Yu + Mou

My friend Zhijing George Mou's life intersected with Yu Luo Ke, a famous, dissident intellectual in China during the Cultural Revolution. As a 17 year old high school student and with incredible courage, Mou started and edited "the most dissident tabloid during that period" (of the Cultural Revolution), with his 24 year old ally and friend Yu Luoke's writings and support. Here is some of that history.

I reviewed putatively relevant materials published by the authorities or distributed by student organizations during the Cultural Revolution. The media, under strict direction of the Central Cultural Revolution Group purposely ignored facts. While the government newspapers praised the Red Guards without mentioning their violence, the number of deaths escalated. These deaths were not mentioned in the flyers of student organizations, according to some interviewees, because such brutalities were considered at most "trivial mistakes" or "unavoidable radical behavior" for such a "great revolution." In late 1966 and early 1967, when new student organizations supported by the leaders of the Cultural Revolution began to criticize the earliest Red Guard organizations in their publications, violent persecution was not their emphasis. Although thousands of people were murdered by the Red Guards in Beijing alone during the summer of 1966, only three victims were named even in the most dissident tabloid during that period, Zhongxue wenge bao. This publication was banned by the authorities in April of 1967 with Yu Luo Ke, the major author of this tabloid, being condemned to death in 1970. (https://ywang.uchicago.edu/history/1966teacher.htm)

From late autumn 1966 to spring 1967, Beijing had descended mainly into a state of de facto quasi-anarchy as several rounds of rival Red Guards movements continued to weaken and destroy the local bureaucracy. As a result, it became difficult to enforce the strict ban on independent newspapers under the authoritarian bureaucracy. Various Red Guard groups and other youth groups, and even individuals who were not part of the Red Guards but were active in promoting their political views in the social movement, expressed their demands through their publications. This practice weakened the control of the traditional bureaucratic groups over the public sphere and thus, in the short term, gained the support of a section of the Maoist leaders represented by the Central Cultural Revolution Group. (Cheng p43)

...although Yu Luoke did not publicly participate in the everyday operations of the newspaper, he was de facto involved in almost all of the group's significant decisions through his private communications with Mou Zhijing, Yu Lowen, and others. (Cheng p46)

The Journal of Middle-School Cultural Revolution was published in six issues between January 18, 1967, and April 1, 1967. Each issue consisted of roughly three parts: the first part was an editorial written by Yu Luoke that addressed the issue of family origin. This section was also the central theme of the entire newspaper, expressing the systematic political views of Yu Luoke and the group he represented. The second section was a reprint of articles that have already been published in other outlets. Most of these articles were speeches by Maoist leaders, and these speeches condemned, at least in principle, the blood lineage theory that “If the father is a hero, the son is also a hero; if the father is a reactionary, the son is a bastard." The primary function of this section was to lend political legitimacy and security to editors’ views by quoting the authorities. The third section consisted of letters from readers and commentaries written by other youth groups to support the newspaper. This section played the function of communication and debate. (Cheng p47)

From the various archival materials, the third issue of the Journal of Middle-school Cultural Revolution was a turning point in the fate of this underground publication, and by extension, in the fate of Yu Luoke and the other organizers and editors of the underground publication. On the one hand, as previously analyzed, from this time onward, Yu Luoke no longer compiled fictional letters from readers under pseudonyms but published actual letters from readers, and the origin of the letters themselves reflects the increasing diversity of the readership. The journal’s influence reached new heights at this time. Mou Zhijing, a close friend of Yu Luoke who oversaw the executive affairs of the Journal of Middle-school Cultural Revolution, recalled that he also attended an event at the Great Hall of the People and presented the Journal of Middle-school Cultural Revolution to Jiang Qing, who also attended the event. In addition, Mou Zhijing was contacted by a Central Cultural Revolution Group member who wanted a complete set of the Journal of Middle-school Cultural Revolution to be submitted to Mao Zedong for his review as an influential private publication.

Although there is no credible evidence that Mao himself had read the Journal of Middle- school Cultural Revolution, these rumors and Mou Zhijing's interactions with the Central Cultural Revolution Group testify to the growing influence of this underground publication. Nevertheless, at the same time, this growing influence did not necessarily mean good news: higher visibility meant higher political risk. Although the underground publication drew the attention of the Central Cultural Revolution Group and other radical Maoist leaders, the feedback was not positive. According to Mou Zhijing's recollection, when this underground publication was launched, two journalists claiming to be from the Red Flag magazine visited the editorial office regularly. Red Flag is the official magazine of the CPC Central Committee and represents the position of the Maoist leadership to a large extent. Since as mentioned in the previous chapter, the operation of the Journal of Middle-school Cultural Revolution was unique in that the de facto central figure, Yu Luoke, did not officially join it and was not directly responsible for its internal affairs. So, the staff member who claimed to represent the Central Cultural Revolution Group and official forces such as the Red Flag magazine did not have direct communication with Yu Luoke. Mou Zhijing recalls that after the publication of the third issue, the two journalists conveyed to him the comments of Guan Feng (关 锋), a vital member of the Central Cultural Revolution Group. Guan Feng accused the Journal of Middle-school Cultural Revolution of being on the wrong course and thought its ideology had severe problems. As for what was wrong, Guan Feng did not discuss it in more detail. (Cheng p55-56)

On April 1, 1967, the last issue of the Journal of Middle-school Cultural Revolution was published. Several days later, Qi Benyu (戚本 禹), a vital member of the Central Cultural Revolution Group, publicly rebuked the journal and the essay “On Family origin ."In his memoirs, Qi Benyu stated that the main reason for his opposition to “On Family origin” was that he believed that the proposition of Yu Luoke completely denied the objectivity of class existence and the necessity of class analysis Benyu's speech also announced the end of the life of the Journal of Middle-school Cultural Revolution. According to Mou Zhijing, who was in charge of the journal’s management, the underground journal was printed in a total of about 100,000 copies, which was an almost impossible achievement at the time .(Cheng p59-60)

Opposition to On Family origin came mainly from the "Old Red Guards," mainly descendants of bureaucratic families and their supporters, such as Tan Lifu and Kuai Dafu. The extreme slogans of this type of criticism of Yu Luoke’s views dominated most of the voices. This type of discourse generally only repeatedly emphasized that people with bad family origins must be inferior, but there were few arguments to support these views. For example, in the autumn of 1966, the Red Guards at Tsinghua High School wrote in a leaflet entitled Be a dauntless man: "We, the children of the workers, peasants, and revolutionary officials, must be the masters of the society, and any person of bad origin must be humble and obeying in front of us, and they are not allowed to talk freely. We have to rebuke the children of the exploiting class, not allow them to turn over the sky. If they talk freely, we will immediately suppress them! For anyone from a non-worker, peasant, or official family, we can find them and inquire about them at any time. They must be inferior in front of us! They are not allowed to malign us!" Some rebuttals are based on logic and theoretical level against On Family origin. For example, members of the old Red Guard groups, also from Tsinghua High School, wrote an article entitled "On ‘On Family origin’"169 in January 1967, printed in their publications. This article's main point was that family and social influence could not be separated, and by extension, neither could family origin and class status.

From the fall of 1966, such debates continued among young people of different political views and factions until the spring of 1967. From February 1967 onward, there were persistent rumors that the Journal of Middle-school Cultural Revolution, and the political views of Yu Luoke, had been rejected by the CCP Central Committee. Mou Zhijing, one of the core operators of this underground journal, recalls that after the publication's third issue, which means after February 10, 1967, someone claiming to be a reporter of the Red Flag magazine relayed to him instructions from Guan Feng, a core member of the Central Cultural Revolution Group, to suspend the publication on the grounds of ideological errors.

Liu Xinwu, a literature scholar who had a personal relationship with the family, also recalled that "March 15, 1967, was a Sunday. On the way to climb the mountain, Yu Luoke said that he was afraid that the Journal of Middle-school Cultural Revolution could no longer be published, and he heard that Qi Benyu from the Central Cultural Revolution had already made a statement in small circle On Family origin was wrong; he also said that he felt that someone seemed to be following him on his way to work these days." These rumors can also be corroborated in the memoirs of Qi Benyu, a Central Cultural Revolution group member. Qi Benyu's memoirs include a special section on his involvement in the case. He said, "During the meeting of the Central Cultural Revolution, we discussed and analyzed the viewpoint of Yu Luoke and concluded that he had completely denied the objectivity of class existence and the necessity of class analysis, which was going to the other extreme of error. So, it was decided at that time that I would make a public speech based on the thought of Chairman Mao, criticizing the views of Yu Luoke." Although Yu Luoke was arrested in January 1968 and executed two years later, the social movement he led can be seen as ending after the forced suspension of the Journal of Middle-school Cultural Revolution in April 1967.(Cheng p85-87)

The discriminatory treatment of Yu Luoke on the issue of his family origin intensified sharply after 1957, and the personal encounters that led him to launch the social movement in 1966 eventually all occurred after 1957. This is consistent with the above analysis that the anti-rightist movement sharply intensified the bureaucratization of the Chinese grassroots and accelerated the transformation of the concept of "class" into "caste" in Chinese politics. The official expressions of the CCP explicitly rejected the blood lineage theory, reflecting the ideological emphasis of Maoism on individual initiative and its aversion to class entrenchment and reflecting the revolutionary aspect of the CCP's ideology, which is metaphysical. At the same time, however, the rigidity, laziness, and selfishness of the CCP's grassroots bureaucracy led to the reinforcement of the blood lineage theory at the level of ordinary people's daily lives, which reflected the authoritarian side of the Stalinist party-state system established by the CCP, which is material. Revolutionary and authoritarian are contradictory terms, but they exist in the Communist regime simultaneously. The contradiction between the two reflects the dichotomy between the revolutionary and conservative features of the CCP's political logic and legacy. This conflict was retained and reinforced in the early 1960s after the end of the Anti-rightist campaign, and the consequent result was the continued bureaucratization and the creation of a privileged class within the Chinese Communist regime. This is one of the most important reasons for the Maoists to launch the Cultural Revolution. Therefore, as analyzed in the previous chapters, the main object of Yu Luoke's critique is not the Chinese Communist Party in the abstract sense but the specific bureaucratic privileged groups. From an ideological point of view, the ideas and actions of Yu Luoke were in line with Maoist ideology and the original intention of the Maoists to launch the Cultural Revolution: only by crushing the new bureaucratic privileged groups through radical revolutionary movements could the flexibility and vitality of the socialist regime be ensured. Nevertheless, the Maoist leaders at the center of power, including Mao himself, could not remain outside the vast bureaucratic system. While the Maoist leaders, including Mao himself, remained revolutionary at the metaphysical level, they also continued to move toward pro-establishment at the practical level. This is evidenced by the fact that since the anti-rightist movement, the Maoists have constantly emphasized their fear of regime subversion. Thus, on the one hand, as Yiching Wu mentioned, the Maoists were, in fact, unable to completely cut themselves off from the bureaucracy, and so their fears were aroused when the social movement's attacks on the bureaucracy were too violent. On the other hand, the arrest of Yu Luoke came in early 1968, when the Red Guard movement was already at a low ebb, and his execution took place in March 1970. The Maoists' logic and motivation for suppressing the entire Red Guard movement were the same as their logic and motivation for blocking both Yu Luoke and the Journal of Middle-school Cultural Revolution: namely, the fear that uncontrolled chaos would eventually backfire on the regime they had established. One of the most significant changes in China between 1968 and 1970 was that mass chaotic and disorderly mass movements were replaced by top-down control, discipline, and censorship. The Cultural Revolution that followed the Red Guards era moved from a quasi- anarchic mass movement to a Stalinist police state like the USSR under the Great Purge. Moreover, this model was dominated by bureaucratic political logic. In a sense, the arrest and killing of Yu Luoke reflected the fact that the Maoist leadership, represented by the Central Cultural Revolutionary Group, also accelerated the alienation from the revolutionary forces within the Party to bureaucratization after the spring of 1967. The CCP that Yu Luoke tried to defend was the idealistic, ideological CCP, which existed as a revolutionary force. At the same time, the CCP that ultimately killed Yu Luoke was the authoritarian, conservative, institutionalized CCP, which existed as a bureaucratic group. The tragedy of Yu Luoke epitomizes how the CCP's own bureaucratic and authoritarian tendencies continue to overcome its revolutionary and idealistic tendencies. (Cheng p123-125)

The fact that Bei Dao's poems in memory of Yu Luoke were written on flags and appeared in the wave of students in Tiananmen Square meant that even though Yu Luoke had passed away and even though the CCP had acquitted him, his struggle had not ended. His spirit came to Tiananmen Square through words to continue his unfinished battles. That is why the conclusion of this study is titled “End of the Beginning": the social movement led by Yu Luoke came to an end in 1967, but that was not the end of the story. His movement was only the beginning of another long story that has not yet ended. After his death, the story continues to this day. The core of this story is the recovery of a lost revolutionary heritage of radicalism in a bureaucratized, authoritarian, and conservative capitalist China through a constant struggle based on left-wing discourse.

Yu Luoke's advocacy of equality for all and the breaking of bureaucratic privilege with the revolutionary heritage of radicalism has acquired a more vital relevance in post-1980 capitalist China. In a sense, Yu Luoke's ideas are in line with those of Mao Zedong in 1919, the Tiananmen Student Movement in 1989, and even the rising New Left, the labor movement, and the feminist movement in post-1989 China. In contemporary China, where the revolutionary ideals of socialism have been entirely replaced by nationalist narratives and the imperial logic of Han supremacy, and in contemporary America, where socialist and left-wing ideas are constantly stigmatized by anti-communism and religious conservatism, the historical legacy of Yu Luoke is resonating more and more strongly between history and reality, and thus, Yu Luoke is immortalized. (Cheng 130-131)

Once formulated by Yu Luoke into a theory of social inequality and oppression, these class differences, which had already been in existence, became unusually threatening to the regime. At least theoretically, therefore, there was a perceptual shift of the locus of social conflict from between the people and the bourgeoisie to between the people and the privileged class within the party. This new understanding of social conflicts and social relationships implied, however vaguely and incoherently, a new understanding of the self. In Yu Luoke’s writings this notion of the self was implicit in his theoretical defense of human equality and choice. He wrote, for example, that “human beings are capable of choosing their own directions for progress” and that “we reject any right that cannot be achieved through individual efforts.” In Yang Xiguang’s essays, this notion of the self was adumbrated in his championing of original and critical thinking. In a political context where the goals of national development were set by the party, Yang and his associates in Shengwulian called on all social groups to search for alternative routes based on independent analyses of China’s actual social conditions. The popularity of the essays of Yu Luoke and Yang Xiguang suggested that this notion of the self was not limited to a few individuals or small groups. The subversive elements in the political agendas that contained this notion of the self were so obvious to the party authorities that politically divided factions within the party lost no time in joining forces to crush the proponents of these ideas. The harsh punishments dealt to Yu Luoke, Yang Xiguang, Lu Li’an, and others prevented them from developing their ideas further and for a short period of time even curtailed the spreading of their ideas. But, as we will see in later chapters, the seeds of dissent that were sown in the Red Guard movement would grow in new soil. Despite the radical nature of political dissent, the heterodox “theoreticians” of the Cultural Revolution shared a fundamental commonality with the practitioners of the revolution who were engaged in violent battles like those in Chongqing, and that is that they had a strong sense of idealism and passion about revolution and radical social change. Their faith in the leadership of the Cultural Revolution may have been shaken, but revolution remained a sacred category in the heterodox thoughts in 1967 and 1968. It continued to be the linchpin of the meaning of a “good life.” It was only when the drama of the revolution came to an end that alternative visions of a good life began to emerge. Yet it is crucial to see the persistence of revolutionary idealism even in the middle of radical revolutionary theorizing, because it helps to understand a distinct trait in the formation of the Red Guard generation, that is, that whatever they became later in their lives, once upon a time they were true believers, and that experience of true belief decisively shaped their personal identities and experiences. Xu Xiao captures this trait quite well in her characterization of Mu (Mou) Zhijing, who helped to disseminate Yu Luoke’s theory of family origin in 1967. In her memoir Half of My Life published in 2005, Xu Xiao writes: Mu Zhijing is still a spiritual wanderer to the present day. To a great extent, his mental journey is a proof of the spiritual journey of our generation. Our spirit of doubt grew out of experiences of belief. Even if we rejected something, we must have first accepted it. This is our difference from the skeptics in the younger generation. They doubt and reject something for the sake of doubting and rejecting it. They do not care whether it is a kind of nihilism. Or maybe nihilism is precisely what they are after.

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tong lun). All these essays were authored by one person, Yu Luoke, who was a twenty-four-year-old worker in 1966. The most important of these essays was titled “On Family Origin” (chu shen lun). The systematic use of social and political labels by the Chinese socialist state was a major cause of symbolic immobility.33 Among these labels was a category based on class origin. Three broad types of class origin, good, middle, and bad, respectively dubbed “red,” “gray" and “black,” were distinguished on the basis of the head of household’s economic and political status in the years before the Communist Party took power.34 Different class origins bestowed different political and social statuses on their incumbents. Thus the good ones ranked highest socially, the bad ones were condemned and stigmatized, and the middling ones occupied a limbo space between the red and the black. Like a caste system, class labels both divided the society and put its members under strict control. Class labels, once assigned, went into everyone’s dossiers and would permanently affect almost all aspects of one’s life, from educational opportunities to careers. Labels like these created and perpetuated ascribed statuses or social stigmas. Before the Cultural Revolution, this “class line” controlled the nerves of Chinese society, giving those from red categories a sense of superiority and treating those from nonred categories as second-class citizens, if not criminals. This class line cast its dark shadows over the education system. The first contingent of Red Guard organizations in Beijing consisted of students from “red-category” families. Their core members were the children of high-level party, government, or military leaders. To show and sustain the sense of superiority of these elite students, these early Red Guard organizations recruited members on the basis of the bloodline theory. On this theory, only students from families of “red categories” were eligible to join Red Guard organizations. Those from “black categories” were not only excluded, but in many cases became the targets of attack. Whereas before the Cultural Revolution such a theory was in de facto effect but not publicized as a party doctrine, the Red Guards lost no time in pronouncing it publicly, and they did so in the most blatant manner. The whole theory was condensed into the following notorious couplet, which spread nationally in June 1966: If the father’s a hero, the son’s a great fellow; If the father’s a reactionary, the son’s a rotten egg.

This was merely a cruder version of the theory that implicitly guided the official practice of dividing Chinese society into various class categories.

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Just as the class categories had been a political yardstick used by the partystate in evaluating individuals, so the ideas expressed in the couplet became widely adopted by some Red Guards as the basis for excluding certain groups of students from Red Guard organizations, making them vulnerable to political persecution. Yu Luoke wrote the long essay “On Family Origin” in July 1966 to refute the bloodline theory. The essay was first publicized and distributed in a leaflet by his brother Yu Luowen, a student in Beijing’s No. 65 Middle School. Initially only several hundred copies of the leaflet were printed and distributed. It was not until it was published in the Middle School Cultural Revolution News (zhong xue wen ge bao) that it gained wide influence. This “little newspaper” was launched on January 18, 1967, through the joint efforts of Yu Luowen, Yu Luoke, and Mu Zhijing, a student in Beijing’s No. 4 Middle School.r’ The paper ran six issues before it was forced to shut down in April 1967. The sixth and last issue was published on April 1,1967. Each of the six issues carried a major article by Yu Luoke, all attacking the “bloodline theory,” but authorship was attributed to a “Beijing Family Background Study Group,” and Yu Luoke was never named. “On Family Origin” argued that a new hereditary caste system (zhong xing zhi du) had formed in China that resembled the feudal caste system. In this system, Yu Luoke argued, social groups that belonged to the so-called seven black categories of family origins became the oppressed class, while those in the red categories were the ruling class. Yu further argued that the criteria for making this distinction was entirely arbitrary and based on ascribed and not achieved status. Fie contended that the reason for the appearance of the new caste system in China was political. It was for the more effective ruling of the people, as he wrote in another article, “On the Life and Death of Zheng Zhaonan the Martyr." On the basis of these analyses, Yu Luoke called on all oppressed youth to rise up in struggles against the injustices of politically imposed social inequality. These essays struck a chord among many. In a 1996 interview, Mu Zhijing, the original editor of the newspaper that carried Yu Luoke’s essay “On Family Origin,” described the popularity of his little paper: Thirty thousand copies ol the first issue ol the paper were printed. Later, sixty thousand more were printed. Altogether, 110,000 copies of “On Family Origin" were printed. The newspaper became very influential. We received large numbers of letters from readers__ Because too many letters were sent to us, the post office refused to deliver them. Everyday, we had to go to the post office to bring

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back two big bags of letters. The price of our paper was set at two fen [equivalent to pennies], but it could be sold as high as five yuan in the street.10

The diffusion of Yu Luoke’s “On Family Origin" owed much to the chaotic political conditions of the Cultural Revolution, which provided relative freedom for people to form organizations and publish their views in small papers. It was a typical case of a small group of people voicing dissent through a small paper. At a time when thousands of such small papers were mushrooming, dissenting voices such as those carried in the Middle School Cultural Revolution News found their outlets. Yet the movement-countermovement dynamics were also essential. As a refutation of the “bloodline theory” of the “old Red Guards," Yu Luoke’s “On Family Origin” provided theoretical support to the insurgent zaofanpai, many of whom had suffered persecution in the hands of the “old guards.” Not surprisingly, although his essay was written in July 1966, its widespread circulation through the publication of Middle School Cultural Revolution News happened only in January 1967, after the old guards had lost their domination of the Red Guard movement, in this sense, the voicing of dissent became possible because the insurgent rebel ranks needed these voices to challenge their rivals. As soon as the voices of dissent had spread, however, their power became a threat not only to the “old Red Guards” but also to the political establish­ ment. Yu Luoke’s challenge against the bloodline theory could be easily interpreted as a challenge to China’s political system. Thus, before long, in April 1967, Yu’s “On Family Origin” was denounced by top leaders as “counterrevolutionary” and the Middle School Cultural Revolution News was shut down. Yu Luoke was arrested on January 5, 1968, and ruthlessly executed on March 5, 1970. Such was the irony of radical mass action during the Cultural Revolution. Sponsored by the very center of political power in China, mass action inadvertently provided the conditions for political dissent that challenged the same power that had sponsored the mass action.

“ ON NEW TRENDS OF THOUGHT-A MANIFESTO OF THE APRIL THIRD FACTION,” JUNE 1967 The notion of the existence of a specially privileged class was the theme of the manifesto of the “April Third” faction among Beijing’s middle school

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students. After party authorities issued orders in March 1967 for schools to resume class and sent military teams from the Beijing Garrison to provide military training to middle school students, rebel Red Guards in Beijing’s middle schools split into two factions. The April Third faction came to be known as such after Zhou Enlai, KangSheng.JiangQing, Xie Fuzhi, and other central party leaders met with Beijing’s college and middle school students on April 3, 1967.17 At that meeting, Jiang Qing, Kang Sheng, and Xie Fuzhi took the Beijing Garrison to task for suppressing rebel organizations in Bei­ jing’s middle schools and supporting the conservative United Action Qiandong). Encouraged by these speeches, the rebel students who had been the target of suppression by the military immediately launched a counteroffensive by putting up posters around the city the next day. These rebels came to be known as the April Third faction. Perhaps to prevent the rebels from going too far in their counterattacks, but certainly reflecting the whimsies of the dynamics of the Cultural Revolution, several other members of the Cultural Revolution Small Group, including Wang Li, Guan Feng and Qi Benyu, met with rebel students in Beijing’s middle schools on April 4 and told them that although the military teams from Beijing Garrison might have committed mistakes in conducting military training, overall they had done a good job and should not be publicly attacked. These speeches were taken as words of support by April Third’s opponents, who became known as the April Fourth faction. After the conservatives or royalists were crushed at the end of 1966, the Red Guard movement in Beijing’s middle schools was carried on mainly between these two rival rebel factions. Although April Third and April Fourth were both rebel organizations, as opposed to conservatives, there were several important differences between the two. First, there was a clearer class line dividing the two than that dividing rebel factions in colleges and universities. The more extreme and radical April Third faction gathered children from “ordinary families” (Jf whereas the April Fourth faction was dominated by children of elite cadres or military families. Second, this difference partly explained their different attitudes toward students of Liandong, who were uniformly from elite families and had vehemently promoted the idea of born-reds in August and September of 1966. The April Third faction argued that members of Liandong were all counterrevolutionaries to be vanquished, whereas the more sympathetic April Fourth faction maintained that not all Liandong members were bad and at least some of them were redeemable and should be won over. The

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third difference was their attitude toward the army, the PLA. Because the April Third faction accused the PLA of suppressing rebel organizations, they were charged of being anti-PLA, whereas April Fourth had the support of the PLA. The rivalry between the April Third and April Fourth factions was carried out both verbally through wall posters and little papers and through physical violence.18 “On New Trends of Thought—a Manifesto of the April Third Faction" was born in the middle of these conflicts. It was published in the first issue of April Third Battle News (si san zhan bao) on June 11,1967. Theorizing the revolution was just as important as conducting the revolution in the street. Much of the political dissent in the Red Guard movement was born as a result of such theorizing. The theorizing itself was deliberate, indeed often done in imitation of the great “revolutionary teachers” such as Marx, Lenin, and Mao Zedong, but the dissent was often accidental and expressed as the applications of Marxist theory to the analysis of Chinese realities. Relatively little is known about the background of the writing of the April Third manifesto. According to Bei Dao’s recollections,311the author was Zhang Xianglong, whose elder brother Zhang Xiangping was a writer for a rebel group known as the “Commune of New No. 4 Middle School.” No. 4 Middle School was an important hub of rebel radicalism for Beijing’s middle school students. It was Mu Zhijing, a student there, who had started the Mid­ dle School Cultural Revolution News, which published Yu Luoke’s articles attacking the bloodline theory. Besides Middle School Cultural Revolution News, rebel students there published several other small papers. It was not surprising that the publication of the April Third manifesto was connected to rebel activities in No. 4 Middle School. The manifesto tried to provide theoretical justification for the practical actions of the April Third faction. Its claim to a “new trend of thought” derives from its argument that the Cultural Revolution was a revolution to promote the redistribution of property and power, encourage revolutionary changes in the society, and break up the privileged class. At the beginning of the CR, the Sixteen Points had defined the main target of the CR as “those within the Party who are in authority and are taking the capitalist road.”'10The question about redistribution of power and property was never mentioned. Yet the April Third manifesto argues that a privileged class had formed in the socialist period and that the Cultural Revolution should aim to achieve the redistribution of property and power. In this respect, the class

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theory in this document was consistent with Yu Luoke’s theory of family origin. Both provided theoretical support for students from marginalized social groups to challenge the “old Red Guards.” The impact of the April Third Manifesto may be seen from the counterat­ tacks it incurred. It was soon labeled and denounced as reactionary heresy. On September 19, 1967, a Red Guard newspaper in Huhhot of Inner Mongolia published an essay titled “Also on New Trends of Thought” (ye hin xin si chao), which was a denunciation of the spreading of similar ideas in Huhhot.41 Another kind of impact was that the manifesto inspired Yang Xiguang to produce his famous essay “Whither China,” which I will discuss.

“ WHITHER CHINA?” OCTOBER 1967-JANUARY 1968 Both Yu Luoke’s essays and the manifesto of the April Third faction influenced Yang Xiguang’s thinking. Yang was an eighteen-year-old high school student in Changsha No. 1 Middle School and a member of Shengwulian, shorthand for Hunan Provincial Proletarian Revolutionary Alliance Commit­ tee. Shengwulian was an umbrella name for many rebel organizations consisting primarily of individuals from disadvantaged social groups. The social background of members of Shengwulian clarified to Yang Xiguang the class nature of the political struggles. Yang saw it as a struggle of the oppressed social groups against a ruling bureaucratic class, which he called “red capitalist class.” According to Yang’s own account, the idea of the existence of a “red capitalist class” first occurred to him when he was exposed to the ideas of the April Third faction on a linkup trip to Beijing in 1967.42 Back in Changsha, Yang traveled to the rural areas to study local social conditions. It was at this time that he began writing “Whither China?” In this essay Yang Xiguang argued that in the seventeen years of communist rule after 1949, a “red capitalist class" consisting of over 90 percent of the high-ranking officials had formed in China. The relationship of this class with the people was that of rulers and ruled, oppressors and oppressed. Because of the existence of this antagonistic relationship, the author further argued, the struggles of the Cultural Revolution were between the oppressed class and the oppressors: Facts as revealed by the masses, and the indignation they brought forth, first told the people that these “Red” capitalists had entirely become a decaying class that hindered the progress of history. The relations between them and the people in

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general had changed from relations between leaders and followers to those between rulers and the ruled and between exploiters and the exploited. From the relations between revolutionaries of equal standing, it had become a relationship between oppressors and the oppressed. The special privileges and high salaries of the class of “Red” capitalists were built upon the foundation of oppression and exploitation of the broad masses of the people. In order to realize the “People’s Commune of China,” it was necessary to overthrow this class.43

In targeting a “red capitalist class,” Yang argued that the Cultural Revolution was not an internal party struggle for purging a few power holders. Rather, it was the struggle of an oppressed class against the oppressors, who were none other than the communist party leadership. The essay proposed to establish a new political party “that will lead the people to overthrow today’s class enemy-the new Red bourgeoisie.”44 In a separate essay, Yang suggested that this new party could take the incipient form of “Maoist groups.” The mandate of these groups was to unite all those who were “willing to learn and bold enough to think, and think independently,” so that they could openly and critically analyze the conditions in China and reach their own conclusions instead of accepting wholesale the theories promulgated in official newspapers (“Suggestions About Establishing Maoist Groups”). Yang suggested that Shengwulian could be viewed as the prototype of such a party. As Jonathan Unger puts it, Shengwulian . . . was a congeries of groups that held one element in common: they all had been persecuted and shortchanged by the state and Party apparatus before and during the Cultural Revolution__ To be sure, elsewhere in China, too, there were obvious distinctions in the overall social composition of the Rebels as against the Conservative faction. But, by 1967, these differences had become partially obfuscated by the twists and turns of the Cultural Revolution, as the alignments of various subgroups and organizations shifted and split and recoalesced in accordance with the vagaries of local repressions, desperate efforts to secure vengeance and to end up on the winning side, and subsequent alliances of convenience.45

Yang Xiguang’s articles drew immediate condemnation from the authorities. Yang himself was charged by party authorities as a “counterrevolutionary," arrested in February 1968, and imprisoned for ten years. Scholars generally agree about the radical nature and significance of Yang’s ideas as expressed in “Whither China?” In particular, Yiching Wu’s

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book analyzes the tortuous trajectories of Shengwulian and the radicalism of “Whither China.”'11’ Still, an important question remains: Why the imperative to theorize the revolution? The stylistic features of Yang Xiguang’s radical essays suggest that he was consciously imitating the style of Mao the revolutionary theorist. He borrowed Mao's words both in the title of his essay “Whither China?” and in its opening sentences. Yang's use of Mao’s classic texts was an act of emulation and reenactment of an ideal, namely, Mao and his revolutionary practices, and it was by means of such emulation that the young radicals wished to become the revolutionaries of their own times. Yang Xiguang’s borrowing of Mao’s words was not limited to “Whither China?” Another important essay he wrote, titled “Report on an Investigation of the Youth Movement in Changsha,” was modeled on Mao’s famous “Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan.” Here is a famous passage from Mao’s 1927 essay: “IT’S TERRIBLE!" OR “IT’S FINE!" The peasants' revolt disturbed the gentry’s sweet dreams. When the news from the countryside reached the cities, it caused immediate uproar among the gentry. Soon after my arrival in Changsha, I met all sorts of people and picked up a good deal of gossip. From the middle social strata upward to the Guomindang right-wingers, there was not a single person who did not sum up the whole business in the phrase, “It's terrible!”47

Below is a striklingly similar passage from Yang’s 1967 essay: “IT’S TERRIBLE!” OR “IT’S FINE!” Educated youth who returned to the city to make rebellions disturbed the sweet dreams ol the bourgeois masters, mistresses, young masters, and young misses. From the middle social strata upward to the rebels' right-wingers, there was not a single person who did not sum up the whole business in the phrase “it’s terrible!"

The emulation of the young Mao was not just a matter of prose style, though the significance of style must not be underestimated. The young radicals of the Cultural Revolution emulated Mao’s whole way of being a revolutionary, his method of social investigation, his boldness and ambition, and his theoretical vision. In the steps of the young Mao, reading Marxist and Maoist theories and applying them to Chinese realities became a way of clarifying the goals and methods of the Cultural Revolution when many young people began to entertain doubts and ambivalences about the gaps between

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the Cultural Revolution and Chinese realities. Hence the rise of what Yang Xiguang calls “theoretical movements” in the second half of 1967. Yang saw such a “theoretical movement” happening when he was studying the educated youth and preparing his report on the educated youth movement: Financially, educated youth had the most difficulties, yet they ran the largest number of newspapers. Whenever a new view appears which offers an explanation of the conditions of educated youth, in less than a day’s time it can spread to every educated youth. Therefore, when you visit the educated youth, you will find a special characteristic, that is, that their views about the educated movement was almost entirely the same. Among educated youth, theory has become a flourishing movement.

The human barriers caused by the bloodline theory can never be corrected. These barriers still exist today between people of my former middle school. These barriers were established by the categories of family background. I remember clearly that when we were about to depart for the countryside, one of the so-called old Red Guards said to us: “From now on, you can take the brush [i.e., for writing] and we will take the weapons; we will see who finally will remain in power!” As could have been expected, many of these old Red Guards are military commanders or vice commanders today.