Chapter 15 11. History of ruling class domination

We often see unfamiliar foreign cultures through our own eyes.Some phrases used by the Beijing government make it more difficult for us to understand.Chinese political articles are not only moral, but also often mixed with some allusions to historical figures, such as Qin Shihuang (221 BC, he established a unified empire, he was regarded as a cruel tyrant, but he can also be regarded as Cheng is a progressive figure), and recently invented Marxist vocabulary, such as "capitalist roader" (referring to a loyal party member who favors material rewards to promote production; he is not a capitalist himself, but advocates the road of material development) .Between Chinese folklore and Marxism, alien to Americans, we find ambiguous words whose power is evident but whose content baffles us.Since political debates in China are usually indirect and veiled, this confusion also shows our ignorance of Chinese politics.

History can help us.Let's start with Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai, the main leaders of China's communist revolution, who played two typical historical roles. When the Qing Dynasty collapsed in 1911, China's authoritarian politics had evolved for more than 2,000 years, when Mao was a top student in an elementary school.Regrettably, China is so poorly studied that one of the world's oldest governing institutions is still not analyzed and studied in the terms of political science—no doubt, to historians and political scientists For many, Chinese historical records are too vast and difficult to understand.We know that China's monarchy and the imperial examination system both come from the same political tradition.The imperial examination first appeared in the Tang Dynasty, 200 years before Charlemagne established a central government in the West.China had invented bureaucracy 1,100 years earlier, when it set out to create highly complex government institutions of centralized rule.This ancient tradition continued into the 20th century and even still controls Chinese politics today.

Any great revolutionary wants to throw away history and start everything from scratch.But the Chinese have the most sense of history among the nations in the world, and Mao's quotations are full of historical allusions.The Chinese revolution is characterized by anti-imperialism and anti-feudalism.Assuming that new revolutionary ideals dominate people's thinking, and half or 2/3 (or 90%?) of human behavior is formed unconsciously, how do these behaviors adapt to the development of the environment?Mao's deep aversion to old ideas and customs is understandable. Taking the length of the ruling period as an example, in the historical process after 1607, two emperors in China each ruled for 60 years (Emperor Kangxi, 1662-1722; Emperor Qianlong, 1736-1795).From 1861 to 1908, Empress Dowager Cixi was in power for more than 40 years.After that came Mao Zedong, who was diametrically opposed to the Empress Dowager Cixi in every respect except for the length of time in power.Imagine what it would be like if Roosevelt had stayed in the White House from 1932 until now.Mao Zedong has been leading the Chinese revolution since 1935—some say 1927.This can show that the Chinese are willing to accept a supreme personal authority, rather than the supremacy of the law.

More creative than any emperor in history, Mao became a source of wisdom and policy, yet he was anti-bureaucratic, mysterious, and reappeared with lightning speed even after months of disappearance.Could Chinese politics be without such a figure?Only a person with the character of the son of heaven can remove the second person twice (in 1967, it was Liu Shaoqi; in 1971, it was Lin Biao), just like the emperor replaced the minister, and the third person who was removed from office, Deng Xiaoping, was reinstated. , At the same time, I always sit firmly in the top spot. Before 1911, the emperor was only above an aristocratic ruling class composed of officials, upper-level scholars, landlords and businessmen who accounted for less than 5% of the population.Mao launched an unprecedented attack on the old ruling class and became the greatest liberator in history.His unique status does not come out of thin air, but has its historical roots.Mao reviewed the course of the Chinese revolution on the Tiananmen Gate in the heart of Beijing. The position he stood on was on the same central axis as the Hall of Supreme Harmony, where the emperor ascended the throne hundreds of years ago in the Forbidden City.It is of the most historical significance to stand here and attack China's stale past.

It can be considered that as the supreme leader of the Communist Party of China after 1935 and the People's Republic of China after 1949, many of the qualities Mao Zedong displayed were derived from traditional Chinese spirit and customary practices.We don't have to seek the secrets of Mao's behavior in the never-so-reported affection for his mother, or in the much-vaunted antagonisms between him and his father.In fact, after he became the supreme leader of China, he was dominated by thousands of years of traditional concepts deeply buried in Chinese people's thinking and behavior.

The emperor of China is the son of heaven above all else. He only obeys the legacy of his ancestors, political system and Confucianism, and is not easy for anyone to control.The emperor was the final decider in the selection of officials; when selecting, he had to weigh ability and loyalty, or decide the fate of his officials according to their performance.His actions represent the interests of the dynasty and are not bound by the rules, therefore, he is the law.He was capricious, unfathomable, and ruthless, and officials were inexplicably dismissed (sometimes for doing so well that the emperor envied him).The more high-ranking officials and prominent positions, the more unpredictable the misfortunes and fortunes. Maybe they are still exercising power today, but tomorrow they will be handcuffed and exiled into the army.This uncertainty of the emperor's favor is a means to make officials do their best.

For example, management scientists were surprised to find that the Qing emperors (1616-1911) had invented a top-secret "Yu Lan" intelligence system in the early 18th century.The memorials submitted by officials all over the country to the emperor can only be read by the emperor alone; the comments he wrote on the memorials are only given to the starter.Therefore, before the Western bureaucracy was established, the Qing emperor had installed many intelligence personnel among his officials. Zhou Enlai is an ideal minister: since 1935, he has always been loyal to Mao, selflessly loyal to his duties, flexible and pragmatic in management, and has a special charm that infects and affects the Chinese people and foreigners.Only someone with the intelligence of the Duke of Zhou (who, about 3,000 years ago, wholeheartedly supported a small emperor to govern the country) could sit on the undisputed premiership of the new China for a quarter of a century.Zhou Enlai successfully avoided being the No. 2 man, and was able to reconcile contradictions from beginning to end, reach a compromise, keep his feet on the ground, and enable the government to perform its management functions.Of course, the key to doing this is that he never offends the highest authority and can save him from extremes.When Mao's campaign dismantled government institutions, he was able to reorganize them.In the end, Zhou became the leader of the moderate faction against the radicals, which shows that Zhou also could not prevent the weakening of Mao's leadership.Both Mao and Zhou held real power, and the two formed a united front.This period of history shows that Zhou made great contributions to the United Front of Mao and Zhou.

Both leaders are a new generation of revolutionaries committed to destroying the old order and creating a new system, which does not free them from the shackles of old Chinese traditions.The entire Chinese revolution was a struggle against tradition, but when there were differences of opinion among revolutionaries, they all used tradition to fight back against each other.This continuation of history does not disregard recent inventions, such as the present belief that man can be perfected in new circumstances, and the facile philosophy of behaviorism - for the most part, tradition does not seem to govern the present - For Americans, this is difficult to understand.Just as sentence structure is more stable than content, the basic form of Chinese political life will continue even though concepts and policies have been completely reversed.For example, the Confucian ideal of harmony was replaced by Mao's ideas of struggle imported from the West, but both ideas became official orthodoxy, essential to the vast Chinese state.In studying the "two-line struggle" of the last decade, we first see a common phenomenon in many developing countries and their revolutions.On the one hand, there is the steady development of science and technology in the process of industrialization, or more broadly, the application of technology to solve modern problems;People saw the struggle as a moral movement against the wicked old order, and the press liked to refer to moderates as "pragmatists."To us, these people seem more palatable than "radicals" and their abstract theoretical jargon.In short, we can understand those who develop technology despite their socialist abhorrence of free association.Deng Xiaoping advocated that it doesn't matter whether a cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice, those radicals use an almost crazy language, only concerned with seizing power and hindering economic development.

However, we are in danger of placing the Prince of Denmark outside of the revolutionary Hamlet, since China is undergoing a social as well as an economic revolution, the social goal of which is the overthrow of the old ruling class.To study the Chinese revolution, one must first look back at Chinese history, especially China has successfully created a ruling class that almost monopolizes the country's cultural class, bureaucratic regime and huge wealth a long time ago, and its number is less than 5% or more of the country's population. 10%.The complexity of the ruling class and its ability to select talents from the masses and maintain its status and traditions are second to none in the history of world society.China's ruling class has written the history of China, therefore, Chinese history can only be examined through the Chinese ruling class.Therefore, it is rare to find records about China's huge agricultural population in historical materials. Although they worked hard, starved or rose up, they were always controlled and guided by a small group of mental workers.

By the 20th century, the old ruling class had gradually disintegrated, so one of the basic goals of the revolution was to eliminate the privileges of the dignitaries and spread cultural knowledge, agency, and political participation rights to ordinary people.Broadly speaking, this is indeed a democratic revolution.Ironically, in the process of carrying out this revolution, the nascent citizen still developed the traditional desire for higher status, more privileges, and high society.In fact, the ideas of the old ruling class have penetrated into the minds of the masses, and being in the upper class is still the goal of struggle in people's minds.Therefore, people today are easily seduced by status and privilege.What Mao wanted to eliminate in the revolution seemed to reappear in the leaders who led the revolution.This also explains why Mao believed that a series of revolutions must be launched to eliminate the disadvantages of tradition.We have a lot of sympathy for the old man, who in the 60s found privilege again in the new bureaucracy.We admired his political sleight of hand, too: mobilizing those teenage Red Guards, surprise attacking faction headquarters, and helping him weed out dissidents—a movement Moscow still marvels at.

However, we must remember that Mao's revolutionary ideals were not democratic in the eyes of Americans, and the state's control over the people was still too strict.The Maoists cleverly used the propaganda media to attack the "capitalist roaders" and other monsters.But what complaints do the Maoists themselves have? Here again, American observers are bewildered by Chinese traditions.In China, people always equate untimely policies with moral corruption.This feature of Chinese politics has never been satisfactorily explained.It seems to stem from the principle of connecting theory with practice: actions express character, and words must show in deeds.Once this traditional thinking is established, people cannot distinguish policy from morality as Westerners do. On the contrary, policy is an integral part of official behavior.When its policies are repugnant, its moral character is called into question.The consequence of this view is that there can be no "loyal dissent" because a man who opposes another man's policy is opposed to himself.They therefore do not separate, as the Anglo-Americans do, between loyalty to the Führer and dissatisfaction with the Führer's current policies. We have seen an even more amazing phenomenon in contemporary China - exposing the bad behavior of those in power.This reminds people of the supervisory palace in the imperial era-long ago, they had the power to criticize and exhort officials to pay attention to their words and deeds.These censors were educated by traditional moral classics, believed that Confucius' ethics and morals were supreme, and refuted any other secular or selfish words and deeds that were contrary to this.As late as the 1870s and 1880s, chauvinist officials were advising the emperor against contact with foreigners, especially against compromise with France, which was at war on the Indochinese border.This function is called "clear discussion" in Chinese political science.It’s akin to the loud pro-America or anti-Communist movements in our political arena mixed with the hellfire of old evangelism. Those who "discuss" put themselves in the position of unimpeachable theoretical authority and do not bear any responsibility.Against such critics, no one wins.On the other hand, the emperor believed in slander and used it as a basis for punishing officials or reorganizing the cabinet. The struggle between China's two different political lines and the camps representing the two lines are incomparable between our Democratic Party and the Republican Party.The contrast between the two factions in China is extremely stark. One advocates economic development, while the other advocates social transformation; one is managers who want to fulfill human missions, and the other is theorists who pursue the ideals of ideology.Administrators generally hold political and military power, while ideologues manipulate the tools of propaganda.As a result, we don't see a balance of power; radicals clearly gain the upper hand with propaganda but little action. All attempts to understand Chinese politics have been thwarted by one fundamental mistake: We have always viewed Chinese politics in terms of our own experience.We must keep in mind that Chinese administrators and ideologues are pursuing very different goals than we Americans.For example, we are not a predominantly agricultural country with a tradition of tight-knit communal life in the countryside.We have never handed over the management of a country's high-level cultural and intellectual life to a small group of people. In the era of Chairman Mao and Premier Zhou, the chairman launched periodic campaigns to bring about social change, and the prime minister exercised management functions.This kind of cooperation in work has been very successful for many years. As a result, Chairman Mao Zedong and the people around him were freed from the shackles and constraints of the other party.In the past, a great leader could command people of two different lines, only occasionally focusing on promoting one line, but then Mao completely sided with the radical, loud faction.This has made the situation in China worse and more volatile, but there are still two routes in terms of policy, because the dual nature of the Chinese revolution, that is, to strengthen the country through economic modernization, and at the same time to change the lives of the Chinese people through social changes that are beneficial to the people, determines There are two lines and policies.In fact, the ups and downs of the revolution did not make them abandon their goals. In China, the central government, especially the bureaucratic ruling class, relied on orthodox ideology and moral concepts, which made the Chinese revolution particularly prone to ups and downs.The main scourge for a country ruled by virtue rather than by law is the ensuing moral corruption and corruption.But revolutionary ideals will not disappear. China has a long tradition of Confucian reforms, and it is constantly struggling against bureaucracy and privilege.Chinese history became the foundation of the Chinese revolution. Therefore, if Americans want to understand the Chinese revolution, they must first understand Chinese history. This review is "Chairman Mao's Dialogue with the People: 1956-1971" (New York: Gods Publishing House, 1974), edited by Stuart Sriem, translated by John Cinary and Tai Yun, partly published in 1975 The New York Review of Books, May 1, 1976, and the rest in Harvard Magazine, September 1976, entitled "Peking Politics: A Western Guide."