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.”