Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University. New York: Columbia University Press, 2016. xv, 262 pp. (Illustrations.) US$60.00, cloth. ISBN 978-0-231-14964-8.
This is a very ambitious and thought-provoking book, which attempts nothing less than to solve three highly contentious issues in the study of the Cultural Revolution and its legacies in less than 200 pages. First, Guobin Yang offers a new perspective on how to explain the roots of factional violence in China’s Red Guard movement; second, he provides an intellectual portrait in the long durée of the “Red Guard generation,” referring to the age cohort born around 1949 who attended middle school by the mid-1960s and for whom the Red Guard movement was the formative experience of their lives. The size of this cohort is not precisely defined (10 to 120 million) (6), but rather depends on whether or not one also includes students in elementary schools and universities. Yang’s final aim is to reveal changes and continuities in Chinese political culture and patterns of popular protest. The arguments are presented in a very accessible style of writing that eases classroom usage, especially at the undergraduate level.
The book is divided into seven chapters, which by and large follow a chronological order. After presenting a case study of factional violence in Chongqing in 1967, the book then traces aspects of political culture that influenced the Red Guard generation and delves into Red Guard theory production during the Cultural Revolution. Chapters 4 and 5 deal with the sent-down period, looking at how the hardship of “ordinary life” transformed the Red Guard generation’s previous revolutionary ideals, and furthermore depict aspects of underground culture that led to new forms of community and a reconceptualization of identities. These newly constituted identities were crucial in turning away from the Cultural Revolution, and by the late 1970s ushering in a period referred to as a “new enlightenment.” The final chapter is closest to Yang’s previous work and traces factionalized memories from the early reform era to the present.
The author is less interested in presenting new materials than in offering new explanations based on theories of Victor Turner, Max Weber, and others. The basic argument may be summarized as follows: Chinese political culture in the 1950s and early 1960s predisposed the Red Guard generation to certain perceptions of reality, most importantly inscribing the sacred nature of the revolution. “Performance” assumes centre stage, as Red Guards tried to live up to or even reenact some of these features during the Cultural Revolution. It is thus “ideas” rather than social background or political circumstances that Yang privileges in his explanations of Red Guard behaviour. The sent-down period is seen as a liminal stage that resulted in a routinization of the revolutionary ideals, as the mundane aspects of everyday life in the countryside superseded abstract notions of class struggle.
The book is strongest in the sections linked to its second goal, the generational portrait. Based on a plethora of memoirs, interviews, and contemporary documents, Yang presents the changes in Red Guard world outlook and self-perception by way of intriguing quotes and interview excerpts. Some issues, such as how members of the Red Guard generation actually perceived the world (64-68), merit a more detailed account. Also of interest are the recurring symbolic repertoires of political protest and the personal continuities, in a process that Yang aptly describes as “funneling out” (156), with activists decreasing in number following the arrests in the wake of every major outbreak of protest.
The book’s brevity, while making for a pleasant read, hampers a full development of many of its arguments. Replacing current explanations of Red Guard factionalism by providing a chapter-length study on Chongqing, which Yang claims applies to most major Chinese cities, is ultimately unconvincing. While Chongqing clearly is one of the most remarkable places to study violent conflicts in the early Cultural Revolution, the involvement of a large number of workers from the military-industrial complex joining different groups does not lend itself easily to purely ideational explanations of Red Guard factionalism. To be sure, including notions of “performance,” “script,” or “enactment” in our understanding of Cultural Revolutionary factionalism (as other authors have done in the past) is crucial, but this “performative turn” does not replace detailed studies of specific social and political contexts.
In terms of theory, the book offers interesting connections but shies away from some of the most difficult questions, such as that of belief in what is quite problematically defined as Maoist “orthodoxy.” It was precisely the lack of a coherent set of “orthodox” guidelines that provided the political space for the politics of the performative, as both the “Sixteen Points” and the “May 16th Circular” contained numerous inconsistencies and self-contradictions, not to mention the citational nature of Mao’s “supreme instructions.” Moreover, Yang employs Lü Xiaobo’s characterization of the “sacredness” of the revolutionary project, without offering an explanation of how we should analytically define and understand these notions of “sacredness” or “sacrality.” The stimulating nature of the book is further hindered by the uneven quality of the chapters, thus chapter 3 on Red Guard theory production offers neither new cases nor a novel analysis beyond what Wu Yiching and others have already explored in much greater detail. There are a few factual errors that are always hard to avoid, such as stating that the Cultural Revolution ended fifty years ago instead of forty (164) or giving the print number of Mao’s Selected Works between 1966 and 1970 as 4.2 billion copies (127) instead of 744 million. The former number includes the Little Red Book and various other writings. Pinyin syllables are also left unorthodoxly unconnected throughout the text.
While the book does not provide a clavis Sinica, a hidden key to unravel the mysteries of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, it does offer a highly intelligent overview of the Red Guard generation that is especially helpful in viewing the long-term development of this age cohort, as well as providing new perspectives on how to analyze this generation’s self-perception during changing periods of the recent Chinese past.
Daniel Leese
University of Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany
pp. 560-562