The Great Retreat and Its Discontents: Reexamining the Shengwulian Episode in the Cultural...

The China Journal, no. 72. 1324-9347/2014/7201-0001. Copyright 2014 by The Australian National University. All rights reserved.

T he Great Retreat and its Discontents:

Re-Examining the Shengwulian Episode

in the Cultural Revolution

AB STR ACT

By late 1967, there had been clear signs that China’s Cultural Revolution had entered the phase

of retrenchment and moderation. Despite continuing radical extravagance, Beijing’s efforts

revolved around taming the divided mass movement and establishing new organs of local

power. In this nationwide milieu, the province of Hunan stood out as a remarkable excep-

tion. It was in Hunan that there emerged a diffused yet vigorous movement in opposition to

Beijing’s attempts to rebuild the Party and state authorities. This movement, the Shengwulian,

has been discussed by a number of China scholars. Conventional scholarly wisdom regarding

this critical episode, however, seems to be based on several less-than-accurate premises. Using

newly available sources, this paper re-examines the Shengwulian episode, with a special focus

on how nationally significant issues, radiating out from the political center, played themselves

out in relation to local contingencies, cleavages and complex power relationships.

From its inception in the summer of 1966, the Cultural Revolution’s free-wheeling mass movement virtually paralyzed China’s Party and state bu-

reaucracies. Throughout 1967, Beijing’s efforts largely revolved around forming “revolutionary great alliances”, to rein in the increasingly divided mass move-ment and establish revolutionary committees as new organs of local power. The People’s Liberation Army (PLA), the only institution which had not collapsed under the turmoil, was called upon to intervene in the political process, which caused numerous conflicts between army units, their supporters and the rebels. The escalation of conflicts climaxed after the Wuhan Incident in late July 1967—a watershed event which was, in the words of Roderick MacFarquhar and Michael Schoenhals, “the most spectacular uprising against the Cultural Revolution” by the Chinese military, and “potentially the most threatening”.1 In the following weeks, rebels throughout the country seized weapons and attacked the PLA and their allied groups, threatening to tear the military apart in the same way that the

1. Roderick MacFarquhar and Michael Schoenhals, Mao’s Last Revolution (Cambridge: Harvard University

Press, 2006), p. 214.

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Cultural Revolution had wrecked the Party and state bureaucracies. The country seemed to be sliding into an all-out civil war, as Mao later admitted: “Everywhere people were fighting, dividing into two factions . . . During the two months of July and August of 1967 things were in terrible shape. The entire country was in great turmoil [tianxia daluan le 天下大乱了].”2

During the summer of 1967, Mao’s own assessment of the Cultural Revolution underwent dramatic changes. In July, before his departure for a secret inspection tour of the provinces, Mao addressed a gathering of PLA officers in a rather opti-mistic tone: “Let’s not be afraid of people causing trouble. The bigger the trouble gets, the longer it lasts, the better.”3 Yet shortly after, Mao seemed to have con-cluded that to continue the course of the movement as before was to court disaster. “The car will overturn if it runs too fast”, a dismayed Mao admonished. “What we must principally accomplish now is the great alliance (da lianhe 大联合) and three-way alliance (sanjiehe 三结合) . . . The Party organization must be restored; Party congresses at all levels should be convened.”4

Indeed, more than a year after the Cultural Revolution was launched, there emerged clear signs that the fate of the Red Guard movement was becoming precarious. The fact that the Cultural Revolution had moved into the phase of retrenchment after August 1967 has been noted widely. In Maurice Meisner’s succinct words, these processes constituted the “Thermidor of the Cultural Revolution”.5 According to Hong Yung Lee, the events that began in late 1967 signaled the process of political “moderation” and “de-escalation”: “With Mao firmly backing a policy of retrenchment . . . it had become obvious that the mass mobilization would soon end”.6 For Harry Harding, the events of the late sum-mer of 1967 “shifted the focus on the Cultural Revolution from the destruction of the old political order to the creation of a new one . . . When forced to choose between the mass movement and the PLA—between continued disorder and the only hope for political stability—Mao selected the latter.”7

2. Mao’s interview with Edgar Snow (18 December 1970), in Mao Zedong, Jianguo yilai Mao Zedong wengao (Mao Zedong’s Manuscripts Since the Founding of the PRC), Vol. 13 (Beijing: Zhongyang Wenxian

Chubanshe, 1996), p. 163.

3. Mao Zedong, Mao Zedong sixiang wansui (Long Live Mao Zedong Thought) (Wuhan: no publisher

information, 1968), Vol. 4, p. 319.

4. “Fu Chongbi chuanda Mao Zedong guanyu zhubu shixian dalianhe, huifu dangzhuzhi de tanhua” (Gen-

eral Fu Chongbi’s Report on Chairman Mao’s Conversation Regarding Gradually Establishing Great Alliances

Jian, Zhou Zehao and Wang Youqin (comps and eds), Zhongguo wenhua dageming wenku (The Chinese Cul-

tural Revolution Database), 3rd ed. (Hong Kong: Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2010).

5. Maurice Meisner, Mao’s China and After: A History of the People’s Republic, 3rd ed. (New York: Free

Press, 1999), pp. 339–40.

6. Hong Yung Lee, The Politics of the Chinese Cultural Revolution: A Case Study (Berkeley: University of

California Press, 1978), p. 9.

7. Harry Harding, “The Chinese State in Crisis, 1966–1969”, in Roderick MacFarquhar (ed.), The Politics of China: The Era of Mao and Deng (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 216.

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In this nationwide milieu, the province of Hunan stood out as an exception. In Hunan, the relationship between the Maoist leadership and the rebel movement that it unleashed took on new complexities, and there appeared a diffused yet vigorous opposition to the national leadership’s attempts to demobilize the mass movement and re-establish local Party and state organizations. In Changsha, the Shengwulian (省无联, the acronym for the Hunan Provincial Proletarian Revolutionary Great Alliance Committee [Hunan sheng wuchan jieji geming-pai da lianhe weiyuanhui 湖南省无产阶级革命派大联合委员会]) emerged in late 1967 in opposition to the new center of local authority backed by Beijing.

The Shengwulian episode signaled significant political divergences in the mak-ing during the Cultural Revolution—the rise of a self-styled “ultra-left” ( jizuo 极左) faction that defied the trend toward demobilization. Nationally, it was one of the few cases in which novel views scrutinizing China’s pre–Cultural Revolution society emerged from Red Guard factional politics. Well known for the attempts by some of its activists to appropriate and reinterpret the Maoist doctrine of the Cultural Revolution, the Shengwulian has received significant scholarly interest. Wang Shaoguang, for example, described it as marking the “mature stage” of the dissident trends of thought that emerged in the Cultural Revolution.8 Richard Kraus characterized the Shengwulian’s activities as the “boldest attempt” to move beyond the Maoist ideology.9 Meisner also portrayed the group as “one of the most critically radical and theoretically sophisticated organizations produced by the Cultural Revolution”:

[T]he Shengwulian combined the original ideals of the Cultural Revolution with

the theory of a new bureaucratic ruling class, a notion Mao had briefly entertained

but abandoned . . . Their proposed remedy was “smashing” the existing state appa-

ratus in favor of a “People’s Commune of China” based on the popular democratic

principles of the Paris Commune. The Shengwulian, or at least its leaders, were

radical Maoists—but too radical for Mao in 1968.10

The fame of the Shengwulian notwithstanding, serious scholarly treatments have been lacking. Except for Jonathan Unger’s pioneering study of the life and activities of Yang Xiguang (杨曦光), the author of the pivotal text which made the Shengwulian famous,11 existing discussions have mostly relied on limited primary

8. Wang Shaoguang, “‘New Trends of Thought’ During the Cultural Revolution”, Journal of Contemporary China, Vol. 8, No. 21 (1999), p. 204.

9. Richard Kraus, Class Conflict in Chinese Socialism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1981), p. 148.

10. Maurice Meisner, Mao’s China and After, p. 344.

11. Jonathan Unger, “Whither China? Yang Xiguang, Red Capitalists, and the Social Turmoil of the Cul-

tural Revolution”, Modern China, Vol. 17, No. 1 (1991), pp. 3–37.

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sources.12 The Shengwulian has been viewed mainly as a case in the develop-ment of “unorthodox” (yiduan 异端) or “ultra-left” political ideas, and far less attention has been given to the complex circumstances and events in which these ideas emerged and took on political significance. Clearly with the Shengwulian in mind, a highly respected Chinese scholar of the Cultural Revolution, Yin Hongbiao, wrote: “After the rebel faction became a strong political force, its most radical wing . . . proposed a series of new ideas . . . [and] a new ideological

thinking was more significant than their activities and organizations”.13 This view was echoed by Kraus, who wrote matter-of-factly that “the tortuous politics of the Chinese ultra-left are of less interest than the relationship between the ideas of Shengwulian and the Maoist political leadership which condemned them”.14

In addition to treating the Shengwulian through the lens of ideological de-velopment, existing scholarship also seems to be based upon several less-than-accurate premises. First, the Shengwulian has typically been viewed as some sort of “supergroup” with a relatively clear organizational boundary, identity and structure. Second, the ideas articulated by some of its young members have been taken to represent the group as a whole, and Yang Xiguang—the 19-year-old author of the famous essay “Whither China?”—is often identified as one of the group’s “main leaders and theorists”.15 Third, it has often been assumed that the social base of the group can be more or less reliably identified. The origins of the Red Guard factionalism have been traced back to long-standing social and political cleavages in China’s state-socialist regime.16 According to Unger, the fac-tional conflicts that resulted in the rise of the Shengwulian represented a division between the “red-class Red Guard organizations”, on the one hand, and “work-ers from the disfavored neighborhood factories and construction and haulage sectors, plus the student Red Guard of middle-class background and the other

12. Klaus Mehnert collected several Shengwulian texts in a volume shortly after the group was suppressed,

and it has been the sole source for most scholarly discussions on the subject. See Klaus Mehnert, Peking and the New Left: At Home and Abroad (Berkeley: Center for Chinese Studies, University of California, 1969).

13. Yin Hongbiao, “ Ideological and Political Tendencies of Factions in the Red Guard Movement ”, Journal of Contemporary China, Vol. 5, No. 13 (1996), pp. 277–79.

14. Richard Kraus, Class Conflict in Chinese Socialism, p. 149. Unger’s paper was an exception in its

attempt to contextualize the critical-theoretical development in Hunan amid the vicissitude of local events.

See Jonathan Unger, “Whither China?”.

15. Song Yongyi and Sun Dajin (eds), Wenhua dageming he tade yiduan sichao (Heterodox Currents of

Thought in the Cultural Revolution) (Hong Kong: Tianyuan Shuwu, 1997), p. 267.

16. For examples of what may be called the “social interpretation” of Red Guard factionalism, see Hong

Yun Lee, “The Radical Students in Kwangtung during the Cultural Revolution”, The China Quarterly, No. 64

(1975), pp. 645–83; Anita Chan, Stanley Rosen and Jonathan Unger, “Students and Class Warfare: The Social

Roots of the Red Guard Conflict in Guangzhou (Canton)”, The China Quarterly, No. 83 (1980), pp. 397–446;

Hong Yung Lee, The Politics of the Chinese Cultural Revolution: A Case Study (Berkeley: University of Cali-

fornia Press, 1978); Shaoguang Wang, Failure of Charisma: The Cultural Revolution in Wuhan (Hong Kong:

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organizations of have-not groups”. The Shengwulian, in short, “was a congeries of groups that held one element in common: they all had been persecuted or shortchanged by the state and Party apparatus before and during the Cultural Revolution”.17 Finally, the Shengwulian in Hunan has often been viewed as part of a short-lived, nationwide political movement that emerged in mid-1967 and intensified in the subsequent months, “a distinct though by no means unified ‘ultra-left’ movement”, as one historian put it.18 Carrying divisiveness to an ex-treme in their attempt to attack the whole existing Party-state machine as well as the army, the “ultra-left” is said to have consisted of both militant members of Mao’s inner circle and their provincial supporters.

In this article, I utilize both existing and newly available primary sources to re-examine the Shengwulian case, subjecting the current scholarship to closer scrutiny. During several trips to Hunan between 2006 and 2011, I was able to collect numerous documents relevant to the Shengwulian case, including Red Guard publications, local gazetteers and newspapers, government documents, and published or unpublished memoirs. I was also able to interview over two dozen eyewitnesses and key participants. This article examines the development of heterodox political ideas as precipitated by new social conditions and unfore-seen historical circumstances. Rather than seeing the Shengwulian episode solely in terms of ideological development, I situate theoretical ideas in their pragmatic contexts. In the conclusion, I discuss briefly how the Shengwulian case sheds light on important issues in Cultural Revolution scholarship, such as the develop-ment of mass factionalism and the role of ideology in Red Guard politics.

The Cultural Revolution mass movement in Hunan was plagued from the begin-ning with serious divisions and by disputes about the movement’s targets, as well as its direction and tactics. The political scene of the province was dominated by shifting alliances and conflicts among several factional coalitions of groups with similar political dispositions. Drawing mostly from college students, the University Alliance (known colloquially as Gao Si 高司1966 as the first rebel organization in the province, and was instrumental in orga-

the Xiangjiang fenglei (湘江风雷) or Xiang River Storm and Thunder (hereaf-ter, Xiang River) was named after the tributary of the Yangtze that runs through Hunan. A loose coalition of several dozen groups, Xiang River attracted members

17. Jonathan Unger, “Whither China?”, pp. 22, 23–24.

18. Jack Gray, Rebellions and Revolutions: China from the 1800s to the 1980sPress, 1990), p. 355. For the Shengwulian’s role in the purported nationwide “ultra-left” movement, also see

Bill Brugger, China: Radicalism to Revisionism, 1962–1979 (London: Croom Helm, 1981), Chapter 4.

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with diverse backgrounds, such as students, rusticated youth, low-level cadres, workers and even the urban jobless. In contrast to Xiang River, the Workers’ Alliance (Gong lian 工联) was formed in April 1967, claiming a membership of 300,000, mostly from large industrial enterprises.19

As in the rest of the country, Hunan’s mass movement underwent fragmenta-tion and factional realignment as the Cultural Revolution proceeded. In early 1967, the local Party organizations abruptly disintegrated as the wave of power seizures which started in Shanghai spread to the whole country, injecting a new, unpredictable dynamic into local mass politics. The disintegration of the pro-vincial Party machine marked a triumphant moment for the Hunanese rebels, but new conflicts immediately developed among the victors. The “January Power Seizure” in Hunan did not yield the relatively stable structure of power that it cre-ated in some other parts of the country, for example in Shanghai. A crucial factor was the absence in Hunan of a well-organized and powerful workers’ organiza-tion, which in Shanghai provided the main catalyst for political reintegration. Also, Hunan lacked an alternative local leadership drawn from the pre–Cultural Revolution Party establishment that could receive the backing of Beijing.20 Such difficulties were compounded by the ambiguities of Beijing’s formula regarding the post-seizure order. During the early months of the Cultural Revolution, the Maoist leadership flirted briefly with the notion that the revolutionary masses of China not only could seize power, but would also radically reorganize Chinese society around the egalitarian principles of the Paris Commune: the state and Party bureaucracies were not to be reformed from within, but rather were to be smashed by mass revolutionary action from below.21 Such lofty ideas, however, rapidly faded out; by February 1967 it had already become official policy that political power could be held only by a three-way alliance (sanjiehe) of mass rep-resentatives, PLA officers and veteran cadres.

19. Changshashi shizhong jingsong zhandoudui (Changsha No. 10 Middle School Pine Tree Red Guard

Battle Group), “Hunan Changsha diqu wuchanjieji wenhua dageming liangtiao luxian douzheng dashiji,

1966.3–1967.8” (A Chronology of Two-Line Struggles in the Cultural Revolution in Changsha, March 1966 to

August 1967) (15 September 1967), in Song Yongyi et al. (eds), Wenhua dageming wenku.

20. In Shanghai, the new local leadership established during the “January Revolution” drew from both the

pre-Cultural Revolution Party establishment and the rebel ranks. For the “January Power Seizure” or “January

Revolution” in Shanghai, see Andrew Walder, Chang Ch’un-Ch’iao and Shanghai’s January Revolution (Michi-

gan Papers in Chinese Studies, Vol. 32) (Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan,

1978). For recent studies of the “January Revolution” and its aftermath in Jiangsu Province, where both the

vacillation of national leaders and protracted local conflicts resulted in the imposition of military control, see

Dong Guoqiang and Andrew Walder, “Nanjing’s Failed ‘January Revolution’ of 1967: The Inner Politics of a

Provincial Power Seizure”, The China Quarterly, No. 203 (September 2010), pp. 675–92; Dong Guoqiang and

Andrew G. Walder, “From Truce to Dictatorship: Creating a Revolutionary Committee in Jiangsu”, The China Journal, No. 68 (July 2012), pp. 1–31.

21. See, for example, Renmin ribao (People’s Daily) (13 August 1966); Hongqi (Red Flag), No. 11 (21

August 1966), pp. 36–37.

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In Hunan, the rebels’ conflicts with local army units became the main focus of contention throughout 1967. They began in the wake of the “January Storm” in early 1967, when official policy first vacillated and then took a moderate turn toward more lenient treatment for cadres under attack, the imposition of a “great alliance” in order to rein in a fragmented mass movement, the formation of rev-olutionary committees as the new form of power, and the mobilization of the PLA to maintain order. In what was dubbed the “February Adverse Current” and “March Black Wind”, the PLA cracked down on rebel groups in a dozen provinces.22 In Hunan, the crackdown on the Red Flag Army, a sizable group of disgruntled PLA veterans and an active force in the Xiang River coalition, was a pivotal event. In mid-January, Red Flag Army members stormed the local PLA headquarters to search for “black materials”, and clashed with PLA person-nel.23 The Beijing leadership promptly issued an order forbidding the disruption of military command systems, and declaring the group “reactionary”.24 The lo-cal military immediately banned the veterans’ group, sparking vigorous reaction from its Xiang River supporters.25

The military’s crackdown on Xiang River, which actively supported the vet-eran group, took place in early February 1967. The PLA leadership made an inflammatory report to Beijing that Xiang River recruited “‘five black catego-ries’ and ex-convicts”, and was preparing for armed uprisings to seize the local PLA headquarters. The report also dramatically inflated Xiang River’s numeri-cal strength, and fabricated evidence that Xiang River was amassing weapons in preparation for armed revolts.26

Group (hereafter CCRG) and the Central Military Committee (hereafter CMC) ordered the local PLA in Hunan to “take immediate measures of dictatorship against the reactionary bosses of Xiang River and the Red Flag Army” and “di-vide and break down the hoodwinked masses”.27 Declaring a state of martial law

22. See Hong Yung Lee, The Politics of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, Chapter 6; Bu Weihua, Zalan jiu shijie: wenhua dageming de dongluan yu haojie, 1966–1968the Cultural Revolution, 1966–1968) (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2008), pp. 456–63.

23. “Changsha diqu wuchanjieji wenhua dageming liangtiao luxian douzheng dashiji”, in Song Yongyi

et al. (eds), Wenhua dageming wenku.

24. “Zhonggong zhongyang, guowuyuan, zhongyang junwei, zhongyang wenge guanyu Hunan hongqijun,

hong daodan deng hongweibing zuzhi dao hunansheng junqu dongshou daren, zhuaren wenti de zhishi”

(Instruction of the CCP Central Committee, the State Council, the CMC and the CCRG regarding the Hunan

Red Army and the Red Missile Group Beating and Detaining People at the Hunan Provincial Military Region)

(20 January 1967), in Song Yongyi et al. (eds), Wenhua dageming wenku.

25. Hunan hongqijun wenti lianhe diaochatuan (Hunan Red Flag Army Investigation Group), “Hunan

hongqijun dashiji” (A Chronology of the Hunan Red Flag Army) (31 July 1967), pamphlet.

26. “Long Shujin de jiantao” (Long Shujin’s Self-Criticism) (31 July 1967), in Song Yongyi et al. (eds), Wen-hua dageming wenku. General Long Shujin was the commander of the Hunan Provincial Military Region.

27. “Changsha diqu wuchanjieji wenhua dageming liangtiao luxian douzheng dashiji” and “Quanjun

wengeban chuanda zhongyang wenge guanyu Hunan xiangjiang fenglei, hongqijun de pishi” (The PLA Cul-

Red Flag Army), both included in Song Yongyi et al. (eds), Wenhua dageming wenku.

8

in Changsha, the local PLA arrested over 10,000 Xiang River and Red Flag Army activists.28 The PLA flew airplanes to drop tens of thousands of leaflets accusing the group of offenses such as (1) attracting the “five black categories”; (2) defying Beijing’s order in its support for the Red Flag Army; (3) inciting the masses to attack the PLA; and (4) engaging in “counterrevolutionary economism” to wreck the national economy.29 Ironically, the massive manhunt was led by members of the University Alliance, once Hunan’s staunchest rebels. The collaboration of University Alliance members with the PLA pitted the group against their one-time rebel comrades, and earned it the stigma of “new conservatives” (xin bao-shoupai 新保守派).30 Indeed, in spite of the apparent transparency of the terms, the familiar distinction between “rebels” and “conservatives” should not be taken as self-evident. Such distinctions, which often expressed bitter factional conflicts at particular times and places rather than stable political dispositions, need to be situated in the highly fluid political processes characteristic of the Cultural Revolution.31

The February crackdown on Xiang River, which was declared “the obstacle to the Cultural Revolution in Hunan”, led to the desertion of many of its mem-bers, especially workers from large factories. With Xiang River banned and being pushed underground, some of its affiliated workers’ groups formed their own umbrella organization. The Workers’ Alliance was founded in early April with the merger of several workers’ groups. The Workers’ Alliance and its 300,000 highly organized industrial workers protested vigorously against the PLA’s crackdown.

28. Changsha wanbao (Changsha Evening News) (6 February 1967); Zhan Xianli and Huang Shaoxian,

“Hunan gao si daibiao xiang zhongyang wenge de shumian jiancha” (Written Self-Criticism Submitted to the

CCRG by University Alliance Representatives) (8 August 1967), in Song Yongyi et al. (eds), Wenhua dageming wenku.

29. “Changsha diqu wuchanjieji wenhua dageming liangtiao luxian douzheng dashiji”.

30. The relationship between University Alliance and Xiang River, which were close allies during the early

months of the Cultural Revolution, worsened in late 1966 and early 1967, as the two factions were unable to

agree on how to treat the officials who were under attack. University Alliance leaders believed that provincial

cadres should be allowed to “rectify” themselves, whereas Xiang River leaders preferred a more aggressive

approach. In late December, some University Alliance leaders reportedly began secret negotiations with

Zhang Pinghua, the Party boss of Hunan, in an attempt to gain support from the provincial cadres in order

to secure a better political position. Some groups within University Alliance withdrew from the organization

and joined Xiang River, and the rebel alliance progressively broke down. See Gaoxiao fenglei tingjin zhongdui

(University Thunder and Storm Advance Corps), “Shui shi Wangjianglou xieyi de zuikuihuoshou?” (Who

Were the Culprits of the Wangjiang Tower Agreement?), Changsha gongren (Changsha Workers) (4 June

1967); “Changsha diqu wuchanjieji wenhua dageming liangtiao luxian douzheng dashiji”.

31. For a classical definition of the “rebel–conservative” distinction, see Hong Yung Lee, “The Radical Stu-

dents in Kwangtung During the Cultural Revolution”, The China Quarterly, No. 64 (December 1975), pp. 645–83;

for criticisms of the distinction, see Andrew Walder, “Factional Conflict at Beijing University, 1966–1968”,

The China Quarterly, No. 188 (December 2006), pp. 1023–47; Dong Guoqiang and Andrew Walder, “Local

Politics in the Chinese Cultural Revolution: Nanjing Under Military Control”, Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 70,

No. 2 (2011), pp. 425–47; Dong Guoqiang and Andrew G. Walder, “Factions in a Bureaucratic Setting: The

The China Journal, No. 65 (January 2011), pp. 1–25.

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The Wuhan Incident and its aftermath led to the temporary retreat of the PLA. In a central directive signed off by Mao in early August, the Beijing leadership cas-tigated the military crackdown on Xiang River, acknowledging that the CCRG’s approval was “a mistake made in haste”. The rehabilitation of Xiang River, how-ever, had a caveat. The group was portrayed as a “revolutionary mass organization infiltrated by a handful of bad people, which caused shortcomings, mistakes and

a “revolutionary rebel group”, was seen in a more favorable light by the Beijing leadership, as its predominantly working-class membership was considered an indication of political reliability. The same directive also decreed the formation of a preparatory revolutionary committee, and General Li Yuan (黎原), a field army commander, was appointed to head the new body.32

Xiang River re-emerged in the summer of 1967, but on a smaller scale, as many of its former members had been absorbed by the Workers’ Alliance. With the collapse of University Alliance, the student group previously allied with the local military, the relationship between the rebel allies—the Workers’ Alliance and Xiang River—deteriorated. Tensions between the two factions had in fact been long in the making. As noted earlier, with Xiang River banned, the Work-ers’ Alliance became instrumental to the rebels’ battle against the local military. However, many Xiang River supporters disagreed with the tactics of the Work-ers’ Alliance. For them, the rehabilitation of Xiang River would necessitate a more aggressive approach. In May, Xiang River supporters proposed that the supply of water and power to the city be cut off, as a way of exerting pressure on the military. The Workers’ Alliance leadership preferred less provocative tactics; this rejection of the proposal was castigated by Xiang River supporters as having “turned right” and “turned revisionist”. The Workers’ Alliance leadership, accord-ing to the critics, “were preoccupied with tactfulness”, and this “had tied up the hands and feet of the revolutionary mass organizations”.33

Another source of friction between the Workers’ Alliance and Xiang River involved organizational membership and structure. In contrast to the Workers’ Alliance, which drew workers en masse from large state-sector factories, Xiang River was a miscellany of smaller groups drawing people with heterogeneous occupational and social backgrounds. The Workers’ Alliance leadership showed

-manders recalled how he felt after attending a joint meeting: “Any time we issued a declaration, there were always 70 or 80 groups. Many of them had only a dozen

32. “Zhonggong zhongyang guanyu Hunan wenti de ruogan jueding” (The Center’s Decisions Regarding

the Situation in Hunan) (10 August 1967), in Song Yongyi et al. (eds), Wenhua dageming wenku.

33. Hunansheng qixiangju hongqi zongbu (Hunan Provincial Meteorological Bureau Red Flag Headquar-

ters), “Yu shengwulian he jizuopai douzheng dashiji” (A Chronicle of Struggle with the Shengwulian and the

Ultra-Leftists) (Changsha: no publisher information, February 1968).

or several dozen members, but when it came to a vote we had to count them. We had over 100,000 members, but our group counted for only one vote. This was not fair. If there were troubles, we wouldn’t even know who the troublemakers were. Therefore we decided that we would be involved in such joint activities as little as possible.” Such a contemptuous attitude on the part of the Workers’ Alliance leaders was not favorably received by their Xiang River counterparts.

In the summer of 1967, Hunan’s rebel, cadre and PLA delegates were sum-moned to Beijing to negotiate the formation of a provincial revolutionary commit-tee as the new local power organ, a protracted process in which various factions vied to strengthen their positions and undermine their rivals. Some Xiang River leaders claimed that the delegations of the rival factions were a “hodgepodge” re-sulting from the “bourgeois reactionary line” and thus must not be recognized.34 The Workers’ Alliance insisted that only groups with sizable memberships should be eligible to be part of the new governing structure. This proposal was rejected by Xiang River, as it was seen as an attempt to exclude the motley small groups that were its main support base. To counter, groups dissatisfied with the Workers’ Alliance’s move proposed to form a separate entity in the name of the “Provincial Proletarian Revolutionary Great Alliance Committee”, with Xiang River as its core, which all rebel groups in Hunan should join. “We have been oppressed”, some Xiang River leaders claimed; “we must unite and form a great alliance our-selves”. “There’s no single group in Hunan that is as powerful as Xiang River. We must strengthen its position as the supreme leading power of Hunan’s Cultural Revolution.”35 To break the deadlock, Beijing directly appointed members of the new power organ, the Preparatory Revolutionary Committee. In addition to cad-res and PLA officers, six rebel leaders were selected to represent Hunan’s major mass organizations. The Workers’ Alliance was assigned two such representatives and Xiang River one. The remaining three spots went to groups formerly affili-ated with Xiang River but which later declared neutrality.36 This alarmed Xiang River leaders, who feared that it would lead to its rival obtaining a dominant position. Facing the inauspicious prospect of not being recognized as equal play-ers in the emergent political order, these groups and their leaders refused to play along. By late September 1967, what had been a united rebel coalition effectively

34. Hunan jianxun bianjibu (Hunan News Bulletin Editorial Department), “Fan’geming dazahui sheng-

wulian zui’e shi” (A History of Crimes Perpetuated by the Counterrevolutionary Hodgepodge Shengwulian),

Hunan jianxun (Hunan News Bulletin), No. 71–73 (March 1968).

35. Hunan jianxun bianjibu, “Fan’geming dazahui shengwulian zui’e shi”. Some Xiang River leaders report-

edly even went so far as to suggest that “the Workers’ Alliance should not be allowed to exist in Changsha”

and must be “driven out of the city”. See Hunansheng qixiangju hongqi zongbu, “Yu shengwulian he jizuopai

douzheng dashiji”.

36. Li Zhengxiang, Sishiqi jun zai Hunan “san zhi liang jun” jishi (Chronicle of the 47th Army’s “Three Sup-

port, Two Military” Activities in Hunan) (Changsha, 2004, privately printed), p. 65.

broke into two antagonistic factions, led by the Workers’ Alliance and Xiang River respectively.

By the late fall of 1967, it had become clear that the mass movement of the Cultural Revolution was winding down, and the issue at stake was the participa-tion of the factions in the new order. The intransigence of segments of Xiang River was anchored in the constellation of political forces at this particular juncture. As mentioned earlier, various Xiang River groups were dissatisfied with Hunan’s emerging political order. Their recalcitrance reflected, above all, the desire to maintain autonomous organizational identities. As one former rebel explained:

defense. Numbers make strength (renduo liliang da 人多力量大). As individuals we

could achieve nothing. If we dissolved our group and returned to our work units,

then those cadres whom we had offended would be able to do anything they liked

to us.

Many also found objectionable the form of the new power and the principle in accordance with which it was constituted. A prevalent complaint was that the new leadership was instead either imposed from above or produced through Byzantine processes of back-room give-and-take, whereas the masses had been promised that they would be able to “take destiny into their own hands”. At a meeting in Beijing in mid-August, Hunanese rebel delegates criticized the na-tional leadership for manipulating local politics. The national leaders were told that wall-posters had appeared in Changsha criticizing the official appointees to the revolutionary committee. “The Preparatory Revolutionary Committee should not be imposed from above by higher leaders, who monopolize the work that should have been done by the masses themselves (baoban daiti 包办代替).” It was also reported that “60 per cent of Changsha’s masses do not trust the Preparatory Revolutionary Committee”. When one Hunanese delegate remarked that the new political authorities “should not be bestowed from above (en ci 恩赐)” but should be generated through “democratic elections”, Qi Benyu (戚本禹), one of Mao’s close aides, retorted: “This has been approved by Chairman Mao—how can this be called ‘bestowed from above?’” Premier Zhou Enlai (周恩来) added that “bourgeois democratic formalities” should not be practiced, and Qi invoked Mao as the supreme authority: “Maybe you would say you don’t understand yet. But Chairman Mao’s instructions must be obeyed whether you comprehend or not.”37

37. “Zhongyang shouzhang jiejian Hunan zaofanpai daibiaotuan tanhua jiyao” (Summary of Talks of

Central Leaders at the Meeting with Delegation of Hunan Rebels) (16 August 1967), in Hunansheng geming

weiyuanhui choubei xiaozu (Hunan Provincial Revolutionary Committee Preparatory Group) and Zhongguo

renmin jiefangjun lujun di sishiqijun (The PLA 47th Army) (eds), Zhonggong zhongyang guanyu Hunan wenti

When asked whether the new leadership should be elected from the bottom up, Zhou Enlai replied bluntly that “anarchism is bound to develop if we immediately implement direct election of the Paris Commune type”.38

During the late summer of 1967, tensions between two of Hunan’s largest rebel groups intensified, and petty skirmishes snowballed into major armed bat-tles. In one pivotal case, on 8 August, a truck belonging to a subsidiary unit of the Workers’ Alliance was stolen. Ten days later, it was spotted being driven by members of The East Is Red, a Xiang River affiliate. Workers’ Alliance members detained the truck and its passengers. In return, The East Is Red issued an ulti-matum demanding an apology. When the Workers’ Alliance refused, The East Is Red’s paramilitary personnel detained Alliance members and their vehicles. During the next two weeks, what began as a minor incident over a truck escalated into an all-out war involving a dozen groups on both sides, in which automatic rifles, heavy machine guns and mortars were deployed.39

The violence in the late summer solidified ties among loosely affiliated Xiang River groups, and crystallized factional divisions. In what may be viewed as a precursor to the formation of the Shengwulian, leaders of over 20 Xiang River groups gathered in late August, issuing a statement condemning the Workers’ Alliance for “supporting the conservatives” and “repeating the mistakes of the military”, thereby signaling the breakup of the rebel alliance.40

delegates of two dozen Xiang River groups gathered to form the “Hunan Provincial Proletarian Revolutionary Great Alliance Committee”.41 The resolution passed at the meeting charged “a handful of capitalist roaders” with “attempting to dissolve the revolutionary mass organizations”, and with “treating the masses as if they themselves were the ‘messiah’, imposing orders from above”. These Hunanese rebels refused to dissolve their organizations, claiming that “the revolutionary young people are still being branded ‘counterrevolutionaries’”. Therefore, “revo-lutionary mass organizations have not yet completed their historical mission. We must not form a great alliance by dissolving revolutionary mass organizations.”42

de ruogan jueding (fu youguan bufen cailiao) (Decisions Regarding Hunan by the CCP Center 9 [with Rel-

evant Materials Attached]) (Changsha: no publisher information, August 1967), p. 82.

-

Yongyi et al. (eds), Wenhua dageming wenku.

39. For an eyewitness account of armed clashes in Changsha in the late summer of 1967, see Chen Yinan,

Qingchun wuhen: yige zaofanpai gongren de shinian wenge (Bygone Youth: A Worker Rebel’s Cultural Revolu-

tion) (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2006), Chapters 11–13.

40. “Lianhe shengming” (United Declaration) (30 August 1967), handbill.

41. Xiangjiang fenglei (Xiang River Storm and Thunder) et al., “Guanyu jianjue yonghu, quanli cujin,

shisi hanwei geming dalianhe de lianhe shengming” (A Joint Declaration Regarding Resolutely Supporting,

Vigorously Promoting and Defending the Revolutionary Great Alliance Until Death) (30 September 1967),

handbill.

42. Xiangjiang Fenglei et al., “Guanyu jianjue yonghu, quanli cujin, shisi hanwei geming dalianhe de

lianhe shengming”.

Instead of dissolving the group, some Xiang River leaders reportedly even pro-posed a recruitment drive to expand the organization’s membership to as many as 3,000,000.43

-ize the arrangements for forming a new alliance. Calling itself the “Provincial Proletarian Revolutionary Great Alliance”, the new entity was colloquially known as the Shengwulian, the first characters for “provincial”, “proletariat” and “alliance”.44 Its membership was fluid (several of its “founding groups” soon dis-avowed involvement, and some groups actively involved in its cause had never officially become members). A central committee—the new group’s governing council—was constituted, on which all constituent groups were represented. In addition, there was a smaller standing committee involving six to seven mem-bers.45

The agenda included: (1) inaugural speech; (2) reading of “founding manifesto” by members of Red Art Troop, a Red Guard group specializing in agitational performance; (3) speech by worker delegate; (4) speech by peasant delegate; (5) speech by student; (6) speech by veteran; (7) speech by military academy stu-dent; (8) reading of “celebratory telegram” to Mao; (9) shouting of revolutionary slogans; (10) parade. General Li Yuan, head of the Preparatory Revolutionary Committee, was also invited, although it was unlikely that he would attend the event. The grand celebration would last for four days, with all of Changsha’s movie theaters open to the public for free, and invitations were also sent to rebel groups in over ten provinces.46

Hunanese rebel delegates in Wuhan and warned that “ultra-leftist” currents, which “targeted the PLA and Chairman Mao”, were deeply entrenched in Hunan. He attributed such activities to “KMT officers, landlords, counterrevolutionaries, rich peasants and bad elements”. Zhou specifically mentioned developments to-ward forming a new, faction-based “great alliance”, stressing that “it is wrong, it is mistaken, this is ultra-leftism”, and made it clear that this would go against Mao’s wish to achieve unity and order.47 Zhou’s warning had the intended effect. The

43. Xin Changsha bao (New Changsha Daily) (19 February 1968).

44. In fact, the group was originally called the Shenghui Wulian, which meant the “Provincial-Capital Revo-

lutionary Alliance”. That its original name highlighted the group’s local base in the provincial capital Changsha

was a shrewd move to evade Beijing’s decree to ban mass organizations of extra-local or cross-regional scope.

However, the character hui that indicates “provincial capital” was often omitted. See Chen Yinan, “Wenge

zhong Hunan ‘shengwulian’ wenti gaishu”.

45. See Hunan jianxun bianjibu, “Fan’geming dazahui shengwulian zui’e shi”; Shenggechou xiezuozu (Writ-

ing Group of the Revolutionary Committee Preparatory Group), “Fan’geming dazahui ‘shengwulian’ zhengshi

chulong de qianqian houhou” (Events Before and After the Founding of the Counterrevolutionary Hodgepodge

“Shengwulian”) (21 February 1968), pamphlet.

46. “Yu shengwulian he jizuopai douzheng dashiji”.

47. “Zhou Enlai jiejian Hunan zaofanpai daibiao de jianghua” (Zhou Enlai’s Talk at the Meeting with Rebel

et al. (eds), Wenhua dageming wenku.

celebrations were promptly cancelled, and several groups which had signed up with the Shengwulian now disavowed their involvement.

While various individuals and groups acted in the name of the Shengwulian, strictly speaking the organization was never officially inaugurated, and the new en-tity had little power over those groups that acted in its name. These groups, which had mostly acted separately, were lumped together as part of the Shengwulian only after Beijing and the provincial leadership denounced the alliance. However, the

groups at the PLA engineering academy in Changsha, which supported Xiang River and the Workers’ Alliance respectively, clashed with each other. Xiang River supporters prematurely distributed leaflets in the name of the new alliance, in order to exaggerate their organizational strength.48

In resisting demobilization, the Shengwulian attracted to its banner many in-dividuals with different grievances at having been disadvantaged in social and political life. The Shengwulian reportedly had extensive ties with various “econ-omistic groups”, and enjoyed support in small neighborhood factories (qujie gongchang 区街工厂), where workers’ wages, benefits and status were generally inferior to those in state-sector industry. Yang Xiguang, for example, recalled participating in rallies of contract workers, who invoked Marx to demand im-provements in their economic circumstances: in particular, that the proletariat should put a slogan on their banners—abolition of the capitalist employment system (contract work).49

Disgruntled PLA veterans also constituted an active force in the Shengwulian.50 In Hunan, veterans’ mobilization began with the establishment of the Red Flag Army in late 1966. It reportedly grew to 470,000 members and became a major force in the Xiang River coalition.51 The group was outlawed in early 1967, and its exoneration became the common cause of Xiang River groups, positioning them in opposition to the PLA and the province’s new center of power. The local and national leaders refused to rehabilitate the veterans’ group. Premier Zhou Enlai

48. Chen Yinan, “Wenge zhong Hunan ‘shengwulian’ wenti gaishu” (A Sketch of Hunan’s ‘Shengwulian’

Episode During the Cultural Revolution), unpublished manuscript.

49. Jonathan Unger, “Transcript of Interviews with Yang Xiguang” (privately held document), p. 28. I am

grateful to Jonathan Unger for generously sharing this document. For Shengwulian-related “economistic”

activities, see Xin Changsha bao (6, 11, 13 and 20 March 1968).

50. For the discontent of PLA veterans in the Mao era, see Gordon White, “The Politics of Demobilized

Soldiers from Liberation to Cultural Revolution”, The China Quarterly, No. 82 (June 1980), pp. 187–213; Neil

J. Diamant, Embattled Glory: Veterans, Military Families, and the Politics of Patriotism in China, 1949–2007

(Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2010).

51. Hunan hongqijun wenti lianhe diaochatuan, “Hunan hongqijun dashiji” (A Chronology of the Hunan

Red Flag Army) (31 July 1967), handbill.

made a concession in August 1967, noting that, while the Red Flag Army’s head-quarters must be disbanded, its grass-roots groups might be restored, but must form “great alliances” or be amalgamated.52 Such a solution was unacceptable to the veterans and their supporters. Deadlocked over the issue of the Red Flag Army, various Xiang River groups continued to target the provincial military commanders and those higher-up officials allegedly behind them.

The Shengwulian enjoyed strong support among the victims of various po-litical campaigns, and especially among those labeled as “rightists” in the late 1950s.53 With Mao’s call for rebellion, many of those who had suffered political attack participated in the movement. Former rightists battled to win “reversal of cases” in spite of Beijing’s repeated injunctions against agitation for the reha-bilitation of victims of political campaigns. By late 1967, several “investigation groups” were formed by former rightists to agitate for rehabilitation. They pub-lished pamphlets and newspapers to publicize their stories, and sent delegates to Changsha and Beijing to lodge complaints.54 The groups of political victims supported the Shengwulian’s attempt to “carry on the revolution to the end”, and their cause enjoyed significant sympathy among Shengwulian members. The re-sponse from the Shengwulian leadership, however, was considerably more cau-tious. In one case, one of the rightists’ groups attempted to join the Shengwulian, but the request was ignored.55 Clearly, the concern was that this could make the Shengwulian politically vulnerable, as former rightists often became convenient targets of attack.

Rusticated youth remained one of the groups most staunchly supporting the Shengwulian. As later exposed in Red Guard materials, many Hunanese rusticates

52. “Zhongyang shouzhang diliuci jiejian Hunan daibiaotuan shi de jianghua” (Central Leaders’ Talk at the

Sixth Meeting with the Hunan Delegation) (15 August 1967), in Song Yongyi et al. (eds), Wenhua dageming wenku.

53. According to the official history, over 31,000 were denounced in 1957–58, including 14 per cent of all

primary and middle school teachers in the province. The subsequent campaign against “right-wing oppor-

tunism” targeted over 100,000 individuals. Zhonggong Hunan shengwei dangshi yanjiushi (The CCP Hunan

Zhongguo Gongchandang Hunan dangshi, 1949–1978 (History of

the Chinese Communist Party in Hunan, 1949–1978) (Changsha: Hunan Renmin Chubanshe, 2009), pp. 269,

272, 324–26.

54. See, for example, Tang Lin, “Wei Xin Hunan bao ‘fandang youpai jituan’ da yuan’an de chedi pingfan er

douzheng” (Struggle for the Thorough Reversal of the Wrongful Case of the “Anti-Party, Rightist Ring” at the

New Hunan Daily) (27 September 1967), pamphlet; Xin Hunan bao zhengzhi pohai konggaotuan (New Hunan Daily Political Persecution Petition Delegation), “Gei quanguo wuchanjieji geming zaofanpai zhanyou de

huyushu” (A Letter of Appeal to Proletarian Revolutionary Rebel Comrades in the Whole Country) (13 Sep-

tember 1967), handbill. In the mid-1950s, journalists and editors at the New Hunan Daily, the main Party

newspaper in the province, became embroiled in a prolonged dispute with the managers on issues relating to

editorial policy. In 1957, over 50 per cent of the paper’s staff were branded as “rightists”. During the Cultural

Revolution, the case became a rallying point for former political victims attempting to seek rehabilitation.

For the New Hunan Daily case, see Zhu Zheng, Luo Yingwen and Liu Haoyu (eds), 1957: Xin Hunan bao ren

(1957: The Staff of the New Hunan Daily) (Changsha, 2002), privately published.

55. Interview with a former rightist, 11 July 2008.

experienced economic hardship. Girls as young as 16 or 17 had to marry local peasants because they were unable to make a living.56 In addition to everyday hardship, abuse and discrimination by local cadres were especially damaging to the rusticates’ morale. Cases of young females sexually molested by rural cadres were often reported.57 With the paralysis of local Party authorities in the Cultural Revolution, the majority of Hunan’s rusticated youth returned to their home cities, either becoming “wanderers” (xiaoyao pai 逍遥派)58 or joining Red Guard groups. In late 1967, there were a dozen rusticates’ groups in Changsha, with membership ranging from a few hundred to thousands. They called for an end to abuses in the rustication program. Some demanded its complete abolition. Some even called the right not to be involuntarily resettled a “human right”. They put forth slo-

hukou” and even “It’s right to rebel for hukou” (zao hukou fan youli 造户口反有理)— clearly modeled on Mao’s call, “It’s right to rebel”.59

freedom of residence was a basic right granted in the PRC Constitution, and compared the rebellion to regain hukou to the Luddites’ destruction of machin-ery in the early 19th century.60 The rusticates’ demands, however, were rebuked by the Beijing leadership. In defiance of Beijing’s injunctions that mass mobilization must be limited locally, Changsha’s rusticates expanded their ties to other cities and provinces. Communication and cooperation among rusticates from different regions reached their peak in late 1967, when delegates from a dozen provinces met in Changsha to discuss matters critical to their concerns.61

Discontented elements such as rusticated youth and former rightists shared much common ground with those rebels keen on “carrying on the revolution to the end”, as it was the continuous attack against the “power holders” that fu-eled the hope that their demands might be satisfied. The Shengwulian’s attempts to resist demobilization provided the opportunity for various political groups to realign. The factionalizing processes which had resulted in the split between the Workers’ Alliance and Xiang River—and to the rise of the Shengwulian—were driven largely by power competition, personal ambitions, entrenched or-ganizational identities, and discord not necessarily rooted in pre-existing social

56. Geming qingnian (Revolutionary Youth) (10 November 1967).

57. In one state farm in Guiyang County in southern Hunan, for example, it was reported that 80 per cent

of the female rusticates were either molested or raped by local cadres. Geming qingnian (19 September 1967).

58. The term “wanderers” or “bystanders” (xiaoyaopai) refers to a large number of individuals who were

not politically active during the Cultural Revolution.

59. Zhang Yang, “Wo dangnian yanjiu ‘shangshan xiaxiang’” (How I Examined the “Up to the Mountains

and Down to the Villages” Movement during the Cultural Revolution), unpublished manuscript.

60. Shanying61. Xie Jihe, “Wenge zhong de Changsha shangshan xiaxiang zhiqing yundong: ji wozai wenge zhong de

yiduan jingli” (Rusticated Youth Movement in Changsha During the Cultural Revolution: Recollection of My

antagonisms. As factional divides widened, however, the new organizational identities that surfaced became the rallying point around which different social positions and interests aggregated. With their demands unmet, the disgruntled elements attempted to “continue the revolution” in an increasingly inhospitable political environment. In the case of the rusticates, their agitation pitted them against the province’s new leadership, whose mandate was to end factional strife and restore order, and this positioned the rusticates to join forces with those who shared their desire for “continuous revolution”. Indeed, while the Shengwulian attracted the marginalized or underprivileged elements in Chinese social life, the fragmentation of Hunan’s mass movement may not adequately be explained by the different social composition of the participants involved. Rather, the diver-gence would be better understood as the contingent consequence of conjunctural yet separately determined events and processes.

While the Cultural Revolution brought China’s discontented citizens unparal-leled opportunities to voice their grievances, many outbursts focused on local circumstances, and rarely were they connected, either organizationally or discur-sively, with nationally significant struggles. In the intransigence of the Hunanese rebels, however, the pragmatic and the ideological coalesced. The desire to pre-serve factional strength and autonomous organizational identity, as well as strug-gles for locally based demands, intertwined with a yearning for self-governance and direct political action. Through this process, local disputes over factional antagonisms, when conjoined with nationally significant issues, became increas-ingly denuded of their contextual specificities and were given new, broader po-litical meanings.

The Shengwulian became well known largely thanks to the writings of Yang Xiguang, a 19-year-old high school senior and author of the provocative essay “Whither China?”. Reinterpreting and challenging the official Maoist doctrine of the Cultural Revolution, young critics such as Yang questioned the discrepancy between the movement’s proclivity to attack individual officials and its radical revolutionary rhetoric, arguing that the major conflict in China was not between Mao’s supporters and the “revisionists”, nor between the proletariat and the for-merly propertied classes, but between a collective “red capitalist class” and the Chinese working people as a whole.62

62. For “Whither China?” and several key Shengwulian texts, see Song Yongyi and Sun Dajin (eds), Wen-hua dageming he tade yiduan sichao, pp. 274–333. For my English translation of “Whither China?”, I have

consulted and modified that in Klaus Mehnert, Peking and the New Left, pp. 82–100.

The general outline of the essay “Whither China?” is well known. Conventional scholarly wisdom has mainly focused on two interrelated themes of the text: the idea that a “red capitalist class” (hongse zichan jieji 红色资产阶级) had emerged after 1949, and the call for a Paris Commune–style polity, an idea to which Mao once appeared sympathetic but which he later abandoned. This narrow focus,

as opposition to the PLA, criticism of the revolutionary committee, analyses of specific historical events, and apologia for Mao—have not received sufficient at-tention. Second, the existing understanding fails to appreciate fully the fact that ideas such as “the red bourgeoisie” and “the People’s Commune of China” were developed mostly in response to the Cultural Revolution’s course of events, both local and national.

Yang’s ideas resulted from his experience in the Cultural Revolution. During the military suppression of Xiang River rebels in February 1967, Yang spent 40 days in detention. “In prison I saw a newspaper”, he later recalled. “I saw that the tone of the editorials had changed to a position in favor of the conservatives, that the Cultural Revolution was to be ended soon. So I felt disillusioned.”63 Yang’s reflec-tions were significantly influenced by similar currents of thought developed else-where in China. Between the spring and summer of 1967 he made several trips to Beijing to participate in the “revolutionary link-up”, where he read Red Guard materials containing notions about “a new privileged class of officials”. Yang was also exposed to ideas produced by the April 3 Faction (si san pai 四三派). Their influential proclamation argued that, although China’s socialist revolution had abolished private property, power and property were concentrated in the hands of a small minority, and Party bureaucrats therefore constituted a “privi-leged class”.64 These ideas had a critical impact on Yang. In a letter sent to his younger sister, dated 4 July 1967, he wrote: “I believe that a high-salaried stratum has already been formed in China. Chairman Mao said [the Cultural Revolution] is a revolution of one class to overthrow another class. Today we must overthrow the high-salaried stratum.”65 “From then on”, he later recalled, “I started to link these ideas to widespread discontent expressed by the urban masses, and I be-gan to reflect on broader issues regarding the causes and origins of the Cultural Revolution”.66

63. Jonathan Unger, “Interviews with Yang Xiguang” (July 1989), p. 16.

64. Yang Xiaokai (a.k.a Yang Xiguang), “‘Zhongguo xiang hechu qu?’ dazibao shimo” (Story of the

Essay “Whither China”), Zhongguo zhichun (China Spring), No. 91 (1990), pp. 42–45. For the proclamation

issued by the April 3 Faction, see Song Yongyi and Sun Dajin (eds), Wenhua dageming he tade yiduan sichao,

pp. 248–56.

65. Hunan jianxun bianjibu, “Fan’geming dazahui shengwulian zui’e shi”.

66. Yang Xiaokai, “‘Zhongguo xiang hechu qu?’ dazibao shimo”, p. 42. Yang was also in correspondence

with self-proclaimed “ultra-leftists” in other parts of China, such as activists in Shandong and members of

the May 16 group in Beijing, who attempted to target Premier Zhou Enlai as well as to instigate opposition to

Yang Xiguang’s reflection on the Cultural Revolution’s turn of events culmi-nated in several essays completed in late 1967, in which he attempted to develop an analysis in ways markedly different from the official Maoist doctrine. In one of these articles, entitled “Some Ideas about the Formation of Maoist Groups”, he expressed doubts—shared by a growing number of young people—about the Cultural Revolution. “We today are participating in the unparalleled Great Cultural Revolution”, he wrote:

We talk about rebellion every day, and about carrying on the revolution to the end.

But these are really vague and empty notions. Questions such as a systematic class

analysis of Chinese society, of the origins, nature and goals of this great proletarian

political revolution (this revolution definitely cannot be called a “cultural revolu-

tion”, but for the present time we have no other term but refer to it as such)—all

these questions have remained mostly unexplored.67

Pushing his doubts further, Yang raised a broad array of questions:

How do we assess and understand the situation of class struggle in China during

the past decade or so?

Why were various Party committees and authorities overthrown? How is it that so

many “capitalist power-holders” were identified and dragged out?

Why was the storm of the January Power Seizure necessary? Why is it that so many

Party and youth league members were inclined to become conservative? Why are

those who dare to think and dare to rebel usually viewed as troublemakers? . . .

Why do most of the Cultural Revolution rebels feel they have just woken up from a

dream (dameng chuxing 大梦初醒)? Why? Why?68

In a letter to a similarly minded student in Shandong, Yang complained that “the old provincial Party committee remains mostly intact, and Hunan is still ruled by the same bureaucrats, who oppress the people”. “Therefore we must choose be-

the army. Such communication, however, by no means constituted a coherently organized nationwide “ultra-

left” movement. For Yang’s ties with “ultra-leftists” elsewhere in the country, see Hongweibing Changshashi

yizhong geming zaofan weiyuanhui (Changsha No. 1 Middle School Red Guard Revolutionary Rebellion

Committee), “Guanyu shengwulian yizhong gang 319 bingtuan fan’geming fenzi Yang Xiguang de diyipi zi -

liao” (First Batch of Materials Regarding Counterrevolutionary Yang Xiguang of the Shengwulian Steel March

19 Regiment) (14 February 1968), pamphlet; Mao Zedong sixiang hongweibing (Mao Zedong Thought Red

Guards) et al., “Shengwulian huaitoutou fan’geming dashiji” (Chronology of Counterrevolutionary Activities

of the Shengwulian’s Evil Bosses) (23 February 1968), handbill. For the alleged May 16 or “ultra-left” conspir-

acy, see Roderick MacFarquhar and Michael Schoenhals, Mao’s Last Revolution, Chapter 13.

67. Song Yongyi and Sun Dajin (eds), Wenhua dageming he tade yiduan sichao, p. 325, italics added.

68. Song Yongyi and Sun Dajin (eds), Wenhua dageming he tade yiduan sichao, pp. 325–26.

tween either waiting for defeat or rising up to resist”, he stressed. “We must not let them consolidate their power . . . I really doubt whether the Cultural Revolution can continue in the same way it was.”69 Yang proposed a loose network of “small groups of Mao Zedong-ism” (Mao Zedong zhuyi xiaozu 毛泽东主义小组)—to provide the grass-roots infrastructure for reorienting the Cultural Revolution through conjoining political activism and critical inquiry. “After over a year of fierce struggle”, he claimed, “the radical rebels [ jijin de zaofanpai 激进的造反派] have so many puzzles for which they can’t find answers”.70 Yang expressed skepti-cism about Mao’s plan to convene the CCP’s Ninth National Congress as part of the process of rebuilding the Party, arguing that the existing CCP apparatus “must undergo revolutionary changes”. “The convening of the Ninth Party Congress”, he wrote, “should not be expected to settle completely the question of where the Party is going”.71 Instead of rebuilding the Party as a centralized body, a different model would be necessary. For Yang, a loose network of “study societies” should constitute the organizational form of social and political rebuilding. In combin-ing theoretical study, social research and political activism, such groups would also become the grass-roots basis for establishing a new political entity, or what Yang called “the party of Mao Zedong-ism”, as an alternative to the bureaucra-tized CCP.

Yang penned arguably the most important “ultra-left” text produced during the Cultural Revolution, “Whither China?”, in December 1967. Appearing under the modest pseudonym “a soldier” (yi bing 一兵),72 the essay originated in dis-cussions among some rank-and-file Red Guards frustrated with the movement’s apparent impasse. As a draft manifesto of the self-styled “Ultra-left Commune”, only 80 copies were mimeographed but fewer than 20 were actually distributed.73 While many involved with the Shengwulian denied such characterization, some self-consciously adopted the controversial term to signify their cause, with some reportedly even calling for “the ultra-leftists all over China” to unite.74 In a letter to his younger sister, Yang Hui, he proclaimed that the “ultra-left” were the most revolutionary, and even speculated that Mao might also be an “ultra-leftist”,75

69. “Gei Qiu Lingming de xin” (Letter to Qiu Liming) (23 November 1967), in Hongweibing Changshashi

yizhong geming zaofan weiyuanhui, “Guanyu shengwulian yizhong gang 319 bingtuan fan’geming fenzi Yang

Xiguang de diyipi ziliao”.

70. Song Yongyi and Sun Dajin (eds), Wenhua dageming he tade yiduan sichao, p. 326.


72. According one of Yang’s classmates, when asked why he did not use his real name for the essay Yang

replied that it was mostly “a gesture of contempt”, that only “one soldier” could fight and defeat all the mighty

adversaries.


74. Mao Zedong sixiang hongweibing et al, “Shengwulian huaitoutou fan’geming dashiji” (10 January

1968), handbill.

75. “Gei Yang Hui de xin (zhailu)” (Excerpts from the Letter to Yang Hui) (4 July 1967, in Hongwei-

bing Changshashi yizhong geming zaofan weiyuanhui, “Guanyu shengwulian yizhong gang 319 bingtuan

fan’geming fenzi Yang Xiguang de diyipi ziliao”.

thereby claiming legitimacy for an otherwise scandalous term and transforming it into a sign of political defiance.

“Whither China?” began its discussion with the brief upsurge of rebel activ-ism after the Wuhan Incident, and expressed puzzlement about the retreat of the Cultural Revolution which had become unmistakable:

When the struggle against the adverse current reached July, August and September,

the people had a sense of vigorous growth, believing that there was hope that the

Great Cultural Revolution would be “carried through to the end” . . . However, an

adverse current of top-down counter-revolutionary reformism has appeared since

-

tural revolution”, suddenly became intense. The people are thrown into bewilder-

ment . . . The question again arises: What is to be done? Whither China?76

In “Whither China?”, events of the previous 18 months were narrated through the optic of class-based revolt against China’s “privileged stratum”. Yang’s in-terpretation of the January episode of the Cultural Revolution was interesting in this regard. For Yang, the most critical fact about the “January Storm” was the “changes in class relations which took place”—that “90 per cent of the se-nior cadres were made to stand aside . . . [and] their power reduced to zero”.77 Believing that Mao had been in favor of the abortive Shanghai Commune, Yang had difficulty explaining why Mao turned against the Commune model of egali-tarian political organization: “Why did Chairman Mao, who strongly advocated the ‘Commune’, suddenly oppose the establishment of the Shanghai Commune in January?” Why, he asked, “cannot communes be established immediately?” Yang’s answer was both ingenious and wishful. He argued that the Chinese prole-tariat was politically immature, and that its consciousness “had not yet developed to the degree at which it was possible to transform society”.78 It was to remedy this situation, Yang believed, that Mao ordered the PLA to become involved in the Cultural Revolution, as a way of not only facilitating the mass movement but also of overcoming the bureaucratic control of the army. In this case, Yang’s criticism of the PLA in “Whither China?” in particular, and the opposition of the Hunanese “ultra-leftists” to the PLA in general, reflected long-standing tensions between the rebels and the local military that had been deployed to “support the left”. While defending Mao’s decision to order military intervention, Yang also attempted to rationalize the Cultural Revolution’s turn toward retrenchment. In a conversation with a fellow student in late 1967, he observed that the preva-lent turmoil and violence necessitated “a phase of political retreat”, in which the


77. Ibid., p. 277.

78. Ibid., p. 279.

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revolution “decelerates in order to allow the national economy to recover”. Yang

the virtual collapse of the national economy led to a more moderate NEP policy which, in tolerating capitalist economic activities, stabilized the Soviet economy. Mao’s new “strategic plan” after September 1967, argued Yang, was equivalent to Lenin’s NEP policy in the 1920s.79

The sharpest criticism developed in “Whither China?” was aimed at the lo-cal revolutionary committees that were being assembled and installed. In Yang’s view, revolutionary committees were a product of political compromise. He spec-ulated that in endorsing these committees Mao perhaps tried to circumvent the opposition and to preserve the revolutionary forces, so that “the splendid name of ‘commune’ may not be tarnished by faulty practice”. Yang offered an elaborate apologia for, and at the same time a veiled criticism of, Mao’s retreat:

Comrade Mao Zedong once again made a broad retreat after September, in disre-

gard of the wishes of those eager for unrealistic victories, so as to consolidate the

achievements already gained and calm the bourgeoisie, in order to prevent them

from taking reckless measures. A political structure for seizure of power by the

bourgeoisie—the revolutionary committee or preparatory revolutionary commit-

tee—has been established.80

The extent of this retreat, for Yang, was “unprecedented”.81 As old power-holders continued to occupy key positions in the new power structure, the “red bour-geoisie” would regain its power, and revolutionary committees would become a form of regime in which “the army and bureaucrats will play a dominant role”.82 The power seizures and the revolutionary committees were therefore at best an inherently limited “reformist” (gailiang zhuyi 改良主义) solution to the political impasse, which “in a zigzag fashion changes the new bureaucratic bourgeois rule before the Cultural Revolution into another type of bourgeois rule by bourgeois bureaucrats and a few representatives from token mass organizations”.83

Yang Xiguang was not the only one among Shengwulian activists and sympa-thizers who produced novel political analyses. Similar ideas were articulated by several university students, such as Zhang Yugang (张玉纲) and Zhou Guohui (周国辉), who also played an active role in Hunan’s mass politics. Zhou, a

79. Hongzhonghui yibing (A Soldier of the Red Middle School Committee), “Yang Xiguang he wo de jici

jiechu he ta de jipian ducao jianjie” (A Brief Account of My Several Encounters with Yang Xiguang and His

Poisonous Writings) (Changsha, 18 February 1968), pamphlet.

80. Song Yongyi and Sun Dajin (eds), Wenhua dageming he tade yiduan sichao, pp. 286–87.

81. Ibid., p. 287.

82. Ibid., p. 280.

83. Ibid., p. 289.

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sophomore who led a college student group in the Xiang River coalition, was the author of several widely circulated speeches which harshly criticized revolution-ary committees for being “dominated by the capitalist power-holders”. Zhang, an engineering student, drew up in December 1967 a widely circulated text entitled

-ture is still generally socialist, its entire vast superstructure has largely become capitalist”. According to Zhang, the goal of the Cultural Revolution was to “over-throw the newly born corrupted bourgeois privileged stratum”, and to “smash the old state apparatus that is in the service of bourgeois privilege”. Asserting that “political power is still in the hands of the bureaucrats and the seizure of power is a change in appearance only”, Zhang made the bold claim that “the Cultural Revolution, in fact, only begins from the present moment . . . The movement on the whole is still in its rudimentary stage. The historical mission of the Cultural Revolution is far from being completed.”84

The importance and novelty of his ideas notwithstanding, Yang was by no means a “major leader” or “key theorist” of the Shengwulian, as he has often been portrayed. According to Zhou Guohui, Yang was in fact little known outside his immediate circles. “If an election were run within the Shengwulian ranks”, Zhou joked, “Yang Xiguang would probably have received only three votes”.85 It is also notable that Yang’s views were often disputed by his peers. At a meet-ing in November 1967, for example, several dozen Shengwulian activists debated the current political situation and organizational strategies. Zhang Yugang crit-icized the “reformist tendency” of the Cultural Revolution, claiming that official statements published in the People’s Daily and Red Flag were “incompatible with Chairman Mao’s revolutionary principles”. Yang Xiguang, on the other hand, ar - gued that the movement would inevitably become a “reformist revolution of dismissing a few officials” unless the majority of cadres were attacked. Most of

China’s socialist state and the “dictatorship of the proletariat” could be explained, if the “privileged stratum” occupied the dominant position. Yang replied—again ingeniously and wishfully—that only Chairman Mao and a few other top leaders close to him were able to represent the collective interests of the proletariat, and therefore the dictatorship of the proletariat was to rely on the centralization of power. This, according to Yang, would explain why China was one of the most politically centralized countries in the world, with unlimited power concentrated in the highest leadership. Hence, the masses’ grasp of Mao Zedong Thought was itself “a reflection of the dictatorship of the proletariat”. Most participants of the

84. Ibid., pp. 300–02. For Zhou Guohui’s speeches, see Hunansheng qixiangju hongqi zongbu (ed.), Bei-ming ji (A Collection of Hysterical Howling) (Changsha, February 1968), pamphlet, pp. 40–48.

85. Cited in Chen Yinan, “Wenge zhong Hunan ‘shengwulian’ wenti gaishu”.

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meeting, however, were not persuaded by Yang Xiguang’s arguments, and the session broke up without agreement.86

In resisting the national trends toward mass demobilization, Shengwulian activists such as Yang Xiguang sailed into ideologically dangerous waters. The Shengwulian was suppressed only a few weeks after “Whither China?” was com-pleted. Hua Guofeng (华国锋), a provincial Party boss who would later be-come Mao’s successor, reportedly concluded after reading Yang’s essay that the Shengwulian was not only “counterrevolutionary in action” but also “totally re-actionary in thought”.87 At a conference in Beijing on 24 January 1968, top CCP leaders such as Jiang Qing (江青), Kang Sheng (康生), Yao Wenyuan (姚文元), Chen Boda (陈伯达) and Zhou Enlai unanimously accused the Shengwulian of every form of heinous political crime. In particular, the national leaders con-demned Shengwulian activists’ idea that a “newborn capitalist privileged stra-tum” had emerged in China, and urged that the organization be immediately dismantled.88 While there was no indication that Mao personally authorized the Shengwulian’s suppression, he was clearly well aware of the developments in Hunan. At the historic meeting with Beijing Red Guard leaders in July 1968, which effectively marked the end of the Red Guard movement, Mao made a dis-paraging reference to the “Shengwulian-style hodgepodge”.89 During his visit to Hunan in June 1969, Mao again made reference to the “ultra-leftist current of the Shengwulian”, noting that it “attempted in vain to reconstruct the Party and the army”.90

Back in Hunan, a drive to denounce the Shengwulian was immediately mounted, as the group was condemned as a “hodgepodge of social dregs”. Within weeks, by late February 1968, the Shengwulian network had been largely de-

21 February 1968, both the Workers’ Alliance and Xiang River—together with ten other major mass organizations active in Hunan’s Cultural Revolution—an-nounced their dissolution. As a later Party history put it, this episode was the be-ginning of a phase in which “the assorted ‘rebel’ organizations active on Hunan’s political stage for the past year and a half would dissolve and fade out”.91 Six weeks

86. Hongzhonghui yibing, “Yang Xiguang he wo de jici jiechu he ta de jipian ducao jianjie”.

87. Chen Yinan, Qingchun wuheng, p. 302.

88. “Zhongyang shouzhang jiejian Mao Zedong sixiang xuexiban Hunan ban quanti tongzhi de jianghua”

(Speeches by Party Leaders at the Meeting with All the Comrades of the Hunan Group of the Mao Zedong

Thought Study Class) (24 January 1968), in Song Yongyi et al. (eds), Wenhua dageming wenku. The texts of

several Party leaders’ speeches were collected in Klaus Mehnert, Peking and the New Left, pp. 107–18.

89. “Zhaojian shoudu hongdaihui ‘wu da lingxiu’ shi de tanhua” (Mao’s Talk at the Meeting with the “Five

Capital Red Guard Leaders”) (18 July 1968), in Song Yongyi et al. (eds), Wenhua dageming wenku.

90. Yu Laishan, Mao Zedong wushi ci hui Hunan (Mao Zedong’s 50 Visits to Hunan) (Changsha: Hunan

Renmin Chubanshe, 2009), p. 309.

91. Hunan difangzhi bianzhuan weiyuanhui (Hunan Provincial Gazetteer Compilation Committee),

Hunan shengzhi: dashiji (Hunan Provincial Gazetteer: Chronology of Major Events) (Changsha: Hunan Ren-

min Chubanshe, 1999), p. 798.

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later, on 8 April, the Hunan Provincial Revolutionary Committee was officially ratified by Beijing, marking the achievement of formal political unity and order in the province.

The development of the Shengwulian in Hunan revealed the significant diver-gence at the grass roots that was in the making during the Cultural Revolution.

needs further elaboration. First of all, the Shengwulian was an emerging factional tendency that was destroyed before it was able to develop into a fully fledged group with a clearly definable organizational identity and boundaries. Second, the Shengwulian’s membership was highly unstable, as was typical with any mass factions during the Cultural Revolution. Third, Yang Xiguang, the 19-year-old student who made the Shengwulian well known, not only nationally but also internationally, was by no means its main leader or theorist, and neither was his essay “Whither China?” a “Shengwulian manifesto”. Last, but not least, instead of being part of a concerted “ultra-left” movement nationwide, the Shengwulian rebels in Hunan constituted a dispersed network that responded mainly to local antagonisms and events.

A more accurate portrayal of this case, however, does not necessarily diminish its political and ideological importance. The development of the Shengwulian mediated a number of social grievances that erupted during the Cultural Rev-olution. The combination of mass factional conflicts, local social and economic grievances, and the development of heterodox political ideas that scrutinized and challenged the existing sociopolitical order had a potentially explosive impact on the mass politics of the Cultural Revolution, both local and nationwide. The dangers posed by Shengwulian-like organizations were well understood by the central leadership, which took decisive actions to suppress such developments.

A re-examination of the Shengwulian sheds new light on current scholarly debates on the Cultural Revolution. In several works since 2002, Andrew Walder has challenged what he dubs the “social interpretation” of Red Guard faction-alism—the once-dominant approach to the study of Cultural Revolution mass politics.92 Walder argues that factional struggles often did not involve significant differences in political or ideological orientations toward the status quo, and that political conflicts were not, as previous scholarship suggested, caused by es-tablished social divisions, or by the social composition of the factions involved.

92. See Andrew Walder, “Beijing Red Guard Factionalism: Social Interpretations Reconsidered”, Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 61, No. 2 (2002), pp. 437–71; Andrew Walder, “Ambiguity and Choice in Political Move-

American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 112, No. 3 (2006),

pp. 710–50; Andrew Walder, “Factional Conflict at Beijing University, 1966–1968”; Andrew Walder, Fractured Rebellion: The Beijing Red Guard Movement (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009).

26

Walder develops an alternative “political interpretation” that stresses processual and contextual contingency, arguing that the factional divisions were often the product of political interactions rooted in specific, unforeseen circumstances.

While acknowledging that contextually situated political actions were impor-tant to Red Guard factionalism, Unger questions the generalizability of Walder’s arguments. He argues that Walder’s findings may be applicable only to the na-tional political center, Beijing—“a small slice of Cultural Revolution activity”93—where Red Guard politics was significantly shaped by the interventions of a divided and often erratic national leadership.94 Unger points particularly to the Shengwulian case in Hunan as a counter-example to Walder’s arguments. Indeed, the Shengwulian case witnessed the development of heterodox political view-points with regard to the nature of the Cultural Revolution, as well as Chinese society. Moreover, the Shengwulian enjoyed extensive support among disaffected elements in the local society, and the process of factional formation that led to its rise appeared to be driven in major part by pre-existing social antagonisms and interests. “If any Cultural Revolution organization belies Walder’s premise”, as Unger puts it, “it ought to be Shengwulian”.95

In the Shengwulian case, I argue that the social, political and ideological mo-ments coalesced with one another in ways more complex than existing scholar-ship has portrayed. Rather than being preceded or directly caused by pre-existing patterns of social antagonism, factional political conflicts and ideological disputes originated, as Theda Skocpol argued in her seminal book on the comparative and historical sociology of revolutions, from “conjunctural, unfolding interactions of originally separately determined processes”.96 As I suggested earlier, Red Guard factionalism in Hunan was rooted in contingent political processes that may not be reducible to fixed social interests and categories. In these processes, driven largely by organizational rivalry, personal power ambitions and local political accidents, originally minor incidents and conflicts became catalysts for widen-

93. Jonathan Unger, “The Cultural Revolution Warfare at Beijing’s Universities”, The China Journal, No. 64

(July 2010), p. 202.

94. Partly in response to Unger’s criticism, Walder and Dong have meticulously examined the Cultural

Revolution events in Jiangsu, arguing that the factional realignment and antagonisms surrounding the estab-

lishment of the revolutionary committee involved “almost complete absence of factional positions based on

broad issues of principle or substantive policy questions”. There were, they conclude, “no disagreements about

the nature of China’s pre-Cultural Revolution status quo, the extent to which the prior Party-state system was

riddled with revisionism and traitors to Mao Zedong Thought, or what policies with regard to labor, cadres or

education should be after order was restored”. Dong Guoqiang and Andrew Walder, “From Truce to Dictator-

ship: Creating a Revolutionary Committee in Jiangsu”, p. 29. Also see Dong Guoqiang and Andrew Walder,

“Local Politics in the Chinese Cultural Revolution”. For a similar analysis of Red Guard factionalism in

Modern China (forthcoming).

95. Jonathan Unger, “The Cultural Revolution Warfare at Beijing’s Universities”, p. 208.

96. Theda Skocpol, States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of Russia, France, and China

(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979), p. 320.

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ing antagonisms. In Hunan, the eruption of pre-existing social antagonisms developed in separate trajectories, not directly related to the province-wide factional politics. Their insertion into the worsening factional politics only oc-curred at specific conjunctures of local political contentions, as Xiang River and the Workers’ Alliance vied for power in a political atmosphere dominated by the national policy imperative of constructing unity and restoring order. The intran-sigence of certain Xiang River groups provided new opportunities for the socially discontented elements to continue to agitate for their so-far-unsatisfied demands. Through incorporating the disaffected elements, the process of factional realign-ment then took on new social characteristics, and the resulting organizational identities became associated with political agendas driven by pre-existing social and economic antagonisms. Indeed, as Walder argues, an adequate social inter-pretation of Red Guard politics may involve much more than simply enumerat-ing the interests and grievances of the contending groups involved.97 To follow this idea, it is all the more important to explore carefully the processes through which social identities and positions, mobilized in the course of factional po-litical battles, might subsequently transform conflicts such as these. The case of Hunan’s Shengwulian, I believe, may contain ingredients useful for developing a more robust and systematic analysis of Cultural Revolution mass factionalism, one that not only emphasizes political contingency and interactive processes but also takes into account social interests, identities and structural relationships as both dynamically constituted and constitutive. The full development of such a view, however, will have to await another article.

The Shengwulian case also sheds light on the role of ideology in the mass poli-tics of the Cultural Revolution. In his review of Fractured Rebellion, Joel Andreas criticizes Walder for unduly neglecting the importance of ideology in conten-tious politics: “The individuals in his account are largely free from ideological and political concerns, except for instrumental calculations about winning and los ing . . . Walder seems intent on stripping away the ideological and substantive political content of the movement to reveal the underlying instrumental calcula-tions of the participants.”98 While I am sympathetic to Andreas’ criticism, I suggest that to appreciate fully the significance of ideology is not merely to bring ideo-logical factors back into the historical equation and juxtapose them with politi-cally motivated actions. It is also to develop a more robust conception of ideology in action that is capable of recognizing its significance in informing political and economic instrumentalities. In the Shengwulian case, the development of hetero-dox political ideas gave new meanings to both the unfolding of factional conflicts and the expression of pre-existing social grievances. While ideas articulated in

97. Andrew Walder, Fractured Rebellion, p. 250.

98. Joel Andreas, “Review of Fractured Rebellion: The Beijing Red Guard Movement”, American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 116, No. 3 (2010), pp. 1028–29.

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texts such as “Whither China?” decidedly did not express the political orienta-tion of the Shengwulian organization as a whole, this by no means diminishes their ideological significance and political impact. “Ultra-leftist” ideas such as the “red bourgeoisie” and “People’s Commune of China” served the crucial ideo-logical function of “suturing”—to borrow a Lacanian term—diverse grievances and demands such that their meanings became modified and broadened. Many of the contentions in the Cultural Revolution were rather local or particular, in-volving specific groups making a range of demands that seemed unrelated to one another. However, a new ideological horizon opened up when singular events transcended their own limits and made meaningful references to broader social conditions and political issues. Through the young critics’ creative reinterpreta-tion of the official Maoist rhetoric, local events and antagonisms were emptied of their contextual specificities and became bearers of new, wider struggles. Ag-gregated into conflicts only indirectly connected to the original incidents and grievances, individual antagonisms cumulatively became more generalized and simplified, ending as tokens in a reconfigured political space polarized into the “revolutionary people” and the “red bourgeoisie”.99 The political dangers which might result from the unforeseen convergence of an increasingly fragmented and unruly mass movement, potentially explosive social antagonisms and heterodox political ideas were well understood by Maoist leaders. By swiftly suppressing the Shengwulian, a potentially explosive political situation was expediently averted.

99. For an insightful discussion of such dynamically linked processes of political and ideological transfor-

mation which has much shaped my understanding of conflicts in the Chinese Cultural Revolution, see Mar-

shall Sahlins, “Structural Work: How Microhistories Become Macrohistories and Vice Versa”, Anthropological Theory, Vol. 5, No. 1 (2005), pp. 5–30.

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