Abstract
Investigating the persecution of Communist cadres provides complex and nuanced illustrations of political culture in Mao’s China. In discussing the Anti-Rightist Campaign in the 1950s and the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s, this chapter focuses on the persecution of Communist cadres and Party members below the leadership level. It shows that the Chinese Communist Party often enacted its high politics of neutralizing opponents and renegades in the form of local politics of practical concerns and self-interest. Though the state ideology that justified crackdowns and purges was severe, the cadres who were purged were often the victims of quotidian politics, local factional strife and personal animosity, and politicians’ tactics for taking advantage of national campaigns to eliminate rivals often determined the fate of cadres.
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Notes
- 1.
Michael Dutton, Policing Chinese Politics: A History (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005), 52, 66.
- 2.
Gao Hua, Hongtaiyang shi zenyang shengqide: Yanan zhengfeng yundong de lailongqumai [How Did the Red Sun Rise: A History of the Yan’an Rectification Movement] (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2003), 597, 599, 617–618.
- 3.
Frederick Teiwes, Politics and Purges in China: Rectification and the Decline of Party Norms, 1950–1965 (Armonk: M. E. Sharpe, 1993), 9–10.
- 4.
Ibid., 26.
- 5.
Major scholarship on these subjects include Teiwes, Politics and Purges in China; Politics at Mao’s Court: Gao Gang and Party Factionalism in the Early 1950s (Armonk: M.E. Sharpe, 1990); Roderick MacFarquhar, The Coming of the Cataclysm, 1961–1966 (Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 1997); Lowell Dittmer, China’s Continuous Revolution: The Post-Liberation Epoch, 1949–1981 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 989); Tony Saich, Governance and Politics of China (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2015), etc.
- 6.
Ma Qibin et al., eds. Zhongguo gongchandang zhizheng sishinian (1949–1989) [The CCP’s Forty Years in Power, 1949–1989] (Beijing: Zhonggong dangshi ziliao chubanshe, 1991), 137.
- 7.
Dutton, Policing Chinese Politics, 180–182.
- 8.
See Teiwes, Politics and Purges in China, Chapter 6. For other leaders’ positive echo of Mao, see Zhou Enlai, “The Report on Question of Intellectuals,” January 14, 1956, in Song Yongyi, ed., The Chinese Anti-Rightist Campaign Database (1957) (Hong Kong: The University Services Centre for China Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2010).
- 9.
See Denis T. Twitchett and John K. Fairbank, eds. The Cambridge History of China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 14:251–253.
- 10.
“Zhonggong zhongyang zuzhibu deng guanyu jixu zhixing zhongyang [1978] 55 hao wenjian jige wenti de qingshi” [Request of the CCP Central Organization Department et al. Over Several Issues Regarding the Implementation of the Centre’s no. 55 Document of 1978], August 29, 1979, in Song, Chinese Anti-Rightist Campaign Database.
- 11.
CCP Central Committee, “Instructions on Seriously Handling the Problems of Party Rightists,” September 2, 1957, in Song, ibid.
- 12.
Mao Zedong, Mao Zedong xuanji [Selected Works of Mao Zedong] (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 1967), 5:487–488.
- 13.
Shen Yuan, “Fanyou yundong shi yichang qingdang” [The Anti-Rightist Campaign Was a Party Cleansing]. Hong Kong: Kaifang zazhi [Open Magazine], August 5, 2012.
- 14.
On May 15, 1957 Mao formally announced that the proportion of rightists might range from 1–3 to 5–10 percent in different urban work units (see Mao Zedong, “Things Are Changing,” in Song Yongyi, Chinese Anti-Rightist Campaign Database). Although this estimate was not always treated as a compulsory guideline, its gist was repeated in ensuing Party directives and thus acquired power. In actual prosecution of the campaign, each urban unit, including universities, high schools, hospitals, research institutes, and government agencies, was obligated to label a portion of its employees as rightists, normally ranging from 5 to 10 percent, while implementation depended upon the commitment of the heads of the units. Frank Dikötter provides a discussion of the “arbitrary nature” of such campaign approach. See Frank Dikötter, The Tragedy of Liberation: A History of the Chinese Revolution, 1945–57 (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2013), 293–294.
- 15.
A PLA document admits that there was a “small circle in the General Political Department headed by Chen Yi” that relentlessly disparaged other vice-directors of the department. See “Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun zong zhengzhibu guanyu Chen Yi wenti de jueding” [Decisions of the General Political Department of the People’s Liberation Army on the Problems of Chen Yi], January 4, 1958, in Song, Chinese Anti-Rightist Campaign Database.
- 16.
Zhou Liangpei, Ding Ling Zhuan [A Biography of Ding Ling] (Beijing: Shiyue wenyi chubanshe, 1993), 72–78; Xu Qingquan, Geming tunshi tade ernu: Ding Ling—Chen Qixia fandang jituan an jishi [Revolution Eats Its Own Children: Records About the Case of Ding Ling—Chen Qixia Anti-Party Clique] (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2008), 273–274.
- 17.
Twitchett and Fairbank, Cambridge History of China, 14:255–256; Ning Wang, Banished to the Great Northern Wilderness: Political Exile and Re-education in Mao’s China (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2017), 29.
- 18.
Zhou, Ding Ling Zhuan, 46; Hu Ping, Chan ji: 1957 kunan de jitan [Allegorical Words: The Bitter Sacrificial Altar, 1957] (Guangzhou: Guangdong luyou chubanshe, 2004), 357.
- 19.
Dai Huang, Jiusi yisheng: wo de youpai licheng [A Narrow Escape from Death: My Experience as a Rightist] (Beijing: Zhongyang bianyi chubanshe, 1998), 59.
- 20.
Dai, ibid., 59–60.
- 21.
CCP Central Committee, “Instructions on Sending down Cadres into Manual Labour,” February 28, 1958, in Zhongyang wenxian yanjiushi, ed. Jianguo yilai zhongyao wenxian xuanbian [Selected Collections of Important Documents Since the Establishment of the People’s Republic of China] (Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe, 1993–1996), 11:196.
- 22.
See materials contained in Wang, Banished to the Great Northern Wilderness.
- 23.
Zhongyang wenxian yanjiushi, Jianguo yilai zhongyao wenxian xuanbian, 19:326.
- 24.
“Circular of the CCP Central Committee on the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution,” People’s Daily, May 17, 1966.
- 25.
“Decisions of the CCP Central Committee concerning the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution,” People’s Daily, August 9, 1966.
- 26.
Wu Yiching, The Cultural Revolution at the Margins: Chinese Socialism in Crisis (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2014), 49.
- 27.
Jiefang ribao [Liberation Daily] editorial, August 23, 1966, quoted in Dittmer, China’s Continuous Revolution, 83.
- 28.
“Decisions of the CCP Central Committee”, People’s Daily, August 9, 1966.
- 29.
Zhonggong zhongyang zuzhibu & zhongyang dang’anguan, eds., Zhongguo gongchandang zuzhishi ziliao [Sources on the Organizational History of the Chinese Communist Party] (Beijing: Zhonggong dangshi chubanshe, 2000).
- 30.
Ibid., 217.
- 31.
Ibid., 322.
- 32.
Frank Dikötter, The Cultural Revolution: A People’s History, 1962–1976 (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2016), 116–117.
- 33.
“Decisions of the CCP Central Committee,” People’s Daily, August 9, 1966.
- 34.
Mao Zedong, Mao Zedong xuanji [Selected Works of Mao Zedong] (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 1967), 1:17.
- 35.
Andrew Walder, China Under Mao: A Revolution Derailed (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2015), 200.
- 36.
Xing Lu, Rhetoric of the Chinese Cultural Revolution: The Impact on Chinese Thought, Culture, and Communication (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2004), 14–15.
- 37.
Wang Youqin, Wenge shounanzhe: guanyu pohai, jianjin yu shalu de xunfang shilu [Victims of the Cultural Revolution: Interview Records on Persecutions, Imprisonment and Murders] (Hong Kong: Kaifang chubanshe, 2004), 33–38.
- 38.
The post-mortem report, from Mao Min, The Revival of China: The Great Cultural Revolution (no pub., 2017), 82–83.
- 39.
Jung Chang, Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China (New York: Anchor Books, 1992), 323.
- 40.
Chang, ibid.
- 41.
Lynn White, Policies of Chaos: Labels, Monitors, and Campaigns as Causes of China’s Cultural Revolution (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989), 8–9.
- 42.
Wu, too, argues that those with ordinary or poor class identities but hoping to change to better ones and those having resentment of bureaucratic privileges of CCP officials would particularly seize opportunities to fight the existing post-1949 social order and attack the cadres. Wu, The Cultural Revolution at the Margins, Chapter 2.
- 43.
Chang, Wild Swans, 324–325.
- 44.
Roderick MacFarquhar & Michael Schoenhals, Mao’s Last Revolution (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2006), 70–71.
- 45.
Andrew Walder, China Under Mao, 274.
- 46.
Frank Dikötter, The Cultural Revolution, 187.
- 47.
Walder, ibid., 277.
- 48.
Walder, ibid., 275.
- 49.
Dikotter, ibid., 190–191; Walder, ibid., 272.
- 50.
MacFarquhar & Schoenhals, Mao’s Last Revolution, 261–262.
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Wang, N. (2020). The Persecution of Communists in Mao’s China. In: Gerlach, C., Six, C. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Anti-Communist Persecutions. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54963-3_17
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