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

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

David M. Raddock
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Extract

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.

Type
Research Article
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 79 , September 1979 , pp. 511 - 528
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 1979

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References

1. For a general discussion of this event, see Barnett, A. Doak, Communist China: The Early Years 1949–1955 (New York: Praeger, 1964), pp. 125–34Google Scholar.

2. Solomon, Richard H., Mao's Revolution and the Chinese Political Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971), passimGoogle Scholar; Pye, Lucian, The Spirit of Chinese Politics (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1968), pp. 74–75 and passimGoogle Scholar.

3. Chin-wu, Cheng, “Be good at encouraging the youth to advance,” Chungkuo ch'ing-nien, No. 22, 16 11 1956Google Scholar, in Extracts from China Mainland Magazines, No. 31 (1956), pp. 49–52Google Scholar.

4. Ibid.

5. See, for example Nan-fang jih-pao, 14 November 1964.

6. Tientsin jih-pao (Tientsin Daily), 13 January 1952.

7. Chekiang jih-pao (Chekiang Daily), 3 March 1952.

8. Chun-yi, Wei, “How youths of bourgeois families should treat their families,” Chung-kuo ch'ing-nien, No. 7 (19 04 1952), p. 8Google Scholar.

9. “A talk about thought questions in the San-fan,” ibid., No. 2 (26 January 1952), p. 12.

10. Ibid. p. 14.

11. Ibid. p. 13.

12. Ibid., 12 January 1952, p. 26.

13. Kuang-ming jih-pao (Kuang-ming Daily), 26 July 1952. Although respondents report that more males than women took an active stand then, many of the models in the newspapers were young women, and their attacks against their fathers seemed all the more venomous and personal.

14. Ibid. 27 May 1952.

15. Ibid.

16. Ibid. 6 June 1952.

17. Chekiang Daily, 15 February 1952.

18. Chung-kuo ch'ing-nien, No. 2 (26 01 1952), p. 14Google Scholar.

19. People's Daily, 14 January 1951.

20. A personal testimony in Stan ch'un-chung jih-pao, 8 March 1952.

21. Cf. Adorno, T. W. et al. , The Authoritarian Personality (New York, Harper, 1950), passimGoogle Scholar; Raddock, David, Political Behavior of Adolescents in China, AAS Monograph XXXII1 (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1977), Chaps. IV and VIGoogle Scholar.

22. Chun-yi, Wei, “Tsai ‘San-fan,’ Wu-fan' yun-tung chung tzu-ch'an-chiehchi chia-t'ing chu-shen-ti ko-ming ch'ing-nien ju-ho k'an-ti tzu-chi” (“How the revolutionary youth of bourgeois background see themselves in the Three-anti and Five-anti movements), Chung-kuo ch'ing-nien, No. 7 (19 04 1952), pp. 8–9Google Scholar.

23. Ibid.

24. Ibid.

25. Ibid.

26. People's Daily. 14 March 1952.

27. Kuang-ming Daily, 20 June 1952.

28. See, for example, Sian ch'ün-chung jih-pao, 5 May 1952; Ch'ang-chiang jih-pao, 24 February 1952.

29. Po-lun, Chu, “Tsun-chung ho fu-yang fu-mu shih wo kuo jen-min yuliang-ti tao-teh ch'uan-t'ung” (“Respect for and support of parents is the excellent moral tradition of our people), Chung-kuo ch'ing-nien, No. 23, 1 12 1956Google Scholar.

30. Fang, Chou, “Ai ni nien-lao-ti fu-mu” (“Love your aged parents”), Chung-kuo ch'ing-nien pao, 23 12 1956Google Scholar.

31. K'e-heng, Hsieh, “Chiao-yu ch'ing-nien tsun hao yang-lao” (“Educate youth to respect and support the aged”), Chung-kuo ch'ingnien pao, 30 11 1956Google Scholar.

32. Yang-fang, Yao, “From filial piety to the treatment of parents,” Chungkuo ch'ing-nien, No. 21, 1 11 1956Google Scholar, transl. in Extracts from China Main-land Magazines (Hereafter ECMM), pp. 21–26.

Contrast this position with the hard-nosed position on the attitude of striving “to become officials” adopted after the Cultural Revolution.

33. Chung-kuo ch'ing-nien pao, 30 November 1956; see also Ibid., 26 December 1956.

34. Chung-kuo ch'ing-nien, No. 23 (1 12 1956), p. 29Google Scholar.

35. Feng Ting, “Love and support of parents is also a necessary virtue in the social society,” ibid. No. 24, 16 November 1956, transl. in ECMM, No. 65 (1956), pp. 17–20Google Scholar.

36. “Learn from the old generation,” Chung-kuo ch'ing-nien, No. 2 (16 01 1952), p. 11Google Scholar.

37. For example, see the photo of a young person studying the art of wood-block printing from anold man, in Chung-kuo ch'ing-nien pao, 22 December 1956.

38. Chung-kuo ch'ing-nien, No. 23, 1 12 1956, p. 33Google Scholar. Cf. Hu Stub's antifiliality poem during the May Fourth:

In reality I wanted no son

But you have come

But I shall have to feed and teach you

This is my obligation to humanity

It is not a special favour to you

39. Apart from case-specific indicators, the syndrome of a “horizontal” father-son relationship consists of such shared factors as lack of arbitrary and harsh discipline; father's encouraging son to express his opinions and taking them into consideration; closeness of father and son (as opposed to father's aloofness); mutual respect; father's encouragement for and praise of son's independent achievements; open debate between father and son over differences.

The “vertical” paradigm is indicated by a father's arbitrary punishment; image of severity; intolerance of a son's legitimate disagreement, not to mention disobedience; aloofness which increases as the boy approaches adolescence.

Both the “vertical” and “horizontal” categories are, of course, necessarily somewhat arbitrarily delimited. For instance, within the comparatively broad “ horizontal” grouping, there is a great deal of variance, ranging from horizontal in some degree to nearly equal; in the former, some of the above indicators would be less pronounced. A diagram quantitatively correlating these intra-familial patterns with level of activism among Red Guard participants appears below:

See also Raddock, David M., Political Behavior of Adolescents in China: The Cultural Revolution in Kwangchow, AAS Monograph XXXII (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1977), Ch. 4, and passimGoogle Scholar.

40. See discussion of the implications of pecking or ranking orders in Lorenz, Konrad, On Aggression (New York: Harcourt, 1966), pp. 40–44Google Scholar; for one of many discussions of competition between subordinates and immediate superordinates as the basis for the need for creating organizational counter-measures, see Crozier, Michel, The Bureaucratic Phenomenon (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,; 1964), p. 162 ffGoogle Scholar.

41. Keniston, Kenneth discusses a similar phenomenon in his article, “The sources of student dissent,” Journal of Social Issues, Vol. 23, No. 3 (1967), pp. 119–21CrossRefGoogle Scholar. He suggests that student rebels in the United States were trying to implement the very values their parents had compromised as adults. Seen in Chinese perspective, this apparent emulation is also a form of generational rivalry, an effort to surpass one's parents.

42. Shanghai wen-hui pao, 4 August 1968, transl. in Survey of China Mainland Press (SCMP), No. 4251, 5 11 1968Google Scholar.

43. Cf. Raddock, David, “The ‘revolutionary successor’: some psychological perspectives on youth participation in the Cultural Revolution,” China Report, Vol. XI, No. 3 (05–06 1975), pp. 27–31Google Scholar.

44. For example, see “Using the Party's basic line to educate a new generation of minors,” People's Daily, 20 August 1975, transl. SCMP, No. 5941 (24 09 1975), pp. 52–61Google Scholar; “Seriously carry out on a solid basis the policy on ‘educable children,’” People's Daily, 21 April 1972, transl. in SCMP, No. 5126 (4 05 1972), p. 141Google Scholar.

45. “Educated Peking youth integrate with workers and peasants,” New China News Agency (Peking), 7 05 1972Google Scholar, transl. inSCMP, No. 5136, p. 164.

46. Eckstein, Harry, A Theory of Stable Democracy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961)Google Scholar.