Rhetoric of the Chinese Cultural Revolution: The Impact on Chinese Thought, Culture, and Communication

Series Editor’s Preface

Lucy Xing Lu’s Rhetoric of the Chinese Cultural Revolution is a systematic and balanced depiction of the rhetoric of the Cultural Revolution and of Chinese rhetoric in the decades following the Cultural Revolution. The book synthesizes a large body of secondary literature and brings important primary sources to bear for the first time—the author’s personal recollections, interviews, and translations of documents that have appeared only in Chinese. This work of scholarly reporting and rhetorical history is a major accomplishment, to which Professor Lu has added her own analysis and reflection as a scholar trained in rhetoric, which she extends into reflections on the ethics of the rhetoric and into her advice for planners and participants in the transformation of China.

This is a big, simple, true, and important book.

Rather than work from a single, a priori theoretical position, Professor Lu calls on a range of mainstream twentieth-century American rhetorical scholarship as it is appropriate to the issue at hand, drawing a wide variety of communication scholarship into the analysis in a way that keeps the focus on big questions rather than being distracted by disciplinarity. The result is a book full of solid news about communicative practices and convincing, shrewd observations grounded in text, observation, and firsthand report, and informed by rhetorical scholarship.

The range of communicative practices is wide and well chosen. Professor Lu deals in special detail with the cultural context, production, themes, rhetorical strategies, and reception of political slogans, wall posters, music, political rituals, and public speaking. The book gives a richly textured account of the street-level experience of rhetoric in the Cultural Revolution.

While avoiding political tendentiousness, the book is unambiguously critical of the Cultural Revolution and of much post-Mao Chinese rhetoric and politics. The immediacy and rootedness of the author’s personal recollections, the testimony of her interviewees, and her rhetorical wisdom combine to make this an important contribution to rhetorical scholarship.

THOMAS W. BENSON

Preface to the Paperback Edition

During the 2016 U.S. presidential election campaign, I cringed when I heard lock her up in news coverage of then-candidate Donald Trump’s rallies. Such chants reminded me of the Chinese Cultural Revolution (CCR; between 1966 and 1976) in which I, my family, and millions of Chinese people suffered when the country where I was born and raised was torn apart by different political factions and engaged in verbal and physical violence. The chants reminded me that humans are capable of destroying both themselves and others by using language of their own invention. During the CCR, the violent use of language wrecked a culture of civility, instigated fanaticism and radicalism, and deprived citizens of rational thinking and humaneness. As I witnessed and experienced during those tumultuous ten years, many people became slaves to a cult of ignorance; they exhibited violent behaviors and engaged in the banality of evil—evil committed by blindly using certain clichés and so-called lofty words that resulted in sheer thoughtlessness of action (Arendt 1963, 287).

In 1966, Mao Zedong, the founder of the People’s Republic of China, launched the political campaign he called China’s Cultural Revolution. The CCR lasted ten years with devastating effects on a massive scale. Although there have been different interpretations of his motive, Mao himself claimed that the goal of the campaign was to prevent China from becoming a capitalist society, to eradicate bourgeois influence, and to crack down the corruption and bureaucracy of party officials. Instead, the CCR resulted in political upheaval and a cultural holocaust. Tens of millions of innocent people were humiliated, persecuted, imprisoned, and tortured; many committed suicide or were killed for their alleged crimes against Mao. (The estimated death toll ranged from hundreds of thousands to twenty million by various sources.) China was at the brink of economic collapse, cultural relics and treasures were destroyed, classical books were burned, government apparatuses became dysfunctional, young people were deprived of formal education, and families and friends were estranged by betrayal or for self-protection. Especially during the first three years of the campaign, violent rhetoric and violent action were rampant.

My academic training in rhetoric has taught me that the language we use shapes our perception, thought, behavior, culture, and communication. In this book, originally published in 2004, I start with the story of my family, ordinary people who were affected by the violent rhetoric of the CCR. In the subsequent chapters, I analyze rhetoric or symbols and symbolic practices during the political campaign in the forms of slogans, wall posters, revolutionary songs, model operas, and political rituals. I strongly believe that this rhetoric and these rhetorical activities inflamed hatred, polarized the nation, suppressed dissenting views, labeled people as class enemies and dehumanized them into snakes and ghosts, and led to the justification of violence and atrocities. I also devote a chapter to analyzing political discourse in post-Mao China that still manifests characteristics of rhetoric of the CCR. I contend that such use of rhetoric and the subsequent human calamity are similar to those periods in the Soviet Union under Stalin’s rule (specifically the Great Purge in the 1930s) and Nazi Germany under Hitler’s dictatorship (specifically the holocaust of the Jewish people).

Since the original publication of this book, the question that lingers in my mind is whether such rhetoric of polarization, dehumanization, and violence in the name of morality and justice will be evoked, escalated, and manipulated again in China or elsewhere in the world on a similar scale. It has been my deepest concern given the rise of nationalism and populism in China and on the global stage.

The impact of the CCR on Chinese thought, culture, and communication is unmeasurable and, in some cases, irreversible. However, the most immediate and dramatic impact was that after the political campaign ended, China moved its path in a wildly different direction from the state-owned economy with communist ideology espoused by Mao Zedong. In 1979, Deng Xiaoping, the paramount leader of China after Mao’s death, inaugurated economic reform and open-door policy, which catalyzed China’s economic prosperity and increased standards of living. China gradually restored its social order, and the Chinese people began to heal from the trauma.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) defined the campaign as ten-year chaos and admitted that Mao had made a mistake by launching the CCR. The collective memory of this catastrophe is deeply rooted in the people who lived through the period, and public consensus was that such a catastrophic campaign should never happen again. Unfortunately, despite a short period of scar literature in which films, memoirs, and literary works that reflected on tragic experiences from the CCR were released, the CCP government has not openly discussed and reflected on the causes of the disaster. The outcry by Ba Jin, a well-known novelist and public intellectual, of building a Cultural Revolution Museum was ignored. (There is, however, a virtual museum established by Wang Youqin, www.Chinese-memorial.org.) Books and research on the campaign were not allowed to be published, and few studies on the rhetoric used during this time period can be found within China or overseas. Details of the campaign are not taught in schools, and textbooks only superficially mention this part of recent Chinese history. The CCR topic became taboo in the name of maintaining the stability of the country. Even my parents were reluctant to talk about it because it was, even up to their deaths, too painful for them to relive the trauma.

The completion of this book in 2004 was therapeutic for me. After I wrote it, I stopped having nightmares of my father being tortured. However, the negative impact of the CCR is still felt (e.g., polarized thinking, fervent nationalism, irrational and violent behavior, lack of civility and a sense of history and culture). Even more so, I am concerned that the generations born after the 1980s will know little about this tumultuous period of China. As my generation dies out, no one will be left to tell the story. This dark page of modern Chinese history is in danger of becoming irrevocably lost. Wrongdoings, such as the beating of schoolteachers, looting of homes, and the killing of innocent people, are not talked about publicly or even privately for the sake of not revealing these past wounds. In the celebration of the seventieth anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, on October 1, 2019, the massive parade in Tiananmen Square displayed the portraits and major achievements of each head of state—from Mao Zedong to Xi Jinping (from 1949 to 2019)—but there was no mention of the CCR. It has simply been erased from Chinese history. The crimes committed at the time, in fact, were attributed to the manipulation of Mao’s good intent by the Gang of Four (Mao’s wife and three other high-ranking party leaders). Even though a select few former Red Guards have publicly apologized for beating their teachers during the CCR, most of the culprits remain silent, claim no responsibility, and show no signs of remorse.

Since the start of economic reform, China has taken a path toward a state capitalist economy (branded as socialism with Chinese characteristics by Deng Xiaoping) that allows private ownership of property, foreign investment, and a market economy under the leadership of the CCP. In the past forty years, China has created an economic boom nothing short of a miracle, as the result of the economic policy change that incentivized the Chinese people to work hard and make money. The Chinese people began to enjoy freedom in social mobility, career choices, and relatively relaxed freedom of expression, even though the mainstream media has been always under the control of the Party. On the other hand, the relentless pursuit of money and wealth has brought corruption among both high- and low-level party officials, triggering a nostalgia among the masses for Mao’s era and the CCR. In the 1990s, dancing loyalty dances in reverence of Mao, wearing Mao’s badges, and reading Mao’s works became prevalent. In addition, in 2008, Bo Xilai, who was at the time the Party Secretary of Chongqing, a major city in South China, initiated a campaign to revive the CCR era by galvanizing citizens of the city to sing revolutionary songs (known as red songs) and operas. All this reminded people of the rhetorical practices and ritualistic performance that took place during the CCR. Furthermore, many have seen the feverish pursuit of material well-being in post-Mao China as a symptom of moral decline. All these happenings create an illusion, even for people who lived through that period, that Mao’s claimed goal of launching the CCR to eradicate corruption and save China from moral decay was necessary, legitimate, and convincing.

Moreover, since Xi Jinping became China’s president in 2012, there has been tightened control over freedom of speech by intellectuals and criticism of the CCP on social media and increased surveillance of dissenting voices. All this has made many people wonder if something like the CCR could happen again in China. In addition to the concern of some prominent public intellectuals, liberal leaders such as Hu Yaobang, the General Party Secretary from 1982 to 1987 (d. 1989), and Wen Jiabao, Premier of China from 2003 to 2013, have also worried that China still has the soil for the CCR to come back. In response to these and other concerns at both the leadership and public level, on October 24, 2019, Xinhua News Agency released a short article that denied the legitimacy of the CCR but did not blame Mao for the launch of the campaign. Instead, it emphasized his good intentions among bad judgment calls and mostly blamed Lin Biao (who was once considered by Mao as his successor) and the Gang of Four for the disastrous outcome.

I hope this book will invite readers to reflect on a few questions. First, what is the role of the masses that allow catastrophes on this scale to happen? In his seminal book, The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind, Gustave Le Bon identified a few characteristics of the crowd: impulsiveness, credulousness, irritability, incapability of both reflection and reasoning. Moreover, he wrote, A crowd thinks in images, and the image itself immediately calls up a series of other images, having no logical connection with the first…. A crowd is almost blind to this truth, and confuses with the real event what the deforming action of its imagination has superimposed thereon (1908, 45–46). Le Bon also pointed out that A crowd may be guilty of murder, incendiarism, and every kind of crime, but it is also capable of very lofty acts of devotion, sacrifice, and disinterestedness (1908, 64). All these descriptions apply to millions of the Chinese masses during the CCR. They waved the flag of morality and justice, showed unwavering loyalty and sacrifice to Mao, blindly submitted to his authority for the fear of being persecuted, and treated Mao as their religious cult. They exhibited no critical thinking ability: few of them had the courage to challenge Mao and question the legitimacy of the campaign, and they allowed themselves to commit crimes or be enablers of others’ violent rhetoric and action.

Some believe that the CCR was an all-out execution of democracy because ordinary people were given the rights to create wall posters, openly debate their views, freely rally and protest, and challenge the status quo. Was the CCR truly an exercise of democracy? Did it help prevent China from becoming a capitalist society as Mao said it would? I argue that these are misleading claims. Democracy involves the participation of the majority of the people in politics, but its operation has to be based on law and order; it has to honor the worth of individuals’ dignity and freedom of thought and expression. The CCR, on the other hand, was a lawless violation of human dignity and human rights. This political campaign disregarded the basic human desire for individual freedom and a good life. It destroyed traditional Chinese culture. It was a prime example of how rhetoric has been used to manipulate and how people can be compelled to obey an authoritative figure while justifying their brutality in the name of morality. Also, ironically, China transitioned to a system of state capitalism soon after the CCR ended.

Second, I’d like to invite the reader to ponder what lessons we can learn from the CCR as ordinary citizens. In his book, They Thought They Were Free:The Germans, 1933–45, Milton Mayer interviewed ten of his Nazi friends who were ordinary people. They were hardworking, honest, and of average intelligence, but they claimed not to know that what Hitler and the Nazi regime did from 1933 to 1945 was evil. Like some Chinese people who do not blame Mao for what he did, these German people did not attribute Nazi atrocities to Hitler but to his strategic mistakes and poor judgment. They did not feel ashamed and did not like to talk about this part of history. According to one of Mayer’s colleagues, you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves (1955, 171). In Mayer’s account, they do not deny that they were bought into Hitler’s dogma (1955, 282). Some people I interviewed in my book share similar sentiments and experiences with this account. The Chinese lived in a time of hatred and fear as they watched their family members and their neighbors being tortured and humiliated. They still followed Mao’s dogma that Revolution is not a dinner party…. A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another (1967, 28).

One reason for studying past atrocities is to avoid repetition of the same human tragedies. What lessons have we learned from history? What have the Chinese learned from the CCR? Chinese people need to search their souls and ask if they have become enablers. They need also to ask themselves what contributed to their blind faith in Mao and why they had to speak the same language or slogans. They need to reflect on the role they played during the CCR. They need to reflect on the factors that contributed to their thoughts and actions; whether they were silent, defied authority, or participated in violent rhetoric and violent action.

History can correct itself by honestly facing and honoring the truth. Remembering the past is for the purpose of moving forward. In 1970, Willy Brandt, the German Chancellor, fell to his knees in front of the Holocaust Memorial in Warsaw. In 2017, Russia unveiled the Wall of Grief, a monument in Moscow to commemorate the victims of political persecution by Joseph Stalin, allowing Russian people to learn about this part of the history, to write it into school textbooks, and talk about it openly in the media. China should follow this example so that young people can understand their nation’s past. Only in so doing can we move forward and clean up the soil to prevent such a tragedy from happening again. The issues of conscience, remorse, redemption, mob mentality, blind faith, and cultism should be topics of discussion on a national scale and in the public sphere.

Third, I invite the reader to think about the relevance of understanding China’s Cultural Revolution in the context of today’s globalization. What problems do humans face, and why are we still hearing and using the rhetoric of political polarization? During China’s Cultural Revolution, most people were deprived of critical thinking abilities—they had only blind faith in a cult-like national leader, Chairman Mao. The rhetoric of this period was mythmaking filled with conspiracy theories, fear appeals, and emotional manipulation. People were only exposed to one source of information from Mao and his propaganda apparatus. Only one type of political discourse was used, and people took it as absolute truth. People fell into a rhetorical trap and did not bother to find evidence and do a reality check or turn to their own conscience and inner voice. To this day, CCP language is still banal, sloganeering, and formulaic. Everyone is expected to use the same language, particularly party officials. Education is not interested in critical thinking but in how to conform to the CCP doctrines. China today does not allow diversity of ideas in the political realm. The country still does not provide its citizens with freedom of press and freedom of speech in the public domain.

I would like to believe that a cultural revolution of such a violent and destructive nature will not happen in China again, nor anywhere else in the world, but I am not so confident. I thought Nazism was gone, but neo-Nazism and white nationalism are on the rise. I thought the world had progressed to accept cultural differences and welcome strangers, but now anti-immigration sentiment is strong in the United States and across Europe. I thought China would become more open and democratic after I left the country in 1987, but this did not happen.

Even more upsetting, I have seen the return of nationalism, xenophobia, divisiveness, polarization, and violence instigated by the rhetoric of hatred and fear in the United States and across the globe. We continue to witness human rights violations and genocides against humanity in China and beyond. For example, China detained an estimated one million Uyghur Muslims in political education camps in Xinjiang Province; Myanmar’s brutal ethnic cleansing against Rohingyas shocked the world; the Saudi-led coalition has killed and wounded thousands of civilians in Yemen; and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) committed genocide of Yazidis in Iraq. Language affects thought, action, culture, and communication. I am longing for rhetoric that promotes compassion, empathy, and inclusiveness through education, dialogue, and mutual respect by inspirational world leaders and from diverse voices. I hope I will never hear the chant to lock someone up at a rally, where people are entrenched by hatred and fear and by polarization and division. I do not want my children and grandchildren to live in that kind of world. I hope this book serves as a reminder of history and how we must work together to the best of our ability to prevent the repetition of that history.

Xing Lu

January 2020

References

Arendt, Hannah, 1963. Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. London: Penguin Books.

Commentator of Xinhua News Agency. Xinhua News Agency Release Denying (Legitimacy) of the Cultural Revolution and Claiming that the Cultural Revolution Is an Internal Turmoil, not a Hard Exploration 新华社发文全面否定文革:文革是内乱而不是艰辛探索 http://m.chinaelections.net/wap/article.aspx?id=252916. October 24, 2019.

Le Bon, Gustave. 1908. The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind. London: T. F. Unwin.

Mao, Zedong. 1967. Selected Works of Mao Tse-Tung, Vol. I. Peking: Foreign Languages Press.

Mayer, Milton. 1955. They Thought They Were Free:The Germans 1933–45. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Preface to the First Edition

The twentieth century ended with conflicts and violence among nations and among ethnic and religious groups, as well as much infighting among factions within nations. Despite some progress made toward peace and reconciliation, the first three years of the twenty-first century have thus far been overshadowed by terrorist attacks against the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C.; the United States-led war in Afghanistan and Iraq; Palestinians’ suicide bombings in Israel; and Israel’s retaliatory military assault on Palestine. In addition to historical and cultural factors contributing to the current state of affairs, a polarized and incendiary rhetoric is largely responsible for inflaming feelings of hatred and violence toward so-called enemies. Polarized language leads to polarized thinking; the rhetoric of agitation leads to fanaticism and violence, as evidenced in human history. Moreover, violent actions and human atrocities are justified by moralistic rhetoric and the dehumanization of perceived enemies. This is exactly what occurred during the Chinese Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966–76), one of the most catastrophic mass movements and political upheavals of the twentieth century.

This book examines the rhetorical landscape of the Cultural Revolution. In particular, I will identify the rhetorical features and persuasive effects of the symbols and symbolic practices of that time. I will explore how the rhetoric of the Cultural Revolution was constructed, disseminated, and propagated by the power elite, as well as how an entire group of people, identified as class enemies, was marginalized and dehumanized. Further, I will analyze the ways in which the rhetoric of the Cultural Revolution has influenced contemporary Chinese thought, culture, and communication in both international and domestic arenas. My intention in so doing is to examine the role and function of political rhetoric cross-culturally. In particular, I will identify similarities between the rhetoric of Communist China and those of Stalin’s Russia and Nazi Germany. Furthermore, I seek to show how the practice of rhetoric in Communist China is situated in a particular social/political context rooted in the rhetorical tradition of ancient China.

With a population of nearly 1.3 billion China remains the largest communist country in the world. Its role and influence on the world scene cannot be overstated. Relations with the Chinese at every level—political, professional, financial, educational, and interpersonal—have become increasingly significant for the peace and well-being of humanity. Unfortunately, U.S.-Chinese relations have been problematic in modern times largely because of ideological differences, cultural misunderstandings, and a lack of knowledge regarding contemporary Chinese communication patterns. Misunderstandings between China and the West have led to many stereotypes and prejudices among Chinese and Westerners alike. While some members of Western nations may be informed of traditional Chinese cultural values and practices, most may know little about the rhetoric of the Cultural Revolution in China or may perceive the chaos of the period as romantic and idealistic.

This book is intended for rhetorical scholars who are interested in political rhetoric in general as well as in the connection between language, thought, culture, and behavior in particular. It should also appeal to sinologists and rhetorical scholars who are interested in contemporary Chinese culture and communication studies.

I was strongly motivated to embark on this project for several reasons. First, my family, especially my parents, were persecuted and suffered great physical and psychological hardship during the Cultural Revolution. I witnessed firsthand how the use of rhetoric mobilized first the young people and then the entire country, elevating Mao to the status of a living god, dehumanizing class enemies, and destroying traditional Chinese cultural values. As a young participant in and victim of the rhetorical experience of the Cultural Revolution (I was ten when the Cultural Revolution began and twenty when it ended), I am intimately familiar with all the rhetorical themes and strategies propagated at the time, and I am also deeply aware of their impact on my own thoughts and actions as well as on those of the people around me. Second, as a rhetorical scholar, I have been prepared by my academic training and research in past years to undertake an intellectual analysis of this rhetorical phenomenon and to examine the forces of Chinese rhetoric in connection with thought, culture, and communication. My cultural and academic backgrounds enable me to describe, interpret, and evaluate the rhetoric of the Cultural Revolution with historical, cultural, and rhetorical sensitivity. Finally, being a native speaker of the Chinese language allowed me to interpret rhetorical texts and to conduct and analyze interviews in Chinese.

Many people have contributed to the formation and publication of this book. I have received consistent support and encouragement from Professors Thomas Benson, Jacqueline Taylor, Vernon Jensen, and David Frank throughout the preparation and completion of this project. I am indebted to Judy Bowker and Minmin Wang for their offer to proofread the entire manuscript and for their valuable suggestions for its improvement; they both raised thought-provoking questions not only from the viewpoint of rhetorical scholars but also from their separate cultural/political experiences as an American and a Chinese reader respectively. I would like to thank Herbert Simons for his empathetic and encouraging comments on the first two chapters. I appreciate very much the positive feedback and constructive criticism from the anonymous reviewers on the manuscript.

Further, I am deeply thankful to the thirty-five informants who willingly shared their experiences and reflections with me. Their personal accounts and witness during the Cultural Revolution added to the breadth of descriptions and depth of analysis of the topic under consideration. I wish to thank Mr. Yan Peng, who offered to read the first three chapters of this book; his experience as a participant in the Cultural Revolution and his remarkable memory of the unfolding events were very helpful. Thanks also to Tara Mckinney for her careful editing and fine-tuning of the manuscript.

This project could not have come to fruition without institutional support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, which granted me a summer stipend; from DePaul University, which granted me a one-year academic leave; and from the University of South Carolina Press, which showed great interest in my initial book proposal. I particularly wish to thank Barry Blose, the acquisitions editor, for his never-failing moral support and faith in me to finish the project and Bill Adams for his helpful editorial guidance.

Last, but not least, I would like to thank my parents, who have been invaluable resources as well as sources of inspiration for me to embark on and finish this project as scheduled. I am also grateful to my husband, Licheng Gu, for being the first reader of every chapter, for his careful proofreading of pinyin (Chinese romanization system for the characters) in the book, and for his love and support throughout the writing of this project. Finally, I would like to express my appreciation to Wendi Lulu Gu, my eleven-year-old daughter, for her patience and understanding in waiting for her turn to use the computer every day and night.

Chinese Names

The natural order of Chinese names places surname first and given name second. This order has been reversed for most Chinese names that are referenced in this book for three reasons: to avoid misunderstanding in the order of names as Western readers habitually regard the first name in the order is the given name; to avoid confusion in matching up with the names in the bibliography; and to follow the conventional practice in other scholarly works with regard to Chinese names. However, the names for prominent Chinese leaders and well-known individuals are ordered in the Chinese way.

Because Chinese names share more of the same surnames, the full names of Chinese writers appear in romanized form as well as in Chinese characters for distinction in the bibliographical reference.

Translation

Few translations of the Cultural Revolutionary texts are available. Therefore, I did my own translations of the most primary texts and all the interviews for the rhetorical analyses. I also translated the titles of books and articles in Chinese language into English for the bibliography section. Translations of Chinese texts are my own unless otherwise indicated.

Chinese Characters

I used the traditional (complicated) version of Chinese characters throughout the book as that version can be recognized by both overseas and mainland Chinese readers.

Introduction

A ten-year calamity is not one person’s nightmare. It has affected the people of the entire world. If we do not understand why it happened and provide an explanation for it, how can we face the people of the world?

Ba Jin, Sui xiang lu (A Collection of Reflections)

The passing of time alone is good enough reason for reexamining the cataclysm that shook China in 1966–1976, whose legacy endures into the China of the 1990s. Like all momentous events in human history, the Cultural Revolution demands constant restudy, reinterpretation, and reflection.

William A. Joseph, Christine P. W. Wong, and David Zweig, eds.,

New Perspectives on the Cultural Revolution

History remembers the mass violence of the French Cultural Revolution (1789–99), the persecution of religious heretics during the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, the terror of Stalin’s Great Purge of political dissidents in 1930s, and the horror of the Holocaust for the Jewish people during World War II. Such atrocities are documented and studied in order to understand the past and avoid repetition of the same mistakes and tragedies in the future. Unfortunately, the past is not always well understood and history does repeat itself. China’s Cultural Revolution (1966–76) is an example of this.

In her Origins of Totalitarianism (1951) Hannah Arendt offers an astute analysis of the indoctrination methods employed in Stalin’s Russia and Hitler’s Germany. While finding many similarities between the two regimes regarding their ideological campaign strategies and outcomes, Arendt had to admit that in the case of China, We never know very well how this worked in everyday life … that is, who did the ‘remolding’ —and we had no inkling of the results of the ‘brainwashing,’ whether it was lasting and actually produced personality changes (viii). Indeed, due to a relative lack of communication between China and the rest of the world prior to the early 1980s, it has been difficult to obtain data from which to develop an informed understanding of the indoctrination processes by which over a billion people were transformed from adherents of Confucianism to devotees of Mao Zedong. China may be better known today because of its increased openness to the outside world since the 1980s. However, the Chinese Cultural Revolution is still less studied and understood than are comparable social experiments and human atrocities in other parts of the world.

I was ten years old when China’s Cultural Revolution began in 1966. Thirty-seven years have passed, yet I still remember clearly the fanatical shouting of slogans denouncing my father as a counterrevolutionary. I recall the horror of seeing my father’s swollen face and blood-soaked shirt, the result of a heavy beating by the Rebels.¹ I can never forget the day when my mother came home crying and wanting to commit suicide because her best friend at work had publicly denounced her for her rich family background and attacked her with groundless accusations. I still have nightmares from witnessing my mother’s temporary insanity when she was cast out of the denunciation rally where my father was being tortured. I remember the days when my siblings and I lived in constant fear and humiliation, and when students had nothing to do at school but recite Mao Zedong’s pronouncements and sing revolutionary songs. Even so, what my family went through was trivial compared to the magnitude of horror and loss many other individuals and families experienced. My family’s story is only one of millions of tragedies that occurred during the Cultural Revolution.

Known to the Chinese as the ten years of chaos, millions of Chinese were persecuted and thousands died during the Cultural Revolution. At the height of the Cultural Revolution (1967–69) it was not uncommon to hear stories of children denouncing their parents, students beating their teachers, husbands and wives opposing each other, and employees betraying employers—all in the name of defending Mao’s revolutionary cause. Human relationships, characterized by harmony and tolerance in ancient China, were filled with hatred and mistrust during the Cultural Revolution. China’s rich tradition of artistic expression was replaced with formulaic political jargon and tedious ideological clichés as the most pervasive form of public discourse. China, one of the oldest and flourishing civilizations in the world, had become a nation of fanaticism and terror, a cultural wasteland, and a stage for social/political drama characterized by cultism and mass hysteria.

The Cultural Revolution ended in 1976 soon after Mao’s death and the arrest of the Gang of Four.² However, the shock waves of the ten-years’ chaos continue to have a devastating effect on Chinese thought, culture, and communication behaviors. This tragic experience of China’s painful past has become part of the collective Chinese memory. These memories cannot be easily erased or forgotten, despite efforts by the government to do so. History is the best teacher. This failed social experiment offers a wealth of potential insights into the relationship between rhetoric and behavior for the Chinese and the non-Chinese, for political leaders as well as for ordinary citizens throughout the world.

This book is not primarily about the tragic events of the Cultural Revolution, nor is it about the recovery of its victims or the redemption of its radical fanatics. The study of victimization can be an emotionally appealing theme, but it does not guarantee that China and the Chinese people will learn the lessons of history, nor does it prevent the occurrence of the Cultural Revolution somewhere else. This book attempts to address the question of why such a human tragedy happened in China. What were the symbols and symbolic practices that instigated such an event? How did the symbols and symbolic practices foster such chaotic nightmare? How did the symbols and symbolic practices at the time influence Chinese culture, Chinese thought processes, and Chinese communication behaviors? What lessons have the Chinese learned from the experience? Do the various factors that contributed to the Cultural Revolution still exist in China today? The Chinese people need to engage in a reflective process that involves moving beyond a sense of themselves as passive victims. As Arendt (1963) implies with regard to the Jewish people, the Chinese people need to search their own souls, examine their own thought processes, and ultimately arrive at a much deeper understanding of the rhetorical phenomenon known as the Cultural Revolution.

The subject of how symbols influence the way people think and act has been the center of scholarly attention and social/political concern since ancient times. While rhetoric was a powerful means of persuasion for Greek sophists and church fathers in ancient and medieval periods respectively, it has served as a primary tool for social change and political control in both democratic and totalitarian societies of the modern era. From the much-debated Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis (language shapes thought and culture), to Michel Foucault’s (1972) theory of discourse formation (discourse is shaped in relation to power and empowerment), to Hannah Arendt’s (1963) discussion of the banality of evil (evil is committed by following certain linguistic rules), we are provided with a more sophisticated understanding of the relationships among language, thought, culture, and human behavior.

This project is premised on the scholarly claim that language influences thought, culture, and human action, and that political language influences political thought and behavior. A look at this phenomenon is taken from anthropological, philosophical, critical, and rhetorical perspectives, examining how symbols and symbolic practices were performed and enacted in political contexts to legitimize the ruling ideology and alienating a whole group of people. The primary types of symbols under examination are political slogans, official propaganda, the language of wall posters, the lyrics in mass songs, and model operas. Symbolic expression is interwoven with ritualistic practices related to cultism, denunciation rallies, political study sessions, and criticism and self-criticism meetings. In describing and analyzing these symbols and practices, rhetorical themes and features are identified and delineated. Their impact on Chinese thought, culture, and communication is discussed.

In my descriptions and analyses of these symbols and symbolic practices I will locate the construction and dissemination of symbols within the political context of the Cultural Revolution. During this period Mao and his followers controlled the official media and were largely responsible for the coining of slogans and political clichés as well as the vulgar and violent rhetoric produced by the Red Guards. The Red Guards’ pamphlets and the mass-produced wall posters were basically plagiarized versions of official Communist Party discourse proclaiming itself the infallible and