No More Learning

And this brings up the nonideological residua present in all Westerners, whose effects were also mixed. Four years after the experience, my subjects still bore marks of both fear and relief. The fear was related to the basic fear mentioned earlier, the fear of total annihilation; it is an unconscious memory not easily lost. Some people may equate it with the experience of having felt totally controlled and dangerously threatened by a powerful parent; but whatever its associations, all dread the possibility of risking its re- currence through re-exposure to total control. Along with this dread, however, some entertain a deeply repressed desire for just such a repetition as a means of atoning for a troubling sense of guilt. I need not again emphasize the importance of this guilt, except to say that it joins with the residual fear to form the most destructive of thought reform's bequests.
Nonetheless, thought reform can also produce a genuinely thera- peutic effect. Western subjects consistently reported a sense of having been benefited and emotionally strengthened, of having be- come more sensitive to their own and others' inner feelings, and more flexible and confident in human relationships. These bene- ficial effects occurred in subjects with all three reactions, although it is difficult to say just what produced them. The best explanation is perhaps that these people had had the experience of testing their emotional limits. They had undergone the ultimate in physical and spiritual pain, and had yet survived; they had been forced to hit rock bottom in their imposed negative self-analysis, and yet had emerged with some measure of self-respect. Each had thus gone farther than ever before in realizing his human potential. Their consequent feeling of having been benefited is analogous to the sense of well-being which has been observed in people after they have experienced severe stress of almost any kind, including that of prolonged sensory deprivation. 16 When the stress is brief, the well- being may be limited to a rebound euphoria. But after an experi-
? RECOVERY AND RENEWAL 239
ence as totally disintegrating as prison thought reform, the relief at being put together again is more basic and more enduring. In the experience itself, and in the process of recovery and renewal which followed it, these men and women gained access to parts of them- selves they had never known existed.
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? ? PART THREE
THOUGHT REFORM OF
CHINESE INTELLECTUALS
We must be engineers of the human soul.
V. I. Lenin
The cultivation of the person depends upon recti-
fying the mind.
Confucius
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? ? 1
In turning from imprisoned Westerners to "free"
Chinese intellectuals, we arrive at the ideological center of the thought reform movement. Instead of being directed at alleged criminals and "imperialists/' reform is used to manipu- late the passions of the most enlightened members of Chinese society. Chinese intellectuals experience thought reform in their own country's educational institutions, under the direction of coun- trymen not too different from themselves. They are asked to un- dergo it as an act of patriotism, as an expression of personal and national rejuvenation.
Their thought reform is not entirely different from the prison program applied to Westerners, Indeed, as I alternated between Western and Chinese subjects during the study, I was often struck by the similarities in the emotional experiences reported by two such divergent groups. But the contrasts were also impressive-- contrasts in thought reform settings and pressures, in life experi- ences and character traits, and in differing relationships to Chinese Communism--so much so that I sometimes felt as if I were con- ducting two separate research projects.
An exploration of these differences takes us inevitably into mat- ters Chinese, into a consideration of influences derived from tradi- tional Chinese culture and from the modern, antitraditional Chi- nese cultural rebellion. Only these patterns can account for China's
CHAPTER THE ENCOUNTER
243
? 244 THOUGHT REFORM
unique way of dealing with imported Communist principles. I shall retain my emphasis upon individual emotions and the sense of inner identity, and move from the individual outward as I attempt to explain his experience in the light of his own and his country's history and culture. This approach also requires an examination of thought reform's origins, both its actual history, and its use of psychological themes derived from Soviet Russian and traditional Chinese models. After that, I shall summarize the general prin- ciples derived from my study of both subject groups--principles which apply to any culture and have significance far beyond that of thought reform itself.
Who are the "Chinese intellectuals"? The term is a loose one and is often applied to anyone in China with a secondary school educa- tion, although the Communists themselves distinguish between "higher intellectuals" and "general intellectuals. " It includes, of course, scholars, teachers, artists, writers, scientists, advanced stu- dents, physicians, and other professional people--all of whom make up a very small but particularly influential segment of the Chinese population. As a group, they are the spiritual if not lineal descend- ants of the Confucian literati, the celebrated class of scholar- officials who in the past set the cultural standards and administered the political structure for whatever dynasty they served. Nowhere was learning more honored than in traditional China, and nowhere was a body of knowledge more necessary for personal advancement; until the beginning of the twentieth century, the main path to wealth and prestige was the state examination based entirely upon the Confucian classics.
But during the last fifty years, the intellectuals, influenced by the West, have led the revolutionary movements to cast off the decay- ing traditional social structure. Much of their identity was trans- formed in the process, and the rebellion was costly to them in an emotional as well as a material sense. Yet even when most be- leaguered, they have always retained their aura of a learned ? lite and a sharp sense of separation from the rest of the mostly illiterate population.
Like the dynasties before them (and like Communist parties everywhere) the Chinese Communists recognized the importance of winning over and putting to effective use this precious intellectual
? THE ENCOUNTER 245
talent. Indeed, their thought reform program has gone far beyond anything either their dynastic predecessors or their Russian Com- munist mentors ever attempted. They called for a personal con- version (or for something very closely resembling one) from every Chinese intellectual, surely an excessively ambitious program. Yet during the period immediately after they assumed power, many circumstances favored their efforts.
The Communists were then in the full flush of triumph. Their discipline and their confidence could not fail to impress a popula- tion which had been spiritually sapped by decades of civil war, foreign encroachments, and political corruption. Well before this a sizable number of intellectuals had been attracted to the Com- munist movement, many of whom had been introduced to it dur- ing their student days. By 1949, intellectuals as a group--including those with no particular ideological commitment--seemed more prone to welcome than to oppose the Communist victory. This was the impression of many observers and scholars, and one also clearly conveyed to me by my Chinese subjects and by friends in Hong Kong. Most intellectuals and students regarded the Nationalist regime with bitter hostility. They resented what they felt were police-state methods without the compensation of police-state ef- ficiency. If one can speak of a class despair--a despair born of dis- illusionment, emotional confusion, repeated frustration, and eco- nomic suffering accompanying runaway inflation--one may cer- tainly say it of the Chinese intellectuals during the years before the Communist takeover. In this condition, many of them were recep- tive not only to change, but to methods of being changed which they might otherwise have abhorred. 1
Some Chinese intellectuals (although by no means all) had an opportunity to acquaint themselves gradually with Communist re- form measures through small "political study" and "mutual aid" groups organized where they lived, worked, or studied. These were dogmatic, but relatively mild compared with what followed. By late 1951, all intellectuals were swept up in a year-long Thought Reform Campaign primarily aimed at them as a group--the first of China's national outbreaks of soul-searching. One Chinese com- mentator, writing from Hong Kong, described this campaign as "one of the most spectacular events in human history. " 2 Other equally spectacular campaigns were to come; but this one set the
? 246 THOUGHT REFORM
precedent, and its sequence of top-to-bottom manipulations--typical for all national campaigns--is worth describing. 3
First came the mandate from Mao Tse-tung himself: "Ideological reform, first of all the ideological reform of the intellectuals, is one of the most important conditions for a country's all-out complete democratic reform and industrialization. " Next, the central ministry of education called together three thousand leading university pro- fessors and academic administrators of the Peking-Tientsin area to launch a "study campaign" aimed at "the reform of the teachers' ideology and of higher education. " Premier Chou En-lai addressed this group for five hours, spelling out in detail a program for trans- forming the university into a genuinely "progressive" institution, and stressing such personal reform issues as "standpoint," "atti- tude," "whom we serve," "problems of thought/' "problems of knowledge," "problems of democracy," and "criticism and self- criticism. " (One of the educators present reported that Chou set a personal example with a self-criticismof his own "social relations. ") Then, under Communist guidance, study groups were formed. At the same time, the campaign was given wide publicity in news- papers, magazines, and radio broadcasts; and through organizational work, it spread from the capital city outward, to all universities and intellectual communities throughout China.
Centered in universities (but including all intellectuals, whatever their affiliations), the campaign included everyone from the elderly college president to the newly-admitted freshman student, as "tens of thousands of intellectuals . . , [were] brought to their knees, ac- cusing themselves relentlessly at tens of thousands of meetings and in tens of millions of written words. "4 This was the campaign's harvest: a flood of self-castigation from China's most learned men, public confessions which became a prominent feature in the coun- try's press during the next few months, and on repeated occasions from then on. Combining personal anecdote, philosophical so- phistication, and stereotyped jargon, the confessions followed a con- sistent pattern: first, the denunciation of one's past--of personal immorality and erroneous views; then a description of the way in which one was changing all of this under Communist guidance; and finally, a humble expression of remaining defects and a pledge to work hard at overcoming them with the help of progressive col- leagues and Party members.
? THE ENCOUNTER 247
Distinguished scholars denounced careers that had brought them international fame, and expressed the desire to begin over again in their work and in their lives. One prominent feature (also present in the case histories) was the professor's public humiliation before his own students: a professor of law, for instance, in making his confession before a large meeting of undergraduates, addressed them as "fellow students/' went on to thank them for their suggestions and to promise to adhere to these "in the most minute detail so that I can improve myself," then closed with the pledge "to be your pupil and to learn from you/' (These confessions must be read to appreciate their full flavor; the published confession of a Harvard-trained professor of philosophy, made at a leading uni- versity in Peking, appears in the Appendix, page 473. ) While much of the content of these documents seems ritualistic and uncon- vincing, my Western subjects made it clear that even such expres- sions are by no means free of emotional involvement, and reflect pressures of immense magnitude. Students outdid their professors in reform enthusiasms.
During the two years of Communist rule before this official campaign began, however, many intellectuals underwent their thought reform in special centers called "revolutionary universities" or "revolutionary colleges/' These institutions provided the most concentrated of programs, sealed-in worlds in which thought reform existed in its own pure culture. The revolutionary university was directly derived from Party schools in which (see Chapter 20) the reform program for Chinese intellectuals had been developed years before; these schools were quietly conducted prototypes for the later, more flamboyant public displays.
Set up in every area of China almost in the wake of the victorious Communist armies, revolutionary universities were most active dur- ing the regime's first few years; by 1952, many had been converted into more conventional cadre-training centers. One of their pur- poses was to meet an emergency need for trained personnel; the course was usually only six months long, at most eight or twelve months, and the student body was by no means exclusive. It in- cluded such groups as former officials of the Nationalist regime, professors from ordinary universities in a particular area; "returned" students from the West, some who had just come back and others who had been to Europe or America as long as thirty or forty years
? ? 248 THOUGHT REFORM
before; and arbitrarily selected groups of young university instruc- tors, recent graduates, and even undergraduates. There were also Communist party members and affiliates, some of whom had dem- onstrated significant "errors" in their work or thoughts, and others who had merely spent enough time in Kuomintang areas to be con- sidered contaminated by the exposure.
Many came to revolutionary universities in response to thinly- veiled coercion--the strong "suggestion" that they attend. But others actively sought admission because they wished to adapt themselves to the new regime, or at least to find out what was ex- pected of them; they believed, moreover, that a diploma from one of these centers would be a big help in the New China. And, as the first Chinese case-history demonstrates, some sought admission to solve personal problems in their relationships to the Communist regime.
I soon became aware that the programs at both regular uni- versities and revolutionary universities had maximum importance for Chinese intellectuals and maximum psychological interest for my research. Twelve of my fifteen subjects underwent their reforms at one or the other, and the four case histories I shall describe are equally divided between them. I have given the revolutionary col- lege the most detailed attention, because I believe it represents the hard core of the entire Chinese thought reform movement. But before weattempt to penetrate this core, I must saya bit more about my Chinese subjects, and the nature of my work with them.
As a group, they could not show as wide a spectrum of responses to thought reform as the Westerners whom I interviewed, for they were all essentially thought reform failures. They belonged to that small minority of Chinese intellectuals who had elected to leave the mainland and remain in Hong Kong as refugees from the Com- munist regime. They are therefore in no sense typical of Chinese intellectuals in general. But neither are their reactions unrelated to those of the larger body of intellectuals who remained: even as thought reform failures, they had some positive responses which can help us understand the program's successes; and their negative reactions, although stronger than those of the majority of intel- lectuals, can help us to appreciate some of the stumbling blocks thought reform ran into with China's intellectuals. Moreover, the nature of the reform process--its stress on close contact and on the
? THE ENCOUNTER 249
psychological expos6--enabled my subjects to make telling observa- tions about others who responded quite differently from themselves. Chinese subjects, of course, could not avoid the psychological and financial strains of their refugee status. Sometimes one of them would attempt to use an interview with me as a forum to attack, not the Communists or the Nationalists, but a rival refugee or- ganization. Most were living under conditions which were, at best7 tenuous, and they tended to look upon their participation in the research as a potential means of sooner or later bettering their lot. This attitude was in keeping with Chinese views of reciprocity; as L. S. Yang has pointed out, when a Chinese acts, he anticipates a response: "Favors done for others are often considered what may be termed5'social investments/ for which handsome returns are expected. " A Chinese subject, understandably enough, usually
wanted material rather than psychological assistance from me; and some of the "handsome returns" expected (or at least hoped for) included my recommending a particular refugee organization to an American group whose assistance was desired, my helping a man to obtain a job with a Western organization in Hong Kong, or my supporting a man's efforts to enter the United States.
I decided that financial remuneration in some form was in order, both because these people badly needed money, and because it could serve as my reciprocal response in place of other expectations, which usually were impossible (if not inadvisable) for me to meet. But I felt that paying by the interview would not be a good idea, since it might create an incentive for a subject to hold back mate- rial in order to prolong the financial opportunity, and also because it might have conveyed the undesirable suggestion that I was pay- ing for information. I hit upon a compromise arrangement which worked so well that I used it throughout the study. I had the sub- ject prepare written materials useful to my work, most often a near verbatim reconstruction of the final thought summary originally composed during thought reform itself; and for this I paid the standard Hong Kong publication rate for an article of approxi- mately that length. If my relationship with a subject was prolonged, I simply repeated the procedure after a certain number of inter- views, and asked the subject to contribute additional autobiograph- ical information that was of special significance in his case. This arrangement proved to be highly beneficial and face-saving for both
? 2JO THOUGHT REFORM
of us.
My interpreters were also refugee intellectuals, and this too cre-
ated problems. Subjects often felt more uneasy about revealing themselves, especially their political convictions, to fellow Chinese refugees than they did to me. I was a relatively harmless American; but who could tell what my interpreter's affiliations might be? Some- times a subject required that a friend of his serve as interpreter, an arrangement I accepted only when I also knew the person sug- gested and thought he was suitable. And even then, I usually tried to replace him with one of my own interpreters for some portion of the work. Other subjects cultivated the interpreter after hours, hoping to win his support for a favor from me. For all of these reasons, I considered it extremely important that the interpreter strongly identify himself with me and with the research. The two men I regularly worked with were personal friends who more than met my requirements.
These considerations were important because my interpreters were required to do a good deal more than simply translate back and forth during the interviews: as Westernized Chinese, they were a bridge between the relatively un-Westernized Chinese subject and the (also relatively) un-Sinicized Western interviewer. David Riesman has called this "tandem interviewing": the interpreter served as an acculturating force in both directions, making it pos- sible for the subject and myself--between whom there was no common language and much cultural distance--to converse with one another. There had to be a certain amount of compromise: the subject had to adapt himself to my Western approach and I had to bend slightly in a Chinese direction. This included, on my part, serving tea with each interview, the unconscious development
of a bit more reserve than usual, and the conscious development of an indirect (or circular) approach to the more sensitive topics discussed.
I have emphasized the difficulties I encountered owing to the Chineseness and the refugee status of this subject group (the lat- ter condition perhaps created more problems than did the former); but once the three of us had surmounted these early barriers, a three-way team enthusiasm often developed. All of us directed our full energies toward illuminating the nuances of the subject's emo- tions and then conveying these to me as the final common pathway;
? THE ENCOUNTER 2$l
and all of us shared in the excitement of achieving a deepening understanding of thought reform. These interviews were often quite grueling, and required at least twice as much time as ordinary inter- views to cover the same ground; but they had a special fascination. After months of work, a significant therapeutic relationship often developed in both interpreted and direct (English language) inter- views with Chinese subjects. This usually did not have the same cathartic intensity as with Westerners (although with one English- speaking girl it did); rather there was a gradual shift from my prob- ing to the subject's raising questions on his own about past and present emotions which had troubled him.
On the whole, my Chinese subject group was young, with a heavy student representation. I did not intentionally seek young subjects; their preponderance was due to a number of reasons. They were available to me through the refugee publishing organ- izations to which they belonged; and younger people could more easily leave Communist China after intensive thought reform, both with and without official permission: they had fewer family responsibilities, greater anonymity, and better excuses (visiting parents in Hong Kong during university vacations for example) to cross the border This accidental emphasis upon youth turned out to be a great advantage. It helped me to achieve better understand- ing of the phenomenal role which young people have played in revolutionary twentieth-century China, and it shed light upon psy- chological questions relating to identity and change. The subject group did not lack diversity, however; it included college students in their late teens and early twenties, seasoned revolutionaries in their thirties, and experienced government officials close to middle age. My subjects came from all parts of China, and from such di- verse backgrounds as middle-class urban merchant families, rural gentry, and, rarely, rural peasantry.
The Chinese subject group may be broken down as follows: total --fifteen; locale of thought reform experience--seven in regular universities, five in revolutionary colleges, two in military settings, and one in a business group; occupation at time of thought reform --seven students, two displaced students, two government officials
(both of whom had done some university teaching), one university instructor, two soldiers, and one businessman (in the Hong Kong environment, thirteen of the subjects were in an ill-defined group
? 252 THOUGHT REFORM
of students-teachers-writers, and the other two were in business); geographical distribution--seven from the Hunan-Hupei-Anhui area (South Central China); four from the Peking area (North Centfal China); and four from the Canton area (South China); sex--twelve male, three female; age--from nineteen to forty-nine, mostly between twenty and thirty-five.
Chinese subjects were on the whole more removed in time from their thought reform than the Western group, most having experi- enced it one to four years before our interviews. This time lapse increased the possibility of retrospective distortion, which I had always to keep in mind. To get underneath any such distortion, I encouraged each subject to try to recapture during our interviews the actual emotions of his reform, rather than merely talk about them from a distance. I eventually got most of them to do this to a considerable extent, because there is something about the reform process which causes it to retain an unusually high degree of emo- tional vividness for the former participant. Only after extensive efforts of this kind--including much focused questioning and re- checking of responses, as well as an over-all estimation of a man's reliability of recall--did I attempt to reconstruct an individual eise.
As I participated in the subject's recapturing process, I often felt that I was listening to a Gulliver telling of his travels in a very strange land. That strange land was not so much China as it was thought reform--especially the alien realm of the revolutionary university.
? 14
UNIVERSITY: MR. HU
Early in my stay in Hong Kong I was introduced to
Mr. Hu Wei-han, a native of Hupeh province in Central China, and a graduate of North China University, a large revolutionary university1 situated just outside of Peking. I met him in the customary fashion, through intermediaries: a Chi- nese acquaintance of mine was working closely with him in a "third force" (critical of both Communists and Nationalists) press service. Mr. Hu was then thirty, tall and thin, erect and dignified, if a bit rigid, in his bearing. Courteous and formal in the fashion of an upper-class Chinese, he spoke in quiet, measured tones, al- ways with intensity. I soon noticed that he rarely smiled; his facial expression was invariably serious, not infrequently sullen, never really relaxed. At the same time, he maintained throughout our sessions an unusual degree of enthusiasm and stamina.
Although he had left Communist China four years before, he was still cautious about interview arrangements. For a while, he preferred to meet at his own office, although later he came reg- ularly to my apartment. He insisted that the friend who had intro- duced us serve as interpreter (although months later, after a falling out with his friend, he welcomed the substitution of one of my regular interpreters). And at first he wondered whether I wasn't
CHAPTER THE REVOLUTIONARY
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"something more than a psychiatrist. " But over the course of six- teen months of interviews (twenty-five meetings totalling about eighty hours), he became increasingly open and spontaneous. In- deed, after a few all-day sessions during the first weeks of our work together, we got to know each other quite well.
At the time Hu began his thought reform, he was no stranger to the Communist movement. He had been sympathetic to it since his middle-school days, and as a student leader at the Universityof Nanking he had worked closely with the Communist underground for several years. Just after the takeover, however, he became in- volved in a controversy with Communist officials which eventually led to his admission to North China University. Appointed to a special committee set up at the University of Nanking, he had spoken strongly in favor of keeping the University in session, in opposition to the Communist representatives who wanted it tem- porarily closed down. Not only was he overruled, he was "tricked into accepting their point of view. " Deeply upset by this experi- ence ("My views . . . were widely known. . . . Now I considered myself a failure. I had no face to see my fellow students"), he de- cided to leave Nanking. Hoping that things might be better in the north, he went to Peking and sought, through well-situated friends, some position within the Communist movement. Meeting with little success, he expressed his disappointment to one of these friends, who in reply offered the following advice:
Your thoughts are still those of the bourgeoisie. You must change for the great period ahead. You should go to North China University for ideological reform and they will help you to make the change.
Still wishing to find a place in the new regime, Hu accepted the idea that a change in his thoughts might be necessary. He took his friend's words seriously, and hearing that a class was about to begin, embarked on the short trip to the revolutionary university. A letter of recommendation which he had obtained from a high-ranking Communist official served as his admission credentials.
The Great Togetherness: Group Identification
Hu found himself in an atmosphere that was austere but friendly: an open area with low wooden buildings which served as living quarters and places of study; old students (who had arrived
? THE REVOLUTIONARY UNIVERSITY 255
a week or two before) and Communist cadres warm in their greet- ings, helpful in their orienting tours, and enthusiastic in their talk about the revolutionary university, the Communist movement, the new hope for the future. He was assigned to a small group of nine other young intellectuals much like himself. Because of his superior knowledge of Marxism he was elected by this group to be its leader, which thus thrust him directly into the organizational hierarchy.
He discovered that the revolutionary university was a huge estab- lishment, tightly organized along Communist principles of "demo- cratic centralism. " It contained four large sections each with more than a thousand students. His section consisted of miscellaneous young intellectuals and was the largest; he estimated that it included about three thousand men and women. The other three were made up of "cultural workers" (writers and artists), older professors and former government officials (a well-publicized invitation to the school had been extended to many such prominent figures), and teachers in training. The nominal head of the institution, who gave the official welcoming speech and presided over other ritual oc- casions, was an elderly educator formerly associated with the KMT; real authority was in the hands of the four section heads, who were Party members, and the subsection heads and class heads who worked under them. Each class head was responsible for the re- form of one hundred students (ten small groups), and had at his disposal three special assistants.
These three assistants, who acted as links between the faculty and students, were the cadres. (This term is used for Communist "or- ganization men"--lower-level officials, usually but not necessarily Party members, whose lives are inseparable from Party activity, and who express at all times the Party point of view.
) The three cadres performed the day-to-day legwork of reform. They knew the pro- cedure well, not only because they had guided previous classes through it, but also because they had experienced it themselves as part of their training. 2 Each of the cadres had a designated function: the "executive cadre" was concerned with courses of study, reports, and records; the "organizing cadre" was most intimately involved with group activities and with the attitudes of individual students; the "advisory cadre" (the only one of the three who might be a woman) concerned himself with the students' personal affairs and reading habits, and offered counsel on ideological problems. Hu
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noticed that the three cadres assigned to his class worked as a unit; they were approachable separately, but always united in policy, and even made many of their public appearances together.
During the first days at the university, the cadres were rarely in evidence: the students were left to themselves in complete freedom, and told to "just get to know each other. " To Hu and to most of the others, the atmosphere was exhilarating. Initial reserve quickly gave way, and students began to reveal to one another details of their backgrounds, and of their frustrations, beliefs, and future aspirations. Forgetting his recent conflict with the Communists, Hu was caught up in the general enthusiasm and the high esprit de corps:
The revolutionary university seemed to be a place which brought together young people from all over with a great deal in common. We ate, slept and talked together, all of us eager to make new friends, The ten of us were at first strangers, but we quickly developed a strong bond. . . . I had very warm feelings toward the group and toward the school. I felt I was being treated well in a very free atmosphere. I was happy and thought that I was on my way to a new life.
Only one incident, which occurred about ten days after Hu's ar- rival, marred an otherwise perfect honeymoon period--an incident which revealed much about Hu, and initiated a pattern in his rela- tionship to school authorities which persisted throughout his six months at the revolutionary university. While taking an after- dinner stroll, he came upon an informal gathering of about one hundred students and three cadres. He listened as one of the cadres explained that Marxism was an "everlasting truth of so- ciety"; but during the discussion which followed, he got up and politely but definitely disagreed with this statement, asserting that Marxism was no more than a "guiding principle of a certain period'" which would probably be replaced by a new doctrine once the tran- sition from capitalism to socialism had been accomplished. Hu re- called the incident (possibly exaggerating it in retrospect) in dra- matic terms:
It was late at night, and there was no electric light. We had only an oil lamp and it was dim with shadows. When the discussion reached its climax . . . many of the students agreed with me. . . . and I was in a more powerful position than the cadres. . . . Someone started ap- plause and it spread to most of the group. Rarely could an idea in such opposition to the cadres gain such a response.
? THE REVOLUTIONARY UNIVERSITY 257
Hu felt that this incident gained him respect among the other students, but that his outspoken behavior had caused the authorities to begin to regard him as an "individualist" and a man to be watched. Soon after this the same cadre began to criticize Hu strongly, to a degree that Hu felt was above and beyond the call of thought reform duty. He attributed this to his having caused the cadre a public loss of face, and gave a clear explanation of what he meant by this: "He was supposed to be the most distinguished per- son among us; by opposing him openly and gaining public support during the discussion. . . . I disgraced him in a Chinese sense. "
After two weeks of this shared informality, all the students in Hu's class were called together for "thought mobilization" meetings at which the philosophy of the program was forcefully presented. In- dividual thought reform was to be a part of the over-all reform of Chinese society. Just as past social evils had to be swept away, so did one have to remedy one's personal evil if he wished to take his place in this great renaissance. For a Chinese intellectual, reform was a particularly pressing matter: his talents were urgently needed by "the people," and yet his class background had so "poisoned" him that until he was reformed, he was unable to serve them.
Next came the beginning of formal courses, the first of which was entitled the History of the Development of Society. This course was followed by: Lenin--The State; Materialistic Dialectics; History of the Chinese Revolution; Theory of the New Democracy-- Maoism; and Field Study--visits to old Communist workshops and industrial centers. A leading Communist theorist came from Peking to deliver the opening lecture (there was just one lecture for each course). This talk was a memorable one: for more than five hours the distinguished visitor presented a carefully-documented exposi- tion of Marxist views on organic evolution (the emergence of man from lower primates by means of labor, or as a popular pamphlet put it: "From monkey to man, through labor"), and on social evo- lution (the development of human society from its primitive com- munist stage through subsequent "slave/' "feudal," "capitalist," "socialist," and inevitable "Communist" stages). The thousand stu- dents in the audience listened carefully, and took copious notes. There were no interruptions and no questions at the end.
Rather, the students quickly reassembled in their small groups to discuss the lecture material And from then on, these hsiieh hsi
? 258 THOUGHT REFORM
sessions continued virtually all day, every day, until they were in- terrupted for another marathon lecture introducing a new course. A major national event, such as a speech by Mao Tse-tung, might also be the occasion for larger gatherings, and a temporary change in the subject matter of the small group sessions as well.
As group leader, Hu guided the hsileh hsi discussions, and tried to clarify the lecture material for the other students. He and the other nine group leaders of his class held daily (sometimes twice daily) meetings with a cadre, during which each gave a rundown on the attitude and progress of the individual members of his group. The other students knew about these reports, but seemed, on the whole, to accept them as regular organizational procedure. Hu was instructed by the cadre to take a "relatively neutral" attitude in his group, and to encourage free and lively discussion. He enjoyed both his teaching and his organizational responsibilities. He shared with the other students a sense of pulling together toward a common goal in a spirit of crusade.
The Closing In: Conflict and "Struggle"
After a few weeks of this study, however, Hu noticed a gradual change. The cadre receiving his daily reports demanded more de- tailed analyses of the other students' behavior; less stress was put on Marxist theory and more on individual attitudes. Hu was no longer enjoying the role he was asked to play: "My intention was to help the students to study about Communism, but I soon began to realize that the Communists were more interested in my helping them to study the students. " At the same time, it was made clear to him that he was to be no longer neutral in his attitude, but was instead (in Mao's phrase) to "lean to one side," to support the "progressive elements," and to apply stronger pressures to the others in the direction of reform.
Matters came to a head at the time of the first "thought sum- mary"; each student prepared one of these at the end of every course. The cadres passed along information--via group leaders and informal contacts in such places as the dining room--about the form these summaries should take: they were mainly to discuss the influence of the first course upon the student's previous views of society. A two-day period was devoted to writing the summary; then
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each of these students was required to read his to the other group members, each of whom offered criticisms. Some of the students, still influenced by the easy-going atmosphere of the honeymoon pe- riod, took the matter lightly and dashed off their summaries with- out much thought; but Hu noticed that the cadres took it very seriously, and that they made a practice of sitting in on some of the summary readings to make sure that the criticisms were thorough and penetrating.
Criticisms gave rise to countercriticisms, and group harmony gave way to tense antagonisms. The descriptions of past and present attitudes which students had so freely offered each other during the first days now came back to haunt them. Previously quiet stu- dents suddenly became "activists," stepping up the pace of criti- cism and intensifying the emotional tone within the group. Some of these activists identified themselves as members of the Commu- nist Youth Corps or of the Communist Party itself, thus emerging from an underground status. Their regular attendance at Party and Youth Corps meetings gave them a channel to the school hierarchy which, in terms of real power, superseded Hu's authority as group leader. When Hu realized this, he became increasingly uncom- fortable--aware that he was being informed on, but never quite sure just when and by whom. He also noted that the authorities had begun to shift students about from one group to another in order to make most effective use of activists, always keeping in his group one or two who could exert strong influence. And his experience with his own thought summary increased his apprehension. Al- though it was fully orthodox in form and content, he had made it somewhat terse. He was strongly criticized by an activist who ac- cused him of concealing details, and the interested presence of all three cadres convinced him that the faculty was showing special concern about his personal progress.
From this point on, pressures steadily mounted, and Hu lived in an atmosphere of criticism, self-criticism, and confession much like the prison environment of the Western subjects. Not only ideas, but underlying motivations were carefully scrutinized. Students were taken to task for failure to achieve the correct "materialistic view- point," "proletarian (or "people's") standpoint," and "dialectical methodology"--and the reasons for these failures were analyzed even more carefully than in prison reform. As a group leader, Hu
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helped to promote this orthodoxy; as a student, he was himself sometimes rebuked for failing to live up to it.
His advanced theoretical knowledge of Communism served him well, but it did not render him immune from the array of standard criticisms which in the revolutionary college covered an even broader spectrum than in the prison. The prisoner was attacked for his associations with imperialism and for his own "imperialistic traits"; the student at the revolutionary university was mainly under fire for his "individualism. " As interpreted from Mao's writings by cadres, activists, and the student rank and file, this term was ex- tended to include any tendency to follow personal inclinations rather than the path charted out by the Party. Since this meant "placing one's own interests above those of 'the people/ " individ- ualism was considered highly immoral. And so were the other faults for which the students were repeatedly criticized and for which they criticized others: "subjectivism"--applying to a problem a personal viewpoint rather than a "scientific" Marxist approach; "objectivism"--undue detachment, viewing oneself "above class distinction," or "posing as a spectator of the new China"; "senti- mentalism"--allowing one's attachments to family or friends to interfere with reform needs, and therefore "carrying about an ideological burden" (usually a reluctance to denounce the objects of one's sentimentalism); as well as "deviationism," "opportunism," "dogmatism," "reflecting exploiting class ideology," "overly techni- cal viewpoints," "bureaucratism," "individual heroism," "revision- ism," "departmentalism," "sectarianism," and (neither last nor least) "pro-American outlook. "
Hu, in the eyes of cadres and fellow-students, was clearly an in- dividualist. His unsolicited public debate with the cadre had given him this status at the onset, and his subsequent behavior did little to dispel it. Even though he conducted himself in an ex- emplary fashion--"progressive" in attitude, circumspect in man- ner, conscientious in carrying out his responsibilities as a group leader--it was clear to everyone that he was holding much of himself back. He did not join in group enthusiasms, and kept to himself as much as he could in such an environment. In his reports to the cadre as group leader, he maintained a correct standard of Communist-style analysis, but at the same time tried always to say as little as possible, and to avoid making damaging assessments of
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other students. These reports were a source of great inner con- flict to him: he hated the idea of informing upon others, yet he could not fully dissociate himself from the cadres' claim that these evaluations served a moral purpose in "helping" backward students; in any case, he felt compelled--as a means of adapting to pressures brought to bear upon him--to offer some degree of compliance.
When criticized, he would admit his shortcomings, and even go on to make the proper self-criticism in attributing them to "ruling class" and "bourgeois" influences in his family and educational background. But there was something perfunctory in his manner of doing so, and the cadres sensed his inner resistance. Often one or more of them would make a friendly approach to him, suggesting that he seemed troubled by "ideological problems/' asking him to "talk things over. " They would go on to tell him that they con- sidered him a man of great promise, the type needed by the Party, one who would go far in the organization. They even described other cases of similar young men, also highly individualistic at the time of their thought reform, who had, after ridding them- selves of this deficiency, become high-ranking Communist officials.
Hu did not respond to these overtures. Instead he felt his inner opposition steadily mounting ("I was becoming more and more sick of the process"), and his inability to discuss his true senti- ments with anyone an increasing strain:
I could never have a chance to talk about these things or about what I considered to be right. I had to restrain myself constantly, to be patient, to avoid offending the cadres or the activists. I always had to conceal what was on my mind. . . . I could never feel easy.
Hu began to sense that the cadres were antagonistic to him, and he feared that, should he make one false move, they might well label him a "reactionary"--a dangerous accusation for anyone. He found himself in the paradoxical position of still retaining his general faith in the Chinese Communist movement, while feeling increasingly trapped in his personal thought reform experience.
His dilemma increased as the moralistic tone of the criticism and self-criticism process extended into every aspect of his daily existence. As in the prison setting (but in a "native" rather than "imperialist" frame) students were criticized for such "bourgeois" or "ruling class" characteristics as pride, conceit, greed, com-
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petitiveness, dishonesty, boastfulness, and rudeness. And when liaisons between the sexes developed (the revolutionary university was co-educational, although living quarters for men and women were completely separate) these were discussed within the small groups and evaluated solely in terms of their effect on the reform progress of the two people involved. If a "backward" girl friend was thought to be impeding a student's progress, he was advised to break off the relationship; but if both were "progressive," or if one were thought to be aiding the other's progress, the group would give its approval. One female activist gave evidence of a romantic interest in Hu, but he was unresponsive and highly suspicious (probably with justification) of her motives. Sexual unions were, on the whole, discouraged, as it was felt that they drained energies from the thought reform process. The opportunity for romance was limited anyway, since the days were taken up almost com- pletely by hsueh hsi, and the evenings by additional meetings and by reading. Sunday, although nominally a day of rest, was fre- quently devoted to self-examinationsthat had not been completed during the week; and such entertainments as there were--movies, plays, group singing, and dancing--were invariably tied in with some aspect of the Communist ideological message. Students in Hu's section were not expected to leave the grounds of the revolu- tionary university unless they had some special reason.
As in prisons, the atmosphere became saturated with individual confessions. Instead of criminal activities, each student was ex- pected to reveal everything about past affiliations with "reactionary" groups (usually the KMT regime or its student organizations). Each course became a vehicle for exposing more of his own self, for condemning more of the evil in his character. Each student developed a running confession, compounded of self-criticisms, thought summaries, and extracurricular self-examinations; this was a major indicator of his progress in reform. Taking shape both orally and in writing, its content became known to other students and to cadres and class heads. One's eagerness to reveal himself seemed to be more important than any specific thing revealed.
Like the Western prisoners, students vied to outdo each other in the frankness, completeness, and luridness of their individual confessions: one group would issue a challenge to another to match its collective confessions; personal confession became the major
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topic of discussion in small group meetings, large student gather- ings, informal talks with cadres, articles posted upon bulletin boards, and "wall newspapers. " Hu had the feeling that everywhere he went, he encountered the question, "Have you made your full confession? "
In his case, he had little in his past to conceal; indeed, his "pro- gressive" record, though he stated it with restraint, was a mark of distinction. What troubled him was a "secret" of the immediate present, and its consequences for his Communist future. For he was becoming obsessed with his own inner antagonism, and the dangerous rebel within him--the formulator of these obsessive thoughts--threatened always to expose the rest of him:
The intensity of my anti-Communist thoughts greatly increased. I de- veloped a terrible fear that these thoughts would come out and be known to all. But I was determined to prevent this, I tried to appear calm, but I was in great inner turmoil. I knew that if I kept quiet no one could know this secret which I had not confessed. But people were always talking about secrets . . . saying that it was wrong to keep secrets, that one had to confess everything. Sometimes during an ordinary conversation the cadre or a student would mention secrets, and I would feel very disturbed. . . . Or we would be called suddenly to an informal meeting, and someone would get up and say, "There are still some students in the university who remain 'antiorganization'. " I knew that no one else was thinking of me, but I couldn't help feeling very upset. . . . The secret was always something that was trying to escape from me.
Part of Hu's "secret" was his growing disillusionment and despair:
I had thought that by entering the revolutionary university I could make a new start. Instead of this it had brought me mainly the loss of personal liberty. . . . I felt disappointed . . . infuriated a n d disgusted. , . . I had little hope for the future.
Observing the other students around him, Hu felt that all were tense and agitated, without necessarily sharing his own response. In fact, many of the younger ones--those in their teens and early twenties--seemed to be throwing themselves fully, even ecstatically, into the reform process, thriving upon their activist frenzy. Others a bit older made a great public display of their progressiveness in what Hu considered an opportunist fashion, some of them seek- ing to compensate for incriminating ties with the old regime in the past. But Hu felt that almost everyone in his section who was over
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twenty-five was in conflict about how much of himself to surrender to the process.
Students' attitudes toward one another had changed greatly from the idyllic togetherness of the earliest days. The sense of common purpose had by no means completely disappeared; but the pres- sures which everyone was experiencing had converted the small group sessions into a complicated blend of eager analysis, cautious orthodoxy, covert personal antagonism, and beleaguered co-opera- tion.
Hu's own position grew steadily worse. His suppressed resent- ment was always just beneath the surface, and on one occasion, when he intervened on behalf of a female student in an argument with school guards, this resentment exploded openly. Hu was then required to make a special self-examination to condemn his mis- conduct, his lack of full faith in the Party's representatives, and the "individualism" at the bottom of it all. Cadres were no longer gentle and therapeutic in their approach to him, but made it clear that they considered him stubborn and unco-operative. One of them (his old nemesis) began to make indirect threats, implying that if his attitude did not improve, his case would be dealt with at a public gathering. Hu knew well what this meant; he had witnessed three such mass meetings. Two of these had been revivalist-like gatherings at which a student with a particularly evil past had been given a dramatic (and well-staged) opportunity to redeem him- self. Before an audience of 3,000 fellow students, this offender gave a lurid description of his misdeeds--political work with the Nationalists, spying for the Japanese, anti-Communist activity, stealing money from his company, violating his neighbor's daughter --followed by an expression of relief at "washing away all of my sins" and of gratitude to the government for "helping me to be-
come a new man. " The effect of the meetings had been an inten- sification of confession pressures and a widespread feeling that whatever one had done was mild by comparison and might as well be revealed.
Aware that he was not a likely candidate for this type of display, Hu worried about another kind of public exposure: the ultimate humiliation of the mass "struggle. " He had seen a student con- sidered to be a hopelessly "backward element" face an equally large audience to be denounced rather than redeemed; faculty members,
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cadres, and fellow students had embellished upon his "reactionary tendencies/' his stubborn refusal to change his ways, his failure to respond to repeated offers of "help" which all claimed to have made. It had been made quite clear that this young man's future in Com- munist China was quite precarious, and the ceremony had been a grim warning to Hu and other students of questionable standing.
Hu received one additional warning. A Youth Corps member personally sympathetic to him told him that his case had been critically discussed by cadres at Youth Corps meetings, and that he had better be more careful in the future. Hu was moved by this show of compassion, realizing that the other student had acted at considerable personal risk.
He did become more cautious, and tried to make a better reform showing. One of the ways he did this, at the same time finding some escape, was to spend as much time as possible alone in the library, immersing himself in the only reading material available--Com- munist literature. What he learned gave him added authority in the group; and the cadre's threats of public exposure were never carried out. Hu felt he had also been protected by his progressive past, his letter of recommendation from a high Communist official, his favorable standing among many of the students, his knowledge of Communism, and, perhaps most important, something in his character which made the cadres feel that he might be still salvaged as an effective Communist worker.
But his added readings, especially of Lenin's works, were also a source of anxiety. For he began to realize that what he was ex- periencing in thought reform was not, as he had preferred to be- lieve, a misapplication of Communist principles, but was in every respect consistent with Leninist teachings. He found himself ques- tioning the entire Communist structure. He achieved better external control; but his inner feelings of hostility, suffocation, and con- fusion were more intolerable than ever:
I had a very strong hatred for the Communists and for the whole sys- tem. But it was a general kind of feeling and I wasn't sure of its exact source. It wasn't directed exclusively against the Communists--but was rather vague and diffuse. I was very unhappy about the surroundings; everything from all directions was pressing upon me. I couldn't stand this pressure and wanted only to get rid of it. It was not a feeling of resistance--I just wanted to escape, I felt persecuted and depressed.
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He began to have nightmares and thought he was talking in his sleep; he would wake up anxiously, fearing that he might have re- vealed his "secret.