The year 2017 just passed marks the 60th anniversary of the Anti-Rightist Movement launched by Mao Zedong. This year, people are recalling and studying the experiences and lessons of the Anti-Rightist Movement, but few people are talking about the “alternative Anti-Rightist”, as Chinese modern historian Song Yongyi called it. While the “anti-rightist movement” was Mao’s brutal killing of China’s intellectual elite, the “alternative anti-rightist movement” was the intellectual elite’s killing of each other. Song Yongyi is a professor at California State University and the author of the e-book “Archives of the People’s Republic of China”. Today is the second lecture, which is about how the intellectual elites tore each other apart.
Song Yongyi points out that the Anti-Rightist Movement was carried out smoothly because of Mao Zedong’s strategy, but also because of the intellectual elite’s tearing each other apart.
Citing Zhang Bojun, then president of Guangming Daily, and Chu Anping, then editor-in-chief, as an example, Song says, “Zhang Bojun was a big rightist named by Mao Zedong, and Chu Anping was the editor-in-chief of Guangming Daily hired by him. Chu Anping made the famous ‘Party World’ statement, which Zhang Bojun agreed with. At that time, Zhang Bojun threw out Cui Anping, and published articles and chaired the criticism of Cui Anping. He thought Mao Zedong would let him off the hook, but it turned out Mao didn’t let him off the hook at all. The joke is that Zhang Bojun, who had clearly become the biggest rightist, still hoped to escape Mao’s purge by exposing and criticizing Cun Anping.”
Song Yongyi cited Wang Ruowang as an example, saying, “Mr. Wang Ruowang later joined the pro-democracy movement and fought the Communist Party, which is worthy of our respect, but he also had a dishonorable performance in the middle of the anti-rightist movement. For example, on June 18, 1957, Xu Zhonian, a professor of French at the Shanghai Institute of Foreign Languages, published an essay in Wen Wei Po, “The Bird Cries by Day,” criticizing the Chinese Communist Party for describing intellectuals in general as ‘stinking with a pit’ – born with the stench of a thatched pit. But what was very surprising was that Mr. Wang Ruowang, who had published more and more powerful essays of this kind at that time, published a miscellaneous article in Wen Wei Po three days later, entitled “Stink with a Pit – Refuting Xu Zhongnian”, accusing: ‘Recently, I read Xu Zhongnian’s “The Bird Cries by Day”, and I was very angry at Communists gnash their teeth and gnash their teeth with overflowing feelings.’ This outline is so high that it is hard to imagine that a great rightist like Wang Ruowang, who would later be one of the best, could be so vocal when he branded people as rightists.”
Song Yongyi went on to cite examples of intellectual elites tearing each other apart, among which there were many jokes that branded even the extreme leftists as rightists: “There was a miscellaneous writer named Xu Mao-yong, a man who was a senior Communist Party cadre and served as secretary of the Party Committee and vice president of Wuhan University. His ultra-leftist approach was so unpleasant to some famous professors of Wuhan University, such as Cheng Qianfan, a professor of the Chinese Department, that Cheng Qianfan and others sued him to the Central South Bureau, which dealt with Xu Mao-yong and transferred him to the Academy of Social Sciences as a general researcher. During the anti-rightist struggle, Cheng Qianfan and others were classified as rightists, and Xu Mao-yong was so happy that he could not forget the old days and wrote a miscellaneous article entitled “The Rightists in the University”. Xu Mao-yong wrote this article, of course, to vent his personal anger and to rehabilitate himself. Well, the Communist Party has a rule that no reversal of cases is allowed in all campaigns, and you, Xu Mao-yong, even at this time, want to reverse the case, also against the Party leadership, and as a result, Xu Mao-yong was classified as a rightist.”
Song Yongyi said, “That’s why the ancient song “Shave your head” sings: ‘Try to see the person who shaves his head, people also shave their heads’.”
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