Chinese regime `evil like Hitler' | Northland News | Local News in Northland

The Chinese Communist Party has been a bogeyman for western democracies since the late Mao Tse-tung led it to power in 1949.

The 1306 million people in the world's most populous nation have not been looking quite so fiercely red since the Soviet Union was dismantled and Helen Clark started teeing us up for a free trade deal.

But Chinese people living in Auckland came to Whangarei yesterday with the news that China's communist rulers were still as savage as they where when a reputed 30 million people perished in Mao's Great Leap Forward.

About a dozen Chinese people distributed pamphlets yesterday in Cameron St, where they held a banner saying they were from the New Zealand branch of the Global Withdrawal from the Chinese Communist Party Service Centre.

They claimed almost seven million people had withdrawn from the Chinese Communist Party over the past year and the desertion was continuing with about 30,000 party members quitting daily.

The demonstrators practice Falun Gong, an exercise and philosophical system resembling tai chi. It is apparently banned in China and Whangarei shoppers learned yesterday that communist authorities there had tortured Falun Gong followers, using electric shocks and other brutal methods.

But what about all the butter, lamb, beef and fruit we have earmarked for the free trade deal?

Global Withdrawal officials John Yu and Todd Yu - unrelated despite their similar surnames - said they wanted New Zealanders to understand the nature of the regime running China. It was "evil like Hitler" and the Yus urged Kiwis to consider who they would be trading with.

"They don't want this (trade) for the people. All they want is the power," Todd Yu said earnestly.

John Yu said he came to New Zealand from China over nine years ago, starting here as a student and now working in a factory making stainless steel bench tops.

He handed out pamphlets saying withdrawals from Communist Party brain-washing were a refusal to accept lies, violence and state terrorism.

The demonstrators also distributed copies of Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party, a book calling for party "poison" to be purged from the Chinese spirit.

Some Kiwi passersby stopped to chat with the demonstrators, but many refused pamphlets which were offered to them and displayed little interest in China's red rulers.