Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2023. US$30.00, paper. ISBN 9781503635227.
Within the enigmatic cataclysm of the Cultural Revolution, Guangxi Province used to appear as most intractable. Crisp-clear and thorough, Andrew Walder’s masterly analysis illuminates the events in Guangxi and has broad implications for Cultural Revolution research. Civil War in Guangxi demonstrates that tracing the formation, proliferation, and confrontation between Guangxi’s competing Allied Command and April 22 factions leads to good explanations for the province’s exceptionally high death toll during the Cultural Revolution. The province’s unique position as a support base for the Vietnam War led to Beijing’s unusual decision to retain a top official whose blatant offenses against Maoist policy made him an obvious target and who had become the rebels’ nemesis. This triggered a chain of events, with fatal decisions along the way, that carried tightly organized competition between the Allied and April factions deep into the countryside. Once the faction associated with localized military networks politically won the upper hand, inflammatory rhetoric and a hierarchy prone to escalation resulted in Guangxi’s infamous atrocities, aggravated by crimes of opportunity.
The book stands on firm empirical ground, in part thanks to recently available investigation reports compiled in the 1980s with firm backing from Beijing authorities. But far more importantly, the author found an efficient methodology to harness this material. Confronted with an avalanche of disjointed raw information worth 36 volumes (in Song Yongyi’s edition), covering events at different hierarchical levels in jurisdictions throughout Guangxi, there is no obvious way to proceed. Meticulously coding the information, compiling one database of jurisdictions and another of events, Walder succeeded in identifying typical patterns, connecting the dots, establishing the sequence of events, recognizing unescapable dynamics, and ultimately presenting a narrative along with statistical evidence backing up his argument at every turn. These databases included on the author’s faculty website are easily downloaded, along with helpful codebooks. This is an exemplary approach to combining a close reading of documents with data analysis.
The book builds on Yang Su’s Collective Killings in Rural China during the Cultural Revolution, starting with the recognition that many noncombatant victims in the countryside suffered not because of their factional affiliations, but because of stigma they carried from previous campaigns. However, Walder convincingly refutes Su’s characterization of rural atrocities as “collective killings.” Instead, killings were closely related to provincial-level politics, distinct organizational features of the two factions, and the lethal dynamics of their competition.
Military forces were protagonists, as they became closely aligned with one faction. Carefully compiled data on the perpetrators of massacres serve as evidence that the local authorities are to blame. The timing of massacres in relationship to political developments is also a strong indication that factional dynamics were key, even when the victims themselves did not belong to any faction. Persecution orders and death lists also contradict the view that violence was localized and spontaneous. To be sure, many campaigns in villages spun out of control as orders were conveyed, but that is a familiar dynamic of Maoist hierarchies. Ultimately, places with less reach of the state also experienced less killing.
Cutting through the complexity of events, Walder’s theory identifies forces that tie together the dynamics of the Cultural Revolution throughout the province. I am not aware of other analyses about Maoist movements which connect with such precision disparate events in towns and villages to events at higher levels of the state. As a mid-level theory, the key for explaining death rates are not socio-economic variables, such as ethnic identities, but characteristics of Guangxi’s factions. The theory is appealing, because it allows for a great diversity of local manifestations reflecting larger trends. In some places, historical grievances against cadres who had eagerly enforced the Great Leap Forward, or the Socialist Education Campaign, became salient rallying cries during the Cultural Revolution. For example, in the county with the highest death rate, the Socialist Education Campaign was the divisive issue early on, but we also learn that the atrocities were the result not of this feature, but of false reports on bandit infestation. Still, there are recurring statistical patterns. For example, in the absence of strong local mass movements, many power seizures in the countryside were initiated and dominated by local cadres. In short, Walder’s theory provides a unifying thread without flattening local histories.
Given the complexity of events and the many numbers presented, the book is surprisingly easy to follow. The narrative is parsimonious, only referring to a limited number of names, organizations, and places, with useful reminders along the way. Perhaps it would have been sufficient to present county rankings by death rates, instead of reverting to absolute death tolls. The exact number of 2,143 natural villages in Binyang might have been dispensable for explaining why militias, as the result of settlement patterns, were outsiders to villages where they intervened. Footnote 73 (162) provides similar numbers, instead of a source for the (plausible) claim that household registers were used to draw up death lists. Except for the infamous photo on the cover, the author provides no photographic illustrations—yet the descriptions of events, from meetings to street battles, conjure vivid and disturbing images.
Far from closing scholarly conversations about the Cultural Revolution, Civil War in Guangxi invites new scholarship. It is encouraging to see how far a researcher can go, even with limited archival access. Walder’s discoveries await explorations of their implications for other regions. In light of the book, interactive dynamics between rural and urban events need reevaluation, as does our understanding of the military’s role. Previous scholarship paid too little attention to the involvement of the military early on, including by initiating power seizures in January 1967. This book is a must-read for anyone working on the Cultural Revolution, whether on elite or on grassroots politics. Reminiscent of Roderick MacFarquhar, to whom the book is dedicated, Civil War in Guangxi highlights the impact of interventions by central leaders who stirred up revolution. But the author also offers compelling accounts of the dynamics of village communities in peripheral areas. While emphasizing the military’s dominance, the findings facilitate future exploration of localist agendas and the agency of ordinary citizens. Those may be less consequential for death rates than for identifying the movement’s impact. This enlightening contribution opens brand new possibilities for Cultural Revolution research.
Daniel Koss
Harvard University, Cambridge