a strong leader. Basically, all power is in his hands. So he has control over the Party, the government, and the military at the same time. What he emphasizes is the centralized and unified leadership of the Central Committee. He’s brought it up in newspaper [articles] and [official] documents. Strengthening the leadership of the Party means strengthening the centralized, unified leadership of the Party’s Central Committee. Who is the central government? Who is the Party? Xi Jinping. He is one and the same, isn’t he? 

So why is he able to do that? It’s first of all because of Hu Jintao’s weakness. At first, people saw the potential in Xi’s strength to push forward reform. No one realized how dangerous his power would become. At the time, I thought it was fine for him to lead the comprehensive reform commission and the national security commission, because we didn’t want him to be too weak. He needed [to do] it. But we didn’t realize that he would completely destroy democratic centralism so that only he could speak and no one could oppose him. 

What the Communist Party is most afraid of is people organizing, because it knows that if there is organization, there will be power, and when people come to a place where there is organization, the power will be very strong. This is a basic tenet of Marxism.

He figured state power was his to take, as if it was his family property. So as you can see, the Communist Party really puts the power of the state in its own pocket. They never had a Party-wide election for the leaders of the state or the Party. They do not have democratic elections. They talk about it among themselves. Who has reached what age? Who has the qualifications to take over the reins? Like when Bo Xilai and Xi Jinping were competing to be general secretary, there was open warfare between the factions, right? The basic premise is that power is not for the people to hold. They do not hold democratic elections. The inner circle deliberates and chooses their successors in the name of strengthening Party leadership. They give them a little test to see who can take over. At the time everyone thought that since Xi Zhongxun [Xi Jinping’s father and one of the country’s senior leaders] hadn’t punished anyone and was reform-minded, Xi Jinping would definitely be a reformer. That’s why they chose him.

One of the areas he’s strengthened control over is private enterprise. Why is that? 

There are two problems. First, these private companies hold huge amounts of property. Their assets are huge. [Xi] has the idea that as long as you become stronger economically, you will make political demands, and then the market will become unstable. I used to have this idea too. I believe that Xi Jinping’s ideology and the ideology of our generation are based on the violent revolution of Mao Zedong and Marx, and the ideology of class struggle. It is a deeply ingrained, basic Communist Party concept that after becoming economically strong, people must demand political rights. So the Party will be highly vigilant about the energy of these big entrepreneurs.

[Look at how] Jack Ma and the others have built a lakeside university [called Hupan University] in Zhejiang. Isn’t this amazing? It recruits entrepreneurs and practical people. You can only enter Hupan University if you have money. In fact, the university has become a collection of private elite groups. What the Communist Party is most afraid of is people organizing, because it knows that if there is organization, there will be power, and when people come to a place where there is organization, the power will be very strong. This is a basic tenet of Marxism.

This is how they started, right?

Yes, Lenin once said that organization is the only weapon of the proletariat. If you are scattered, you cannot resist. He attached great importance to the organization of all Communist parties. 

[Xi is] afraid that businessmen will organize. China’s civil society has been totally destroyed. In the 1980s, foreign NGOs came to China and helped China. In the 1990s, after the market economy [came back], social organizations slowly started springing up. Under Hu Jintao, China started restricting Chinese NGOs and preventing foreign NGOs from entering China. It has gotten worse under Xi Jinping, not just in terms of suppression. So, of course he would crack down on these things. He will not let you organize. [Xi] knows that by scattering people, by isolating everyone, they won’t be able to resist him. A deep-seated idea in the Communist Party is that all that money the [entrepreneurs] have acquired, was gained through exploitation. This is the excuse the Party can use whenever it confiscates your wealth. Frankly, the Party does not create wealth, but it will plunder [other people’s] wealth. Marx’s theory of surplus value is an argument that legitimizes stealing from the rich. His theory has become the Communist Party’s justification for stealing from the rich. At the Central Party School, in the ‘90s, we had already proven that this theory was wrong. There are two cornerstones of Marxist theory, one is the theory of surplus value, the other is the dictatorship of the proletariat. In my mind, these two pillars have been overturned. So am I a believer in Marxism? Not anymore.

Xi Jinping giving remarks at an event commemorating the 200th anniversary of Karl Marx’s birth, May 4th, 2018. Credit: CGTN

Xi Jinping hasn’t reached this level of understanding. In his mind, he completely accepts everything we have been told since we were children about exploitation. And he tells the people at the lowest rung of society that these businessmen are all big capitalists, and capital represents immorality. They have robbed you. And then he invokes “common prosperity,” [and even though] it doesn’t include the bottom rung at all, a lot of people at the bottom will support him. He uses this populist argument [for] plunder. He wants to strike down these big [business] tycoons.

Does this idea about capital and capitalism undermine or alter the path of reform and market orientation that we saw driving the country’s growth since the early to mid 1990s?

Xi Jinping is controlling. He has to have control of everything. He’s already started using state-owned enterprises to buy up these big [private] companies. As early as 2013, in a resolution for total reform, he said he would protect reforms that were consistent with ownership, that private enterprise could yield to the state, that is to say central SOEs, and SOEs can purchase shares in private companies. Your private company could also buy shares in central and state-owned enterprises. At the time private business owners thought, we’ve got money, we can buy shares of SOEs. At that time, I spoke to them. I said, cinch up your purse strings. It’s like you are voluntarily putting your money into their pockets. You can give away your money, but you won’t have any say in how it’s used. You think you’ll have equity, that you’ll have a say because you have so many shares? Not a chance. They’re just saying that to get you to invest, but in fact it’s just an excuse to take all your money, and you’re voluntarily giving it to them. And now? Now they’re just robbing you blind in the name of “common prosperity.” 

…pressure from the outside world will help things develop internally and will help weaken [Xi’s] political capacity. Under certain circumstances, it could push China towards constitutional democracy sooner.

And in addition to stealing your money and spending your capital, they’ve started buying up large enterprises, like a central SOE seems to have gotten into Tencent. Even if a central SOE only has a 1 percent stake in an information technology or big data company, the private enterprise has to set up a Party committee. This Party committee decides company policy. The board doesn’t make company policy, the Party committee does, then the board calls a meeting, and then they meet. 

You say the country under Xi Jinping has become more repressive, that the Party is less open, reforms have been abandoned and a move toward some form of democracy is disappearing. Are you optimistic that China might find a better path? And do your comments about Xi Jinping mean that the direction won’t change until he leaves office? 

I do think there’s hope for China, but it will require pressure from the outside. What do I mean? In [Samuel P.] Huntington’s “Third Wave,” where he writes about a country’s democratization, in addition to the four internal factors, the fifth is the influence of the outside world, the pressure it exerts. While I was in Beijing and thinking about how China would transition to democracy, I thought that Huntington’s five factors didn’t apply. They only worked in small countries. But now I think they do apply to China, that outside pressure can help to amplify the voices inside China urging the transition to a constitutional democracy. The outside world needs to play a role. If it doesn’t, that internal pressure will always be deflated. You can’t rise up. It doesn’t have a spark. The inside is the spark, the outside is the air. If you have a spark, the outside has oxygen. For instance, if there’s an event that acts as a fuse, it will start. So I have truly come to realize that the outside world matters. 

Not that we [depend on your support], but we need European countries and the U.S. to clearly articulate that it will try harder, that it will put pressure on China. This will help constitutional democracy in China, and it will help world peace. It will be good for everybody. I truly hope that everyone will do it. First of all, pressure from the outside world will help things develop internally and will help weaken his political capacity. Under certain circumstances, it could push China towards constitutional democracy sooner. It’s not that there’s no hope, I believe there still is hope. 

I was tricked from my childhood, for several decades. If I hadn’t studied at the Central Party School, if I hadn’t read so many books, I wouldn’t have my own ideas either. 

Another point is tearing down the Great Firewall. Once that is done, people will be able to share information. Think about it, there are so many voices in the outside world. [Xi] has divided China and the outside world into two. Why did he clamp down so hard on [Chinese tennis player] Peng Shuai? Because he was about to host the Winter Olympics. For Xi Jinping, the Olympics were about face, and also about his authority. If, say, all those foreigners boycotted the Olympics, and foreign leaders boycotted them, that would be a huge embarrassment for him. So he had to do everything he could to shut down Peng Shuai. That’s what he was afraid of. Then it doesn’t matter what the debate about it is like outside, I’ll dispatch my “internet army” to confuse you and stir up the mud in the water. I know I can’t stop you from talking, but as long as your voice can’t pass through the wall, you won’t touch me, and I’ll still dominate. 

The Chinese people aren’t stupid. The Chinese people are smart. And they’re also hard-working, but they only get one [source of] information. So when you tear down the Great Firewall and let everyone know the truth, you let them get information from different types of sources. You let them gather a wealth of information, only then can one’s thinking and field of vision open up; only then can one [really] think through problems. Otherwise you are locked in by a unitary [source of] information, and you will be swayed by that one voice. 

I’m the same. I was tricked from my childhood, for several decades. If I hadn’t studied at the Central Party School, if I hadn’t read so many books, I wouldn’t have my own ideas either. 

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