GENERATIONS, LEGITIMACY, AND POLITICAL IDEAS IN CHINA The End of Polarization or the End of Ideology?
Nora Sausmikat
Abstract This paper investigates the relationship between political ideas and life stories, i.e., the influence of biographical learning on political orientation. It focuses on the political discussions among intellectuals and politicians who belong to the birth cohort of the late 1940s and early 1950s, the so called Zhiqing genera- tion, and describes embedded and developed stereotypes of political identity and legitimation.
This paper investigates the relationship between political ideas and life stories— the social and historical foundations of some seem- ingly new political ideas with the prefix “neo-” currently being discussed by intellectuals in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The analysis is based on interviews the author conducted in 1994, 1996, 2000, and 2001 and the study of writings of intellectuals of the ex-Red Guard and Zhiqing genera-
Dr. Phil. Nora Sausmikat is a Research Associate at the University of Duisburg-Essen, Department of Political Science/ East Asian Studies, Duisburg, Germany. Email: [email protected]. A draft of this paper was presented at the annual meeting of the Association of Asian Studies in Chicago in March 2001 and at the International Convention of Asian Scholars (ICAS) 2 conference in Berlin in August 2001. The author would like to thank all interviewees for their frankness and openness during the interview series. She also greatly respects valuable advice given during the revision process by Lowell Dittmer, Carol Lee Hamrin, David Fraser, Jonathan Unger, Timothy Gluckman, He Baogang, and the anonymous reviewers. Asian Survey , 43:2, pp. 352–384. ISSN: 0004–4687 Ó 2003 by The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. Send Requests for Permission to Reprint to: Rights and Permissions, University of California Press, Journals Division, 2000 Center St., Ste. 303, Berkeley, CA 94704–1223.
352 NORA SAUSMIKAT 353 tion.1 I base my conclusion upon my Ph.D. thesis on the autobiographical reflections of members of the Zhiqing generation and on findings I made during a current research project on political reform and democratization in China. In my dissertation I was concerned with the salient issues and major events in the lives of that generation; going a bit further, this paper tries to link this knowledge to current movements among intellectuals. The concept of “generations” seems to be a very useful category to analyze the way people reflect on their national history. Also, in the field of social and political transformation, research into generations is very much in vogue.2 In the field of post-war Estonian or Russian political thought, the biographical perspective on societies seems to find worldwide interest. In the China field, the study of different generations of intellectuals has a long his- tory. Benjamin Schwartz was one of the promoters of the study of intellec- tual and political history. He pointed to the “ concrete experience of intellectuals within any given society” and to the “ concrete specificities of history”: “In China, the end of the examination system in 1905, the Japanese incursion into China . . . —to mention certain events at random—are specific historic movements which must figure in any effort to understand the exper- iences and the responses of Chinese intellectuals within the time period with which we are concerned.” 3 What Schwartz called the “ transitional genera- tion,” with leading figures such as Kang Youwei, Yan Fu, Liang Qichao, et al., is characterized by their assimilation of Western theories and their own versions of Rousseau, the French Revolution, and contemporaneous Russian revolutionary thought. Schwartz began the fruitful inquiry of the study of intellectuals in non-Western societies and their role in periods of political transition. But this term is also a political one and brings with it the danger of ideo- logical generalizations. If national disputes refer to the generation of “person so-and-so,” usually this is an instrument to reflect on a sensitive issue of the
1.The full term reads “zhishi qingnian ,” which means literally “youth with knowledge” refers to the educated youth aged between 14 and 20 who were sent down to the countryside for reeducation during the Cultural Revolution. 2.Donatella Della Porta, “Life Histories in the Analysis of Social Movement Activists,” in Mario Diani and Ron Eyermann, eds., Studying Social Movements (London: Sage, 1992), pp. 168–193; Kathleen Blee, “Becoming a Racist: Women in Contemporary Ku Klux Klan and Neo- Nazi Groups,” Gender and Society 10 (1996), pp. 680–702; Roswitha Breckner et al., Biogra- phies and the Division of Europe: Experience, Action and Change on the ‘ Eastern Side’ (Opladen: Leske & Budrich, 2000); Ingrid Miethe, Silke Roth, eds., Politische Biografien und sozialer Wandel [Political Biographies and Political Change] (Gie en: Psychosozial-Verlag, 2000). 3.Benjamin Schwartz, “The Limits of ‘Tradition Versus Modernity‘: The Case of the Chinese Intellectuals,” in Schwartz, China and Other Matters (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972/ 1996, pp. 45–64), p. 55. 354 ASIAN SURVEY, VOL. XLIII, NO. 2, MARCH/APRIL 2003 national past. But does one man like German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer represent the ‘68 generation in Germany? 4 Or was the anti-Vietnam cohort in the United States a homogenous group? The answers are undoubt- edly negative. Does the concept of political generations help in understand- ing history, or is the use of the term “generation” merely a discourse strategy tied to political power and legitimacy? In answering these questions, this paper focuses on the ex-Red Guard/ Zhiqing generation. Since the Cultural Revolution (CR) of 1966– 76, the term “generation” has become one of the most important aspects of Chinese politics.5 On the one hand, members of this generation formed strong collec- tive bonds during their odyssey from the 1960s to the present. On the other hand, we can observe how members of the so-called Zhiqing or Laosanjie (old three classes) 6 try to differentiate themselves from each other, try to find their own individual place in a politicized community of ex-Cultural Revolu- tion players that became strongly exploited by the government during the 1990s. Some critics see already in the use of the term “generation” a power propaganda effort that tries to mobilize people to cultivate communist ethics and support the neo-conservative power elite that aimed for stabilization after the Tiananmen massacre, as discussed below. 7 Focusing on the political con- cepts and ideas inside the political reform debate presented by some intellec- tuals of this generation, the origin and substance of these ideas will be analyzed before the background of their historical reflections. During the last few years, debates and articles have emerged that try to categorize the differ- ent trends and discussions among intellectuals about political reform. Schol- ars inside and outside China try to grasp the new discourses by establishing categories like the “New Left” ( xin zuopai) or the “New Right” ( xin youpai), neo-conservatism ( xin baoshou zhuyi ), neo-authoritarianism ( xin quanwei zhuyi), neo-(or revived) liberalism ( xin ziyou zhuyi ), cultural traditionalism (Confucianism), and nationalism. Probably one can add more categories. 8 It
4.The dispute in 2000 about the German foreign minister, Joschka Fischer, and his activities in the late 1960s was meant to discredit the minister by the opposition Christian Democrats because of his involvement in the student left movements of 1968. 5.Michael Yahuda, “ Political Generations in China ,” China Quarterly No. 80 (1979), pp. 793–805, here p. 794. 6.Laosanjie translates into “old three school classes” and refers to the high school graduates of the classes 1966–68 who were the main target of the rustication mass movement during the Cultural Revolution. Students were aged between 14 and 20. 7.Zilin Dong in Jiang Wang, Jiehou Huihuang: Zai Monan Zhong Jueqi de Zhiqing, Laosanjie, Gongheguo de Sandairen [The Glory after Derailment: Emergence from the Suffering of the Zhiqing, Laosanjie, and the Third Generation of the People’s Republic of China] (Beijing: Guangmin ribao chubanshe, 1995), pp. 172–181. 8.See for example Werner Meissner, “New Intellectual Currents in the People’s Republic of China,” in David Teather and Herbert Yee, eds., China in Transition (London: Macmillan Press, NORA SAUSMIKAT 355 will be argued that despite the heated discussions about the new “isms,” we can observe many “old” traits among them and we can formulate some com- mon structures in the political debate. We will find attitudes toward legiti- macy of power similar to those we know from the first to the third generation of leaders (the first generation of political leaders is associated with Mao Zedong, the second with Deng Xiaoping and the third with Jiang Zemin; talking about age cohorts, the “Fourth generation of leadership” refers to the “third echelon of leaders” under Jiang Zemin). As in the past, the concept of generation is still used to classify and legiti- mize political ideas and their meaning for Chinese history. Applying Mann- heim’s term “generation” illuminates the discussion as to whether the current, diversified political discussions between some intellectuals of the Red Guard/ Zhiqing generation show an inner linkage among them.
I.The Concept of Generation: The Red Guard/Zhiqing Generation The social scientist Mannheim made an important contribution by defining the term “generation” in a new way. In his classic essay about generations he asked for an enlargement of this term away from solely biological age co- horts.9 He looked for the principles that tied a group together. In order to obtain a clear idea of the phenomenon of generations, he defined a generation through three concepts: the generation as a “social location in history” ( sozi- ale Lagerung ) based on “certain definite modes of behavior, feeling, and thought”10 which link historical events and circumstances for people of the same age; at the same time, Mannheim pointed out that inside a generation there exist different “generation units.” This means that a common location does not mean that every contemporary will develop the same worldview. Mannheim pointed to intragenerational in addition to intergenerational ten- sions. His third concept is the “ generation as an actuality.” This element describes the inner links between different generational units.
Do we put peasants, scattered as they are in remote districts and almost untouched by current upheavals, in a common actual (sic!) generation with the urban youth of the same period? Certainly not! . . . We shall therefore speak of a generation as an actuality only where a concrete bond is created between members of a generation by their being exposed to the social and intellectual symptoms of a process of dynamic destabilization. Thus the young peasants mentioned above only share the
1999), pp. 3–24; Baogang He, The Democratization of China (New York, London: Routledge, 1996); Merle Goldman, Sowing the Seeds of Democracy in China (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni- versity Press, 1994). 9.See Karl Mannheim, “ The Problem of Generations,” in Karl Mannheim, Essays on the Sociology of Knowledge (London: Routledge, 1928/1952), pp. 276–322. 10.Ibid., p. 291. 356 ASIAN SURVEY, VOL. XLIII, NO. 2, MARCH/APRIL 2003 same generation location, however, without being members of the same generation as an actuality. 11 The generation as an actuality describes different “forms of the intellectuals and social response to an historical stimulus experienced by all in com- mon.”12 With this concept in mind, we can define the Red Guard/ Zhiqing generation as a generation whose social location has been the CR and whose generational units can be exemplified by the diversified political groups or loose associations emerging during the 1980s and 1990s in China. To be sure, Mannheim’ s concept of generation integrates the concept of age-co- horts, but does not solely rely on that. Much more important for him is the concept of the generation as an actuality, which emphasizes the differentia- tion among members of the same age-cohort. Many scholars of China apply the term generation without this differentia- tion. They speak of the “ CR generation,” but this does not mean that the same historical background produces a somehow homogeneous political mainstream, since the group has never been homogeneous, neither during the CR nor afterward. The common ground is the historical stimulus, or the “need for interpretation,” of a certain experienced reality, 13 the “ generation as an actuality.” Li Cheng highlighted the importance of distinguishing be- tween political elite generation and political generation. The so-called Fourth Generation of leadership (which is said to be represented by the new Presi- dent Hu Jintao, the new Premier Wen Jiabao, the former leader of organiza- tional department and newly elected Vice President Zeng Qinghong, et al.) is defined as the “CR generation,” but Li argued that there are many subgroups inside this generation. 14 The majority of them had no chance to become poli- ticians or establishment intellectuals. William W. Whitson used political generations in his analysis of the Chi- nese People’ s Liberation Army (PLA), where the concept is operationally important (he refers to the “ Yanan generation,” the “ war of national resis- tance generation,” the “ Long March generation,” and so forth). 15 Whitson defines military generations by the two parameters of “political crisis” exper-
11.The quote continues: “. . .Youth experiencing the same concrete historical problems may be said to be part of the same actual generation; while those groups within the same actual generation which work up the material of their common experiences in different specific ways, constitute separate generation units.” Ibid., p. 304. 12. Ibid. 13.Heinz Bude, Deutsche Karrieren [German Careers] (Frankfurt a. M., Germany: Suhrkamp, 1987), p. 38. 14.Li Cheng, “Jiang Zemin’s Successors: The Rise of the ‘Fourth Generation of Leaders in the PRC’,” China Quarterly No. 161 (March 2000), pp. 1–40. Li defined the Fourth generation of leaders as those born between 1941 and 1956. 15.William W. Whitson, The Chinese High Command: A History of Communist Politics, 1927–71 (London: Macmillan, 1973). I thank Lowell Dittmer for advice on this. NORA SAUSMIKAT 357 ienced, and subsequent promotion of military personal. He highlights the sharp contrast inside one age-cohort by referring to the fundamentally differ- ent circumstances American graduates faced graduating in 1943 versus 1945.16 This statement supports the importance of the differentiation Mann- heim made, not to rely solely on age groups, but rather to differentiate be- tween the real circumstances in different times, localities, and classes. We could add some more categories of differentiation like gender, ethnicity, per- sonality, graduate of a keypoint school or not, urban/rural education. These differentiations have to be made, although the source material is difficult to get; to the extent that material could be obtained, it is embedded in this analy- sis. If we turn now to the subgroup comprising the Red Guard/Zhiqing genera- tion, it is especially difficult to apply the age-group concept. Social reality does not follow the criteria of numerical exactness. We can list some salient events experienced by former members of the Red Guards as well as by for- mer Zhiqing, such as Mao Zedong’ s issuing of his letter to the (old) Red Guards in July 1966, the official recognition of the Red Guards on August 1, 1966, the birth of the “bloodline theory,” the Wuhan Incident in July 1967, the Qu Zhe “ incident” in September 1967, the December 1968 editorial in Renmin Ribao (People’s Daily), the Lin Biao incident in 1971, among others. All these events were perceived very differently by different age groups. But the main criteria for the term “Zhiqing” is the rustication movement, although many of the Zhiqing had also been Red Guards. This movement was de- signed to remove urban youth to the countryside in order for them to learn from farmers the practical underpinnings of rural-based Maoist ideology, and perhaps to bring any skills to help the impoverished farmers. But most of the Red Guards were rusticated too. In fact, these two groups are not really sepa- rable from each other. But in the perception of intellectuals today, the conno- tation of “Red Guard” differs very much from that of “Zhiqing.” This brings in the question of ideologies and terms, created throughout history, as with the “ ‘68-generation” in Germany or the “ Vietnam War generation” in the U.S. Usually, political generations are categorized alongside the definition the Chinese authorities are using, which means the categorization within the his- torical periods in which people joined the Party and/ or participated in key events of Party history. 17 If we were to apply these categories to the Red Guard/Zhiqing generation, that would mean defining the Cultural Revolution as a key element in Party history, which is ideologically unacceptable. Also
16.Ibid., pp. 416–417. 17.A. Doak Barnett, Cadres, Bureaucracy, and Political Power in Communist China (New York: Columbia University Press, 1967). 358 ASIAN SURVEY, VOL. XLIII, NO. 2, MARCH/APRIL 2003 this would require defining a movement like the Red Guard movement as patriotic. We will now turn to the heated debates about political legitimacy, a contro- versial term without clear definition. We may as a result observe that defin- ing generations is not only the business of social scientists, but also of politicians. It is closely linked to concepts of legitimacy and claims to power. The book by the well-known author Yang Fan, The Third Generation of the People’s Republic of China, 18 was written, according to the foreword, to reestablish the moral legitimacy of the “Third generation of leadership” after the Tiananmen massacre. The tradition of creating legitimacy by identifying a specific group of per- sons as legitimate leaders of a new era existed throughout the imperial age. 19 Rewriting history in favor of the current “emperor” did not begin with Mao or the communist regime. The current Chinese mainstream conceptualization of generations mixes Marxist-Leninist leadership structures with traditional concepts of moral integrity and political morals. Legitimacy in the Weberian sense (charismatic, traditional, legal power) found many supporters among social scientists dealing with communist systems. Indeed, legitimacy based on charismatic leadership and revolutionary experience was seen as a basic element for wielding power in communist China, 20 whereas others proclaim a transformation to a more legal-rational type of legitimacy. 21 In his book The Legitimation of Power , David Beetham presented a con- cept of legitimacy that aims to surpass political systems. 22 Two criteria in his concept of legitimacy are the justification of rules in terms of shared belief, and legitimation through expressed consent. He criticizes Weber’s focus on the leadership abilities of the leaders and not on the real effects of the prac- tice of power, when Weber applies categories like charisma and “traditional”
18.Yang Fan, Zhonghua Renmin Gongheguo de Disandai Ren (The Third Generation of the People’s Republic of China)(Chengdu: Chengdu renmin chubanshe, 1991). 19.Chinese historians had mostly been Confucian scholars or officials who concentrated on the affairs of the imperial court. This naturally influenced their historical works, which were based on the “theory of legitimate succession” ( zhengtong). Biographies of personalities are at the center of historical sources. About 62% of the literary genres of Chinese historiography are biographies. This shows how much importance was given to individual achievements in deter- mining history. 20.Frederick Teiwes, Leadership, Legitimacy, and Conflict in China: From a Charismatic Mao to Politics of Succession (Armonk, New York: Sharpe, 1984). 21.For example He Baogang, who sees China in a transitional period from the absence of rules and regulations of succession to the establishment of these rules. Baogang He, The Democ- ratization of China (London & New York: Routledge, 1996), pp. 208–209. 22.David Beetham, The Legitimation of Power (Houndsmills: Macmillan, 1991). For a de- tailed analysis of this concept, see Heike Holbig, Inflation als Herausforderung der Legitimation Politischer Herrschaft [Inflation as a Challenge to the Legitimacy of Political Rule] (Hamburg: Institut fur¨ Asienkunde, 2001), pp. 47–59. NORA SAUSMIKAT 359 legitimacy concepts (as applied to communist countries by changing the be- lief in the holiness of the leader into the belief in the revolutionary tradi- tion).23 But if we analyze the political reflections of the generation in question, the basic concept of legitimacy still follows criteria of legitimacy based on traditional and charismatic dimensions. We have to bear in mind that concepts of political generations are tied to the personal legitimacy of the rulers and their handpicked successors. During the CR, generations were dra- matically bonded together by the concept of “xuetonglun,” the bloodline the- ory: this was used to legitimize one person above the other in his or her legitimate claim to be accepted as a revolutionary successor, and it caused a human tragedy. Under the bloodline theory the black (bad) and red (good) classes were “inherited” by different generations and all members of black classes lost any human dignity, to say nothing of political legitimacy. There- fore it is necessary to examine in detail current arguments on “generations” and political legitimacy among former Red Guards and Zhiqing.
II. Terms: Zhiqing/Red Guard vs. Laosanjie These terms themselves, as described above, harbor the notion of legitimacy. Therefore I will describe why I prefer to use the term “Zhiqing/Red Guard.” This term includes all former pupils in urban and rural areas who actively participated either in the Red Guard movement or/ and in the rustication movement. The Zhiqing/ Red Guard generation was “born” within a non- democratic political environment and was misused as a political instrument by the elite in power. The social and political transformation planned by Mao and his followers was meant to be a concern for several generations . In 1964, for example, there was widespread propaganda fusing some polemics that theoretician Kang Sheng wrote by order of Mao Zedong. The propa- ganda for the “ Third and Fourth generation” of the successors of the “First Generation of socialist revolutionaries” reads as follows:
Because of the changes in the Soviet Union, the imperialist prophets hope for a “peaceful evolution” 24 of the Third and Fourth Generation inside the Chinese Party. We will take to pieces these prophecies of the imperialists. We will con- centrate thoroughly and permanently on the education and raising of the successors of the revolutionary matter. 25
23.Christel Lane, “Legitimacy and Power in the Soviet Union through Socialist Ritual,” Brit- ish Journal of Political Science (1984), Vol. 14, pp. 207–217. 24.The degeneration from socialism to capitalism. 25.“ About the Pseudo-communism of Khrushchev and the Historical Lessons for the World,“ in Words of Chairman Mao (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1967), pp. 327–331. 360 ASIAN SURVEY, VOL. XLIII, NO. 2, MARCH/APRIL 2003 At the same time there was the first peak in propaganda designed to en- courage people to settle in the countryside, because now young people born at the end of the 1940s were entering the labor market. 26 The aim of the propaganda was to create a generation of loyal and self-sacrificing Party members.27 This means that before the mass movement to settle in the coun- tryside started in 1968, the young pupils learned in school that they had be- come the target of propaganda to “create a new generation.” On January 16, 1964, there was a decisive resolution inside the Central Commission of the Party and the State Council to include the rustication movement to settle youth in the countryside into overall national revolutionary movements. The indoctrination by this kind of propaganda created legitimacy concepts, defined here as a common bond between some members of this generation, provided that they had been pupils of the keypoint, or special high schools (zhongdian xuexiao ). Pupils from high schools attached to the elite universi- ties like Qinghua or Beijing University especially were very much influenced by the expectation of the cadres to become the future leadership generation of the nation. This internalized mission was deeply shaken during the fierce fights among different Red Guard factions, by contradictions created by the rustica- tion movement, and by attempts to survive or even strive for higher positions in the first half of the 1970s. Great numbers of students were sent down to the countryside to be reeducated ( zai jiaoyu) by the farmers; some students voluntarily moved to rural areas out of revolutionary fervor. 28 Elsewhere I
26.See Lynn T. White, “The Road to Urumqi: Approved Institutions in Search of Attainable Goals During Pre-1968 Rustication from Shanghai,” China Quarterly No. 79 (1979), p. 483. 27.Like Lei Feng and Wang Jie. Lei Feng was a young soldier from the “good red“ classes who died an accidental death in 1962. He represents a new form of model for heroes because he did not belong to the socialist heroes of the war and guerrilla times. The “spirit of Lei Feng“ was characterized by unquestioning loyality, self-sacrifice, and devotion to duty. Wang Jie was a soldier like Lei Feng, but he came from a middle-level peasant family. He died by throwing himself onto an exploding shell in 1965. He was meant to become an identification model for all those who tried after 1965 to escape their “ bad” class through revolutionary behavior. See Jonathan Unger, Education under Mao: Class and Competition in Canton Schools (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), pp. 98 and 107–8. 28.See the standard works of Thomas Bernstein, Up to the Mountains, Down to the Villages: The Transfer of Youth from Urban to Rural China (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1977) and Thomas Scharping, Umsiedlungsprogramme f ur¨ Chinas Jugend 1955– 1980 [Resettlement of China’ s Youth, 1955–1981] (Hamburg: Institut f ur¨ Asienkunde, 1981). Also Stanley Rosen, The Role of the Sent-Down Youth in the Cultural Revolution: The Case of Guangzhou, China Research Monographs No. 19 (Berkeley, 1981); Thomas B. Gold, “Back to the City: The Return of Shanghai’ s Educated Youth,” China Quarterly No. 84 (1980), pp. 755–770; Xiaomeng Liu et al., Z hishi Qingnian Shidian [Encyclopedia of Zhiqing] (Chengdu, China, 1995); and Xiaomeng Liu, Zhongguo Zhiqing Shi— Dachao 1966–1980 [The History of the Chinese Zhiqing—The Climax, 1966–1980], 2 (Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue chubanshe, 1998). NORA SAUSMIKAT 361 have addressed the question of individual life stories during the years 1966–76, which cannot be explored here in detail. 29 But we have to bear in mind that the end of the CR was experienced by some participants as a great disaster and not as a relief, because they had managed to build up careers either in the countryside or in urban areas. The subsequent “sanzhong ren ” (“three kinds of people”) 3 0 movement during the 1980s, an official investiga- tion into the personal pasts of people using China’s full security apparatus, was aimed at separating the relatively culpable from the relatively innocent. Admissions under interrogation concerning one’ s past sometimes made or broke an entire career. Since some CR participants had obtained positions inside government institutions, they were dependent on protection afforded by higher officials so as not to be labeled in this category. For example, many young professionals working inside the newly established economic theory group under the state council had been former Red Guards or Zhiqing. Reflecting on one’s personal past as a Red Guard and on one’s specific career during the 1970s remained and still remains a sensitive topic on the Main- land, whereas in the United States these reflections could be published. After the Tiananmen massacre of June 1989, two distinct stereotypes dom- inated reflections on the CR. During the first half of the 1990s we witnessed the narrative differentiation (through a massive propaganda campaign) of the Red Guard/ Zhiqing generation into the “ heroic Laosanjie” (see footnote 6), who were characterized by self-sacrifice, loyalty to the Party, and commit- ment to modernize the hinterland, and the “ brutal hooligans of the Red Guards,” who just wanted to topple the system. Apart from these dangerous stereotypes it is misleading, as mentioned above, to separate this group in this way. As a result, the glorification of the Laosanjie and the demonization of the Red Guards again forced members of the latter group to reflect on their iden- tity. After 1993, the “ Youth has no regrets” debate ( qingchun wuhui ) fos- tered the revival of “heroes of the [Cultural] revolution” who were portrayed as having sacrificed their lives for the Party. The pluralism in discussions of the past, which had prevailed during the 1980s, vanished. The effect of this separation into two stereotyped groups was a homogenization of this diversi-
29.Nora Sausmikat, Kulturrevolution, Diskurs und Erinnerung [Cultural Revolution, Dis- course, and Remembering] (New York & Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2002). 30.The “ three kinds of people” were leading cadres and other personnel considered to be former collaborators of the Gang of Four and Lin Biao and whose careers were rooted in the Cultural Revolution; people who supported these people and spread their “thinking”; and people who committed crimes, used violence, or were involved in violent fights which caused harm to public property. See Zhongguo Gongchandang Lishi Da Cidian [Dictionary of the History of the Communist Party of China] (Beijing: Zhonggong zhongyang dangxiao chuban, 1992), p. 396. From 1978 onward, this task caused many problems since guilty cadres in high positions were protected, while others were blackmailed or suspected without any proof. 362 ASIAN SURVEY, VOL. XLIII, NO. 2, MARCH/APRIL 2003 fied pool of people, with a resulting enforcement of the taboo not to articulate the Red Guards’ past. Laosanjie differentiate themselves from other Zhiqing by stating that they went voluntarily to the countryside before “ Mao Zedong’s order” of December 22, 1968, thus showing an especially strong commitment to “ change the backwardness of the hinterland” ( bianhua nongcun luohou de mianmao ).31 State intervention and the claim to control personal reflections very rapidly produced an image of the so-called Laosanjie as a synonym for patriotic heroes, who then integrated easily into the Party guideline of economic modernization during the 1990s. During the 1990s, powerful statements criticized this stereotyping and homogeniza- tion;32 some critics even spoke of a “forced collective spirit” that developed out of a psychology of totalitarianism. 33 Therefore I do not make use of the term Laosanjie here.
III. Political Worldviews of This Generation Let us turn now to the political worldviews of former Red Guards/Zhiqing. At issue is how they articulate their ideas when they belong to a group that suffers from being stereotyped either as former hooligans or heroes of mod- ernization. They are people who are stigmatized either as “naive idealists” who blindly followed Mao Zedong, or praised as the “real patriots” who sac- rificed their youth to help the “ backward western hinterland” of China to develop. We know little about the detailed biographies of each of the participants of the reform discussions of the 1990s. But in comparison we know a great deal about the different political ideas of intellectuals of the various pai (factions). Diverse intellectual currents have appeared in political discussions and ideas published in journals or in the extraordinary three-volume publication Cur- rent Trends in Chinese Intellectual Thought (liberalism, conservatism, na- tionalism). 34 One can find the renaissance of Western non-Marxist
31.For further discussion of the term, see also Nora Sausmikat, “ Can Western Academics Penetrate the Scars of Chinese History? Western Zhiqing Research. Collection of Biographies from Female Zhiqing in China,” China Studies 55 (Hong Kong, Fall 1996), pp. 111–124; Nora Sausmikat, “Female Autobiographies from the Cultural Revolution: Returned Xiaxiang Educated Women in the 1990s,” in Frank Pieke and Hein Mallee, eds., Internal and International Migra- tion: Chinese Perspectives (Richmond, Surrey, U.K.: Curzon, 1998), pp. 297–314. 32.See Sausmikat , Kulturrevolution, Diskurs und Erinnerung , pp. 218–227, 238–251. 33.Kangkang Zhang, China News Digest (CND) Huaxia wenzai , June 30, 2000. 34.Journals like Tianya Zhisheng [The Voice from the End of the World] (Hainan), estab- lished by the Zhiqing Han Shaogang, the well-known author of the roots-seeking literature of the 1980s; Dushu [Reading]; Zhanlue¨ yu Guanli [Strategy and Management], Zhongguo Xiandai Wenxue [Contemporary Literature in China], Dongfang [Orient]; and the Hong Kong-based journals like Ershiyi Shiji [The 21st Century]. See also Li Shitao, ed., Zhongguo Zhishi Fenzi NORA SAUSMIKAT 363 philosophy, the revival of political liberalism, warnings against a wholesale Westernization ( quanpan xihua ), discussions about the necessity of develop- ing nationalism, or the emergence of Chinese neo-conservatism. It is remark- able that almost all the participants in this debate belong to the Red Guard/ Zhiqing generation. In the following section, the dominant topics, commonalities, and differ- ences inside the discourse will be linked to the following parameters and to the degree of involvement during the different mass movements: Red Guard/ rustication, Red Guard faction, Cultural Revolution Period class background, rustication length, place of rustication, Reform period academic career after 1978, academic career after 1989, and political faction during the 1990s. The most basic commonality among the different participants in the reform dis- cussions is their urge to “struggle for a cultural and political renewal, as Guobin Yang puts it, 35 in the 1980s during the wenhua re (fevered, nation- wide debates over culture), the most popular slogan among intellectuals and students. Continuity and change are dimensions associated with the change of generations. Among all the different political topics discussed here I would like to focus on two common features. These are legitimacy of the future political elite and the relationship of this elite to party-state authorities, and also the elite relationship to the West and the affirmation or rejection of Western political ideas.
IV.Red Guard/Zhiqing Intellectuals and Their Relation with the Party-State This article argues that the conception of legitimacy (or justification) and the discussion about the legitimate claim to power corresponds with cleavages among former Red Guards or a group composed of “ rebel” and “ loyalist” Red Guards. This is very difficult to assess, especially because former fac- tions were not static, and members of a given faction at times switched to their enemies’ faction during the course of the Cultural Revolution. Besides that, factions were not clearly defined, as they were reevaluated and relabeled throughout 1966–68. Xu Youyu, political philosopher at the Chinese Acad- emy of Social Sciences, described in detail how his “rebel faction” was la- beled “ rightist” and later “ leftist” and how he himself got into difficulties inside his own faction (some Shanghai intellectuals told me, in fact, he be- longed to the “conservatives”). He also described several fusions with other
Lichang [Current Trends in Chinese Intellectual Thought], vol. 1– 3 (Beijing: Shidai wenyi chubanshe, 2000). 35.Guobin Yang, “The Identity Transformation of the Red Guard Generation,”unpublished dissertation, New York University, 2001. 364 ASIAN SURVEY, VOL. XLIII, NO. 2, MARCH/APRIL 2003 factions that were supposed to belong to the “other side.”36 Today, one of his main messages in scholarly circles is the necessity to differentiate between factions and factions inside factions. 37 But what is important for this analysis is the discourse that developed around former Cultural Revolutionary labels during the 1990s. Critical reflections on the CR and especially on the mass movement of the Red Guards and the Zhiqing need to be linked to the debate on democracy and socialism. The “youth has no regrets” debate of the 1990s was only one example of the attempt to enforce historical amnesia and to silence voices linked in the past to the current regime. In many articles we can also observe strong resentments against former “rebels” who are said to be either “liberals” or “anti-democrats” or both at the same time. For exam- ple, the Australian political scientist He Baogang has correctly argued that “all former rebels are liberals today.”38 The discourse is only seldom directly linked to older factions; more often it becomes manifest through the evalua- tion of Tiananmen. 39 One has to bear in mind that attitudes, reflections, and worldviews change during historical processes. Anita Chan has depicted in a very useful graphi- cal model the confusing, changing views and shifting relationships among various players in the Red Guard movement. The “rebels paradigm” in 1968 is described as the interpretation of Chinese society as political antagonism between the bureaucratic class and Mao, the “loyalists” or conservative fac- tion of Red Guards (perceived as the privileged class) on the one side, and the “masses” (rebels) on the other side. The “Dengist paradigm” saw in 1981 the antagonism between the Gang of Four and their followers on the one side, and—contrary to most of the memoirs from Red Guards—the Dengists and the masses on the other. 40 If we go further in history and try to describe the democracy movements, we again get a different image.
36.Xu Youyu, Ziyou de Yanshuo [Talks on Freedom] (Changchun, China: Changchun chubanshe, 1999), pp. 30–58. 37.Xu organized and participated in several meetings addressing this question. He also lec- tured on this topic when he was awarded the Olof Palme chair in 2001–2002 in Lund, Sweden. 38.He Baogang during the conference on Discourses on Political Reform and Democratiza- tion in East and South East Asia, Duisburg, Germany, May 2002. 39.As I describe in my dissertation, the interviews and discourse analysis have shown that the discussion on the Tiananmen massacre leads many former Red Guards to argue that the “first Red Guards” were the real “democrats,” while the former “rebel” factions argue that the “con- servatives” showed their real face in 1989, when they fired on students. See Sausmikat, Kultur- revolution, Diskurs und Erinnerung , pp. 227–235. 40.Anita Chan, “Dispelling Misconceptions of the Red Guard Movement,” Journal of Con- temporary China ,1:1 (1992), p. 70. NORA SAUSMIKAT 365
TABLE 1 Generation phases
Time “Generation” Power Holders Events Phase 1 1974–81 Red Guards Li Yizhe (1972–74)
conflict Tiananmen (1976)
China Spring (1978) First generation ofWaves of arrest conflict revolutionaries (Deng(1979– 1981), mainly Xiaoping, Yang intellectuals, students. Shangkun, et al.)Activists in exile
Phase 2 1986–89 New student move-Second generation ofWaves of arrest ments, no experience power holders (Zhao(intellectuals, work- of CR Ziyang, Li Peng, Huers, power holders) Qili, et al.)
Source: Most ideas are from Mark Selden and Kagami Mitsuyuki, “China: The Roots of Mad- ness,” AMPO: Japan-Asia Quarterly Review 20:4 (1989), pp. 104–13.
Whereas many former Red Guards, many of them ex-rebels, 41 became es- tablishment intellectuals during the 1980s and tried to reform the system from within, some worried that the second democratization movement could be- come a dangerous threat to the entire system. Therefore the relations with the state and the Party were hot issues for members of this generation. One of the main critics of Chinese intellectuals, Liu Xiaobo (born in 1955), a former Zhiqing and Red Guard, criticized in the wake of the Tiananmen demonstra- tion the “second kind of loyalty”( di er zhong zhongcheng ), namely the “slav- ish relationship between intellectuals and the political elite,” the misguided or blind loyalty toward the Party. 42 Liu urged intellectuals to redefine their position. His criticism was di- rected against some members of his own generation, whom he perceived to be harsh critics of the more radical intellectuals and dissidents. 43 His attacks
41.Inside the Hu Yaobang think tank, there were many full-time employees of the former rebel group. Hu protected them against the investigation troops. See Michael Schoenhals, Do- ing Things with Words in Chinese Politics (Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, 1992), p. 60. 42.Richard Baum, “ The Road to Tiananmen: Chinese Politics in the 1980s,” in Roderick MacFarquhar, ed., The Politics of China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 374. “A Second Kind of Loyalty“ ( Di er zhong zhongcheng ) was published in the journal “Opening” ( Kaituo) in March 1985. 43.See Helmut Martin and Ines-Susanne Schilling, “ Stimmen der Opposition: Chinesische Intellektuelle der achtziger Jahre“ [Voices of dissent: Chinese intellectuals in the 1980s], (Bochum: Projekt Verlag, 1995), p. 34, cited from the pamphlet by Liu Xiaobo, “ Zhongguo Dangdai Zhengzhi yu Zhongguo Zhishi Fenzi “ [Current Chinese politics and the Chinese intel- lectuals] (Taipei, 1990). 366 ASIAN SURVEY, VOL. XLIII, NO. 2, MARCH/APRIL 2003 against the neo-authoritarianism of the late 1980s as well as former Prime Minister Zhao Ziyang and his think tank characterized one side of the politi- cal discourse among intellectuals in the late 1980s. Liu strongly criticized the continuation of the tradition of May Fourth, 44 which he identified with the hope of reforming the system from within “through the means of grassroot education and the spreading of new, unorthodox ideas.”45 Most of the 1980s intellectuals who adopted that ideal, like Jin Guantao, Chen Zimin, Wang Juntao, Zhu Jiaming, Yan Jiaqi, Gan Yang, Tang Yijie, Cao Siyuan, among others, do not work any longer inside state institutions: they went to Hong Kong, or became marginalized or exiled. Ten years after Liu Xiaobo’s critique, we can observe the continuation of a debate that was halted after the crackdown on the Tiananmen protests. Be- yond that, the discussions in the late 1990s can be viewed as a revival of some topics of the May Fourth debate; these included the search for a new relationship between intellectuals and the state, debates about the significance of the French Revolution, Rousseau, and the import of Western ideas for political reforms. The May Fourth Movement is today the most important reference point used not only by the Party to legitimize its power, but also by opponents of the Party to legitimize their critiques. Merle Goldman has shown clearly that China during the 1990s, unlike Czechoslovakia or Poland, did not succeed in establishing some kind of organized, alternative leadership outside the control of the Party state. 46 This social pattern may be caused by some kind of intra-generational lack of communication. First, we have to recognize that belonging to the same generation of former Red Guards/Zhiqing constitutes the link between many intellectuals who be- came active in the political reform discussions during the 1980s and 1990s. Zhu Jiaming (1950– ), one of the so-called “Four Princes” (children of high cadres) of the think tank connected with Zhao Ziyang, 47 recognized that only the Zhiqing, who returned from the remote areas in 1978–79 and who did not enter university, immediately became active in the dissident movement of 1979. Other returnees first started to study in 1978–79 and only later became active in the 1986 and 1989 democracy movements. 48
44.The May Fourth debate refers to the debates during the May Fourth Movement of 1919, which began as a reaction by urban intellectuals to the unequal Versailles Treaty. It saw the solution to China’s problems in the institutionalization of “democracy and science.” 45.Guantao Jin and Fong-Ching Chen, From Youthful Manuscripts to ‘River Elegy’ (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 1997), p. 3. 46.Merle Goldman, Sowing the Seeds of Democracy in China (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni- versity Press, 1994), p. 359. 47.Zhu also led the exile democracy movement; he was chair of the Federation for a Demo- cratic China (FDC), 1991–93, and of the Alliance for a Democratic China (ADC), 1993–94. 48.Jin and Chen, “From Youthful Manuscripts,” p. 3. NORA SAUSMIKAT 367 The Shenzhen-based (Guangdong Province) philosopher Liu Xiaofeng (b. 1956), who had been very active during the 1980s and established, together with other intellectuals of his generation, the book series Culture: China and the World, coined an interesting term for his generation: the “April 5 (1976) Generation” ( siwu yidai).49 This term refers to participants in the demonstra- tions after the death of Zhou Enlai in April 1976 (Mao died in September 1976). This movement was banned by the so-called Gang of Four as a coun- terrevolutionary movement. He compared his generation with the “ May Fourth Generation” of 1919, and identified the eruption of the Tiananmen demonstrations against the downfall of the Gang of Four in late 1976 as the crucial event of his generation. Therefore, he called for a critical evaluation of the May Fourth intellectuals: 50 “We can either continue or reject the tradi- tion of the May Fourth generation. But to think about the generation of April 5th means to deal with oneself—we belong to the April 5th generation—and we are at this moment creating something which later will be regarded as tradition. . . . We should foster constructive criticism about our society and culture which points to the future.”51 In his article Liu highlighted the importance of the fact that “ people are making history,” and urged his generation to take action. The internalized mission can clearly be seen, a mission of being “ responsible” for political change as former member of the “vanguard of the revolution” and “creating” something like a Chinese tradition different from the still powerful May Fourth spirit. He asks his generation to formulate a “genuine self-criticism” that should simultaneously be a critique of the present society and culture as well as of the past. To put it in concrete terms, as Liu argues later in his essay, he rejects the hurried and uncritical acceptance of Western ideas that he sees as characteristic of the May Fourth generation, but at the same time rejects the nihilism of his own generation. He emphasizes the responsibility of his generation to fight for confidence in a new national culture. 52 Bearing in mind this appeal to responsibility and the call for trust in the national culture, it seems that Liu had the power to foresee the destiny of some protagonists of his generation who gained much influence in the second
49.Liu was interrogated during the case against Bao Tong after the crackdown in 1989. He was cited to prove the intimate relationship between Bao Tong and Chen Yizi. See: Yadong Liu and James D. Seymour, “Bao Tong and the End of Glasnost,” Chinese Law and Government 31:3 (May/June 1998), pp. 42–43. 50.See Xiaofeng Liu, “Guanyu Wusi Yidai yu Siwu Yidai de Shehuixue Sikao Zaji“ [Some sociological thoughts on the April Fifth generation and May Fourth generation] Dushu No. 5 (1989), pp. 35–43. Liu Xiaofeng was involved in the matter against Bao Tong, Zhao Ziyang’s secretary, after the Tiananmen massacre. See Chinese Law and Government 31:3 (May/ June 1998), pp. 42–43. 51.Xiaofeng Liu, “Guanyu wusi yidai,” p. 36. 52.Ibid., p. 39. 368 ASIAN SURVEY, VOL. XLIII, NO. 2, MARCH/APRIL 2003 half of the 1990s and became the advocates of nationalism and conservatism. We will see in the following examples that the appeal to the responsibility of “one’s generation” is based on a very specific conception of legitimacy—the legitimacy of certain generations—and therefore a “historic” or “ideological” legitimacy. The following statements demonstrate this point. The reflections of Zhang Chengzhi and Ren Shimin on one side and Zheng Guangzhao (Zheng Yi), Zhong Weiguang, Hu Ping, Zhang Shengyou, and Mou Zhijing on the other exemplify the usual way of referring to former factions of Red Guards in order to demonstrate either the link between the past and the present, or their disconnection. The conflicts articulated in these reflections are at the center of the evaluation of the past and present. They concern the question of responsibility (past and now), the question of inti- mate connection to the elite and therefore good promotion (elite sponsorship), and the legitimacy of the claim to power of some former factions today. 53 Ren Shimin and Zhong Weiguang argue about their different memories of the events concerning the founding of the (old) Red Guards and the conflicts between them and the (later established) rebels. I interviewed both when they were in Germany. 54 Ren characterized the first (old) Red Guards as idealistic and democratic, whereas Mao Zedong appears opposed to these goals. Anita Chan’s research offers a similar description and supports this argument. 55 According to Ren, the “Laobing,” the first Red Guards, engaged in heated discussions about who should belong to the “ revolutionary students” and how to reform the Chinese education system. 56 But suddenly the work groups (political com- missars with connections to Liu Shaoqi and Zhou Enlai, responsible for up- holding order in the universities during the second half of 1966) and who
53.Zheng Yi, in Laifong Leung, Morning Sun: Interviews with Chinese Writers of the Lost Generation (New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1994), pp. 259– 269; Chengzhi Zhang, in ibid., pp. 217–228; Shimin Ren, “ Guanyu Qinghua Fuzhong de Hongweibing Xiaozu: yu Zhong Weiguang Xiansheng Luetan¨ Wenge Shishi” [On the Red Guards of the Qinghua Middle School: Discussing some historical facts with Zhong Weiguang] Zhenyan [Opinion and Truth] No. 42 (Bonn, 1996), pp. 3–4; Weiguang Zhong, “Weidao Zhang Zhengzhi: Shundao de Wang Shuo” [Zhang Chengzhi, somebody who defends traditional moral conceptions; the direct way of Wang Shuo] Zhenyan [Opinion and truth] (Bonn 1996), No. 41, pp. 1– 2; Zhong Weiguang, “Hongweibing: dangdai jiquanzhuyi zhengzhi wenhua de chanwu” [The Red Guards: A product of the political culture of totalitarianism] Zhenyan [Opinion and truth] (Bonn 1996), No. 44, pp. 7–8. Zhenyan was a newspaper for overseas Chinese students in Germany. 54.Both gave me the articles they published in Germany which deal extensively with their recollections. Interview with Ren Shimin, August 1997; with Zhong Weiguang, March 1998. 55.Anita Chan, “Dispelling Misconceptions about the Red Guard Movement: The Necessity to Re–examine Cultural Revolution Factionalism and Periodization,” Journal of Contemporary China 1:1 (Denver, Colo., USA, 1992), pp. 61–85. 56.Very similar descriptions are made by Zhang Chengzhi in Leung, Morning Sun, pp. 217–28. NORA SAUSMIKAT 369
T A B L E 2 “Conservatives” versus “Rebels”
“Conservatives” “Rebels” Zhang Chengzhi (1948–), writer; Hui Zhong Weiguang (ca. 1950–), scholar Muslim minority; in CR “first Red in Germany; Qinghua University mid- Guard group” at Qinghua Universitydle school; Jinggangshan rebel; “bad middle school; 1979– 1981 university;class background.” 1980s Chinese Academy of Social Hu Ping (1947–), writer; parents were Sciences; 1991: hereafter not allowed executed as “counterrevolutionaries”; to reflect on Red Guards. “bad class background” ; later presi- dent of the Chinese Alliance for Democracy, USA. Ren Shimin (ca. 1949–), artist in Beij- Zheng Guangzhao (Zheng Yi), writer; ing; “first Red Guard group” Qinghua 1947 Qinghua University rebel; 1978 University; “good class background”; university; 1989 activist; currently spent 1990s in Europe; (2003) in USA. returned to China in 1998. Mou Zhijing (n.d.), graduated from elite Middle School No. 4; later stud- ied in USA.
SOURCE:By Author. supported and finally legitimized their organization as a mass organization, were dissolved, and anarchy set in:
Mao wrote a letter to the Red Guards where he encouraged them [by saying] that rebellion is justified ( zaofan youli ).57 Overnight, Red Guards in Beijing and the whole nation were praised as if they were angels, so the young people became fanatical. . . . Millions of organizations came into being and all called themselves Red Guards. Apart from Mao, they were allowed to rebel against everybody. 58 Ren compared the Red Guards to the Hitler Youth and blamed Mao for misusing young people and creating chaos and anarchy and allowing murder and destruction throughout the whole country. Zhang Chengzhi, a well- known writer, depicts the establishment of the first Red Guards as a complete rejection of the establishment (to which he belonged) and the “old” education system. His works conform to communist aesthetics. His key protagonist
57.According to Ren, Mao Zedong wrote a letter dated August 1, 1966, to the Red Guards of Qinghua University. Harding casually mentions this letter and dates it to the end of July. See Harry Harding, “The Chinese State in Crisis, 1966–69,” in MacFarquhar, The Politics of China, pp. 177–78. 58.Ren, “Guanyu Qinghua Fuzhong,” pp. 3–4. 370 ASIAN SURVEY, VOL. XLIII, NO. 2, MARCH/APRIL 2003 heroes, aware of their past guilt, become purified through rustification. 59 Zhang, Ren, and most of the people who tell a more romanticized, mythical, and heroic narrative (a narrative of the first democratic heroes) did not have to stay very long—if at all—in the countryside. Most of them managed to return to the cities at the beginning of the 1970s and were able to enter the universities in 1978 (Zhang belonged to the first group of students allowed to study abroad; he was permitted to study in Japan as early as 1981). On the other side, Zhong Weiguang and Mou Zhijing depict the movement from its very beginning as totalitarian and antidemocratic. They stress the discrimination experienced by people with the wrong class background who suffered because of the politicization of everyday life. Zhong states that this discrimination continued even after the CR— he says that even in 1981 he was refused his master’ s degree because of his former class background. Zhong reflects further:
I remember clearly 1968 when we all left the Qinghua middle school to begin a new life [in the countryside]. One of the authors of the slogan “The class line of the proletarians should live forever!” this Zhang Min . . . said to Zheng Guangzhao [Zheng Yi] and the others, sending them off: “ You are the landlords, counter- revolutionaries, and bad elements ( difu fanhuai ); we are the workers and peasants.” After 20 years we saw each other again at Tiananmen Square. Indeed it had been these children of high cadres who brutally smashed everything and everybody. And last year [in 1994] a friend of mine told me that he took part in a wedding ceremony of a former schoolmate. At this party all the children of high cadres said in one voice: “If our fathers had not been so wise as to crack down this protest [of 1989], we would have lost our power as early as the East Europeans [did].” 60 Zhong Weiguang directly attributed the responsibility for the brutal crack- down of 1989 to the gaogan zhi di (children of high cadres). 61 He argued that the group of rebels, represented by famous people like Zheng Yi, at the time of the CR was only eager to study and did not want to get involved in politics. But during the 1980s, he recalls, they faced discrimination a second time when many of them were labeled as members of “ the three sorts of people,” who were not allowed to continue their careers. Beyond that, this quote makes clear that the bloodline theory is seen not only as the reason for
59.“ I believe that in the times to come a deep justice recognition will judge us. At that time the struggle, the search, and the choice our generation took will reveal its sense,” Zhang Chengzhi, “ Beifang zhi Lu” [The path of the north], in Zhang Chengzhi, Zhang Chengzhi Daibiaozuo [Representative Works of Zhang Chengzhi] (Henan Province, China: Henan renmin chubanshe, 1988), p. 244. 60.Zhong Weiguang, The Red Guards , pp. 7–8. 61.This argument is also fostered by Anita Chan in Dispelling Misconceptions . NORA SAUSMIKAT 371 factional fights among Red Guards, but also for the decision about the future leadership of the country. 62 Mou Zhijing, now living and working in Ohio, in the U.S., argues that the CR officially was condemned, but in fact the mechanisms of suppression continue until today. In a published interview, he depicted the main conflict within the CR as being one between the victims of the bloodline theory and the First Red Guards, a rift that still endures nowadays:
The human barriers caused by the bloodline theory can never be corrected. These barriers still exist today between people of my former middle school. These barri- ers were established by the categories of family background. I remember clearly that when we were about to depart for the countryside, one of the so-called old Red Guards said to us: “From now on, you can take the brush [i.e., for writing] and we will take the weapons; we will see who finally will remain in power!” As could have been expected, many of these old Red Guards are military commanders or vice commanders today. 63 The question of legitimate political power stands at the forefront of the cur- rent discussions among these ex-rebels. Whereas Mou Zhijing and Zhong Weiguang depict the 1989 democracy movement as an old conflict between the privileged (or the social class of the “ old Red Guards” ) and the sup- pressed (rebels), Ren Shimin tries to defend the former old (or loyal) Red Guards by highlighting their democratic goals. This characterization originates in Zheng Yi’ s famous article “ The Cultural Revolution of Mao Zedong and the Cultural Revolution of the People,”64 or in other words, the Cultural Revolution of the citizens and that of the “crown princes” ( gaogan zhi di). This version of the CR and the 1989 movement can be summarized as the “rebel’s paradigm,” which Anita Chan described for 1968, but which has determined the views of many intellectuals up the present. 65 These two ver- sions of the linkage between the CR and the 1989 movement and the dispute about legitimate political power can be read as personal interpretations of
62.Hu Yaobang ignored the Red Guards’ past of his young assistants. In 1980, when some CCP authorities disapproved of Hu’ s being surrounded with former rebel Red Guards, he re- marked that these people had committed errors at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, but had suffered enough, so that politically they should be trusted. See Michael Schoenhals, Doing Things with Words , pp. 60–61. This attitude might have been one reason why the condemnation of Hu in 1987 was also seen as the victory of the “conservatives” over the “rebels.” 63.Zhijing Mou, “Cong Zhishizhe de Liangxin Chufa” [Start from the conscientiousness of the initiated], Center for Cultural Revolution Studies, Oral History ,
66.Jin and Chen, Youthful Manuscripts , pp. 21–22. 67.The principles are to keep to the communist road; to uphold the people’ s democratic dictatorship; to uphold leadership by the Communist Party; and Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought. 68.Interview with Xu Youyu, June 2000, Beijing. 69.Nora Sausmikat, “ Demokratisierungsdiskurse unter Intellektuellen in der VR China 2000,” in Project Discussion Paper No. 11, Duisburg University, 2001. 70.Interviews by the author with Xu Youyu, Dai Qing, Qin Hui, and others in summer 2000. 71.Cui was born in 1963 in Beijing, and so does not belong to the generation discussed. Cui recently wrote an essay on the occasion of honoring the memory of University of Chicago Pro- fessor Tang Tsou in which he reflected on Tang Tsou’ s use of the term “totalitarianism.” Cui points out that totalitarianism was not inherited by the CCP, and thus expresses hopes for new 374 ASIAN SURVEY, VOL. XLIII, NO. 2, MARCH/APRIL 2003 some economic structures practiced during the Cultural Revolution. Cui Zhiyuan, Gan Yang, and Wang Shaoguang are the three best-known “ neo- leftists” today, 72 and all have been associated with leading universities in the United States. 73 Unlike rebels described by Anita Chan, Xu does not see the CR as a positive mass movement. 74 In opposing neo-leftists like Cui, Xu Youyu argues similarly to Mou Zhijing when he recalls in the interview: “Some Chinese intellectuals talk about the good things in the CR—there are some in China and some in the West, like Cui Zhiyuan. I strongly oppose these people. They do not understand anything of the CR; their knowledge derives from the editorials of the People’s Daily . This has nothing to do with reality.” By referring to his own experiences, he points out that the genera- tion today still is factionalized: “Before I [too] had been a blind communist. But we became dissidents against (then Defense Minister Lin Biao) and were compelled to settle in the countryside. We were forced to reflect on the real meaning of democracy and independent thinking. . . . I am speaking for peo- ple of my age. Our ideology was transformed during the course of the Cul- tural Revolution. Indeed, today there are many different groups among the intellectuals, but the phenomena of the former categories of the Cultural Revolution still persists today, the factionalism still is the same between rebels (zaofanpai) and conservatives ( baoshou pai ). The conservatives are nowadays managers and/ or very rich. They are supported by the state and did not obtain their positions through their hard work. Some of the rebels are rich today, but most of them are still in the position of critics of the regime. But it would be too easy to proclaim that all current critics are former rebels.” Xu delineates a clear black-and-white picture of the rebels and the conserv- atives, but he is hesitant when it comes to identifying all former rebels as liberals or critics of today’s regime. In fact, in the 1980s he worked together with some of today’ s “ neo-leftists” like Gan Yang, whom he strongly op- posed after the Tiananmen massacre. It seems that after 1989, alliances got split into former antagonisms again. The image of liberals as “ former rebels” and the “ neo-leftists” and con- servatives as “former conservative Red Guards” derives from the CR. Wang ways of leadership within the Party. See Zhiyuan Cui, “Introduction to Tang Tsou’s Interpreting the Revolution in China ,” Modern China 26:2 (Newbury Park, 2000), p. 201. 72.Liu Junning argues that the term “neo-leftists” was derived from the West and was ap- plied by some Chinese intellectuals to their own postmodern and anti-liberal tendencies, but does not adapt the anti-totalitarian critique of the Western leftists. See Junning Liu, “Ziyouzhuyi yu Gongzheng: Dui Ruogan Jienan de Huida” [Liberalism and justice: A reaction on certain interro- gations], Sixiang de Jingjie [Mirror of Thought], No. 4 (2000), pp. 1– 21,
75.Shaoguang Wang, “‘New Trend of Thought’ on the Cultural Revolution,” Journal of Con- temporary China (July 1999), p. 197. 76.Interview with Wang Xiaodong in June 2000. 77.This is a special interpretation by Xiao Gongqin, who identifies the “scoundrel rebels” as “average workers” who became hooligans and got involved in violent clashes with the authori- ties. The “little intellectuals” were rebel Red Guards like himself who could take over organiza- tional posts. “Black classes” describes people labeled as rich people, landlords, counterrevolutionaries, bad criminal elements and rightists (di, fu, fan, huai, you fenzi). 78.Gongqin Xiao, “Gongchang Zaofanpai de Liangzhong Leixing [Two kinds of rebels in the factories], China News Digest, Ziyou Luntan [Free Discussion], August 8, 2000. 79.Gongqin Xiao, “ Preface to Xiao Gongqin Ji,” Chinese Law and Government 30:6 (De- cember 1997–98), p. 53. 80.Ibid., pp. 82–83. 376 ASIAN SURVEY, VOL. XLIII, NO. 2, MARCH/APRIL 2003 ernization”; 8 1 and the rationalism, romanticism, and utopianism of the French Revolution. In particular in the discussions about Tiananmen and democracy, we can observe how strong the affiliations of intellectuals like Xiao Gongqin or the conservative He Xin (1954–) 8 2 are with the political elite. Xiao supports the government by saying, “Even before the [June 4th Incident], I disagreed with the views of certain liberal radicals who wanted to abolish the ‘Four Cardinal Principles. . . . The legitimacy of the Chinese government’s authority is man- ifested through the symbol system of these ‘Four Cardinal Principles’.” 83 In a recent presentation in Washington, D.C., Xiao Gongqin described the antagonism between liberals and conservatives as superseded by the new power of centrists, technocrats, intellectuals, and the media—the new middle class of China. 84 After June 4, 1989, liberals were purged or marginalized and replaced by the new centrist forces. Conservatives obtained temporary power on a platform of anti-liberalism combined with political alliances with elders. This is interpreted by Xiao as “the arrival of neo-authoritarianism” in China. The so-called “liberals” are very often portrayed by today’s conservatives as the “idealistic, romantic and radical rebels” of the CR, whereas the con- servatives are portrayed by former rebels as former bureaucrats’ children who only work for their own profit. 85 The examples show that after the Tiananmen massacre it was not possible any longer to believe in a polarized image, i.e., to separate former rebels from conservatives by identifying the one with “critics” and the other with “supporters” of the current regime. In- side the former rebel group we can find committed conservatives too. We have to go beyond the homogenized pictures of the rebels or the loyalists . The above examples demonstrate how flexible the images of former rebels still are, and how labels are used to justify positions. If we compare the different positions of Xiao Gongqin, much more famous than Xu Youyu and once very influential, with the position of Xu Youyu, we can conclude that their identification as liberal reformers is linked to an identification as a for- mer rebel, although the label “rebel” is linked to very different biographical backgrounds. But the characterizations of former rebels can vary greatly. Xu Youyu wants to make clear that despite the denunciation of former Red
81.Ibid., pp. 79–83. 82.The critic Li Shenzhi, ex-deputy director of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), calls He Xin a “bootlicker to Jiang Zemin.” Interview with Li Shenzhi, June 2000. 83.Xiao Gongqin, “ History Rejects Romanticism: The Emergence of the Second Trend of Thought Reform in China,” Chinese Law and Government (1999), p. 84. 84.Gongqin Xiao, “Marginalization of Liberals and Conservatives and its Impact on Chinese Politics,” Carnegie Endowment (Washington, D.C.), May 14, 2002. 85. Dalu Zazhi [Mainland China Magazine] 3:4, Taipei (April 1996). NORA SAUSMIKAT 377 Guards, “the original cause of the rebellion cannot be changed.”86 By “origi- nal cause” he refers to the identity of former rebels as “true democrats” who identify the Four Cardinal Principles as a left-over from the totalitarian state,87 whereas Xiao Gongqin as a former rebel of another rebel-faction de- fends the Four Cardinal Principles. We can conclude that cleavages between members of the same generation function along the lines of former factions because the actors follow master narratives borrowed from the CR. This means, that despite their belonging to the same former faction, they differentiate themselves from each other by arguing inside the CR framework, proving that there probably were no “same factions,” meaning that the “rebel faction” includes many different factions. Moreover, people who criticize the Party today believe that those who coop- erate with the Party or became “rich managers” must belong to the ex-con- servative camp. June Fourth changed the self-perception of former rebels or conservatives. 88 Today, there are all kinds of alliances between former rebels of one sort with more conservative Party authorities, and former rebels of another sort with more liberal Party authorities. Jin Guantao, a former advisor to Hu Yaobang who did not belong to any faction during the CR, became marginalized because of Tiananmen; as a result the 1980s alliance between Party reformers and intellectuals changed within the 1990s Party to alliances between Party conservatives and non-political technocrats. Yahuda describes the experience of persecution of two generations: the older intellectuals and former Rightists who received Western educations (they can be perceived as the grandfather generation for the Red Guards), and secondly the older cadres who perceive themselves as “survivors” of the CR and can be viewed as the parental generation of the Red Guards. The latter group received Soviet educations and are said to have an authoritarian char- acter or be “moral cowards” (because of their socialization to be always obe- dient). Ironically their common experience of oppression provided the base for the total transformation of the relationship between older cadres and older intellectuals in the 1980s. They share a commitment to modernization, ex- pertise, and legality, and through the alliance the former Rightists got a
86.CND, October 19, 2000. 87.In his June 9, 1989, speech directly after the crackdown on Tiananmen, Deng Xiaoping interpreted the Tiananmen Incident as ”basically the confrontation between the Four Cardinal Principles and bourgeois liberalization” (FBIS, June 27, 1989, pp. 8–10). 88.It can also be argued that the short “unity” between different former factions before 1989 was destroyed by the crackdown. Heilmann has shown the converging trends among dissidents with radical, conservative, and bad class backgrounds during the 1970s. See Sebastian Heilmann, “Turning Away from the Cultural Revolution: Political Grass-Roots Activism in the Mid-Seventies,” Center for Pacific Asia Studies, Stockholm University, Occasional Paper No. 28, 1996. 378 ASIAN SURVEY, VOL. XLIII, NO. 2, MARCH/APRIL 2003 chance to gain influence. 89 Similarly, the former radical rebels were inte- grated into the political elite during the 1980s, but after 1989, those alliances broke down and their status declined. Many of the former Rightists (“grand- fathers”) as well as the former rebels (“grandchildren”) have become disap- pointed in the system, and nowadays voice very similar frustrations. It seems that in the current era the (conservative) parents’ generation establishes alli- ances with the new, young, professional elite.
V.Relations with the West and Attitudes toward Western Political Ideas Despite the different discussions about democracy, the Third Way, and liber- alism, we have to remember that China remains a Leninist one-party state. That means that discussions about Western concepts, political reform, and modification of such ideas are always connected with the legitimacy of the Party, and therefore with reform experiments before and after Tiananmen. Moreover, the impact of these discussions is determined by the specific rela- tionship between politicians and intellectuals. The events during the last three years have shown that being a member of a state think tank does not necessarily mean having more political influence. The “criticism and correc- tion” campaign in spring and summer 2000, which forced many intellectuals in state think tanks (mainly the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences) to re- sign from work or to emigrate, needs to be seen in relation to the strong pressure on the reform camp inside the Party following corruption scandals and the initial resistance of party conservatives against joining the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1999– 2000. The following criticism cam- paigns against bourgeois liberalization and wholesale Westernization were not, in the view of Li Shenzhi, a former leading intellectual during the era of Zhao Ziyang, a real argument about political ideas, but only “ a power play between different actors.”90 The political scientist He Baogang and the astrophysicist Fang Lizhi have argued that the concept of Western parliaments entered China as a means for power: “When the concept of democracy came to China it was presented as an ornament of modernity and an asset for rulers.”91 Fang puts it as follows: “In China the concept of democratization has often been nothing more than a poker chip in what is really a game of power. Maybe there are still a few idealistic leaders, but on the whole most are preoccupied with the struggle for power, and they use such concepts as democracy as just another means of
89.Yahuda, “Political Generations in China,” p. 799. 90.Interview with Li Shenzhi, June 2000. 91.He Baogang in Andrew J. Nathan, Chinese Democracy (Berkeley: University of Califor- nia Press, 1986), p. 43. NORA SAUSMIKAT 379 defeating their opponents. One side will say, ‘ I stand for reform and you don’t, so you shouldn’t be here!’ The other will say, ‘No! Reform is wrong, so you shouldn’ t be here!’ In the end it is the Chinese people who suffer, because they get used as playthings.”92 The discourse about democracy as a means and not a goal—the misuse of a political idea—is one of the primary current arguments behind the notion of developing a “democracy with Chinese characteristics.” At the same time, this is a warning against the adoption of Western models. But the rejection of Western models is very much determined by the experience of “Chinese de- mocracy” during the CR. In the last three years there have been many books on political reform, globalization, and democratization, as well as analyses of the political situation in China. Among these books, a three-volume compila- tion, Current Trends in Chinese Intellectual Thought (Zhongguo zhishi fenzi lichang), gives a good overview of the main arguments of the debate. The majority of the authors in the three volumes belong to the Red Guard/Zhiqing generation. According to these books and recent articles about the development of po- litical thought during the 1980s and 1990s, 93 we can identify two dominant (i.e., most discussed) discourses: one on economic liberalism and the other on political nationalism . Other authors writing on various current political ideas might suggest that there are in fact four different political discourses, includ- ing radical, conservative, traditional, and populist. 94 But the underlying hier- archy of these discourses is decided by their affirmation or rejection of Western concepts. Often, merely discussing Western concepts is enough to be labeled a “liberal.” Xu Youyu is one of the main proponents (next to Qin Hui, who argues for the “Chinese Third Way” beyond the main ideologies of liberalism and state socialism) of the de-ideologization of the political debate, which seems to be like “ separating fish from water” in the People’ s Republic of China). But whereas Qin Hui searches for indigenous roots of liberalism, Xu tries to de- fend his admiration for Western theories. He argues for the complete adap- tion of Western theories, for example, the Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School. Xu criticizes Wang Binbin of the Culture Department of the Peo-
92.Fang in Orville Schell, “China’s Andrei Sakharov,” Atlantic Monthly (1988), p. 43. 93.Hui Wang, “The Historical Roots of the Social Movement of 1989 and the ‘New Liber- alism’,” Zhongguo Xiandai Wenxue [Contemporary Literature in China], No. 19, Beijing (De- cember 2000), pp. 451–501; Youyu Xu, “Ziyou de Yanshuo”; Xiaodong Wang, “Zhongguo de Minzuzhuyi he Zhongguo de Weilai” [China’ s future and Chinese nationalism], Ming Pao news- paper (Hong Kong), 1996, pp. 1–15; Xueqin Zhu, “Xin Zuopai yu Ziyouzhuyi zhi Zheng” [The argument between the new left and the liberals],” Sixiang de Jingjie [Mirror of Thought], In- ternet forum 2000
95.Youyu Xu, “Ziyouzhuyi, Falankefu Xuepai ji Qita” [Liberalism, the Frankfurt school, and others], in Zhishi Fenzi Lichang [Current Trends in Chinese Intellectual Thought] (Beijing, 2000), pp. 413–431. 96.Xiao, “History Rejects Romanticism,” p. 84. 97.Schwartz, “Limits.” 98.Stanley Rosen, “Guest Editor’s Introduction,” Chinese Law and Government (special edi- tion: Nationalism and Neoconservatism in China) 30:6 (1997– 1998), pp. 3– 7. Others include Merle Goldman, “ Politically Engaged Intellectuals in the 1990’ s,” China Quarterly No. 159 (1999), pp. 700–711; Geremie Barm´e, “To Screw Foreigners Is Patriotic: China’s Avant-Garde Nationalists,” China Journal 34 (Canberra) (July 1995), pp. 209–38, pp. 4–5. 99.Jin and Chen, “From Youthful Manuscripts,” p. 279. NORA SAUSMIKAT 381 This call for “becoming whole again” does not necessarily mean a homo- geneous attitude toward cultural relativism ( wenhua xiangdui zhuyi ), or that cultural relativism is adapted to values like human rights, democracy, or free- dom. It can be read as a call for finding a national and cultural identity. As Mobo Gao mentioned recently in his attack on Andrew Nathan, not all argu- ments about the historical, cultural, economic, or social contexts can be inter- preted as cultural relativism. He points out that Chinese have the right to find their own way without constant moralizing from the West. 100 In fact, we can find a lot of evidence for this argument by scrutinizing the discussions among members of the Red Guard/ Zhiqing generation. Wang Lixiong (1954–) argues against Western democracy and parliamentarianism in his 1991 book Yellow Peril (1991). This book predicted a civil war in China that would end with enormous numbers of Chinese fleeing into neigh- boring countries. It was banned by the Chinese Communist Party because of its forecast of the end of communist rule in China. Wang recently published an article contrasting the indirect representation system against the demo- cratic system. 101 In it he argues that China will face ethnic conflicts if it does not change its policies toward ethnic minorities. He discussed critically the concept of national self-government, which some groups inside Tibet claim as their basic right. Here we can see strong advocacy of national unity combined with a warn- ing against mass despotism, nationalism, and Western-style democracy:
It is not possible to discuss [the problem of Tibet] on the basis of nationalism; this will result in mutual misunderstanding. I support a state without borders and a global community. But democracy is not the solution to fight against national- ism. . . . In 1992 the Dalai Lama explained his vision of a democratic system (minzhu zhidu ). . . . We can see that in this system the members of parliament have decisive power; they use the power of law and elect the president. Also the gov- ernment is elected by them. Applying such a system to backward Tibet would be catastrophic. . . . Our starting point has to be “how things are at the moment,” and not “how they should be.” Those people [scholars, thinkers, liberals] are utopians and dreamers. . . . Intellectuals criticize reality and start with morals. . . . Free discussions are the basis of democracies. Everybody can gain the attention of the masses with a little wild action. . . . A sudden democratization could destroy ration- ality and all progress. Since the end of the Cultural Revolution there have been no mass movements anymore in Tibet. . . . Especially nationalism can steer emotional
100.Mobo Gao, “ China in Transition: Issues and Debates,” Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars 32:3 (2000), pp. 53–57. 101.Lixiong Wang, “ Zhiceng Dixuanzhi yu Minzhu Zhi: Jiejue Xizang Wenti de Fangfa Bijiao”[Indirect representation system versus democratic system: Relative advantages for resolving the problem of Tibet],” Zhongguo Shehui Kexue Yuekan [China Social Sciences Monthly], Beijing (December 2000), pp. 1–14. Bao Mi (pseudonym for Lixiong Wang), Yellow Peril (Toronto: Mirror Books, 1991). 382 ASIAN SURVEY, VOL. XLIII, NO. 2, MARCH/APRIL 2003 reactions. Once the emotions of the masses in Tibet are steered, all their hate and anger will end up in a brutal chaos.”102 Despite his warning against the Western democratic system, Wang Lixiong differs in his analysis of nationalism very much from people like He Xin and Xiao Gongqin. He warns that nationalism could steer ethnic conflicts that could destroy China. The discussion about whether to adopt Western concepts of democracy or not can also be seen as a dialogue between different factions of one genera- tion. The advocates of a “strong China” approach such as Wang Shaoguang or Hu Angang try to collaborate with the government, whereas people like Xu Youyu, the journalist Dai Qing, and others argue openly against any kind of cultural relativism. Again, the Tiananmen massacre separated them from former colleagues who worked with them for reform, inside the system, in the 1980s. These people are marginalized today because they advocate the necessity of universal rights and of political participation of citizens, even after Tiananmen. According to He Baogang, Xu Youyu’s references to the “interests of the citizens” and “the losers of the reforms,” plus his anti-elite orientation, would fit all the characteristics of the “populist democrats” of the “CR generation,” who later became liberals. 103 Here, support for the adop- tion of “universal modes of governing” is equated with being “liberal,” with being “pro-Western.” Although we already know that the dichotomy “West/ East” is empirically unprovable, such labels are used by various alliances of intellectuals with the political elite. Nationalism and state sovereignty are the two concepts which divide the intellectuals of the Red Guard/Zhiqing generation. Because of the economic imbalance between the so-called First, Second, and Third Worlds, the New Left, as argued by Cao Weidong, the translator of Habermas, will never ac- cept any of the “ Western models of democracy,” because in fact they re- present solely the interests of the First and Second Worlds: “ We have to understand sovereignty and human rights in the light of economic globaliza- tion. Culture and politics are relativized against this background. National states lose their importance as subjects of international politics.”104 Sometimes the arguments pro or contra Western political reform models seem to be just strategic. Recently, political leaders like former Premier Zhu Rongji have made clear that China will never adopt Western political models like parliamentary democracy. 105 Thus some people argue against the adap- tation of Western models, but simultaneously they do not reject certain fea-
102.Lixiong Wang, “Zhiceng Dixuanzhi,” pp. 5–6. 103.Baogang He, The Democratization of China (New York & London, 1996), p. 17. 104.Weidong Cao, Shijie Zhongguo , May 5, 2001. 105.See Zhu Rongji in Die Welt [The World], Germany, March 16, 2001. NORA SAUSMIKAT 383 tures of Western democracies. We can observe, for example in the recent argumentation of Xiao Gongqin, that he applies the vocabulary of the govern- ment when he talks about a civil society or “democracy with Chinese charac- teristics,” but at the same time he is pointing to the ideological pluralism which is necessary to develop democracy. 106 Failing to include the supple- mentary term “with Chinese characteristics” when talking about democracy would provoke criticism. Recently Xiao pointed out that since the second half of the 1990s, the “politics of polarization” withered, and new “centrist” forces of technocrats marginalized the liberals and conservatives. These forces abandoned ideological struggles and reintroduced “ neo-authoritarian politics.”107 There remains much doubt about the end of the “ politics of polarization” concerning the West/East ideologies.
Conclusion We have seen that the relationship to the Party and what goes with that, the advocacy of a Leninist central leadership, is very much based on historical experiences of the people of the so-called “Fourth generation of leadership.” Directly linked to this question is the question of legitimacy. Many of the intellectuals described above have an internalized feeling of being obliged to become politicians because of their affiliation to a specific generation. Discourse about this generation is filled with stereotypes, accusations, and romanticism, whether its members try to link their generation to the May Fourth generation, or hitch their lofty morals to their affiliation to one of the two dominant factions of the Red Guards. The arguments of responsibility for leadership and guiding the future of China—owing to their membership in the Red Guard/ Zhiqing generation— very much resemble the orthodox CCP method of creating legitimacy. But participation in the Red Guard movement, especially on the rebel side, after 1989 seems to have become an obstacle to creating this legitimacy. The decision about “ good” or “ evil” rebels, “good” or “evil” loyalists, seems to be important to justify people’ s own attitudes toward the Party and/or the support of some political concepts promoted by certain wings of the Party. Although as Xiao Gongqin has stated, the polarization seems to have vanished after the liberals and conserv- atives got replaced by highly skilled technocrats, the discussion of being “le- gitimized for future leadership” is very emotional and linked to past experiences from the CR. The decisive discourse strategy in order to be rec- ognized as an important intellectual, even when belonging to the former rebel camp, seems to be the rejection of “Western models” of society and democ- racy.
106.Shanghai scholar on PRC Political Reform, FBIS-CHI-2001-0327, March 27, 2003. 107.Gongqin Xiao, “Marginalization of Liberals and Conservatives,” May 14, 2002. 384 ASIAN SURVEY, VOL. XLIII, NO. 2, MARCH/APRIL 2003 China formed a new leadership in November 2002, and the thinking in terms of generations is bound to the discourse of the Party. As we have seen, the question of legitimate successors corresponds with the old conflicts among different factions of the CR, although the labels are not important anymore. The question of legitimate succession is linked to what Mannheim would call their “social location in history.” The discussion about democracy and the correct concept for political reform produced a division among for- mer generational communities after 1989. The understanding of democracy is formed by their willingness to cooperate with the post-Tiananmen regime and their search for a new national identity. Their willingness to use patriotic and nationalistic concepts will determine their future strength in political struggles. It seems that members of this generation are caught between clientelism concerning protection through high cadres inside the Party, and emancipation as an independent, “new” generation of thinkers. During the period of mod- ernization they are still dependent on the Party and are only allowed to offer their political (or technocratic) skills as long as they do not challenge the Party. Many fear being left out during the consultations on the next leading generation. Therefore, many criticize their own generation for not being able to emancipate themselves. The double-edged nature of “nationalism” produces some counterproduc- tive side effects. It influences the communication between members of the same generation by singling out some members as “ traitors” of the nation because they believe in Western political concepts. This again deepens the reliance on high cadres as protectors and undermines their proclaimed inde- pendence. The fight for power and the intrigues among these intellectuals weaken the impact of the whole generation. Perhaps it is too far-fetched to see also an intergenerational aspect in these political orientations. But it is significant that the “Western-oriented” mem- bers of the Zhiqing/Red Guard generation continue to maintain close ties with their grandparents’ generation, a group that portrayed itself as “connoisseurs of the West.” It is also notable that the “ leftists” among the Zhiqing/ Red Guard generation do not distance themselves from their parents or try to es- tablish alliances with the younger, more “naive” generations.