Author: Alex Morin (Mao An Li)

Dear Readers,

As I approach my retirement, I find it crucial to explore one last story, the story of the Cultural Revolution. China has been faced with an enormous set of challenges over the past few decades, from successfully reworking class within the countryside, to rooting out intellectual Rightists, China has overcome many hardships. During the final years of Chairman Mao’s rule, he unleashed his last and most important campaign: the Cultural Revolution.

The Chairman has passed away, and with party support to discuss the Cultural Revolution’s effects freely, I feel for the first time I can share my thoughts on the Cultural Revolution’s shortcomings. The gap between the countryside and urban centers persists, the youth have been disenfranchised by Party antics, and now we must evaluate the success of the Chairman’s goal to create a communist nation and inspire the youth to carry on China’s revolutionary processes.

The importance of peasants and rural life as the beating heart of China’s revolution dates to Mao’s experience during the Shanghai massacre in 1927. Once taking power, the Chairman has consistently advocated for the peasants, from Land Reform, to sending intellectuals down to the countryside during anti-Rightist campaign, through his latest attempt at empowering China’s youth in the Cultural Revolution. I have had the privilege of receiving an advanced copy of Liang Heng’s manuscript Son of the Revolution, which has provided an invaluable insight into the life of someone growing up during this turbulent period. Liang was the son of intellectuals, his father was a reporter for the Hunan Daily, and his mother was a local bureaucrat. During the Cultural Revolution, his family was swept up in the high tide of violent revolutionary activity from the Red Guards, eventually being sent to the countryside in Mao’s attempt to curb the violence. Liang felt the Cultural Revolution was turned inside out disenfranchising many young intellectuals, they signed up for work in the countryside because “they were exhausted, they had unhappy lives at home, and they had nothing to do at school.” It is evident through Liang’s account, the motivation to engage in rural work was not because of feeling inspired by Chairman Mao, but because they had no other choice, as they looked for a more stable life within the countryside. This mindset turned out to be misguided, Liang was struck by the poverty so many peasants faced, the lack of abundant food reserves and the means to purchase fertilizers for everyday life. Upon arrival the peasants remarked that “We’ve got to give you food, find you a place to work. What kind of help is that?” Peasants felt burdened by the untrained workers that were sent down to the countryside, they were already struggling to get by, and the requisitioning campaigns added to the burdens so many peasants faced. Consequently, this reveals the gap between urban centers and the rural countryside remained prevalent socially and economically. Peasants had no extra food to give, nor did they have the time to adequately train the unskilled intellectuals.

Youth became disenfranchised by the Cultural Revolution as they were given a central role by our great Chairman, but he pulled the rug out from underneath their feet once the revolution started to become excessively violent. At first, youth enthusiastically responded to the Chairman’s policies of rooting out intellectuals as they were following what Mao’s directives over radio broadcasts. China’s youth during this period were the first generation to grow up after the revolution, by giving them the opportunity to participate in revolution, Mao unleashed a charged and extremely enthusiastic group of people that ended with disastrous consequences. Factional violence and civil war among different youth groups with different interpretations of the Chairman’s policies brutally ripped China apart. Schools closed, people were struggled against, and many died. One Red Guard even enjoyed beating people of interest, revealing the gap between the empowered youth and their target groups. Liang Heng remembers feeling immense “disappointment,” when Chairman Mao called for a stop to the fighting and for the Red Guards “to go up to the mountains and down to the countryside.” His sisters and family felt incredible despair and anguish at the thought of spending the remainder of their lives in the countryside. Many peasants disliked the Party’s program to send the Red Guards to the countryside, because they had to Liang’s father, a stout supporter of the Party, had trouble defending Communist Party directives to confiscate livestock and grain upon understanding the scale of poverty within the countryside when compared to the relative prosperity found within urban centers. With Chairman Mao’s passing, the question becomes how the new regime will bridge the gap between urban centers and the countryside and empower the youth to become enthusiastic and productive members of society.

Dear Comrades,

I am writing to you today ashamed and remorseful for my previous writings criticizing our great Communist Party during our Great Leap Forward. My misguided statements came out of love and admiration for our party and our mission to bring China into a new, independent, and equitable future. In accordance with Chairman Mao’s belief that “we can get rid of the bad style but keep the good” (LRB, 114), statements are not the same as beliefs, and my statements are not in line with my absolute faith in our grand Communist Party, and our obviously successful Great Leap Forward.

Why should we throw the baby out with the bathwater? Why should I not be allowed to wipe dust away in my mind? Chairman Mao believes decluttering and dedusting our own minds is vital for our revolution (LRB, 114). This is what separates our great Party from others that are lesser and more capitalistic, like the failed Soviet enterprise. I need and will, find new ways to prove my faith in the Communist project that China has undertaken since we won the great Civil War of 1949. I will write emphatically in support of Chairman Mao, the Party, and our Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.

For those of you who question my former status as a defile elite, I say to you that I have enthusiastically rejected my position as a member of the landlord class. I broke off contact with my family during the Land Reform campaign. I easily rejected my kin because our great Party educated me on the horrific evils my family committed. I learned from the Party about my family’s previous errors, and I chose not to walk in their evil steps, just as Chairman Mao teaches us that “a person is saved when the surgeon removes the appendix.” (LRB, 115). The Party gave me strength to remove my appendix before, and I ask again for the comradery that will help cure me of my present sickness.

I acknowledge the shortcomings of my political writings and the mistakes that I made. No one is perfect, not even me. Chairman Mao teaches everyone that every good party member is “taught by mistakes and setbacks, and that we become wiser and [will] handle our mistakes better” (LRB, 117). I promise I will do what it takes to correct my past mistakes as a faithful Party member. I implore you to follow our great Chairman and impose reasonable remedies. I would forever be grateful.

Long live Chairman Mao! Long live the Party! Long live our great China!

Dear Readers,

Chaos has erupted, blood has spilled, and China’s predicament is perilous. Since my last dispatch reporting on Land Reform, the Communist Party has successfully rooted out dissenters and intellectuals through the anti-rightest campaign. I am writing to you with a pen name with the hope of not being caught for the ‘rightest’ leanings. Chairman Mao jumpstarted the largest, most disastrous campaign yet, The Great Leap Forward, to fully realize the Party’s ambitions to industrialize and create a communist utopia within China. The Chairman’s efforts have failed miserably, resulting in one of the largest famines in history, and with more deaths than the combined total in the war against Japan and the Guomindang.

Chairman Mao and the high leadership have directed the Party to get back on the horse. Aggressive policies have revolutionized the countryside by establishing work communes, and by devoting resources towards large industrial projects to grow China’s economy larger than Britain’s in less than fifteen years. Consequently, a rat race has ensued throughout the countryside attempting to accomplish everything all at once. Zhang Langlang said “Each commune promised a higher amount until the last school gave their highest figure. Then we dug a hole the size of a swimming pool and put all the fertilizer and seeds in it.” Since the Party squashed decent through the anti-rightest campaign no one has spoken out against these farcical farming practices that have robbed so many of their food. In a speech to high-level party members, the great Peng Duhai, one of the great generals of our revolution, was removed from power for suggesting the Party was moving too quickly. Now, farmers have stopped working their fields building backyard furnaces to forge homemade steel. Subsequently, rural people have given up essential and scarce consumer products that they needed to survive including their pots and pans, tools, and bedframes. Li Maoxiu told me in an interview that “their steel-making methods were primitive, and that people were unhappy and didn’t dare say anything against the party. The result was that everything made of iron and steel was taken from every family and was made useless.”  The party has continued to pressure communes for higher production numbers from the fields and from new industrial projects. Through unrealistic goals, they cultivated a culture of increased competition, and they stripped workers of the vital tools necessary to accomplish the collective task ahead. It was under this backdrop, where dissent was crushed, where unrealistic agriculture and industrial practices were implemented, and where a culture of violence in the countryside that festered finally exploded.

Irrational agriculture practices have led our great China into one of the worst manmade famines in history. Lacking the necessary tools and implementing close planting has completely ruined the harvest over the past few years. Rural folk now find themselves searching for food substitutes and wandering throughout the countryside, desperate to find sustenance for survival. One report from Jingian indicates that some have wandered ten miles away from their villages in search of food. Additionally, Party officials are suspicious that food is being concealed by the peasants during this despot time. One notable example is the report of Wu Xing who led a raid of peasant homes in his quest to find hidden grain and his establishment of extrajudicial prisons that tortured the suspected farmers. We should not blame Wu or others who have raided and pillaged, we should blame the high leadership for cultivating a culture where discussion is silenced. We must ask ourselves how can the peasants be hiding food when they are eating dirt?

Women and children have been brutally affected by the Great Leap. Malnourished women have stopped menstruating, producing breastmilk for their children, and have been exploited sexually to keep morale high. A report from Wugang County explains women were forced to take their tops off in the fields to boost male morale among agricultural workers. Du Laojiu and Zhao Laochun felt that “what happened was more humiliating than having an affair.” China’s future, our children, are now burdened with rickets, a developmental disorder of the bones. How can peasants expect future prosperity when children cannot walk straight, and women can no longer have babies? Additionally, they are suffering the fate of being broken up from their families as they have watched their parents die or they have been sold off into an uncertain future. Orphaned children can be found digging roots and eating dirt. Wang Jiarong was unable to feed the children in her orphanage, and after they left to “rummage for food,” she physically beat the children as a form of punishment. This Great Leap has certainly landed China in a pit of misery and death and what remains to be answered is how the Party will remain credible moving forward in the face of this misery.

The people are speaking, the body is turning, and a new China has emerged. Since my last transmission in Yenan, The People’s Republic was founded only two years ago, and the ruling Communist Party has implemented a new campaign collectively known as Land Reform. The Party has adopted a policy of persuasion and action; calling on the intellectual elite to journey into the countryside, live among the working poor peasants, and harness their energy towards overthrowing the wealthy landlord class, who according to Chaiman Mao have exploited rural peasants for millennia.

Two ideas promoted by the chairman have been crucial to the land revolution. First, he has promoted the mass line, where all members of society would be organized to participate in revolution, where leaders of the party listen to the peasant classes, to harness and promote their desires towards revolution. This strategy has proved to be highly effective in accomplishing the party’s goal of systemic structural change by making the peasants feel empowered to become active agents in their struggle. The mass line coupled with Mao’s saying that revolution is not a “dinner party” forms the second piece of revolution, where violence was one of the primary mechanisms to achieve change achieve systemic change. The concepts of the mass line and empowerment through violent struggle was the definition of revolution according to Mao. If the Communists forced the peasants to adopt their polices this would run counter to Mao’s theory and represent a continuation of the practices of the old system, where there was an embedded top down hierarchy that imposed their will on the rural masses.

Empowering the masses started in the countryside. Work teams assembled of young intellectuals ventured to rural areas to educate the masses on Mao’s policies, to listen to the concerns of the peasantry, and to work with local cadres and single out wealthy landowners. Wen Cai’s approach to educating peasants often left many feeling mystified and bewildered by Marxist theory. However, many uneducated poor peasants have easily understood the differences between themselves and landlords. After all, many poor peasants aspired to move up in society. Work teams teach the peasants to speak bitterness to the landlords, often resulting in large public demonstrations where the landlord is publicly humiliated. One notable example is when Tang Zhankui was publicly beaten and condemned to death by the masses because of his high status as a landlord. For the first time in Chinese history peasants have felt they can express themselves and air their grievances with thei oppressors. Women have felt empowered to speak out against oppressive husbands because of the Party’s liberating position on women’s rights. Land Reform has successfully turned the body and accomplished Fanshen. Most of the landlord class has been abolished, property has successfully been redistributed to the peasants who in turn feel they have become active agents in their own lives.

Larges changes often come with large consequences, and violent revolution in the countryside has had devastating effects on many including my own family who were landlords. At first, we were labeled “evil,” and the peasants spoke bitterness against us. The masses have failed to understand that my grandfather was able to build a business predicated on class mobility, where the poor aspired to become the wealthy. Now my family has fled the country; without contact it is unclear if I will ever reconnect with them again. I have stayed behind as an intellectual who has joined a work team, and I have been able to successfully fly under the radar. Some villages have proved hard to reform because they do not have wealthy landlords or rich peasants. Unfortunately, we picked some middle peasants for humiliation, and I even heard of an exceptionally brutal leader, Duan Mingzhu who tortured many in the village. Party officials did not direct us to tone down the violence, which was incredibly scary because we had no way of stopping the revolutionary forces we stirred up. Many women have been failed by party officials where double fanshen had limited success, through marriage equality, participation in political affairs, and through the rights to initiate divorce. In practice, many women were not trained properly on how to work the fields, and the party supported men more than women in their push to reinstate a productive family and village unit. This has myself scratching my head because it feels like the party returned to Confusion values of patriarchy and filial fealty vis a vis supporting men in the village but on the other hand land reform successfully redistributed wealth and property, rose the standard of living of the peasanty and empowered the masses. The question remains if this will be the Party’s only attempt at revolution.

War on all fronts! Our country is under invasion from another imperialist enemy: Japan. We also face the reality of being torn apart from within as the Guomindang have relentlessly pursued the Communists to the remote northern location: Yenan. After a year on the road, and eight years in Yenan, in the northern province of Shaanxi, I am reporting to the people on the activity of the Communists in this faraway place, and to provide some insight as to why so many have flocked here.

I first interviewed Chairman Mao Zedong, the leader of the Communist Party, who has provided an attractive ideology and alternative leadership approach towards governance. Leading by example, Mao has been able to connect with the poorer classes on an unprecedented level. Incredibly, he walked the 6,000 miles on the Long March, he eats the common food of the people, and he lives in caves with his fellow comrades. Mao additionally has encouraged his military to treat the people with respect and to become “one with the people,” where the military, the party and the people work together to achieve revolutionary change. This approach has been well received among the poorer peasant classes and stands in contrast to the unpopular practices of the Guomindang who are often cruel towards commoners. Mao’s ability to live like a peasant and his willingness to listen to the most populus class in China, the peasants, has proved to be an effective strategy for garnering popular support for the Communist movement and attracting many people to move to Yenan.

I interviewed He Manquiu, a young woman living in the countryside. When the Red Army passed through her village, she expected the army to brutally pillage her family’s home. Instead, she discovered that the Red Army treated peasants with respect, encouraged, she joined their ranks and was provided with the opportunity to become a military doctor. He was provided with an out from traditional female cultural norms such as being regulated to homelife and commonly placed in an unwanted and arranged marriage. Mao wanted to ensure “freedom of marriage equality between men and women, equal pay for equal work,” and he argued that “genuine equality between the sexes can only be realized in the complete transformation of society as a whole.”  Equal treatment and class mobility offered by Mao provided an alternative lifestyle for women who did not fit into traditional gender roles like He. Thus, He was able to transcend her intellectual class background and advance within society because of army’s implementation of Mao’s rhetoric. Freedom from traditional Confucian feminine roles was immensely attractive for women who do not fit into traditional gender roles, who want to live their own independent life or who simply want respect and equal treatment among other men. The promise of equality and the opportunity to create an independent and equal life among men has attracted many women to the Communist movement in Yenan.

Party rhetoric and practices have not always aligned over women’s rights. Women like He have been promised gender equality and have received overall better treatment because of party policy but widespread social change has yet to be implemented as the party fears alienating poor peasant men in the more conservative northern provinces and practical issues such as economic production have taken the driver’s seat to sustain the Red Army. Consequently, while many women have been promised opportunity for advancements, they were often silenced by part officials. When I interviewed Ting Ling, she felt the party was not going far enough to implement reform and she felt old traditional values were resurfacing within the movement. She points out a double standard where “women who do not marry are ridiculed, and if they do marry and have children, they are criticized for attending political events instead of caring for their family.” The Party soon moved to silence Ting’s criticisms of reform. Mao’s pragmatic attitude towards women’s rights has kept his movement intact and popular. He continues to focus on repelling the Japanese invaders and he continues to promote Chinese unity when most within the country understand Chiang Kai-shek only suspended hostilities with the Communists because he was kidnapped. Mao’s Communist Party adapts to popular support and listens to the people, which best explains why so many people have flocked to Yenan in recent years.

Dear readers, many Chinese are asking themselves for a proper direction forward, a way out of the political turbulence since the fall of the Qing dynasty. They are asking for relief from the national infighting that has ensued during the warlord years and most Chinese want proper and complete independence from foreigners. Many are longing for a refined and progressive culture independent of our traditional male centric Confucian past. For some, this answer lies in the Chinese Communist Party commonly referred to as the CCP. This brief report will educate the readership on the basic ideology of the CCP and show through a series of interviews why this new ideology resonates with so many.

The CCP was founded in July of 1921 in the city of Shanghai. For most of the party’s early history the CCP was based as an urban movement resembling a typical Marxist approach to economic class struggles, which pitted the wage-earning working class, the proletariat, against the capitalist class or the bourgeoisie. Qiu Hui-ying, a female textile worker explained how many urban dwellers were persuaded by communism because of the promise of less starvation and more rights for the workers. She blames the hardships she faced on her employers “through the labor contract,” and on foreign influence via imperialist powers. Industrial workers have felt displaced by a system that oppresses their ability to lead a prosperous life, and the class uprising called upon by Marx, which clearly reflects Qui’s sentiments and wishes for better treatment within the workplace.

However, the more powerful nationalist Guomindang party soon broke their alliance with the CCP and massacred the communists for fear of their growing influence among many urban dwellers after the communists handed Shanghai over to them peacefully during the Northern Expedition. As a journalist working in Shanghai during this time, I can say that this was an incredibly brutal response and tactic on the part of the nationalists. While this development forced the CCP to relocate and redevelop their strategy for revolution in China, Mao Zedong had been advocating for a different and more rural revolutionary approach for years. Mao argues in his report on the “Peasant Movement in Hunan” that peasants appeared ready to explode against an oppressive feudal and patriarchal system, and that revolution was not a “dinner party” because the goal of the revolution was to overthrow the landlords and foreign elites.

With my curiosity peaked, I decided to leave Shanghai and travel to the heart of the CCP’s new countryside headquarters in Jiangxi, and to other locations of discontent throughout China. This has proven to be a dangerous task as many of the communists are against people of my background and family stature. I have worked hard to conceal my identity to avoid being caught, which would not only be disastrous for me but for this story as well.  Women are particularly interested in revolution as the CCP has promised them equality with men before the law. Wan Xiang explained her fears of being married off at age seven and the fear associated with being a child bride. Xie Pei-lan believed that she would gain her freedom if she joined the revolutionary cause, and she was caught up in the violent overthrow of her landlord and was involved within their daughter’s murder. Women clearly desire a social change from traditional Confucian China, and the openness towards gender equality reflects this.

While women feel compelled to join the revolution because of the promise for equality between sexes. Poor peasant men on the other hand are more focused on alleviating economic disparity between themselves and their landlords because of the immense level of poverty peasants were subjected to in the countryside. However, it has yet to be seen how many poor peasant men will respond to the CCP’s call for gender equality even though many of these men have been promised wives as their birthright. Will men perceive gender equality as a threat to their economic futures? This is something the CCP will certainly need to rectify within the countryside. Will they put men before women when push comes to shove? It has become clear that Chiang Kai-shek and his nationalist party will not tolerate communism as seen in the brutal Shanghai massacre. To what extent will the Guomindang attempt to root out the communists in Xiangxi?  How persistent will they be if they do take direct action against the CCP? If the massacre at Shanghai serves at precedent, they will likely be persistent in their attempts to root out this rural social experiment that is popular among the rural classes and goes so much against the values of nationalists living in major urban centers.

My name is Mao An Li, I was born on August 12, 1912, and I am a boy. I have one younger brother and I am the product of a rare matrilocal marriage. My father ran away from home in northern China because he did not want the hardworking and often demoralizing life of a poor peasant farmer. Additionally, my maternal grandparents failed to have a son. So, when my mother and father met, a matrilocal marriage made sense even though it goes against traditional Confucian norms. My grandfather was elated to accept my father into their family with the goal of keeping their daughter near to care for them in their old age. While my maternal grandparents were still peasants, they lived a more prosperous life in a small village outside Xi’an in Shaanxi province because they were able to rent out their extra land, which enabled my grandfather to eventually gain the opportunity to become a trading merchant. After becoming a more ‘wealthy’ landowner and moving in Xi’an proper, his two incomes provided our family with financial security after the fall of traditional China in 1911. Happily enjoying his retirement, my grandfather passed the day-to-day operations of his business and our lands to my father who is often away trading in major cities. I decided to pursue college in Shanghai, the cultural and industrial heart of China, to gain experiences with foreign culture and life outside of central China. I have the hopes of one day returning to my hometown to increase my family’s name and standing in society. I have taken this job as a journalist with the hopes of traveling and meeting new people, and enhancing the writing skills I picked up as a history major in college. One thing that has me concerned is the talk of a revolutionary class struggle with a massive peasant takeover. I feel as though the system needs to be reformed and overthrown to give more opportunities for peasants to move up like my grandfather did.