- I'm here this morning
with Dr. Frank Dikotter,
the Chair Professor of Humanities
at University of Hong Kong.
We're here to discuss his new book
"The Cultural Revolution:
A People's History".
Frank, thanks for joining us.
- Thank you.
- The Cultural Revolution,
it's a big, big, notion
but it probably is not homogeneous.
- Exactly.
- Can you help us clarify
what do you perceive as
the Cultural Revolution?
- Yes, so, the debates
about how long it lasted
and what it actually was,
I think it's confusing,
in the sense that it rediscovered
a period of about 10 years.
If I would have to put it in a nutshell,
in terms of, if you wish ideology.
The notion is that the Soviet
Union at the time has somehow
betrayed the revolution,
after Nikita Khrushchev,
denounces Stalin and
starts de-Stalinization.
So the point here is
that Mao Zedong believes,
that the issue, is not
so much the bourgeoisie,
in Marxist parlance,
but bourgeois culture,
the bourgeoisie is gone
with the revolution of 1917
under Lenin or the 1949
revolution in China,
but bourgeois culture is still there
and it allows a number of
people to erode and subvert
the entire system from the bottom,
all the way down to to the ground level.
So Cultural Revolution is ready
to attack bourgeois culture
and make sure that is
eradicated once and for all,
when in fact, the Cultural Revolution
is three very different
periods 1966 to 1968,
when Chairman Mao unleashes the people,
in order to attack, the party,
in particular those he
viewed as revisionists,
or capitalist roaders,
inside the higher echelons
of the party itself.
That period comes to an end in
1968, when the army moves in,
and very much puts in place
a military dictatorship.
So under Lin Biao head of
the army from 1968 to 71,
this country is turned virtually
into a garrison state with
soldiers overseeing schools,
factories, government units.
But of course, the army itself,
becomes victim of the Cultural Revolution,
is purged Lin Biao dies in
a mysterious plane accident,
from 1971 to 1976 it's a
very very different period
there too it's still the
Cultural Revolution but the party
has been severely undermined
by the Cultural Revolution,
the army has gone back to the barracks,
ordinary people in the countryside
get some sort of leeway,
and they very quietly
in what I refer to as a silent revolution,
reconnect with the past in
particular with markets.
So three very very different periods,
one of great chaos if you wish,
one of military dictatorship,
and one of more or less
some leeway being created,
by the very fact that
the Cultural Revolution
has damaged the party under Chairman Mao.
- Now this is the third
of a trilogy of books
that you've written, one
on Mao's Great Famine,
one on the earlier periods from 1949
called The Tragedy of Liberation.
- Yes.
- And then back forward to
the Cultural Revolution.
Tell us a little bit
about what inspired you
to write this third book?
What sources did you find
and how do you differ
from what we might call
the conventional wisdom
that has been imparted to us
about the Cultural Revolution?
- Right So I published Mao's Great Famine,
which is really about the 10s
of millions of people beaten,
starved, neglected to
death between 1958 and 62.
Of course I'd come across documents
from the earlier years and it seemed to me
that that was really
worthwhile investigating.
But I got a number of
colleagues and readers
who told me that they wanted
to know about what happened
after Mao's great famine,
the Cultural Revolution.
I was dubious at first,
but I did manage to find
vast amounts of archival material
and I think that really persuaded me,
to undertake this final
last volume in the trilogy,
in the sense that what we have heard
or read about the Cultural Revolution
tends to be generally based
either on just ideological
statements or on official or
semi official publications
released by the party itself,
whereas by gaining access
to the party archives,
they gained insights into
all sorts of much more
grounded sort of episodes
of the Cultural Revolution
you get detailed investigations
into the countryside,
you get reports about mass starvation,
you get really interesting reports
from the Public Security Bureau,
in other words there's a whole wealth
of accountable material
that allow me to see
what in effect was the effect
of the Cultural Revolution on
people of all walks of life.
In other words, I moved the
focus away from court politics,
Zhou Enlai, Deng Xiaoping, Mao Zedong,
towards ordinary people.
I was trying to rebuild
the history of the people,
the question was, where are the people
in the history of the
People's Republic of China?
- That's the subtitle of your book.
- [Frank] Indeed.
- And what did you see
in through these archives
through these controversies
that are with let us just say,
we're not part of the press releases,
or marketing or ideological propaganda?
What did you uncover about the people?
- Well, what really struck
me, is that the sort of images
that circulate about
the Cultural Revolution,
tend to stress uniformity conformity,
we have images of Red Guards
in 1966 on Tiananmen Square
cheering Chairman Mao
brandishing a little red book,
as if there's some sort of,
general madness taking
over this whole country.
And what struck me, thanks to
interviews on the one hand,
and reading memoirs of people
from all walks of life but
mainly thanks to the archives
of the Communist Party itself.
I realized, that throughout
this entire period
if not much earlier on, the
vast majority of people offered
nothing but outward compliance,
signs of outward compliance.
They would stand up, shout a slogan,
denounce a neighbor when they had to,
but as soon as it was over,
they would go back to,
their own lives, they kept the
inner thoughts to themselves
their personal feelings to themselves.
In a nutshell, many ordinary
people in most one party states
not just China, are
extraordinary, gifted actors.
So take for instance, if I may elaborate,
Red Guards, young people
standing on Tiananment Square,
cheering the chairman, if
you actually get much closer
to the pulse of life if
you interview some of them
if you read some of the
material compiled at the time
you find out that not all of them,
who were shouting slogans
actually believed in it.
There was one young man for instance,
who had never been able to go to school
because his family was
classified as class enemies
couldn't go to school,
his parents, elder brother in particular,
at school and at home
taught him to respect
human rights and democracy.
He managed to somehow infiltrate
the Red Guard movement,
stood on Tiananmen Square,
felt nothing but dread
when he saw Chairman Mao a
mere 30 meters away from him.
One young woman in there,
was a student of German,
she wrote to Chairman Mao,
to say that it reminded
her of the rallies held
under Adolf Hitler in
Nazi Germany in the 1930s.
Needless to say she got arrested
and sent to a labor camp.
So once you really, look at
it in much greater detail
you realize that this image
of uniformity just vanishes.
This is sorry.
- And then you look at this,
what you might call actor
or actress on stage,
creating the space for their
emotional and personal life.
And then you have the interaction
between the authorities,
and how the society and economy
functions in the regions.
It's a very large country
very decentralized,
the top can't monitor each and everything.
So what's evolving what's
morphing underneath the surface
in this system of control and
what you might call cultural
purification, that's a
bit of a theatrical dance
it's not really heartfelt.
- Exactly, if you could
describe the years after 1949
the moment the red flag
goes up in Beijing,
the moment the new regime takes place,
you could describe the decades that follow
as a game of cat and mouse a deadly game.
But nonetheless a game of cat and mouse,
the moment that the one party
state in the early 1950s
starts eliminating most basic freedoms,
political freedoms of assembly,
of religion, of movement,
but also basic economic freedoms
by setting up a planned economy,
where people in the countryside
are reduced to the status
of pretty much bonded servants
by the time we are at 1957 to 58
nevermind a great leap forward.
The moment that happens,
villages try to still maintain
some connection with the
market with the past,
though in this game, during for instance,
Mao's great famine, when
the structures of the state
are close to collapse and ordinary people
have to sell have to set a black markets,
have to trade in order
to survive the famine,
there's a resurgence of
this past so to speak.
There's a clamp down during
the Cultural Revolution,
but the point must be that in 1971,
when the army itself falls
victim to the Cultural Revolution
and is purged, when the soldiers
who oversee factories and
schools and government units
are sent back to the barracks,
ordinary people in particular
in the countryside realize
that the party comes out
of the Cultural Revolution
badly damaged from 1971,
onwards five years before the
death of Chairman Mao 1976,
In a myriad of acts of defiance.
People in the countryside
stop redistributing the land
they open underground factories,
they start traveling this country,
they recreate the market
from the bottom up,
and frequently they
manage to include beyond
local candidates, either by giving them
a share of the benefits
that come from the market.
You could call it an act of corruption,
am allowed to have two
chicken I will have 10 instead
I give you an egg every
week you are the local cadre
bit by bit, this whole
economy becomes much freer,
much more open despite
the planned economy.
In other words, by the
time that Chairman died,
millions upon millions
of people have already,
undermined the planned economy
and replaced the dead hand of the state
with their own ingenuity.
So if I had to put it in a
nutshell, I would say that
well before Deng Xiaoping even arrived
to power in 1979.
The economic reforms had already started,
the true architects of
economic reforms are the people
not Deng Xiaoping.
- It reminds me in my own life,
at around the year 2000
I spent some time in
Kontraka, Russia, all along the coastline,
there were local salmon fishermen.
And the salmon fishermen,
and their families,
were policed by the KGB,
except for the fact that
KGB got extra salmon,
and they were allowed to
fish far beyond their quotas,
and the local community was very happy.
But the orders coming from Moscow,
were to clamp down on
the salmon fisherman,
so that the big net intensive,
we might call capital
intensive fishing industry
would capture more and
more of the fish stock,
but it didn't work that way in practice
because the local officials
bonded with the community,
or were bribed to be
part of the community,
and we're much better off
working with the bottom up.
- I think it's a very
interesting example and it brings
to mind a report I read in the archives,
to an investigation teams
sent to the countryside
in Guangdong Province not
far away from Hong Kong.
This is 1972, a year after
the death of Lin Biao.
And they noticed that in the countryside,
there are markets everywhere,
and there are local cars
who actually connive
with local villages and making sure
that this black market
actually flourishes.
And then inspectors say we can clamp down,
we can try, to make sure
that the planned economy
is actually implemented,
but the local cadres
will no longer have
anything to eat (laughs).
In other words, the very food
that ended up on the table,
of local cadres came
from the black market.
- And in the early 90s,
when I worked in the financial industry,
I often went to China 92, 93.
And at that time,
many of the officials in
Beijing were most concerned
that whenever they'd send somebody out
to be a tax collector,
all of their brothers and
sisters and their children
ended up on the boards
of the local companies.
And lo and behold, there was
never any tax, to be collected
no one reported profits
but everybody's family was doing fine.
- Exactly, that's what I
call reform from the law.
- Yes.
- Rather than the image we've been given,
of a paramount leader like Deng Xiaoping
who institutes reform from above.
What is so interesting
about Deng Xiaoping,
is that even as late as 1979
three years after the death
of Chairman Mao in April
79 he still insists
that people in the countryside
who have left the people's communes,
returned to the collectives,
that already in parts of
say, Zhejiang province
the size of a country like France, by 1972
the regions were up to two
thirds of all the villages
work on their own, they've
left the collectives
they thrive on their own,
just imagine them being forced
to return to the people's communes.
- So, in the, we might
call Western parable,
there is this discontinuity
between the time of Mao,
and the time of Deng Xiaoping,
and obviously in the West,
we tend to favor Deng
Xiaoping mode of organization.
It sounds as if you say there's
a lot more continuity there
that our simple story has to tell,
that these formations from the bottom up
and these returned to
markets and the incapacity
of the top to monitor and maintain
all the quotas and
controls was a precursor
to the kind of structure
Deng Xiaoping inherited in and amplified.
- Very much, as if, I mean this
is the propaganda in China,
but it's taken on a life of its own
outside of China in the West.
It is as if history doesn't exist,
it is as if there was a vague
decade of chaos under Mao,
where China is really waiting
for Deng Xiaoping to arrive
as if the history of the
People's Republic really starts
in 1978 or 79 with so
called Economic Reforms.
These are being implemented
from the top down.
Whereas in reality, all of
this is already happening
from the bottom up from 1971 onwards,
Deng Xiaoping has no alternative
but to go along with the flow,
there's no alternative but to accept,
the economic freedoms that
had been that have been seized
by villages from 1971 onwards
is too late to go back.
Deng Xiaoping is very
pragmatic and goes along,
but here's another continuity,
1979 climbed down in Beijing,
1989 climbed down in Beijing.
The point surely must be,
that Deng Xiaoping and others,
including of course Xi Jinping,
live in fear of the people,
ever since the Cultural
Revolution, ever since Mao allowed
in 1966 and 67 ordinary
people to voice criticisms,
of party members.
Leading officials have viewed democracy,
as the equivalent of
the Cultural Revolution,
which is the equivalent of chaos.
In other words, they are
very much determined to,
repress any political
aspirations that ordinary people
may have, and they will
not hesitate to do so
as Deng Xiaoping demonstrated, of course,
by sending in tanks on to
Tiananmen Square in 1989.
But that impulse is still there,
with us in the People's
Republic to this very day,
economic freedoms okay.
But there will be no
sharing of the monopoly
of a power of the one party state.
- This is fascinating because,
when we're talking about democracy,
people have a quick association with
quality representation and
authoritarian governments not.
But I sense it's a bit
grayer here in that,
you're telling me that the leadership
in suppressing democracy
is also very responsive
because of their fears.
- Exactly.
- And that's a kind of representation
doesn't fit them all particularly well.
- Very much so, what Deng Xiaoping sees,
when there are pro-democracy demonstrators
on Tiananmen Square 1989, what he sees,
is the Cultural Revolution.
During the Cultural Revolution
1966 there were students,
sitting, in hunger strike
in front of Provincial Party Committees.
For instance, Xi'an,
there were demonstrations by
students and ordinary people,
against party members,
in Beijing and elsewhere.
That image, of people
Somehow taking on the party
is what is right behind
that fear of democracy.
In other words, unfortunately,
because of the Cultural Revolution,
there is an equation
between democracy and chaos
in the minds of leading party officials.
- And the economic development,
is a way to satisfy the
yearnings of the people,
So they don't resort to democracy.
- Indeed.
- Or don't feel the need to
- Indeed.
So these economic reforms
have been wrenched
by ordinary people from the party
and Deng Xiaoping to give
them some credit and indeed,
once he realized he
had to go with the flow
made the very best of it by using
whatever economic growth there was,
to consolidate the organization
of the one party state.
And that very sort of jewelistic approach,
is very much the foundation
of the party to this very day,
use whether the economic
growth that might be,
to consolidate the one party
state and never ever allow
ordinary people to have a say in politics.
- I used to work in the US Senate,
and I once asked the
men I was working for,
on the budget committee,
what makes a great
politician, a great leader?
He says, what makes a
great politician or leader
is an element of courage and
really pushing for change
that's healthy that would be resisted,
but what appears to create a great leader
is someone who gets in front of parades
that other people started (laughs)
I always remembered
that and it sounds as if
you could attribute both
things to Deng Xiaoping.
There was a sense in which he recognized,
the flow got in front of the parade,
but he also understand how to enlarge it
and increase the benefit.
- Yes, he saw what was
happening, he realized that
he would have to face
literary, a peasant rebellion
if he insisted on the planned economy
and on maintaining
these people's communes.
These people's communes collapsed in 1982,
Deng Xiaoping harnessed
that vast potential
by ordinary people,
allow basic economic freedoms
to flourish to some extent,
but used it in order to make
sure that the one party state
would not share any of its
power, to this very day.
To that extent, he's been very successful.
- I remember in my travels to
Beijing, there was an exhibit
I believe it's still there
at the National Museum,
and it spends a great deal
of time, talking about
the Opium Wars, imperialists,
the Japanese invasion,
and then it moves forward.
- [Frank] Quickly.
- And jumps right over
the Cultural Revolution,
and then talks about the
technological developments,
Deng Xiaoping to the present,
modernization of the economy,
and what I knew from our conversations
that you were writing this book,
I was quite enthusiastic
because I remembered
that I did not think it was coincidence,
that exhibit which is
I believe Deng Xiaoping
gave one of his very first speeches,
and it was about national identity.
- Indeed.
- The national identity
was not confronting.
- Indeed.
- The themes that you've explored here.
- The myth here is, of
course, the foundation myth
of Chinese nationalism
is of course, opium.
Imperialist uses opium to
poison the Chinese people,
it created chaos, Mao Zedong came
and liberated this country in 1949.
Then we fast forward very quickly
(laughs)
over what is really
three decades of horror.
And out of this horror
emerges Deng Xiaoping
to start economic
reforms that is very much
the image projected by the propaganda.
- In our conversations,
you've talked about
the Cultural Revolution,
not as murderous,
in the physical sense of
exterminating numbers of people
so much as devastating to
the emotion to the mind.
- Describe or characterize
that distinction.
how do you come to that?
- In a nutshell, from 1949
to 1957 when this regime
has to establish itself there
is really killing by quota
in literally from October
1950 to October 1951
Mao Zedong has a one per 1000 killing rate
that millions are deliberately eliminated.
1958 to 62 is Mao's great
famine this is if you wish,
murder through neglect when
10s of millions of people
are starved to death, but
the Cultural Revolution
in total, probably only
has about 2 million people
were hounded to their
deaths it's a big number
but it doesn't compare even to
October 1950 to October 1951.
In other words, it seems
to me that it is important
to highlight that the effect
of the Cultural Revolution
the point of the Cultural
Revolution was to really bend
and break millions upon
millions it's the trauma,
which is at the heart of
the Cultural Revolution,
not so much more than or loss of life.
- It's emotional devastation.
- Exactly, emotional
devastation is loss of faith,
there's loss of trust in human beings
and their relationships.
The fact that people were
pitted against each other
with foster denounce family
members, colleagues, friends,
and had to live with that burden,
for years afterwards,
there's an attempt to cow the population,
it is an attempt to
regiment the greatest number
of people possible, it's not about death.
- And what was it that you
will attribute to Mao as
motivation for this calling
in this emotional pressure?
- If you are a dictator,
you will have to constantly
look over your shoulders.
And not just during your
lifetime there's also
the threat that somebody
later on might denounce you.
The biggest model for Mao is Stalin,
Stalin managed to die in his own bed,
but he was denounced by Nikita Khrushchev
three years later in 1956.
So the Cultural Revolution
is also an attempt
by an aging dictator,
to divide and rule to keep
everybody on their toes.
Frequently, in the past it was set
that the real target of
the Cultural Revolution
was Deng Xiaoping and Liu Shaoqi.
But this is not so,
Mao was smart enough to realize
that the dagger could come from anywhere,
in other words, he doesn't know
who the Chinese Khrushchev will be.
The Culture Revolution really
keeps everybody on their toes
makes it impossible for anybody to somehow
come up with a clique that
is critical of chairman Mao.
- So this is kind of King Lear, in China.
- It is King Lear in China.
With all the madness that
comes with that attempt
to consolidate and hold
on to power at any cost.
- Yeah have read the Ernest Becker's
Pulitzer Prize winning
book "The Denial of Death,"
which is all about immortality
yearnings and the violence
that great people will go
to and he culminates in how
he's a psychologist in Sigmund Freud,
turns on his disciples young
and particularly auto rank,
because he contracts cancer,
he doesn't want to face the
notion that anybody would
take the discipline beyond where
he took it in his own life.
- So Mao turns against
his erstwhile colleagues,
long standing comrades in arms,
but the word you use
immortality is very important,
and that it is not just court politics,
and try to eliminate all those around you
at least keep them on their toes.
It's also a man who is
there to consolidate
his own standing in world history.
The Cultural Revolution is also an attempt
by Mao to become the one,
who has led the revolution
against revisionism,
that will make sure that the
rule will go towards socialism
without ever having to going
back like the Soviet Union.
To put it in a nutshell, in
Mao's view Lenin was the one
who displaced the bourgeoisie in 1917.
He will be the one to
displace bourgeois culture
once and forever with
the Cultural Revolution,
he's the one who inherits
and develops Marxism-Leninism
into Marxism-Leninism Mao Zedong Thought,
just also about
consolidating his own legacy.
To some extent, you could
say it's worked rather well.
(laughing)
There are still people who do believe
and read Moa Zedong Thought.
- Well, this is a fantastic
trilogy, and formidable third,
I hope not final dimension
of your writings on China,
but thank you very much
for joining us today.
- Thank you.
- And thank you for all the
work you do to illuminate
this ever so important part of the world.
- Thank you, thank you very much.
