Symposium 2003

The State of Revolutionary Ideology in Modern-day China

by Landon Yoder


Over the course of history, many violent revolutions have brought forth new leaders and new ideas. They came in a great many forms and in response to a variety of circumstances. However, the Communist Revolution in China remains perhaps the greatest recent example. Not only because it took more than two decades to complete, but also because there was an attempt to institutionalize revolution after some initial changes to build state infrastructure.


China is an incredibly complex entity with a history approximately 22 times longer than the United States and is as far culturally from the West as it is geographically. Particularly in contrast to the Western acceptance of dissent, has been a long-standing institution of Confucian principles. When oversimplified, Confucian principles mean that children submit to their parents, wives submit to husbands, and citizens obey the state. To disagree with a superior in China is risky business, because ultimately the most important thing is to maintain good appearances.


With such a strong emphasis on hierarchy and submission to authorities it is surprising that a revolution in China ever occurred. Part of what I wish to examine were the circumstances in which revolution took place, considering that the 20th century witnessed two Chinese revolutions, the first ending the long dynastic tradition in 1911. I also wish to examine the attempt to institutionalize revolution during the early part of the People’s Republic of China, the PRC, most notable during the Cultural Revolution, as well as look at the popular movement for democracy during the decade following the Cultural Revolution. What appears from the history of the PRC is the eventual loss of revolutionary zeal due to a combination of factors: scarce economic resources because of overpopulation, the threat of state repression, and satiation from current economic growth.


The initial change in the course of Chinese history that led to revolution has most often been traced back to the Opium War between China and Great Britain in 1839. It is important to note that from 1839 to the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, China withstood perhaps the fiercest roller coaster ride in its history under revolutionary thrusts for control. China up to this point had arguably been the pinnacle of civilization on Earth at four different times; even the Roman Empire had but one turn.


Thus, when the Qing Empire decided that their dealings with Great Britain were not to their benefit, they told the British to pack up and go. Unfortunately for the Chinese, British weaponry was far superior—despite the fact that the Chinese invented gunpowder almost a half millennium before Europe; yet, they used it for fireworks, not firearms. With only half a dozen battles, British gunboats won the Opium War of 1839-1842 for complete access to Chinese ports.


Within a decade, the Qing Empire then faced its first serious internal revolt since the Qing took power in 1644. It took eleven years to defeat the Taiping Rebellion, but subsequent revolts followed over the next half-century that continued to weaken Qing control until their eventual overthrow in 1911. What seems significant during this time period was the constant internal and external pressure on the Qing. These two elements mirror the circumstances in which the Chinese Communist Party, known as the CCP, fought for power from 1927 to 1949.
To summarize the time in between the fall of the Qing Empire to the Communists’ Victory, is to say that political life in China had no strong central authority. The primary force was the Kuomintang, the Chinese Nationalist Party. The Kuomintang, known as the KMT, took control with superior military force over the fledgling Chinese Communist Party and numerous landlords who maintained private armies of their own. However, these different groups continued to fight for power until 1949.


In 1931, four years after the KMT established themselves as the dominant political group, the Japanese invaded from the northeast. It marked the beginning of 14 years of Japanese aggression on Chinese soil. Only during the years of 1937-1941 did the Communists and the Nationalists put aside their difference to jointly fight against Japan.


During the time when the Communist Party was fighting the KMT and the Japanese, they were also organizing and mobilizing common Chinese to join their cause. What began as a miniscule group of 57 members in 1921, and remained only several hundred at the dawn of the 1930s, grew approximately from 40,000 in 1937 to 1,200,000 in 1945.


So why was revolution becoming the popular option during this time? Similarly to the Qing collapse, the KMT faced the internal threat of Communist revolt and the external threat of Japanese conquest. The Communists, however, added a new element that did not occur during the first revolution in 1911. They organized the peasantry. Whereas the first revolution was but a small group of idealists, who could not maintain control after their military success, hence the lack of central political authority, the Communist Revolution became a popular movement. The Communists preached and practiced equitable reforms of land distribution that greatly benefited the vast majority of people. Farmers were not tenants of unjust landlords, but under Communist-ruled territories managed small plots of their own land.


Under this pretext, the Communists marched along to victory in 1949, after three years of civil war, and drove the KMT to Taiwan where they remain to this day. With that as the backdrop to Communist Rule, Mao Zedong, the first Communist leader of the People's Republic, attempted to institutionalize revolution. Mao's sporadic policies kept people continually on their toes, never knowing exactly how to best obey the Party. People therefore tried their best to do what Mao suggested. The revolutionary zeal, which resulted from Mao's directives, was most prevalent during the Proletarian Cultural Revolution. Surprising, while the chaos experienced from the Cultural Revolution caused widespread fear of state repression, less than a decade after the end of the Cultural Revolution, many common Chinese pushed for democratic reforms. It is particularly striking when considering, not only the time frame, but the extent to which Chinese people are taught to submit to authority.


"From 1950 to 1953, the Communist Party consolidated its hold on power in rural areas by conducting the Land Reform Campaign, which confiscated land from landlords, rich peasants, and sometimes "middle peasants" and distributed it to poor and landless farmers."


While the Land Reform Campaign reflected the promises and the convictions of the Communist Party it was not a sign of the times to come. Providing people with their own land motivated poor farmers to produce, but when the Communist Party attempted to socialize agriculture, people's motivations relaxed, but worse local Party officials misled the leaders in Beijing as to the actual production of food, for fear of looking bad. Thus, a larger supply of food left the countryside for commercial use, while farmers experienced wide-spread starvation at the end of the 1950s.


The high degree of starvation in China at this time was not due entirely to the misuse of agricultural resources, although it was the primary reason. With Mao Zedong's encouragement, many Chinese increased the size of their households. In 1953, China's population was 583 million; by 1980 it had increased to over 1 billion people. Journalist Richard Bernstein interviewed a Chinese intellectual who commented on Mao's refusal to address overpopulation. "'Because of the mistake of one man…we have half a billion more people than we can comfortably support. In that sense alone, Mao is our greatest tragedy.'"


In addition to the failure of socialized agriculture and the increased population burden, was the Hundred Flowers Campaign in 1956. Hundred Flowers was a specific reference to a blossoming of ideas among China's intellectuals. The Campaign would propel China forward and prevent political stagnation within the Communist Party. Perhaps the initiative had been a trap from the start, but after only several months the CCP, led by the convictions of Mao Zedong, cracked down and severely punished intellectuals who had suggested ideas contrary to the Party line.


Because of Mao's hard line against dissenters, combined with the serious economic failures during the first decade of CCP rule, Mao's opponents attempted to marginalize his authority. However, in 1966 Mao successfully appealed to the masses, particularly students, to follow his directives in revolutionizing the country.


This was the Proletarian Cultural Revolution: a time of utter chaos and fear that touched nearly every corner of China. The students, known as the Red Guards, were responsible for exposing and punishing "rightists." Frequently, people would be accused of acting or speaking against the Party. Regardless of people's guilt, accusations would be continued until a concession was made by the accused, which would then result in a new round of accusations, until the accused was exposed and punished in public. A former Red Guard recalled, "If [someone] showed any resistance, we attacked him [or her], sometimes physically. After a few attacks, no one else resisted us." In hindsight, he also recalled the ignorance the Red Guards held at the time. “We thought Chairman Mao was giving us an opportunity to practice and to gain revolutionary experience.”


The first two years of the Cultural Revolution were the most devastating and chaotic, but the effects of Mao's initiative lasted through his death in 1976 and until the subsequent punishment of his allies over the following two years.
It would seem as though everyone in China would have breathed a deep sigh of relief when Mao died and Deng Xiaoping entered the scene as the next leader of the PRC. And for the most part everyone did. What didn't happen, however, was a relaxing of people's desire for change.


In 1979, the Democracy Wall Movement began, where common Chinese demanded the advent of democracy and the freeing of scientific research. It was as much as push for change, as it was a way for people to express their anger and resentment against the Party. "Early in the movement, the writing of critical wall posters had even been encouraged by Deng Xiaoping—probably because most of their criticisms were directed at Deng's enemies in the Politburo."


Throughout the 1980s, protest was always lingering at the back door, but Deng's economic reforms provided enough improvement in the well-being of the populace that people did not revolt when democracy was not provided. "Deng's first major accomplishment was decollectivization," returning the responsibility of farming back to the family. "Within a decade, rural incomes had doubled…." The socialization of the country had waned with an influx of foreign investment and numerous special zones, where capitalism was permitted along China's coast.
The main reason protest seemed not to have erupted in full during the 80's was because of Deng's ability to stimulate the economy. A popular peasant saying during this time was, "Mao Zedong gave us liberation and Deng Xiaoping has given us food."


However, in 1989, political life again became ugly in China. A storm had been brewing since 1987 when nation-wide protests were halted and Hu Yao Baong, a popular figure and friend to activists, was ousted from the CCP. In April of 1989, Hu Yao Baong died. In his memory, students began organizing widespread protests and the dissent caught fire—drawing in hundreds of thousands of working Chinese as they occupied Tiananmen Square.


Unlike the Cultural Revolution, where a political leader had encouraged revolutionary activity to purify the country, the Tiananmen Square demonstrations were clearly led by common Chinese and were a fierce call for political reform. For weeks neither side budged and while the CCP had brought in the military, soldiers and tanks were cut off from reaching the square by other protesters and citizens.


However, on June 4, the stalemate ended. Tanks marched their way onto the Square crushing people, while soldiers also moved in spraying gunfire into the crowds. The death toll was in the thousands, but an official count is difficult, because to this day the CCP denies that the massacre ever existed.
So what happened in China after the Tiananmen Square Massacre? Did people rebound from the brutality, as they had after the Cultural Revoution? Did revolutionary ideology imbed itself in an even stronger form—leading people to armed revolt? Well—no. In fact, it is nearly impossible to tell that the Chinese of today live in a society that once held revolution as one of its highest virtues.


What seems evident in hindsight is that while Mao Zedong cultivated revolutionary ideology in China, he did so to serve his interests in maintaining power. So while common Chinese saw his death and the emergence of Deng Xiaoping as an opportunity for presenting new ideas, China has never genuinely set about the task of making revolution a virtue. Currently, the CCP still represses dissent, jailing people who speak out against the Party and uses capital punishment with astonishing frequency to maintain civilian obedience to the law.
During the ‘90s, China became more deeply engrossed in development and free market enterprise. Students at universities today are more interested in shopping and getting a good job, than studying Mao Zedong thought, or fighting for political reform. While the capitalist track has benefited a lot of Chinese, it has also tripled the gap between rich and poor over the last decade.


China's New Rulers, a book released last year that is based on files released by the CCP, describes the ideas of China's top seven leaders. They do not promote Mao Zedong thought, nor do they push for democracy and human rights. They are technocratic and believe in modernizing China with a strong authoritarian fist.
What appears through the various strands of recent Chinese history, be it related to overpopulation, state repression, or economic satiation, is a populace that is currently unprepared and uninterested in pursuing any form of revolution. The change in mindset from Mao to today's leaders marks a distinct transformation from revolutionary ideology as a necessary and vital component within political life to a harmful and disruptive force. Unless a cataclysmic event rocks the political climate or an economic catastrophe occurs, it is unlikely that China will see another revolution any time soon.