Red Guard Factionalism And The Cultural Revolution In Guangzhou (canton)

Stanley Rosen

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781000309232
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politique et relations internationales
• Subtopic: Politique asiatique

When the Chinese Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (GPCR) of the middle and late 1960s burst forth, the initial response both in China and the West seemed primarily to be one of mystification. The spectacle of severe splits among leaders long thought to be compatible, of armed struggles between factional units whose uniform pledges to Chairman Mao and the Party Center appeared to make their similarities greater than their differences, and of destructive Red Guards who were bent on "tearing down the old world to build a new one" was at first difficult to explain.

Part 1:
Students and Schools, 1960-1966

By the eve of the GPCR, several cleavages had developed within China's student population. Even more fundamental, there was a contradiction between the two primary aims the state was attempting to achieve through its educational system: 1) the creation of a "new Socialist man" who would be both "red and expert"; who would emphasize cooperation and collective values over competition and individual self-aggrandizement; and 2) the use of the educational system to determine future job assignments for Chinese students. Additionally, by the mid-1960s, these contradictions were being fueled by students^' narrowing prospects for upward mobility.

In laying the groundwork for an explanation of the causes of GPCR factionalism, Chapter One argues that, given the structure of the educational system and the behavior of central leaders and local officials working in the field of education, the second aim ultimately was accorded more importance than the first. Chapter Two then examines the effect of the structure described in Chapter One on classroom relationships and student behavior.

1
Mission and Structure of the Educational System

As a first step to understanding the Chinese educational system of the 1960s, it is necessary to realize that a broad consensus regarding the importance of a university education prevailed among students, middle school officials and the central leadership. Nearly all Chinese students in urban areas who had managed to reach higher middle school sought to extend their education into the university. As will be shown, there really were few other viable alternatives once one had chosen to attend a "regular" senior high.¹

The aspirations of these students were strongly reinforced by middle school officials who, in their own interests, sought a high promotion rate to the university. Moreover, official policy as transmitted through the official press, in consistently pointing out China's need for those with a higher education and strongly encouraging all eligible students to sit for the entrance examinations, sanctioned the prevailing values among students and educational administrators.

Although these features were constant, throughout the 1960s there were important changes in China's educational system. While the basic educational structure remained unchanged, over the 1960-66 period the state did at times alter its priorities and some of its policies, to conform to changing conceptions of the mission of the educational system. Shifts in state policy required adjustments by secondary school administrators eager to maintain or increase their school's success in promoting students to the university. Finally, these official policy shifts and the behavioral modifications they induced in administrators affected different categories of students in dissimilar ways.

The early 1960s witnessed the high tide of academic achievement as the main criterion for university enrollment in China. Beginning in 1964, however, a student's class origin became of great importance for university admission. These shifts in national policy regarding recruitment criteria emphasis seem to have exerted a major influence on both students and administrators.

Criteria for University Recruitment

University selection in China has, since 1949, been a function of the changing relationships among three major criteria, geared to three priorities the government held paramount.

One priority was the desire to build a strong and modern state. There was a great demand for skilled personnel to occupy the key positions required for an industrializing state with a rapidly expanding economy. Thus, the expert emerged, the person whose academic achievement (chengji) had shown him/her to be best suited to filling the strategic posts in an advanced nation.

At the same time there was a commitment from the beginning to create an educational system which would no longer exclude the children of the workers, peasants, and other laboring people. The revolution had been made in their name and it was strongly felt that they were entitled to its fruits. In addition, it was understood that they would be most likely to defend the revolution. Children of those whose social position had fallen as a result of the success of the revolution might have to be relied on for a transitional period, but in the long view it was clear that the offspring of workers and peasants would have a natural inclination to be red, and therefore reliable. So the second criterion for university entrance was family background (jiating chengfen), frequently called family chengfen.²

The "red" and the "expert" ideally would be combined in one person, a proletarianized intellectual of good academic achievement who would be committed to serving the proletariat. While those who were born in the homes of the laboring masses were assumed to have a head start through family socialization and gratitude to the Party, the road was open to all youths to achieve proletarianization and redness. Those of petty bourgeois or even exploiting class background could not choose their family chengfen, it was constantly repeated, but they could choose their behavior. By "integrating with the workers and peasants" and, particularly in the case of youths from bad family backgrounds, by drawing a clear line between themselves and their families, they too could achieve redness. While the road was acknowledged to be a difficult one, no one was theoretically beyond the pale. Those of good class background, too, were expected by their deeds to live up to the Party^'s expectations. An individual's commitment to socialism could thus be measured through the third criterion, his individual performance (geren biaoxian).

Admission to any level of schooling beyond primary school took account of all three factors. Furthermore, the relative weight given to each criterion varied considerably over time. The balance could be and was adjusted in accordance with shifting emphasis on one or another of the state's priorities. As will be shown, the modulations in national policy regarding the relative weight of these criteria energized the entire structure of relationships among students, administrators and university enrollment.

As for the criteria themselves, the easiest to determine was academic achievement. The student's score on the examination for middle school (tongkao) set by the province or the unified national universfty entrance exam (gaokao) set in Beijing was the sole academic criterion considered.

Class origin was slightly more complicated in spite of, or perhaps because of, the many chengfen categories which existed. While each student had a fixed class designation based on his/her father's employment and source of income three years prior to Liberation in his locality, and while this designation was in his dossier, a person's class status could change, particularly during movements. This ongoing process of readjustment in a parent's class status could theoretically cause serious problems to a son or daughter, especially one who sought to become an activist and a member of the YCL. Although in most cases and during non-movement periods chengfen could be considered fixed and permanent, there was just enough ambiguity in the formulation to cause a limited number of students some uncertainty about their official class designation (see Chapter Two).

Basically, a person's class background was either good, ordinary, or bad. Those with good class background would include pre-Liberation workers (further subdivided into industrial and non-industrial, etc.), poor and lower-middle peasants, revolutionary cadres and revolutionary military, and revolutionary martyrs (the so-called five red categories).

Within the designation "good class background," revolutionary cadre and revolutionary military had the highest social status. After all, their "redness" had come from active participation in the revolution at a time of uncertain success. They had been the vanguard who had struggled on behalf of the workers and peasants. Thus, children of cadres could point with some pride to the accomplishments of their parents, while children...