On the night of October 6, 1976, Mao’s wife Jiang Qing and Zhang Chunqiao and four others were suddenly arrested and imprisoned. They were called the “Gang of Four”. Prior to that, they had occupied four of the top six positions in China’s power field. Zhang Chunqiao was the fourth most powerful person in China at the Time. “The arrest of the Gang of Four, along with the death of Mao 27 days earlier, were the two most important factors that led to the end of the Cultural Revolution.
Four years later, at the end of 1980, the “Special Court” tried Lin Biao and the Gang of Four, the “two counter-revolutionary groups. Zhang Chunqiao was sentenced to a “suspended death sentence”, which was commuted to Life imprisonment two years later, and in 1998 he was sentenced to “medical parole for illness”.
Forty years have passed, and young people in China no longer know the name of the Gang of Four. However, in 2016, during the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the launch of the Cultural Revolution, the name of Zhang Chunqiao, the main figure of the Gang of Four, was raised again, and his ghost was floating around. What is going on here?
- A documentary on Zhang Chunqiao’s secret visit to Cambodia in 1976
In 2014, The Missing Picture, a Cambodian production, was one of four nominees for “Best Foreign Film” at the Academy Awards. It is a film about the tragedy of the people of Cambodia during the “Red Cambodia” or Communist period (1975-1979), showing how Cambodians were evicted from their homes in the cities, subjected to excessive physical labor on collective farms, starved, punished and died. The immensity of the disaster caused by the Red Cambodia is sad and outrageous. (According to a 2014 International Tribunal trial, between one million seven hundred thousand and two million Cambodians died as a result of torture, starvation, mass executions and overwork practiced by the Red Cambodian, representing between one fifth and one quarter of the total population.)
The film is quite unique. The characters are molded in clay, and the film is interspersed with black-and-white documentaries from the Khmer Rouge period. These documentaries were propaganda items of the time and quite effectively add to the historical texture of the film and also favorably illustrate the origins and causes of the film’s story ……
In these documentaries, I suddenly saw the long-lost Zhang Chunqiao: footage of Zhang Chunqiao’s visit to Cambodia in 1976. The film shows him in high spirits and glowing, looking healthier and younger than Chinese men of his age (this change in appearance brought about by power is another subject worth studying). The huge special plane lands. Zhang Chunqiao led the way down the gangway and shook hands and embraced Pol Pot (1925-1998), the waiting leader of the Cambodian Communist Party; young women presented him with flowers; he and Pol Pot walked past the crowds and soldiers who greeted them; he presented Pol Pot with a large picture of Mao Zedong meeting Pol Pot in a large frame (Mao met Pol Pot in Beijing in June 1975); he held up a tall glass of wine to Pol Pot at the banquet. He clinked glasses with Bobo at a banquet; he sat on a long sofa with Bobo for talks.
In the film, Zhang Chunqiao praised Cambodia’s “Great Leap Forward”, saying that every day was like a big celebration. He told Pol Pot that Cambodia had succeeded through purification and cleansing that China had failed to do. Cambodia is a remarkable ideological testing ground, and a visit here was a lesson learned.
At the time, news of Zhang Chunqiao’s visit to Cambodia was not publicized in Chinese newspapers. The Chinese media never mentioned Zhang Chunqiao’s visit to Cambodia in 1976, let alone reported his conversation with Bobo. Zhang’s visit was a “secret visit” to the Chinese people. In fact, for many years ordinary Chinese people neither knew about the Cambodian revolution nor how much China had spent on supporting the Khmer Rouge. Secrecy was the “norm” at that time. According to the later Cambodian government’s “national historical record”, Zhang Chunqiao visited Cambodia in February 1976. (Thanks to Mr. Song Zheng for his help in finding this date. He is the author of “The Rise and Fall of Maoism: A History of the Chinese “Revolution” and the Khmer Rouge “Revolution,” a 900-page book.)
- Red Kampuchea ruled Cambodia tyrannically for three years and eight months
The introduction to the book “A History of Democratic Kampuchea” (translated by the author) says about what Khmer Rouge did in Cambodia
After taking power in 1975, Khmer Rouge drove two million people living in Phnom Penh and other cities into the countryside to work in agriculture. Thousands of people died during the evacuation of the cities.
It was also at this time that Ch’i Cambodian began to implement its radical Maoist and Marxist-Leninist social transformation. They wanted to transform Cambodia into a rural, classless society. A society in which there were no rich, no poor, and no exploitation. To achieve this transformation, they abolished money, free markets, normal schooling, private property, exotic clothing patterns, religious practices, and traditional Cambodian Culture. Public schools, pagodas, temples, churches, universities, stores, and government buildings were either closed or converted into prisons, barns, re-Education labor camps, and warehouses. There is no public or private transportation, no private property, and no non-revolutionary entertainment. Leisure activities were severely restricted. The entire population, including the leaders of Democratic Kampuchea, were required to wear black, their traditional revolutionary dress.
Under Democratic Kampuchea, all people were deprived of their basic rights. People were not allowed to leave their cooperatives to go outside. The regime also did not allow anyone to gather or hold discussions. If three people met to talk, they were accused of being “enemies” and were arrested or executed.
Family relationships were severely criticized. People were forbidden to express even mild love, humor, or compassion. Khmer Rouge demanded that all Cambodians believe in, obey and respect only the “revolutionary organization”. This “revolutionary organization” was called the “father and mother” of each person.
The Khmer Rouge claimed that only pure people were qualified to build the revolution. As soon as they seized power, they arrested and killed thousands of soldiers, officers and civilian officials of the Khmer Republic regime led by General Lon Nol. These people were regarded as “impure elements”. Over the next three years, they executed thousands of intellectuals, urban dwellers, ethnic minorities such as Cham, Vietnamese and Chinese, and a large number of their own fighters and party members – who were accused of being “traitors.
In the CPP’s 1976 “Four-Year Plan,” Cambodians were required to produce three tons of rice per hectare of land nationwide. This meant that people had to plant and harvest rice for all twelve months of the year. In most areas, Khmer Rouge forced people to work more than twelve hours a day without rest or enough Food.
More specifically, Khmer Rouge created large cooperatives of several thousand people as a step toward the elimination of private property and capitalism. The cooperatives were designed to be self-sufficient to the greatest extent possible. People worked together and ate together in the communal cafeteria, making hunger even worse. Red Cambodia closed its stores. Phnom Penh, the capital, was a large city with a million people, but because of the forced departure of the inhabitants, only 40,000 people and one store remained. That store sold only to people from foreign embassies.
Under Khmer Rouge’s rule, there was never a full formal school. The children studied under trees or in people’s homes. The teachers were often poor peasants with very little education. In addition, the children usually lived separately from their Parents and did not enjoy the pleasures of family life. The leaders of Khmer Rouge, some of whom were very well educated, saw other educated people as potential enemies of the state. Depending on the intellectuals who turned the country into foreign puppets, most of them became targets of killings; thousands of school teachers as well as university-educated people were killed. The Chinese in Cambodia, many of whom had their own businesses, were killed as “bourgeoisie”.
The Cambodians searched everywhere for their enemies: wrongly accused of working for the CIA, the Soviet Secret Police or the Vietnamese. Khmer Rouge built a huge security system with nearly 200 prisons, divided into five levels. The highest level was numbered S-21. Prisoners were Red Cambodian cadres and soldiers accused of betraying the revolution. Fourteen thousand people died in this prison.
- It is no accident that Zhang Chunqiao praised Khmer Rouge for doing something that was ahead of China
All of these mass group persecutions and killings occurred during the process of social transformation and restructuring. It did not end until the Vietnamese army invaded and Ch’i Cambodian retreated to the jungle. The Chinese are no stranger to the set of things that Ch’i Cambodian did, because a good portion of what Pol Pot did in Cambodia was also strongly advocated and practiced by Zhang Chun Qiao in China, only to a slightly different degree and pace. What is the thing that Cambodia has done that “China has not done” that Zhang Chunqiao so strongly affirms and praises? It is money, that is, money. Chibok never used money during their rule, even though they had occupied the capital Phnom Penh and ruled the country for three years, eight months and twenty days.
In “The Lost Film”, the banknotes of the Chibok government are shown. They had printed banknotes, but they never used them. In the film, there are scenes of large amounts of banknotes scattered in the streets. The large amount of brand new bills became garbage. Some of them were later picked up and made into historical collections.
“The role and value of money in our social life is well known both in the East and the West. Despite the fact that money is considered dirty by some, there has not been a “revolution” in which the government has completely abolished the use of money. China’s Cultural Revolution, while violent and intense, did not go so far as to stop the use of money. Modern history is unique in that it is a government and a form of society that does not use money as much as Chikan. A country of eight million people went three years and eight months without the use of banknotes. The abolition of banknotes was the most radical act of state in Khmer Rouge.
Yet Zhang Chunqiao praised the Pol Pot regime for abolishing the currency, doing for Cambodia what “China had not done”-not a polite, offhand compliment. On April 1, 1975, before Chibok occupied the capital Phnom Penh, Zhang Chunqiao published a lengthy article in the Red Flag magazine and the People’s Daily entitled “On the Total Dictatorship of the Bourgeoisie”. In this article, Zhang Chunqiao declared that he wanted to impose the “dictatorship of the proletariat” on “money exchange” as well as “commodity production” and “distribution according to labor”. “.
Zhang Chunqiao’s praise was not an empty response; as he praised Bobo, weapons and food and equipment were being sent from China to Cambodia. Yale University professor Ben Kiernan’s book, “The Pol Pot Regime,” lists the aid China provided to Chibok. In 1975 alone, China gave $2 billion in interest-free loans and $40 million in “gifts. This support sustained Khmer Rouge’s bloody rule.
In “The Missing Film,” the scenes of Zhang Chunqiao’s visit to Cambodia are short, and the film focuses on the miserable life of the Cambodian people under Ch’i Cambodian rule and the confessions of the survivors. But they do not leave out Zhang Chunqiao, thickening the ideological context of the Cambodian tragedy.
As a Writer on the history of China’s Cultural Revolution, it seems to me that this documentary on Zhang Chunqiao gives us a deeper understanding of the Cultural Revolution through the direct connection between China’s Cultural Revolution and the Khmer Rouge. Zhang Chunqiao’s enthusiastic guidance of Ch’ien Ch’ien reveals the social transformation he planned to do in China, although those absurd and brutal “purification” measures were not yet “doable” in China. But if the Gang of Four had been in full power, and Zhang Chunqiao had become Premier, and the Cultural Revolution had continued for ten years, would China still be “prosperous” today?
4, “Letter from prison” praise Zhang Chunqiao theory better than today
Compared to Cambodian films, Zhang Chunqiao has been treated differently in the Chinese world.
In 2015, the Chinese University of Hong Kong Press published “Zhang Chunqiao’s Letter from Prison”. The book comes in two volumes with the same textual content. One volume is typeset in printed type, and the other is in Zhang Chunqiao’s handwriting. Both books are purple cloth hardcover with gilt title deluxe edition. In Chinese books, it is very rare for a book to be bound with such esteem. Those who publish handwriting are usually works with calligraphic value. Or it is the case of such deified figures as Mao Zedong and Lu Xun, but they are only seen in their poetic works, and hardly ever in handwritten editions of entire works.
This shows how much reverence the publisher of “Zhang Chunqiao’s Letter from Prison” had for Zhang Chunqiao. We do not need to trace the publishing insider, after all, Hong Kong is a place with freedom of publication, someone to pay for investment, the publication of any color book, is no one interfered. For reference, in the publisher’s lengthy introduction to the book, comments from three people are quoted. The first is Michael Schoenhals, a Swedish professor of Chinese studies whose Chinese name is Michael Shen. He says that Zhang Chunqiao’s book is “comparable” to “Notes from Prison” written by Gramsci, the secretary of the Italian Communist Party in the 1920s.
Zhang Chunqiao’s book has been published for more than a year. Professor Shen Mac has no further arguments, explanations or corrections for such a comment. Whether Gramsci’s book is “good” or not will not be discussed in this article. But is Zhang Chunqiao’s new book “good”? We can discuss it.
It should be noted that Antonio Gramsci, although he was the leader of the Italian Communist Party, although his books were translated into Chinese and published in China, and although he is known as the most important Marxist thinker of the twentieth century, did not hold power and did not have much opportunity to implement his theories on paper. But in this respect, Zhang Chunqiao was very different from Gramsci. He was the deputy head of the powerful “Central Cultural Revolution Group” at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution. He was one of the drafters of the “Circular 516” and the “Sixteen Articles”, two programmatic documents that initiated and guided the Cultural Revolution. Not only that, Zhang Chunqiao was involved in writing and reviewing all the important documents from the earliest to the last guiding documents of the Cultural Revolution.
When Zhang Chunqiao went to Cambodia in early 1976, several other important “penmen” of the Cultural Revolution, such as Wang Li, Guan Feng, Qi Benyu and Chen Boda, had already been sent to prison (this is one of the characteristics of the Cultural Revolution: there are always people who are popular in the Cultural Revolution, but soon they are sent to prison. These people, who had done so much harm to others, had no place to “settle down”. (In the Cultural Revolution, the victims were killed and the perpetrators were not safe), but Zhang Chunqiao was an important figure in the theory and practice of the Cultural Revolution from the beginning to the end. He even played a major role in Chikan’s revolution – as seen in the “Lost Films” movie.
It turns out that Gramsci, who lived only 46 years, was nothing more than a thinker. Zhang Chunqiao’s theory was practiced during the Cultural Revolution in China, which had a population of 800 million, and guided Cambodia to practice it quite thoroughly. The consequence was that millions of people were persecuted to death and the people were left in poverty. This is a memory that many Chinese people will not forget. But not many people understand the basis for those who still say Zhang Chunqiao is “wonderful” today.
Zhang Chunqiao was one of the main theorists of the Cultural Revolution that Mao always relied on, and was a die-hard Maoist. He was impressed by his contemptuous attitude of shutting up in court. The book “Letter from the Prisoner” shows no remorse for his past actions, and according to the Chinese Communist Party law, a suspended death sentence without repentance is “deserving of death”. However, not only did he die without treatment, but he also left behind this posthumous book, which was praised as “beautiful” – which can only be considered, to a considerable extent, as saying that the theory and practice of the Cultural Revolution was “beautiful”.
In Zhang Chunqiao’s Letters from Prison, in addition to letters written by Zhang from prison, there is a lengthy interview between Zhang’s daughter Zhang Weiwei (who was an adult before the start of the Cultural Revolution in 1966) and “Kitty. “Katie” introduces herself as Zhang Weiwei’s classmate at Fudan University High School, now living in London, whose father spent several years working on a biography of Zhang Chunqiao. Katie is clearly a Chinese person who knows and has lived through the Cultural Revolution, and has no cultural barriers to it. Consider page 302 of the book.
Katy asks.
There are also many people who want to know. What would China be like now if your father and his people had succeeded? Would there have been the same economic development? Does your dad admit that the people are much better off now than they were before?
Zhang Weiwei replied.
Of course my father admits that the people’s lives are much better now than they were before. However, if they follow the path they planned at that time, the people’s life will also be much better. Society always has to progress. They also have to develop production, grasp the revolution to promote production, not only Deng Xiaoping to develop production. Moreover, my father and his plan is to follow the road of common prosperity. Not to let some people get rich first.
This is a further level of affirmation of Zhang Chunqiao. Not only did he affirm his theory, but he also asserted that Zhang Chunqiao’s theory was better than the current policy of the Chinese Communist Party authorities and that there would be no difference between the rich and the poor, criticizing Deng Xiaoping’s policy that some people would get rich first. China’s economic boom has caused many criticisms, and Zhang Weiwei surprised people by saying that the solution to China’s present problems should be to follow Zhang Chunqiao’s plan/road, that is, to follow the plan/road of the Cultural Revolution.
The Cultural Revolution, was it wonderful or was it a holocaust? Shouldn’t the revolution continue with the red flag held high? This is the question raised by Zhang Chunqiao’s ghost on the occasion of the 50th year of the Cultural Revolution.
Shen Mac, who commented on the book, and Zhang Weiwei, who wrote the book, have one thing in common: both fail to present arguments for their at least abrupt arguments. Especially the former, who, as a professor, should know the way to make an argument. Did they think it was self-evidently true? Or are they just unable to present an argument in the first place?
For many years, people have been calling for “the truth about the Cultural Revolution” on the Internet. Fifty years after the Cultural Revolution, they are still at the level of demanding the truth. Two years ago I wrote that there are “deniers” who deny the violent persecution of the Cultural Revolution. Little did I know that a more radical form of denial would soon emerge, namely, the outright praise of the Cultural Revolution. An arrogant academic hall rolls out the red carpet and lets the ghosts of the Gang of Four descend to fool all the people, how long will the truth about China’s Cultural Revolution be lost?
- Did the Cultural Revolution have a positive meaning of social transformation?
Investigating and documenting the victims of the Cultural Revolution is an important part of the work I do. In fact, the massive persecution of human beings was the most important scenario of the Cultural Revolution. The brutalization of a large number of human lives was the main evil of the Cultural Revolution. I have written down the names of the victims one by one and put them on the web page, and also printed them in a book of more than 500 pages called “The Victims of the Cultural Revolution”. It is an investigative narrative of persecution, imprisonment and killings.
In addition to persecution and death, I also attempt to analyze the social revolutionary content of the Cultural Revolution as practiced. In the introduction to The Victims of the Cultural Revolution, I write.
The Cultural Revolution had an “ideal”. In a nutshell, it was to create a “monolithic” and highly centralized power structure with no balance of power and no checks, an economy with no market, no commodity production and even no money, a media with only one opinion and one way to express the same opinion, and to turn the whole people into a “screw”. “In addition, for the purpose of the revolution, it is possible to beat, imprison, and even kill people whom the revolutionary leaders designate as “enemies”. In addition, for revolutionary purposes, they could beat, imprison, and even kill people whom the revolutionary leaders designated as “enemies”.
The persecution of the Cultural Revolution and the social revolution of the Cultural Revolution are, in my opinion, the two most important aspects of the writing of the history of the Cultural Revolution that need attention. Of course, to a considerable extent, the issue of victims/persecution is also part of the social revolution. Think about it: the Red Guards killed the principal and teachers (in just the ten girls’ high schools in Beijing that I investigated, three principals and three teachers were killed alive by Red Guard students during the “Red August” in 1966. For more details, see my article “The History of the Cultural Revolution under the Haze,” 2014), has this ever happened in a Chinese society that “respects teachers and values morality”? Wasn’t it a fundamental subversion of the justice system in Chinese society that President Liu Shaoqi was imprisoned in a secret place and died under torture, and that even the Stalinist “show trial” and the ploy to get Li Si to confess his guilt in prison during the era of Qin II did not need to be bothered with? Nevertheless, I would like to explain the distinction and connection between the two. The reason is that massive persecution can lead to massive social transformation that defies common sense.
Zhang Chunqiao was the head of the “Shanghai Revolutionary Committee” for nine years. In the summer of 1966, the Red Guards in Beijing killed 1,772 people with fists, sticks, and brass belts, while 11 people were killed in Shanghai during the same period. But at that time Zhang Chunqiao did not yet hold supreme power in Shanghai. Later, after Zhang Chunqiao led the “seizure” of power over Shanghai’s former leaders, Shanghai began to lead the country in persecution brutality.
In my article “The Cultural Revolution Struggle Sessions”, I pointed out that the “Struggle Sessions” were a form of persecution with “Chinese characteristics”. The Cultural Revolution did not use the Stalinist “show trials” mentioned above – that is, fake trials, not even bothering to fake them. The Cultural Revolution made extensive use of “struggle sessions”. Shanghai was the largest industrial city in China, and it took advantage of this to create TV “struggle meetings”. 51 TV “struggle meetings” were held in 1967. Each unit organized a collective viewing, and after watching it, they collectively did what they were told. There were hundreds of millions of viewers. (See the photos of the televised struggle meetings in the Shanghai newspapers.
Another “characteristic persecution” of the Cultural Revolution was the “cowshed”, which was a private prison in each work unit and school, where the “cows and snakes” of the unit were imprisoned. I wrote “The Cowshed of the Cultural Revolution”. In the “cowshed,” the detainees were tortured, beaten, humiliated, and even killed. The first official document to use the term “cowshed” was in Shanghai. The “cowshed” form of persecution was formalized and socialized, creating a national model. The Shanghai authorities also set up large “cowsheds” where hundreds of people could be held.
In April 1968, Shanghai authorities shot Lu Hongen, conductor of the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra (27th), and Lin Zhao, a 1957 “rightist student” at Peking University (29th). The executions were carried out at Shanghai’s own discretion, as the Supreme Court stopped approving death sentences at the time. It was also the first time in the country to start shooting “cultural figures” who were not guilty of any criminal offense. After Lin Zhaoge was shot, the authorities sent someone to her mother to ask for five cents for the bullet. These cruel practices were later copied in other places. According to official statistics, the number of “unnatural deaths” during the Cultural Revolution in Shanghai was 11,510, and 170,000 “class enemies” belonging to nine categories were arrested and fought. This is a good percentage of the number of workers.
Some Cultural Revolution apologists say that the massive deaths and disabilities of the Cultural Revolution were caused by “loss of control” or “necessary costs”. Leaving aside the absurdity of these defenses, we should also look at what these “costs” were in exchange for. What kind of society did Zhang Chunqiao want to build through what he called the “purification” and “cleansing” of Pol Pot?
Politically, the Cultural Revolution proposed a “monolithic” leadership, which was in fact an unprecedented exercise of individual power and indiscriminate punishment. In five years, the two “successors” set up by Mao Zedong himself, Liu Shaoqi and Lin Biao, became “class enemies” one after another. One died in secret captivity, the other in a mysterious plane crash. While Stalin held pretend trials of his political enemies, such as Bukharin, Mao never held a legal trial of Liu Shaoqi and Lin Biao in any sense. All school principals of schools, large and small, throughout China, without exception, were violently tortured and humiliated by Red Guard students. With very few exceptions, all writers were subjected to “criticism” and “struggle”. Almost all cadres at the section chief level and above were “emancipated” only after censorship and review. (This claim of “cadre liberation” is one of the most absurd claims of the Cultural Revolution. The perpetrators suspended the persecution for “liberation”. The “smashing of the public prosecutor’s office” and the military takeover of the whole country, like a martial law system, replaced the artificial anarchy ……
Economically, city dwellers were not even allowed to sell boiled water on the roadside for two cents a glass. Workers’ bonuses were abolished, wages were not increased for years, and material deprivation was extreme. Like Cambodia, rural China had large public canteens during the Great Leap Forward, which were only reluctantly disbanded after large numbers of people starved to death. During the Cultural Revolution, the policy of concessions to the peasants became the crime of the “capitalists” ……
As with the closing of schools in Chikan, schools and universities were closed for long periods of time during the Cultural Revolution. The university did not enroll for five years. In August 1969, a large number of universities were forced to move out of the city in a short period of time under the “No. 1 order” for war preparation. Such as the later Chibok evacuation of Phnom Penh preview. Among the universities in Beijing, only Peking University and Tsinghua were allowed to stay. There were 55 universities in Beijing before the Cultural Revolution, but only 18 at the end of the Revolution. Some of the university classroom buildings were turned into military housing. An inexplicable “Deputy Commissar Wang” was in charge of Beijing University for eight years ……
The “new things” of the Cultural Revolution included barefoot doctors, model plays, revolutionary committees, university students of workers, peasants and soldiers, and intellectual youths going to the countryside. Among them, the most influential one was the “intellectual youth going to the countryside” movement. According to statistics, 16 million young intellectuals, or about one-sixth of the urban population, were sent to the countryside. Shanghai, China’s largest industrial city, sent all of its junior high school graduates in 1969 to the countryside and to distant provinces. This campaign killed three birds with one stone, weakening schools, weakening cities, and weakening families. It was a totally irresponsible and reckless decision to destroy the minimum social ecology, with endless consequences. Surprisingly, some Cultural Revolution apologists said that “going to the mountains and going to the countryside” was a last resort, in order to solve the employment problem.
- Mao’s death interrupted Zhang Chunqiao’s chance to carry out a brutal utopian transformation.
These “new things”, which were constantly affirmed and embellished by the defenders and drummers of the Cultural Revolution, also confused foreigners who did not know the truth. Even today, they are still distorted as experiments that “paved the way” for today’s reform and opening up. We have to analyze again the deep meaning of the aforementioned Zhang Chunqiao’s April 1975 article “On the Total Dictatorship of the Bourgeoisie”. This is the most important theoretical article on the Cultural Revolution that Zhang Chunqiao wrote, and it was also the last major article of the Cultural Revolution. In this article, written for Mao’s new instructions at the time, Zhang discusses why “commodity production, money exchange, and distribution according to labor” belong to “bourgeois law” and are the object of the “dictatorship of the proletariat. The object of the “dictatorship of the proletariat”. He writes.
In a short time, there will be no fundamental change in the situation where the two systems of ownership, universal and collective, coexist. As long as these two systems of ownership exist, commodity production, money exchange, and the distribution of labor are inevitable. Since “this can only be restricted under the dictatorship of the proletariat”, the development of capitalist elements in urban and rural areas and the emergence of new bourgeois elements are also inevitable. If left unrestricted, capitalism and the bourgeoisie would have developed even faster.
We have never believed that …… continues to engage in commodity production, money exchange, and distribution according to labor. We have taken and will continue to take appropriate methods to limit the harm it brings. The dictatorship of the proletariat is the dictatorship of the masses. We believe that the masses, under the leadership of the Party, have the power and ability to struggle against the bourgeoisie and finally defeat them.
Zhang Chunqiao’s plan for the future was clear: as soon as the time was ripe for economic development, they were going to implement the purified socialist public ownership system that had been practiced in Chikan. The dictatorship of the proletariat was used to eliminate capitalist commodity production and money exchange. Thus eliminating the bourgeoisie once and for all. –This cruel and anti-human utopian plan is not only unattainable under the “penniless” Mao era, but will be strongly resisted even when material production is abundant. And the more pressing reality is: they have no room for maneuvering. With Mao’s illness, which doctors knew would not last more than two years, and Mao’s death, Zhang Chunqiao’s plan had no chance to be implemented in China.
The end of the Cultural Revolution was not so much the result of a struggle against a cruel and absurd program of social transformation, but essentially the death of a tyrant, which was entirely accidental, that interrupted the Cultural Revolution. This, of course, was a good thing, as it revoked Zhang Chunqiao’s plans for further social transformation and reduced the potential for greater suffering of the people. Zhang Chunqiao ranked fourth on Mao’s funeral committee. That year, Zhang Chunqiao was 61 years old.
Had Mao Zedong (who died at 83) lived as long as Deng Xiaoping (who lived to 93), Zhang would have had the opportunity to implement his Chikan-style plan. The eight-tier wage system has long since been discontinued, and Shanghai has also spread the bonuses of the pre-Cultural Revolution workers (still a remnant of the “distribution according to work”) equally into wages, meaning that the “bonuses” and the pay-for-work they represented no longer exist. The three things that Mao said caused “little difference from the old society” (the eight-tier wage system, the distribution of work according to labor, and monetary exchange), only the abolition of money remains.
The use of violent persecution to eliminate private ownership and the culture associated with it can in fact only be a cruel reality born of lofty slogans. It happened in Russia, it happened in China, it happened in Cambodia. Zhang Chunqiao is not the only one with such claims. So it is necessary to know and analyze him.
- Was Zhang Chunqiao “demonized”? Who killed Zhou Xinyuan?
Those who are still putting Gold on Zhang Chunqiao’s face today say that Zhang Chunqiao was “demonized”. Is this true? Absolutely not. As I pointed out in one of my articles, the verdict of the “Special Tribunal” against Lin Biao and the Gang of Four listed the names of those who were killed during the Cultural Revolution, which is similar to the number of victims at Peking University (63). If compared to the total number of victims at Fudan University and East China Normal University in Shanghai (80), it is still a dozen less. The sins of Zhang Chunqiao, a longtime Shanghai resident, have not been exaggerated at all.
In 2007, I wrote an article for a French publication entitled “Official History and Parallel Histories”, the Chinese version of which was published as late as 2012 under the title “To write or not to write about the victims: the main differences in the writing of the history of the Cultural Revolution”. In the article, there is a paragraph that reads
In 2004, two memoirs of the Cultural Revolution written by Xu Jingxian and Nie Yuanzi were published in Hong Kong (Xu Jingxian’s “A Dream for Ten Years” and Nie Yuanzi’s “Nie Yuanzi’s Memoirs”). Both Xu and Nie were well known and held high positions of power during the Cultural Revolution. Xu was the number three person in the Shanghai Municipal Revolutionary Committee (just below Zhang Chunqiao and Yao Wenyuan) for ten years and was sentenced to 18 years in prison after the Cultural Revolution. Nie was the head of the Peking University Revolutionary Committee. According to “internal statistics,” 11,150 people were persecuted to death during the Cultural Revolution in Shanghai, but Xu Jingxian does not mention any of the dead in his 430-page book. Similarly, Nie Yuanzi complains in her book about her 17-year sentence, but does not offer a single apology to the large number of victims of the Cultural Revolution at Peking University (as many as 63). Both Xu and Nie are smart enough. They were afraid that if they mentioned the victims, they would be asked who was the victim, so they simply did not mention them.
After reading Zhang Chunqiao’s new book, I realized that Zhang Chunqiao’s book also did not mention any of the victims by name, let alone apologize to them. They are the same perpetrators of the Cultural Revolution, and their attitude toward the victims is so identical. Have they forgotten? Or did they never have any compassion for the victims? Mencius said, “All people have compassion. But these leaders of the Cultural Revolution had no compassion, no mercy, no sympathy, and no repentance. They were not ordinary people, were they “demons”?
I have thought many times of Shakespeare’s performance of Macbeth in which he shows the Macbeths’ fear and unease after they assassinate the king and gain the throne. At the end of the new Peking Opera “Red Cliff” in 2012, Zhuge Liang, who has won the battle of Red Cliff, is alone by the river thinking about how many people and soldiers have died and is very sad. If Zhang Chunqiao and Xu Jingxian were to watch these two plays, what would be their inner reaction? Would they have laughed at the weakness of Mack Bai and Zhuge Liang in their hearts?
One of the articles in The Victims of the Cultural Revolution is about the writer and editor “Zhou Xianyuan,” who “committed suicide” in the well pictured here on August 11, 1968. I put “suicide” in quotation marks because it was not a suicide in the usual sense of the word. Rather, they were forced by the sufferers to end their own lives after being beaten, humiliated and imprisoned, and in some cases, they were simply faked “suicides” after being killed. The Cultural Revolution saw the largest “suicide” in Chinese history and probably in world history. Before I took the picture at the well, Zhou Quan, Zhou’s youngest daughter, told me that in March 1968, Zhang Chunqiao met with two factions of the rebellion in Suzhou, the “kickers” and the “supporters”, who were “fighting” against each other. In March 1968, Zhang Chunqiao met with two factions of the Suzhou rebellion, the “Kickers” and the “Branchists”, who were “fighting” against each other, and asked them to unite to fight against Zhou Qingjuan, who was “engaged in bonsai to restore capitalism.
Zhou Quan was still very young in 1968. She said she heard that when Zhou was the editor-in-chief of the newspaper “Declaration”, he rejected the articles submitted by Zhang Chunqiao. Zhou Quan was the tenth child in her family, and her father named her after the word “ten perfects”. I was very impressed by her elegance and sincerity.
Zhou was forced to burn books three times, in the courtyard, at the gate and in the alley. According to my research, all writers during the Cultural Revolution, except Guo Moruo and Mao Dun, were subjected to “struggle” and “criticism”. But Zhou was specifically called upon by Zhang Chunqiao to fight against the Suzhou rebels in 1968, which was the specific cause of his death.
I found the March 15, 1968 issue of the Suzhou Workers and Peasants newspaper. The headline on the front page reads: “Suzhou Revolutionary Faction Unites to Fight the Enemy” and “Representatives of the two major factions in the city reached an agreement in Shanghai on an enlarged program to adjust and enrich the Suzhou Municipal Committee. The part of Zhang Chunqiao’s talk to the two factions about Zhou Xianyuan was provided by Mr. Jin Mainland of the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences as follows.
Zhang Chunqiao said: “That some traitors, agents, traitors, and a group in this city, they will never be willing that the proletariat can stand firm in this city, carry out socialist reforms, and carry out socialist construction. Then the enemy will never be willing, they always hope for a restoration. You see, after the liberation, you can see from many things, the restoration of capitalism, the restoration of feudalism forces ah! I think to Suzhou is not small. You see what the Zhou thin cuckoo class of boring guys which, to others on the special get a bonsai ah, are engaged in this set. You see he is completely out of hobby? Then this is not restoration! Propaganda of those things, to break people’s will to fight. I went to Suzhou several times, but I never went to Zhou’s house. I went there for what, to see that some, you only have to go once, ah, he will have to blow half a day. I’ll give you an example, this thing, the restoration, the old guard forces, it is trying to keep this Suzhou, ah, has been maintained in a half-feudal, half-colonial color, always want to pull the city back, never willing to turn it into a school of Mao Zedong Thought, much less it this big red school, that they never want to do.” (March 14, 1968, “Red Suzhou” “New Suzhou” joint edition)
Do bonsai, is to restore capitalism to restore feudalism? Is it “traitor, traitor, traitor?” To be put to death? A foreign professor of Chinese literature read this passage of Zhang Chunqiao’s and said to me: These words are like the words of a middle school student cursing, not like the words of a responsible political figure. I said: They have never been responsible political figures, but they are never ambiguous and efficient in persecuting people. The professor also talked about one of her students working on translations of Sherlock Holmes novels in China, and that Zhou was one of the first Chinese translators of Sherlock Holmes.
I checked the “Chronology of Zhang Chunqiao’s Writings” compiled by Ye Yonglie, and saw that Zhang Chunqiao had published three articles in Declarations in the 1930s. It is not unusual for a 20-year-old contributor to have his articles rejected by the editor. But in 1968, thirty years later, Zhang Chunqiao still harbored a grudge and used his power to retaliate for the death of Zhou Xianyuan. Another thirty years later when he wrote “Letter from the Prisoner”, did he really forget the people he killed during the Cultural Revolution? Zhang Chunqiao’s erasure of the sufferers was deliberate, calculated, and a fool’s errand. He is either a demon or a bad person and a criminal.
The persecution and killings during the Cultural Revolution were “mass” persecution and killings. For example, all the principals in China that I have written about were beaten, insulted and “struggled”. A “principal” is a group. Some people defend the perpetrators by saying that these cruel and barbaric acts were done for the needs of the “revolution” and not for personal gain, because they did not know each other. This is, of course, an unjustifiable defense. The “revolution” that brutalizes the innocent is a crime, without any justification whatsoever.
Looking at the facts, I conclude that Zhang Chunqiao was not only one of the main architects and advocates of the rise and development of the Cultural Revolution, but also one of the perpetrators and leaders of the brutal persecution of the people and the radical social transformation, but also a morally cruel and callous person. He was involved in creating economic poverty and deprivation, human rights cruelty and brutality, and cultural desolation and barrenness. He is not a man to be “compared” to anyone.
The year 2016 marks fifty years since the start of the Cultural Revolution. This year will soon be over. In the next year, the “denialists” who persecuted and killed during the Cultural Revolution will probably continue to operate. But the witnesses will also continue to bear witness to history. An accurate account of history is the basis for planning the future. Although the ghost of Zhang Chunqiao is still floating around and the lies about the Cultural Revolution are still circulating, as Abraham Lincoln said, you may deceive all the people for a while, you may keep deceiving some people, but you cannot deceive all the people forever. I heard this quote from Lincoln forty years ago and will never forget it.
(Written in July-December 2016. Youqin Wang: Graduated from the Chinese Department of Peking University in 1982, received his PhD from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in 1988, and went to the United States in the same year. She is now a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago. (Author of “The Sufferers of the Cultural Revolution” and other books.)
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