The Cultural Revolution, Forgotten

What does it mean when a body disappears? What causes the disappearance? Death comes to mind first, but that’s not quite right. When somebody dies, their body is usually memorialized via a grave, a cremation, some sort of memorial service, a crypt, or any other kind of memorial. Sometimes, however, those memories themselves disappear. What happens when a memory disappears? That is when a body truly disappears.

Memory is an interesting thing. Growing up, young people’s perception is that memory is set in stone like history: things happen, and we remember them. Only in high school or college do we learn that memory can be—and is easily—manipulated. It can be manipulated for political reasons, such as the United States’ whitewashing of our own memory of concentration camps (see: Filipino and Japanese internment) or some of the more barbarous acts of America’s Founding Fathers. Or, for example, Chinese memory of the Cultural Revolution.

The Cultural Revolution took place from 1966-76, after advisors of Mao Zedong—then the Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party and ruler of the People’s Republic of China—issued edicts on Mao’s behalf warning of a bourgeois infiltration of the Party. In an effort to root out the counter-revolutionaries, Mao issued calls for all Party loyalists to purge bourgeois elements from society.

According to The Guardian, up to two million Chinese were killed in the ten years that followed, most directly by government forces. They were professors, attacked in their universities by their own students. They were business-people, attacked walking down the street for their clothing. Millions more Chinese— including future Chinese presidents Deng Xiaoping and Xi Jinping—were “purged.” Children were sent to farms in the countryside, and some Party members were consigned to menial labor. This period of tumult, terror, and upheaval did not end until Mao’s death in 1976.

[pullquote]Up to two million Chinese were killed in the ten years of the Cultural Revolution, most directly by government forces, directed by orders from the paranoid Mao Zedong.[/pullquote]

One would think that an event this traumatizing would be canonized in Chinese memory, but that might not be the case.

The People’s Education Press, a state-owned textbook company in China, published in 2018 a new edition of its eighth-grade history textbook. This surely wouldn’t be newsworthy, except that the publishers omitted the chapter documenting the Cultural Revolution, according to the South China Morning Post. One chapter in previous editions was called “The 10 Years of Cultural Revolution.” In the new edition, that same chapter is titled “Arduous Exploration and Development Achievements,” and has been reduced to six paragraphs.

[pullquote]One would think that the Cultural Revolution was a traumatizing event in Chinese memory, but that might not be the case.[/pullquote]

Six paragraphs for two million bodies. What kind of memory is that? How can those bodies be remembered in six paragraphs? What does it mean that China is erasing the memory of one of its most traumatizing periods in post-1949 history? This is not exclusively a political issue; it is an issue of human dignity. There are adults alive today who might remember their parents being taken away by Red Guards or government soldiers—but nobody after them will. The Chinese government, by removing the memory of the Cultural Revolution from its educational canon, is removing those two million people from the Chinese memory. Their lives, their humanity, their personalities, their bodies, are no more.

Instead, victims of persecution will be relegated to six paragraphs in the chapter detailing the arduous exploration and development achievements. These victims—their bodies—are simply growing pains in a period of exploration for the People’s Republic of China.

[pullquote]These victims of the Cultural Revolution—their bodies—are simply growing pains in a period of exploration for the People’s Republic of China, according to official education materials.[/pullquote]

It means a lot when a body disappears. It means a lot when a murder goes unsolved, or a missing child goes unfound. It means even more when millions of bodies disappear; when millions of murders go unresolved; when millions of missing children remain unsought. It has far-reaching implications, particularly for policy.

People enjoy making comparisons between Xi Jinping and Mao Zedong, particularly as Xi Jinping has continued consolidating power, making himself the head of: the party, the government, the military, and the ambitious anti-corruption campaign he is waging. I believe this comparison is shortsighted and simplistic. However, as Xi Jinping has consolidated power, actions like this erasure of history must be taken seriously.

During the Cultural Revolution, Xi Jinping was “reeducated” in the countryside. His father, a small-time businessman, was purged from the Party and humiliated. His sister hanged herself during the Cultural Revolution out of shame.

Xi Jinping’s childhood was decimated by Mao’s paranoia and the horror that it caused.

Fifty years later, Xi Jinping either allowed or forced this happen. Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party are, either directly or indirectly, responsible for the whitewashing of one of the darkest eras in the People’s Republic of China’s memory. The CCP has removed from popular education the memory of a paranoid purge, hoping that next year’s eighth-graders leave school with a less nuanced, more supportive view of the Chinese Communist Party.

What does that mean for the world?

Jacob Finke ’20 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. He can be reached at jbfinke@wustl.edu.