No More Learning

But after acknowledging these Russian and Western debts, we must still ask why it was the Chinese who developed thought reform. Other Communist countries have, to be sure, used elaborate propaganda techniques and various psychological pressures, but never with thought reform's meticulous organization, its depth of
? 3 9 ? THOUGHT REFORM
psychological probing, or its national scale. Nowhere else has there been such a mass output of energy directed toward changing people. In Russia confessions have generally been associated with the purge --the "ritual of liquidation"; in China, confession has been the vehicle for individual re-education. What is the source of this special reform emphasis?
Communist leaders reveal the source in some of their thought re- form writings. Liu Shao-chi, for instance, in "How to be a Good Communist" enjoins Party neophytes to pursue diligently their "self-cultivation. " And he quotes as an example the experience and the words of none other than Confucius himself:
At fifteen, I had my mind bent on learning. At thirty, I stood firm. At forty, I had no doubts. At fifty, I knew the decree of Heaven. At sixty, my ear was an obedient organ for the reception of truth. At sev- enty, I could follow my heart's desire, without transgressing what was right.
Liu also makes reference to the Confucian disciple who said: "I reflect on myself three times a day," and to the Book of Odes which suggests that one cultivate oneself "as a lapidary cuts and files, carves and polishes. " He refers to the Confucian principles expressed in the following quotation from The Great Learning:
The ancients who wished to illustrate illustrious virtue throughout the kingdom first ordered well their own states. Wishing to order well their own states, they first regulated their families. Wishing to regulate their families, they first cultivated their persons. Wishing to cultivate their persons, they first rectified their hearts. Wishing to rectify their hearts, they first sought to be sincere in their thoughts. Wishing to be sincere in their thoughts, they first extended to the utmost, their knowledge. . . . from the Son of Heaven down to the mass of the people, all must consider the cultivation of the person the root of everything besides. 3
These principles echo in the thought reform program, although Liu does of course emphasize the Communists' needs to stress materialism rather than classical "idealism," and to achieve their self-cultivation not through passive meditation but rather by means of active participation in the Communist movement.
Yet the concept of self-cultivation is distinctly Confucian, as is Liu's injunction to Communist cadres that each "watch himself when alone. " Liu and other Communist theorists may refer to these
? ORIGINS 391
traditional principles in order to introduce the alien words of Marx, Lenin, and Stalin in a familiar idiom; but this Confucian idiom does have deep emotional meaning even for anti-Confucian re- formers, and it is this lingering Confucian spirit which has caused the Chinese Communists to make an ideological fetish of moralistic personal re-education.
Similarly, the Confucian principle of "rectification of names" (which according to the Sage was the first and most important task for a new ruler) has important bearing upon thought reform's ap- proach to the reshaping of identity. In both cases, "rectification" means changing not the "name" or category of man, but rather changing the man himself until he fits that category--the Con-
fucian or Communist ideology, of course, being the arbiter of proper standards. This principle is expressed in Confucius' demand, "let the ruler be ruler, the minister be minister; let the father be father and the son, son," and in the Communist demand that the intellectual be the "progressive" or "proletarian" intellectual or the "good Communist. " For Confucianism shares with Communism the assumption that men can and should remake themselves, first as part of a process of changing their environment, and then as a means of adapting themselves to their environment. Both systems always involve a subtle interplay between role and identity: one first learns the more or less formal requirements for thought and be- havior, and only much later becomes in his essence the thing aspired to. This is called achieving complete "sincerity. "
And in Confucianism, just as in thought reform, the ideal of sincerity is made almost sacred:
Sincerity is the way of heaven. The attainment of sincerity is the way of men. He who possesses sincerity is he who, without an effort, hits what is right, and apprehends without the exercise of thought;--he is the sage who naturally embodies the right way. He who attains to sin- cerity is he who chooses what is good and firmly holds it fast. 4
This Confucian (and later neo-Confucian) notion of sincerity depends very much upon the principle of harmony: harmony within, permitting one to act correctly in an automatic fashion, and harmony without, enabling one to find his proper behavior in re- lationship to other men. To be sincere, in traditional China, meant to possess an inner urge toward fulfilling one's obligations, includ-
? y)2 THOUGHT REFORM
ing both the desire and the means for conforming to the filial ideology. Only the sincere man could give full expression to his nature, possess genuine self-knowledge, exert a beneficial influence upon others, and achieve a complete union (both organic and mystical) with Heaven and Earth. Thought reform is a way to achieve such sincerity in relationship to Communist doctrine. As in Confucianism, it is finding the correct path; as in neo-Confucianism it is combining knowledge and action. And the man who is truly sincere, like his Confucian and neo-Confucian counterparts, is said to possess superhuman powers. 5
These traditional Chinese themes could be expressed in thought reform only because they were also consistent with Marxist-Leninist principles. And this double fit has enabled the Chinese Communists to pursue them so energetically. Marxist-Leninist writings, for in- stance, are replete with references to personal reform; a similar Chinese cultural tradition has enabled Chinese Communists to be good Marxists. Communist practice in any country requires role- playing and identity change; but the Chinese bring to this a more concrete and explicit--not to say diligent--emphasis. In the matter of sincerity, Leninists too stress uniting theory and practice; but it is thought reform's combination of Marxist-Leninist (including Christian and Russian) with Confucian influences that has pro- duced the bizarre extremes described in this book: for when the Eastern notion of The Way was combined with the Western ideal of credal purity, sincerity came to mean nothing short of absolute submission.
It is impossible to document all the ways in which traditional Chinese and Russian Communist styles come together in thought reform, but a few of the more important convergences are worth listing. We have already noted the great sweep of both Confucian- ism and Communism; both cover all aspects of human existence in their stress upon loyalty and orthodoxy. In addition, both have a tradition of benevolent leadership by a small elite, within a strongly authoritarian framework. They also share an emphasis upon the responsibility of the individual person to the larger human group, upon his impotence when he stands alone, and upon the dangers of deviant individual initiative. In both there is the conviction that human nature is essentially good, although the extent to which both seek to control human behavior makes one wonder whether
? ORIGINS 393
their advocates really believe this. The Russian Communist re- liance upon emotionally charged slogans has an analogue in the traditional Chinese style of thinking in wholes rather than in parts, of using proverbs and metaphor to envelop a subject emotionally as well as intellectually. 6 There is some similarity (along with a good deal of difference) between the Soviet Communist dualism of the dialectic and the traditional Chinese dualism of Yin and Yang,7 The traditional blood brotherhood of Chinese rebel bands and secret societies resembles Communism's sense of cloak-and- dagger intimacy and moral mission. The Soviet Communist stress upon personal confession (the main source of this ethic for thought reform) had some relationship to the traditional Chinese practice of requiring local officials to accept blame for such things as natural catastrophes and to "confess" that their own unworthiness may have been responsible. And in the prison setting, Russian Com- munist pressures to confess (themselves apparently derived from practices of the Tsarist Okhrdna) come together with a traditional Chinese custom of requiring a prisoner to confess his crime be- fore being judged, while granting the judge considerable latitude in the methods he could employ to extract this confession. 8
How did this blending of cultural styles occur? The extensive thought reform program which the Communists had ready at the moment of the takeover was obviously the product of years of preparation. I was fortunate in being able to discuss this question in some detail with Mr. Chang Kuo-t'ao, one of the leading figures of the early Chinese Communist movement until his defection in 1938. According to Mr. Chang, the Communists began to employ systematic, if crude, reform techniques as early as the late igzo's. Communist leaders commanding small and relatively isolated mili- tary units began to devote much attention to the problem of win- ning over captured enemy soldiers and groups among the general population. Their task was complicated by the differences among their prospective converts: peasants, opium-smoking bandits, dis- gruntled conscripts in the Kuomintang armies, old-time Kuomintang supporters, uninvolved bystanders, and idealistic intellectuals. They first utilized international Communist principles, learned from Soviet contacts, dealing with "agitation and propaganda/' But very soon they began to modify these and develop their own pro- grams derived from their special Chinese environment.
? 394 THOUGHT REFORM
They approached uneducated peasants on a simple colloquial level. Ordinary enemy soldiers were first treated with unexpected "leniency"; then they were encouraged to vent all of their grievances against such past authorities as landlords and officers (to "vomit bitter water"); next they were taught to recognize the social evils of the Kuomintang regime as the source of their suffering ("dig the bitter roots"). The soldier was then offered an opportunity to remain with the Communists--to join the "one heart movement" to combat Chiang Kai-shek and create a new China; or he was given the option of returning to his home village as a person osten- sibly sympathetic to the Communist cause. As in later programs, participants quickly became themselves active reformers: peasant soldier captives showing signs of "progress" were encouraged to circulate among new arrivals with similar class backgrounds, and help in the latter's "vomiting" and "root digging" by recounting their own happy reform experiences.
With captured officers the Communists employed more sophisti- cated and individualized approaches. After separating the officer from his men, they would assign to him some of their most articu- late and persuasive spokesmen, and then subject him to prolonged analytic discussions of his personal relationship to the Chinese Civil War. Struggle procedures were used upon the most recal- citrant, and those known to be responsible for the death of large numbers of Communists were often executed; but there was an attempt to win converts whenever possible.
Chang emphasized that, with both officers and men, the Com- munists were consciously aware of the importance of setting an impressive personal example in their own dedication, discipline, and personal morality. After their first more or less experimental military efforts, the Communists proceeded in twenty years of trial-and-error improvement to make their program increasingly efficient. They extended the reform efforts to Japanese prisoners cap tured during the thirties and later to American prisoners captured during the Korean war. But their main efforts were concentrated upon their own countrymen during the phases of the long Chinese Civil War, so that by the time of the takeover, they had learned how to apply them quickly and effectively to entire armies of prisoners.
The reform program specifically for intellectuals, as opposed to
? ORIGINS 395
that for military captives, was developed by Communist groups operating in the outlying border areas during the Yenan period (1935-45). In order to absorb the large numbers of intellectuals, sympathetic but inexperienced (at least in the ways of revolution), who made their way to these Communist areas, a number of special training centers were set up. Those in the Yenan area of northwest China--the Anti-Japanese University, North Shensi Academy, and Marx Lenin Institute (later renamed Lu Hsun Academy)--gave rise to the thought reform programs for intellectuals we have been studying.
Here, as elsewhere, the Communists started with a prescribed Russian Communist model: the Yenan institutions were set up as replicas of Sun Yat-sen University in Moscow, an early training center for Chinese Communist intellectuals. This model was then adapted to their own revolutionary style. The Communists im- provised as they went along, hardly following a precise scientific "methodology. " Indeed, Mr. Chang felt that an important factor in the introspective hsiieh hsi, or group study process, was the isolation of many of these early institutions, and the lack of qualified teachers and textbooks, so that much of the subject matter studied had to come from the participants. This comment, while far from a full explanation, does make clear how important the external circum- stances were under which the Chinese Communist revolutionary movement synthesized Chinese and Russian Communist themes. Nor were Chinese improvisations always approved by Russian ad- visors: Chang mentioned that on several occasions Chinese Com- munist leaders were criticized for being "too much influenced by Confucian ethics. " Yet this moral and psychological emphasis seemed to come naturally to them; according to Chang, they were "good psychiatrists. " And although the Nationalists made similar efforts to "reform" Communists and Communist sympathizers in special "repentance camps," their efforts were (according to Chang and many other observers) much more clumsy and much less effective.
Perhaps the crucial step in the development of the Communist reform program for intellectuals was the Cheng Feng (literally, reform of work style or "spirit") conducted within the Communist Party, mostly in Yenan, from 1942 to 1944. (Mr. Chang was no longer with the Communists then; my information here is based on
? 396 THOUGHT REFORM
written studies and on the impressions of my subjects. ) During this campaign, the basic techniques, as well as the widely-circulated Reform Documents from which I have been quoting, were evolved.
At' the time of the Cheng Feng, the Party faced the problem of the threat of unorthodoxy among its heterogeneous recruits, and especially among its intellectuals; it was also confronted with the task of Sinifying a Marxist movement whose ideology had here- tofore been entirely foreign, and it had to invigorate intraparty morale. 9 It is of the greatest significance that the Chinese Com- munists solved these problems through personal confession and re-education, that these forms of introspection were used to pro- duce within each Party member the desired blend of Leninism and Chineseness, along with a sense of personal revitalization. From this movement the Chinese Communists' own ideology (mostly in the form of "the thought of Mao Tse-tung") emerged; the im- portance of this ideology lay not in any brilliant originality, but more in its organizational and psychological usefulness, and in the renewed sense of group identity to which both the campaign and its ideology contributed. After the Cheng Feng, the die was cast; just a year later, "the documents of the movement had become Party dogma, and the reform process had become a continuing organizational mechanism. "10 Even such a brief outline of the his- tory of thought reform confirms what I have already suggested-- that the reformers evolved their psychological skills by combining elements from their cultural heritage and their own revolutionary needs with principles of Russian Communist theory and practice.
One other important factor in the Chinese heritage also played a part in the evolution of reform techniques: human-centered psy- chological skills. No other civilization has paid so much attention to the conduct of human relationships. An American anthropolo- gist has claimed that "Chinese culture has developed inter-personal relationships to the level of an exquisite and superb art/'n It is not that Chinese are incapable of obtuseness and insensitivity; but a particular kind of psychological mindedness has long been culti- vated in Chinese life. The Chinese family, with its characteristi- cally complicated inner maneuvering, has been an excellent psy-
chological training ground: in order to be "proper," Chinese children have had to learn to be aware of the emotional currents in their milieu. And this personal emphasis has extended from the family
? ORIGINS 397
into the rest of Chinese life: whether performing official duties or seeking personal objectives, Chinese have always put great stress on exerting influence upon the people involved--and there is only a fine line between influence and manipulation. These human-centered skills have been carefully nurtured over centuries, and emphasized at the expense of technical achievements (even the gods play psy- chological games). 12 In this sense, thought reform is the modern totalitarian expression of a national genius.
But the spirit in which these human-centered skills are used in thought reform is certainly alien to the traditional Chinese cultural style. In the past, the stress was upon individual and social harmony; the ideal was that of quiet wisdom and unbroken calm. The chun- tze, or superior Confucian man, was expected to be contemplative and reserved in his bearing: "the master was mild yet dignified; majestic and yet not fierce; respectful and yet easy. "13 Above all, he was to be in full control of his emotions: "if a man be under the influence of passion, he will be incorrect in his conduct. "14 For the withdrawn Taoist sage, restraint was equally essential: "So long as I love calm, the people will be right themselves. " 15 Such a cultural stress upon moderation, balance, and harmony--which we may call a cult of restraint--insures a certain degree of preservation of self.
Thought reform has the opposite ethos, a cult of enthusiasm (enthusiasm in the religious meaning of rapturous and excessive emotional experience),16 with a demand for total self-surrender. It is true that thought reform implies a promise of a return to re- straint, and of an attainment of relaxed perfection some time in the mystical Communist future, just as Confucius claimed that these ideals had existed during an equally mystical past or "golden age"-- but enthusiasm and restraint, once established, are not always so
easily controlled.
The spirit of enthusiasm seems to have entered China from the
outside, carried in on the ideological wings of Western nationalism, international Communism, and displaced Judeo-Christian demands for ecstatic repentance and histrionic remorse. Yet the intellectual descendants of the staid literati have shown themselves to be quite capable of orgiastic display--in fact, more capable of it than their counterparts in Western Communist countries who have a much greater tradition for this type of emotional excess. Apparently any
? 398 THOUGHT REFORM
culture, or any person within a culture, is potentially capable of either restraint or enthusiasm, depending upon individual and col- lective historical experience. Those cultures in which restraint has been long maintained (again we may use the analogy of the individ- ual) are likely to experience an explosive emotional breakthrough once the restraint begins to loosen; and the new enthusiasm be- comes the means of putting to rout what remains of the older pattern.
Just as thought reform draws upon psychological skills of both traditional China and Western Communism, it also brings out the inquisitional tendencies of both worlds. From each of the two great cultural streams, it stresses what is most illiberal. Inquisitorial dogmatism, skillful human-centered manipulation, and ecstatic en- thusiasm combine within it to produce an awesome quality. Con- sequently, relatively moderate Russian and Eastern European Com- munists look warily at China's totalism (and Stalinism); and people like Bishop Barker (something of an enthusiast himself) envy the energies and the psychological cleverness of a respected rival. For in breaking out of its traditional cult of restraint, while retaining its old penchant for the reordering of human emotions, China has created a cult of enthusiasm of such proportions that it must startle even the most immoderate Christian or Communist visionary.
? 21 CULTURAL PERSPECTIVES: IMP ACT
How have the majority of Chinese intellectuals re-
sponded to the cult of enthusiasm? Has thought re- form really been successful with them? What has been its imme- diate and long-range impact upon them? These questions demanded a follow-up evaluation of the continuing thought reform program,
The evaluation had to be made cautiously, since most Chinese intellectuals remain within China, quite inaccessible to me. Yet I believe I have enough evidence to make a few generalizations --evidence derived from my original research, from Chinese Com- munist press reports of the next few years, and from my follow-up visit to Hong Kong during the summer of 1958.
Most of my Chinese subjects had participated in the first great national wave of thought reform which took place from 1948 to 1952. These were the years of maximum activity in the revolutionary universities (afterward, many of them were converted into more conventional Marxist-Leninist training centers), of sweeping re- forms in regular universities, and of the histrionic early campaigns --"The Suppression of Counterrevolutionaries/' the hsueh hsi pro- gram, the "Three-Anti" and "Five-Anti" movements, the ideologi- cal struggles of "culture workers" (everyone concerned with the arts) centering around the motion picture The Life of Wu Hsun, and the Thought Reform Campaign itself. My subjects' accounts of these campaigns always included a description of others' re-
C H A P TER
399
? 400 THOUGHT REFORM
sponses along with their own. I also made a point of asking each of them to estimate the general effects of thought reform within his immediate environment.
The estimates I got were remarkably consistent, and were also confirmed by other Chinese and Westerners who had been in China at the time. I was led to the conclusion that thought reform, at least during its early phase, had been much more successful with Chinese than with Westerners--largely because of the immense appeal of nationalism, the reinforcement of thought reform by the Chinese Communist environment, the sense of belonging to a group within one's own society, as well as many of the other histori- cal and cultural influences already mentioned. Yet it was possible to identify in the Chinese intellectuals three kinds of response roughly analogous to (although by no means the same as) those I have de- scribed in Westerners.
Chinese zealous converts underwent a profound religious ex- perience. They regarded thought reform as fine and ennobling and felt genuinely reborn, along with their society. The zealous convert was usually youthful, either an adolescent or a young adult. Al- though he may not have been completely free of inner doubt even after his thought reform, his conversion was generally much more profound than that of the apparent converts among the Westerners.
(This was, after all, his world, and in it his future seemed un- limited. ) None of my subjects fit exactly into this category; of them, George Chen's early responses came closest. Perhaps better examples of zealous converts were the middle-school and university students around him whom he described as being completely im- mersed in the general enthusiasm. It was probably true that a sizable number, perhaps even a majority, of Chinese between the ages of fifteen and twenty-two were at that time zealous converts. The incidence of conversion apparently decreased in direct propor- tion to age, and most of my informants expressed the opinion that thirty was an important dividing line. Zealous converts were prob- ably rare in the upper age groups, and they seemed to be a dis- tinct minority among Chinese intellectuals as a whole.
At the other extreme were the resisters, those who felt suffocated by the program and considered it bad and coercive. As with some of my subjects (Mr. Hu and Grace Wu for instance), they were apt to have been a good deal more sympathetic to Communism before
? IMPACT 401
their reform than after. But the resister who stayed in China could not, at least during this early period, reveal himself; clear-cut acts of resistance were virtually confined to the few who fled. And the re- sponses of those who did leave China led me to conclude that the program had been massive enough to make even the resister ques- tion his own attitude and feel guilty for being against the majority --perhaps even more guilty than the Western apparent resister felt. It is probable that the resisters were most frequently older in- tellectuals, especially those who in the past had been significantly exposed to the West. But resisters too seemed to constitute a minority among Chinese intellectuals.
The most usual response lay between these two extremes, and most Chinese intellectuals may be called adapters. An adapter was partially but not entirely convinced by the program; essentially he was concerned with the problems of coping with a stressful ex- perience and finding a place in the new society. His feelings about thought reform may have been similarly complicated; he may have experienced it as painful, perhaps even coercive, but at the same time possibly beneficial--like medicine which may do some good just because it tastes so bad. The adapter, while by no means un- affected by ideology, was likely to be (as was Robert Chao) less affected by it than either a convert or a resister. Of course, both convert and resister also did some adapting. The adapter underwent his share of confusion and identity crisis, but not to the extreme degree of the obviously confused among Westerners; for he was not (except in rare cases) forced to make a sudden transition from one world to another. He often tried to dispel his doubts by behaving like a zealous convert, and in doing so, may have resembled a Western apparent convert immediately after his reform experience. In a historical sense, the adapter was following a long-established pattern of Chinese intellectuals: accepting the change in dynasty as part of the order of things, placing his talents at the disposal of the new rulers, and seeing in the reign both good and evil, but not enough good to win his absolute enthusiasm nor enough evil to provoke his unqualified opposition.
Apart from these response categories, I gained the impression that this first wave of thought reform had served the over-all function of setting the standards for intellectual and emotional existence under Communism. Not only was The Way pointed out, but it was, to a
? 4 O 2 THOUGHT REFORM
large extent, internally imposed. 1 Early enthusiasm for Communism and residual bitterness toward the old regime made this the pe- riod of thought reform's greatest opportunity--an opportunity furthered by the patriotic sentiments aroused by the Korean war, and by the special campaign appeals ("Resist America, Aid Korea," "Enlist For The Army," and even the hygiene enthusiasms) which went along with it. But we cannot judge the effects of this initial phase of thought reform without examining the events which fol- lowed.
After two years of relative ideological calm, Chinese intellectuals were swept up into the second great wave of thought reform cam- paigns. During 1954 and 1955, organized emotional frenzy was re- newed--first over the lingering "poisons" related to the liberalism of Hu Shih; then over the proper critical approach to the novel, The Dream of the Red Chamber; and then over the "criminal acts" of the independently-minded left-wing writer and former disciple of Lu Hsun, Hu Feng. Each of these campaigns served to stimulate new displays of confession and repentance, and each outdid its predecessor in thought reform efforts; the vituperative intensity and the scope of this second jwave of thought reform were, if anything, even greater than those of the first.
Yet when the frenzy of this push-button enthusiasm had abated, the Party leaders indicated that there was still much more to be accomplished, and in late 1955 and early 1956 convened a series of conferences on "the question of intellectuals. " At one of these, Chou En-lai expressed the belief that great progress had been made, and quoted from surveys: "According to statistical data on 141 teachers in four higher institutes of Peking, Tientsin and Tsingtao, for example, in the past six years the progressive elements have in- creased from 18 per cent to 41 per cent, while the backward ele- ments were reduced from 28 per cent to 15 per cent. " 2 He summed up his statistics as follows: 40 per cent were "progressive elements" actively supporting the regime; 40 per cent were "middle-of-the-road elements" who supported the regime but were "not sufficiently pro- gressive"; a little over 10 per cent were "backward elements" who
"lack political consciousness or ideologically oppose socialism"; and "only a few per cent"--presumably the rest--were "counter- revolutionaries and other bad elements. " Chou of course concluded that intellectuals require "continued ideological reform/' but his
? IMPACT 403
tone was conciliatory, and he proposed a series of improvements (soon put into effect) in general working and living conditions re- lating to such things as housing, salary, equipment, and availability of needed reference materials. He proposed that five-sixths of in- tellectuals' working time, or forty hours a week, be made available for their professional activities; the remaining time was to be used for "political study, attending necessary meetings, and taking part in social activity. " This soft approach contrasted sharply with the vindictive excesses of the recently-completed Hu Fung campaign, and it inaugurated the third and perhaps most remarkable of all
thought reform phases--the period of the "Hundred Flowers/' That the Communists should adopt as a slogan the phrase, "Let the hundred flowers bloom, let the hundred schools of thought contend" (a classical allusion to the hundred schools of philosophy which flourished during the Chou Dynasty before Confucianism became the official ideology) was ironic enough, but no less ironic than the events which followed. Mao Tse-tung is said to have first suggested the expression in an unpublished address before a Party conference in May, 1956; and it was first publicly stated a few weeks later by the director of propaganda of the Party's Central Com- mittee. Thought reform was to continue, but thought reform of a new kind: there was to be "freedom of independent thinking, free- dom of debate, freedom of creative work, freedom to criticize, to
express one's own views. "3
Intellectuals were understandably slow to respond to the invita-
tion until it was again extended by Mao himself almost a year later in his widely publicized speech, "On the Correct Handling of Contradictions among the People," and still again in another speech a few weeks later. The invitation was then formalized into a national campaign for the "Rectification of Party Members," and the strange spectacle was seen of all the usual organizational paraphernalia--newspaper editorials, radio and loud-speaker broad- casts, and word of mouth evangelizing--being directed at provoking criticism (constructive, of course) of Communist Party members. The idea behind the campaign was apparently a tentative policy of liberalization, a controlled opportunity for non-Party intellectuals to vent their grievances and thereby improve their working relation- ship with the Party. In converting the invitation to a command per- formance, Communist leaders may have been influenced by an un-
? 404 THOUGHT REFORM
easiness they sensed in the intellectuals, about events elsewhere in the Communist world (the Hungarian uprising and the publication of Khrushchev's speech on Stalin), and about economic difficulties within China.
In any case, it was all meant to be a friendly version of thought reform. Everyone was to speak out freely and air the "contradic- tions" between the leaders and the led. There were to be no mass meetings or "struggles," only small discussion groups and "com- radely heart to heart talks"; the campaign was to be carried out, according to its directive, "as gently as a breeze or a mild rain. "
But when the intellectuals finally spoke out, the "mild rain" quickly assumed hurricane proportions. Far from limiting them- selves to polite suggestions, they bitterly criticised every phase of Communist rule, including Party infallibility, the benevolence of the Peking regime, and the integrity of Mao Tse-tung himself. One group of intellectuals (sometimes sounding like the Yugoslav Communist, Milovan Djilas) centered their fire upon the Party's abuse of power and privileges: a newspaper editor complained that the Party was highhanded ("I think a Party leading the nation is not the same as a Party owning the nation"); other critics equated Communist leadership with traditional despotism ("Local em- perors," "Party dynasty," "empire of the Party"), and urged high Communist officials to "alight from their sedan-chairs"; still others condemned the priority given to Party members in such matters as promotion, living subsidies, medical care, school facilities for chil- dren, and opportunities to travel abroad.
Many intellectuals said that their initial enthusiasm for Com- munism had given way to disillusionment. A lecturer in science warned the regime that things had gotten so bad that unless it gave up its "arrogant and conceited" attitudes, "the masses will bring you down, kill the Communists, and overthrow you. "
One university professor, after an articulate statement on the limitations of Marxism-Leninism ("no doctrine can embody the whole truth"), had the audacity to suggest that it be dispensed with as an ideological guide. Others advocated the formation of genuine opposition parties, free elections, and other elements of parliamen- tary democracy. The absence of civil rights and legal safeguards was noted, and the regime's constitution was denounced as a "scrap of paper not observed by the Party/' Critics condemned Com-
? IMP ACT 4 0 5
munist manipulation of information; and one journalist chided the country's newspapers for "playing the role of a notice board, a gramophone, and a pirated edition of a book"; another objected to the practice of reproducing editorials from the People's Daily-- the spokesman of the Peking regime--in newspapers throughout China, pointing out that "the editorials of the New York Times are not reproduced by other American papers/'
And perhaps most important, many of the critics struck out at thought reform itself. A Peking University professor minced no words: "I find the term thought reform rather repulsive. . . . I am not aware that there is anything wrong with my thought. . . . No style of thought is made up entirely of cream or scum. " Many condemned the abuses of the national campaigns ("People who have gone through these movements will remember the terror and feel their flesh creep whenever they think of them") and demanded that the Party admit its mistakes in humiliating, imprisoning, and even putting to death many innocent people. One highranking government official referred to the repeated re-education programs as "disgusting," and felt that rather than winning over the intel- lectuals, they had done much to embitter them. Others found the programs "a total mistake" and "rotten to the core," claiming that thought reform "has made everybody live in insecurity/' and using such terms as "assault on the person" and "blindfold of the mind. "
Some of the most heated criticisms were made by Communist Party members. One compared the relationship between the leaders and the led (placing intellectuals in the latter category) to that between mistress and slave girl:
A slave girl is the dowry or appendage of her mistress. She has to win the favor and avoid the hate of her mistress. In her spiritual world there are only submission and flattery. She looks upon the swallowing of the saliva of her mistress as an honor. This is the true philosophy of the slave girl.
Another, in condemning Party orthodoxy, defended his own "rebel- lious character," and quoted Maxim Gorki's phrase, "Man comes into the world to rebel/' Still another expressed the dilemma of a Party member asked to participate actively in the rectification cam- paign and at the same time observe Party discipline: "This amounts to sealing our mouth while expecting us to speak. "
? 4 0 6 THOUGHT R E F O R M
This critical outburst was permitted to last for about one month, during which time the Party leadership apparently experienced hesitancy and confusion. Although they had themselves set off the campaign, they seemed to be totally unprepared for its vehemence. At the beginning, Party organs praised its own critics for their participation in the "blooming and contending/' and for having become "inflamed with enthusiasm. " After that, there were a few expressions of concern about the tone of the criticisms, but still no clear policy was taken about them.
Finally, six weeks after the beginning of the rectification move- ment, a full-scale counterattack was launched. An editorial in the Peking People's Daily, appropriately entitled, "What is This For? ", gave the signal for a reversal of the critical tide. It labeled the most outspoken critics "rightist elements," and accused them (accurately enough) of "challenging the political leadership of the Communist Party . . . and even openly clamoring for the Party's 'quitting the stage' . . . in the name of 'helping the Communist Party rectify its working style/ " In subsequent editorials (and presumably in instructions passed down through the Party's ranks), the order was given to oppose "incorrect criticisms" and "firmly develop correct countercriticisms. " Soon it was the critics themselves (no longer simply "rightist elements" but "bourgeois rightists"), rather than Party members, who were being ''rectified. " These critics then be- came targets of the most extreme "ideological struggle" and the most abusive hostility, as the "blooming and contending" abruptly gave way to a new "Anti-Rightist Campaign. " Many of them were accused of participating in the subversive "Chang-Lo alliance"
(Chang and Lo, both leading members of "democratic" parties who had held rather high positions in the regime, had been among the most outspoken, and were cited as prominent bad examples).
The regime was particularly sensitive about the criticisms of thought reform. It countered these with the claim that the Hun- dred Flowers incident left no doubt that more, rather than less, thought reform was needed, and promised the intellectuals that they would in the future be given refresher courses of thought reform every year or even every six months. The results of the first of these refresher courses soon become apparent. True to form, each of the former critics in turn renounced his criticisms of the regime; each condemned the remaining bourgeois influences within
? IMP ACT 4 0 7
himself, and many emphasized their having been influenced by the notorious "Chang-Lo alliance. " Many Party members were expelled (not for being themselves "bourgeois rightists," but for having allegedly been influenced by them), critics were removed from office, some were arrested, and there were reports of suicides, and even of executions. The soft policy toward intellectuals was suddenly replaced by hard disdain: intellectuals were ridiculed, unfavorably compared (even in regard to intelligence) with "the masses/' told that it was necessary to be first "Red'' and then "ex- pert," and in many cases were sent to rural areas to learn their lessons. The experiment with liberalization was over and the old variety of thought reform was back.
One particularly significant aspect of the Hundred Flowers out- burst was the behavior of China's students. In 1958, I obtained firsthand descriptions of this behavior from two young men who had participated in the campaign the year before while attending uni- versities in Peking. Their reports on the attitudes of university students--the age group which has been most responsive to thought reform--were extremely revealing.
Both were in their early twenties; in 1957 Wang had been a junior at Tsing Hua, and Li a senior at Peking University. Each had gone through thought reform at middle school; both had then shared in the general sense of exhilaration and had accepted the Communist point of view fully, though Li felt that because he was a Christian, he might have been a bit less enthusiastic than some of the others. Both described the strong impact upon the Chi- nese students of events in European Communist countries--Khru- shchev's denunciation of Stalin, the Hungarian revolution, and un- rest of Polish intellectuals--despite the limited and highly-slanted coverage of these events in the Chinese Communist press. Since many students had, according to Li, a "religious" belief in Com- munism's perfection, their disillusion was "like that of a person with a sincere belief in God who suddenly discovers there is no God/' He said the Hungarian revolution was particularly important to them, and estimated that only about one-third of the students accepted without question the Party's official version that it was a reactionary uprising brought about by American imperialist activity. Reports of Russian intervention bothered the students, although most even- tually rationalized this as "probably necessary to preserve socialism. "
? 408 THOUGHT REFORM
Li himself shared the general feeling of uneasiness and had an urge to "talk to the others about these things. "
Wang stressed the effects of Khrushchev's revelations about Stalin. I asked him how he and the other students had learned about this, since the Chinese Communist regime, deeply identified as it was with Stalinism, had suppressed most of the details. Wang gave a surprising answer: someone had discovered the text of the speech in a copy of the New York Daily Worker in a library. The Worker was, of course, the only American newspaper available to students. This information was spread by word-of-mouth, and many students went to the library to read the speech. It was a shock to them to learn that the Russian system was "not democratic" and that the man held up to them as such a humane leader, whose writings they used in their courses, had put so many people to death.
Both Li and Wang emphasized, however, that almost 90 per cent of the students were members of the Communist Youth Corps, and that the students continued to identify themselves with the regime. Some consoled themselves with their faith that Chinese Communism was superior to European Communism. Although occasionally aware that individual freedom was curtailed, they did not experience a continuous sense of suppression, and were usually "too busy studying to think too much about it. " But Li thought that in 1957 most students would have favored China's following Poland's example in granting additional self-expression, although few said so outright.
In any case, in the months just before the release of Hundred Flowers emotions both Li and Wang were aware of widespread "restlessness" and "frustration. " The students, like their teachers, were slow to respond to the invitation to speak out. But when they did, they were second to none in the vigor of their criticisms, and much more prone than other groups to convert their sentiments into action. As usual, it was Peking University which led all the rest.
There the students set up a "Democratic Wall," a large bulletin board devoted to criticism and protest. The wall space near the bulletin board was devoted to the same purpose, and, true to the horticultural metaphor, was called "The Garden of Democracy. " Students, individually or in groups, prepared sharp commentaries, satirical poems, cartoons, and slogans. And soon, as the Party press reported, "enthusiastic discussions and debates were developed near
? IMP ACT 4 0 9
the walls, in the dormitories, in the passageways of the classrooms, or on the meadows by the side of the lake. " The spontaneous debate was "like in Hyde Park," and "the atmosphere of free contention engulfed the whole university. " Students brought up the same complaints as other critics. They also raised issues particularly im- portant to them as a group. They complained of the Party's arbi- trary control over their programs of study and of their later job assignments; they asked for free expression of student opinion; they praised the "courageous" actions of their fellow-students in Hungary and Poland. One of the most persistent themes, expressed both on the bulletin board and during debates, was, "We should find out what freedom and democracy mean. "
At one point, a Party official tried to restrain the Peking Univer- sity students, and told them that bulletin boards were "not a good medium" for the rectification campaign. But this attitude was bitterly denounced on the Democratic Wall, and soon afterward a higher official apologized to the students for the erroneous views of his subordinate. And according to Li, many Party members and Youth Corps leaders from among the students were in the vanguard of the protest activities.
Very quickly, Democratic Walls appeared at universities all over China (press reports and letters exchanged among students had publicized the original). Wang told me that Khrushchev's anti- Stalin speech was posted on Tsing Hua's Democratic W all. In some other cities, the students acted with even greater vehemence, staging riots, beating up Party members, and destroying Party prop- erty. Prominent among the demonstrators were middle-school students. Once more there was student agitation in China, but this time the Communists were its targets rather than its bene- ficiaries.
Immediately after the "What is This For? " editorial, however, Party members and supporters were able to gain full control of university environments. The students abruptly ceased their pro- tests, and the attack upon "rightists" in their ranks began. Accord- ing to Li, students were not surprised when the government stepped in; but they did resent its rough treatment of those who had spoken out. Li said that many of the students who had previously been most vehement in their criticisms were now the loudest voices in the anti-rightist chorus, and compared their actions to the betrayal
? 410 THOUGHT REFORM
of Jesus by his own disciple.
The government made sure that the counterattack was launched
from Peking University. A reorganized Peking University student association sent an open letter to student leaders in all of the other major universities, denouncing "rightist activities," and support- ing the government's countermeasures. The Democratic Wall was retained; but the essays, poems, and cartoons on it now attacked the "rightists," and its new slogan--posted in large whitewashed char- acters--read: "Any word or act alienated from Socialism is com- pletely erroneous. "
Li estimated that about one-third of the students agreed fully with the government's intervention, feeling it necessary and just; the sentiments among the rest varied greatly--some were bitterly resentful, others of two minds, and still others blandly compliant. Many students, in explaining these difficult matters to themselves and to each other, resorted to traditional Chinese ideas about the rise and fall of great dynasties; they concluded that since Commu- nism had been active in China for only about twenty-five years, it had "not yet used up its history," and one might as well continue to support it.
Li told me that he had decided to leave China because he feared that if he ever expressed his resentments about the regime, he might cause difficulty for himself and others. Chang gave similar reasons; during the Hundred Flowers campaign he had compared Stalin to Hitler, and spoken out strongly against Party control of the uni- versity, so that he felt that his position was already precarious. Nor were his apprehensions unfounded: the People's Daily had already announced that graduates of Peking University were to be subjected to a special "political examination" consisting of a detailed scrutiny of their attitudes and behavior during the "anti-rightist struggle. " The results of this examination were to be kept as official records and used as a basis for job assignments: "We will never let anyone politically questionable assume duties that he should not assume. " And during the wave of thought reform which followed, many students and recent graduates were sent to work in the countryside, many others placed under various forms of special surveillance, and a few were sent to prison for reform through labor.
I believe the Hundred Flowers episode has great significance for an evaluation of thought reform's effectiveness. One cannot draw
? IMP ACT 4 1 1
statistical conclusions from an event so massively emotional; and there is no way of knowing what percentage of Chinese intellectuals shared the feelings of the regime's critics. Yet the sudden intensity of both the antiregime outburst and the "anti-rightist" counter- attack illuminate the limitations as well as the accomplishments of the thought reform program.
Looking first at the program's limitations, the Hundred Flowers incident reveals the potential of a reform-saturated environment for a sudden reversal of sentiment, for the release of bitter emotions directed both at thought reform and at the regime which per- petuates it. Behind such a reversal lies the latent resentment which thought reform builds up in varying degrees within virtually all who are exposed to it. This resentment originates in a basic human aversion to excessive personal control, a phenomenon which I call the hostility of suffocation (discussed further in Part IV). Thought reform constantly provokes this hostility, first by stimulating it within individual participants, and then by creating conditions of group intensity which can magnify it to frenzy. In other words, thought reform is able to promote an emotional contagion--of resentment as well as enthusiasm. These emotions are closely re- lated, and easily changed from one to the other. Individual feelings of hostility and resentment toward reform may exist consciously, or may be deeply repressed, but when encouraged by external con- ditions, they can emerge suddenly and unexpectedly.
One external condition which encourages their expression is the release of environmental controls. This in turn leads to the break- down of the individual's defense mechanisms, particularly repres- sion, which ordinarily keep resentment in check. Thus, liberaliza- tion of the milieu can create a quick surge of resentment, which mounts until it is again forced underground by the restoration of a suppressive atmosphere. This leads to more hostility of suffoca- tion, and thought reform is then on a treadmill of extremism.
Another limitation in the effectiveness of thought reform is its dependency on the maintenance of a closed system of communica- tion, on an idea-tight milieu control. If information from the out- side which contradicts thought reform's message breaks through this milieu control, it can also be a stimulus for resentment. This was true of the news from Hungary, Russia, and Poland at the time of the Hundred Flowers. As the students' use of the New York
? 412 THOUGHT REFORM
Daily Worker reveals, the increase in international communication makes strict milieu control difficult to maintain; and if information from outside includes evidence of brutality within the Communist system, the hostility of suffocation becomes combined with a sense of having been betrayed.
The break in milieu control need not come from so great a dis- tance: life experiences within Communist China, outside of the immediate thought reform process, can also serve the same func- tion. Thus, thought reform extolled the brilliance of the Commu- nist Party's economic planning, but Chinese intellectuals, like everyone else, were suffering from shortages; thought reform preached austerity, but intellectuals saw a privileged class of Party members emerge. This kind of information is of course even more accessible to a thought reform participant than news from the out- side world. All of which suggests that thought reform cannot be conducted in a vacuum; milieu control can never be complete. The one-sided visions of thought reform are always threatened by the world without, a world which will neither live up to these visions nor cease to undermine them.
The Hundred Flowers experience also seems to indicate that thought reform is subject to a law of diminishing conversions. Re- peated attempts to reform the same man are more likely to increase his hostility of suffocation than to purge him of his "incorrect" thoughts. With each histrionic show of repentance, his conversion becomes more suspect. This hypothesis is confirmed by the revised official estimates of the intellectuals' ideological status after the Hundred Flowers episode. In 1958, commentators placed "only a few" of China's intellectuals in the category of fully acceptable "working class intellectuals" (fewer than Chou En-lai's 1956 esti- mate of 40 per cent), characterizing the majority of intellectuals as "middle-of-the-roaders" (more than Chou's 1956 estimate of 40 per cent). Although these estimates are hardly precise (they may have been exaggerated to spur the intellectuals on to greater efforts), the Hundred Flowers incident itself suggests that they may cor- rectly indicate a trend. By "middle-of-the-roaders," the Commu- nists did not mean "bourgeois rightists" (who presumably had al- ready been dealt with), but rather those intellectuals who had reacted with emotional passivity and partial withdrawal to an over- dose of thought reform. Such passive tendencies can be observed
? IMP ACT 4 1 3
in Chinese intellectuals (Robert Chao, for instance) who are faced with unpleasant environmental realities. At the beginning, perhaps, thought reform can frequently break through these patterns and even utilize the emotional conflicts which accompany them; but over a period of time it runs the risk of itself stimulating a protec- tive inner passivity and withdrawal even among those who outwardly seem active and involved.
The Chinese Communists seem to interpret these passive tend- encies not as evidences of too much reform but rather of too little, and their treatment is always the same--more reform. We can only conclude that Chinese leaders are by no means as logical and calmly methodical about their reform programs as many outsiders assume them to be. Indeed, they themselves appear to be caught up in an irrational urge to reform, an urge which frequently works against their own interests. I estimate that thought reform's maximum
(post-takeover) effectiveness was reached sometime during its first wave (about 1951 or 1952), and that after this the balance between enthusiasm and coercion has shifted to a decrease of the former and an increase of the latter. This too is part of the Communist leaders' own treadmill, since it means that they can neither achieve their perfectionistic thought reform goals, nor cease trying to; and every wave of thought reform makes the next wave even more necessary. The stagers of thought reform are in this sense the vic- tims of their own cult of enthusiasm.
Yet all of this is just one side of the story. The repetitive waves of thought reform diminish spontaneity and stimulate resentment, but they also help to achieve what is perhaps thought reform's major goal, the rapid establishment of a Chinese Communist ideological culture--a prescribed system of feeling and belief against which everything is critically judged. A variation of thought re- form got the Party into difficulty during the Hundred Flowers out- burst; a hyperorthodox thought reform came to the rescue. Al- though the counterattack was neither as significant nor as un- expected as the critical outburst which preceded it, the almost im- mediate recantation made by all who had spoken out was nearly as impressive a spectacle, and was certainly a highly convincing dis- play of the recuperative powers of thought reform. Those who recanted must have been very fearful, and their performances were perhaps even more than usually ritualistic. Yet they may also have
? 414 THOUGHT REFORM
felt some genuine repentance, for thought reform had applied to them its special techniques for reclaiming backsliders. By its mobili- zation of mass emotions, it could have convinced them that their critical views were out of step with the march of history, and that they had helped their country's enemies and harmed a noble cause. Thought reform can so envelop the backslider in his guilt that, however sincere his original protest, he is made to doubt himself enough to return to the fold--if not as a true believer, then as a humiliated, fearful, confused, and impotent follower. We saw ves- tiges of this reclaiming power in many of my subjects: the guilty sense of having been a betrayer, along with a paralyzing fear of the Communists (especially in Hu and in George Chen), persisting long after the escape from Communist control. For thought reform achieves a degree of psychological control over the individual as strong as any yet devised.
Accompanying this control is thought reform's extraordinary capacity for personal manipulation. We need not accept, of course, the regime's later claim to infallibility in relationship to the Hun- dred Flowers episode--its innuendoes that it had inaugurated the campaign in order to expose the "poisonous weeds" (a view also held by many cynical outsiders). The evidence suggests that the Communists were as surprised as anyone else at the response. Yet this ex post facto claim does have a kernel of truth: for in any system as total as thought reform, liberalization is at best a device, a purposeful technique rather than an expression of genuine con- viction. Thought reform manipulates the sequence of suffocation- liberalization-suffocation, and in so doing ensures that Communist realities remain at the center of the stage, whatever the degree of enthusiasm or resentment of the players.
I am aware that I have presented versions of thought reform's limitations and accomplishments which seem almost contradic- tory. I have done this intentionally, because these opposing effects can and do co-exist, sometimes even within the same person. A true picture of the program's impact can only be obtained by visualizing within the emotional life of individual Chinese intellectuals a fluc- tuating complex of genuine enthusiasm, neutral compliance, passive withdrawal, and hostility of suffocation--along with a tendency to accept much that is unpleasant because it seems to be a necessary part of a greater program, or the only way to get things done.
? IMP ACT 4 1 5
Will thought reform continue indefinitely? No one can be sure. Its intensity may diminish as the Chinese Communists move be- yond the acute ideological stage of revolution. This would be in keeping with their contention that the need for thought reform arises solely from the contaminations of the old order: new genera- tions of intellectuals, brought up entirely under Communism, should--according to this logic--have no reason to reform. Yet matters may not turn out to be quite so simple. The psychological forces which originally set thought reform in motion will continue to be felt; and perhaps for as long as this strange marriage be- tween Communism and Chinese culture remains solvent (despite the early clash of temperaments, the union looks like an enduring one), Chinese intellectuals will find themselves subjected to some kind of periodic "rectification. "
This page intentionally left blank
? ? PART FOUR
TOTALISM AND ITS
AL TERNA TIVES
For my part, I detest these absolute systems which represent all the events of history as depending upon great first causes linked by the chain of fatality, and which, as it were, suppress men from the history of the human race. They seem narrowed to my mind, under their pretense of broadness, and false beneath their air of mathematical exactness.
Alexis de Tocqueville
If to see more is really to become more, if deeper vi- sion is really fuller being, then we should look closely at man in order to increase our capacity to live.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
This page intentionally left blank
? ? CHAPTER 22 IDEOLOGICAL TOTALISM
Thought reform has a psychological momentum of
its own, a self-perpetuating energy not always bound by the interests of the program's directors. When we inquire into the sources of this momentum, we come upon a complex set of psychological themes, which may be grouped under the general heading of ideological totalism. By this ungainly phrase I mean to suggest the coming together of immoderate ideology with equally immoderate individualcharacter traits--an extremist meeting ground between people and ideas.
In discussing tendencies toward individual totalism within my subjects, I made it clear that these were a matter of degree, and that some potential for this form of all-or-nothing emotional align- ment exists within everyone. Similarly, any ideology--that is, any set of emotionally-charged convictions about man and his rela- tionship to the natural or supernatural world--may be carried by its adherents in a totalistic direction. But this is most likely to occur with those ideologies which are most sweeping in their content and most ambitious--or messianic--in their claims, whether religious, political, or scientific. And where totalism exists, a re- ligion, a political movement, or even a scientific organization be- comes little more than an exclusive cult.
A discussion of what is most central in the thought reform en- vironment can thus lead us to a more general consideration of the
419
? 420 THOUGHT REFORM
psychology of human zealotry. For in identifying, on the basis of this study of thought reform, features common to all expressions of ideological totalism, I wish to suggest a set of criteria against which any environment may be judged--a basis for answering the ever- recurring question: "Isn't this just like 'brainwashing'? "
These criteria consist of eight psychological themes which are predominant within the social field of the thought reform milieu. Each has a totalistic quality; each depends upon an equally ab- solute philosophical assumption; and each mobilizes certain in- dividual emotional tendencies, mostly of a polarizing nature. Psy- chological theme, philosophical rationale, and polarized individual tendencies are interdependent; they require, rather than directly cause, each other. In combination they create an atmosphere which may temporarily energize or exhilarate, but which at the same time poses the gravest of human threats.
Milieu Control
The most basic feature of the thought reform environment, the psychological current upon which all else depends, is the control of human communication. Through this milieu control the totalist environment seeks to establish domain over not only the individ- ual's communication with the outside (all that he sees and hears, reads and writes, experiences, and expresses), but also--in its penetration of his inner life--over what we may speak of as his communication with himself. It creates an atmosphere uncom- fortably reminiscent of George Orwell's 1984; but with one im- portant difference. Orwell, as a Westerner, envisioned milieu con- trol accomplished by a mechanical device, the two-way "tele- screen.