Thought Reform and Cultural Revolution: An Analysis of the Symbolism of Chinese Polemics

Lowell Dittmer

doi:10.2307/1956954

Between Generations: Activist Chinese Youths in Pursuit of a Political Role in the San-fan and in the Cultural Revolution

The China Quarterly ◽

10.1017/s0305741000038297 ◽

1979 ◽

Vol 79 ◽

pp. 511-528 ◽

Cited By ~ 10

Author(s):

David M. Raddock

Keyword(s):

Cultural Revolution ◽

Family Relationships ◽

Reform Movement ◽

Political Role ◽

Thought Reform ◽

Political Roles ◽

Clear Line ◽

The Cultural Revolution

This paper attempts to assess just how much and in what ways behaviour has changed between the generation that experienced the Son-fan, Wu-fan Campaign in 1951–52 and the generation that pitched itself into the Cultural Revolution of 1966–69. We focus in the first instance on the confluence of the San-fan with a thought reform movement in the schools in 1951–52, in which students “drew a clear line of demarcation between self and family,” often denouncing their parents, and in which a youth vanguard forced their teachers as well to criticize themselves. Impressionistic comparisons between that campaign and the Cultural Revolution of the ways in which adoles-cents tried to establish continuity between patterns of behaviour learned in childhood and adult social-political roles may reveal differences in the direction and nature of their rebelliousness and may reflect changes in family relationships and in socialization patterns.

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Thought Reform During the Chinese Cultural Revolution: The Case of Deng Kesheng

SSRN Electronic Journal ◽

10.2139/ssrn.2712298 ◽

2016 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Mirjam Eggli ◽

Reza Hasmath

Keyword(s):

Cultural Revolution ◽

Thought Reform ◽

Chinese Cultural Revolution

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Thought Reform and Cultural Revolution: An Analysis of the Symbolism of Chinese Polemics

American Political Science Review ◽

10.1017/s0003055400259303 ◽

1977 ◽

Vol 71 (1) ◽

pp. 67-85 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Lowell Dittmer

Keyword(s):

Political Culture ◽

Cultural Revolution ◽

Educational Achievement ◽

Cultural Transformation ◽

Social Categories ◽

Major Purpose ◽

Thought Reform ◽

The Masses ◽

Chinese Political Culture ◽

The Cultural Revolution

Although the major purpose of the Cultural Revolution was to transform Chinese political culture, the way in which this transformation took place has remained unclear. This paper attempts to understand cultural transformation as a process of interaction within a semiological system, consisting of a network of communicators and a lexicon of political symbols. The pragmatic aspect of this process is the outcome of an interplay among the intentions of the elites, the masses, and the target of criticism: political circumstances during the Cultural Revolution were more benign to the cathartic and hortatory intentions of the masses and elites than to the expiatory needs of the target. The syntactic aspect of the system concerns the relationship among symbols: These were found to form a dichotomous structure divided by a taboo barrier, which elicited strong but ambivalent desires to achieve a revolutionary breakthrough. The semantic aspect of the symbolism refers to problematic dimensions of experience in Chinese political culture–the psychological repression imposed by a system of rigid social censorship, the political discrimination practiced against certain social categories, the persistence of differences in income or educational achievement in a socialist system–and suggests that these “contradictions” may be resolved by bold frontal assault.The symbolism of Cultural Revolution polemics has now become part of Chinese political culture. Its impact seems to have been to inhibit social differentiation (particularly hierarchical), to encourage greater mass participation, and to foster more frequent and irreconcilable conflict among elites.

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Interviews with Li Xueqin: The Life of a Chinese Historian in Tumultuous Times: Part One

Early China ◽

10.1017/s0362502800000419 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 35 ◽

pp. 1-35 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Keyword(s):

Cultural Revolution ◽

Mao Zedong ◽

Republic Of China ◽

Great Leap ◽

Thought Reform ◽

Great Leap Forward ◽

The Republic Of China ◽

The Republic ◽

The Great Leap Forward ◽

Political Turmoil

When Li Xueqin was born in Beijing on 28 March, 1933, the Republic of China was in power, with its capital in Nanjing, and the Japanese occupied Manchuria. On 29 July 1937 Japanese troops invaded Beijing and brought it under control in little more than a week. The occupation of Beijing lasted until the Japanese surrender in August 1945. The People's Liberation Army entered Beijing in the end of January of 1949 and on 1 October 1949, when Li Xueqin was sixteen, Mao Zedong proclaimed the establishment of the People's Republic of China. This period of warfare was followed by periods of political turmoil which often centered around intellectuals—thought reform in the early fifties, the anti-rightest campaigns and the Great Leap Forward of the late fifties and early sixties, the Cultural Revolution from the mid-sixties to the mid-seventies.

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