Post-Epilogue
Return to Prisoners of Liberation: Four Years in a Chinese Communist Prison
Post-Epilogue
It has been fifteen years since the above Epilogue was written and during that time many people have asked us whether we still felt the same about our experience, about China, and about the system of thought reform in general. Of course, over the years many of our ideas have been altered in accordance with the changes that have taken place in America and China, and particularly in our own personal lives. But on rereading Prisoners of Liberation for the first time since shortly after its publication, we were both struck by how much we are still in agreement with its contents. Perhaps our most acute emotion is one of embarrassment at having failed to live up to our idealistic expectations of the time.
By and large, we have managed to stay out of the ivory tower in spite of its continuing appeal, but our limited success has been due as much to external forces as to the strength of our own resolution. During the early years we gained some acceptance in this country’s peace movement, particularly as the result of a country-wide speaking tour we made in the summer of 1957 after the publication of our book. Again and again, we were informed by our hosts during the tour that this was the first meeting they had had since the McCarthy era of the early 1950s. After the tour we returned to Philadelphia and became further involved in peace and community activities while Dell worked for the American Friends Service Committee and Rick attended the University of Pennsylvania.
It should be said that in spite of our slight martyr complex and youthful bravado when we first returned home, we never really suffered for our actions. Open attacks were primarily limited to blasts in local newspapers usually delivered after we had left the scene of our talks. Most of the covert attacks we knew nothing about, and our friends, the university, and the Service Committee continued to support us even though they were much more vulnerable than we. We, after all, had very little to lose. Thus, we escaped much of the fear and uncertainty of other activists of the time.
Furthermore, by the time Rick received his Ph.D. in 1960, the country had suddenly awakened to the fact that during the previous ten years of McCarthyism practically no one had been trained in Chinese except for interpreters and translators for military and intelligence organizations. Rick, who had originally despaired of ever finding a job in his field when he returned to academic studies in 1956, now found himself with a choice of jobs including an offer to stay at the University of Pennsylvania. He elected to stay and now teaches modern Chinese history and language there. Dell then returned to the university to take her Ph.D. in 1967, and now she also teaches at the university in the fields of Chinese language and literature. In the meantime, we adopted two Chinese children from Hong Kong and gradually acquired all the accouterments of the American “good life.”
In recent years, though we have continued to be somewhat active in community and peace activities, most of our energies have been devoted to the university and to speaking and writing about China. Explaining China to the American people has not been an easy task. Not only are the two countries worlds apart in terms of political and social systems, technical development, general way of life, and individual and national goals, but reliable information about what has been happening in China over the years has been extremely difficult to obtain. We found ourselves caught between the deadly dull propaganda of official Chinese publications such as the Peking Review on the one hand and the distortions of Hong Kong and other outside based China watchers on the other. It was as though a door had slammed shut behind us when we crossed that border and we had become just two more outsiders attempting to peer through cracks in the wall. Our only justification for continuing to talk about China was the fact that we did have a certain experience which few other Americans could duplicate. Fortunately, we occasionally met non-Americans who had been in China more recently than we and who helped immeasurably in restoring our sense of reality. During the past year, of course, the flood gates have opened wide for information about China to enter the United States, and it is particularly refreshing now to have in our courses students who have been to China and have returned with the same enthusiasm we felt.
As a result, the picture of what has been happening in China is much clearer. Since 1955 China has gone through a number of movements aimed at pushing the revolution forward or rectifying problems which arose during its course. The campaign to “Let the Hundred Flowers Bloom” in 1956-57 was followed by an “Anti-Rightist Movement” in 1957-58, which in turn paved the way for the “Great Leap Forward” in 1958-59. The Great Leap, for all its remarkable achievements, including the rise of the communes and the beginnings of the technological revolution in the countryside, brought with it excesses and problems of adjustment that resulted in economic setbacks and the first major split in the Party’s leadership. Mao Tse-tung himself came under strong attack in 1959 and for a few years seems to have exerted less influence on the political scene.
The problems of the Great Leap, further compounded by three years of disastrous weather conditions and the abrupt termination of Soviet technical assistance as a result of the intensifying Sino-Soviet dispute, led to a severe economic crisis from which China required several years to recover. During these years, the Party leadership tended to be dominated by so-called pragmatists, technocrats, and bureaucratic administrators who looked upon the decentralization and mass mobilization of the Great Leap as sheer chaos. They opted for a return to conservative centralized planning and control over the economy with special emphasis on heavy industry, material incentives to workers, and strict profit-oriented cost accounting for management. In agriculture the communes were decentralized with much of their production turned over to individual households. The proportion of commune land allotted to private plots was greatly increased, and peasants were allowed to sell grain as well as other produce in free markets.
By 1965 China had recovered economically, but the growth rate was considerably lower than it had been during the 1950s. Furthermore, there was a feeling among many Party members that the revolution was in the process of being lost to bourgeois tendencies. In place of mass initiative and involvement had come bureaucratic fiat. In place of Yenan-type cadre leadership, there was beginning to appear a new elite made up of bureaucrats and technical personnel who were gradually taking unto themselves many of the special privileges of a ruling class. They dominated the Party apparatus and the middle and upper echelons in governmental and economic institutions, including the press and cultural organs. Their children filled the universities, thus providing the basis for a new semi-hereditary class of leaders. The ordinary workers and peasants were becoming increasingly alienated from the Party’s leadership and turning their attention toward personal comfort and individual concerns rather than the building of a new society.
It was to counteract these developments more than anything else that Mao Tse-tung in 1966 launched the “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution,” the most profound movement in China since land reform and perhaps, in terms of the questions raised, one of the most significant movements for the rest of the world in modern times. Eric Fromm in his The Sane Society (p. 363) makes the point that “Man today is confronted with a most fundamental choice; not that between Capitalism or Communism, but that between robotism (of both the capitalist and the communist variety), or Humanistic Communitarian Socialism.” Mao Tse-tung would hardly agree with Fromm’s formulation, but from the very beginning of the revolution the Chinese have stressed the dangers of bureaucratization, and no other society has ever attempted to deal with the problem of bureaucracy so openly and forcefully as they have, especially during the three years of often violent struggle accompanying the Cultural Revolution.
No sooner had Mao Tse-tung launched his attack on the Party’s bureaucratic leadership headed by Liu Shao-ch’i, the man who had replaced Mao as Chairman of the People’s Republic in 1959 and one of the Party’s leading figures for many years, than Liu’s supporters commenced their countermoves. They did this not by questioning Mao openly— his position and prestige would not permit that— but by pretending to be even more Maoist than Mao; Red Flags were raised to beat down Red Flags, and for the first time since 1949 the ordinary Chinese citizen found himself without the clear leadership of the Party. Confusion reigned, and factionalism became rife. Student Red Guard units supporting Mao were formed in Peking to be followed by the formation of other Red Guard units throughout the country. Some of these were genuine supporters of Mao’s line, while others were simply fronts created by the opposition to protect their interests. Shouting slogans and waving little red books, Red Guard units of both sides vied with each other as the true proponents of Mao Tse-tung’s thought. As the struggle intensified, Leftist excess, often deliberately fulminated by the Right opposition, came to constitute a more serious threat than the Right itself. Some cultural monuments were destroyed, cultural figures were badly mistreated— so much so that a few of them are reported to have committed suicide— and a number of conscientious supporters of Mao were wrongly accused of bourgeois revisionism and held in confinement or otherwise unjustly punished. The complexity of the situation is revealed by one incident in August, 1967, when the Foreign Ministry was taken over by a Leftist group of students acting under the leadership of two members of Mao’s Cultural Revolution Committee. They attacked the British Embassy in Peking and created incidents around the world under the pretext of exporting the Cultural Revolution abroad. Later these two Committee members, Wang Li and Yao Teng-shan, were accused of having connections with Liu Shao-ch’i and were ousted from power, but not before tremendous damage had been done.
The violence, which reached its peak in 1967, fortunately tended to be sporadic and local in scope, but for a time large-scale civil war threatened. In July of that year serious trouble erupted in Wuhan with numbers of local troops and workers supporting right-wing commanders. It was not until Chou En-lai personally made a very risky trip to the area that the situation was brought under control. Fortunately, again, the People’s Liberation Army, which had gone through something of its own Cultural Revolution under Lin Piao before the major movement began, remained loyal to Mao Tse-tung and his objectives. However, it was not until 1969 that the political situation began to stabilize and various factional disputes were sufficiently resolved to make possible the remarkable advances in economic construction and foreign relations of the past two or three years. Even now, however, intense discussion continues around many of the issues raised during the Cultural Revolution. Such Leftist slogans as “everything for the public interest; nothing for oneself” have given way to “public interest first; personal interest second.” Many forms of literature, scholarship, and other cultural activity, which had ceased to exist during the Cultural Revolution, are now being eagerly pursued. The political awareness of the ordinary person, especially the peasants, has been raised tremendously. Such rural communes as Ta-chai have provided a new inspiration and leadership for the country as a whole, while “barefoot doctors” have imparted new meaning to the slogan “serve the people.”
But this does not mean that all the problems of China have been solved or, for that matter, ever can be. Visitors returning from China report that the Chinese still regard bureaucracy as one of their major problems along with the fact that women, for all their tremendous rise in position since 1949, still do not enjoy universal equality with men. The need to relate education to practical life and to prevent it from becoming a steppingstone to a new social elite is accepted without question, but how to accomplish this while at the same time providing the society with the well-trained scientists, technicians, and cultural workers it needs is still a matter requiring great thought and experimentation. Indeed, the entire question of how to maintain an essentially equalitarian society in the technological age is far from resolved. But given the level of their awareness and the stage of development of their society, if anyone can cope with this problem, it is undoubtedly the Chinese.
One might well ask, if the system of thought reform we experienced really worked, why was it necessary to have a Cultural Revolution, and why was it still necessary in the 1960s and even today to keep reiterating such slogans as “serve the people” and “public interest first; personal interest second”? It would be a gross mistake to imply it did not work, but it must be kept in mind, as Lenin said, “The force of habit of millions and tens of millions is a most terrible force.” Change does not come easily, and furthermore, as we indicated in the book, there is no such thing as complete and final reform. It is an ongoing process, and particularly as a person’s life style and position change, he is liable to develop bureaucratic or corrupt tendencies without being really aware of what is happening to him unless he himself remains on constant guard and the system works to keep him honest. As a person’s position becomes more responsible, it is very easy to convince himself that his importance justifies certain little privileges such as not having to stand in line or not having to participate in routine work or meetings. He gradually assumes for himself the right to such advantages as first choice of theater or sporting event tickets allotted to his unit, a better place to live, the use of a car, or special education for his children. Since he is very busy, he assumes he should not be expected to sit around waiting for seemingly endless discussions to resolve matters and takes to making decisions on his own. When these are later questioned, it is only natural that he should become annoyed and even attempt to quash his critics.
All of this is consciously or unconsciously rationalized as consistent with the new society, and if he were subjected to frequent sincere criticism and self-criticism sessions the problem would most likely never develop. Unfortunately, for many of these people criticism and self-criticism sessions are among the first meetings they are too busy to attend.
This situation was abetted by changes in the society itself. As China’s society began to stabilize, particularly after the end of the Korean war, there seems to have developed a general tendency toward formalism in thought reform. During the early years, revolutionary ideology was still very fresh, the memories of the old society were still vivid, the enthusiasm for building a new society abounded, and in general the Yenan spirit of self-sacrifice was exceedingly strong, especially among the young. Later, as the period of crisis passed, the newness of the revolution began to fade, and people began to find their individual niches in society, revolutionary idealism tended to give way to careerism and the amount of sincere attention paid to reform and criticism and self-criticism diminished.
This tendency was further augmented by the complexity of many of the issues associated with the heightened demands of each new stage of the revolution. Discussions were inclined to become more issue- than attitude-centered, more about what we should do and less about why we are doing it. Therefore, during the major movements, extremists would sometimes dominate the show and people who were unable to stand up to their revolutionary rhetoric and personal attacks would back away from real participation.
Thus, even though there was constant criticism of bureaucratism and frequent minor movements to curb bureaucratic practices, their success was limited. Minor excesses could be corrected and the petty kingdoms established by individual bureaucrats toppled, but the central core of bureaucracy in the Party and in government was hardly touched.
During the Cultural Revolution, the struggle was so intense and the leadership so confusing that criticism frequently became a weapon of attack rather than reform. “K’ai-men cheng-feng” (open the door to accept reform) often gave way to “tsa-men cheng-feng” (beat down the door to reform others), leading Mao Tse-tung himself to proclaim in 1968: “Let the two sides do more of self-criticism; the mistakes of others should be left to them to discuss.” The essential element of successful criticism is the application of Mao Tse-tung’s formula of “unity-struggle-unity.” That is to say that out of the struggle should come a resolution of contradictions and a new unity on a higher level. Unfortunately, in the heat of the struggle this principle is too often forgotten, and the motivation becomes one of winning the personal struggle rather than resolving contradictions. Naturally, in some cases the contradictions are so antagonistic that suppression is the only answer, but when this approach is applied indiscriminately throughout the population it amounts to civil war. It was not until the People’s Liberation Army entered the factories to serve as mediators in the disputes there, and later both army personnel and workers together entered the universities, that most of the violent struggles were resolved.
Clearly the lesson of the Cultural Revolution was that for thought reform to be successful on a national scale, genuine, not sham, criticism and self-criticism must be applied constantly, especially among persons in positions of authority. Furthermore, it must be carried out under a strong, united, and dedicated leadership armed with a theory inspirational in terms of goals, realistic in terms of current social conditions, and flexible enough to meet changing situations. On the individual level, it must never be forgotten that the purpose of criticism and self-criticism is to solve problems, not win arguments; to achieve the common good, not personal gratification.
However, in spite of all these problems, thought reform, which lies at the very heart of the revolution, has been instrumental in producing an entirely new Chinese society and a new Chinese man. When one considers the complexity of China, its size, population, its former backwardness, and the strength of its traditional institution, the extent and nature of this achievement becomes even more remarkable. It is equally remarkable that the revolution should still be alive after a quarter of a century. Nothing is so debilitating for the spirit of revolution as success, and most revolutions, including that of the Soviet Union, quickly lose sight of their goals after their initial victory. In China, however, people on a mass scale are still willing to struggle, not just for immediate material benefits, though these are important too, but also for continuing progress toward a social ideal. While in the Soviet Union and the West crime is on the upswing and the alienation of individuals from society has led to a general social malaise, in China one finds an optimism, enthusiasm, and sense of social responsibility that has confounded most foreign visitors.
Perhaps one of the most amusing spectacles of the TV coverage of the Nixon trip was the confusion of American commentators when they attempted to explain how hundreds of thousands of Chinese could cheerfully take to the streets to clean away the snow after a sudden storm. The commentators were obviously beset by feelings of both envy and suspicion. Envy because with all our technology and wealth we in the United States have found it impossible to clean our streets of trash, not to mention a sudden snow. Suspicion because, notwithstanding their inability to find any evidence of coercion, they could not believe people capable of such a volunteer effort. Therefore, they insisted on describing the event as an appalling example of regimentation. There undoubtedly was organization, but not the forced regimentation the commentators implied. The problem is really not that difficult. It was merely the act of a people with a high sense of social responsibility who understood that if they wanted their city cleaned, it was up to them to do it and that by everyone assuming his share of the load, the task would be easily accomplished.
The sad thing is that Americans should understand this perhaps better than any other people. So many of our past accomplishments were based on volunteer efforts, from barn-raising to social services performed by church and club groups. This is not to mention the tremendous outpouring of volunteer effort which accompanies any disaster. But all too often as we have grown rich and soft we have switched to letting the government or “George” do what we used to do ourselves.
People have frequently asked us about the applicability of Chinese thought reform, criticism, and self-criticism to the United States. This is not a simple question to answer because, though the techniques of criticism and self-criticism, in theory, can be applied anywhere, the whole process of thought reform cannot be separated from the total revolutionary experience of a society. Since returning home we have encountered many groups practicing variations of criticism and self-criticism. They have ranged from such basically religious groups as the Sharmanites, who attempt to reform themselves by comparing their actions with the words of Jesus, to political consciousness-raising groups of various persuasions and to formal group therapy as applied in institutions or under formal supervision. In general, our reaction to these American experiments has been mixed. The basic problems are motivation and follow-up. Where the problem is clear and motivation is thus relatively high, as in criminal reform or alcoholism or drug therapy, the initial results seem to be quite successful. Our experience with ordinary groups, particularly so-called political consciousness-raising sessions, has usually been negative. All too often we have found such sessions motivated by unrealistic idealism or by a simple desire to release one’s own frustrations rather than any solidly based desire for personal reform. The failures of well-based programs more often than not may be blamed on the general social situation rather than the method itself. Where experiments have failed in connection with criminal, drug, and alcoholism reform, it has often been due to the fact that such treatment occurred in a very restricted environment, and those involved returned to a society that not only failed to provide ongoing support but in fact presented him with constant temptations to return to his old ways. Where the therapy has continued to work, it is primarily because of continuing support from concerned organizations.
In our own personal lives, we have found that the experience in China has been of tremendous value. The knowledge that criticism, even though often painful and sometimes not one hundred per cent correct, is bound to be helpful has made our marital relations and relations with other people much smoother. Though we have admittedly fallen far short of the goals we once set for ourselves, nevertheless we are both convinced that what we learned during our prison experience has made us far happier and more active people than we otherwise would have been.
Allyn and Adele Rickett
Philadelphia, 1972