"Non-People" in the People's Republic of China:
A Chronicle of Terminological Ambiguity

Michael Schoenhals
Stockholm University

The notion that sequences of real events
possess the formal attributes of the stories
we tell about imaginary events could only have
its origin in wishes, daydreams, reveries.

Hayden White, "The Value of Narrativity in the Representation of Reality"

The central subject of what follows is a cluster of terms employed by the Chinese Communist party (CCP) to refer to People (renmin) and non-People (fei renmin). Initially, it was to have been a properly "closed" historical story with a moral meaning. For now, however, I have decided that I am unable to determine what the true or most plausible story to be told about these terms and their functions ought to be. The use and abuse, currency and obsolescence of individual terms still retains the form of a myriad of unfinished stories. Here and there these unfinished stories seem to come together, and briefly one glimpses the possibility of a closure as particular terms are solemnly relegated to the dustheap of history by no less an authority than the CCP Central Committee. But while the lives of non-People as "rightists" or "capitalist roaders" may well be over for good­and the stories of their lives have revealed themselves to be tragedies or for that matter comedies­these terms as such do not simply become archaisms because the Party wishes them to. Once honorific words, rather than disappear, may go in hiding among the vaguely ironic, reappearing to irritate and confuse; and dysphemisms pronounced dead by one generation are revived by the next to curse their ancestors. Because of this, what follows is a chronicle of the uses of terms­not a fully realized historical discourse on political discourse. It terminates, abruptly, during the Cultural Revolution.

"The Chinese People, comprising one-quarter of humanity, have now stood up," CCP Chairman Mao Zedong declared in his opening address at the First Plenary Session of the Chinese People's Consultative Conference on 21 September 1949. "We have stood up," he repeated, assuming the role of the People's spokesperson, and added, "We have friends all over the world."⁽¹⁾

The important point that many of Mao's "friends all over the world" appear never to have fully appreciated is that the seemingly innocuous People (in what follows, the English word is capitalized throughout and used exclusively as a translation of the Chinese term renmin) meant something quite different from what one might have expected, i.e., men or women indefinitely; persons. Mao's People were not quite the same as his "quarter of humanity" either, as the next decades were to show. There were significant segments of China's population that were non-People, who neither got an opportunity nor the CCP Chairman's permission to "stand up." "At the present stage in China," Mao had said three months prior to the founding of the People's Republic, the non-People who forthwith were to be subject to "People's democratic dictatorship" included "the running-dogs of imperialism­the landlord class and bureaucrat-bourgeoisie, as well as the representatives of these classes, the Guomindang reactionaries and their accomplices."⁽²⁾

That the term People was part of an expanding ickylex peculiar to the Communist movement was, not surprisingly, neither denied nor affirmed.⁽³⁾ Still quite a few official explanatory texts published at the time of the founding of the PRC addressed the crucial issue of who is and who is not of the People. To the student of political keywords, the most interesting texts are those that explain by comparison to already familiar concepts, rather than by way of pseudo-sociological analyses or references to canonical texts. In the following excerpt, CCP Central Committee member Bo Yibo explains the meaning of "People" to a group of newly trained journalists:

I think its meaning is quite obvious. "People" is not the same as "nationals" (guomin). In the past, we generally used to say that "nationals" include the landlords and the other antagonistic classes. In any case, persons (ren) living on the national soil are all [sic] "nationals," and are all called "nationals." Then there is another term, called "citizen" (gongmin). "Citizens" are different from "nationals" and from "People." Politically and legally there are such things as "citizen's rights," the most important of which are the right to vote and the right to be elected. So much for "citizens." With "People" it's different. For example, the People's Democratic Dictatorship with the worker-peasant alliance as its main body: here "People" includes workers, peasants, the urban poor, intellectuals, etc., but certainly not landlords and comprador bourgeois elements.⁽⁴⁾

It became the task of the journalists that made up Bo's audience to act as the propagators of an entirely new political discourse centered on a distinction between People on the one hand and non-People on the other. In this context, it could not be taken for granted that the People itself would realize by itself and for itself that the new state was "theirs." Thus in October 1949, the New China News Agency (NCNA) asked journalists to employ every available popular form of communication

to educate (jiaoyu) the People to correctly understand (renshi) and cherish (aihu) their own state and to make them grasp the following point: Old China was a state in which the imperialists, landlords, and bureaucrat-capitalist class oppressed the People; we are now going to create in accordance with Chairman Mao's instructions a People's democratic dictatorship, i.e., the People's own state.⁽⁵⁾

In the "Old China," Chiang Kai-shek's government had been the non-People's government. Zhou Enlai's government was now the People's Government. In a directive to the Chinese media the CCP pointed out that "People's Government (renmin zhengfu) is the formal designation of the democratic government at all levels (e.g., the North-China People's Government), while democratic government (minzhu zhengfu) itself is a general term."⁽⁶⁾

In a report on improving propaganda directed at overseas audiences, a senior editor told the Third NCNA National Conference in December 1953 of a spate of letters he had received from a certain Englishwoman [sic] by the name of McGraw. In one of her letters, Ms. McGraw said "I am overjoyed knowing that today the People of China lead a happy life. You deserve to enjoy happiness more than any other People on this earth."⁽⁷⁾ After citing this and other similarly enthusiastic letters from "friends all over the world," the editor reminded his audience of how important it was to adapt the wording and contents of overseas propaganda to the "mental state" (sixiang zhuangkuang) of foreigners. When describing the improvement of the livelihood of the Chinese People brought about by the CCP, the media's domestic "formulations" (tifa) had to be suitably modified to produce the desired effect:

For instance, one must not put too much stress on the extension of working hours, on doing without rest or sleep, on women taking part in heavy physical labor, etc. This is because in the minds of Western readers, circumstances like these easily create the impression of labor being made more and more intense and of a lack of concern with [the well-being of] the individual. This in turn provides the enemy with opportunities to spread rumors.⁽⁸⁾

The problem of formulations­for domestic and foreign consumption respectively­was to persist for many years, as journalists all over China grappled with the how People and non-People alike were to be written up for one audience or another. Both the NCNA and provincial newspapers were criticized again and again by the CCP Central Propaganda Department and its deputy director Hu Qiaomu for failing in this respect.

Perhaps the most serious problem had to do with voice, as in who was entitled to voice an opinion on behalf of the People of China? In theory, the CCP as a whole represented the ninety-five percent or so of China's nationals that, according to Mao four years earlier, had stood up. But in specific instances, this did not mean that party-run newspapers were free to turn this power (quanli) of representation into quasi-first-person narratives and actually state what the Chinese People did or felt. Ultimately, this important right (n.b., again quanli) was one that belonged exclusively to the CCP Center. But quite often this was forgotten, and hence some of the criticisms were directed against the provincial press in particular.

Between January and October 1953, the NCNA Head Office in Beijing issued some 177 "corrections" of no less than 243 domestic news items.⁽⁹⁾ One of these concerned a telegram from the Shenyang NCNA branch on 17 February in which the Chinese People were mentioned in conjunction with the recent shooting down of five American fighter jets over northeast China. Part of the concluding paragraph of the telegram read: "The People of China . . . express their extreme indignation . . . and are already closely and vigilantly monitoring this plot by the American imperialists to expand the war [in Korea]." These words prompted Hu Qiaomu to inform the NCNA head office of the obvious: "Aside from the People in the area, the 'People of China' had no knowledge whatsoever of this event having taken place. They were even less in a position to feel 'indignation' or to be 'vigilant'."⁽¹⁰⁾ In matters such as these, only the Center could express the feelings of the "People of China."

One unintended and perplexing consequence of the CCP Center's criticism of the media for voicing opinions on behalf of the People "in general" was that it became safer for journalists and editors to represent the sinister essence of what China's non-People, rather than China's People, did or felt. Domestic "running-dogs of imperialism" had no agents who protested a misrepresentation or falsehood attributed to them.

A second practice that disturbed the CCP Center was when journalists neglected to mention the role of the Party when discussing the achievements of individual representatives of the People. In a 1954 self-criticism produced by the editorial board of the Inner Mongolia Daily, this practice was attributed to a failure on behalf of the staff concerned to realize that the individual "can accomplish nothing in isolation from the leadership of the Party and the power of the collective." The self-criticism (circulated nationwide by the Central Propaganda Department) cited an article that had ascribed the "startling feats" of a labor hero from the ranks of the People solely to "his stubborn refusal to be daunted by difficulties and his willingness to study assiduously." The problem with this article, according to the Inner Mongolia Daily editorial board, was that "it made no mention of the Party having fostered and helped him." In a second article, a journalist had written about a humble peasant who had become a labor hero thanks to his "outstanding moral qualities." This was also deemed problematic, since what was described "could not possibly have taken place without the Party's fostering and education, and the help of the masses."⁽¹¹⁾

In the summer of 1955, the People's Daily was able to declare with confidence that: "In short: A day of joy for the People is a time of woe for counter-revolutionary elements. Each year on our National Day, this is what we celebrate above all else."⁽¹²⁾ In denunciations of the so-called "Hu Feng counter-revolutionary clique," the Party media repeated the message over and over again. The things that "terrify" the enemy are precisely the things that "make the revolutionary masses of the People happy."⁽¹³⁾

When the population in parts of China refused to abide by this logic­formulated by none other than Mao Zedong himself­the CCP promptly ordered the People's Liberation Army (PLA) to intervene. In southwest China, agricultural collectivization presented a case in point. In a brief to journalists, the NCNA had recently described it as "a step taken by our Party to resolve China's ethnic problem . . . about which propaganda should be made to hearten and educate the People."⁽¹⁴⁾ But in December 1955, more than 100,000 less than "happy" members of the Yi and other ethnic groups in forty-three counties along the Yunnan-Sichuan-Tibet border rebelled against the forced imposition of land reform and (trial) rural collectivization. The CCP responded by mobilizing no less than thirty-four regiments from the Kunming and Chengdu Military Regions. Today's official history books note that "more than 6,000 battles were fought, more than 20,000 rebel elements were shot, more than 20,000 rebel elements were taken prisoner, while more than 40,000 masses were able to return to their homes."⁽¹⁵⁾

The dead and imprisoned had been sacrificed for the sake of keeping the Chinese People "happy." The value of non-People's lives was miniscule indeed. In fact, in his address to the Eighth CCP Central Committee's Second Plenum in November 1956, Mao Zedong implied in metaphorical language that even expending them for the sake of comforting beasts was a legitimate political option: "If we did not suppress counter-revolutionaries, the working People would be unhappy. So would the oxen and the hoes, and even the land would feel uncomfortable, all because the peasants who put the oxen and hoes and the land to use would be unhappy."⁽¹⁶⁾

"The People does not exercise dictatorship over itself," Mao Zedong declared in February 1957. In one of his most systematic­though not necessarily very coherent­discourses on the relationship between and among People, non-People, and the CCP, the Chairman made numerous remarks like this one. In a rare statistic concerning China's non-People, he noted that between 1950 and 1952, some 700,000 persons had been done away with, but that "beginning last year . . . the killing basically stopped altogether." The now dead had constituted an impediment to the development of China's economy. "If that bunch [the 700,000 persons just mentioned] had not been killed, the People would not have been in a position to raise their heads. The People demanded they be killed, in order to liberate the forces of production."⁽¹⁷⁾

These statistics were not included in the published version of Mao's speech. The precise reference to the non-People who perished at the hands of the People's democratic dictatorship was also changed to read very generally "counter-revolutionaries."⁽¹⁸⁾ Originally, it had been a brief, but to an insider rather more informative, "five categories of counter-revolutionaries" (wulei fangeming). So as to preempt any confusion on this point, it needs to be noted that these five "kinds" were not the non-People mentioned by Mao and Bo Yibo in 1949, nor were they identical to what after June 1957 were to be called the "black five categories" (hei wulei). Mao's five categories were "bandit chieftains, professional brigands, local tyrants, special agents, and leaders of reactionary secret societies." These were but one-third of the fifteen kinds of "counter-revolutionary elements and other bad elements" defined and described in detail in two important policy documents from 1956 titled "Explanations by the CCP Center's ten-member small group concerning counter-revolutionary elements and other bad elements" and "Supplementary explanations by the CCP Center's ten-member small group concerning counter-revolutionary elements and other bad elements."⁽¹⁹⁾

At Mao's insistence, in the wake of the speech mentioned, the Chinese media began publishing accounts of how the CCP was solving not contradictions between People and non-People, but "among the People." At first, journalists and editors hesitated for fear of committing mistakes. In its editorial guidelines, the NCNA acknowledged that their task as such was now a new one. Rules were laid down concerning what could and could not be written up, and one of these (altogether eight) rules suggested that for the People not to be informed about everything the People were doing was only for the best of the People:

In general it is inadvisable to report on disturbances by the People, including strikes, interruption of classes, demonstrations, and petitioning of higher authorities. This is because such phenomena are extremely rare, if looked at from our undertaking as a whole. They may only be reported on selectively (once they have been successfully resolved by the departments concerned) if their general didactic significance is so great that the Center has concluded that open reporting would serve to educate the People of the entire nation.⁽²⁰⁾

It was hardly surprising that the media found propagating the "correct handling of contradictions among the People" a difficult task. But these difficulties would soon be over, as the CCP leadership chose to redefine its priorities altogether.

In the English language there is the four-letter word; in Chinese there is the four-character term of abuse. In 1955, Mao Zedong had publicly denounced "Right opportunists inside the Party who . . . act in concert with the forces of capitalism" by calling them "evil spirits and monstrous freaks" (yaomo guiguai).⁽²¹⁾ In early 1957, he began speaking of "ox-monsters and snake-demons" (niugui sheshen), an expression that does not occur in the first four volumes of Selected Works of Mao Zedong but eventually gained widespread popularity. On 12 March, Mao first used it when touching upon traditional operas in an address to a national propaganda conference:

To let some­but not too many­ox-monsters and snake-demons appear on stage is all-right with me. . . . It's dangerous to forbid people from watching ox-monsters and snake-demons. But I'm by no means recommending that we now should let the ox-monsters and snake-demons take over the stage altogether. Then we'd have a mess.⁽²²⁾

In conversation with Central Propaganda Department Deputy Director Zhou Yang, Minister of Culture Mao Dun, and prominent representatives of China's literary and operatic circles attending the conference, Mao used the expression metaphorically not just to speak of the stage but referring as well to "large numbers of ox-monsters and snake-demons out there in society."⁽²³⁾

Part of the tension in Mao's remarks at around this time arose from his conception of China's revolution as a play with only a vaguely realized script rather than, as was customary, a journey towards a fairly well-defined, though distant goal. The actors who normally controlled the (political) stage were increasingly uncomfortable with the growing number of "monsters and demons" given highly visible roles, but in April, Mao defended himself:

Let them assault us! Assault us for a year! Who permitted us to be dogmatic in the first place? Once their assault has made us get rid of dogmatism, then things will be fine. Even if the assault is too fierce, we'll let all of the ox-monsters and snake-demons come out and stir up trouble. The Communist party will allow itself to be cursed for awhile. Let them curse for a couple of months, while we do some thinking.⁽²⁴⁾

As always, Mao ultimately justified his actions and the direction in which he was permitting the plot to develop by referring to the Chinese People, or as it were in this case, "the audience":

Who says we want the ox-monsters and snake-demons? It's the masses who want to see them. We must not suppress them, but rather perform even more and better plays ourselves. We should permit society to gain somewhat in complexity.⁽²⁵⁾

Concordances to Mao's writings published after his death do not tell us where the late Chairman got the key expression from in the first place, but note that it occurs in Du Mu's preface to the Collected Works of Li He. The poetry of Li He (A. D. 790-816), which Mao is known to have been fond of, is here described as "even more absurd and fantastic than ox-monsters and snake-demons."⁽²⁶⁾ Eventually, the concordances note, the expression "came to be used to describe bad people of all kinds."⁽²⁷⁾

"Freaks" firmly entered the public realm of politics three months later. In an editorial written for the People's Daily, Mao used it together with yet a third four-character term of abuse when describing the final month of the combined "hundred flowers" and rectification campaign that had lasted until 7 June:

The purpose was to let the forest-demons and swamp-spirits (chimei wangliang) and the ox-monsters and snake-demons "air views freely" and let poisonous weeds sprout and grow in profusion, so that the People, now shocked to find these things still existing in the world, would take action to wipe them out.⁽²⁸⁾

At this point, the expression "ox-monsters and snake-demons" became synonymous with China's non-People, conveniently defined with the help of yet another four-character phrase, i.e., di fu fan huai which in English is commonly rendered as "landlord elements, rich-peasant elements, reactionary elements, and hooligans." Mao's "forest-demons and swamp-spirits" never gained widespread currency, in all likelihood partly because many Chinese did not know how to pronounce it. Concordances to Mao's works and even ordinary dictionaries of "easily mispronounced words" typically state as follows: "Chimei. Not pronounced 'liwei.' In fairy tales, a forest demon capable of hurting people."⁽²⁹⁾

In the months of July, August, and September 1957, the brunt of CCP propaganda turned from contradictions among the People to the "heinous crimes" of the "bourgeois rightists" (zichanjieji youpai). According to Mao Zedong, this new label represented a "scientific and true-to-fact definition" of those "bourgeois reactionaries" who "oppose the CCP, the People, and socialism." After the summer of 1957, the "ox-monsters and snake-demons" became synonymous with the original four categories of non-People plus the "bourgeois rightists."

No other political movement in the history of the PRC­save for the Cultural Revolution­witnessed such an outburst of creativity in the use and abuse of political dysphemisms in the official media. A quick glance at newspaper headlines alone will illustrate this more than well. Literally hundreds of new labels were invented to refer to the new non-People. Variants on the simple "rightist" label included rightist hard-core element, old-line rightist, rightist pathbreaker, vicious rightist "counsellor," rightist careerist, utterly evil rightist element, rightist wolf in sheep's clothing, and sinister and ruthless rightist element.⁽³⁰⁾ Variants on the "anti-" theme included utterly arrogant and utterly reactionary and utterly despicable anti-Party element, anti-Communist and anti-People conspiratorial activist, anti-Party buffoon-gang accomplice, anti-Party careerist, traitor and spy turned anti-Communist vanguard, anti-Communist specialist, anti-Party "eulogist," anti-Communist "valiant general," anti-Communist black gang strategist and Hu Feng counter-revolutionary clique rank-and-file, old-line anti-Communist, anti-Party clique "military counsellor," anti-Communist "rocket gun," and rightist element oozing anti-Communist toxin from the depths of the soul.⁽³¹⁾ General political slander included political slave of a foreign master, utterly reactionary political conspirator, bourgeois political careerist and "valiant general" assaulting the Party, loyal and obedient servant of imperialism, political conspirator donning the robes of the progressive scholar, double-faced conspirator, and overwhelmingly ambitious conspirator.⁽³²⁾

Western students of languages and their implications have suggested that languages of "sub-political" activities (e.g., theology, law, economy, etc.) may migrate into the political speech, bringing with them paradigms of their own. In such cases, these languages no longer merely perform authoritatively within a limited subcommunity, but encourage new definitions and distributions of authority within the political community at large.⁽³³⁾ It would appear as if something along these lines had happened in China by 1957, when the kind of language one previously would have expected to encounter among uneducated ruffians had been fully assimilated by the Party intelligentsia responsible for headlines in the nation's major newspapers. The sub-political act of simply calling down curses on one's perceived foes was now legitimate. Dysphemic political neologisms (constituent parts of which still hinted at politics, e.g., "right" or "left," "progressive" or "reactionary") like those listed in the preceding paragraph were surrounded by words that were merely offensive. Common terms of abuse included double-dealer, scum, renegade, turncoat, wolf, monster, garbage pile, hooligan and trickster, shameless literati, black sheep, and arsonist.⁽³⁴⁾ Animal, insect, and poison images were popular in references to intellectuals in particular, and included zhuchong (an insect that eats books, similar to a moth), zhuchong of the soul (a play on Stalin's "engineers of the soul"), poisonous snake, poisonous insect, "poisonous weed in the Sun Yat-sen Botanical Garden" (in a reference to a botanist in Nanjing), and all-out-toxic conspirator and careerist (literally wudu juquan, i.e., containing the five toxins of the scorpion, viper, centipede, house lizard and toad).⁽³⁵⁾ Female rightists were called rightist woman general, ferocious woman general, anti-Party clique woman general, and fierce and tough rightist woman general.⁽³⁶⁾

The People of China (as distinct from "the Chinese") are incapable of self-emancipation. On this point the CCP Central Propaganda Department is explicit in its instructions to Party censors noting that the People "easily become ideologically confused" by alternative and heretic accounts of the truth. "The true history" of post-49 events may only be discussed when the CCP Center judges the timing and setting to be right. This applies even to works of fiction. In 1983, a censor with a Shanxi publishing firm informed a writer who had submitted a novel set in the China of the 1950s and 60s that: "The People must be told the true history of the anti-rightism of 1957 and the three bad years, but even so it is (at least for the moment) inadvisable to take the wraps off everything just like that and to write it up in the form of an exposé."⁽³⁷⁾

The People (not China's population) are openly masochistic. They will put up with any amount of abuse as long as their tormentor is a real Communist. In the words of a former President of the CCP Central Party School, describing the situation in the Henan countryside on the eve of the worst famine in modern Chinese history:

Some cadres are hounding the common people to death. They exploit them, and deprive them of every single possession they have. They treat them the way Tibetan slave owners treat their slaves, only they don't actually flay them. When they don't beat the masses, they curse them. They're even worse than the Japanese. . . . And still [the common people] don't rebel.⁽³⁸⁾

No wonder the Party loves the People! Here is a semantic entity that by definition is incapable of rebelling against the CCP. In the same way that a member of a silent majority changes her status the instant she opens her mouth to protest an injustice, a member of the People joins the ranks of the non-People if she rebels against a Party cadre who treats her "worse than the Japanese."

"Humanity" (renlei) constitutes a subject matter on which leading CCP figures discourse only on the rarest of occasions. The official Party newspaper has also used the word sparingly, and mostly in quite narrow contexts. In the 1950s, "humanity" figured in the Chinese media mainly in the contexts of the international peace movement ("The Common Hope of Humanity" was the title of one People's Daily editorial devoted to the movement in 1957) and Soviet proposals to stop the testing of nuclear bombs ("The Intuitive Knowledge of Humanity Must Emerge Victorious" and "The Gospel of Humanity" are the titles of two People's Daily editorials on this topic from 1957 and 1958, respectively). In the following rare digression on what it means to be "human," the speaker is Mao Zedong's close comrade-in-arms Marshal Lin Biao. Lin was by his own admission not a talented speaker, and it is unlikely that he wrote the notes for this speech from 1960 himself. But a transcript of it was subsequently published in his name and circulated inside and outside the PLA for "study and emulation."

As might have been expected from someone who is on record as having called a "revolution in one's thinking" the "most basic of that which is the most basic, the very core of that which is at the very core, and the very soul of that which is the very soul," the idea of thinking or thought (sixiang) is of central importance to Lin:

Thought, one could say, is the distinguishing feature of humanity. Only humans think. Thinking is what distinguishes humans from animals. Human, of course, does here not refer to individuals in isolation. Humans are social beings, they make tools, and they think. Humans have a pair of hands, but in the absence of a brain, in the absence of thought, those hands are unable to create. Hands without a brain are unable to do anything, and will produce nothing. In the absence of correct thought, it is impossible to organize a [political] party bringing together all the heroes and braves [yingxiong haohan]. There will be no party, and no correct [political] movement. This will all become impossible.⁽³⁹⁾

The simple distinction between thinking humans and non-thinking animals is blurred just slightly when Lin goes on from here to speak of lowering and raising the requirements for being human. In the following passage, a distinction between "vulgar" and "lofty" humans is introduced, again linked solely to their thought:

Having thought is one of the main requirements [tiaojian] for being human. The more we lower this requirement, the more we become vulgar [diji] humans; the more we raise this requirement, the more we become lofty [gaoji] humans. We Chinese, if we want to stand at the forefront of the world, and not resign ourselves to a backward position, then we must raise the level of our thought. Raising the level of our thought is the most important thing we can to in order to raise the position of our nation.⁽⁴⁰⁾

If "thought" at this point were to be equated with "education" or "high moral standards," then Lin's argument might still be regarded as conventional, allowing for some friendly interpretation of ambiguous passages. But Lin's "thought" is something out of the ordinary:

But the thought we have in mind is not ordinary thought­the thought of the natural sciences­but political thought. Political thought and apolitical thought are two different things, and we are not referring to that apolitical thought, but to political thought. . . . In its entirety, we call this kind of political thought of ours class thought or the thought of class struggle.⁽⁴¹⁾

We are thus prototypical humans (i.e., not animals) to the extent that we have correct political thought, "class thought," or "thought of class struggle."

From 1963 to 1966, ox-monsters and snake-demons were among the designated targets of the rural so-called "Four Cleanups" movement. In one of the very first programmatic documents of that movement, it was said that one must "expose all the ox-monsters and snake-demons who do damage to socialism."⁽⁴²⁾ Commenting on the progress of the movement in Zhengding county, the Hebei Party Committee declared in February 1966 that:

one must be skilled at accelerating the revolutionization of the thinking of cadres and the broad masses by way of the cleansing of class statuses, the review and judging of the four kinds of elements, the sweeping away of ox-monsters and snake-demons, and other kinds of work and practical struggle.⁽⁴³⁾

In Zhengding county, "sweeping away ox-monsters and snake-demons" had officially been named as one of four "kinds of work and practical struggle" to be carried out during the movement.

It is difficult to determine to what extent the sweeping away of ox-monsters and snake-demons meant the actual execution of non-People "who do damage to socialism." During the initial trial phase of the movement in Hunan, in the winter of 1962-63, some seventy-six such persons lost their lives. When the movement got under way in Hubei, in the second half of 1963, the death toll in the "first batch of experimental sites" was over 2,000. In Xiangyang county, one of Hubei's "second batch of experimental sites," seventy-four non-People lost their lives during the first twenty-five days of the movement. In the autumn and winter of 1963, the Four Cleanups in rural Guangdong led to no less than 602 suicide attempts, of which 503 were successful.⁽⁴⁴⁾

At the end of 1968, the CCP Politburo suggested in circular Zhongfa [1968] 170 that "ox-monsters and snake-demons" belonged to an "ambiguous and vague terminology that is likely to result in the confusion of the two kinds of contradictions."⁽⁴⁵⁾ In a Chinese encyclopedia of words and events from the Cultural Revolution published by the CCP Central Party School in 1989, the relevant entry states: "After the smashing of the 'Gang of Four,' the expression 'ox-monsters and snake-demons' is no longer used when referring to individuals."⁽⁴⁶⁾

When the Chinese population was first bifurcated, the CCP insisted that to tell People from non-People was if not easy then at least possible by applying certain criteria. By 1964, the initial confidence had worn thin, and the following admission by Liu Shaoqi suggests that in some cases (Which ones?) the persons who acted and spoke just like the People might in fact be the most dangerous representatives of the non-People:

Over the past fifteen years, . . . the class enemy has become thoroughly familiar with our way of struggle and knows all our methods. He understands our policies even more clearly than we do ourselves. . . . He hides his class status and appears as a middle peasant, a poor peasant, or a worker. . . . We are no longer able to spot him. All we see are cadres and Communist party members. The enemy uses our own policies and our own slogans in his struggle against us. . . . He accepts (yao) the CCP and socialism, and even the Four Cleanups and the Five Antis. He accepts all the slogans, and all the methods, but it is to be under his leadership.⁽⁴⁷⁾

It is no small wonder CCP policies became extremely ambiguous during the months leading up to the Cultural Revolution.

In the late summer of 1966, during a visit to the Beijing Institute of Architectural Engineering, Liu Shaoqi reminded a hostile audience that, according to Karl Marx, "the emancipation of the workers contains universal human emancipation."⁽⁴⁸⁾ When Liu asked his audience if "landlord elements, rich-peasant elements, reactionary elements, and hooligans" were part of this humanity to be emancipated, the response he got was that "They count as human beings (ren), but not as People (renmin)." For reasons he was to regret, Liu went on to stress that indeed "They count as humans. They are not animals."⁽⁴⁹⁾ Later that same day, he again elaborated on the same topic in conversation with a second group of intellectuals. This time he insisted that "Humanity includes proletarian laborers as well as the sons and daughters of the exploiting classes and any [members of those classes] not executed. . . . Human beings not yet executed are still human beings."⁽⁵⁰⁾

Eventually, Liu's hostile audience forced him to apologize for having made these "erroneous" statements. In a written self-criticism, he had to admit that:

When I tried to explain what kinds of people were included under "universal human" [emancipation]. . . I spoke too much and too emphatically about the remnants of the exploiting classes. It appeared as if I was putting the incidental before the fundamental. This was another error of mine.⁽⁵¹⁾

Not only Liu Shaoqi was accused in 1966-67 by university and high-school students of putting undue emphasis on that which all human beings have in common, and of not paying proper attention to the "fundamental" distinction between People and non-People. The members of the Central Cultural Revolution Small Group­Jiang Qing et al.­were also regarded by some students of elite family background as rather too much in favor of the slogan "all human beings are equal (renren pingdeng)" and not sufficiently concerned with "class line and class imprimatur."⁽⁵²⁾

One of many significant developments at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution was an increased emphasis on "purity." Students in Beijing's elite schools called for the expulsion from the capital of any and all persons who were not of the People. "Let us promptly take action," they said, "to make our capital more pure and more red."⁽⁵³⁾ With massive support from the municipal authorities and public security organs, the children of the elite succeeded in forcing thousands of non-People originally from elsewhere in China to return to whence they had come. As one Red Guard ultimatum put it, this expulsion from the capital of "landlord elements, rich-peasant elements, reactionary elements, and hooligans who have done nothing but evil and perpetrated outrages while riding on the backs of the laboring People" was to protect "the interests of the Party and the People." The offending "four kinds of elements" were told to "Piss off right now!"⁽⁵⁴⁾ According to statistics subsequently compiled by the municipal authorities, some 77,000 persons were expelled from Beijing city in the three weeks leading up to 15 September. The internal composition of this massive body of non-People was as follows:

"Five kinds of elements" 37,000

Enemy and puppet military, government, police,

and military police personnel 600

Capitalists 5,500

Petty property owners, proprietors, peddlers 200

Indecent or larcenous persons with a politically

problematic past or dubious lifestyle 2,400

Others 500

Dependents of any of the above 30,000⁽⁵⁵⁾

Later in the autumn of 1966, the movement to "purify the People's capital" gradually subsided in intensity, as did similar copy-cat movements in other Chinese cities.

The emphasis on the "purity" of the People was not only ideological and social, but also biological. In August 1966, "all revolutionary comrades" in the Beijing Municipal Blood Transfusion Center east of Beihai Park put out an "urgent letter of appeal" to city residents, informing them of among other things the following:

From now on, no hospital is permitted to give blood from proletarian class brothers to persons like landlord elements, rich-peasant elements, reactionary elements, hooligans, rightist elements, capitalists, and black-gang elements. The ranks of new blood donors must on no account include landlord elements, rich-peasant elements, reactionary elements, hooligans, rightist elements, capitalists, and black-gang elements.⁽⁵⁶⁾

The emphasis on pure blood also was reflected metaphorically in the use of dysphemisms like "vampire" (xixuegui). In a public letter of appeal to Red Guards from "all revolutionary comrades" in the Beijing No. 2 Casting and Soldering Factory dated 27 August 1966, "vampires like landlord elements, rich-peasant elements, reactionary elements, hooligans, rightist elements, capitalists, and petty proprietors" were immediately to be denied all further access to social services like nurses, public baths, and subsidized haircuts.⁽⁵⁷⁾

On the basis of the prototypical theory of "what it means to be human" subscribed to by Lin Biao et al., persons whose political thought was altogether "incorrect" came to form not merely a human sub-species, but something bordering on a sub-human species. Zhang Zhiyang, a philosopher imprisoned for seven years during the Cultural Revolution for having committed an unspecified thought-crime, has recalled the following incident which taught him this lesson:

I tore down the "Rules for Criminals" from the wall in my cell. My cadre [guard] asked: "What are you doing?" I said: "I used to write the character for 'criminal' (fan) in the past without ever noticing that it has a 'beast' (quan) radical. It's quite offensive." The cadre roared in my direction: "Criminals just aren't human. You're dogs." The criminal is a dog. That was my first lesson while in solitary confinement. "Criminals are dogs."⁽⁵⁸⁾

Some prison guards might have contested the idea that "criminals are dogs." Prison guards too, after all, are only human. In another exchange, in a different prison, two guards of the deposed PLA Chief-of-Staff Luo Ruiqing had the following conversation as recalled by one of them years later. Luo had broken his legs in a failed suicide attempt and had to be carried to the toilet on the back of one of his guards every day. The guard wanted to move Luo to a cell closer to the toilet:

[A fellow guard remarked] It is not appropriate for you to do this out of concern for Luo Ruiqing. . . . Do you know what he is?

[I replied] It does not matter what he is, he is still a human being [ren]. If he is to be arrested then he should be arrested, if he is to be shot than he should be shot, but he has to be given something to eat. Until he is executed you have to let him eat, and if you let him eat, then you also have to let him go somewhere to shit!⁽⁵⁹⁾

This position of maintaining that even "non-People" deserve to be treated like human beings was typically held by the lesser educated. The intelligentsia­about whom V. I. Lenin once said they "fancy themselves the nation's brain. In fact they are not the brain but the shit"⁽⁶⁰⁾­in turn harbored the shrillest critics of that position.

One consequence of the major policy changes enacted by the Eleventh CCP Central Committee around the time of its third plenum in December 1978 was the gradual demise of the discourse that pitted People against non-People. The de-accentuation of "class struggle" and increasing importance attached to harmonious cooperation across social boundaries made some political keywords of the preceding thirty years obsolescent and instilled others with new and different meanings. The People, slowly and almost imperceptibly, ceased to be used with reference to only the ninety-five percent "on our side" and became (again) synonymous with the entire population or citizenry.⁽⁶¹⁾ Semantic surgery of the kind in which so many CCP propagandists had come to excel during the preceding years was used to remove a battery of dysphemic references to non-People from the media. At the same time, the non-People that had survived three decades of abuse were themselves finally accepted among the ranks of the equally human.

Deng Xiaoping was to promote the use of a whole new lexicon in an effort to change political perceptions. Like Mao Zedong before him, he appears to have believed that it was possible to make one see things differently by intentionally manipulating the tools with which one sees. That habits of thought and speech to some extent were enemies of political change was something he had noted already in 1962. In the context of rotating Party cadres he had argued that:

[After awhile] one becomes insensitive to things, and one begins to react slowly. The language becomes habitual. [When this happens] one must adopt new habits and a new language. . . . When one's language becomes routine, one's way of approaching problems becomes casual.⁽⁶²⁾

This adoption of a "new language" was to be instrumental in bringing about a break with the "casual" approach to China's problems that had dominated so much of the recent past.

The "black categories" to which members of the non-People had belonged were abolished. The formal names of most categories were no longer to be used with reference to the present but only to the past. One of the first categories to be abandoned, together with its formerly "scientific" label as the figment of misguided imagination, was that of which Deng Xiaoping had once himself been publicly identified as China's second-most villainous representative. "There are no people who are capitalist roaders," a senior Party theorist stated confidently in 1979. The very concept was un-scientific and part of a fallacious political theory.⁽⁶³⁾

The new regulations governing how the "class status of one's family" (jiating chushen) was to be specified in identity cards and the like were fundamentally different from the past in that they no longer allowed for the use of terms ("elements") like "landlord" and "rich-peasant." Only those persons who prior to land-reform had been landlords or rich-peasants themselves could still be referred to thus, and even then they were in all other respects to be treated no differently from their more impoverished brethren. Everyone else was simply to be listed as of "peasant" stock.⁽⁶⁴⁾ Semantically, with the death of the older generation, the elements in the first two black categories of non-People would be wiped out once and for all.

If existing terminological conventions had been the sole determining factor, the non-People in the original fifth black category would have enjoyed so-called "rehabilitation" (pingfan). But for reasons explained to a national conference of Party historians in 1980, the cases of some 539,000 "Bourgeois Rightists" were subject to "correction" (gaizheng) instead:

With respect to the Rightists, we don't use the term "rehabilitation" but speak of "correction." What is the difference between these two terms? Answer: None. They mean the same thing. [The different term was chosen] most likely because comrade Mao Zedong originally had said there can be no question of rehabilitating the targets of the Anti-Rightist Struggle. All-right, if you say there must be no "rehabilitation" there will instead be "correction." Either way it's the same thing.⁽⁶⁵⁾

At the same time as it systematically corrected one Rightist's case after the other, the CCP continued to insist that the Anti-Rightist Movement as such had been "entirely necessary." It had "clarified the basic issue of major rights and wrongs among the People all over China." Without it, "all of China would have been lost in massive political and ideological confusion." But in the course of the movement too many members of the People had been reduced to non-People status. According to the official version of events, only a mere 11,000 persons (or "an extremely small number") really deserved to be called "bourgeois Rightists." This target had been exceeded by some four thousand nine hundred percent!⁽⁶⁶⁾

With most of its negations altered, redefined or destined soon to become anachronisms, the People itself became a progressively less clear-cut concept, and it began to mean what Bo Yibo in 1949 had said specifically it did not, i.e., the citizens of China. As a result, the keyword "Liberation" (which, when used with reference to the establishment of the PRC, had implied that historical event was tantamount to the liberation, by the CCP, of People from repression by non-People) lost some of its popularity, with those who still cared, to the expression "founding of the nation" (jianguo). Statements about the People that in an earlier era would simply have been dismissed not just as patently untrue but as by definition impossible began to appear in the most authoritative fora. So, for instance, in an analysis of the composition of the population of China's labor reform camps published in Law Journal in 1984:

Historical development has significantly altered the subject of coercive transformation (qiangzhi gaizao). At present, an absolute majority of criminal offenders belong to the working People (laodong renmin) and the children of working People. . . . There is a huge difference between the state of today's criminal contingent and those who were the subject of reform prior to the Ten Years of Turmoil.⁽⁶⁷⁾

Two decades earlier­when Liu Shaoqi had warned CCP members of how cleverly the class enemy was usurping and perverting the Party's policies, how he accepted the slogans and methods of the CCP "but under his leadership," and how he was literally invisible, appearing here in the guise of a poor peasant and there as a worker­the above statement could only have been made as an indictment of a revolution gone terribly wrong. The meaning ascribed to the keyword People ruled out the possibility of the statement actually referring to a "liberated" country. By definition, any country where an "absolute majority" of the People was subject to state-administered "coercive transformation" was either feudal, capitalist, fascist, or revisionist or all of the above!

1. "Zhongguo renmin zhanqilaile" [The Chinese people have stood up], in Mao Zedong xuanji [Selected works of Mao Zedong], vol. 5 (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 1977), p. 5. An often reiterated myth has it that Mao uttered his now famous words about the Chinese People having stood up while himself standing on the Tiananmen Rostrum on 1 October 1949. In Jan Myrdal's "A Feast in Liu Lin or a New and Different Chinese Millennium" (Aftonbladet Kultur, no. 3-4, 1994), we come across the following passage purporting to represent the historical truth:

Forty-five years ago when my son was about to be born . . . I spent the nights with my shortwave receiver, a Philetta, listening to the news from Asia. . . . On the night of the first of October 1949, I heard how the chairman of the victorious communists from the top of the Gate of Heavenly Peace in Beijing announced to the assembled masses the founding of the Zhongguo [sic] Renmin Gongheguo, the People's Republic of China. He said:

­China has again stood up!

I entered the other room and woke up my wife.

­China is red! I said.

In fact, Mao did not say anything at all about "standing up" in his famous address in Tiananmen Square. Compare the original recording on Juren zhi sheng: Mao Zedong jianghua yuanshi luyin [Voice of a great man: Original recordings of speeches by Mao Zedong] (Shenzhen: Xianke Yule chuanbo youxian gongsi, 1993).

2. "Lun renmin minzhu zhuanzheng" [On the people's democratic dictatorship], in Mao Zedong xuanji, vol. 4 (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 1964), p. 1480.

3. "Ickylex n [ichytology a branch of zoology dealing with fish+lexis; literally 'fishy language']: A series of rhetorical devices, stock phrases, and syntactic structures that reveal to trained observers the presence of unsavory or suspect intentions." From Jack Hitt, ed., In a Word: A Dictionary of Words That Don't Exist, But Ought To (New York: Dell, 1992), p. 88.

4. Bo Yibo, "Renmin ribao de mingcheng he baotou de youlai" [The origins of the name and title of the People's Daily], Xinwen zhanxian, no. 7, 1981, p. 3.

5. "Zhonggong zhongyang xibeiju xuanchuanbu guanyu muqian xuanchuan neirong de zhishi," in Zhongguo gongchandang xinwen gongzuo wenjian huibian [Collected CCP documents on journalism], edited by Zhongguo shehui kexueyuan xinwen yanjiusuo, 3 vols. (Beijing: Xinhua chubanshe, 1980), vol. 1, p. 357.

6. "Zhonggong zhongyang guanyu siying baokan tongxun she deng wenti de zhishi" [CCP Center directive concerning privately owned newspapers and news agencies etc.], in Xinhuashe wenjian ziliao xuanbian [Selected NCNA documents and materials], edited by Xinhuashe xinwen yanjiubu, 3 vols. (Beijing, n.d.), vol. 2, p. 3.

7. "Ba guonei xinwen duiwai baodao de shuiping tigao yibu­Xiao Ximing tongzhi zai di san ci quanguo shewu huiyi shang de fayan" [Raising the level of overseas reporting of domestic news­Comrade Xiao Ximing's statement at the Third NCNA National Conference], in Xinhuashe xinwen yanjiubu, vol. 3, p. 144.

8. "Ba guonei xinwen duiwai baodao de shuiping tigao yibu," p. 148.

9. "Xinhuashe dangzu guanyu 1953 nian xiaomie xinwen baodao zhong cuowu de qingkuang he jingyan gei Zhongxuanbu de baogao" [Report from the NCNA Party group to the Central Propaganda Department on stamping out errors in news reports in 1953], in Xinhuashe xinwen yanjiubu, vol. 3, p. 201.

10. "Qiaomu tongzhi dui Xinhuashe baodao zhong ying xiaomie feihua, pizi de zhishi" [Comrade Qiaomu's instructions on getting rid of rubbish and odd characters in NCNA telegrams], in Xinhuashe xinwen yanjiubu, vol. 3, p. 336-38.

11. "Neimenggu ribao bianweihui guanyu baozhi shang geren chongbai xuanchuan de jiancha zongjie (zhaiyao)" [Inner Mongolia Daily editorial committee summary of self-criticism concerning newspaper propaganda about worshiping the individual (extracts)], in Zhongguo shehui kexueyuan xinwen yanjiusuo, vol. 2, p. 358.

12. "Guanyu Hu Feng fangeming jituan de di er pi cailiao" [About the second batch of materials on the Hu Feng counter-revolutionary clique], Renmin ribao, 24 May 1955.

13. "Guanyu Hu Feng fangeming jituan de di san pi cailiao" [About the third batch of materials on the Hu Feng counter-revolutionary clique], Renmin ribao, 10 June 1955.

14. "Shaoshu minzu diqu de huzhu hezuo yundong he nongye shengchan baodao ying zhuyi minzu tedian" [When reporting on the co-operative movement and agricultural production in ethnic minority areas attention must be paid to ethnic peculiarities], in Xinhuashe xinwen yanjiubu, vol. 3, p. 384.

15. Deng Lifeng, ed., Xin Zhongguo junshi huodong jishi, 1949-1959 [Factual record of military action in New China, 1949-1959] (Beijing: Zhonggong dangshi ziliao chubanshe, 1989), pp. 429-31.

16. "Zai Zhongguo gongchandang di ba jie zhongyang weiyuanhui di er ci quanti huiyi shang de jianghua" [Speech at the second plenary session of the Eighth Central Committee of the CCP], in Mao Zedong xuanji, vol. 5, pp. 317-18.

17. "Guanyu zhengque chuli renmin neibu maodun de wenti" [On the correct handling of contradictions among the People] (Speaking notes), in Mao Zedong sixiang wansui [Long live Mao Zedong thought], edited by Zhongguo renmin daxue san hong (Beijing, 1967), pp. 25; 32-33.

18. "Guanyu zhengque chuli renmin neibu maodun de wenti" [On the correct handling of contradictions among the People], in Mao Zedong xuanji, vol. 5, p. 377.

19. "Zhonggong zhongyang shi ren xiaozu guanyu fangeming fenzi he qita huai fenzi de jieshi" and "Zhonggong zhongyang shi ren xiaozu guanyu fangeming fenzi he qita huai fenzi de buchong jieshi," in Guanyu qingli jieji duiwu de cailiao huibian [Collected material on cleansing the class ranks] (N.p., 1968), pp. 21-23.

20. "Guanyu ruhe baodao zhengque de chuli renmin neibu maodun wenti de yijian" [Opinion on how to report on the correct handling of contradictions among the People], in Xinhuashe wenjian ziliao xuanbian [Selected NCNA documents and materials], edited by Xinhuashe xinwen yanjiusuo (Beijing, n.d.), vol. 4, p. 43.

21. "Zhongguo nongcun de shehuizhuyi gaochao de anyu" [Prefaces to Socialist upsurge in China's countryside], in Mao Zedong xuanji, vol. 5, p. 233.

22. "Zai quanguo xuanchuan gongzuo huiyi shang de jianghua" [Speech at a national conference on propaganda work], in Zhongguo renmin daxue san hong, pp. 86-87.

23. "He wenyijie de tanhua" [Conversation with literary circles], in Zhongguo renmin daxue san hong, suppl. 1, p. 34.

24. "Zai Shanghai ju Hangzhou huiyi shang de chahua" [Interjections at the Hangzhou meeting of the Shanghai bureau (sic)], in Zhongguo renmin daxue san hong, suppl. no. 1, p. 131.

25. "Zai Shanghai ju Hangzhou," p. 134.

26. Mao Zedong xuanji di wu juan ciyu jianshi [Brief explanations to words and phrases in volume five of Selected works of Mao Zedong] (Beijing: Zhongguo qingnian chubanshe, 1977), p. 209.

27. Mao Zedong xuanji di wu juan ciyu jianshi; Mao Zedong xuanji chengyu diangu zhushi [Notes and explanations of sayings and allusions in the Selected works of Mao Zedong] (Beijing: Beijing renmin chubanshe, 1977), p. 106.

28. "Wenhuibao de zichanjieji fangxiang yingdang pipan" [The bourgeois orientation of the Wenhui Daily should be criticized], in Mao Zedong xuanji, vol. 5, p. 436.

29. Wang Yuqun, Hanzi xing yin yi bianxi [Distinguishing and analyzing the form, sound, and meaning of characters] (Changsha: Hunan renmin chubanshe, 1975), p. 3.

30. Xinwen ribao, 8 September 1957; Jiefang ribao, 7 and 19 September 1957; Xin Hunan bao, 20 September 1957; Renmin ribao, 3 August 1957; Anhui ribao, 18 August 1957; Henan ribao, 6 August 1957; Gansu ribao, 20 July 1957.

31. Renmin ribao, 8 and 21 August 1957; 4 September 1957; Gansu ribao, 9 and 18 August 1957; Zhejiang ribao, 27 July 1957; Guangxi ribao, 30 July 1957; Jiefang ribao, 14 and 19 August 1957; Guangming ribao, 27 July 1957; Liaoning ribao, 4 September 1957; Fujian ribao, 27 August 1957.

32. Gansu ribao, 19 July; Jiankang bao, 2 August 1957; Henan ribao, 7 September 1957; Jiangxi ribao, 22 August 1957; Wenyibao, no. 9, 1957; Guangming ribao, 18 September 1957; Renmin ribao, 20 September 1957.

33. J. G. A. Pocock, Politics, Language & Time: Essays on Political Thought and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), p. 22.

34. Xinhua ribao, 9 and 12 August 1957; Xingang, no. 9, 1957; Gansu ribao, 27 July 1957; Henan ribao, 7 August 1957; Fujian ribao, 11 August 1957; Shaanxi ribao, 6 August 1957; Renmin ribao, 4 and 11 August 1957; Xin Hunan bao, 15 August 1957; Zhongguo qingnian bao, 27 July 1957; Beijing ribao, 6 August 1957; Anhui ribao, 21 August 1957. As explained by the wife of the Party Chairman to an audience of "literary and art workers" in 1966, "Although we still go on using some of the [old] words, their content is now entirely different. . . . We're still using them, but their class content is the very opposite [of that given them by the exploiting classes]."

35. Wenyibao, no. 9, 1957; Shanxi ribao, 24 August 1957; Xinhua ribao, 31 July; 11 August 1957; Xinwen yu chuban, 25 July 1957.

36. Guangming ribao, 19 August 1957; Renmin ribao, 9 August 1957; Gansu ribao, 9 August 1957; Yunnan ribao, 11 August 1957.

37. Huang Yi, Zuo jia pian (Taiyuan: Shanxi renmin chubanshe, 1986), p. 68.

38. Quoted in Michael Schoenhals, "Yang Xianzhen's Critique of the Great Leap Forward," Modern Asian Studies 26 (1992): 604.

39. "Zai quanjun gaoji ganbu huiyi shang de jianghua (jielu)" [Speech at an all-army conference of high-level cadres (extracts)], in Lin Biao xuanji [Selected works of Lin Biao] (N.p., n.d.), p. 107.

40. "Zai quanjun gaoji ganbu huiyi shang de jianghua," pp. 107-108.

41. "Zai quanjun gaoji ganbu huiyi shang de jianghua," p. 108.

42. "Zhonggong zhongyang guanyu muqian nongcun gongzuo zhong ruogan wenti de jueding (caoan)" [CCP Center decision (draft) concerning some problems in present rural work] in Wuchanjieji wenhua dageming wenjian huibian [Collected documents from the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution], edited by Beijing huagong xueyuan Mao Zedong sixiang xuanchuanyuan (Beijing, 1967), p. 106.

43. Hebei siqing tongxun, vol. 148, p. 3.

44. Bo Yibo, Ruogan zhongda juece yu shijian de huigu [Recollections of some major policy decisions and events] (Beijing: Zhonggong zhongyang dangxiao chubanshe, 1993), pt. 2, pp. 1111-1115.

45. Translated in Michael Schoenhals, Doing Things with Words in Chinese Politics (Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, 1992), pp. 38-40.

46. Jin Chunming, Huang Yuchong, and Cheng Huimin, eds., "Wenge" shiqi guaishi guaiyu [Strange words and strange events from the "Cultural Revolution"] (Beijing: Qiushi chubanshe, 1989), p. 123.

47. "Guanyu shejiao yundong he liangzhong jiaoyu zhidu, liangzhong laodong zhidu wenti de baogao" [Report on the socialist education campaign and the issue of two educational systems and two labor system], in an untitled collection of Liu Shaoqi's writings (N.p. [Beijing?], n.d. [1967?]), p. 208.

48. Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1977), p. 73.

49. "Liu Shaoqi dui 'Gemingtuan' daibiao de jianghua" [Liu Shaoqi's speech to the "Revolutionary regiment"], in Liu Shaoqi xiang Beijing jianzhu gongye xueyuan geming shisheng yuangong de renzuishu [Liu Shaoqi's admission of guilt to the revolutionary teachers, students, staff, and workers of the Beijing institute of building industry] (Beijing: Beijing jianzhu gongye xueyuan Qianfeng zhandoudui geming zaofan lianluozhan, 1967), p. 8.

50. "Liu Shaoqi dui 'Bayituan' daibiao de jianghua" [Liu Shaoqi's speech to the "August 1st regiment"], in Liu Shaoqi xiang Beijing jianzhu gongye xueyuan geming shisheng yuangong de renzuishu, p. 9.

51. "Liu Shaoqi xiang Beijing jianzhu gongye xueyuan geming shisheng yuangong de 'renzuishu'" [Liu Shaoqi's "admission of guilt" to the revolutionary teachers, students, staff, and workers of the Beijing Institute of Building Industry], in Liu Shaoqi xiang Beijing jianzhu gongye xueyuan geming shisheng yuangong de renzuishu, p. 6.

52. "Kan! Yige liandong fenzi de zigong­yi feng hei xin" [Look! A confession by a United Regiment element­A black letter], in Dazibao xuan [Selected big-character posters], edited by Hongdaihui xin Beida fuzhong Jinggangshan bingtuan zongbu (Beijing, April 1967), p. 11.

53. "Beijing sizhong geming shisheng guanyu quzhu sileifenzi de wu xiang mingling" [Five orders from the revolutionary teachers and students at Beijing no. 4 middle school concerning the expulsion of four kinds of elements] (Handbill dated 24 August 1966).

54. "Zuihou tongdie­jiashu zhong de silei fenzi liji gundan!" [Final ultimatum: Family dependents belonging to the four kinds of elements must piss off now!] (Handbill dated 23 August 1966).

55. "Beijing shi 'Wenhua dageming' dashiji" [Record of major events in the "Great Cultural Revolution" in Beijing municipality], in Beijing dangshi ziliao tongxun, extra issue no. 17, 1987, p. 24.

56. "Shoudu Baiqiuen xuezhan quanti geming tongzhi zhi quanshi jinji huyushu" [Urgent appeal from all the revolutionary comrades with the Capital Norman Bethune Blood Center to the citizens of the entire city] (Handbill dated 25 August 1966).

57. "Beijing zhuhanjian erchang quanti geming tongzhi zhizuo 'Hongweibing' de jianqiang houdun" [Revolutionary comrades with the Beijing casting and soldering factory no. 2 pledge to be the firm backup of the Red Guards] (Handbill dated 27 August 1966).

58. In Celebration of Blasphemy: The Strange Musings of Zhang Zhiyang, a special issue of Chinese Studies in Philosophy 25(3) [Armonk: M. E. Sharpe, Inc., forthcoming].

59. Liu Yang, Tejian yishi [Anecdotes from the special prison] (Beijing: Renmin Zhongguo chubanshe, 1992), p. 188.

60. Quoted in Abbott Gleason et al., eds., Bolshevik Culture: Experiment and Order in the Russian Revolution (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989), p. 94.

61. Mao Zedong is on record as stating, on numerous occasions, that the People in terms of numbers make up some ninety-five percent of China's total population. As a historical aside, it is worth mentioning that not just in China has the 95/5 ratio of "good" versus "bad" been popular among the politically active. Compare the following testimony by Adolphe Menjou in front of a subcommittee of the Un-American Activities of the US Congress in 1947: "I believe that ninety-five percent of the people in California are decent, honest American citizens. The Communist Party is a minority, but a dangerous minority. I believe that the entire nation should be alerted to its menace today." Quoted in Eric Bentley, ed., Thirty Years of Treason: Excerpts from Hearings before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, 1938-1968 (London: Thames and Hudson, 1972), p. 126.

62. "Zai zuzhi gongzuo huiyi quanguo jiancha gongzuo huiyi shang de baogao" [Report to the national congresses on organization and supervisory work], in Fangeming xiuzhengzhuyi fenzi Deng Xiaoping fandong yanlun [Reactionary utterances by the counter-revolutionary revisionist element Deng Xiaoping], edited by Beijing daxue wenhua geming weiyuanhui ziliaozu (Beijing, 1967), p. 68.

63. Liao Gailong, "Shehuizhuyi jianshe xin changzheng de weida ganglingxing wenjian" [Great programmatic document for the new long march of socialist construction], Xueshu yanjiu dongtai, no. 31, 1979, p. 14.

64. Zhao Qizheng, ed., Ganbu renshi gongzuo shouce [Handbook on cadre personnel work] (Shanghai: Shanghai renmin chubanshe, 1986), p. 302.

65. Liao Gailong, "Lishi de jingyan he women de fazhan daolu" [The experience of history and our road of development], in Quanguo dangxiao xitong Zhonggong dangshi xueshu taolunhui zhuanti baogao he fayan huibian [Collection of speeches and reports on special topics at the all-China party school network academic conference on the history of the CCP], 2 vols. (Hefei: Zhonggong Anhui shengwei dangxiao tushu ziliaoshi, 1980), vol. 1, p. 26.

66. Liao Gailong,"Lishi de jingyan," p. 9.

67. Xie Anshan and Yan Li, eds., Zonghe zhili shehui zhian gongzuo shouce [Handbook on the comprehensive management of public order] (Changchun: Jilin renmin chubanshe, 1986), p. 535.