China’s return to Maoism
With the ascendance of Xi Jinping and his consolidation of power, China, perhaps, owing to the necessity of power struggle And fissures in the party line, is harking back to the Mao era, Marx and Marxism, red tradition, the countryside campaign, state dominated economic growth, hyper-nationalism, and wolf warrior diplomacy.
The post 1949 internal and external dynamics in China were determined by “war is inevitable” and “class struggle” paradigms. Mao Zedong, the then the supreme leader of China, made an immediate choice of “lean to one side”, but as the differences with the Soviet Union grew, the paradigm shifted to “to fight with two fists” (两个拳
confrontation with both the superpowers. Internally, as the “class struggle” took center stage, various campaigns such as the “Three Antis” (corruption, waste and bureaucracy) of 1951, “Five Antis” (bribery, theft of state property, tax evasion, cheating on government contracts, and stealing state economic intelligence) of 1952, the “Anti-rightist Campaign” between 195759, and finally the ten years of chaos in form of the “Cultural Revolution” (1966-76) were launched one after another for the need of political struggles that inflicted untold miseries on the Chinese people. The “Red Guards” holding Mao’s “Little Red Book” went on a rampage, attacking and killing the “imperialists”, “bourgeoisie”, “capitalist roaders”, intellectuals in those vicious “struggle sessions”. Even the Confucius and Buddhist statues and temples were vandalised. It has been estimated that during the “Cultural Revolution”, also pronounced as “10 bad years of great disaster” (十年浩劫), between half a million to two million people were killed and millions left scarred. If the fatalities caused by the man-made famine of 1959-61 are counted, a study titled “The Demography of China’s 1958-61 Famine: A Closer Examination” by Zhao Zhongwei and Anna Reimondos (2012) points to deaths in excess of 30 million.
Though the Communist Party of China (CPC) never carried out a serious appraisal of the “Cultural Revolution”, however, after the demise of Mao, the CPC did hold Mao responsible for the “great proletarian revolution” that he spearheaded. The resolution passed by the Sixth Plenum of the 11th Central Committee on 27 June 1981 entitled
“On questions of Party history” pronounced him as arrogant and remarked that he “divorced himself from practice and from the masses, acted more and more arbitrarily and subjectively, and increasingly put himself above the Central Committee of the Party.” Nevertheless, the resolution also exonerated him of the crimes by noting that “his contributions to the Chinese revolution far outweigh his mistakes.” The criticism was perhaps necessary as China opened to the outside world, dismantled the planned economy gradually and allowed criticism of the “Cultural Revolution” by intellectuals. Since then, many writings appeared on bookstalls across China, depicting death and destruction. Some narrations of the scarred victims are too graphic and have been known as “scar literature”
in China. However, with the ascendance of Xi Jinping and his consolidation of power, China, perhaps, again owing to the necessity of power struggle and fissures in the party line, is harking back to the Mao era, Marx and Marxism, red tradition, the countryside campaign, state dominated economic growth, hyper-nationalism, and wolf warrior diplomacy. Early in February this year, the CPC officially released the new version of A Brief History of the Communist Party of China, a designated textbook for the study of Party history. The new edition doesn’t list the “Cultural Revolution” as a chapter in the contents, but makes it a part of the chapter entitled “Exploration and tortuous development of socialist construction” (1949-1976) and downplays the deaths and miseries inflicted by the “Cultural Revolution” on people as well as the role and motive of Mao Zedong for launching the “Cultural Revolution”. The most striking feature of the new Party history is that Xi Jinping and his New Era occupy one-fourth of a century of party history, thus outweighing the socialist construction and the reform era of his predecessors. Undoubtedly, without the shock of the “Cultural Revolution”, the CPC would not have experimented with liberalization. On the other hand, the kind of economic, cultural and political space created by the reforms and individual economy in the last four decades has come back to haunt the CPC of its dangers, especially distrust of the authority by the millennial population. It is for these reasons that people are increasingly witnessing the following phenomena of the so called “Red China” in Xi’s new era.
One, literary inquisition/ persecution or the so-called wenziyu (文字狱), refers to official persecution of intellectuals for their writings. The literary inquisition starting from the “burning of Confucian classics and burying scholars alive”
during the Qin Dynasty (221BC-206 BC) to present day has gone unabated. Surprisingly, some of these were due to the naming taboo, i.e. even a single Chinese character that is part of the emperor’s personal name was also forbidden in writings. In recent years, Chinese characters which are negatively associated with Xi Jinping’s surname “Xi” (习) have been proscribed from the Chinese internet. For example, Cui (翠) character (emerald green) has “xixi” (习习) on top and “Zu”(卒)at the bottom. If the disassembled characters are translated it implies Xi or Xi twins are dead. The bottom of Cui (
character is also read as “cu” (卒), which means a pawn, therefore one can imagine the sensitivities related to these characters. Another hilarious example is how the characters such as “louxi” (陋习bad habits) have been changed to “louren” (陋刃bad blades) in a slogan “Raise the standard of civilized hygiene, get rid of bad blades” (提高文明卫
owing to the naming taboo. Netizens drawing comparison between Winnie the Pooh and Chinese President have also been censored.
Two, censoring of former Premier Wen Jiabao’s letter, a tribute to his late mother published by Macao Herald is another case of literary inquisition. The reasons behind the censure are attributed to Wen’s veiled criticism of Xi Jinping’s policies and the “Cultural Revolution”. One, the former Premier said in his tribute, “I retired (ᚒㅌભ
after having worked in the Zhongnanhai for 28 years, including 10 years as Premier.” This is construed as his veiled attack on Xi Jinping changing the Constitution and wanting to become President for life. Two, he castigated the “Cultural Revolution” many a time in his letter, contrary to idolizing the symbols of “Cultural Revolution” in the new era. He wrote, “During the ‘Cultural Revolution’, his father was imprisoned in a school and often subjected to barbaric (㊁ⱄ⊛) ‘interrogation’, beatings and abuses (“审讯”ᛂ骂)”. Third, he envisaged a China that is “full of fairness and justice” (ᐔᱜ义), hinting that he has opinion about the direction in which the Chinese society is heading. In the same vein, when Chinese origin Chloe Zhao won the Best Director award for her film “Nomadland” at the Golden Globes in February, the film was censored in
China, only for one reason that a decade back she had described China as “a place where there are lies everywhere”. The “witch hunt” and purges of the “virus carriers” are not limited to Hong Kong and Xinjiang, the mainland Chinese too have faced the brunt. For example, recently a 19-yearold Wang Jingyu, a resident of Chongqing municipality in Sichuan was arrested by the UAE police for extradition to China, according to Wang. Wang’s only “crime” was that early in February this year, he questioned China’s version of PLA casualties in the Galwan border clash. Another netizen called Qiu Ziming, who also doubted the Chinese version of Galwan fatalities, was sentenced to 8 months in prison for “defaming heroes and martyrs” on 1 June 2021. Many such people have been pronounced as “bedbugs” for “criticizing and discrediting the heroes” by state media.