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HTAV CONFERENCE 2012 V4

VCE REVOLUTIONS: CHINA Revision and Subversion

PART 1 REVISION [1,900 words]

“What do I have to learn for the essay? “

“Everything so you can answer any question.”

“But what do I really have to learn?”

Have you ever had this type of conversation with your VCE Revolutions students? It’s not just

the lazy ones looking to find a way to compensate for the work that they haven’t done during

the year. It can also be the anxious and conscientious ones. I try to talk about a ‘basket of

goodies’ that they will be able to dip into depending on the question. But I also try to help them

to manipulate the same material in several ways so that they can be flexible in their approach

when faced by an examination essay question on China. The essay questions are designed to

allow students to challenge the view that is being presented and to argue a point of view using

a range of material, although not necessarily, given the time constraints, everything that they

know.

In order to help them write the exam essay we also need to help our students find ways to

revise. We have been running a joint Action Research Project at Trinity Grammar School for the

past 18 months, deliberately and almost tediously teaching our students how to revise in

History and Science. Deconstructing what good students do automatically has been very

enlightening. Some of these ideas are illustrated below.

The Examiner’s Report

A good starting point to remind our students of what they need to know is to have a look at the

Examiner’s Report.

Every year VCAA publishes an Examiner’s Report available at Past Exams and Assessment

Reports at http://www.vcaa.vic.edu.au/vce/exams/examsassessreports.html.

For Revolutions, click on H for History, then Revolutions at

http://www.vcaa.vic.edu.au/vce/studies/history/revolutions/exams.html

Here you can find comments on all sections of the exam paper, including Section B, Revolution

two, Part 2: Creating a new society, Question 2 - the essay.

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In the last few years some key points made by the Examiner’s Report have included the need for a range of evidence as in 2010: ‘The highest-scoring essays used specific factual evidence such as statistics, quotes, dates, names, policies or events to support their points’. Another oft repeated comment is that: ‘Too often historians’ views were used as evidence rather than as an opinion to support evidence. Students should supply their own factual evidence and confirm it with a viewpoint’. Needless to say the Examiners also want to see a focus on the question, including the use of topic sentences. They also note that: ‘The less successful responses tended to narrate, describing anything about the revolution and often without clear relevance’. http://www.vcaa.vic.edu.au/vcaa/vce/studies/history/revolutions/assessreports/2010/historyrevs_assessrep_10.pdf Reading the Essay Question

We tell our students endlessly: ‘Read the question!”. Most do and some don’t – out of panic or

just misreading. Some only see words and phrases that they want to see and just do not read

all the key words. Use a highlighter we say, but students need to practice with highlighting key

words long before VCE. Think about using the highlighter all year, especially if you teach boys.

I found some interesting comments when I was researching methods of revision at the

University of Leicester web site.

http://www2.le.ac.uk/offices/careers/ld/resources/study/revision-exam

They advised their students, when reading an essay question to:

Respect the question. Take time to 'listen' to the question before thinking of the answer, rather than assuming that you know what the question will be. It may be slightly different from what you expect.

Read all parts of a question before beginning to answer. In that way you can see how the examiner has divided the knowledge between the different parts of the question, so you can be sure to focus on the specific response needed for each part.

These explanations seemed very clear to me and I have begun using these phrases with my students.

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Active and passive revision

One of the things we have been emphasizing at Trinity in the last 12 months is the difference between active and passive revision as active revision is much more effective. Passive revision ‘is associated with such activities as reading notes, and copying material. Active revision is concerned with using and organizing material’.

http://www2.le.ac.uk/offices/careers/ld/resources/study/revision-exam

As part of the revision process, the University of Leicester suggests that active revision is associated with the following ‘organising’ type tasks that I feel are relevant to revising for Revolutions:

Looking for underlying themes or principles. Thinking about inter-relationships. Looking for similarities or differences. Looking for points for and against an argument.

http://www2.le.ac.uk/offices/careers/ld/resources/study/revision-exam

Making up Exam Questions

Active revision is also concerned with making revision meaningful and, in this case, that means asking questions and writing essays! We encourage students to make up questions based on their notes. But many of our boys just don’t know where to start.

The first type of question that students need to ask when revising and learning material are the very simple ones of: what? how? where? when? who? why? so what? Once they know the answers to these ones they can move on to more conceptual questions. The second type of question that VCE Revolutions students could make up, are questions using the dot points and the other explanatory information in the Study Design. Remind them that it is the Study Design that an Examination writer must use to create the examination questions. They could simply use the dot point of ‘the compromise of revolutionary ideals’ and make up a question such as: How were the ideals of the peasants compromised during the Great Leap Forward?

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Or, using the dot point, ‘the cause of difficulties or crises faced by the revolutionary groups or governments as a new state was consolidated’ create a question with the same focus: ‘How did the Great Leap Forward create a crisis for the revolutionary government?’ The students can describe the same background to the Great Leap Forward, such as dates, Mao Zedong’s aims, and the various aspects of the Leap and its effects. But the first question needs a focus on the peasants in the Great Leap Forward, comparing their idealistic optimism at the beginning and the disastrous end when so many peasants starved to death. By contrast, the second question could focus more on the disastrous effects which proved such a crisis that Mao’s leadership was threatened and his policies had to be reversed. So, students still need to ‘know’ information, but also need to have a base of knowledge that they can then manipulate to answer the question. I find that if I say and demonstrate this often enough it eventually sinks in, for most students anyway! They can also expand their questions by using the introductory comments to Area of Study 2, Creating a new society. For example, the comment that: ‘revolutionary governments often became more authoritarian’ can become a simple question such as: ‘To what extent did the Chinese government after 1949 become more authoritarian?’ Students could also develop more complex questions that do not specifically use the words in the Study Design but use the concepts behind it. Instead of ‘Revolutions being ‘endangered and radicalized’, we could ask students to comment on how revolutionary ideologies are modified or temporarily abandoned to suit changing circumstances. Students can also develop questions based on quotations. Most text books have an introduction or a summary of the chapter’s content which will often include comments that could become an essay question. For example, I used a comment by Jenner to sum up Mao Zedong’s achievements:

‘Mao was extremely successful as a revolutionary but disappointing as a nation builder’. [Jenner, 1992:63].

To what extent was Mao ‘disappointing as a nation builder’ after 1976?’

In his introduction to Mao’s Great Famine [2010], the historian, Frank Dikotter argues that:

‘The CCP never managed to impose its grand design’ [Dikotter, 2010:xiv]. Discuss the extent to which the new society was able to achieve its ideals.

Tom Ryan, in China Rising [2009], comments that: ‘The CCP’s efforts to implement its revolutionary agendas … were both triumphant and tragic’ [Ryan, 2009:159]. To what extent was China changed by the CCP after 1976?

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Making up a chart using the dot points We also develop the endless chart, using the dot points. Students need to ask themselves: How does this event fit into various dot points? Developing this flexibility in a summary form can help them to use their basic material in more than one way.

Dot Point Event – Basic Information on the GLF

Useful Quotes

Role of individuals, groups

The causes and responses to difficulties, crises

The compromise of revolutionary ideals

The changes

The continuities

A different set of values fulfilling the ideals of the revolution

Range of Evidence

As our students gain knowledge about the new society in China after 1976, how can we make

sure that they have a range of evidence at their disposal?

At its most basic we tell our boys that a paragraph in a History essay has a topic sentence, a

date, 4-5 points and at least 2 quotes. Remember that boys like clear guidelines! So below is a

‘skeleton’ framework for an essay (a more interesting term than an essay plan) with some

associations and narrative in it. Or it could be a list of points to write on a revision card, or

points to put on a sticky note on a wall that students move away from as they learn it, or a list

of simple questions that parents or a friend can ask students.

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A ‘skeleton’ framework for the Speak Bitterness campaign, 1950

Note that I have bolded elements from the Examiner’s Report.

1950 (A nice round date and very early after the CCP took power in 1949 showing the

importance of this reform).

- Agrarian Reform Law (nickname: ‘Speak Bitterness’). Also a memory trigger for the

process of carrying out the reform

- Policy: Land Redistribution

- Had already been practiced in Jiangxi and Yenan. Names.

- Former landlords publicly denounced by former tenant farmers

- ‘The broad masses rose of their own accord’ Official history quote. BUT they were

encouraged by local CCP cadres

- Violent denunciations – 800,000 to 5 million killed but this varied depending on the

area you were in. A statistic. (This is also historiography but without stating it as such)

- A woman official described ‘a rally where four people were hanging by their wrists from

four ropes’ [Chang and Halliday, 2001:329]. Primary Quote.

- Ideals seemed to be fulfilled – peasants getting land. Key concept from Study Design

but notice the use of a more subtle word – seemed.

- Hinton: ‘The amount of land did not make them wealthy … but they moved for the

first time from the ragged edge of poverty into relative security’ Quote.

BUT … Although this sort of note taking can form the basis of revision, students have to be

careful that making notes doesn’t become too reductive. This can become very passive and

time consuming. So they must then relate it back to the broad concepts in the Study Design.

And how a student finally presents it in the exam all depends on their argument!

NOW … get the students to work out what dot points this event illustrates. These could

become the topic sentences in the essay’s argument.

Change for the peasants.

Everyday lives improved

Ideals fulfilled

The role that groups (peasants and CCP cadres) played in revolution

The Party’s ‘difficulties’ in implementing reforms and disposing of opposition.

The use of violence in the revolutionary society

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And … what prior exam question would it help me to answer?

2009, 2012 and 2011. And that should build the students’ confidence in their ability to deal with

an unseen essay question.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

History. VCE Study Design, 2009.

http://www.vcaa.vic.edu.au/vce/studies/history/revolutions/revolutionindex.html

Downloaded 1/07/2012

Past Exams and Assessment Reports

http://www.vcaa.vic.edu.au/vce/exams/examsassessreports.html.

Downloaded 2/4/2012

Revolutions Past Exams and Assessment Reports

http://www.vcaa.vic.edu.au/vce/studies/history/revolutions/exams.html

Downloaded 2/4/2012

Revision and exam skills, University of Leicester,

http://www2.le.ac.uk/offices/careers/ld/resources/study/revision-exam

Downloaded 2/4/2012

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HTAV CONFERENCE 2012

VCE REVOLUTIONS: CHINA Revision and Subversion

PART 2 SUBVERSION [5,800 words]

The Overt and Covert Values of the Chinese Revolution post 1949

The Study Design [2009] asks the question: ‘Has the revolution been successful in establishing a

different set of values that fulfilled the ideals of the revolutionaries?’ It also suggests that we

explore ‘the changes and continuities that the revolution brought about in … [society’s] values’.

People need a framework to live by. The framework consists of a vision for their future (as

promised by Mao and the CCP), the values that shape their actions and the strategies that they

need to adopt to survive, day to day, week to week and month to month. Unfortunately for the

Chinese people, the overt revolutionary values that they may have believed in had to be

suborned and become covert values, in order to survive.

My thinking in this paper is based on my reading of Frank Dikotter’s recent book, Mao’s Great

Famine [2010]. In his Preface he argues that despite the ‘vision of social order the regime

projected at and abroad … the Party encountered a degree of covert opposition and subversion

that would have been unheard of in any country with an elected government’ [Dikotter,

2010:xiv]. He also discusses the overt values in terms of terror that the Party developed. In the

end he claims: ‘Everybody [was forced] to make grim moral compromises’ [Dikotter, 2010:xv].

This reading had lead me into thinking about the overt and covert values that operated in China

post 1949.

What were the overt revolutionary values pre 1949?

The CCP began as a Marxist party with 12 (or 13) delegates, representing 50 (or 57) members,

one of which may (or may not have been, Mao Zedong), meeting in Shanghai in 1921 under the

leadership of Chen Duxiu and Li Dazhao. The CCP believed in the development of a proletarian

revolution from the 2 million urban workers out of the 400 million people in China. Chen did

not give much credence to the idea of a peasant revolution, writing that: ‘The peasants are

scattered and their forces are not easy to concentrate, their culture is low, their desires in life

are simple, and they tend towards conservatism’ [Chen cited in Hsu, 1990:517]. By 1923 the

CCP had 342 members. Li was perhaps more of a nationalist and was important in forming the

CCP’s alliance with the Guomindang in 1923 when the Party’s Third Congress acknowledged

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that the GMD should be the central force of the revolution. He was one of the 24 CCP members

elected to the GMD Central Executive. Li did seem to have some doubts, or perhaps was

expressing the CCP’s pragmatism, when he wrote:

We are not opportunists who merely wish to use the Guomindang label to advance the

Communist movement. We want you comrades to understand that we join the

Guomindang as individuals rather than as a political group … you cannot say there is a

Communist Party within the Guomindang [Li, in Dun, 1969:65].

Li also commented on the role of peasants in the revolution telling young revolutionaries that:

‘Our nation is a rural nation and most of the laboring class is made up of peasants … Go out and

develop them and cause them to know liberation’ [Li cited in Buggy, 1988:153].

In 1920 the student lecturers began to work in the villages close to Beijing. But, on the whole,

the CCP, in classic Marxist style, supported workers and encouraged unions and strikes. In 1925

the Party was made up entirely of intellectuals, but by 1926, 66% of the 30,000 members were

workers [Buggy, 1988:144].

Mao Zedong’s values in 1927

Mao Zedong would change the focus of the CCP to that of the peasants. In 1926 he would

become the Head of the Guomindang’s Peasant Department. The peasants were welcoming the

soldiers of the Northern Expedition and in the Guangdong, Hunan and Hebei Provinces were

attacking their landlords. Mao investigated the uprisings and wrote his 1927 Report on an

Investigation into the Peasant Movement in Hunan. He argued that: ‘In a very short time … the

peasants will rise like a mighty storm.’ He said that there were ’three alternatives. To march at

their head and lead them? To trail behind them gesticulating and criticizing? Or to stand in their

way and oppose them?’

For Mao the peasants were worth ‘seven points’ out of ten in the democratic revolution, ‘with

the urban dweller and the military units worth only three’.

Mao Zedong, The Selected Works of Mao Zedong, Vol I.

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Mao’s values 1934 - 1949

During the Shanghai Massacre in 1927 much of the CCP leadership was killed by the

Guomindang under Chiang Kai Shek’s orders. Their support was lost and the remnants,

including Mao, fled into the hills of Jiangxi Province. Here Mao would help to create the Red

Army and would eventually take control of the CCP during the Long March in 1934. In Yenan he

would do most of his theoretical writing explaining his values, which were the CCP’s values.

Edgar Snow, the author of Red Star Over China, and perhaps the unwitting propagandist of the

CCP wrote in 1938:

The basic Three Principles remained the common heritage of both the GMD and the

CCP. The Communists brought to these principles a Chinese Marxist interpretation of a

social revolution … with China’s modernization to be achieved by … a proletarian

revolution, lead by the Communist Party [Snow, 1972:68].

But Mao Zedong was not a Marxist. He argued that Marxism was ‘not a dogma but a guide to

action’ and that ‘we can only put Marxism into practice when it is integrated with the specific

characteristics of our country and acquires a definite national form’.

Mao Zedong, The Selected Works of Mao Zedong, Vol I.

The values that were part of the Thought of Mao Zedong was developing.

The Yenan Spirit, 1935-1949

Many of the CCP’s values would be defined during the Party’s time in Yenan. The overt values,

which were those often seen by Western visitors, included patriotism, self reliance, self denial

and simple living conditions.

The more Marxist values included a belief in a new and better world through revolution,

equality, a belief that a person’s value was defined in terms of their political virtue, soldiers and

peasants and party officials working together, ‘going down to the masses’ and that the energies

of the masses could be harnessed to change nature and the world.

Maoism added a belief in peasants as a revolutionary force, the traditional pattern of an

authority centred society dominated by an elite, who serve the state and a propensity for using

violence as a revolutionary tool.

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In On New Democracy, written in January, 1940, Mao outlined his promise to the peasants:

The republic will take certain necessary steps to confiscate the land of the

landlords and distribute it to those peasants having little or no land, carry out Dr.

Sun Yat-sen's slogan of "land to the tiller", abolish feudal relations in the rural

areas, and turn the land over to the private ownership of the peasants

Mao Zedong, The Selected Works of Mao Zedong, Vol 2.

It is worthwhile noting Mao’s comments on Culture as foreshadowing the later Cultural Revolution.

Revolutionary culture is a powerful revolutionary weapon for the broad masses of the people. It prepares the ground ideologically before the revolution comes and is an important, indeed essential, fighting front in the general revolutionary front during the revolution.

Mao Zedong, The Selected Works of Mao Zedong, Vol 2.

The values of the Rectification Campaign, 1942

Unfortunately other revolutionary values developed in Yenan which would become part

of the mental framework of Party cadres.

In 1942 Mao began the Rectification Campaign. Its overt purpose was to ‘educate’ the

intellectuals. Mao claimed that:

They [the intellectuals] ought to be aware of the truth that actually … the workers and peasants sometimes know more than they do … But all he [an educated student] has is book-learning; he has not yet taken part in any practical activities or applied what he has learned to any field of life. Can such a person be regarded as a completely developed intellectual? Hardly so, in my opinion, because his knowledge is still incomplete.

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Self criticism ‘struggle’ sessions would follow, so that the Chinese people could:

… first, "learn from past mistakes to avoid future ones", and second, "cure the sickness to save the patient". The mistakes of the past must be exposed without sparing anyone's sensibilities; it is necessary to analyse and criticize what was bad in the past with a scientific attitude so that work in the future will be done more carefully and done better.

Mao Zedong, The Selected Works of Mao Zedong, Vol 3.

The methods used; the ‘struggle sessions’, fear, torture and confessions to save

oneself’, would establish ‘the pattern for the future’ [Fenby, 2008:310]. The CCP was

purged of any challenges to Mao. And the supporters of the CCP learned that: ‘if the

leadership demanded evidence of sins, the suspect must provide it’ [Fenby, 2008:31].

Or, the Party members must provide it in order to save themselves.

A certain type of Party cadre developed and, since China post 1949 became a vast

bureaucracy, it was the attitude and values of those cadres and bureaucrats who would

ruthlessly implement the policies that people would have to both support and survive.

Dikotter argues that it was the Party cadres who had survived the War against Japan,

the Civil War, and the Rectification Campaigns, who were the most vicious towards the

peasants during the Great Leap Forward.

All the leaders were military men attuned to the rigours of warfare … The

glorified violence and were inured to massive loss of life. And all of them shared

an ideology in which the end justified the means … One official commented: “We

are not weak, we are stronger, we have kept the backbone” [Dikotter,

2010:299].

Chang and Halliday [2005] also claim that harshness became part of the CCP mentality

during the Rectification Campaigns. Mao ‘greatly enlarged the number of people

directly involved in torture’ [Chang and Halliday, 2005:253]. The prisoners were

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encouraged to denounce others, ‘Not in order to find spies but for the sake of inducing

terror’ [Chang and Halliday, 2005:254]. People informed on each other and Mao ‘thus

broke the trust between people and scared them off exchanging views, not just at the

time in Yenan, but in the future too’ [Chang and Halliday, 2005:254]. They argue that

independent thinking disappeared and ‘the lively young volunteers … became robots …

Mao needed a machine, so that when he pressed the button, all the cogs would operate

in unison. And he got it’ [Chang and Halliday, 2005:255].

Harsh revolutionary values indeed.

Values for the Party and the people post 1949

I will exemplify values, and the subversion of values, using the Speak Bitterness

Campaigns, the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution.

Overt values in the “Speak Bitterness” Campaign, 1950

Initially the peasants’ ideals were fulfilled. Fenby describes the motivation behind the

campaign of land redistribution, beginning in 1950, as one of winning support which

drew ‘on deep and long standing grievances, and to that extent [the CCP] tilled

genuinely revolutionary soil’ [Fenby, 2008:356]. To some extent the policy was

successful.

However, Hinton, in his detailed study of Long Bow Village [1984], points out that very

early on in the campaign, 29 families were still ‘deficient’ and that there was no more

land or wealth (in the form of animals, carts, implements and housing) to give them

without reducing ex landlords and rich peasants to beggars [Hinton, 1984:69]. These

peasants looked to a viable, collective alternative.

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Hinton indicates that subversion (to use Dikotter’s term) came from those who wanted

old holdings restored and those ‘whose members wanted only to be left alone to

prosper as they had usually managed to do in the past’ [Hinton, 1984:70]. There were

also those who were on the way up and satisfied and finding the world new and

interesting, and those on the way down who ‘suffered increasing disillusionment’

[Hinton, 1984:71]. Many regarded ‘the revolution as over and now one could bury one’s

head in production, prosper and enjoy life’ [Hinton, 1984:71]. He estimated that in 13

villages there were 28 new rich peasant families who had been ‘bare poor’ before but

now ‘had learned how to enrich themselves’ [Hinton, 1984:75]. Hinton states that

peasants remember 1952 and 1953 as ‘the golden age of the free market’ [Hinton,

1984:98]. The Marxist values had been subverted by an older peasant value – how to

make a better life for themselves. Others, recall that they subverted the system by lying

to survive. A peasant remembers that he was ‘quite the little activist … trying to talk

other people into joining the co-op – and trying to talk myself into it too! … I just had

get along with the high ups’ [Xinxin and Ye, 1987:119].

Revolutionary violence

From Mao’s policies and campaigns pre 1949 came the use of violence as an integral

part of the revolution. In the village this was seen in the ‘class struggle’ as peasants

were put into categories. Those targeted for attack were accused, paraded and the CCP

work teams (often from outside the village), encouraged denunciations. Some were

shot immediately. Their property was redistributed, their homes ransacked. ‘Those who

had been oppressed for generations got their revenge … There was no need to grasp

Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought to join in the settling of old scores … Estimates

of those who died vary from 800,000 to five million’ [Fenby, 2010:174]. Chang and

Halliday argue that the cadres ‘were told not to stop the violence, the line being that

these were legitimate acts of revenge by the downtrodden’ [Chang and Halliday,

2005:327]. Jack Beldon, an American reporter, initially sympathetic to the CCP before

1949, reported that: ‘The Reds have created in the peasants a terror and furtiveness he

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has never before seen in Communist areas’ [Beldon cited in Chang and Halliday,

2005:320]. The ‘furtiveness’ was that you had to be seen to be enthusiastic or you too

could become the accused.

The State also ‘plugged the capitalist loopholes’ by becoming the only purchaser and

distributer of grain and then set up a nationwide system of residency permits. This

stopped the free movement of peasants. Hinton argues that ‘two categories of citizens

were created. The urban category was secure and privileged and the rural remained at

the mercy of nature and weather … and inferior’ [Hinton, 1984:108]. The danwei

system, using compulsory registration and personal files on members, also ‘constituted

a coercive control apparatus that both fragmented and regimented the population’

[Fenby, 2010:361]. The new emperor, with his Marxist- Maoist Mandate of Heaven, was

in control.

The values of the Great Leap Forward, 1958-1961

The Overt Values

The overt hoped-to-be values for the Great Leap Forward are clear. Mao was ‘convinced

that something new and different was needed to build up the economy and revitalize

the revolution’ [Fenby, 2008:396]. China set itself the target of surpassing Britain in 15

years. Farms would be turned into vast communes, eventually 25,000, with each

incorporating 5000 households. These would, with a completely collective existence for

all the members, combine agriculture and small scale industry. However, there would

also be giant irrigation projects using peasant labour. Private property and private life

would disappear. Mao wanted to lift the lid and ‘let the people explode’ [Fenby,

2008:398]. Steel production would take place in the three quarters of a million

‘backyard furnaces’ across China. Fenby describes the Leap as ‘a fatal and self

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contradictory mix of authoritarianism, self delusion and anarchic devolution … [where]

realists would be on the defensive so long as Mao lived’ [Fenby, 2008:399].

Initially, some were enthusiastic. A maker of farm equipment on a commune recalled:

It was real communism. The mess hall was great. We got to eat things made

from wheat flour every day and they were always slaughtering pigs for us. For a

while it seemed that they were telling the truth and we were going to enter

heaven … Communism is heaven and the communes are the bridge that will take

us there [Fenby, 2008:400].

In the village of Long Bow a Party leader remembered that;

On the railroad construction project everyone worked hard. All strove to be

heroes and nobody lagged behind … Whenever I called a meeting they all came

to take part [Hinton, 1984:204].

‘With full stomachs, high hopes and infections zeal they challenged nature. Never had

China’s future seemed so bright’ [Hinton, 1984:208].

The Covert Values of the Great Leap Forward

But, in order to survive after the initial enthusiasm, the Chinese people would have to

adopt different values.

In this section I am going to use Dikotter’s, Mao’s Great Famine [2010] as my main

reference. He argues that:

So destructive was radical collectivization that at every level the population tried

to circumvent, undermine or exploit the master plan … as famine spread, the

very survival of an ordinary person came increasingly to depend on their ability

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to lie, charm, hide, steal, cheat, pilfer, forage, smuggle, trick, manipulate or

otherwise outwit the state … survival depended on disobedience … Obfuscation

was the Communist way of life … Individual initiative and critical thought had to

be constantly suppressed [Dikotter, 2010:xiv].

Some examples include:

In order to avoid all livestock being collectivized at the start of the Great Leap Forward,

a farmer ‘killed four chickens, followed on day two by three ducks. Then came three

female dogs, the puppies being slaughtered next. Finally, the cat was eaten’ [Dikotter,

2020:52]. But the feast would not last.

Hinton argues that during the Great Leap Forward: ‘In the long run the biggest casualty

of all was the habit of telling the truth’ [Hinton, 1983:249]. The biggest lies were told

about grain production. The actual grain output for 1958 was just over 200 million tones

but Party cadres officially declared that it was close to 410 tonnes. So, as large amounts

in line with the fake figures were taken from the peasants, the famine began. Officials

lied and blamed the shortfalls on communes hiding grain. When Peng Duhai spoke out

against the Great Leap Forward at the Lushan Conference in July 1959, after seeing its

effects in his own home province, Mao attacked him as a rightist and other party

leaders followed suit. Dikotter argues that: ‘Truth met its end in Lushan’ [Dikotter,

2010:214]. Peng was forced to undergo self criticism. Purges were carried out

throughout the Party. ‘In 1959-60 some 3.6 million party members were labeled or

purged as rightists’ [Dikotter, 2010:102]. The Party remained caught in ‘a maze of self

deception’ [Dikotter, 2010:327].

However, total party membership increased from 13,960,000 in 1959 to 17, 380,000 in

1961’ [Dikotter, 2010:102]. This was not necessarily due to a belief in communism. It

was a more calculated decision, subverting the notion of commitment to the

Communist ideals. Party cadres had more privileges and were fed better. One way was

to attend frequent meetings where everything was provided. Or you could ‘product

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test’ as 20 cadres did in Yingkou in 1960, ‘testing’ cigarettes, tinned meat, fruit, biscuits

and rice wine until ‘at the end of the day, satiated and drunk, three of the testers

vomited’ [Dikotter, 2010:193].

Peasants defrauded the state by increasing the food ration with dead souls. Families hid

a death to keep the rations. A small brickyard claimed 600 workers but only 306 could

be found on the ground. Some factories classified all their workers as heavy workers

who got extra rations [Dikotter, 2010:201]. And ‘one of the paradoxes of the planned

economy was that everyone traded’ [Dikotter, 2010:202]. Jewelry for ration cards, fruit

from the countryside for a bicycle, standing in any queue for anything that could be sold

on later. Black markets developed. ‘Roughly one out of ten primary school children in

Jilin speculated in cakes, meat, eggs, vegetables or soap’ [Dikotter, 2010:204]. Ration

cards were forged. Horribly and in desperation, some peasants sold their children for

food.

Dikotter argues that many people were ‘not passive victims and devised a whole range

of strategies of survival. The most common one was to slack at work, allowing natural

inertia to take over’ [Dikotter, 2010:208]. Interestingly, historians also suggested that

this is what African American slaves did as a form of resistance. Factory workers arrived

late, left early, chatted and went to the movies. Farmers would work while the cadre

was watching and then sit, saving their strength. Some slept their shifts away.

Theft was endemic from trains, post offices, canteens, state shops, pharmacies and

hospitals. In the countryside farmers ate grain raw from the fields. One peasant

remembers: ‘Those who could not steal died. Those who managed to steal some food

did not die’ [Dikotter, 2010:211]. Guards in charge of state granaries stole. Finally, and

desperately, people stole from each other – even family members.

Finally, Dikotter examines the lies told about the actual number who died in the Great

Leap Forward. He points out that the official statistics, consisting of data compiled by

the provincial Public Security Bureaux, local committees and local Statistical Bureaux

19

(which were examined in 1976 by a special committee), came to a total of 45 million.

But these numbers were incomplete and did not distinguish between ‘natural’ and

‘unatural deaths’ which could include industrial accidents, suicides or fatal epidemics.

Some cadres kept two lists and some kept no statistics at all, for ‘who could keep track

of an avalanche of death?’ [Dikotter, 2010:327] And of course, lies went all the way

down and all the way up. He concludes: ‘The more absolute the power was, the less

truth it managed to produce’ [Dikotter, 2010:327].

A sad value for the people of the People’s Republic of China.

The Cultural Revolution begins, 1966-1976

Dikotter ends his book with an anecdote about Mao and Liu. In 1962 Liu wanted Mao to

see two critics of the Great Leap Forward but Mao was resisting. Liu blurted out:

‘History will judge you and me. Even cannibalism will go into the books!’ [Dikotter,

2010:337]. Dikotter suggests that Mao now felt that he had ‘found his Krushchev, the

servant who had denounced his master, Stalin’ [Dikotter, 2012:337] and that Mao was

now biding his time to attack Liu – in what would be the Cultural Revolution. Is this one

of the values of the Cultural Revolution – that of revenge?

The overt values of the Cultural Revolution

Officially the Cultural Revolution, in the beginning, was focused on China forging a new

culture where the ‘four olds’ – thoughts, culture, customs and habits, would be swept

away. Young people would be the shock troops and would gain a new sense of

revolutionary enthusiasm. Mao said that: ‘Great chaos will lead to great order’ and ‘The

demons and monsters will come out by themselves’. The ‘demons and monsters’ were

those ‘within the Party who are in authority and are taking the capitalist road’ [Fenby,

20

2008: 444-445]. But the reality was that this was a power struggle for Mao who had

been treated, as he said: ‘Like a dead ancestor’ after the failures of his last mass

campaign in the Great Leap Forward. He would take revenge on those who had rebuilt

China and sidelined him. His method would be, as always, authoritarianism, violence

and fear. There were those in power who supported Mao like Lin Biao and Mao’s wife,

Jiang Qing. Opposed to his radical policies and the chaos it created were Liu Shaoqi,

Deng Xiaoping and to, some extent, Zhou Enlai.

It was the Red Guards who would carry out Mao’s policies. But, ‘from the very start, the

rhetoric of the young shock troops was even more vengeful and extreme than any

previous campaign in the PRC’ [Fenby, 2008:441]. Big character posters attacked Mao’s

‘enemies’, especially Liu Shaoqi. Mao ‘appeared like a god’ [Fenby, 2008:447] at mass

rallies of the Red Guards. The Red Guards’ violence varied from individual, public

denunciations, violent ‘struggle sessions’ and punishments, to people ‘being suicided’,

to mass killings. Finally, in 1968, 12 million were sent down to the countryside and

factories to gain experience from the peasants and workers. Kissinger, in his recent

book, Henry Kissinger on China [2011], describes the result of the Cultural Revolution as

‘spectacular human and institutional carnage’ as ‘China became as upside down world’

[Kissinger, 2011:193].

The Ninth Party Congress in 1969 was ‘meant to mark the triumphal conclusion of the

Cultural Revolution’ [Fenby, 2008:487] but Mao had nothing constructive to offer and

factionalism continued. Liu Shaoqi died from his harsh treatment by Red Guards in

1969. Lin Biao was named Mao’s successor but he was killed in a plane crash in 1971

and discredited. By 1973 some of the old guard were rehabilitated, including Deng

Xiaoping. But the Gang of Four was still strengthening its position. In the final power

struggle, as Deng tried to implement the Four Modernisations, Mao could not entirely

abandon the radical ideology of the Cultural Revolution and criticised Deng. Deng was

blamed for the illegal mourning after Zhou Enlai’s death in 1976 and purged again.

21

Mao’s death in September, 1976 deprived the Gang of Four of its only real support and

they were arrested by Deng’s military supporters in October.

The power struggle at the top was echoed by their supporters in the day to day level of

ordinary people’s lives. The numbers who died vary from 1.5 million [MacFarquar and

Schoenhals] to 3 million [Chang and Halliday]. Up to 100 million (1/6 of the population)

[Chirot] suffered physically but survived. But all of China could not have avoided

witnessing ‘the Cultural’.

The values of the Red Guards

How did the Red Guards explain their violence? Fenby argues it was a combination of

factors. ‘By the mid 1960’s it was clear that 1949 had not bough paradise but a deeply

divided society … for the mass of people life was dreary and harsh, hemmed by

restriction’ [Fenby, 2008:453-454]. Mao, as the Great Helmsman could not be blamed

so it must be the fault of those around him who could now be openly criticized. And,

‘the sudden freedom to speak out was intoxicating’ [Fenby, 2008:454]. As a student

said: ‘It was a feast of criticism’ and another ‘I grew radical, daring and enthusiastic’

[Fenby, 2008:455]. For young women ‘it was a chance to step to the front in the image

of Jiang Qing’ [Fenby, 2008:455]. Fenby, like Dikotter, argues that there was a heritage

of violence in the Chinese Revolution and these students believed in ‘the mythology of

victory through violence [which] … had been dinned into them’ [Fenby, 2008:456]. And,

a long period of ‘purges, denunciations and a lack of concern for human life …

constituted a deep, poisonous well in which Mao fished adroitly’ [Fenby, 2008:456].

Jung Chang, in her autobiographical Wild Swans [1991], realizes that ‘We had been

taught to be ruthless to class enemies. Failure to do so would made us class enemies

ourselves’ [Chang, 1991:307[. Public dissent was almost impossible and punished. Some

committed suicide as dissent.

22

How could one ‘circumvent’ or ‘undermine’ the Cultural Revolution and survive?

In the early period, that of the Red Guards, on occasions they were argued out of

carrying out their destruction, as when Museum curators protected the home of Sun Yat

Sen from Red Guards who wanted to destroy the ‘four olds’, including his bathtub! Ding

Ling, the writer, was made to do hard labour but felt that ‘some of her captors were, in

fact, protecting her from even worse treatment’ [Fenby, 2008:451].

In this section of the paper I have made a deliberate choice to go back to the source,

insofar as a non Chinese speaker can! I have re read that key, and very popular,

autobiographical example of ‘literature of the wounded’, Wild Swans, [Chang, 1991]. I

chose it because I knew it well and was able to read past the narrative very easily,

looking for examples of subversion as survival during the Cultural Revolution.

Jung Chang at age 14, when the Cultural Revolution begins, writes of being ‘frightened

of the wall posters and endless meetings’ at school. She begins to truant but then is

‘constantly criticized for putting family first’ [Chang, 1991:279]. Jung Chang’s mother

initially goes against the tide but ‘Many other work teams engaged in victimizing

completely innocent people to save their own skins’ [Chang, 1991:281]. When the Red

Guard movement begins, Jung joins as ‘the thought of now playing truant gave me a

sense of danger so I felt compelled to stay’ [Chang, 1991:287]. And who could blame a

14 year old for this decision? However, she was able to avoid taking part in actual

destruction as it was not well organized and no one made sure she took part [Chang,

1991:292]. Later she works in the ‘office’ listening to people and taking notes on those

who want to travel and ‘make revolution’. To some extent she was allowed to do this

because ‘she had been born bright red’ [Chang, 1991:293] but later this would not be

enough to protect her and her parents. Her sister ‘guards’ the school library where ‘She

spent her days and nights reading, devouring all the forbidden fruits she could. It was

this that held her together’ [Chang, 1991:310].

23

Chang does offer a thoughtful assessment as to why so many Chinese accepted the

chaos.

Like so many Chinese, I was incapable of rational thinking in those days. We

were so cowed and contorted by fear and indoctrination that to deviate from

the path laid down by Mao would have been inconceivable. Besides, we had

been overwhelmed by deceptive rhetoric, disinformation and hypocrisy which

made it virtually impossible to see through the situation and to form an

intelligent opinion [Chang, 1991:304].

As her parents’ persecution increases, they hoped that they could ‘apply to be ordinary

citizens and enjoy a normal family life’ but, ‘This was no more than a self deluding

fantasy because the Communist Party allowed no opting out’ [Chang, 1991:326]. As her

father continued to resist the beatings, ‘Every now and then a complete stranger

passing us on the streets would murmur stealthily how my father had impressed them’

[Chang, 1991:332]. Notice here the same theme mentioned before – that notion of

furtiveness as a way a surviving.

Jung Chang’s parents continued to resist, although it drove her father into bouts of

madness. He refused to support one side or the other in the power struggle in Chengdu.

He ‘dared to oppose the powerful rebels … to turn down an offer to be rehabilitated

and return to power’ [Chang, 1991:355]. As he later said, when asked to sign a wall

poster praising those he knows are not “good” officials: ‘I will not sell my soul’ [Chang,

1991:357]. Her mother, while in prison, ‘signs many “confessions” admitting that she

had sympathized with “a capitalist road” but she refused to denounce my father and

she denied all spy charges that she knew would lead to the incrimination of others’

[Chang, 1991:360].

24

A friend forged documents for Jung so she could get her registration moved closer to Chengdu

and she used her father’s name to get the red approval seal from the household register

official. In her new commune in Deyang she worked in the fields, taking 10 hours to do a job

that could be done in 5 as ‘we had to be out there for 10 hours for it to be counted for a full

day’ to get the necessary work points [Chang, 1991:415]. However, she maintained her distance

by being an aloof outsider: ‘Once you became one of the masses, you immediately let yourself

in for intrusion and control’ [Chang, 1991:424]. Her production team manipulated the system

and got rid of her by letting her become a ‘barefoot doctor’ [Chang, 1991:426].

In 1973 university education and enrolments resumed and Jung Chang got the highest marks in

the enrolment exams in Chengdu but, when an applicant handed in a blank exam complaining

that their restoration was ‘capitalist’ all results were cancelled. She now had to try the ‘back

door’ by asking her father’s colleagues in the Sichuan Enrollment Committee to help. Her father

found that he still could not go against his principles but her mother spoke to the Committee.

Jung Chang now found that: ‘The way to get things done was through personal connections’

[Chang, 1991:459].

Her brother, Xiao-hei, a radio operator in the Air Force (again via his mother’s ‘connections),

wanted to join the Party as a way to gain personal advantage. It was ‘like taking out an

insurance policy’ against fear. ‘Party membership meant that you were less distrusted and this

sense of relative security was very comforting’ [Chang, 1991:461]. For her brother ‘the most

direct path to the Party was to raise pigs’ so he became a full time swineherd [Chang,

1991:462]. After a year he was accepted into the Party and ‘Like many others, he put his feet up

and began to take it easy’ [Chang, 1991:463].

When Mao died, despite a moment of inner euphoria Jung’s ‘ingrained self censorship

immediately started working ‘ and she sobbed ‘appropriately’ [Chang, 1991:404]. On reflection

she felt that Mao’s legacy was ‘a moral wasteland and a land of hatred … and the reign of

ignorance’ [Chang, 1991:405]. But, optimistically she won a scholarship to study in the West ‘on

professional merit’ and hoped ‘that a more fair and open China was on its way’ [Chang,

1991:504].

My re reading of Wild Swans [1991] has illustrated Dikotter’s comment that people were ‘not

passive victims and devised a whole range of strategies of survival’ [Dikotter, 2010:208].

25

Conclusion

I think we can fairly conclude that the revolutionary values promised by Mao and the CCP were

destroyed in what became a struggle for survival, especially after 1958. This struggle was

aggravated by the harshness of the cadres as they tried to implement Mao’s values. The

peasants, briefly had their dream of land ownership fulfilled in the Agrarian Reforms. But they

had had to accept and participate in violence against the landlords and, in some cases, pretend

a belief in the Party’s policies. The Great Leap Forward became a struggle for personal survival.

At first, it was learning to accept the need to lie. As the economy declined, speculation and

trading on the black market evolved and finally, in the struggle for food, fraud and theft was

endemic.

The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution was no better. The Red Guards may have begun

believing that they were Mao’s ‘shock troops’ in Mao’s ‘continuous revolution’, but their

actions reflected the violence that was always inherent in Mao’s revolution. Open dissent was

not possible, although some did resist, like Jung Chang’s parents. But, again, people like Jung

Chang learned to subvert the system by avoiding participating in violence, by taking advantage

of the chaos created by the Cultural Revolution, by ‘working with the masses’ but not becoming

one of them. And finally, by lying and using ‘the back door’ and personal connections in the

‘moral wasteland’ that was Maoist China.

New covert values, focused on survival and making ‘grim moral compromises’ [Dikotter,

2012:xv] and replaced the supposed overt Communist values. The ideals of the revolution

remained unfulfilled.

And to end. In a recent article analyzing the efforts of General Liu Yuan (Liu Shaoqi’s son) to

fight corruption in the PLA, a senior official comments that: ‘Corruption is the glue that keeps

the whole system together, after the age of idealism’ [Garnaut, 2012]. Clearly, there are still

overt and covert values in Communist China.

Di Mc Donald,

Trinity Grammar School.

mcdonaldd@trinity.vic.edu.au

26

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