The Chinese Communist Party journal “Seeking Truth” published Xi Jinping’s speech on Party history mobilization and education more than a month ago, and Xinhua bookstores issued a single copy of the speech, promoting a nationwide campaign. Some experts say that Xi’s speech is intended to reset the Party’s historical no-go areas and put an end to the tendency of research and exploration inside and outside the Party, and that the “emancipation of the mind” advocated in the 40 years of reform and opening up may become extinct. However, this will give more opportunities to the so-called wild history and secret history that the Chinese Communist Party fears.
Xi Jinping
This Xi Jinping speech, published on March 31, asks CCP members to be wary of some “erroneous tendencies” when studying Party history, claiming that “some exaggerate mistakes and twists in Party history, wantonly smear and distort the Party’s history and attack the Party leadership.”
But what are these “mistakes and twists” in Party history? How have they been exaggerated? How have they been “smeared and distorted”? He did not specify.
Xi also called for the so-called “correct understanding and scientific evaluation of major events, meetings and figures in the Party’s history,” and for the so-called “opposition to historical nihilism.
In a Voice of America current affairs program, Professor Emeritus Song Yongyi of California State University, Los Angeles, argued that ideological progress is like sailing against the current, and if you do not advance, you will fall back. Xi Jinping has no intention of liberating the mind, which will inevitably lead to the ensuing stagnation or even regression of technological and economic development. The achievements of China’s reform and opening up and economic development for 40 years are likely to be lost in just five to ten years.
Song Yongyi said that in China’s current political environment, the words of the leaders must be understood in reverse to understand the implications.
Regarding Xi Jinping’s slogan-like words, it is important to understand the leader’s words or propaganda words in reverse,” Song said. For example, I am afraid that the ambiguous and one-sided understanding of the major historical issues he mentioned is precisely what has led to a breakthrough and a record of historical truth since the reform and opening up. The method of doing research in European and American historiography, as he said, is precisely to be able to clear the source in the midst of the clamor. Academic research cannot use administrative means to cut across the board, a cut across the board is bound to be the theme first, conspiracy historiography. This in the Cultural Revolution to engage in more. In the Cultural Revolution, it was not Zhu De and Mao Zedong who met at Jinggang Mountain, it was Lin Biao and Mao Zedong who met at Jinggang Mountain, and at that time Zhou Enlai also agreed. Then it became a joke within a few years.”
Song Yongyi has previously said that the history of the CCP is built on one lie after another. Now Xi Jinping is asking the entire party to reject “historical nihilism” and establish a correct view of party history, etc. He is actually worried that the CCP will lose the hearts and minds of the people if the lies are constantly exposed.
Ma Zhao, an associate professor of East Asia at Washington University in St. Louis, believes that Party history education is a top-down political learning campaign that extends from within the Party to the entire population, with the aim of unifying ideology.
However, Ma points out that a closed approach to historical research would only give more opportunities for what Communist Party leaders fear are “wild histories” and “secret histories.
It is noteworthy that Xi mentioned in his speech on Party history mobilization and education that CCP members “do not believe in proper history and believe in wild history, vulgarize and entertain Party history, eagerly spread gossip and anecdotes, and relish illegal foreign publications. The purchase, circulation and collection of overseas publications featuring scandals at the top of the CCP have become one of the crimes of many fallen officials in recent years.
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