“Contradictions among the People”

Chapter 8 turns to the Maoist practices of resolving civil disputes through mediation by courts, workplace leaders, and residents committees, guided by the notion that such disputes were “contradictions among the people.” The focus is on the impact of the Marriage Law of 1950, since other kinds of civil disputes were rather rare under the Maoist Socialist system. The principle of gender and marital equality and the way marital disputes and divorces were handled by community and workplace leaders as well as courts were continuation of the same practices in the revolutionary years. The emphasis on mediation before adjudication in divorce cases was also similar to the earlier times, even though mediators were different.

The People According to the Chinese Communist Party: Reinterpreting the Party’s Political Theory

This article argues that the Chinese Communist Party has adopted a unique understanding of the people. Unlike the liberal view, which generally considers the people a nonpolitical and positive entity, the party views the people as essentially political. The party’s political understanding of the people, this article argues, is consistent with the very nature of the people. Viewed from the political understanding of the people and representing the people, the party’s theories of “contradictions among the people,” of the “mass line,” and of distinctions among different classes and individuals are consistent with self-governance by the people. The party’s theories are not inherently totalitarian, antidemocratic, and arbitrary, as liberal theorists argue.

Manifesto of the Alliance for Human Rights in China

The repression of dissent and the arrest of a number of human rights activists in Peking last April was not unexpected. For one thing, this repression has confirmed the general belief that the authorities in China have no time for legality in any Western sense of the word. The idea that a citizen should be entitled to civil rights, held independently from the Communist Party and the State, is nearly always dismissed as a bourgeois absurdity. The Catch-22 logic of Mao's concept of the ‘contradictions among the people’ was manifested once again: the people do have a right to speak out freely, should fully air their views, hold serious debate on national issues, and write dazibaos (wall posters). But if they go too far, if they abuse that right, they are no longer allowed to exercise it. They become ‘reactionaries’. The ‘movement for democratic freedoms and respect for human rights’ started in mid-November 1978 and lasted until April of this year, becoming known as the ‘Peking Spring’. As part of their campaign, the activists held public meetings and organised demonstrations in the streets of Peking, as well as in the provinces. Dazibaos were put up on the Democracy Wall at Xidan Square in the centre of Peking. Unofficial publications were sold in the streets. Among the various publications to emerge from the movement were: The Fifth April Tribune, Today, Bulletin of References for the Masses, Tribune of the People, The Alliance for Human Rights, and Tansuo (‘Explorations’). Among the unknown number of those arrested were two well-known leaders of the movement: Wei Jingsheng, 29, electrician, publisher and editor of Tansuo. He is also the author of ‘The Fifth Modernisation’ and ‘Qin Cheng No. 1’, which describes a prison for high-level cadres in the suburb of Peking. Also detained is Ren Wanding, 35, a worker, and one of the leaders of the Alliance for Human Rights in China. Both men have been condemned by the authorities as ‘counter-revolutionaries’, a charge that carries capital punishment.