{"id":13946,"date":"2018-08-09T09:20:26","date_gmt":"2018-08-08T23:20:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chinaheritage.net\/?p=13946"},"modified":"2022-06-28T12:25:25","modified_gmt":"2022-06-28T02:25:25","slug":"drop-your-pants-the-party-wants-to-patriotise-you-all-over-again-part-i","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chinaheritage.net\/journal\/drop-your-pants-the-party-wants-to-patriotise-you-all-over-again-part-i\/","title":{"rendered":"Drop Your Pants! The Party Wants to Patriotise You All Over Again (Part I)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ruling The Rivers & Mountains<\/strong>
\n \u7a69\u5750\u6c5f\u5c71<\/strong><\/h2>\n

 <\/p>\n

This Lesson in New Sinology<\/a> is published on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the opening ceremony of the XXIXth Olympiad in Beijing (for an analysis of that event, see China’s Flat Earth: History and 8 August 2008<\/a>). Official China acknowledged the three decades dated from late 1978 since Communist Party policies had actually helped the country achieve the kinds of prosperity promised thirty years earlier (from 1949), hopes long betrayed by Party infighting and misdirection, with disastrous consequences. Freed of Party dogma, by 2008 China had been economically remade; with the diminution of policies to protect the socialist ideals, and egalitarianism in areas such as education, health and employment, of the Party’s original mission, however, the country had also become a haven for egregious behaviour and state-sanctioned capitalism.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

For Non-Official China, 2008 was a very different place. In preparation for what the international media blithely celebrated as \u2018China\u2019s Coming Out Party\u2019, the party-state had invested massively in new technologies and training related to the dark arts of social control. The repression of dissent, the bloody crushing of protests in Tibetan China, increased policing of the media and\u00a0the expansion of\u00a0<\/span>social surveillance were all much in evidence.<\/p>\n

The 2008 Olympics were, however, also an occasion when Chinese people more generally could rightly celebrate hard-won achievements and global recognition. Finally, after nearly sixty years, New China seemed more ready than ever before to embrace a broader humanity. The hope was summed up in the theme of the Beijing Olympics: \u2018One World, One Dream\u2019 \u540c\u4e00\u4e16\u754c \u540c\u4e00\u5922\u60f3<\/a>. This appeared to be an undertaking that would vouchsafe harmony, peace and prosperity for all; its reality actually reflected the party-state\u2019s demands for compliance, which even then was being called\u00a0The China Story \u4e2d\u570b\u7684\u6545\u4e8b<\/a>. In fact, the darkness of Xi Jinping’s New Epoch (2012-) was in many respects adumbrated in 2008.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

We start this five-part Lesson in New Sinology by considering an indoctrination campaign launched by the Communist Party on the eve of the tenth anniversary of the Beijing Olympics. The ‘Offensive to Promote the Spirit of Patriotic Struggle\u00a0[that requires intellectuals to]\u00a0Contribute Positively to Building the Enterprise in the New Epoch [of the Party-State and China]\u2019 \u5f18\u63da\u611b\u570b\u596e\u9b25\u7cbe\u795e\u3001\u5efa\u529f\u7acb\u696d\u65b0\u6642\u4ee3\u6d3b\u52d5 was fortuitously announced on 29 July 2018, only days after Xu Zhangrun \u8a31\u7ae0\u6f64, a professor of law at Tsinghua University in Beijing, had published\u00a0Imminent Fears, Immediate Hopes \u2014 a Beijing Jeremiad<\/a>\u00a0\u6211\u5011\u7576\u4e0b\u7684\u6050\u61fc\u8207\u671f\u5f85<\/a>\u00a0(trans. with notes, China Heritage<\/i>, 1 August 2018), although that is not to suggest that the two were connected.<\/p>\n

In his powerful petition Xu had warned against the dangers of, and the potential disruption caused by, new political campaigns. He expressed concern about a party, insecure in its rule, targeting the country’s disgruntled intellectuals, in particular academics who had studied overseas, and treating them as scapegoats for its own political deficiencies. The announcement outlining the aims of the new patriotic offensive was couched in the vague, obfuscating language generally favoured by today’s Party ideologues in public. In private most knew that, in essence, this latest ‘cultural pogrom’ was really about Thought Reform \u601d\u60f3\u6539\u9020 and Political Thought Work \u601d\u60f3\u653f\u6cbb\u5de5\u4f5c, that is quashing dissent and re-moulding the ideas, attitudes and speech of individuals so that they would accord with the prioritities and needs of Party policy.<\/p>\n

\"\"
‘Promote the Spirit of Patriotic Struggle, Contribute Positively to Building the Enterprise of the New Epoch’<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

From the late 1930s, ‘Thought Work’ had played a crucial role in regimenting and unifying the thinking of the Communist Party men and women from disparate regions and backgrounds who found their way to the wartime revolutionary guerrilla base at Yan’an in Shaanxi province \u9655\u897f\u5ef6\u5b89. Military might would bring the Communists to power in 1949, but it was ideology, long-term and focussed political study, as well as the body of ideas known as Mao Zedong Thought that laid the basis for what the Communists, using an ancient expression, would call ‘Conquering All Under Heaven and Claiming Rule over The Rivers and Mountains [of China]’ \u6253\u5929\u4e0b\uff0c\u5750\u6c5f\u5c71.<\/p>\n

In ‘The Rivers & Mountains \u7a69\u5750\u6c5f\u5c71’ (an expression that means ‘confidently ruling China’), the first of a five-part series, we offer an account of some aspects of Thought Work in the People’s Republic, as well as accounting for its pre-1949 practice in Yan’an. In the process, we also tell the story of one of the Communist Party’s most important thought-policemen, Hu Qiaomu\u00a0(\u80e1\u55ac\u6728<\/a>, 1912-1992). Through introductory essays, translations, works of fiction, media reports and art work, this Lesson in New Sinology aims to help familiarise readers with a range of Party practices, and resistance to those practices, relevant to appreciating Xi Jinping’s New Epoch.<\/p>\n

\u2014 Geremie R. Barm\u00e9
\nEditor, China Heritage<\/em>
\n8 August 2018<\/p>\n

\n

Preface: Mind Melding in Times of Conflict<\/strong><\/h2>\n

 <\/p>\n

The People’s Republic of China was founded in conflict, primarily because it was the result of the victory in a civil war with the Nationalist-led government of the Republic of China. But with that triumph the Communists were also victorious over the United States, a country they regarded as being the supporter not only of the Nationalists, but more generally of imperialist designs on and the exploitation of China itself.<\/p>\n

In White Paper, Red Menace \u2014 Watching China Watching (VII)<\/a>\u00a0(China Heritage<\/em>, 17 January 2018), we discussed the impact of the American government’s ‘China White Paper’ (the full title of which was\u00a0United States Relations With China, With Special Reference to the Period 1944\u20131949<\/span><\/em>), released on 5 August 1949. The White Paper’s avowed support for a democratic China against a communist-dominated government beholden to the Soviet Union would bolster the anti-American arguments that Mao Zedong, the leader of the Communists, had been making for many years. In a series of Five Critiques of the White Paper (excerpted in White Paper, Red Menace<\/a>), which he wrote with the help of his secretary Hu Qiaomu \u80e1\u55ac\u6728<\/a>, Mao laid out what essentially remains the ideological basis for China’s opposition to the US, in particular during periods of conflict, today.<\/p>\n

The Korean War (25 June 1950-27 July 1953) \u2014 known in official Chinese as \u6297\u7f8e\u63f4\u671d (the\u00a0War to Resist American Aggression and Aid Korea) \u2014 locked the two powers in direct conflict. While that conflict ravaged the Korean Peninsula, another battlefront was claiming its own victims in Beijing. Mao and his colleagues knew that their control over China’s intelligentsia was based both on the latter\u2019s patriotic yearnings, as well as the Party’s promises made over the years since the end of the Sino-Japanese conflict in 1945. The Communists had made extravagant undertakings in relation to their support for human rights, democracy and intellectual freedom, all of which most members of the intelligentsia felt had been denied to them by the Nationalist government during the Civil War. But, from late 1949, now that they were in power \u2014 having ‘Conquered All Under Heaven and Claiming Rule over The Rivers and Mountains [of China]’ \u6253\u5929\u4e0b\uff0c\u5750\u6c5f\u5c71 \u2014 the Party quickly unveiled their real agenda, and they needed the continued support, and compliance, of the intelligentsia to achieve it. To that end, Party organisations at the key centres of higher education, Peking and Tsinghua universities in Beijing, set about creating a model to be followed nationwide to achieve the mental transformation of university teachers, scientists, researchers, publishers, and the cultural world more generally. This ‘intellectual rectification’ would be called the Movement to Remould Thinking \u601d\u60f3\u6539\u9020\u904b\u52d5<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As we noted in Mendacious, Hyperbolic & Fatuous \u2014 an ill wind from People\u2019s Daily<\/em><\/a>\u00a0(China\u00a0<\/em>Heritage<\/em>, 10 July 2018), the Communists had carried out a lengthy, and at times violent, Rectification Movement \u6574\u98a8\u904b\u52d5 in Yan’an in 1942-1943. From late 1949 up to the autumn of 1952, they would apply the lessons of Yan’an to the universities and publishing houses of the whole country. Although the Thought Reform that was launched at Peking and Tsinghua universities was informally known as a movement to ‘Drop Your Pants, Cut Off Your Tail, Get in Line to Wash in Public’ \u812b\u8932\u5b50\uff0c\u5272\u5c3e\u5df4\uff0c \u6392\u968a\u6d17\u6fa1, out of a reluctant consideration for the sensitivities of the intelligentsia, and women in particular, it was simply called ‘Washing in Public’ \u6d17\u6fa1.<\/p>\n

The process of \u2018cleaning up\u2019 the intelligentsia was, nonetheless, rigorous, tireless and in some cases merciless. Just as in Yan’an, there were casualties and deaths. China has never entirely recovered from that transformation. Observers, and even many people in the People’s Republic of China, may think that since the Communist Party negated the \u2018leftist\u2019 extremism of the Cultural Revolution in a formal Party Resolution in 1981 \u2014 one that also criticised the supposed origins of Mao\u2019s wilful authoritarianism from the late 1950s \u2014 the policies of violent class struggle, the physical elimination of class enemies and brutal political campaigns that proceeded it would be of little relevance to understanding China in the twenty-first century. In fact, the purges, murders and liquidations of the early to mid 1950s have never been repudiated. They are regarded by the authorities as foundational to the history of the People’s Republic and the creation of a strong, industrialising and cohesive nation that, since the launch of economic reforms in 1978, has achieved greatness.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

In 2018, as the United States and the People’s Republic became embroiled in a Trade War, the long-forgotten history of ‘Washing in Public’ from 1949 to 1952 comes to mind. When, on 31 July 2018, a joint news release by the Communist Party’s Organisation and Propaganda (Publicity) departments announced a new patriotic education campaign \u2014 \u2018An Offensive to Promote the Spirit of Patriotic Struggle\u00a0[that requires intellectuals to]\u00a0Contribute Positively to Building the Enterprise in the New Epoch [of the Party-State and China]\u2019 \u5f18\u63da\u611b\u570b\u596e\u9b25\u7cbe\u795e\u3001\u5efa\u529f\u7acb\u696d\u65b0\u6642\u4ee3\u6d3b\u52d5 \u2014 it was doing so at a time when international concern about Chinese scientific and industrial espionage as well IP theft by agents or those sympathetic to the People’s Republic was at a new height, in particular in relation to the Made in China 2025 \u4e2d\u56fd\u5236\u90202025<\/span><\/a> strategy which was aimed at the country achieving major industrial and scientific advances. The 2025 plan was, like previous Party programs, a mixture of the technical and strategic, the overt and the covert. As the\u00a0Sino-US trade clash continued the\u00a0new patriotic campaign was launched in atmosphere of mounting paranoia and urgency. Regardless of its avowed aims, the campaign would focus in particular on the loyalty of returnee intellectuals, teachers, scientists and technicians educated overseas, in particular in the United States.<\/p>\n

In the new millennium, as the Chinese economy boomed and society seem to be undergoing major transformations, many graduates had sought opportunities in the familiarity of ‘the old country’. It was reported that many hoped\u00a0to benefit from the country’s ongoing economic rise, as well as being able to contribute their talents to the place of their birth.\u00a0Behind the anodyne official talk of encouraging greater participation of talented individuals in achieving national goals, the 31 July announcement hinted that men and women who had returned from overseas were potentially tainted; perhaps the old Mao-era slurs about ‘dubious foreign liaisons’ \u88cf\u901a\u5916\u570b, or ‘collaborating with the outside’ \u88e1\u61c9\u5916\u5408, and even ‘selling out the country for personal glory’ \u8ce3\u570b\u6c42\u69ae would come back into vogue? During the first term of Xi Jinping’s rule (2012-2017), Thought Moulding had already become a significant feature of religious and ethnic policy. With his reassertion of 360-degree-control by the Party, his administration pursued policies first introduced in the early 1950s, among them was an organised effort to eliminate independent religious practices and create pliant, pro-Party ‘patriotic’ faith communities. Following a lengthy analysis of the causes and consequences of the 2008 rebellion in Tibetan China, the authorities had concluded that the religious spirit of the region was a long-term threat to the Party. By effectively turning monasteries into study prisons and via sequestration, constant surveillance, the mandated collective study of political tracts, the use of individual confessions, intimidation of family members, and so on, patriotic thought re-moulding had been underway for years. Problematic individuals and groups were not so easily isolated in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, so over time Lager (concentration camps) were constructed for mass re-education. In 2018, the sheer scale of the plight of Uyghurs in Xinjiang seemed finally to alert the international community, and even many slow-witted China Experts, to what, in fact, were the range of repressive policies and coercive techniques that had long lurked at the core of the China Dream.<\/p>\n

Proving loyalty to New China during the blood-washed conflict between the People’s Republic and the United States in Korea took many forms. Keeping a passport might be regarded as a sign of potential betrayal, or mistrust in the new government; foreign contacts would have to be monitored or severed; relatives or loved ones overseas could be a cause for suspicions, and so on. The individual’s guilt was also judged by just how much in thrall they were to the US, and a specific mini-campaign was even launched to ascertain people’s sentiments. It was aimed at assessing if the individual was pro-, worshipful or fearful of America\u00a0\u89aa\u7f8e\u3001\u5d07\u7f8e\u3001\u6050\u7f8e? From mid 1950, as the Korean conflict escalated, university-based intellectuals, along with their fellow citizens were also subjected to what was called a ‘Three Perspectives Education Campaign’ \u4e09\u8996\u6559\u80b2\u904b\u52d5<\/a>. Through mass propaganda activities, films, art exhibitions, books, pamphlets and constant media reports, as well as collective study sessions that focused on reading, discussing and memorising key political texts, everyone would come to understand the true nature of the Paper Tiger \u7d19\u8001\u864e<\/a> of Reactionary Imperialism; as a result they would finally be able to ‘Hate \u4ec7\u8996, Despise\u00a0\u9119\u8996 and\u00a0Belittle\u00a0\u8511\u8996’ the United States. Because of the deep, long-term connections between many of China’s four million Christians and churches in the United States, believers were also a major target during the campaign.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Buddhists in Qinghai help fund an airplane during the Korean conflict<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Patriotising people in China in 2018 would take a myriad of forms: rote study sessions during which the deathless words and ideas of Xi Jinping would be read, mulled over and internalised, focus groups that concentrated on particular issues, individual guidance and ‘ideological wellness’ sessions were paired with the usual full range of inducements and punishments available to the Party apparat. The Chinese intelligentsia were living in the twenty-first century, but the jagged mechanisms of oversight and control exercised by the Communist Party had been at work for nearly eighty years. Intellectuals in Xi Jinping’s New Epoch who had already learned to self-censor and be vigilant about what they said in class, or in public, were gradually being re-educated, they were learning some of the same painful lessons as their predecessors.<\/p>\n

For patriot-intellectuals seen as models of a loyalty that was married to professional acumen, there was the promise of reward. On 8 August 2018, for example, New China News Agency reported that sixty-two ‘representative’ outstanding scientists and experts were vacationing at the Party’s luxury seaside resort at Beidaihe \u5317\u6234\u6cb3, Hebei province. They were guests of the State Council and Party Central. (See \u6797\u6689,\u00a0\u611b\u570b\u596e\u9b25\u8b5c\u83ef\u7ae0\u3000\u5efa\u529f\u7acb\u696d\u65b0\u6642\u4ee3<\/a>\u2014\u2014<\/span><\/strong>\u9ee8\u4e2d\u592e\u3001\u570b\u52d9\u9662\u9080\u8acb\u512a\u79c0\u5c08\u5bb6\u4eba\u624d\u4ee3\u8868\u5317\u6234\u6cb3\u4f11\u5047\u5074\u8a18, Xinhua, 8 August 2018).<\/p>\n

\n

Lessons in New Sinology<\/strong><\/h3>\n

We launched China Heritage<\/em> on 1 January 2017 with the publication of a mediation on Sino-US relations that focussed on the newly elected president Donald Trump and the China question (see A Monkey King’s Journey to the East<\/a>). At that time, we also offered the Rationale behind our work in the form of an essay titled On Heritage \u907a<\/a>. That declaration of intent was prefaced by a quotation from China’s most famous, and ancient, oracular text\u00a0I Ching<\/em> \u6613\u7d93, or\u00a0the\u00a0Book of Changes<\/i>:<\/p>\n

For every plain there is a slope,\u00a0\u7121\u5e73\u4e0d\u9642\uff0c
\nFor every going there is a return.\u00a0\u7121\u5f80\u4e0d\u5fa9\u3002<\/p>\n

\u2014 Hexagram XI, I Ching<\/a><\/i> \u5468\u6613 \u6cf0\u639b\u7e6b\u8fad<\/p>\n

The main focus of China Heritage<\/em> is the ways in which the past works in the present, in particular how aspects of China’s intersecting traditions of literature, art, thought and history commingle, emerge and reemerge in ways that celebrate both continuity and renewal, a phenomenon that was long ago framed by the word t\u014dng<\/em>bi\u00e0n<\/em>\u00a0\u901a\u8b8a,\u00a0invention within tradition. T\u014dng<\/em>bi\u00e0n<\/em>\u00a0is made up of two elements: t\u014dng<\/em>\u00a0\u901a, <\/i>meaning a thoroughgoing familiarity with past practice, and bi\u00e0n<\/em>\u00a0\u8b8a, the creative transformation of convention.\u00a0Since much of the past pulsates with life in the present, we feel it is also relevant to introduce, or re-introduce readers, to historical moments, concepts and even words from China’s past. Apart from the excited neo-philia of much writing about, reporting on and research into contemporary China, the dimension of the past may also be of use to understanding the present and even in preparing for the future.<\/p>\n

In championing New Sinology, we also keep a gimlet eye fixed on China’s politics of becoming. Previously, we have said that Xi Jinping’s New Epoch is a boon for New Sinology, for\u00a0in today\u2019s China party-state rule works to preserve the core of the cloak-and-dagger Leninist-Stalinist state while its leaders tirelessly repeat Maoist dicta which are amplified by socialist-style neo-liberal policies wedded to cosmetic institutional Confucian conservatism.<\/p>\n

As we have noted in the above, this Lesson in New Sinology \u2014 ‘Drop Your Pants, the Party Wants to Patriotise You All Over Again’ \u2014 is written both to mark 8 August 2018, a decade since the Opening Ceremony of the XXIX Olympiad in Beijing, and in the context of the new round of patriotic indoctrination ordered by the Party on 31 July 2018. To appreciate the ‘Offensive to Promote the Spirit of Patriotic Struggle\u00a0[that requires intellectuals to]\u00a0Contribute Positively to Building the Enterprise\u00a0[of the Party-State and China]’ \u5f18\u63da\u611b\u570b\u596e\u9b25\u7cbe\u795e\u3001\u5efa\u529f\u7acb\u696d\u65b0\u6642\u4ee3\u6d3b\u52d5, this Lesson consists of five inter-connected essays:<\/p>\n