Piles of Files of Manufactured Dissent: The Struggle of Loyal Intellectuals in Maoist China as shown by the Case of Du Gao
Date Issued
2008
Date
2008
Author(s)
Schreiber, Ute
Abstract
The sad fate of Chinese intellectuals under Maoist China has long been a topic of deliberation in studies of modern Chinese history. Historians have made attempted to trace the roots of thought reform in post 1949 China, and pointed out how various intellectual trends in late Qing and early Republican China facilitated thought reform. Nevertheless, thought reform in post 1949 China still remains a topic which is little understood and difficult to analyze. In the past years, historians have increasingly emphasized the importance of using diaries, memoirs, letters, files, and literature in tracing the thought of Chinese intellectuals under Maoist China. This thesis approaches the topic of thought reform using the file of Du Gao, a rather unknown modern Chinese intellectual, writer, literary critic and playwright under Maoist China. Du Gao’s file is a comprehensive file of an ordinary intellectual engaged in literary and cultural work. Such files are very rare to come by, since most have been destroyed. Du Gao’s file was suddenly found at a used book stand in Bejing in 1998 by the Chinese scholar, Li Hui. Using the example of Du Gao and analysis of his file, this thesis attempts to trace how thought reform and the framing of guilt as a counterrevolutionary were in effect part of one simultaneous process in the political movements of post 1949 China. Analysis of Du Gao’s file allows us to the examine the fate of an unknown intellectual who was framed as a rightist and leader of a small counterrevolutionary group in the 1950s. The investigation procedures to which Du Gao and other intellectuals were submitted in the 1950s were the same as those used in Yenan in 1942. A core feature of this procedure was simultaneously investigating thought problems and political guilt, which caused thought problems to be exaggerated into political crimes. This thesis explores how this process caused loyal Chinese intellectuals to be transformed into enemies of the people. Analysis of the multitude of recantations, exposures, informants, self-criticisms contained in Du Gao’s file allows historians to explore how the Communist leadership at all levels (local and national) re-interpreted and re-contextualized the words and actions of Du Gao and his circle of friends, so that these actions became counter-revolutionary actions. Throughout this process, the Communist leadership gradually monopolized the right of interpretation of actions. This process created extremely dangerous half-truths: the consummation of a given word or action was undeniable, but the meaning of the action/word had completely changed. Throughout this investigation process, the Communist leadership resorted to Communist moral codes. In an effort to show loyalty to Communist moral codes, each investigated person wrote criticisms which further ensnared friends and themselves into political guilt. Moral identity overtook legal identity, and the breaking of moral codes became the starting point for attribution of political guilt, legal confinement, and labor reform. Du Gao’s file spans from the 1955 Su-fan movement to the Cultural Revolution, providing historians with a rare window to examine Communist morality and its connection with thought reform and the framing of political guilt.
Subjects
Du Gao
intellectuals
Su-fan
Anti-rightist campaign
labor reform
Hu Feng
communist morality
counter-revolutionary clique
SDGs
Type
thesis
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