The Fate of Chinese Intellectuals

As the late Liu Binyan (pictured) pointed out, the history of the Chinese Communist Party had largely been anti-intellectual.

The former dissident in exile noted that “almost none of the intellectuals among the first generation of Chinese communists (including the party’s founders) “has avoided coming to grief.”

In his book China’s crisis, China’s Hope, Essays from an Intellectual in Exile (Harvard University Press 1990) Liu noted that among Chinese intellectuals, renowned Chinese writer Shen Congwen (沈从文)“was the smart one.”

“Following two unsuccessful suicide attempts at the height of the campaign in 1951, he abandoned his writing career altogether and took up research on the history of Chinese attire, thereby avoiding considerable anguish and reaping a degree of scholarly rewards in the process.”

In contrast, philosopher Liang Shuming (梁漱溟) was indomitable and unyielding, “so typical of intellectuals in China’s tradition.” He had the courage to engage Mao Zedong in open debate, “holding back nothing in his criticism of Mao’s ultimate authority”, and he stood up to the public attacks that followed.

“All the others either kept silent or, like Guo Moruo (郭沫若), sang paeans even to the blatant mistakes of the Chinese Communist Party, shamelessly selling their souls for all to see.”

When compared to intellectuals in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, Chinese intellectuals were said to be more compliant.

In the twenty years following the 1917 revolution, some Soviet writers and literary theorists continued to contribute valuable work to the world, but nothing similar occurred in China.

Even as late as in the 1980s, Chinese writers could not match the courage of Hungarian writers of the 1950s or Czech writers of the 1960s.

So where did the problem lie? According to Liu., “the appeal of name, position, and material benefits is so strong among some intellectuals that it can overcome the desire for truth and lead to a willing sacrifice of individual talent.”

The lack of intellectual courage also had to do with what Liu called the loss of their political and economic independence as intellectuals became “employees of a highly centralized state.”

In the 35 years prior to 1990, intellectuals had lost their freedom to choose the nature of their work, as well as the location, organization, and the conditions under which the work was performed. Their salaries, position, housing, awards and honors, the opportunity to go abroad or perform domestic assignments were all determined by a higher authority. This could not help but undermine their independent thought, and made them subservient to party cadres who had the power to determine their fate. As Liu pit it, “the loss of a sense of equality saps the courage to struggle.”

But the true determination of the fate of intellectuals had been the anti-intellectualism campaigns launched by Mao Zedong. The theoretical framework of the campaign was that intellectuals must be dependent upon and obedient to the workers and peasants whom they were supposed to serve while cleansing themselves of “bourgeois individualism”.

“The effect … was to crush, once and for all, the intellectuals’ critical spirit and rebelliousness. This philosophy has enjoyed uninterrupted development since 1949, forcing intellectuals to move through society with their tails between their legs.”

China's Crisis, China's Hope

Picked up the book China’s crisis, China’s Hope, Essays from an Intellectual in Exile (Liu Binyan (刘宾雁), Harvard University Press 1990) after developing a sudden affinity with the late Chinese dissident in exile.

(Coz during my search for housing in Washington DC I chanced upon a Dupont Circle apartment that Liu used to live in for a year, at least according to the owner.)

Even as an exile, Liu was hardly bitter about the Chinese regime. His collection of essays were mainly reasoned and measured.

Liu noted that before 1988, officials used their authority for personal economic advantage but such acquisitions were considered illegal. The harm they inflicted on society by misappropriating funds and diverting public wealth was “more or less indirect.”

But since 1988, bureaucrats and their relatives were said to be diverting public funds “through the authority of party organizations to enter the realm of production and commodities by setting up state-funded companies; their speculation and profiteering caused untold damage to the national economy as they reaped staggering profits.”

Writing before 1990, Liu said the most serious problem was the “widespread spiritual malaise” among ordinary Chinese from all walks of life, “a growing mood of depression, even despair, a loss of hope for the future and of any sense of social responsibility, as if China were no longer their country and society owed them something.”

Remarking that such an attitude had not been seen in the four decades prior to 1990, Liu, a former Communist Party member and People’s Daily correspondent, argued that the malaise had led to disturbances such as labor strikes and work slowdowns.

Even so, Liu contended that the CCP had enjoyed a high degree of moral authority which is “unmatched by any other regime in the country’s history.”

“Even though people constantly witness the misdeeds of party members, they continue to view the party in a good light. Concepts, particularly traditional ones, have a powerful hold. So when people talk about forming another political party in China or setting up a multi-party system, I think the time is not yet ripe for that.”

Liu was sanguine that changes would occur in China, citing the role of the country’s trade unions which were then clamoring for reform and emphasizing on participation in government and their watchdog functions.

Liu noted that such clamoring were not official announcements, nor do they “originate from the powers that be”. Instead, these stemmed from changes within the unions themselves, many of which were no longer content to be “mere branches of the government” and were more interested in serving the interests of the workers.

These unions had formulated a series of demands, and they wanted to participate in legislation and be consulted on policies that involved the interests of workers.

“Government-run trade unions are in the process of becoming popular labor unions. Even though the appearance of a union like Poland’s Solidarity is not considered a strong possibility in China, there is a distinct possibility that government-run trade unions will in fact evolve into popular unions.”

Another example cited was the China Youth Daily which in 1988 published speeches of Ding Shisun (丁石孙), the president of Beijing University, and noted economist Qian Jiaju (千家驹). The move was said to have upset the authorities.

“I assumed that the paper would be chastened by this criticism, but they leaped right back into the fray after some perfunctory self-criticism. This is a case of a government-run newspaper evolving into a popular one.”