Taiwan Today

Ambassador Ch'en Chih-mai's recalling of the 'cultural revolution' is must reading for the new crop of table tennis fans

Some time in 1966, we heard that the Chinese Com­munists were launching a nationwide movement known as the "great proletarian cultural revolution." The term did not suggest anything startlingly new. As far back as the Yenan days, movements to enforce political and cultural conformity were called Rectification Movements, Cheng Feng Yun Tung, and there were many of them, during which helpless wri­ters and artists who had somehow fallen into disfavor were exposed, humiliated and punished. In later years they were called Thought Reform Movements, Ssu Hsiang Kai Tso Yun Tung, with similar purposes and consequences. Easily the most dramatic and heart­rending was the Hundred Flowers Movement, Ming Fang Yun Tung, during which intellectuals responding to the call of the authorities for free expression found to their regret that they had taken it too literally. When we first heard of the "great proletarian cultural revolu­tion," we thought it was only the latest of a long series of such campaigns.

Soon afterwards we found that the "great proletarian cultural revolution" contained a new element - the Red Guards. A few months later, some Red Guards defected to Taiwan where they talked freely of their fantastic experiences. The Red Guards, we learned, were composed of young men and women, many of whom had not yet come of age, who had organized themselves into bands, roaming all over the country and congregating on Peiping en masse ostensibly to "exchange revolutionary experiences." The railroads and buslines were forced to provide them with free transportation. Local authorities were intimidated to give them free room and board. They took anything they wanted, including personal files and public moneys of governmental agencies. They meted out summary justice.¹

Wherever they went, the Red Guards plastered all public places with crudely written posters in large characters, called ta szu pao. This was no novelty. Public posters have been a standard medium of student protest from way back. What astonished us in this instance was that the Red Guards' posters, besides shooting at the usual targets such as American impe­rialism and Soviet revisionism, also attacked in violent terms some of the most important and powerful men in the Communist establishment, naming names with stinging epithets. Was the Red Guard Movement directed against the Communist establishment? Who was behind it?

After congregating in Peiping in large numbers, the Red Guards received a letter from no less than Mao Tse-tung himself, dated August 1, 1966. In the letter, Mao called upon the Red Guards to "rebel against the landlord class, the bourgeoisie, imperial­ism, and revisionism and their running dogs," and against "the handful of Party persons in authority taking the capitalist road."² Four days later, on August 5, 1966, Mao himself contributed a big-character poster expressing his wrath at "some leading comrades who enforced bourgeois dictatorship and struck down the surging movement of the cultural revolution."

Mao's endorsement defined the true nature of the Red Guards Movement. It was further clarified by an editorial in the Red Flag labeling it the battle call to the whole party and the people of the whole country "to completely smash the bourgeois headquarters" in the Communist establishment. In other words, it was an internal fight among the leaders of the hierarchy.

The Red Guards behaved like a bunch of spoiled kids, which in fact they were. They undertook forcibly to change the names of streets and stores into such ridiculous names as "Anti-Revisionist Street," "East is Red Barber Shop." They threatened to storm the museums housing China's priceless art treasures. They attacked the foreign embassies. They beat up people for wearing clothes "in the Hongkong style." They forced girls to take off their makeup and cut their hair. They criticized people for leading "a bourgeois life," often with strong erotic overtones. Tao Chu, the boss of South China, was accused of giving too lavish banquets and taking too much ginseng for his health. Li Ching-chuan, the overlord of Szechwan, was lambasted for liking to eat pigeon eggs. The Pan­ ch'an Lama, the Living Buddha, was described both as a sex pervert and a rapist. The secretary of the Shanghai Party Headquarters, one Chang Hao-po, was found guilty of watching a movie showing the ballet "Swan Lake" and for enjoying the melody of the popular song "Ramona." Victims were dragged into the streets and paraded, with large placards hanging around their necks. In the frenzied rampage, mighty heads fell one by one. The accused were given no chance to defend themselves, After all, how can one refute the charge that one likes pigeon eggs?

Mao Tse-tung, with his wife Chiang Ching by his side, must have enjoyed every minute of the show. The Red Guards were disgracing and destroying his enemies. His principal rival, Liu Shao-ch'i, was finally reduced to impotence, a prisoner on the island Ying­ t'ai in the artificial lake in the Forbidden City where the Manchu Empress Dowager, Tz'u Hsi, used to keep the Emperor Kuang-hsu. It really did not matter that the country was plunged into confusion and anarchy, that the administrative machinery had fallen apart, that the economy was in a shambles, and that the educational institutions were practically non-existent. Mao was winning over his enemies, and that was all that mattered to him.

"Political power," Mao once said, "issues from the barrel of a gun." This statement is a gem in what is known as "Mao Thought." So the only thing untouched by the Red Guards was the armed force. Mao was allied with Lin Piao, the military commander, whom he had made his "official successor." Whatever his political leanings, Ch'ien Hsueh-shen, the man mainly responsible for the nuclear tests and space satellites, was showered with high honors.

Thus the great proletarian cultural revolution has turned the country into a military state. The army is ubiquitous and everywhere in positions of power. It has acquired a heightened role as a source of in­spiration and a model to be emulated by other organ­izations. As long as Lin Piao and Ch'ien Hsueh-shen remain loyal, Mao has no worries.

The situation of Communist China today is anomalous indeed. It is a Communist state without a work­ing Communist Party. Its head of state, Liu Shao-ch'i, is in prison. Its foreign minister, Ch'en I, has dis­appeared from the public eye. One is tempted to paraphrase a well-known epitaph concerning the Holy Roman Empire by saying that the "great proletarian cultural revolution" is neither great, nor proletarian, nor cultural, and not even a revolution. It is, in fact, a brutal power struggle between Mao Tse-tung and Lin Piao on one side and Liu Shao-ch'i and his associates on the other. With the issue resolved, for the time being at least, in Mao­ Lin's favor, the Red Guards have served their purpose and have been disbanded. To add insult to injury, they were told to go back to school!

The origins of the "great proletarian cultural revolution" may be traced back to the events of the mid-1950s, culminating in the Lu-shan Conference of July­-August, 1959.

Following the conquest of the China mainland in October, 1949, Mao launched a series of campaigns to deal with his enemies, actual or potential. These campaigns were known as the "Three-Anti" and the "Five-Anti" movements. They were waves of terror waged by the authorities under Mao's direction to get rid of all dissident elements. By 1958, Mao felt the time had arrived for him to put through his program to turn the country into what he considered to be a true Marxist-Leninist state. The program came under the general heading the Three Red Banners, namely the General Line, the Great Leap Forward and the People's Commune. The ruthless enforcement of the program turned the country upside down, but it was a fiasco. In late August, 1958, Mao mounted an artillery blockade of Quemoy as the first step towards the invasion of Taiwan. This, too, turned out to be a dismal failure.

With nothing but failure on his ledger, Mao was wide open for attack by his enemies. In April, 1959, the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party relieved him of his position as head of state, leaving him only the post as chairman of the party. This was a humiliating blow. In July the same year, the Lu-shan Conference was called to review the general situation. The first shot was fired by P'eng Te-huai. The signs were ominous indeed. P'eng was no ordinary party member. He was commander of the First Field Army. He saw service in the Korean War. For his long military record and successes in the field, he held the august title of "marshal of the army." He was "minister of national defense." His close associate was Huang K'e-ch'eng, chief of general staff. Just before the Lu-shan Conference, he concluded an extensive trip to the Soviet Union and several Eastern European countries.

In a series of reports and statements at the con­ference, P'eng criticized Mao's program in strong terms. He told the conference that the production figures of the Great Leap Forward program were largely fabrications, including those of Mao's own district in Hunan province. He called the whole effort "unsound," "half­-baked," "over-zealous." He criticized Mao for being unreceptive to bad news and alternate proposals, "similar to Stalin in his last days."

One of the most extraordinary documents to come out of Communist China is Mao's 40-minute reply. According to secretarial notes, Mao spoke extemporaneously, but a verbatim record was kept. Mao tried to make several points, but he was unable to drive them home. He kept flying off on tangents, making irrelevant literary and historical references. It is al­most incoherent. It appeared that he lost control of himself under strain and pressure, revealing a danger­ous aspect of his personality.³

P'eng's attack was a matter of utmost gravity. His seemingly casual reference to Stalin was taken most seriously. Could he be playing Khrushchev's game of de-Stalinization in China? Could Khrushchev have made P'eng the agent to topple Mao? Was P'eng acting on his own? Was there someone behind him?

The battle that ensued was tortuous and tumul­tuous. P'eng was charged with being "anti-party" and was dismissed. The affair shook the party to its very foundations. It also contributed greatly to the split be­tween the Chinese and the Soviet Communist Parties.

After 1959, Mao used to disappear for long periods, giving rise to wild speculations. We now know he was traveling around the country trying to line up support for his comeback. "For seven years," he was to say in 1966, "I was in the shadows." During those long, dark years, he schemed and plotted studiously against his enemies, principally Liu Shao-ch'i. The "great proletarian cultural revolution" was the platform he built to regain full power.

In 1959 and 1960, Wu Han, a historian specializ­ing in the Ming dynasty, published a series of articles praising the courage and integrity of a Ming high offi­cial, Hai Jui, for daring to scold the reigning Emperor Chia-ching for neglect of duties. Hai Jui was dismissed from office. Wu Han's articles evoked interest only among the professional historians. Some time later, Wu Han was persuaded by the celebrated Peiping opera singer, Ma Lien-liang, to follow up the articles by com­ posing a libretto for an opera in the traditional style, entitled Hai Jui Pa Kuan, "Hai Jui Dismissed from Office," which received wide critical acclaim. At the time, the articles and the opera were taken as the literary products of a man well qualified to deal with the subject. Wu Han, in fact, continued to be vice mayor of Peiping.

All of a sudden, on November 10, 1965, six years after the opera was first staged, there appeared in the newspaper Wen Hui Pao, an article by Yao Wen-yuan severely criticizing Wu Han and his opera, branding the libretto "not a fragrant flower but a poisonous weed."⁴ Yao Wen-yuan was close to Mao. The article was obviously written on Mao's order. It was- soon followed by many articles and editorials in a concerted campaign against Wu Han. In due course, many others high in the Communist hierarchy were implicated with Liu Shao-ch'i emerging as the principal target, identified only as "China's Khrushchev" or "the person taking the capitalist road."

The main thrust of the campaign was that Wu Han was the mouthpiece of a sinister clique headed by Liu Shao-ch'i working for P'eng Te-huai's absolution. As far back as 1962, Liu had made a speech in a party conference arguing that P'eng's criticism of the Three Red Banners program contained "many elements of truth," that p'eng "cannot be regarded as having committed an error" and that the fight which led to P'eng's dismissal was "wrong and overdone." Liu's speech brought forth an 8,000-word statement by P'eng himself justifying his criticisms by again at­tacking the Three Red Banners program and Mao's leadership. Wu Han was accused of indulging in the old Chinese game of "citing historical examples to condemn current events" (t'o ku fei chin) as the Confucian scholars used to do during the reign of the First Emperor of the Ch'in dynasty more than 2,000 years ago. Mao himself plunged into the battle by declaring bluntly: "Emperor Chia-ching dismissed Hai Jui; in 1959, I dismissed P'eng Te-huai; so P'eng Te-huai is Hai Jui." Mao was really saying that Wu Han, by praising Hai Jui for scolding the Ming Emperor, was in effect supporting P'eng for criticizing Mao.

The campaign against Wu Han led to the re-ex­amination of other writers and there were some startling revelations. For example, Teng T'o, chief editor of the party organ, People's Daily, was found to be the real author of a large number of short articles published in the Peiping Evening News later collected under the title Yen Shan Yeh Hua. Writing under a pen name, Teng T'o explored the whole range of Chi­nese historical and cultural heritage and made observations which were totally incompatible with Marxist-Leninist ideology. He even dared to say that "in the Ch'un-ch'iu and Shan-kuo period (the feudal age) some great political leaders saw the need to protect labor."

Chou Yang, the party's deputy propaganda chief, was found to have presided over a symposium on Con­fucius on November 6, 1962, in Chu-fu where Con­fucius was born. During the symposium, Chou praised Confucius as "a great philosopher, a statesman and an educator of ancient China." He even went so far as to say that "there is a large storehouse behind 'the K'ung (Confucius) Family Inn' where the cultural heritage of many thousands of years is in custody." While on the subject of Confucius, it was discovered that Liu Shao-ch'i had made a pilgrimage to Chu-fu in the spring of 1951 where he paid homage to the ancient sage and urged the building of a new shrine at Confucius' tomb. Digging even deeper into the record, Liu was declared guilty of citing the moral concepts of Confucius as norms for character-building in his book Self-Cultivation of a Communist published in 1939! After taking note of all these findings, People's Daily, now no longer under Teng T'o's editorship, solemnly laid down the law in an editorial dated January 10, 1967: "In the 'great proletarian cultural revolution,' one of the major tasks is to crush the feudalistic corpse of Confucianism and to thorough­ly exterminate the extremely reactionary ideology of Confucius."

In the eyes of the Chinese Communists, every­thing before 1949 is "feudalistic." This includes the entire body of Chinese literature. Mao had declared back in the Yenan days that "all our literature and art are for the masses of the people, and in the first place for the workers, peasants and soldiers." While one may point out that Mao's own poetry does not seem to fit this norm at all, Mao's statement has been cited over and over again as the standard for all writers to follow. During the early stage of the Chinese Communist movement, two writers, Lu Hsun and Ting Ling, were singled out as particularly meritorious and were placed on the pedestals of eminence. They were the forerunners of what was known as p'u lo wen hsueh, "proletarian literature." There was in Yenan a Lu Hsun Institute where "cultural workers" were trained. He was the father figure of literature among the Communists. He died early enough to escape the purges, but his mordant satire was no longer ap­preciated in the age of strict conformity. Ting Ling was for a time the mother figure of literature. Un­fortunately, she lived long enough to be humiliated and purged, forced to work as a charwoman in the Peiping Writers' Union Building where she was formerly a director.

Before the Communists captured political power, the party was loud in its praise for the so-called "progressive writers," most notably the novelists Mao Tun (Shen Yen-ping), Pa Chin (a pen name formed by the first syllable of the name Bakunin and the last syllable of the name Kropotkin), Lao She (Shu She-yu), the dramatists T'ien Han, Yang Han-sheng, Ts'ao Yu (Wan Chia-pao). These writers were not necessarily Communist Party members, but by concentrating on exposing the darker side of Chinese society, they served the Communist cause well.

After 1949, these writers found themselves in a most awkward position. Obviously they could not continue to attack the old society which had been overthrown. Neither could they praise the new society which had yet to be born. At the initial stage, these writers, being well known all over the country, became "cultural officers" whose duty it was to lay down rules for the guidance of the younger writers. Soon enough they found to their regret that they could no longer produce any creative work along the lines they had formulated themselves. In their effort to continue writing, they were accused of clinging to bourgeois values and were downgraded or disgraced one by one. Perhaps the only person who managed to remain on top was Kuo Mo-jo, but then his was a special case. After all, he was the man who wrote the poem in which Mao was called "the sun in the sky." Kuo Mo-jo was the "cultural officer" par excellence. He has not written anything creative in the past quarter of a century.

The "great proletarian cultural revolution" was the latest occasion when all literary works, good and bad, old and new, were placed under searching scru­tiny. Broadly speaking, they were divided into two categories, "fragrant flowers" and "poisonous weeds."

First to come under review were the historians whose task it was to rewrite history in accordance with Communist precepts. One work after another was found to have failed to meet the prescribed stand­ards. Even historians well known for their Marxist leanings, such as Chien Po-tsan and Chou Ku-ch'eng, who interpreted 5,000 years of Chinese history as an unending class struggle, could not escape the ax. There is a good reason for it. Communist historiography was concerned at first with re-evaluating historical events and personalities. This type of intellectual exercise is called fan an, "turning over the table." The purpose was to create a new line of gods for the Communist pantheon, now that the old ones had been toppled. But it soon dawned upon the Communists that no such pantheon was really needed. It could also be dangerous. What was Wu Han doing but to stage a fan an on P'eng Te-huai's dismissal?

Next came the novelists. During the earlier cam­paigns, most of the big-name writers had fallen. In the "great proletarian cultural revolution," the newer writers were examined, and most of them were found wanting. A case in point was the long novel (1.3 million words) Morning in Shanghai by Chou Erh-fu published in 1958. Having sold briskly for many years, it was suddenly declared "a poisonous weed" because, according to one critic, "it leads the readers to develop bourgeois thought, become indolent, greedy, vain and irresponsible." Of more political significance was the novel Pao Wei Yenan in which the author gave credit to P'eng Te-huai for successfully defending Yenan in 1947. All the criticisms were directed towards the content of the works. No attention whatsoever was paid to their literary merits.

The dearth of worthy literary productions drove the readers back to the old classics. Apparently there is no law yet against reading them, but to comment on them is quite another matter. Communist writers used to denounce Hu Shih for his commentaries on the Hung Lou Meng. Yu P'ing-po was later taken to task for following in Hu Shih's footsteps. Read­ing erotic novels such as the classic Chin P'ing Mei can get one into serious trouble, as in the case of the above mentioned Chang Hao-po, who happened to like reading Chin P'ing Mei as much as watching "Swan Lake" and hearing "Ramona." People's Daily sternly admonished all good party members "to clean up the bookstalls in the streets, to ban the trash of bureaucratism (sic), the bourgeoisie and revisionists and the anti-party, anti-socialist and anti-Mao thought bad books (including cartoons) and never allow them to poison the youth." If this trend continues, the only book left will be Quotations of Chairman Mao, the magical powers of which have been fully advertised.

The appeal of Chinese plastic art in its various forms is perhaps the hardest thing to discard. In the early days, Mao, following the Soviet example, had enjoined his supporters to embrace what was known as Socialist Realism. It may be categorically stated that, in China as in Russia, not a single worthy work has been produced under such guidance. All the artists have degenerated into producing political propaganda posters in the most revolting manner. Meanwhile, the Chinese people simply cannot forget their rich artistic heritage. They have not lost their good taste. In the early days of the Communist rule, some interest was shown in reproducing major works of art for wide distribution. Art historians such as Fu Pao-shih were allowed to continue their studies. This state of affairs did not last long. After a few years, the trend was reversed. But some people were not prepared to give up. Chang Hsi-jo, "minister of higher education," asked during the Hundred Flowers Movement: "How can we honestly contend that Wang Hsi-chih's calligraphy and Chao Meng-fu's paintings are all feudalistic" and therefore to be considered worthless? Teng To showed in his writings that he genuinely loved the traditional style of painting. His article on the ten great Chinese painters is very know­ledgeable. He urged youngsters to practice calligraphy. He worked at it studiously himself with commendable results.

However, the philosophy underlying Chinese painting, particularly landscape painting, with its appeal for tranquility and repose, its disdain for the mundane struggles of life, is incompatible with Communist ideology. To the Communists, art is nothing but a medium of political propaganda. If the state­ment is ideologically correct, then it is acceptable, how­ever amateurish, banal or asinine it may be. The last two true artists to work in Communist China were Rsu Pei-hung and Ch'i Pai-shih. No work worthy of consideration has been produced since their death. When the Red Guards were on the rampage, works of art were thrown around like waste paper. In the latter part of 1967, a Japanese art dealer, Harada of Fukuoka, bought on the China mainland some 3500 works of art. They were sold to him uncatalogued and contained in jute bags. The contempory painter and collector, Chang Ta-ch'ien, inspected the purchase. While the items were of uneven quality, there were some good things, mostly belonging to the late Ming and Ch'ing periods.

Chiang Ching was a movie actress in Shanghai before she married Mao. She is understandably interested in the theater. Having supervised the production of propaganda plays for decades, she has broadened her field to include the Peiping opera. The propaganda plays were usually the "boy-loves-girl, girl-loves-tractor" type. Since the Korean War, the plays had become increasingly political, with Ameri­can imperialism the chief villain. Mao had long written off the Peiping opera as being "dominated by lords and ladies and their pampered sons and daughters." Chiang Ching has tried to put on some new operas. A typical example is the opera A Bucket of Manure, which tells the story of a man and his wife arguing whether the bucket of manure should be applied to the collective or the private plot of land. Of course the public-spirited partner wins the argument. The opera has been hailed as "a fragrant flower." Mean­while, it was reported that, during its first perfor­mance, some unappreciative theater-goers threw debris on to the stage.

This dismal account may be concluded with a brief reference to a Chinese Communist porcelain exhibition held in Stockholm in January, 1970. Let us quote from the review by Wilfrid Fleisher:

"Perhaps never before has art been so regimented to serve a cause as the glorification of Mao Tse-tung. Propaganda to be effective should be subtle or even disguised, but here it simply shrieks at the public. There is not a single object, among the 177 displayed, that is not connected with Mao and the revolution. Plates, porcelain plaques and vases are decorated with Mao portraits, landscapes of Mao's home in the mountains, Mao's achievements (new bridges, waterfalls, and power plants), soldiers, Red Guards, peasants and farm tractors." (International Herald Tribune, Paris, January 22, 1970.)

The Communist establishment, it appears, has lost all sense of literary and artistic values. Can the same be said of the Chinese people? Speaking of "poisonous weeds," one is reminded of an old Chinese poem, two lines of which read:

Wild fire cannot burn them all;

When the spring wind blows, they'll grow again.

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Editor's note, The author is ambassador to the Holy See. This article was written at the request of the Quadrant of Australia, where Mr. Ch'en was ambassador from 1959 to 1966