ICAS Publications Series. Monographs; 7. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press; Chicago: University of Chicago Press [distributor], 2012. 313 pp. US$75.00, paper. ISBN 978-90-8964-410-7.
When the revolutionary Chinese Communist Party led by Mao Zedong founded the People’s Republic in 1949, a central component of the state-building project was thought remoulding. Defined by Hu Ping as transforming individuals’ worldviews, or more simply as xinao (brainwashing), the scope of this endeavour was enormous: “Today, there is no one over fifty years of age in mainland China who lacks heartfelt experience of thought remoulding” (10). The breadth and depth of thought remoulding in China was unparalleled anywhere in the communist world, such that Hu sees it as a defining feature of the CCP’s totalitarian rule. To Hu, the process of thought remoulding is essentially about the “taming of the human” (10), and, importantly, the varied responses of individuals willing to accept or resist the will of the party. This translated volume of Hu’s meditations on thought remoulding tackles several questions: what was it, why was it accepted, how was it carried out, and how did some resist it?
In addressing these questions, Hu makes clear the devastating impact of thought remoulding on both the individual and larger Chinese society. Hu weaves into his narrative a mixture of personal anecdote, references to Western philosophical work, social science research, and Chinese history. The breadth of references is striking: Hu will move effortlessly from summarizing a 1959 psychology study carried out at Stanford University to, three pages later, a discussion of the relationship between thought remoulding and Chinese literary classics such as Water Margin.
Over the course of seven chapters, Hu considers his core questions about thought remoulding for audiences both familiar and unfamiliar with the topic. The first two chapters seek to define thought remoulding, including its “absurdity” in comparison to more “logical product[s] of Marxism” (21) such as the planned economy. Part of defining a concept foreign to most Western readers is articulating what thought remoulding is not; Hu is emphatic in differentiating it from other mental processes such as the development of morals or evolution of ideas.
Chapter 2, which takes up the issue of why thought remoulding was accepted en masse, focuses on the CCP’s building of a new conceptual universe (for example, casting intellectuals as the “stinking number nine” at the bottom of a new social hierarchy) and an ideological and organizational structure whereby there is one truth and violence accompanies the enforcement of that truth. Totalitarian systems have a “sky-darkening huge net of many types of lies” (50), which make it difficult for any lone citizen to determine truths outside of official doctrine. Layered over this is the sheer power of the endless campaign culture of the Mao period. Here Hu tells the story of a friend of his who loved singing but disliked revolutionary songs. Despite his best efforts to sing folk songs, this friend nonetheless found himself humming revolutionary songs to himself during unguarded moments because of the repetition of hearing these songs over and over, everywhere.
After laying conceptual foundations, the third chapter provides a description of the various tactics employed in thought remoulding, to powerful cumulative effect. There are the study sessions, collective rituals, affective propaganda, criticism, and self-criticism meetings. First is the “ferocious clap” of denouncing a person in a criticism session, then isolation and shaming. All of this has the effect of breaking down an individual’s defenses and creating in him an “emotional need to identify with one’s oppressors” (117).
From there the book pivots to the ways in which individuals found ways to evade thought remoulding or outright rebel against these heavy-handed tactics of a seemingly monolithic party-state. Evasion has the appearance of “getting tamed” (164), observed during the middle and late periods of the Cultural Revolution (1969–76). Rebellion has followed evasion, though Hu puzzles through, in chapter 7, why CCP membership is still widely coveted and why there hasn’t been a mass defection from the Party.
The last two chapters weigh the problem of an apathetic Chinese citizenry—the result of a crumbling ideological foundation and the waning of thought remoulding—against the struggles of a pro-democracy minority both underground and exiled. Hu is staunchly in the liberal camp, but he is skeptical of the thesis posited by modernization theorists that economic development and shared prosperity across a burgeoning middle class will drive political liberalization. He favours an ideational approach to political change, one where citizens must have at bottom faith in the power of liberal ideas. At this juncture he could have dedicated more space to the formidable coordination problems facing his political minority, which is compounded by the problems of falsified preferences, geography, and lack of institutional memory.
Hu is cautiously optimistic about the emergence of a China free of thought remoulding and the political control required to carry it out. He sees a present and future where liberal-minded citizens and sympathetic Party members support one another and break down a system where thought remoulding will mark a historical moment in a bygone system. But whereas thought remoulding is “a negation of the freedom of thought” (165), this does not necessarily imply that the end of thought remoulding will usher in a time of free thought. Instead there is only the possibility, with measured strides, of achieving the universal dignity that Hu believes is at the heart of a liberal society.
In closing, Hu casts China as progressing through several stages in the life cycle of a totalitarian system. First is the promise of a utopian system that elicits fanatic pledges of loyalty, and citizen obedience is further enforced through a regime of terror. Rebellion follows, and if the party is successful in thwarting these efforts, citizen indifference and apathy mark the final stage. What happens next is a matter of speculation.
Charlotte Lee
Stanford University, Stanford, USA
pp. 898-900