GaoMobo: ReviewofTheCambridgeHistoryofChinaVol.15,Part2

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Review of The Cambridge History of China Vol.15, Part 2: Revolutions within the Chinese Revolution (1962-1982)

C. F. Mobo Gao is Professor of Chinese Studies, Director of Confucius Institute at University of Adelaide, and author of Gao Village: Rural Life in Modern China and The Battle of China’s Past: Mao and the Cultural Revolution.

This review is based on the Chinese version published by the Chinese Social Science Academy. I initially intended to compare the original version and the Chinese translation, but decided to drop the plan due to time constraint. The Cambridge History of China Vol.15 consists of 12 chapters, most of which are written by world leading scholars (if there were such a thing). Chapter 1 on Mao’s Thought is by Stuart Schram; Chapter 2 on the Cultural Revolution by Harry Hardings; Chapter 4, also on the Cultural Revolution, by MacFarquhar; the chapter on the Cultural Revolution and China’s economy by Perkins, the Cultural Revolution and education by Suzanne Pepper, the Cultural Revolution and culture by Douwe Fokkema; Chapter 9 on rural life is by Richard Madsen, and Chapter 10 on urban life by Martin King Whyte. There is also one chapter on Taiwan by Ralph Clough. The general editors of this volume are MacFarquhar, who is renowned for his in-depth study of the Cultural Revolution, and the distinguished John K. Fairbank.

Not surprisingly, a great length is devoted to the discussion of the Cultural Revolution, as the ten-year period falls within the very time frame this volume attempts to address. Judging from the subtitle of this volume, Revolutions within the Chinese Revolution, the authors nonetheless regard the Cultural Revolution as a “revolution”, regardless of their personal views of revolutions. This contrasts with the right-wing and the restorationist elites in China, who refer to the Cultural Revolution as the “ ten-year calamity”(shinian haojie), the “ten-year chaos” (shinian dongluan), or simply, a period of ruthless persecutions (zheng ren). Nevertheless, these western scholars frequently cite the voices and writings from within China as well as from the overseas Chinese with a mainland background, like Gao Gao and Yan Jiaqi, Jin Chunming, Wang Nianyi, Liang Heng, Gao Yuan, Zheng Nian etc. As a result, these authors’ account for that part of the history are inevitably subject to the memory, understandings and explanations of those Chinese intellectuals and party elites who they cite. In Chapter 8, for instance, Douwe Fokkema claims that the purge of intellectuals during the Cultural Revolution is comparable to Stalin’s suppression in the 1930s and Nazi Germany’s holocaust. But obviously, in the 1980s when the author was writing his piece, the school of thought which calls for a comprehensive objection to revolutions (an even bolder attempt than a farewell to revolutions) had yet to reach its peak, as the Tian’anmen Incident had not occurred; nor had globally hegemonic American think tanks began to call for “the end of history”. So I wonder: is there value in 1980’s reflection about China between 1962 and 1982? Would it make more sense to wait until the 21st century to look back on the China from 1966 to 1982?

Among the 1,600 plus references listed in the bibliography, very few are scholarly works in Chinese or written by scholars with a mainland background. This is due not to authors’ negligence, but a real shortage of such works at the time. On the one hand, the Chinese government still controlled the access to relevant archives, and made research projects in this field politically sensitive. On the other, studies of the Cultural Revolution uninflected by personal emotions and ideological mainstreams had not surfaced at the time. Both factors inevitably give rise to inaccuracies in the book, and the scale of such inaccuracies is appalling. Zhang Zhiming , for instance, listed many such errors in his 2003 article, “ Some Factual Debates concerning the Cambridge History of China (1966 – 1982)”(Jianqiao zhonghua renmin gongheguo shi (1966-1982) ruogan shishi bianzheng: www.creaders.org/forum/politics/mesages/501080. html). In addition, by the time this book went to print, the consequences of the post-Mao development had not become obvious to many Chinese and aversion to the Mao era held by them, especially the elites, was almost instinctive. It was nearly impossible for average Chinese at the time to make a fair comparison between the two eras. As a result, there were no critiques or counter-thoughts against the anti-Cultural-Revolution views. In this light, the contribution of this authoritative Cambridge history goes no further than simply summarizing what had already been published in the western academia up to that point.

In the following, I will select a few specific topics to illustrate what I consider to be the drawbacks of this volume. Let me start with Mao. Schram is an authority in the study of Mao’s thought. Even he finds it ambiguous whether to categorize the basic structure of Mao’s thought as western or Chinese. The distinction gets even vaguer for the ideas developed in the later stage of Mao’s life. Schram believes that Mao insisted on adopting the key slogans from Leninism, like Democratic Centralism, as a gesture to demonstrate his loyalty to the Soviet Union. Yet at the same time, Mao used the term “great commons” (da tong) interchangeably with “Communism.” Schram also argues that Mao’s understanding of Marxist’s dialectics was mistaken, and it was such “mistakes”, as he asserts, that later led to the Cultural Revolution when everything was supposed to be negated and overthrown and that proves that Mao was not a real Marxist. My response is as follows. Firstly, how to define and classify Mao’s thought is a challenge in itself not just for Schram, but for most Western scholars. To see Mao as a creative thinker is simply an unacceptable starting point for them. Secondly, even a serious scholar like Schram cannot help falling into a swamp in which Mao is seen as indulgent in struggles for his personal power. For example, Schram asserts that Mao attacked the leading figures in arts, literature, philosophy and education not because he thought they belonged to the privileged who exploited the masses, but because they had not accepted the Utopia that Mao was fighting for, and thus was not following his orders full-heartedly. Schram believes that in Mao’s definition, dissidents naturally became revisionists. Schram also believes that Mao would sacrifice the political apparatus he had spent decades in building, simply to eliminate whoever he considered to be his enemies. I am appalled by Schram’s lack of understanding in the true purpose as well as the significance of the Cultural Revolution. I think it is time for any scholar who takes interest in studying China to learn some postmodernism, postcolonialism and poststructuralism.

Moving on to the Cultural Revolution. Harry Hardings acknowledges that it is “exceptionally” difficult to have a fair evaluation of the Cultural Revolution. Not only were the relevant materials inaccurate, but given that the Cultural Revolution had only been a recent history of less than two decades, there hardly existed any analysis done from a historical perspective. As a result, to conclude his chapter, Hardings quoted a refugee in Hong Kong who used to be a Red Guard, and claimed that his anger and disappointment represented that of the entire generation. This Red Guard said that when he was in the countryside, peasants complained to him that the Mao era was worse than the time of KMT government, and that they liked Liu Shaoqi better than Mao Zedong. Does this person truly represent the entire generation? Which class of the generation? Did the Red Guard accurately represent the words of Chinese peasants? These were peasants of which region in China?

China’s foreign relation also takes up a substantial space, in particular, Sino-Soviet and Sino-US relations. I would like to pick on a view widely shared by the foreign scholars and the anti-Mao, anti-Communist Chinese elites. That is, Chinese people, the Chinese government and the CCP created its own diplomatic isolation for the purpose of keeping the foreigners out of their country. Such isolation was most intensified during the Cultural Revolution; it was not until Mao’s death and the Gang of Four’s downfall that China finally opened up to the world, which is why it was called the Reform and Opening-up Policy (gaige kaifang). A careful inspection of facts would prove this argument groundless. It is true that in Mao’s time, the CCP government did systematically expropriate foreign capitalists and rendered them no basis for survival in China; yet China had never officially refused diplomatic ties with other countries, especially economic and cultural ties. China had tried to gain recognition in the UN, but the effort was stalled for a long time by strong opposition from the west, especially the U.S.

China never “liberated” Hong Kong by force, another indicator of China’s intension to reach out– since in the Cold War era, Hong Kong was the only gateway China had to the outside world. Beijing’s “leaning to one side” (yibian dao) in the 1950s was an inevitable political choice, but nonetheless that did not constitute the so-called isolation. In the 1960s, China had to split with the Soviet Union out of two major concerns, ideological differences and the need to maintain independence. Even at the height of the Cold War, China remained in defence and was a weaker force. On the contrary, the U.S. and its allies were always on the offensive side, exemplified by the U.S.-initiated Korean War and the Vietnam War. China in those years, under Mao’ leadership, could only do what it had to do, otherwise it would have to surrender to the Western capitalists’ camp and become a de facto dependent the way Japan, Taiwan, South Korea and Singapore did. Therefore, if the clock were to be turned back, I doubt China would have done anything differently given the same circumstances. It was not until the tide of the Cold War started to shift did it become possible for Sino-U.S. relation to ease, and that was when Mao and Zhou invited Nixon for a visit in China. If the so called opening-up only refers to the rapprochement between the U.S. and China, then China had already opened up under Mao’s leadership. And if opening-up does not refer to this, what else then? If there had not been such rapprochement, the U.S.-dependent countries like Japan and Australia would have never dared to officially establish diplomatic ties with China.

Nor does China’s relationship with the Southeast Asian countries suggest that China was isolating itself. People from these Southeast Asian countries were prevented from interacting with Chinese because of their own governments’ anti-Communist stance. China, on the other hand, hoping to soften these governments’ anti-China stance, decided not to recognize double citizenship, i.e. overseas Chinese who had become citizens of another country must forgo their Chinese citizenship. To various degrees, the Chinese government did support some Communist movements and guerrilla activities in Southeast Asia and some other neighbouring countries. It was nonetheless a logical strategy, given its security concern and regime nature, and thus should not come as a surprise. Similarly, the U.S. has been supporting the anti-Communist regimes till this day. One would get an idea of how difficult the situation was for China by simply looking into the case of Indonesia. The country’s then president Sukarno took a neutral stance towards Communism and China, and was overthrown as a result. Suharto came to power essentially through a coup disguised as an effort to counter a Communist coup. During his time in office, with the acquiescence, if not support, from the U.S, the U.K and Australia, Suharto carried out a massacre which took away lives of hundreds of thousands, or even millions of innocent civilians, most of whom Chinese Indonesians. This is considered to be a public secret, but this book I am reviewing somehow tactically shifts all the responsibilities onto China.

There are many other ungrounded arguments throughout the book. For example, attributing the end of the “active period” of the Cultural Revolution in 1969 to the unexpected overreaction by the Russians to the Zhenbao Island incident, or claiming Lin Biao was against easing ties with the U.S – neither have factual basis. In the discussions about China’s domestic politics, this book also arbitrarily overemphasized the U.S. factor, asserting that due to U.S. military intervention in Vietnam, Mao had to postpone the launch of the Cultural Revolution till 1966, rather than in 1965 according to the original plan. On the account of Sino-U.S. rapprochement, China was characterized not as the active party, but the passive one, and China’s reaction towards U.S. suggestions and goodwill was either apathy, or rejection. Hence no mention was made in the book about the “Table Tennis Diplomacy” (pingpangqiu waijiao). The book certainly dramatizes the incident when some radical young insurgents surrounded foreign embassies and burned down the British office during the Cultural Revolution. As unfortunate as they were, this incident was organized by a small number of young radicals and had little bearing on China’s foreign policies. Also, it is unjustified to regard the 1962 China-Indian border dispute as an invasion by China. Moreover, it is unwarranted to suggest that if it had not been for the Cultural Revolution, China would have obtained its status in the UN years before 1971.

As far as I am concerned, the chapter on education by Suzanne Pepper is the richest in content, the most comprehensive, and the most fair among all chapters, and can stand the harsh test of time. The existence of some underground literature during the Cultural Revolution period (let’s agree on it lasting for 10 years for the time being) was not recognized in the chapter on literature and arts. That is a pity, but no fault of the author since no relevant historic archives surfaced at the time when the chapter was being written.

I would conclude this review by pointing out the difficulty of studying China in general. That is, any study about China should involve reading Chinese materials published in China, and that’s where the complications arise. Firstly, Chinese is not the easiest language in the world in terms of reading and writing. It would be unrealistic to expect Western scholars to comprehend Chinese to the extent that they do with their native alphabetic language. This makes inter-disciplinary research much more difficult in researching Chinese archives. Yet, the very lack of inter-disciplinary insights is often what limits the depth and the breadth of perspectives. Secondly, the Chinese government is both capable and efficient in controlling written materials, a feature both inherited historically and reinforced by the current political system. This creates additional barrier to accessing reliable information. Thirdly, the Chinese government tend to boast its achievements, partly due to its sense of insecurity. Western scholars are strongly immune to this tendency, but as a result, they become very receptive to negative comments made by Chinese government and Chinese. Because Western scholars have no immunity to negative statements, they are inclined to consider these as “the Chinese have finally told the truth.” Thus when Chinese began to say how awful the Cultural Revolution had been, those Western leftists who were originally sympathetic became so ashamed that some of them switched to the far right, going further than the original rightists. And the original rightists had rejoiced and said, I told you!

Then the question becomes, is there a left-right difference among scholars? That would be for the readers to judge.


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