Four—
The Inner Logic of Cultural Revolution
Chapter 3 followed two parallel developments: on the one hand, the gradual institutionalization of a structure of socialist authority, a structure derived from the organizational principles of the Leninist Party and designed to compensate for the social disintegration and weakness that had afflicted China for much of the previous century and thus more rigid and impermeable than any previous structures since perhaps the Qin dynasty. The institutionalization of a socialist authority structure in turn led to a rift between public and private sectors, the former dominated by a rhetoric of ideological generalities, the latter consisting of isolated subsectors linked by rumor and backstage maneuver in pursuit of particularistic interests.
On the other hand, Mao Zedong and a small, quasi-conspiratorial band of relatively low-ranking assistants proceeded to formulate a comprehensive critique of these emergent "frames," initially in the context of the Sino-Soviet polemic, later in response to frustrations in the implementation of the Socialist Education movement, Beijing opera reform, and other such initiatives. In 1965–66 the struggle was joined, as Mao called upon the "revolutionary masses" to arise and publicly criticize (pipan ) the "Party persons in authority taking the capitalist road" whom he held responsible for degeneration of the Leninist Party-state into an aversive structure, a repressive "bourgeois dictatorship." The struggle would continue to rage at varying levels of intensity for the next decade, its political implications ramifying well beyond that.
"There are two aspects of socialist transformation," Mao once observed. "One is the transformation of institutions, and the other is the transformation of people."[1] The Cultural Revolution also consisted of two distinct periods, the first of which was characterized by spontaneous mobilization of (subjectively defined) disprivileged strata, lasting from the summer of 1966 through the fall of 1968; the second of which was characterized by elite attempts to sponsor and channel mass mobilization,
[1] Mao, "Concluding Remarks," pp. 90–100.
which lasted from late 1968 until the downfall of the Shanghai radicals in October 1976. The period of spontaneous mobilization was focused on the "transformation of people," using institutions as the anvil against which the revolutionary new culture should be forged (with the hammer of ideology). Not until the later period would there be any reasonably systematic attempt at the "transformation of institutions." This chapter is focused on the early period, to be referred to simply as the "Cultural Revolution"; Chapters 5, 6, and 7 will analyze the period of guided mobilization and institutional transformation, to be distinguished as the "late" Cultural Revolution.
All three functional requisites of continued revolution underwent major changes in connection with the Cultural Revolution. First, charismatic leadership became personalized and detached itself from the bureaucratic apparatus; it was no longer actualized through organizational socialization within the cellular network, but directly through the mass media. Second, the pre-Liberation residual structure joined with the socialist emergent structure to function as the target of revolutionary breakthrough. Inasmuch as breakthrough was achieved rather quickly, the organizational hierarchy soon disintegrated (with the exception of the Army, which was assigned to aid the forces of revolution). Thereafter, the only source of coherence was the framework of polemical symbolism within which the Cultural Revolution was fought, which endowed meaning to the experience for its participants. The third requisite, mobilization of the masses, was propelled essentially by the symbolic rewards (plus whatever opportunistic material side-payments could be expropriated) of smashing the cultural superstructure. Socialization of the means of production and the failure of the Leap had precluded redistributive reform or hypergrowth as alternative resource bases for mobilization.
Charismatic Leadership
As a consequence of Mao's miscalculations in so heavily investing in the Hundred Flowers and Great Leap Forward, his prestige within the Party leadership sank perceptibly, as cadres turned increasingly to the "first front" operational leadership of Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping for guidance. Mao's leadership initiatives in the domestic policy arena became more episodic, with little sustained follow-through; his statements "tended to be either sweeping and impractical or vague and tentative."[2] Although they always provoked a flurry of response he considered efforts at implementation utterly inadequate. Under these circumstances an adversarial relationship gradually developed between Mao and his orga-
[2] Teiwes, Leadership, Legitimacy and Conflict .
nizational apparatus. At the same time, however, Mao's prestige among the masses was artificially enhanced during the early 1960s via a publicity blitz, promoted most actively by the People's Liberation Army (PLA). Meanwhile, Mao's assumption of a leading role in foreign policy disputes allowed him to flaunt his ideological preeminence as symbol of the nation-state without economic risk. Paradoxically, then, while the prestige of the Party among the masses declined as a consequence of the "three bad years" following the Leap crash, and Mao's personal prestige within the elite sank for the same reason, his public visibility as an ideological oracle heightened. It was in fact here that the "personality cult" was born, apparently designed to compensate for Mao's slippage among the elite with an enlarged mass constituency. In the absence of any recent heroic achievements this post-Leap revival was however a clear case of synthetic charisma, achieved through the monopolization of public communication and the suppression of dissent. Mao was aware of the fragility of his status, as he indicated in conversation with Snow, and thus welcomed the opportunity to test the depth of spontaneous support by "taking the lid off."
The apparent efficacy of the cult even after organizational constraint was relaxed by the withdrawal of Party work teams in August 1966 may in part be attributed to the simplification, exaggeration, and endless repetition of Maoist slogans. This approach to political socialization may have annoyed other Party leaders, but it probably facilitated assimilation by an incompletely literate and rather naive young audience. Traditional symbolic devices were used with telling effect. Mao appeared in art, stories, and poems as a superhuman figure, different from others and separate from the social environment—as in traditional pictorial art, in which rulers are placed higher or shown in larger scale in order to express status differences. Mao's public appearances were arranged to befit a modern "Son of Heaven": few people were permitted to meet with him; he rarely appeared in public, and when he did the occasion was highly ritualized. He rarely spoke, and when he did his utterances were immediately sacralized. At times his speeches were read for him by an agent.[3]
During the Cultural Revolution itself, the cult was taken to extreme lengths, as Mao and his Thought were ascribed the power to effectuate the achievement of normally impossible feats.[4] Symbolized like Louis XIV by the sun, Mao was built into the polemics as a supernatural force of enlightenment, his splendor being heightened by juxtaposition with the forces of revisionism surrounding and imperiling him. The dossiers of potential opponents were rifled for quotations casting any shadow of
[3] Mildred L. E. Wagemann, "The Changing Image of Mao Tse-tung: Leadership Image and Social Structure" (Ph.D. diss., Cornell University, 1974).
[4] See George Urban, ed., The "Miracles" of Chairman Mao (Los Angeles: Nash, 1971).
doubt on his infallibility, which were assumed to betoken vicious opposition to his leadership. There is little doubt that Mao fully approved of the cult at the time, the political payoff to him consisting of his ability to mobilize the whole nation (and to intimidate his opponents) by uttering a few words.
Having in effect suspended the formal leadership forums of the Party-state upon adjournment of the Eleventh Plenum of the Eighth CC in August 1966, Mao turned for assistance to an informal personal retinue consisting of his wife, Jiang Qing; her former patron, Kang Sheng; a former secretary, Chen Boda; and a number of junior sub-recruits, most prominent of whom were Zhang Chunqiao and Yao Wenyuan, two municipal officials with backgrounds in the propaganda-culture sector. These "court favorites" lacked an organizational base aside from Mao himself, and this dearth tended to ensure that their interests coincided with those of their patron—only much later, as Mao approached death, did their interests diverge from his because of their wish to survive. They were relative neophytes politically, a fact that facilitated Mao's use of them for unorthodox projects (such as encouraging the masses to attack Party and state) while at the same time ensuring that those projects would be carried out with minimal sensitivity to bureaucratic interests. Such extracurricular trouble-shooting would greatly inhibit their later attempts at integration into the regular hierarchy.[5]
The prevalence of the cult entailed that Mao's language largely superseded normal public discourse. The polemical vocabulary was derived almost entirely from his published writings (including, for the first time, his poetry), particularly as these were anthologized in the "little red book." This reduction of public language to a set of dogmatic clichés apparently transpired under the illusion that actions performed in Maoist language would necessarily conform to Maoist norms, to judge from the outrage expressed against those who "waved the red flag to oppose the red flag." Mao was of course at liberty to add to his public corpus at will, and he did so in the form of a series of "latest instructions." These were immediately relayed to the public through the official media, supplemented by a decentralized network of Red Guard tabloids, whose circulation occasionally surpassed that of official media. Inasmuch as the Party-state apparatus was paralyzed by mass criticism, formal and informal media substituted for the apparatus in coordinating the mass movement, though the decentralized and uncontrollable character of the informal network and the inherent ambiguity of abstract polemics rendered the substitution inadequate.
[5] See Lowell Dittmer, "Bases of Power in Chinese Politics: A Theory and an Analysis of the Fall of the 'Gang of Four,'" World Politics 31, no. 1 (October 1978): 26–61.
Structure
By the end of the 1950s the residual structure had become a shadow of its former reality, to be evoked only by the selection of representative criticism targets and other mnemonic devices. What resulted was a period of structural ambiguity, in which a residual structure of dwindling objective significance coexisted with an emergent structure of socialist institutions, and grievances against the latter were systematically redirected against the former. As the residual structure gradually lost plausibility, however, a ritualization of mass criticism occurred. During the Hundred Flowers, a fleeting experiment with spontaneity permitted criticism for the first time to be directed against the emergent structure, provoking a shocked elite backlash. With the Cultural Revolution Mao once again unleashed mass criticism against the emergent structure (more specifically against deviant cadres within it, but these cadres were indicated so vaguely that criticism tended to be indiscriminate), and this time he successfully resisted elite attempts to suppress the movement in statu nascendi . By repudiating elite attempts to defend themselves against criticism from their subordinates (and enforcing this interdict with the PLA), the structure of socialist authority was canceled as an active political force—soon it would disintegrate under critical fire as even a passive target. This development left the structure of polemical symbolism to function as the sole source of meaning in the melee.
The polemical symbolism formed its own structure, which metaphorically reproduced the experience of "two worlds" commonly fostered by the institutional segmentation of reality described in chapter 3. In four different dimensions, a set of "binary oppositions"[6] emerged: (1) light/darkness, (2) revealed/concealed, (3) pure/defiled, and (4) active/passive.
1. The metaphor of light was pervasive, symbolized by the color red. The orthodox Communist "red/white" color symbolism (as in "white terror," "Red Army") was changed into "red/black" to accord with the light metaphor. Red denoted ideological orthodoxy: "red hearts" (hong xin ) stood for militance and loyalty; a "red lantern" (hong deng ) was a source of doctrinal illumination; "red flowers" (hong hua ) referred to the Red Guards and other objects of praise.[7] Some young rebels even demanded that the "go" signals in traffic lights be changed from green to red! The following message illustrates the frequency of this color's appearance:
[6] See Claude Levi-Strauss, Structural Anthropology (New York: Basic Books, 1963), chapters 2, 10, 11; also The Savage Mind (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966), p. 80.
[7] H. C. Chuang, The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution: A Terminological Study (Berkeley: University of California, Center for Chinese Studies, August 1967). I rely heavily on Chuang in this section.
On that day, countless red flags waved in the breeze at Tiananmen Square. Tens of thousands of Red Guards wearing red armbands and carrying red-colored Quotations of Chairman Mao Zedong sang with gusto, "Sailing the Seas Depends on the Helmsman." The whole square became a surging ocean of red.[8]
So many people wished to show their love for the Chairman by painting their walls red that there was a shortage of red paint. Jiang Qing finally had to prohibit this "red sea" (hong haiyang ).
Contrary to red was black—which in traditional Chinese color symbolism has clandestine and sinister connotations, whereas red connotes good luck and prosperity. Thus "bourgeois authorities" were said to use "black language" (hei hua ), to write "black books" (hei shu ), post a "black flag" (hei qi ) and were characterized as a "black gang" (hei bang ), "black line" (hei xian ), or "black inn" (hei dian ).[9] Anthony Grey, a British journalist held prisoner several months by Red Guards, was struck forcibly by the pervasiveness of this color symbolism upon returning to his redecorated apartment:
Black paint ran down every wall. Every square foot had been daubed with slogans in Chinese and English. . . . Even the sheets of my bed had been daubed with Chinese characters saying "da dao Gelai!"—"Down with Grey!" . . . The bathroom mirror was covered with slogans and there was one other refinement. The bristles of my toothbrush had been carefully painted black with slogan paint . . . The inside of the bath had been painted black too, putting it out of action.[10]
The primary symbol of light was the "red sun" (hong taiyang ), identified with Chairman Mao or his Thought. In ritual adherence to the principles of Chinese geomancy (fengshui ), the exhibition halls of the life of Mao that were constructed throughout the country were invariably built to face east, the source of light, just as the emperors' palaces had earlier been built to face south, the source of warmth.[11] Like the sun, Mao's Thought radiated life: "Sun, rain, and dew nourish the pine trees, Mao Zedong's Thought nourishes [buyu ] heroes." Thus it was deemed advisable to incorporate it into the body: "Mao Zedong's Thought is the red, red sun in our hearts."[12]
[8] RR , September 1, 1966, as cited in Chuang, Cultural Revolution .
[9] RR , July 26, p. 4; Guangming Ribao (hereinafter GM ), July 17, 1966, p. 2; HQ , no. 9 (1966): 35; all as cited in Chuang, ibid.
[10] Anthony Grey, Hostage in Peking (London: Michael Joseph, 1970), pp. 104–5.
[11] Adrian Hsia, Die Chinesische Kulturrevolution (Neuwied: Hermann Luchterhand, 1971), p. 265.
[12] RR editorial, March 18, 1967, translated in Joint Publications Research Service (hereinafter JPRS ), no. 40525 (April 5, 1967). JPRS translations are sometimes questionable; wherever possible I have checked them against the originals.
A secondary symbol of light was fire: "They try everything from struggle to encirclement for attack in their vain attempt to extinguish the flames of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, which are bound to become a prairie fire." "They spread the sparks of revolutionary rebelling." "They light the flames of criticism."[13] Again, only the wicked are assumed to be flammable; fire has an annealing effect on the righteous, "steeling . . . and and maturing them in the furnaces of the great Cultural Revolutionary . . . crucible." Yao Wenyuan was said to have lit the flames of the Cultural Revolution in his November 1965 broadside against Wu Han, and other authorities were warned that they must "not only mobilize the masses and start a fire to burn ourselves, but also take the initiative to appear and carry out self-revolution." Otherwise, "One day, the blazing flames of revolution will burn your monster and devil group all to death." By contrast with the metaphor of fire, the enemy threatens to become a "free-flowing inundation."[14]
The locus of the enemies with reference to the light/dark dimension is, of course, in outer darkness. Yet the most sinister danger is posed by those enemies who seek to emigrate from the world of darkness to the world of light under false pretenses: "The enemy in daylight look like men, in darkness devils. To your face, they speak human language, behind your back the language of devils. They are wolves clad in skins of sheep, man-eating smiling tigers. . . . The enemies without guns are more hidden, cunning, sinister and vicious than the enemies with guns."[15]
2. The second dimension is that of revealed/concealed, public/private. The enemies are "tigers" who must be "lured from their lair"; "snakes" who "crawl underground," hide in "holes," from whence they must be "dragged out"; they "shield" themselves with "masks," or even "fig leaves," which must be "ripped off"; they are "bullets" with "sugar coats," "wolves clad in skins of sheep," and so on.[16] "We have torn aside
[13] Jinggangshan editorial, no. 5 (December 26, 1966), p. 3; "The Struggle against the Bourgeois Reactionary Line," Hongqi (Beijing Aeronautical Institute), no. 3 (December 26, 1966): 3–4; Kuai Dafu, "Destroy the Liu-Deng Bourgeois Reactionary Line and Strive for New Victories," Hongweibing [Red guard], no. 15 (December 30, 1966): 2, 4, 17–22. All are Red Guard publications.
[14] Wu Bin, "Struggle Firmly against Class Enemies," Zhongguo Qingnian [China youth], no. 13 (July 1, 1966), trans. in JPRS , no. 39235 (December 22, 1966), pp. 46–48; Commentator, "Cast Away Three Wrong Ways of Thinking," Tiyu Zhanbao [Physical education battle news], Shanghai, in JPRS , no. 41450, pp. 115–16; "The Flame That Cannot Be Put Out," Dongfanghong Bao [East is red news], May 9, 1967, in JPRS , no. 42503 (September 7, 1967), pp. 129–35; "Resolutely Smash the Counterattacks of the Bourgeois Reactionary Line," Hongweibing Bao , no. 15 (December 15, 1966), pp. 3, 84 (cited in that sequence).
[15] JFJB editorial, August 23, 1966.
[16] At times, a castration threat seemed implicit in the threat to expose; see "Regard Chairman Mao's Works Throughout the PLA," JFJB editorial, as translated in SCMP , no. 3712 (June 6, 1966), p. 5.
your filthy curtain of counterrevolution and caught you red-handed. We shall strip you of your disguises and expose you in all your ugliness."[17] The archetypal symbol for this imagery is that of an underworld, or Hades, which the Red Guards were also determined to assault: "Overthrow the king of Hell and free all the little devils!"
3. Filth, feces in particular, became one of the more popular metaphors for the enemy. He was "wallowing in the mire," a "pile of dogshit" who must be "criticized until he stinks." "Where the broom does not sweep, the dirt does not vanish of itself." The Cultural Revolution was a cleansing agent: whereas water assumes a counterrevolutionary aspect in relation to fire, here it becomes a revolutionary purgative. "The turbulent stream of the revolutionary mass movement has been washing away the filth left by the old society." "The roaring torrent of the great democratic movement under the command of the Thought of Mao Zedong is flowing on with surging waves under the bright sun, washing the whole of the old world." "The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, like a mighty red torrent, is sweeping away the old."[18] Again, the test of the true revolutionary is his willingness to submit to this overwhelming experience, under the assumption that authentic revolutionary ardor is waterproof: "If you are a genuine proletarian revolutionary . . . you will surely hail and be inspired by the rise of the hundreds of millions of people, join the masses in making revolution and throw yourselves into the torrent for criticism of the bourgeois reactionary line."[19] The notion of a "test by water" appears again in a Liberation Army Daily editorial: "Only by following Chairman Mao's instructions and putting 'daring' and 'doing' above everything else, and courageously plunging into the practice of war—tempering ourselves in the teeth of storms and learning to swim by swimming—can we acquaint ourselves with the laws of war and master them."[20]
4. In deliberate defiance of the traditional Chinese attachment to peace and harmony, the rhetoric of the Cultural Revolution stressed violent action. The rebel forces called themselves (or were called by others) "shock troops" (chuangjiang ), and "small generals" (xiaojiang ), chris-
[17] "Tear Aside the Bourgeois Mask of 'Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity,'" RR editorial, June 4, 1966, in SCMP , no. 3714 (June 8, 1966), p. 3.
[18] Hongweibing Bao , no. 15, p. 3; Wang Li et al., "Dictatorship of the Proletariat and the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution," HQ , no. 15 (December 13, 1966); "A Proposal by 57 Revolutionary Organizations," New China News Agency (NCNA), Beijing, January 29, 1967, in JPRS , no. 41202 (May 29, 1967), pp. 23–27; "Hold Fast to the Main Orientation in the Struggle," HQ , no. 12 (September 17, 1966), in JPRS , no. 29235 (December 22, 1966), pp. 41–44.
[19] "Lord She's Love of Dragons," RR editorial, December 21, 1966, in JPRS , no. 40525.
[20] "Study Problems of Strategy in China's Revolutionary War," JFJB editorial, trans. in PR , January 13, 1967, p. 18. The interest in braving the waves is perhaps also a tribute to Mao's well-known swimming skills.
tened their tabloids "battle news" (zhanbao ), and referred to their factions in military terms such as "brigade," "regiment," or "garrison headquarters." They described their exploits with cataclysmic metaphors that suggested a desire to feel part of a vast, impersonal, destructive force: "with the fury of a hurricane," "with the force to topple mountains and upturn seas," "with the power of thunder and lightning from the heavens, this has enveloped all China and the world."[21] The enemies, on the other hand, were accused of passive, pacifist tendencies: they tried to "extinguish class struggle," sought rapprochement with American imperialism and Soviet revisionism (Mei di Su xiu ), espoused "inner-Party peace," a "parliamentary road" to socialism that circumvents violent revolution, and so forth. In public struggle meetings against prominent political figures, these respective roles would be acted out: the target would be forced into an abject, dependent position, forbidden to make extended remarks or to counterquestion, while the surrounding rebel interrogators would assume a questing, aggressive stance.[22]
In denouncing these enemies, rebel polemicists advocated consequential ruthlessness, renouncing what they conceived to be the characteristic Chinese tendency to develop pity for an enemy midway in the attack and then spare him, with the result that he (or she) would revive and counterattack. The contrast between the old and new attitudes toward violence may be illustrated by comparing the Cultural Revolution shibboleths "Beat the dog even when it has fallen into the water" (do luo shui gou ) and "Once you start beating it, beat it to death" (Lu Xun), and "With power to spare we must pursue the tottering foe" (Mao Zedong)[23] —with Mencius' dictum that if a child fell into a well it was "human nature" to pull it out, even if it happened to be the child of one's worst enemy.[24] Although the vehemence of such expressions was perhaps considered necessary to overcome deeply rooted cultural inhibitions against criticism of authority, once these psychic barriers were breached the distinction between symbolic and physical violence proved impossible to maintain, and the struggle soon began to escalate to truly lethal proportions.[25]
To wit, the dichotomous imagery of the Cultural Revolution portrays
[21] "A Proposal by 57 Revolutionary Organizations," January 29, 1967; "Behind-the-Scenes Story of the Yielding of Power in the Seven Ministries of Machine Building," Fei Ming Di [Flying whistling arrowhead], February 17, 1967, in JPRS , no. 41779 (July 11, 1967), pp. 101–5; RR editorial, June 8, 1966, in Current Background , no. 392 (October 29, 1969).
[22] Cf. "Three Trials of Pickpocket Wang Guangmei," pp. 2–4.
[23] Cited in Chuang, The Little Red Book and Current Chinese Language (Berkeley: University of California, Center for Chinese Studies, 1968), p. 28.
[24] James Legge, trans., The Chinese Classics, II: The Works of Mencius , reprint of 1895 ed. (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1960), pp. 201–2.
[25] Cf. John Gittings, "Inside China," Ramparts 10, no. 2 (August 1971): 10–20; see also William Hinton, "Hundred Day War," Monthly Review , 24 (July–August 1972).
two worlds: the apparent world is filled with light, purity, and publicity; but this world is suspected of being unreal. Behind "masks" or hidden in "holes," there is a real world of darkness and squalor. This underworld is inhabited by all manner of savage beasts: there are "man-eating" tigers, "noxious vermin," "voracious wolves," "poisonous snakes," and others. As if these metaphors were inadequate to describe the dangers lurking below, the demonology of popular Buddhism is invoked: there are "bull-ghosts and snake-spirits" (niugui sheshen , usually freely translated as "freaks and monsters"), and "demons" who masquerade in "painted skin," speak "ghost language," and practice "black magic."[26]
What divides these two worlds is a forbidding barrier, variously referred to as a "line of demarcation," "shackles," a "fortress," or (most commonly) "frame" (kuangkuang ). This barrier is heavily fortified, and must remain so. Between good and evil one must "draw a clear line of demarcation" (huaqing jiexian ), and those who "deliberately confuse the line of demarcation between . . . revolutionaries and counterrevolutionaries" are denounced as "two-faced and three-sworded"—that is to say, treacherous.[27] As previously noted, the nuclear family was sometimes rent by this ideological division, which severed husband from wife, parents from children. Yet, paradoxically, it is the wish of the young rebels to shatter this barrier, an act they describe with verbs of violent penetration such as "smash," "crush," "bombard the fortress," and "break the frames." This penetration is said to require courage and to occasion high excitement: "With the tremendous and impetuous force of a raging storm [the rebels] have smashed the shackles imposed on their minds by the exploiting classes for so long."[28]
The motives for penetration appear mixed. On the one hand, the rebels expressed the desire to "destroy all evil winds," "sweep all demons and freaks away," and otherwise annihilate the enemy. They also wished, however, to emancipate the repressed. An article entitled "Don't Be Afraid of Washing Dirty Linen in Public" asserted, for instance, that "fear to discuss our shortcomings and mistakes actually is fear to touch our own souls and dig up the dirty things in our minds."[29] It was felt necessary not only to "dig up dirty things," but thoroughly to assimilate them: "The revolutionary young people must tumble millions of times in the mud of the masses."[30] Emancipation and assimilation of the re-
[26] Cited in Chuang, Little Red Book , p. 18.
[27] HQ editorial, no. 4 (March 1, 1967), in JPRS , no. 41450, pp. 46–53.
[28] "Sweep Away All Freaks and Monsters," RR editorial, June 1, 1966, in SCMP , no. 3712 (June 6, 1966), p. 2.
For an intimate account of how the concept of a "line of demarcation" might apply within the nuclear family, see Liang and Shapiro, Son of the Revolution , pp. 40–80.
[29] GM , March 23, 1967, in JPRS , no. 41450, pp. 53–54.
[30] "Learn to Swim While Swimming," RR editorial, August 17, 1966.
pressed was desirable because although this hidden world was a source of danger and pollution, it also harbored an uncanny power, and by unleashing this power the rebels could exploit it to confound their opponents and cleanse the world. The effect was like that of a dam bursting:
For the sake of our country never changing color, for the sake of the complete liberation of the proletariat, you [viz., Mao] personally lighted the flames of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. . . . The billows of the historically unprecedented revolution surge and roll in an irresistible force which sweeps over the old world and which will completely bury imperialism and modern revisionism. The hearts of the revolutionary peoples boil with anger and their spirits are soaring.[31]
To smash the frames was to obliterate the distinction between revealed and concealed and to "drag out" those lurking in darkness into the light. The result was that "ghosts" and "men" intermingled freely without distinguishing earmarks, a situation that was termed "chaos" (luan ). During the movement's initial stages (i.e., up to the "February adverse current," in 1967), chaos was deliberately fostered, in an apparent attempt to shatter the conventional barriers of shame that supported the emergent socialist authority structure. As Mao told the young rebels: "Do not be afraid to make trouble. The more trouble you make and the longer you make it the better. Confusion and trouble are always noteworthy. It can clear things up . . . wherever there are abscesses or infections we must always blow them up."[32] And the rebels responded with enthusiasm: "We want to wield the massive cudgel, express our spirit, invoke our magic influence and turn the old world upside down, smash things into chaos, into smithereens, the more chaos the better!"[33]
Frames are to be smashed, then—but why? Consider once again the structure of polemical symbolism: above is the world of appearance, full of light, purity, public spirit and virtuous action; underground, stealthily concealed, a world of darkness, selfishness, defilement, passive dependency. Dividing the two worlds is a formidable barrier, which seems to arouse intense ambivalence. It is graphically depicted in figure 1.
This symbolic construct corresponds to three dimensions of experience in Chinese social life: moral, psycho-cultural, and stratificational. The moral implications are perhaps most readily apparent: the upper row represents virtue and the lower row represents evil. The barrier dividing
[31] RR , June 7, 1966, cited in Chuang, Cultural Revolution .
[32] "Chairman Mao's Important Instructions" (n.d.), trans. in JPRS , no. 49826, p. 23. For a penetrating psychoanalytic perspective on "chaos" see Richard Solomon, "Mao's Effort to Reintegrate the Chinese Polity: Problems of Authority and Conflict in the Chinese Social Process," in A. Doak Barnett, ed., Chinese Communist Politics in Action , pp. 271–365.
[33] Red Guards of Qinghua Middle School (Beijing), "Long Live the Revolutionary Rebel Spirit of the Proletariat" (June 24, 1966), quoted in HQ , no. 11 (August 21, 1966), p. 27.
APPEARANCE | LIGHT | PUBLICITY | PURITY | ACTIVITY |
REALITY | DARKNESS | CONCEALMENT | DEFILEMENT | PASSIVITY |
Figure 1
Polemical Symbol Structure
the two rows represents moral inhibitions against deviation. China is what anthropologists call a "shame" culture, in which virtue is promoted by assuring group acceptance of a set of norms and by exposing behavior to maximum publicity, so that any deviant is immediately confronted by unanimous censure, just as any act of heroism is greeted by widespread applause.[34] Those human impulses that conflict with official norms must either be repressed or allowed some form of surreptitious or symbolically disguised expression. In such a system, any relaxation of normative controls (as in this case the paralysis of the Party) would allow two distinct "worlds" to become clearly visible where only one had been apparent before, making the intervening barrier subject to challenge. Liberalization would (under these circumstances) threaten moral havoc by subverting conventional controls on immorality, at the same time revealing moral nuances and unwonted pluralism. From the moral point of view the correct response would thus seem to be to reinforce the barrier between the two worlds, decry any attempt to obscure or extenuate this barrier as hypocrisy or subversion, and to drive invaders from the subterranean world back out of sight.
The psycho-cultural dimension of this symbolic construct seems to correspond roughly to the defense mechanism of repression, in which the world of light represents the realm of freedom and rationality and the world of darkness the unconscious realm of repressed and irrational impulses. According to classic psychoanalytic theory, aggressive and sexual impulses are hedged by taboos in most civilized societies and therefore likely to play a prominent role in the unconscious. There is ample evidence that these impulses have been even more stringently regulated in China. In the course of the mass criticism movement, normally illicit sexual impulses were both symbolically and directly expressed.[35] In-group aggression, normally subject to painstaking regi-
[34] See Weston LaBarre, "Some Observations on Character Structure in the Orient. II. The Chinese, Part 1," Psychiatry 9 , no. 3 (August 1946): 215–39.
[35] According to Zhou Enlai, sexual promiscuity during the Cultural Revolution accounted for a measurable increase in China's population growth rate. Edgar Snow, The Long Revolution (New York: Vintage Books, 1973), p. 45. Vivid eyewitness accounts of such activity may be found in Ken Ling, The Revenge of Heaven: Journal of a Young Chinese (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1972), pp. 14, 31, 30, 119, 121, 146, 250, 332–33; also Liang and Shapiro, Son of the Revolution , pp. 126–27. Sexual imagery is also apparent in thelanguage of the polemics: there is a confrontation envisaged between two opposing (and yet strangely attracted) forces, separated by a taboo barrier, the penetration of which is destructive and yet necessary, dangerous and yet thrilling. This seems to be defloration symbolism, as John Weakland has also noted in a quite different (but analogous) context. See his "Chinese Film Images of Invasion and Resistance," CQ , no. 47 (July-September 1971): 438–71.
mentation,[36] was unleashed against both Party-government authorities and rival rebel factions.
Prominent though such impulses were, it would be unduly simplistic to "reduce" the elating sensation of freedom described by so many participants solely to the liberation of repressed sexual and aggressive instincts. Within the broad latitude of freedom allowed by the collapse of conventional authority, these young rebels had unprecedented opportunities to exercise initiative, to roam the world, to explore new ideas and pursue their logical implications without official censure, to realize previously untapped potentialities for leadership and self-expression.[37] From a psycho-cultural perspective, then, the Cultural Revolution implied an opportunity to smash taboo barriers and emancipate culturally and psychically repressed vital impulses of all kinds—an opportunity that many Chinese young people found exciting.
The stratificational dimension of the polemical symbolism refers to what Alan Liu calls a "political culture of dualism": the Chinese màsses had been taught to cultivate "boundless love" and self-sacrifice for the "people" and "boundless hate" for "enemies of the people."[38] From this
[36] A Japanese reporter made these painstaking observations of a Beijing rally in support of North Vietnam in 1965: The buildings in Beijing along Changan Street are equipped with red flags to be hung and lights to be turned on within minutes after they receive an order. Each of the paving stones in the Tiananmen Plaza is numbered, so that students can be given standing orders to form great ideographs and geometrical patterns (e.g., "Fifty students from X Commune stand from A-13 to A-15.") The march routes and dispersion points are all designated in advance (e.g., "When the demonstration is over, the W Commune shall turn at the corner of X, march down Y Street and disperse when they reach the buses waiting at point Z.") When certain paving stones are removed and a blue canvas tent is erected, certain parts of the road become public lavatories that can accommodate about thirty people within ten minutes (the lavatories are directly connected with the sewage system). Since the masses become thirsty from shouting slogans and singing songs, first-aid teams are dispersed throughout the crowd, and stands serving hot water are set up, with a red-colored antiseptic solution used to disinfect the cups. Yomiuri , February 25, 1965, trans. in Daily Summary of the Japanese Press (Tokyo: U.S. Embassy), March 3, 1965, p. 16.
[37] See Gordon Bennett and Ronald Montaperto, Red Guard : The Political Biography of Dai Hsiao-ai (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Co., 1971); as well as Ling, Revenge ; and Liang and Shapiro, Son of the Revolution . For a balanced secondary analysis, see Andrew J. Watson, "A Revolution to Touch Men's Souls: The Family, Interpersonal Relations and Daily Life," in Stuart Schram, ed., Authority , Participation and Cultural Change in China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), pp. 291–331.
[38] Alan P. L. Liu, Political Culture and Group Conflict in Communist China (Santa Barbara, Calif.: Clio Press, 1976), pp. 24–31.
perspective the frames should be smashed and the enemies eradicated, or at least severely punished. The identity of these enemies however remained ambiguous, as residual and emergent criteria for the classification of classes competed with one another in the public arena.[39] If residual criteria were applied, the "spearhead" would be turned downward, targeting representatives of the former propertied classes; if emergent criteria were selected, representatives of the bureaucratic New Class could be targeted. The implication that the class enemy should be destroyed (or at least transformed), in the context of the ambiguous semantics of this term, meant that any heightening of the rhetoric resulted only in an intensification of internecine conflict.
Altogether, then, the polemical symbolism of the Cultural Revolution had at least three dimensions, the third of which contained an unacknowledged contradiction between residual and emergent criteria for defining its referents. It is graphically depicted in figure 2.
Moral | Psycho-Cultural | Stratificatonal | |
World of Light | VIRTUE | EMANCIPATION | "THE PEOPLE" |
World of Darkness | EVIL | REPRESSION | "THE ENEMY" |
Figure 2
Semantic Dimensions of the Polemical Symbolism
Each of these dimensions had different action implications, although paradoxically the "condensation" of divergent meanings in the same polemical symbolism seemed to magnify rather than mitigate its mobilizational efficacy. Both psycho-cultural and stratificational dimensions legitimated smashing the frames of the established authority structure, in the first case for the purpose of emancipation, in the second for repression. Morality, on the other hand, reinforced this barrier, intensifying the excitement attached to its smashing when the authorization of the other two dimensions sufficed to motivate this taboo violation. The empirical referents of each dimension proved to be sufficiently vague to permit tactical flexibility on the part of faction leaders.
Mass Mobilization
Whereas the Cultural Revolution seemed from the perspective of those whom it politicized to represent a merging of the ideal and the real, rhetoric and action, in a revolutionary epiphany, this synthesis was in fact incomplete. It is true that rhetoric played a more integral role in the
[39] See Kraus, Class Conflict , pp. 143–65 et passim .
Cultural Revolution than in previous movements, due to the collapse of the Party-state apparatus that normally orientates mass participation, and to paucity of extrinsic incentives for involvement (such as, say, a plot of land). Nevertheless, not everyone fully entered into the symbol structure, and those who did sometimes smuggled in residual commitments to ulterior objectives—such as political self-aggrandizement, hunger for adventure, or private account-reckoning—to which the "open-textured" character of the symbolism offered ample latitude. Thus the split between particularistic interests and ideological generalities noted above reemerged in chaotic contestation in the public arena—the former in the form of various group and sectoral interests, the latter in the form of certain structurally congruent general tendencies. The interplay between particular interests and structurally congruent tendencies is discernible in the vicissitudes of the mass media.
Group Interests
First of all, the national elites who led the movement, consisting of Mao Zedong and his retinue, were motivated by two objectives, one positive and one negative. The positive objective, which Mao in 1967 gave top priority, was to "transform . . . the cultural superstructure," to "construct a revolutionary world view and eliminate the roots of revisionism."[40] Mao had expressed awareness that such a transformation could not be forced.[41] This awareness underlay his decision in the spring of 1966, in the face of widespread elite misgivings, to remove organizational constraints on the movement, permitting it to develop its own momentum. The masses would be brought to embrace the "correct" by becoming engaged in struggle against the "wrong." "What is correct invariably develops in the course of struggle with what is wrong," as Mao declared in 1957. "The true, the good and the beautiful always exist in comparison with the false, the evil and the ugly, and grow in struggle with the latter."[42] By blaming the "Party persons in authority taking the capitalist road" for previous failure to achieve Maoist norms, the masses would be encouraged to believe that those norms were after all realistic desiderata that could now be achieved with more strenuous efforts. The essence of "proletarian revolutionary" norms in this "two-line struggle" (as argued in the previous chapter) was intrepid selflessness—ideally, martyrdom. And the general criticism themes emanating from the "top" reflexively
[40] Mao Zedong, "Zai zui gao guowuhuiyi shang de jieshu hua" [Concluding remarks at the Supreme State Conference] (March 1, 1957), in Wansui (1969), pp. 90–100.
[41] Ibid.
[42] Mao, "On the Correct Handling of Contradictions among the People," in SW , vol. 5: 409.
supported these norms, despite specific shifts of polemical emphasis to counter evanescent deviant tendencies that arose in the course of the movement—for example, criticism of "economism," coinciding with a wave of strikes and management buy-offs (higher wages, paid travel to Beijing) in January–February 1967; criticism of a "mountaintop mentality" or "theory of mass spontaneity," coinciding with a Maoist drive against rebel inter-factional conflict in the late summer and fall of 1967; criticism of Liu Shaoqi's Party-building policies, coinciding with the effort to set up Party committees in the fall of 1968.
The negative objective, which Mao in 1967 relegated to subsidiary importance but which in fact tended to assume primacy, was power-political: to purge all "Party persons in authority taking the capitalist road" from their Party and government positions. Mao's evident motive was to eliminate opponents; the motive of his radical retinue, to wash out rivals and improve their own political positions. Throughout the early 1960s Mao's rhetoric contained pointed warnings to those he held accountable for the frustration of his initiatives, whom he would "cap" with ideological "labels" ranging from "bureaucratism" to "revisionism." But the persons being warned were invariably anonymous; thus, it was left unclear to outside observers (and perhaps even to those involved) just who Mao's enemies were. It became clear only in the course of the movement, when through various subtle signals Mao indicated his preferences, whereupon the wheat would be gleaned and the chaff left to the revolutionary masses. At least that was what happened at the highest level; at lower levels the very number of cadres purged implied that purge victims were often decided by the balance of power among rebel factions and local military elites, without clear guidelines from the center.
The relationship between the first and second elite objectives was basically one of functional complementarity. As targets of mass criticism, purged opponents would contribute to the political edification of the masses. The principal purge targets were, of course, Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping, who came to personify the "bourgeois reactionary line." When the first and second objectives conflicted, the second seemed to take priority. For example, it might have been useful for the purpose of providing an expiatory finale to otherwise unmanageable factional strife to accept the self-criticisms of the principal targets, making way for their reintegration into the moral community along the lines of "criticism and self-criticism" as practiced in the small-group context. This outcome, incompatible as it was with the power-political objectives of the movement, was forgone.
To the masses, the Cultural Revolution was an opportunity for catharsis rather than revolutionary self-transformation, a chance to express demands and grievances normally repressed in the People's Republic.
Mao encouraged catharsis under the assumption that if emotions are pent up they acquire explosive destructive potential. Some of the grievances and demands that found expression were generally shared, such as resentment of "frames." Others were specific to a particular group and tended to reflect their backgrounds and interests.
Students, for instance, manifested an idealistic conception of politics, indignation about its coercive aspect, and a demand for the emancipation of disprivileged strata. In contrast to official publications, which exhibited relative concern with the erosion of "proletarian dictatorship" (by functional experts, intellectual liberalism, the market, and so forth), Red Guard media were most preoccupied with issues of political repression. The same concerns were reflected in their choice of the dates of confrontation between students and authorities as anniversaries or as faction names, as in the "May 16 Group" (wu yao liu ), a radical faction named after Mao's inaugural manifesto in 1966. The two factions in the Ministry of Machine Industry called themselves "September 16 (jiu yao liu ) and "September 17" (jiu yao qi ); Jiangsu's "August 27" (ba er qi ) faction commemorated the date (in 1966) of the first march on the provincial Party committee by Nanjing University students; and so on. Their anti-authoritarian themes and eagerness to "seize power" reflected the students' sense of status discrepancy between present subordination and future elitehood, together with frustration over growing obstacles to these aspirations.[43] Red Guard criticisms also displayed greater outrage concerning incidents of apparent irreverence toward Mao Zedong and his Though than did official publications. The emotional cogency of lèse majesté to these young rebels (who in Chinese families were still children) may derive from their incomplete separation of politics from a domestic context: Mao appears as the benign father, Liu Shaoqi et al. as unfilial sons, and the young rebel can deny analogous sentiments even while engaging in revolution. Finally, the policy areas selected for special emphasis by student polemicists (viz., education and cultural affairs generally) reflected their academic backgrounds.
Whereas these themes characterized nearly all student groups, there were also a number of issue areas in which their interests diverged. The two primary bases for cleavage were class origin and academic achievement. Those with "five red" (hong wu lei ) class origins (i.e., children of workers, poor peasants, revolutionary martyrs, cadres, and soldiers) were generally eager to attack "bourgeois intellectual authorities" (i.e.,
[43] Most manpower studies have made note of the tightening professional job market in China. Cf. John Philip Emerson, "Employment in Mainland China," in Robert Dernberger, ed., An Economic Profile of Mainland China: Studies Prepared for the Joint Economic Committee of Congress , vol. 2 (February 1967): 458–59; also Leo Orleans, "Communist China's Education: Politics, Problems, and Prospects," in ibid., p. 515.
teachers and functional experts) but had a vested interest in maintaining the existing class structure that discriminated in their favor politically, and recoiled from any determined assault on the Party or on its successor as a pillar of established authority, the PLA. Students from "five black" (hei wu lei ) backgrounds (children of counterrevolutionaries, bad elements, rich peasants, landlords, and bourgeoisie) and children of the "intermediate" classes (e.g., teachers, doctors, urban middle-class professionals), on the other hand, had previously been excluded from participation in school Youth League and Party activities, and took advantage of their enfranchisement to articulate a radical critique of the status quo that threw the entire seventeen-year history of Communist rule into critical relief.[44]
Academic achievement tended to crosscut the class cleavage, inasmuch as children from unreliable class origins tended to excel scholastically due to their culturally advantaged family backgrounds and their desire to compensate for political vulnerability. Thus students from "bad" class backgrounds did not necessarily become radical activists, particularly if their academic achievements had given them bright career prospects and a stake in the status quo, in which case discretion might dictate a less active role. Nor did students with "good" (i.e., "red") class backgrounds always join in defense of the establishment, particularly if disprivileged (e.g., poor peasant) backgrounds or low scholastic achievement beclouded their futures. Work-study students (who were both underpaid as part-time workers and undereducated as part-time students) and students who had been "transferred down" (xiafang ) for work in the countryside were conspicuously prominent among the radicals.[45]
A third basis for potential cleavage among students (and indeed, among all groups) was regionalism. When Red Guards fanned out across the countryside from the urban centers where the movement originated to "spread the sparks of revolution," they often engaged in more "radical" tactics than they permitted themselves in their home towns, and their condescending attitudes toward "backward" native youth provoked a regional xenophobia that local elites often encouraged for their own self-protection.[46] On the other hand, "returned" Red Guards were often the most zealous of all.
In their late response to mobilization, initial support of the local authorities, and anti-intellectual orientation, Chinese workers seemed to
[44] See Hong Yung Lee, The Politics of the Chinese Cultural Revolution: A Case Study (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978); see also Stanley Rosen, Red Guard Factionalism and the Cultural Revolution in Guangzhou (Canton ) (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1982).
[45] See Lee, Politics .
[46] Ling, Revenge , pp. 70–71.
fit the profile Lipset calls "working-class authoritarianism": leftist on economic issues, but rigid and intolerant on social issues.[47] This posture disposed workers to resist initial Red Guard incursions into their factories. As the "power seizure" movement of January 1967 gathered momentum, workers joined in, grasping their chance to bargain for higher wages ("the students wanted power, but the workers wanted money," as a former Red Guard put it).[48] As in the case of students, however, workers were internally divided by conflicts of interest. With their participation in the movement came a tendency to splinter into factions, usually based on trade or income (a tendency condemned in the press as a "guild mentality"). The most conservative "guilds," composed of senior, "model," and unionized workers, lent active support to Party or PLA forces in their conflict with radical student units. The nonunionized contract, piece, rotation, or apprentice workers received low wages and were subject to layoff on a last-hired, first-fired basis; they understandably tended to adopt more radical postures, demanding major changes in the industrial wage scale and administrative hierarchy.[49] Workers from small handicraft industries seemed on the other hand less inclined to join radical factions than did workers in large state factories. Their reluctance can probably be explained by insecurity and/or a greater financial stake in the enterprise (workers in collective enterprises were paid from retained profits, not on salary).
Peasants did not generally become actively engaged in the movement. As victims of the collapse of the Great Leap and beneficiaries of "revisionist" recovery policies of the early 1960s that gave greater latitude to private plots, domestic industries, and the rural market, the peasants seemed generally opposed to radical social programs.[50] So they opposed returning Red Guards who espoused drastic changes, in a few cases threatening (perhaps under "backstage" instigation) to "encircle the cities from the countryside" and quell the radicals. On the outskirts of some large industrial cities, on the other hand, jacquerie -type uprisings occurred. These may perhaps be attributed to the salience of urban–rural income disparities in the suburbs, and to the rather large concentrations of rusticated urbanites in these locations, many of whom were quite ready to march back into the cities and demand redress.[51]
[47] Seymour Martin Lipset, Political Man (Baltimore, Md.: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981, expanded ed.), pp. 87–127.
[48] Ling, Revenge , p. 243.
[49] Hong Yung Lee, "The Political Mobilization of the Red Guards and Revolutionary Rebels in the Cultural Revolution" (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1973).
[50] See Anita Chan, Richard Madsen, and Jonathan Unger, Chen Village: The Recent History of a Peasant Community in Mao's China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), pp. 96, 170–73.
[51] Liu, Political Culture , pp. 153–56.
Structurally Congruent Tendencies
If the Cultural Revolution is scrutinized "microscopically," as it were, taking into consideration the interplay of factions within a restricted arena over a limited time span, group interests appear predominant.[52] But if it is looked at "macroscopically," certain general tendencies emerge. Such tendencies were as often as not irrational in terms of the goals dictated by the material interests of the participants, and can more efficiently be accounted for in terms of the implications of the polemical symbol structure. Three such trends were particularly prominent: the tendencies toward anarchism , polarization , and an obsession with exposure .
Anarchism: Rebel anarchic propensities resulted from the application of the polemical symbol structure to the emergent Chinese stratification system. The symbol structure implied that any form of domination—whether based on economic, status, or political criteria—was illegitimate, any victim of repression justified in rebelling. Whereas for Mao, revolutionary cadres could still be differentiated from "capitalist-roaders" on the basis of empirical information concerning their performance, for the young rebels, lacking such "inside" information, the two classes were defined in more consistently structural terms, according to which those in authority were almost unexceptionally suspected of having "capitalist" propensities. This failure to differentiate not only led to the disqualification of most officials with any experience in running the country (roughly 60–80 percent of incumbent cadres were purged) but made it impossible to establish any authority whatever. If one rebel faction managed to "seize power" it would promptly be assailed by another faction that had been left out of the coalition, which denounced the former in the same language previously used against the established authorities. A seemingly endless series of power seizures ensued.
Mao took note of this development with considerable dismay: "The Shanghai People's Council office submitted a proposal to the Premier of the State Council in which they asked for the elimination of all chiefs," he noted. "This is extreme anarchy; it is most reactionary. Now they do not wish to refer to anyone as chief of such-and-such; they call them orderlies and attendants. . . . Actually, there always have to be chiefs."[53]
Polarization: Most adult authorities had been "toppled" or at least driven into political passivity within the first year of the movement, whereupon the still zealous rebel bands gravitated into conflict with one another. In most conflict arenas, the "free market" of numerous competing conflict groups lasted only a few months, thereafter giving way to
[52] See n. 44 above.
[53] "Chairman Mao's Speech at His Third Meeting with Zhang Chunqiao and Yao Wenyuan" (February 1967), as trans. in JPRS , no. 49826, pp. 44–45.
tendencies toward attrition of intermediate groups and polarization into "two opposing factional organizations" locked into a conflict spiral.[54] For example, in Beijing a conflict between the Geology Institute and the Aeronautics Institute soon subsumed all other local Red Guard organizations and escalated to sustained warfare between what became known as the Earth and Heaven factions; in Guangdong, the struggle became polarized between the East Wind and the Red Flag factions; in Guangxi, between "April 22nd" and "Alliance Command"; in Yunnan, between "August 23rd" and "Yunnan Alliance"; and in Fujian, between the "Revolutionary Rebels" and "August 29th."[55] Such polarization was not consonant with the interests of the groups described above, for pursuit of group interests would logically lead to competition among more than two factions. Polarization also militated against the objectives common to all factions, making it impossible to "unite 95 percent of the people and cadres against 5 percent of the enemy"; in most arenas the two sides were so evenly matched that neither side could destroy the other, with the result that confrontation devolved into extended siege warfare broken by occasional sorties. Mao could not understand this tendency toward polarization, discerning no substantive issues at stake between the two factions: "There is no fundamental clash of interests within the working class," he told representatives of two contending factions. "Why should they be split into two big irreconcilable organizations? I don't understand it; some people are pulling the strings. This is inevitably the result of the manipulation by capitalist-roaders."[56]
This combative impulse and its tendency to escalate derived from the polemics, whose premium on smashing frames required an opposing structure against which a revolutionary breakthrough could be achieved;
[54] Editor, "Mass Factionalism in Communist China," Current Scene , vol. 6, no. 8 (May 15, 1968).
[55] For analyses of the Beijing and Guangdong conflicts see Hong Yung Lee, "The Political Behavior of the Radical Students and Their Social Characteristics in the Cultural Revolution," CQ, 63 (September 1975); for a brief summary of Red Guard activities in the other provinces cited see Victor C. Falkenheim, "The Cultural Revolution in Kwangsi, Yunnan and Fukien," AS , 9 (August 1969): 580–97. I know of only one exception to this tendency toward bipolarity: in Shenyang (Mukden Province), there were three factions, which coalesced in support of "backstage backers" (houtai laoban ) Chen Xilian (representing the army), Song Renqiong (representing civilian cadres), and the Navy–Air Force Headquarters (the most consistent source of radical patronage within the establishment).
[56] "Chairman Mao's Later Supreme Instructions during His Inspection Tour," Zhengfa Hongqi [Politics and law red flag], Guangzhou, combined issues nos. 3–4 (October 17, 1967). Whether "capitalist-roaders" still had any influence at this point is doubtful, but Mao was correct in suspecting that "some people are pulling the strings"—he being perhaps foremost among them. No faction was ever "destroyed" unless its backstage collapsed, with the ultimate outcome to be determined on the basis of negotiations in Beijing.
once the Party-state apparatus had been "toppled," it inspired a search for new opposition that soon brought different rebel factions into conflict with each other. The polarizing tendency derived from the dichotomous syntactic structure of the rhetoric, which in effect denied the possibility of intermediate positions, placing all terms referring to such positions between inverted commas, indicating their nominal or hypocritical character. Within the conceptual framework that the rebels in both factions used to order their arguments (and probably their thinking), it became impossible to draw subtle distinctions; only a zero-sum choice between "bourgeois" and "proletarian" could be made. In a given arena, the conflict inexorably polarized to fit the participants' two-class model of the situation:
As the two armies face each other, large posters with such slogans as "Provincial Revolutionary Rebel Joint Committee [PRRJC] is very good!" and "Sentence PRRJC to death!" are put up in the streets all of a sudden, and the whole city is resounding with such slogans as "PRRJC is finished!" and "PRRJC is growing up amidst curses!" At this critical juncture every revolutionary comrade, every organization, and the political forces of every faction must clearly indicate his attitude and choose sides. Should the PRRJC really be "Sentenced to death?" This is a question that must be answered unequivocally.[57]
Although the vivid antipodal imagery indeed made this an urgent question, it contained no answer, tending rather to sustain each faction's faith in its own righteousness and its opponent's perfidy. The polemical rhetoric provided a set of conceptual "trenches" confronting each other, so to speak. It did not specify who should occupy which positions (this decision was usually made on the basis of group interests), nor did it contain any instructions about how peace might be negotiated. Although peace was eventually imposed willy-nilly by Beijing, factional loyalties and antipathies were forged that continued to have a subdued effect for many years thereafter, sometimes even surviving the official termination of the Cultural Revolution in July 1977.
Exposure: The "two worlds" structure of symbolism conveyed the general impression of a deep cleft between the world of appearance and the world of reality, that the apparent world contained no reliable indicators of the nature of the real world. This disjunction occasioned a sense of outrage and an ambition to reduce appearances to their underlying naked realities. In short, there was a general suspicion of the conventional, which predicated a correspondence between revealed/concealed and phony/real. The systematically misleading relationship between
[57] "Guangdong Rebel Joint Committee Proclamation," Guangdong Zhan Bao [Guangdong battle news], February 22, 1967, trans. in JPRS , no. 41450, pp. 79–82.
appearance and reality was more subtly indicated by addition of inverted commas or the adjective "suowei " (so-called) to the once illustrious title of the target, as in suowei scholars (xuezhe ), specialists (zhuanjia ), or authorities (quanwei , dangquan pai ).
The quest for exposure was to be undertaken "resolutely, thoroughly, wholly and completely" (jianjue chedi ganjing quanbu de ), to quote one of Mao's characteristic contributions to the language,[58] with the ultimate intention of annihilating the sphere of "bourgeois privacy" and realizing the ancient ideal, "all for the public interest, nothing for oneself" (da gong wu si ). Any indication that an authority was protecting some aspect of the policy process from full public scrutiny aroused suspicion that one was "shielding" the guilty from legitimate criticism.[59] Thus Red Guards and Revolutionary Rebels systematically violated attempts to preserve secrecy by launching raids in search of "black materials," ransacking homes and offices, interviewing interested subordinate officials (or finding allies among them, such as Yao Dengshan in the Foreign Ministry), torturing or otherwise encouraging intimates of the targets to bear witness against them (e.g., Liu Shaoqi's estranged ex-wife and their two children testified voluntarily; his current wife was abducted and "struggled"),[60] and for the first time breaching the Party's hitherto sacrosanct internal file system. "What's so terrific about secrets?" a participant in the notorious raid on the Foreign Ministry files asked rhetorically. "To Hell with them!"[61] Sometimes in the context of such raids rebels would seize the opportunity to destroy their own files—only to plunge into deeper trouble later, for without a dossier one could be suspected of anything.
Once such secret information was discovered, the motto da gong wu si dictated that it be made public. This was done either via big-character posters, which could be written anonymously by anyone and soon "covered every available wall and mat," or in rebel tabloids (xiaobao ), which came to comprise a vast and lively alternative media system. Some tabloids appeared daily, others every third or fourth day; some were printed, some hectographed; some original, others plagiarized; some local, some with national circulations (for several months in 1967, Qinghua University's Jinggangshan had a circulation exceeding that of
[58] Mao Zedong Zhuxi Yulu [Quotations of Chairman Mao Zedong], pp. 98, 143, as quoted in Chuang, Little Red Book . See also Alan Liu, Political Culture , pp. 153–56.
[59] Cf. Neale Hunter, Shanghai Journal: An Eyewitness Account of the Cultural Revolution (New York: Praeger, 1969), p. 36: "To them [viz ., the Red Guards], Yang Hsi-kuang was saying, 'Hands off the Party leaders! Criticize anyone you like, but the Municipal Committee is sacrosanct.' This was precisely the attitude they were out to destroy."
[60] See "Three Trials of Pickpocket Wang Kuang-mei," as trans. in Current Background , no. 848 (February 27, 1968), pp. 1–42.
[61] Ross Terrill, "The 800,000,000, Part II: China and the World," The Atlantic 229 (January 1972), pp. 39–63, at p. 49.
People's Daily ).[62] Printed media were augmented by oral communications, which came to comprise a nationwide rumor network. Early in the movement the interdict on inter-city mobility was placed in abeyance in order to facilitate mobilization, and Red Guards set up a network of liaison stations, which functioned like diplomatic missions and were connected by envoys and commercial telegraph facilities. These stations were extremely effective in disseminating news (e.g., in July 1967, Jiang Qing's instruction to "attack with reason and defend with force" was followed within a few hours by Red Guard arms seizures—it was not until a few days later that her instruction was published in the official press). Sensational and irresponsible as it was, this alternative media system was richer in content and often more accurate than the official press.
This almost obsessive rebel interest in exposure seemed, however, to harbor an underlying ambivalence. For although Red Guards denounced authorities for hypocritically concealing their crimes and displaying only their virtues, when an authority actually made a statement revealing reservations about Mao's leadership, however obliquely (as in Deng Tuo's satires of the early 1960s),[63] he would be condemned for "shamelessly" and "audaciously shouting," "fanatically trumpeting," and so forth. Even if one confessed, the confession was invariably rejected as "superficial" and "fraudulent."
The reason for this ambivalence has to do with the fact that secrecy was not merely a "cover" used by capitalist-roaders in the Party to protect themselves from public accountability, but a regular dimension of organization—both "revisionist" and "revolutionary" leaders communicated through organizational channels, made decisions in closed meetings, and otherwise adhered to the rules of information security. So no one was finally proof against accusations of "coverups." Zhou Enlai came under repeated attack for shielding his vice-premiers, for example, and a purge of acting Chief-of-Staff Yang Chengwu amid allusions to a "black backer" even excited momentary suspicions of Lin Biao. When the May 16th Group was purged in September 1967, Jiang Qing accused its leaders of "collecting black material on every one of us, and it may throw it out in public at any time."[64] As chapter 3 has already indicated, secrecy played a pervasive role in Chinese society as a criterion for organizational
[62] T. K. Tong, "Red Guard Newspapers," Columbia Forum 12, no. 1 (Spring 1969): 38–41.
[63] Trans. in Joachim Glaubitz, Opposition Gegen Mao: Abendspräche am Yanshan und andere politische Dokumente (Olten: Walter Verlag, 1969).
[64] See CCP Documents of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (Hong Kong: Union Research Institute, 1969), pp. 72, 309, and 503 for an indication of the CCRG's shift of position on this pivotal issue.
self-definition and hierarchy. Possession of privileged information helped to define "inside" (nei ) from "outside" (wai ), and "top" (shang ) from "bottom" (xia ): the unit was thus set off from its environment, Party from non-Party, leaders from masses. It was precisely the multifunctional utility of secrecy—and the invidious element common to these functions—that endowed its critique with such widespread appeal.
The Interplay between Ideology and Political Interest
Noticing the tendency of the movement to fragment into contending interest groups, the central authorities attempted, beginning in the spring of 1967, to impose structure through a concerted media campaign. Thus, on February 23, 1967, Red Flag stressed that "the overwhelming majority of cadres at all levels" were "good or comparatively good," and that criticism should henceforth be focused on "China's Khrushchev" (viz., Liu Shaoqi).[65] Beginning April 1, a national criticism campaign was launched against Liu in all official media, with the proclaimed intention of deflecting criticism from secondary targets and thereby mitigating factional strife. This tactic seems to have been temporarily successful in absorbing polemical energies, but as it becames less plausible that Liu posed any real threat to Mao, rebel units tended to ignore Liu, or to adopt him as a symbol for their local opponents, paradoxically leading to an intensification of factionalism by the summer of 1967.
Similarly, a campaign was launched by the center beginning in the fall of 1967 to deactivate the semantic implications of the symbolism.[66] The "frame" that should be "smashed" was in effect psychologized: rebels were told to "dare to rebel against all the things in their minds which do not conform to the Thought of Mao . . . to let the proletariat seize power in their minds" and "revolutionize the self."[67] Revolution thus reconstrued might relieve besieged authority structures from further storming and power seizures, and salvage penitent cadres: "The fact that a cadre who has made errors can turn from his former adherence to the bourgeois reactionary line, can fight back fiercely against this line and rise up to make rebellion, shows that he has changed his standpoint," a usually leftist official journal editorialized. "This 'going over' is a revolution . . . against the viruses of the bourgeois reactionary line in one's mind."[68] This campaign was however also ineffectual in abating rebel factionalism.
[65] "Revolutionary Cadres Must be Treated Correctly," HQ editorial, no. 3 (February 23, 1967).
[66] HQ , no. 15, 1967; "The Great Historical Tide," RR editorial, September 22, 1967; Mao Zedong, "Instruction Given during Inspection Tour," RR , September 14, 1967.
[67] RR , February 8, 1967, trans. in JPRS , no. 41147.
[68] Wenhui Bao editorial, February 13, 1967, in JPRS , no. 41450.
The inefficacy of such campaigns to coordinate the movement through the media may be attributed to three factors. First, the absence of an organizational command hierarchy with the capacity to interpret mediarelayed messages unambiguously and enforce them. The PLA was instructed to enter the vacuum left by the collapse of the Party and fill this role, but the Chen Zaidao incident in Wuhan in the summer of 1967 revealed a cleavage within the PLA between central and regional forces that cast doubt on the hierarchy's reliability. Second, the lack of centralized control over the media network itself. Before 1966, such control made the nation a vast echo chamber, in which a concerted initiative in the pace-making central media promptly reverberated in all provincial and local outlets. The advent of an alternative media network in late 1966 made it more difficult to achieve such mimetic response. Local rebel tabloids typically responded to central thematic initiatives, but they tended to reconstrue them in terms of factional interests, and would then revert to investigative journalism and local polemics. Third, the structure of the rhetoric permitted and even encouraged conflicting interests to be fought out rather than compromised (as demonstrated in the immediately preceding subsection).
Conclusions
As a form of collective thought reform, the Cultural Revolution is distinguished by its abandonment of highly organized "cultivation" therapy within a small-group context, and its substitution of nondirective "shock" therapy operating within a communications network temporarily freed from authoritative constraints. The focus is on the smashing of symbolic "frames" representing cultural and psychological inhibitions upon the expression of repressed impulses. This symbolic revolutionary break-through, by sanctioning the catharsis of previously repressed grievances against targets of criticism, should unleash vital energies and foster the internalization of revolutionary norms. Through such a combination of exhortation and catharsis, "norms and values," on the one hand, become saturated with emotion, while the "gross and basic emotions become ennobled through contact with social values."[69] Without exhortation, catharsis would be illegitimate; but without catharsis, exhortation would become coercive. In previous movements, catharsis was disciplined by the Party apparatus—targets were preselected, and expression of criticism
[69] Victor Turner, "Symbols in Ndembu Ritual," in Dorothy Emmet, ed., Sociological Theory and Philosophical Analysis (New York: Macmillan, 1970), p. 162; see also Turner's The Forest of Symbols : Aspects of Ndembu Ritual (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1967), pp. 19–47; and Dramas , Fields and Metaphors : Symbolic Action in Human Society (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1974), p. 37.
was restricted to official media and cadre-directed small groups—with resulting tendencies toward ritualization.[70] The sudden relaxation of organizational discipline permitted the cathartic function to assume greater prominence than it had in previous movements, giving the Cultural Revolution greater spontaneity and vitality.
The actual impact of the Cultural Revolution on the lives of those involved, so far as this can be determined on the basis of a series of intensive retrospective interviews with a sample of erstwhile participants who emigrated to Hong Kong,[71] coincided to a recognizable extent with therapeutic intentions, though the situation was complicated by various circumstantial factors. Among the most important of these was Lenin's quintessentially political question, "Who-whom?" A former target of criticism was likely to have a quite different perspective than a former participant in mass criticism. And the impact on targets was much more relevant than hitherto, for instead of attacking out-group or marginal scapegoats, the movement turned against the elite, later rehabilitating many of them to high positions. The inability to impose discipline permitted targets to proliferate unmanageably.
The impact of the movement upon targets of mass criticism was profound but essentially negative. Not a single former target felt that there was any correspondence between their errors and the criticisms to which they were subjected, attributing their humiliation rather to bad class background or other "unfair" political considerations. The impact of criticism upon their ideological attitudes ranged from superficially or temporarily successful to counterproductive. As one put it:
Struggle didn't change my thoughts. It caused me to resist. If they're not right, they can't change my thoughts; if they're right, they don't need to struggle . . . The more you're struggled, the more you resist. I would superficially accept, but in my heart, I would hate it. That more than anything else made me decide to leave China. If you completely deny any rightness in someone, he can't accept it.[72]
[70] See Whyte, Small Groups and Political Ritual .
[71] The data in this section and in portions of chapter 6 are derived from interviews conducted with forty-eight former residents of the PRC who emigrated sometime between 1974 and 1977. Forty-four of these were conducted in Hong Kong, the remaining four in Berkeley. Please see the preface for a discussion of the interview methodology; a translation of the protocol is contained in the appendix.
[72] Informant born in Nanjing in 1934, daughter of a KMT official. She graduated from the Beijing Medical Institute in 1959 and worked in Zhengzhou (Henan Province) from then until 1975, when she legally emigrated to Hong Kong. (Hereinafter informant no. 37.) See also male informant, born 1929 in Guangdong province of free professional family background, state cadre individual status (teacher). College graduate, in literature, of overseas Chinese background, he legally migrated to Hong Kong in March 1976 in order to earn more money (hereinafter informant no. 17). And male informant, born 1928 in Guangdong(Nanhai) of poor peasant family background, worker individual class status (eighth grade technician), migrated illegally in 1974. Interviewed April 25, 1977 (hereinafter informant no. 9). See also Thurston, "Victims of China's Cultural Revolution," Parts I and II, for a penetrating analysis of pathological sequelae in terms of "post-traumatic stress disorder."
The reasons for this often vehement antipathy ranged from the forced or arbitrary character of the professed conversion to the acquisition of new information about the "shadow side" of Chinese politics.[73] It typically resulted in a more cynical, opportunistic attitude toward political involvement: "Now I have changed and become a person who struggles only for my own purposes and does not care about anything else," said one young man, sounding like Tolstoy's Prince Andrei after Austerlitz. "But I still care about China's future."[74] Others, however, denied any change at all or even claimed to have been changed from naive idealism to embittered anticommunism.[75]
On the whole, the impact of the movement upon the political attitudes of the critics and passive onlookers was more consistent with its stated objectives. It is said to have stimulated interest in national affairs and a more active involvement in local politics,[76] aroused revolutionary
[73] Informant no. 12. See also male informant, born 1949 in Guangdong, of free professional family background, student individual class status. Sent down to the countryside during the Cultural Revolution, where he was class leader (banzhang ) of a production brigade, before migrating legally to Hong Kong in May 1975. Interviewed May 3, 1977 (hereinafter informant no. 23).
[74] Male informant, born in Nanjing in 1946 of free professional family background, student class status, was a member of the CYL, became a Red Guard and was then "sent down" to the countryside, where he became a Mao Zedong Thought study class leader in the brigade. Migrated illegally to Hong Kong in 1973 (hereinafter informant no. 38). Also second interview with male informant, born in Zhongshan, Guangdong, in 1946 of free employee family background, student class status. He was a fourth grade worker in a Guangdong machine repair factory. Interview conducted July 23–24, 1977 (hereinafter informant no. 29). Also see female informant, born 1950 in Guangdong, of free employee family background, student individual class status. She was sent down to the countryside during the 1968 demobilization, where she functioned as a kindergarten teacher, before migrating illegally to Hong Kong in 1973. Interviewed May 13, 1977 (hereinafter informant no. 20).
[75] Male informant, born 1944 in Shanghai, of free professional family background, student individual class status, worked as thirteenth grade technical cadre in a Shenyang factory. Migrated illegally to Hong Kong in 1974. Interviewed May 18, 1977 (hereinafter informant no. 31). See Connie Squires Meany's collection of interviews with a number of industrial workers conducted in Hong Kong in 1980, which she generously made available to me (hereinafter Squires collection). Also informants no. 38, 29 (second interview), and 20.
[76] Male informant, born 1944 in Guangdong, of overseas Chinese (Indonesian) family background, student individual class status, he was a rank eighteen government cadre in Hebei and chief of surgery at the People's Medical Institute (renmin yiyuan ) in Yutian xian , before migrating legally to Hong Kong in 1973. Interviewed April 21, 1977 (hereinafter informant no. 4).
ideals,[77] and provided timely warning against the deviations of which the targets stood accused.[78] "The Cultural Revolution was a revolution to touch people's souls," averred a former cadre. "Previous movements were only partial, they weren't as expansive and penetrating."[79] The exemplary punishment meted out to criticism targets had its impact, as did the rhetoric adjuring greater self-sacrifice, and the eye-opening participation in a movement that smashed conventional frames and permitted the exploration of a wide range of new experiences.[80] True, a perverse identification with underdogs was still sometimes confessed, betraying the influence of Mencius rather than Mao, but this seemed to be a minority response and prudence kept it well concealed (until Hong Kong).[81]
As far as expectations about the system and political behavior within it are concerned, the impact of the movement was more nearly uniform. This is one of the more surprising findings from this survey of former participants. For both cadres and masses, both ex-targets and former rebels or bystanders, the ideological message of the movement seems to
[77] "The Cultural Revolution was a revolution to touch men's souls. Previous movements were only partial, they were not as expansive and penetrating. But the Cultural Revolution was a comprehensive, very penetrating revolution. Many families were split into two factions, thus illustrating how thoroughly the movement penetrated." Informant no. 32.
"The Cultural Revolution was a very impressive mass campaign because the masses wanted revolution and the purpose of revolution was to change the way of life. Otherwise, what was revolution for? The existence of individualism had to be recognized. People gave up things in their endeavors. But what were their endeavors for? There must be some things worthy of their endeavors, otherwise who would want to take the chance?" Informant no. 35.
[78] "During the mass criticism I changed my thoughts because I thought, 'Oh, what that person did was wrong!' Without struggle, economic progress would be better. But some people would oppose the Party, and the Party would lose its moral authority." Informant no. 37.
[79] Informant no. 32.
[80] As one former "rightist" put it, "The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution penetrated to every corner. Every person was touched by it. Before, people had been narrow-minded, but following the Cultural Revolution, everyone began to have a sense of responsibility." Informant no. 15.
[81] One former worker, CYL member, and Red Guard seemed willing to forgive all targets (although he had not personally been targeted): "Frankly speaking, the fact that these four elements could live in society instead of being confined to labor reform camps was proof that they had not committed serious mistakes. The fact that they had lost a lot of freedom deserved our sympathy. The so-called traitors and secret agents were just the same. There were just some historical problems that had nothing to do with their current behavior." Male informant, born 1944 in Guangdong, lower-middle peasant family background and individual class status, received primary education up to third grade. Became a workpoint recorder for his commune in rural Guangdong before illegally migrating to Hong Kong in late 1975. Interviewed July 8, 1977. (Hereinafter informant no. 11.)
have been well understood and broadly accepted as politically "correct" for the system as a whole, regardless of their personal attitude toward that message. Thus it was generally credited that revisionism was indeed implicit in the pre-1966 developmental pattern, entailing bureaucratism and increasing stratification between mental and manual workers, countryside and city. It was likewise believed that an exclusive (or at least excessive) focus on economic growth and enhanced material welfare resulted in selfish individualism detrimental to revolutionary ideals. Respondents generally accepted the equation of revisionism with Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping. They also conceded the inherent superiority of the Maoist revolutionary norm (viz., fearless self-sacrifice) in principle —though this did not necessarily entail any personal commitment to follow it. And there was clear recognition that post-Mao China had turned from that norm back to revisionism, though there was no great sense of indignation about this reversal. As one informant put it, in a rather extreme formulation: "Liu Shaoqi stood for the capitalist class line. The capitalist class is concerned with money, and the masses needed money. Thus in practice the masses agreed with Liu Shaoqi's line. This feeling intensified after the Cultural Revolution."[82]
All this is to say that the Maoist justification for the Cultural Revolution claimed wide credence. "Struggle" was necessary if the revisionist "frames" were to be broken, and is historically inexorable in any case.[83]
[82] Male informant, free professional family background, student individual class status, worked as a village high school teacher on Hainan Island before legally migrating to Hong Kong in October 1974 for reunion with overseas Chinese relatives. Interviewed May 26, 1977. (Hereinafter informant no. 21.) Even more favorably: "My opinion of Liu Shaoqi changed after the Cultural Revolution. He worked for people's welfare. Life was relatively good under Liu and there were improvements in livelihood." Male informant, born 1945 in Guangxi province of capitalist class background, nonetheless became CYL member, later a primary school teacher (hence a state cadre). Legally migrated to Hong Kong in 1975. Interviewed July 10–11, 1976. (Hereinafter informant no. 26.)
More typical: "Without the Cultural Revolution, Liu Shaoqi would practice capitalism, which would harm the interests of the majority of the people. People might feel capitalism was not so bad for a period of time. But to develop capitalism further would divide workers from peasants and cause polarization between cities and villages. Liu Shaoqi had to be overthrown, although a very big price had to be paid for his downfall." Male informant, born 1944 in Shanghai, of free professional family background, student individual class status, worked as thirteenth grade technical cadre in a factory in Shenyang. Migrated illegally to Hong Kong in 1974. Interviewed May 18, 1977. (Hereinafter informant no. 31.)
It is noteworthy that although their attitudes differed, all three informants shared an "economist" cognition of Liu.
[83] "Without struggles, contradictions cannot be resolved. With a large territory, a large population, and complicated problems, it is impossible to have no struggles." Male informant, born 1934 in Singapore, of overseas Chinese class background, worked as an architect (hence as a tenth grade central state cadre) until his legal departure in April 1975. (Hereinafter informant no. 36.)
"If you want progress, you have to have struggle."[84] There are different forms of struggle (class struggle, factional struggle, line struggle, antagonistic and nonantagonistic contradictions), but these analytical distinctions were little understood and less regarded. All struggle derived from the inevitable but intolerable emergence of differences of political opinion, and would tend to intensify until those who erred were either rectified or destroyed.[85] "The so-called class struggle is just a title; even trivial things in a campaign might be escalated to this title."[86] The Truth was unique and exclusive. "In order to unify [tuanjie ], it is also necessary to unify thinking," as one informant put it. "Therefore, all those who have made mistakes must be struggled."[87] These convictions were professed notwithstanding a preponderant personal aversion to struggle—few ventured to generalize from subjective preference to objective necessity.
In sum, despite the material and psychological toll it took, the impact of the early spontaneous mobilization phase of the Cultural Revolution on culture was to persuade the Chinese people to accept Mao's overall vision of history. This vision included his rationale for the Cultural Revolution and the whole notion of a "two-line struggle" that was implicit in the Manichaean imagery of the polemics. To this degree, the transformative impact of the Cultural Revolution was indeed profound. The language of cultural radicalism became generalized to the public sector so that everyone who participated in that sector moved within its categories. To be sure, group interests—whether based on old patterns such as kinship or on new ones such as occupational association—did not perish because the language used to express them became taboo. They reasserted themselves, giving rise to considerable semantic confusion (as well as sporadic internecine violence) as a bidding war arose between interests determined to appropriate ideologically legitimate self-justifications. But the belief in the abstract verities professed in the polemics seems to have survived, at least until the death of Mao Zedong and the arrest of his most ardent supporters allowed the language itself to be reconsidered.
[84] Informant no. 17.
[85] Informants no. 9, 15, 23, and 32. See also female informant, born in Hangzhou in 1956, of landlord family background, student class status, legally migrated to Hong Kong in February 1976 (hereinafter informant no. 34). And male informant, born 1956 in Guangdong, free professional family background, student individual class status, sent down to a production and construction military camp (Shengchan jianshe bingtuan ) in the Changjiang countryside. Migrated illegally in November 1976 to get out of the countryside. Interviewed May 6, 1977 (hereinafter informant no. 16).
[86] Informants no. 34 and 16.
[87] Informant no. 9.