Reforming Intellectuals
The Chinese characters embody the essence of 5,000 years of civilization. Each character�s form and pronunciation, and the idioms and literary allusions composed of combinations of the characters, all express profound cultural meanings. The CCP has not only simplified the Chinese characters, but also tried to replace them with Romanized pinyin, which would remove all cultural tradition from the Chinese characters and language. But the replacement plan has failed, thus sparing further damage to the Chinese language. However, the Chinese intellectuals who inherited the same traditional culture were not so fortunate as to be spared destruction.
Prior to 1949, China had about two million intellectuals. Although some had studied in Western countries, they still inherited some Confucian ideas. The CCP certainly could not relax its control of them, because as members of the traditional �scholar-aristocracy� class, their ways of thinking played important roles in shaping the thoughts of ordinary people.
In September 1951, the CCP initiated a large-scale �thought reform movement� starting in Peking University among intellectuals, and required to �organize a movement (among teachers in colleges, middle schools and primary schools, and college students) to confess their history faithfully and honestly,� so as to cleanse any counter-revolutionary elements.�[73]
Mao Zedong never liked intellectuals. He said, �They [the intellectuals] ought to be aware of the truth that actually many so-called intellectuals are, relatively speaking, quite ignorant and the workers and farmers sometimes know more than they do.� [74] �Compared with the workers and peasants, the unreformed intellectuals were not clean, and in the last analysis, the workers and peasants were the cleanest people, even though their hands were dirty and their feet smeared with cow-dung�� [75]
The CCP�s persecution of intellectuals started with various forms of accusations, ranging from the 1951 criticism of Wu Xun [76] for �running schools with begged money� to Mao Zedong�s personal attack, in 1955, on writer Hu Feng [77] as a counter-revolutionary. In the beginning, the intellectuals were not categorized as a reactionary class, but by 1957, after several major religious groups had surrendered through the �unified front� movement, the CCP could focus its energy on the intellectuals. The �Anti-Rightist� movement was thus launched.
In the end of February of 1957, claiming to �let a hundred flowers bloom and a hundred schools of thought contend,� the CCP called on intellectuals to voice their suggestions and criticisms to the Party, promising no retaliation. Those intellectuals had been dissatisfied with the CCP for a long time for its ruling in every field even though it was a layman in those fields and its killing of innocent people during the movement to �suppress counter-revolutionaries� in 1950-1953 and to �eliminate counter-revolutionaries� in 1955-1957. They thought the CCP had finally become open-minded. So they began to speak out their true feelings, and their criticism grew more and more intense.
Many years later, there are still many people who believe that Mao Zedong only started to attack the intellectuals after becoming impatient with their overly harsh criticisms. The truth, however, turned out to be different.
On May 15, 1957, Mao Zedong wrote an article entitled �Things Are Beginning to Change� and circulated it among senior CCP officials. The article said, �In recent days the Rightists�have shown themselves to be most determined and most rabid. �The Rightists, who are anti-Communist, are making a desperate attempt to stir up a typhoon above force seven in China�and are so bent on destroying the Communist Party.� [78] After that, those officials who had been indifferent to the �let a hundred flowers bloom and a hundred schools of thought contend� campaign suddenly became enthusiastic and �earnest.� In her memoir The Past Doesn't Disappear Like Smoke, Zhang Bojun�s daughter recounted:
Li Weihan, Minister of the United Front Work Department, called Zhang Bojun in person to invite him to a rectification meeting to offer his opinion about the CCP. Zhang was arranged to sit on a front row sofa. Not knowing this to be a trap, Zhang articulated his criticisms of the CCP. During the whole course, �Li Weihan appeared relaxed. Zhang probably thought Li agreed with what he said. He didn�t know Li was pleased to see his prey falling into the trap.� After the meeting, Zhang was classified as the number one rightist in China.
We can cite a string of dates in 1957 that marked proposals or speeches delivered by intellectuals offering criticisms and suggestions: Zhang Bojun�s �Political Design Institute� on May 21; Long Yun�s �Absurd Anti-Soviet Views� on May 22; Luo Longji�s �Redressing Committee� on May 22; Lin Xiling�s speech on �Criticizing the CCP�s Feudalistic Socialism� at Peking University on May 30; Wu Zuguang�s �The Party Should Stop Leading the Arts� on May 31; and Chu Anping�s �The Party Dominates the World� on June 1. All these proposals and speeches had been invited, and were offered after Mao Zedong had already sharpened his butcher�s knife.
All of these intellectuals, predictably, were later labeled rightists. There were more than 550,000 such �rightists� nationwide.
Chinese tradition has it that �scholars can be killed but cannot be humiliated.� The CCP was capable of humiliating intellectuals by denying their right to survive and even incriminating their families unless they accepted humiliation. Many intellectuals did surrender. During the course, some of them told on others to save themselves, which broke many people�s hearts. Those who did not submit to humiliation were killed�serving as examples to terrorize other intellectuals.
The traditional �scholarly class,� exemplars of social morality, was thus obliterated.
Mao Zedong said,
What can Emperor Qin Shi Huang brag about? He only killed 460 Confucian scholars, but we killed 46,000 intellectuals. In our suppression of counter-revolutionaries, didn�t we kill some counter-revolutionary intellectuals as well? I argued with the pro-democratic people who accused us of acting like Emperor Qin Shi Huang. I said they were wrong. We surpassed him by a hundred times. [79]
Indeed, Mao did more than kill the intellectuals. More grievously, he destroyed their minds and hearts.
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