Words Kill: Calling for the Destruction of 'Class Enemies' in China, 1949-1953 (East Asia (New York, N.Y.).)

EAST ASIA HISTORY, POLITICS, SOCIOLOGY, CULTURE EDITED BY EDWARD BEAUCHAMP UNIVERSITY OF HAWAII A ROUTLEDGE SERIES

EAST ASIA HlSTORY, POLITICS, SOCIOLOGY, CULTURE EDWARD BEAUCHAMP, General Editor PROBLEMS OF DEMOCRATIZATION IN CHINA Thomas G.Lum THE UNKNOWN CULTURAL REVOLUTION Educational Reforms and Their Impact on China’s Rural Development, 1966–1976 Dongping Han MAO’S PREY The History of Chen Renbing, Liberal Intellectual Jeanette Ford Fernandez THE ROOTS OF JAPAN’S ENVIRONMENTAL POLICIES Amy Wong THE ORIGINS OF THE BILATERAL OKINAWA PROBLEM Okinawa in Postwar US-Japan Relations, 1945–1952 Robert D.Eldridge SOUTH-SOUTH TRANSFER A Study of Sino-African Exchanges Sandra Gillespie STUDYING THE ENEMY Japan Hands in Republican China and Their Quest for National Identity Christiane I.Reinhold SELF-RELIANCE OR SELF-DESTRUCTION? Success and Failure of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’s Development Strategy of Self-Reliance “juche” Phillip H.Park THIRD DELIGHT The Internationalization of Higher Education in China Rui Yang

STRUGGLE FOR NATIONAL SURVIVAL Eugenics in Sino-Japanese Contexts, 1896–1945 Yuehtsen Juliette Chung RETHINKING JAPAN’S IDENTITY AND INTERNATIONAL ROLE An Intercultural Perspective Susanne Klien JAPAN’S FOREIGN POLICY MATURATION A Quest for Normalcy Kevin J.Cooney VILLAGE, MARKET AND WELL-BEING IN A RURAL CHINESE TOWNSHIP Tamara Perkins HISTORY OF JAPANESE POLICIES IN EDUCATION AID TO DEVELOPING COUNTRIES, 1950s–1990s The Role of the Subgovernmental Processes Takao Kamibeppu ENGINEERING THE STATE The Huai River and Reconstruction in Nationalist China, 1927–1937 David A.Pietz

WORDS KILL CALLING FOR THE DESTRUCTION OF “CLASS ENEMIES” IN CHINA, 1949–1953

CHENG-CHIH WANG

ROUTLEDGE NEW YORK & LONDON

Published in 2002 by Routledge 29 West 35th Street New York, NY 10001 http://www.routledge-ny.com/ Published in Great Britain by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane London EC4P 4EE Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group. This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to http://www.ebookstore.tandf.co.uk/.” Copyright © 2002 by Cheng-chih Wang All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Wang, Cheng-Chih. Words kill: calling for the destruction of “class enemies” in China, 1949-1953/Cheng-Chih Wang. p. cm. (East Asia, history, politics, sociology, culture) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-41593428-1 1. Propaganda, Communist—China. 2. Zhongguo gong chan dang. 3. Genocide—China. I.Title. II. East Asia (New York, N.Y.) JQ1512.Z13 P857 2002 320.951′09′045–dc21 2002022381 ISBN 0-203-01803-6 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-415-93428-1 (Print Edition)

To my father, who had left his prints on this studyin a way he was never aware of.

CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES, TABLES AND CHARTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS INTRODUCTION

THE PROBLEM AND ITS SETTING

viii xi xiii

1

FORMATION OF GENOCIDE—REVIEW OF THE RELATED LITERATURE

21

DATA AND METHOD

50

FINDINGS AND INTERPRETATIONS

62

WORDS KILL—CONCLUDING DISCUSSIONS

115

APPENDIX

122

BIBLIOGRAPHY

132

INDEX

141

LIST OF FIGURES, CHARTS AND TABLES Figure 1–1:

Mechanism of Legitimacy-Maintenance via Language xv

Figure 3–1:

Evolutional Model of Genocide in China

Table 3–1:

Instances of Genocidal And Non-Genocidal Outcomes 23 By Revolutions And Other Conditions

Table 3–2:

Comparisons of Selected Total Domestic Genocides

24

Table 3–3:

Likely Preconditions And Victims of Genocide

26

Table 4–1:

Methodological Treatment of Sub-Problems in this Study

56

Chart 4–1:

Mobilization Mechanism of Mass Campaigns

59

Chart 4–2:

Propaganda-Related Institutions of the PRC in the Early 1950s

60

Table 5–1:

Minor Themes of The People’s Daily Editorials 1949– 63 1953

Chart 5–1:

Minor Themes of The People’s Daily Editorials, 1949–1953 By Number of Paragraphs

65

Table 5–2:

Major Themes of The People’s Daily Editorials, 1949–1953

66

Chart 5–2:

Major Themes of The People’s Daily Editorials, 1949–1953 By Number of Paragraphs

68

Table 5–3:

CCP-Constructed Enemy Labels

71

21

Table 5–4:

Projected Actions Against Five Major Enemies

75

Chart 5–3:

Overall Patterns of the Use of Five Major SubCategories of People’s Enemy

79

Table 5–5:

Comparison of Major Movements Launched Between 80 June1950–July1953

Chart 5–4:

Pre-War Frequency Appearance of the “Unaffiliated Adversary” Category

85

Chart 5–5:

Pre-War Frequency Appearance of Enemies in the “Imperialism” Category

86

Chart 5–6:

Pre-War Frequency Appearance of Enemies in the “Feudalism” Category

87

Chart 5–7:

Pre-War Frequency Appearance of Enemies in the “Bureaucrat-Capitalism” Category

89

Chart 5–8:

Pre-War Frequency Appearance of Enemies in the “Counter-Revolutionary” Category

90

Chart 5–9:

Wartime Frequency Appearance of Major Enemies Compared in Rank Order

96

Chart 5–10:

96 Frequency Appearance of Enemies in the “Unaffiliated Adversary” Category During War Years

Chart 5–11:

Frequency Appearance of Enemies in the “Imperialism” Category During War Years

Chart: 5–12:

Frequency Appearance of Enemies in the “Feudalism” 100 Category During War Years

99

Chart: 5–1 3: Frequency Appearance of Enemies in the “Bureaucrat- 102 Capitalism” Category During War Years Chart: 5–14:

Frequency Appearance of Enemies in the “CounterRevolutionary” Category During War Years

103

Table 5–6:

Projected Actions Against Major Enemies in August 1953

106

Table 5–7:

Projected Actions Against Major Enemies in November 1953

107

Chart 5–15:

Post-War Frequency Appearance of Enemies in the “Unaffiliated Adversary” Category

108

Chart 5–16:

Post-War Frequency Appearance of Enemies in the “Imperialism” Category

109

Chart 5–17:

Post-War Frequency Appearance of Enemies in the “Feudalism” Category

110

Chart 5–18:

Post-War Frequency Appearance of Enemies in the “Bureaucrat-Capitalism” Category

111

Chart 5–19:

Post-War Frequency Appearance of Enemies in the “Counter-Revolutionary” Category

112

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS A FEW PARAGRAPHS OF AFFECTION ON THE THIRD PAGE OF A DISSERTATION ARE THE only place non-professional expressions will be tolerated in a research project. Limited space means the author can only select a number of names to express his gratitude to from the long list of people who have helped the completion of this dissertation directly or indirectly. Every contribution is deeply appreciated. My first thank goes to Dr. Philo Wasburn who has been laboriously guiding me through the whole process of completing the current project. His academic insight profoundly enhanced the depth of analysis of this study. Drs. Harry Potter, jack Spencer, Rachael Einhwoner and Aihe Wang all provided useful assistance either during the preliminary or final stages of this research. Dr. Rose Haberer’s professional editing made the current study much more readable. Two Ph. D. students, Szu-yu Kuo and Se-fong Kao, helped me test the reliability of the coding scheme. I heartily thank them for their unselfish assistance. Just as researchers customarily write the preface last, my final but deepest thanks go to my parents in law and families in Taiwan for their financial and spiritual support. After all these years, the completion of this project should come as a relief to my wife Chi-jen Fang and my two children, joe and Bryce, who have no choice but to tolerate my stubborn pursuit of an uncertain goal. I thank Dr. Harry Wu, the Executive Director of the Laogai Research Foundation (CA.), who generously offered hard evidence that proves that the CCP had ordered to kill its own people by quotas.

INTRODUCTION THIS STUDY IS ABOUT POLITICAL USE OF LANGUAGE. lT ARGUES THAT CONSTRUCTED realities are capable of creating an all-embracing “frame of reference” for people to make sense of their everyday life. Such “frame of reference” can be manipulated by a state government to maintain its legitimacy. Armed with this legal domination, a totalitarian government is able to make even genocidal policies viable. As a tool for social and political control, words can be an aid to either constructive or destructive purposes. This study proposes that language, as conveyed by instruments of state propaganda, can be a lethal weapon when used by a totalitarian government. The focus of the research, articulated below, is on the political processes of language use rather than on the political structure of a totalitarian state. Sociologically, moreover, it tries to explore, through content analysis of PRC’s official propaganda, the way totalitarian states such as the PRC maintain its legitimacy through constant elimination of constructed enemies. Max Weber constructed three ideal types of legitimate rule (or domination) to analyze polities, past and present. They are: “legal-rational rule” by means of established laws, “traditional rule” by means of custom or precedence, and “charismatic rule” by means of a charismatic leader with unusual qualities and the norms and goals laid down by the person. Most polities are ruled by a mixture of the three types of legitimation and none of the pure type ever existed in reality (Mommsen 1974:73; 1989:21). In this study, the legal-rational legitimacy is my primary concern. Not that charismatic rule was nonexistent in China. Signs of Mao’s personal dictatorship was not manifest during the 1950s, but the image of Mao as a charisma within the Party has begun to emerge even before 1949. Nor because the CCP has completely abolished all Chinese customs. The Party has not been able to do this to this date. Indeed, the CCP preserved many constituent elements of the old order but tried to endow those elements with new meanings. This has very important sociological implications. I will elaborate on that later in this section. My rationale of focusing on legal-rational legitimacy is that the CCP has had acquired legitimacy through the following achievements: 1. That it was able to draw mass support by promising them a better future; 2. That it succeeded in conveying the image that the CCP sympathizes the grievances of the peasants; 3. That it has a lion’s share in the unification of China, along with the KMT, after the Northern Expedition (1926–1928); 4. That it was capable of putting 230 million square miles of Chinese territory and more than 168 million population under its effective administration by the end of 1948 (Guo 1980:775); 5. That the CCP was finally able to unify the entire China single-handedly, against a sea of unfavorable conditions (see Fairbank and MacFaquhar 1990).

From the date of October 1, 1949 onward, the core concern for the PRC was to maintain its hard-won legitimacy through several major moves: 1. To realize its promises to the people. 2. To eliminate remnant and potential enemies of the new “people’s government.” 3. To construct a new society according to its own image. What is to be done to achieve these goals? Terror, persuasion and a combination of the two can do the job. Examples of preserving the old bottle and fill in new wine in China were plenty. The interim constitution of the PRC—the “Common Program”—legalized the continuing existence of the “national capitalists” namely, the hand-crafters and owners of small private businesses. This policy openly contradicts the proclaimed official line of a socialist revolution that intended to eliminate all bourgeoisie and pettybourgeoisie (Mao, Selected Readings 1971). Another example concerns the bureaucracy. Monarch rule with the assistance of a very advanced system of bureaucracy was the order of the day in China for two millenniums. “Bureaucracy” and the “bureaucrat-capitalists” were condemned by the Party as “people’s enemies.” Yet, “theory and practices” of the CCP made no intention to derail from this course (Fairbank and MacFarquhar 1987:48). To consolidate the people’s revolution, Mao announced in 1949, the state machine (and, naturally, its constituent parts) will not only be preserved but also strengthened over a long period of time (Mao 1949). These strategies of political engineering cannot be satisfactorily explained by the official ideology of Marxism, but can be better understood from a Weberian perspective of legitimacy maintenance. Weber’s sociological model of legitimate rule is relevant here in at least two senses. First, legal-rational domination contains anti-democratic implication. Most modern states rule through bureaucracy which is at once a necessary tool and a curse in Weber’s conceptualization (Mommsen 1989:46). Under modern conditions, a political leader must make full use of the bureaucracy in order to succeed. Emphases on administrative efficiency and organization goals tend to create unintended anti-democratic effects. Frequently, “it does subject people to impersonal rules which they played little role in making” (Wasburn 1982:23). According to Lipset, there is “little difference between capitalist and socialist societies” in their propensity to the above-mentioned alienation (cited in Wasburn 1982:23). To elaborate, under legal-rational domination, “as long as political rule is conducted according to procedures and regulations considered legitimate by the public, no decision arrived at in such a manner will be considered unlawful, however outrageous it may be in terms of a substantive moral standard” (Mommsen 1989:47). The Holocaust as well the Chinese genocide under examination in this study might never have occurred if the policy to eliminate certain politically constructed groups was not considered formally correct by the majority of people. Second, idea matters. Weber’s model of political change hinges on the conception that “interests (both material and ideal), not ideas, directly govern human action. But the world-views created by ‘ideas’ very often set the points of the rails along which the course of action proceeded, propelled by the dynamic of interests” (cited in Mommsen 1989:131). To put it another way, for the maintenance of a regime, the uses of coercion or disproportionate distribution of resources may be essential. Nevertheless, as Collins notes, “…physical resources do not automatically flow into power, and it makes all the

difference in individual careers and in the long-run changes of human history just how men manipulate beliefs and emotions” (Collins 1975:368). In sum, legitimation is the process of explaining and justifying (Berger and Luckmann 1966:91). To manipulate ideas and set the course for collective action was exactly what the Nazis and the CCP tried to do through their propaganda campaigns. Figure 1–1 graphically shows the mechanism of legitimacy-maintenance via language.

Figure 1–1: Mechanism of LegitimacyMaintenance via Language The transmitting belt that connects beliefs and actions is language. While stressing the dialectical relationship between ideas and their sustaining social processes, Berger and Luckmann (1966:38) argued that language, as a sign system, has the quality of objectivity and can force a person into its patterns. For example, one cannot use the rules of Chinese syntax when speaking English. If one wishes to be understood, he/she must take into account customs of proper speech for various occasions. For words to be meaningful and to generate interactions, they must be situated, i.e., embodied by concrete individuals and groups that serve as definers of reality. Constructed realities, in turn, can be treated as objective entities. The validity of this kind of “knowledge” of everyday life is taken for granted by the individual until a problem arises that cannot be solved in terms of it. Usually, this kind of legitimation problem occurs “inevitably” when the institutionalized order is to be transmitted to a new generation (Berger and Luckmann 1966:93). Consider the situation wherein the transmission of institutionalized order occurred in a revolutionary society instead of an well-ordered society as a whole. The problem of legitimacy is now no longer between generations, but between the state and society. The old order was dismantled. The old “symbolic universe” becomes a problem. A new “symbolic universe” an all-embracing frame of reference that functions to make sense of all human experience (Berger and Luckmann 1966:96), is established by the new regime according to the official ideology. Alternative symbolic universe, or frame of reference, would have to be eliminated in order to acquire dominant authority. Then, this particular symbolic universe must sustain so that legitimation of the new regime would maintain. Specific procedure of universe-maintenance becomes necessary. As Berger and

Luckmann (1966:119–120) point out, police can enforce definitions of realities and this kind of definitions need not be less convincing than those accepted voluntarily. A frame of reference detached from empirical experience can be said to be convincing because it “works”—“in the sense of having become standard, taken-for-granted knowledge in the society in question. Such reference can only be made “stick” through power competition. In the case of China, this struggle against the “enemy” has two fronts: one against opponent enemy groups and one against opponent symbolicuniverse. To kill or to win over the enemies were both legitimate tactics and they can be mutually reinforcing. However, to render the official worldview dominant in the society was obviously an easier way to maintain cohesion, acquire authority, and quash the enemy in the battle of legitimation maintenance. In short, words work. Language as an instrument of political power certainly is not a new topic within the fields of sociology, social linguistics, and political communication. In the case of China, the role of language in politics was salient. William Hinton noted in his Fanshen: A Documentary of Revolution in a Chinese Village (1966:vii): “Every revolution creates new words. The Chinese Revolution created a whole new vocabulary.” For the Chinese peasants, Hinton observed, the new vocabulary or those old terms endowed with new meanings definitely symbolized a different universe that, although embodied their past life experience, must be learned anew. John Young (1991:202) argues similarly: “In almost every revolutionary countries where the Communist Party takes control of the state government, linguistic change occurs as partly spontaneous and partly planned and managed action by the Party to reflect new ideas and new ways of life.” In Hinton’s observation, “Fanshen” (used to simply describe the act of turning one’s body) came to denote the following things: stand up, throw off the landlord yoke, to gain land, stock, implements, and houses. It also meant to throw off superstition and study science, to abolish “word blindness” and learn to read, to cease considering women as chattels and establish equality between the sexes, to do away with appointed village magistrates, and replace them with elected councils. “It meant to enter a new world” (Hinton 1991:202). Indeed, since the term “Fanshen” did not come to represent such complicated political meanings through a process of natural evolution, I would say it meant more like “creating” a new world through new words and words-mediated actions. The Party wanted them to enter a new world, that is. Linguistic change takes place gradually in an ordered society, but tends to be violent in a disordered society. As in Nazi Germany, many terms in Communist countries such as the PRC under Mao’s rule were “murdered”. What the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) tried to do was a deliberate attack on the Chinese history (Young 1991:203). While breaking the old order, the Party simultaneously was exposing people to a large number of sometimes conflicting ideas and instructions “to seal them on a single severely limited point of view and to preclude essential knowledge of others instead of expanding people’s breadth of vision” (Young 1991:207). With hundreds of millions of people being patterned to think and act in the direction intended by the Party, the power of the masses is indeed massive. This power, in turn, can be, and was indeed, used to eliminate all unwanted elements of the new society of the new “people.” Unlike the Nazi propaganda, the Chinese Communists categorize people into classes and treat them accordingly. This policy was implemented with success because the

relationship between the individual and the state in Communist China was a particular type. Theoretically, the state benefits specific groups and it threatens certain groups as well. This happens in every state. Accordingly, the masses need to believe “something about” the state to reassure themselves. Political symbols can perform this function. However, “it is the needs, the hopes, and the anxieties of men that determine the meanings” of political symbols (Edelman 1967:2). That said, it must be reiterated here that individual needs, hopes, and anxieties are largely at the discretion of the state government in China during that time. Therefore, even though conceptually we must acknowledge that individuals do not passively accept constructed realities, we must emphasize the fact that the Party and state government was the actual motoring force that “frames” the “symbolic universe” and materialize genocidal policies. Against this background, I believe a linguistic treatment of the Chinese Communist propaganda in its commitment of genocide is essential. Language functions as a prerequisite condition of politics. Command, persuasion, appeal, exhortation, rule, regulation; all these have to be formulated, framed and contemplated in words. Linguistic determinists such as Whorf (1964) and Sapir (1961) argued long ago that language predisposes us to perceive only certain parts of the whole reality. For them, a change in language may not create separate reality. Instead, language can transform our appreciation of the cosmos (Whorf 1964:213–214). Whorf’s characterization of language implies, from my perspective, that by manipulating language a government might skew its subjects’ perception of reality. If this is the case, language can be a tool of political or even social control. Given the technology of modern mass communications, this is possible. Recent and less deterministic linguistic studies rarely deny the overarching influence of language on thought (Chomsky 1972; Steinberg 1982). This further justifies my taking language seriously in exploring the conditions of genocide. However, as Bourdieu pointed out in the early 1980s, structural linguistics largely failed to grasp the specific social and political conditions of language formation and use (Bourdieu 1991). He strongly believes that consideration of social and historical conditions may enhance our understanding of the legitimating power of language. For Bourdieu, language exchange serves as an arena where professionals compete for the power to control non-professionals, a situation similar to the competition for marketshares among merchants. Nevertheless, Bourdieu tends to consider language exchange within a market context, where ideas are free to compete with each other for market shares. The scenario does not apply to the case under study. The Chinese people did not have alternative information sources available to them. The society was dominated by the discourse created by the Party and the state government (the same group of people with different titles). To the extent that there was linguistic exchange, unofficial visions were suppressed before they could gain much currency. Students of political communications such as Mueller (1975:11) have long reminded us that language has a political function in that language codes employed routinely by an individual can influence his/her cognitive perception of the institutionalized authority. More importantly, Mueller maintains, totalitarian systems consciously manipulate language and institutions of socialization to ensure the “success of a political system’s claim to legitimacy” (Mueller 1975:11). The imposition of the ideology of the totalitarian system, he observes, usually takes the form of a

reinterpretation of all prior history and the elimination of references to any interpretative scheme other than the dominant one (Mueller 1975:24). A similar theoretical point was made by three communication theorists, in their joint effort to explore the change of worldview in the official Chinese media. In a totalitarian system, they argue, language use may be more appropriately conceived of as a cognitive tool for the users to make sense of the world beyond their control (Cheng, Wang, and Cheng 1994). Indeed, totalitarian state governments can manipulate language to shape the content of daily discourse of the masses. The state not only aims to get the people to talk about what the political leadership want them to talk about, but to make them act accordingly. Language, in this context, becomes a “template” for the general public to make sense of its everyday life. To the extent that specific social and political conditions of language formation are taken into account, everyday language exchange is no longer a competition for audience and power. It become a device for the government to disseminate the “official view” among the public in order to ensure that people shall have the “correct” understanding of the world. It is not relevant whether anybody believes the authenticity of the information or not. In China, the government had already “programmed” the content of daily discourse for the general public, and since there was no alternative media available, there was little to compete about at the individual level in terms of attracting audiences. Thus, the focus of language usage shifts from the individual user to the state censors. Sociologically, the contents of language should be the bulk of analysis from the social constructionist perspective. Holstein and Miller (1990), Loseke (1992, 1993) and Spencer (1996) propose to employ the conception of “people categories” to analyze social problems. They argue: “people categories” provide interpretive frameworks for producing matching clients and producing accounts for decisions regarding those clients. Further, constructed people categories are utilized within universes of moral meanings that often evoke commensurate actions toward clients of the categories (Holstein and Miller 1990). In the context of this study, designating groups as “enemy” requires the construction of people categories as worthy of confrontation and destruction. That was exactly what the CCP did. By contrast, Ibarra and Kitsuse (1993) and Best (1990) propagate the concept of “condition categories” that focus on content of language and the larger cultural context in which the “claims” of social problems are registered. Essentially, their theoretical position is similar to that of Berger and Luckmann (1966) in that they all maintain that language has to be “embodied” by concrete groups or situations. Indeed, since the CCP did not consider humans as the only possible client that can embody the “enemy category,” it seems that the notion of “condition categories” could also fit into the analytical scheme of this study. Both constructionist approaches discussed above emphasize the importance of taking language seriously. They also point to the possibility that, once a category is constructed, situationally relevant characteristics of candidate clients of the category would be produced (Holstein 1992). A moral universe could be employed that prescribes certain behaviors to specific “clients.” Language is, thus, a precondition of genocide. “Excluding a group from the post revolutionary definition of what constitutes a member of the people and labeling it as ‘enemies of the revolution’ is a necessary if not yet a sufficlent condition for genocide”

(Melson 1992:271). By giving a new identity to the potentially counter-revolutionary groups, the Chinese government was able to legitimately reshape and remould the “enemies of the people” through whatever measures it deemed appropriate. The theoretical position to be explored here, hence, is that language, used by a government, represents its perception of reality and legitimates its policies. Content of language is heavily influenced by social situations and historical conditions, it does not necessarily reflect accurately the condition of the society in which it is being used (Koselleck 1989). Politicians manipulate language to render their vision of the world prevalent among the population they govern. The credibility and sincerity of their statements are not at issue here. Whether or not the masses believe in or conform to the official line was also irrelevant. It is power that is at issue. In his analysis of totalitarian language used by the Nazis, former USSR, and the PRC, john Young argues that, to some extent, “every major revolution becomes a struggle for the power to define words and to make one’s definitions stick;” and for those who were able to forge a new language consensus and a new consensus about civic values, their “ability to use and to influence the use of language in this manner is proof of power procured and enemies vanquished” (Young 1991:26). Language always carries an illusive quality even in the best time of a best society (Young 1991:22). By contrast, the uncertainty of meanings of words in a revolutionary society is far greater. To vanquish the enemies in a revolutionary society by framing and redefining becomes one of the sources of the reign of terror. As Cassinelli (1960) pointed out four decades ago, full conformity with the “party line” under Communism and Nazism cannot save certain groups from the terror. For example, once the Kulaks have been eliminated, their place was taken by national minorities in the Soviet Union. The point is that by constructing a political spectacle through particular patterns of language political leaders generate authority, enhance status, and gain profits while denying these benefits to those ideologically excluded groups. Specifically, according to Young (1991), the Nazi slogans and the Communist “formula language” perform the following functions: 1. They exhort the masses and members of the Party to strive with all their energy to attain various goals. 2. The formulas lay down the current policy and the correct line of the Party. 3. The use of formula language is a kind of defense mechanism for the leadership, protecting it to some extent from challenges to its monopoly on power. 4. To do away with the need for spontaneity and thought. (Young 1991:208–210) In perspective to the genocidal practices committed by the PRC during the early 1950s, language was one of the weapons available to the state leadership to consolidate power and to vanquish the enemy. Naked force or pure words alone cannot adequately do the job. To build a Communist collective identity would surely smooth the process. Yet, during the past, students of political sociology have not paid much attention to the role and substance of words used to justify genocidal policies and practices in revolutionary societies. It is not assumed here that concrete historical situations are unimportant. An ahistorical sociological inquiry is likely to have difficulty in grasping the meaning of such important concepts as “social change” (Mills 1959:143–164). Instead, historical

contingencies are the foundation of political spectacles (Edelman 1988:133–137). Nevertheless, language is critical: it structures people’s experiences and supports a particular course for their collective action. Moreover, “language changes more slowly than does the chain of event that it help to set in motion and that it seeks to comprehend” (Koselleck 1989:660). That renders language content a valuable source for researchers to track down traces of historical events. Using a series of political movements and a very effective propaganda system, the government of the People’s Republic of China (PRC henceforth) constructed a new society and, in essence, a new people during the 1949–53 period. New realities were created by new language, which in turn was imposed upon the populace. The propaganda machine paved the way for the destruction of “class enemies”. The content of the propaganda defined the enemy and justified the radical measures to be taken against it. The very process of reality construction reveals the genocidal intent of the Chinese government if we consider Helen Fein’s definition of intent as “evidence of repetition of destruction either in design or as a foreseeable outcome” (cited in Andreoplous ed. 1994:95). Moral concern about killing was rendered irrelevant. By systematically examining Chinese government propaganda produced during the period of 1949–1953, this study attempts to advance understanding of a long neglected aspect of politics, that “official stories” are capable of killing. Modern states widely use the mass media as a critical tool to win the people to their side and to attain political legitimacy. They have good reasons to do so. Effective propaganda campaigns enable a government to create subjects who either will not or cannot disobey orders. They will not resist perhaps because they sincerely support the official ideology. They cannot resist, which is more often the case, because they are exposed to “constructed realities” that renders them cognitively defenseless (Sapir 1961; Whorf 1964; Chomsky 1989). Naturally, a regime’s willingness to accompany mass persuasion with state terror helps considerably to achieve support or acquiescence. In China, the government legitimized mass murder as an attempt to complete the revolution. A policy of total domestic genocide was made viable by the construction of a new language; words were used effectively to support the killing of millions. The second part of the dissertation discusses the general social and historical setting of China (1949–53) and specifies the importance of studying this case in the proposed manner. Since it is claimed that historical conditions and ideology have considerable influence on the construction of language, which in turn operates as a motor of genocide, these concepts and conditions will be defined and discussed in this section. The third section of the dissertation presents a critical review of literature that aims at pinpointing the interconnections of war, revolution, genocide and the role of language in coordinating these forces into action. The fourth part will discuss sources of the data, the research method adopted, and will present the research findings. Finally, I try to summarize the findings of my research, reiterate some theoretical points and identify some policy implications. WORDS KlLL

THE PROBLEM AND ITS SETTING I. STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM STUDENTS OF GENOCIDE HAVE BEEN FRUSTRATED FOR YEARS BY THE LACK OF effective preventive measures of genocide in the world since Raphael Lemkin coined the term in 1944. One of the main reasons contributing to this frustration has been the lack of consensus in defining the term, which derives, at least in part, from inadequate conceptualization of the phenomenon. Unsatisfactory conceptualization, as some scholars argue, is due to an insufficient number of cases observed (Gurr and Harff 1988). For other scholars such as Hirsch (1995), it was more likely due to the “politics of memory;” namely, politicians deliberately wipe out the episode from daily political discourse for the purpose of thought control. A fully articulated theory of genocide would require an examination of the complex interaction among social, cultural, political and economic forces within a specific society. Developing such a comprehensive theory is far beyond the objective of this research. Rather, the present study is limited to investigating the role which one particular cultural factor, language, played in the occurrence of a historically specific instance of total domestic genocide. Little research has been conducted on this topic, especially in reference to China. This study, then, uses a linguistic approach. By this, I have in mind what the sociologist Mills (1940:13) has said about the mechanism that connects vocabularies of motive to systems of action: “Motives are words…. They stand for anticipated situational consequences of questioned conduct” (Mills 1940:906). As such, stable vocabularies of motives link anticipated consequences and specific actions. Moreover, “Motives are accepted justifications for present, future, or past programs or acts… The only source for a termi-nology of motives is the vocabularies of motives actually and usually verbalized by actors in specific situations” (Mills 1940:907, 910). From this perspective, a sociologist should approach linguistic behavior, not by referring it to private states in individuals, but by observing its social function of coordinating diverse actions. Unlike the physical world where many axioms are “discovered” social norms and social problems are essentially “constructed.” Such constructions, to be sure, are deeply influenced by a society’s cultural heritage, historical contingencies, and individual members’ perceptions of their own situations. Once a problem is constructed, however, it acquires a life that often ends only after a solution of it is claimed and executed. In some cases, the construction of a problem is motivated by a calculated intent to empower an actor or actors to deal with the unwelcomed social phenomenon (Edelman 1988; Spector and Kitsuse 1987). In short, “language is a dialectical phenomenon that both shapes and reflects experience” (Bollinger 1980:ix). Without dismissing the interactive relationship between language and social condition, this study focuses particularly on one dimension of the relationship, namely, to treat words of motives as social instruments with which an actor is able to influence others.

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IMPORTANCE OF THE STUDY The study of genocide has yet to be comprehensively defined and delimited as a “field.” Its overarching concern, though, is with humanity. At present, the study deals primarily with particular cases of genocide, such as the Holocaust. Efforts at identifying cases of genocide have been made by numerous scholars during the past decade. Their findings are valuable, but still, more detailed case studies are essential. According to one scholar’s observation, between 1816 and 1991, state governments murdered over 151 million people worldwide, not including the number of combat deaths, and six Communist regimes (including the Communist USSR, China, and pre-Mao guerrillas, Khmer Rouge Cambodia, Vietnam, and Yugoslavia) plus the Fascist Nazi Germany accounted for 84 percent of the victims (Rummel 1994:3). Not all cases received comparable academic attention. Within the last decade, sociologist Helen Fein (1990) observed that there have been notable advances in scholarship on genocides that occurred in the Soviet Union and Cambodia, yet much remains to be learned about the People’s Republic of China and other Communist states. Among other things, the Chinese experience has intrinsic importance in terms of the number of victims. By political scientist Rummel’s (1994:8) account, the Chinese people’s immolation (8 million non-combat deaths) is next only to that of Russia. There is simply no way to obtain an accurate number of victims of any genocide. Rummel’s method was to bracket a range of reasonable estimates and took the middle number (Rummel 1990:12). Thus, the number of victims during Communist China’s consolidation period is said to be 8,427,000. According to Rummel, Chinese “democide,” (a term coined by Rummel [1990:241]) which includes any actions by government designed to kill or cause the death of people because of their race, language, ethnicity, class, politics and/or other actions constructed as opposing the government or wrecking social policy, was over four times more calamitous than famine, and over four times more than the human cost of wars and rebellions combined. Guillermaz (1976:24) estimates that approximately 5 million landlords and counter-revolutionaries were killed during the same time. Shalom (1984) gives a conservative figure of two million deaths. To stand on a safer ground, I adopted Gurr and Harff’s (1992:35) estimation of 800,000–3 million. Once more accurate data are available, it must be stressed, these numbers may have to be revised. Compared to the Russian case, China is under-researched. By no means does this paper intend to suggest that only total genocide deserves extensive research. Rather, the tremendous loss of human lives caused by these genocides and the apparent similarities among the perpetrators deserve attention in their own right. The linguistic approach that this study employs may help bring to the forefront the idea that political rhetoric has political consequences, that it is an important tool of political domination. As Connoly argues insightfully, “the language of politics is not a neutral medium that conveys ideas independently formed,” but is “an institutionalized structure of meanings that channels political thought and action in certain directions” (cited in Shapiro 1984:10). The state government, in this sense, is actually using two distinct kinds of power to make its genocidal practices viable. Language is important if one considers political discourse from the viewpoint of the resources it deploys, the capacities and incapacities it distributes (Connolly in Shapiro 1984). Language can be understood as a framework within which action is employed. If words and deeds are two

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kinds of action, then the discrepancy between words and deeds that we often find among political leaders may be better understood as a difference between two disparate actions they are undertaking (Znaniecki 1936). This leads us to examine history and institutions instead of the black box inside the human brain. As Mills argues, motives are words and they are not to be understood as statements about prior elements in the mind, which explain observable behavior. Rather, “motives may be considered as typical vocabularies having ascertainable functions in delimited social situation” (cited in Shapiro 1984:5). In short, language is best understood in terms of the action framework within which it is deployed. This interaction between history and language is another axle of analysis in this study. CAUTIONS This study is an effort to construct a story of a historical case of genocide, adopting a linguistic analytic scheme. The story told by this study depicts the way a totalitarian regime manipulates language to legitimize its genocidal practices and the linguistic image of “enemies” projected by the official propaganda. As such, the current project deals more with conditions and processes of the genocide than with its consequences or with possible preventive measures. The goal is limited to offer an approach to the understanding of a specific aspect of a historical episode within which many important sociological issues were interconnected. Hence, it deals with preconditions instead of genocide itself. The conclusions reached in this study are highly tentative. Many facts about revolutionary China in its early days remain unknown to researchers, either secreted away through bureaucratic channels or buried in the memory of fearful, or even dead, people. Quantitative data are largely unavailable. To the extent that some scanty quantitative data are available, their credibility is highly questionable. It is simply not possible to undertake any intimate observation of the subject as I would have liked. A large amount of secondary material has to be used which may contain conflicting interpretations of commonly accepted facts. To deliver a general picture of the whole period under investigation, press materials promised to yield good results. The People’s Daily (Ren Min Rih Bao, RMRB henceforth) expresses the official views of the Chinese Communist Party and presents the Chinese government’s domestic and foreign policies. The importance of this publication to any analysis of politics in Communist China has been documented by three widely cited studies: The Propaganda Machine in Communist China—with Special Reference to Ideology, Policy, and Regulations, as of 1952 (Frederick T.C.Yu 1955); Mass Persuasion in Communist China (Frederick T.C.Yu 1964); and To Change a Nation (Franklin W.Houn 1965). Moreover, given that the “bamboo curtain” leaked little information and the intelligence was unstable during the 1949–53 period, an analysis of newspaper contents to explore the ideological essence of a revolutionary regime appears to be an acceptable compromise. With these cautions noted, I venture an approach to the Chinese genocide, which suggests that effective manipulation of language by the state government can make genocidal policies against constructed enemies viable. In turn, I wish to reframe our sense of what is characteristic of genocides, and what is problematic about them.

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II. THE SUBPROBLEMS This section serves as a brief literature review that deals with the historical development of China before the 1949 revolution. The section concerns a central analytical question: the function of political rhetoric in a revolutionary state. 1. WHAT WERE THE POLITICAL-ECONOMIC-SOCIAL CONDITIONS CONFRONTING THE CCP LEADERSHIP IN ITS EARLY DAYS? The victory of the Chinese Communists was the result of military and ideological struggles against imperialism, a stagnant social structure, and an incompetent government over a period of 28 years and through the collective efforts made by two generations of the Communist leadership. Internal developments were critical to this victory (Scalapino 1969). Nevertheless, both before and after the revolutionary victory, there are traces of external influence, mainly from Western powers (including japan) (Bianco 1967; Scalapino 1969). Some historical knowledge is required to assess the impact of the 1949 revolution on China. Yet, if one is to stick to essentials, the background must be kept simple. That is the compromise adopted here. Published literature on the modern history of China is so abundant that it should not be too difficult to obtain the details of the events mentioned here (for a comprehensive reading, see the Cambridge History of China [vols. 11, 12, 13]; for a more concise but excellent overview, see Jonathan D.Spence (1990) and Guo Ting-yi (1980). Early students of political development often depict an image of a “traditional society” progressing into a modern society (Lerner 1958). Political scientists and sociologists now note that the term “traditional society” does not necessarily imply that the basic features of a society had not been subject to radical changes (Pye 1992). Prior to the twentieth century, China had experienced many changes in the system of land tenure, had at times been politically unified and at others fragmented, and had periods of scientific and technological sophistication far in advance of the West (Temple 1986). At the turn of the nineteenth-century, the Chinese rejected a society characterized by the Chinese Communists as “semi-feudal and semi-colonial.” The overarching character of this massive country was that it was ruled by an aging dynasty that was trying to transform the polity into constitutional monarchy. It has established modern army and navy. The whole process of state-led modernization was initiated earlier than the Japanese Meiji Restoration of 1868. Yet, the so-called “strength itself (meaning modernization) movement” achieved little. During the latter half of the nineteenth century, China was plagued by external invasions from the coast. Internally, Catholic missionary, mainly the French churches, permeated the whole urban and rural areas. In some places, churches remained the de facto ruling government of the local village until the Communists overthrew them (see Hinton 1966). Grievances brought by invasions of foreign powers had already been felt at the grass-root level long before the creation of the CCP in 1921. It is worth noting that when Chinese historians use the word “feudal,” they are speaking of a social system based upon the primacy of land ownership, which applies to the warring states period (200 BC), the Qin Empire, and the following two millennia.

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What the word “feudal” denotes now in China does not correspond precisely to the Western understanding of the “feudal” system that either precedes or follows a bureaucratic empire and within which land ownership is based upon a tradition of military service (Brugger 1981). Foreign powers influenced the way the Chinese seek to reinvigorate their ancient society in a variety of ways. To name one: the history of revolution in modern China begins in the mid-nineteenth century (Taipin Rebellion) and succeeded in mid-twentieth century; both drew their ideologies not from the millennial Chinese tradition but Western religious and intellectual sources—Christianity for the Taipin and Marxism for the Communists (Meisner 1986:3). In a sense, Western Imperialism generated the process of modernization in China. Britain, France, the United States, Prussia, Russia, and japan were considered as major foreign powers in China. Smaller countries such as Italy, Austria, Holland, Belgium, Denmark, Spain, Portugal, and Sweden also enjoyed similar privileges in China. The latter, however, did not often pursue new privileges with military force or diplomatic intimidation. They just followed the steps of the bigger powers. This is something the reader should keep in mind constantly. The following are some major instances described by Guo Ting-yi (1980) of how Western Imperialism created feelings of “anti-imperialism” in China. The Opium War and the subsequent Nanjing Treaty (1842) forced the Chinese Empire to open five ports and marked China’s entrance onto the stage of modern world history. From then on, imperialism in modern China resulted in the establishment of over 80 “treaty ports,” opened by naked force, wherein foreigners were immune from Chinese law, i.e., in so far as they acknowledged the existence of law as such in China. The opening of the ports ruined the population of boatmen, porters, and coolies who lived on it in the Yangzi Valley and Canton province. These unemployed groups subsequently played an important part in the Taiping rebellion, according to Chesneaux (1976:73). International concessions were created and the Chinese government “had virtually no control over these enclaves” (Chesneaux 1976:73). Spheres of influence were carved which, for a time, gave the appearance of turning China into actual colonies. Encirclement of the empire was exacerbated by further annexations: Britain annexed Burma in 1886, made Sikkim a protectorate in 1890 and obtained the opening of Tibet in 1893; France occupied Laos in 1893; Russia began to build the Trans-Siberian railway in 1891 and by the time the line reached Lake Baikal and Siberia in 1895 the areas was populated at the rate of “100,000 immigrants per year” (Chesneaux 1976:267). Among all the powers, japan had the clearest colonial ambition in China, the 1894 Sino-Japanese War decimated Chinese modern army and navy, severed the Formosa (Taiwan) island from its motherland and decisively destroyed what little fruit the modernization movement had achieved. In addition, the decisive battle helped consolidate Dr. Sun Yat-sen’s determination to overthrow the ancient regime through violent revolution (Guo 1982). Nevertheless, other nations also practiced some form of colonialism. For example, the Maritime Customs Service was under control of Britain, the United States, France, and Germany to ensure the payment of indemnities wrung out of China at gun point (Guo 1980:198–200). The Chinese tariff was fixed by treaty at 5 per cent, favorable to foreign business. French, Spanish, and American missionaries reached a wide area and often functioned as the instruments of foreign power, despite

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individual goodwill and intentions. According to Brugger (1981:21), “a plethora of limitations on Chinese sovereignty caused resentment which was frequently explosive.” Economically, China was not prospering, largely due to unfair treaties. Between 1870 and 1910, the handicraft spinning of cotton yarn declined by over 50 per cent. Foreign mines (mainly British and japanese) produced 99 per cent of the pig iron and 76 per cent of the coal mined by modern methods (Brugger 1981). The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (established by Britain in 1865) had under its discretion almost the entire Chinese financial system. Foreign ships amounted to 40% of Chinese shipping industry. All railways were owned by foreigners (Guo 1980:360–361). The trade deficit had been permanent since 1877 (Chesneaux 1976:256). Not surprisingly, there were widespread revolts against the Qing Imperial court, which was justifiably responsible for the majority of ordeals the people suffered (Spence 1990). Among a series of insurrectionary crises that occurred between 1842 and 1911, the Taipin Rebellion (1851–64) deserves particular attention. At the peak of that peasant revolution (1854–55), 16 of the 18 provinces threw off Imperial rule. Rebellion and suppression resulted in tens of millions of deaths and left a number of provinces in ruins. At the same time as the Taipin rebellion, the Nian Rebellion (1851–1868) and the Muslim revolts (1855–1873) jointly shook the foundation of legitimacy of the Qing Dynasty, especially given the fact that the government was only able to suppress the revolts with the assistance of foreign troops. Even Karl Marx predicted in the late 1850s that the Qing dynasty would soon fall (Spence 1990). Foreigners became more involved in domestic Chinese affairs. Warlords emerged in China. Wars continue to play the role of the last few straws that broke the camel’s back. In 1900, japan and Russia fought for sphere of influence. Combats were fought on China’s land, and booty for the victorious Japan was Chinese land and ports. The Boxer Rebellion, under the slogan of “Restore Qin Empire and Eliminate Foreigners,” that exploded in 1900 was a nation-alistic reaction to the accumulation of grievances created by the foreigners in China. The fact that the movement attracted sympathy from all walks of life, from the emperor to prostitutes, manifested the depth of hatred toward foreigners. The 13-month episode, proved a disaster for China, was actually suppressed by more than 100,000 allied foreign troops. China was forced to pay approximately 67 million pounds of compensation. The price equals to five times of China’s annual income. Millions of Chinese people died. Rape, loot, arson, and theft of invaluable Chinese arts were widespread (Guo 1980:326–350). The 1911 revolution was not unexpected. The first Republic in Asia was created after the fire of revolution was sparked by a mass movement in Sichuan Province that demanded to take back the ownership of a proposed railway from the hands of Britain, France, Prussia, and US. The success of the 1911 revolution hinged on provincial military leaders, which later evolved into warlords that were backed by different foreign governments. Wars between warlords, between contending political parties and against foreign imperialist powers ensued and lasted for the next 30 years. All this ended with a protracted civil war. While the Chinese people suffered tremendously from those wars, the structure of their huge society remained largely untouched. The Chinese Communists completed that task. The nearly anarchical political situation of the new China (1911–1928) invited harsh demands from Japan. In addition, the new government was totally incompetent to

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persuade the Western powers to give up their vested privileges and interests in China. Even the action of sending 100,000 Chinese laborers to work with the Allied powers in Western Europe during World War I had failed to win the backing of those nations for China’s territorial claims to its own land. The result, noted historian Spence (1990), “was a period of political insecurity and unparalleled intellectual self-scrutiny and exploration.” Intellectual efforts to understand Western civilization appeared in early 1900s. The May Fourth Movement of 1919 was a concentrated Chinese intellectual endeavor that sought to explore a wide variety of political theories, debate the values of new forms of education and language, and most important of all, call into question the ideological underpinnings of the Imperial regime. In essence, this movement disputed the legitimacy of the very basis of Chinese society; and it foreshadowed and paved the way for 1949 (Bianco, 1967). It was during this movement that a number of China’s brightest minds, such as Chen Tu-hsiu, Mao Tse-tung, and Kuo Mo-jo, were attracted to the doctrines of Marxist socialism. By 1920, the nucleus for a Chinese Communist Party was already in place. In 1921, the first general meeting of the party was held in Shanghai. The Chinese Communist historians like to take the May Fourth Movement, instead of the 1911 Revolution, as the starting point of the contemporary era partly because this was the time the fundamental structure of the Chinese society began to be challenged (Bianco 1967). In 1923, the ruling Nationalist Party (Guo Ming Dang, more widely known as Kuo Ming Tang, KMT) restructured its organization along the Soviet Russian model. Under the banner of saving China from destruction, both parties were trying to mobilize all ablebodied Chinese citizens to serve for them. There was a clear trend among the Chinese intelligentsia that “moved almost uninterruptedly leftward—to be precise, toward Marxism” in the 20 years between the May Fourth Movement and the Sino-japanese War (Bianco 1967:43). During that 20 years, the CCP and the KMT started to act as the major palyers that shape the appearance of modern China. At first, the KMT won the rhetorical war to capture political power, their supporters became known as “Nationalists.” Armed with public support, Chiang Kai-shek launched the North Expedition (1926–1928) and united China, with the cooperation of the CCP. The two parties broke apart after the North Expedition due to ideological differences as well as a bitter struggle for power. Bloody purge of Communists spread in many provinces and caused tens of thousands executions (Rummel 1991:57–66). Chiang was first coined as a “traitor” of revolution by the CCP ever since. Rhetorical clashes escalated into military confrontation, the first stage of the civil war. The CCP established its own government and army in jiangsi Province. The KMT launched five major attacks (1932–1934) on the CCP and forced the latter to escape for 25,000 kilometers. At the same time, japan invaded the Northeast and established a proxy government. Hence, China actually had three governments in 1932 (Guo 1980). The Sino-Japanese War saved the CCP from being decimated and lent it valuable time to expand troops and territory from the remote border regions. The Communists continued to accumulate precious administrative experience throughout the civil war. Thus, even though the victory came some-what unexpectedly, the Chinese Communists were already qualified winners ready to take over the whole country (johnson 1962). Only one year after 1949, another war challenged the very existence of China. The unexpected Korean War, to be sure, exacerbated the existing mistrust toward “Western

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imperialists” among the Chinese people and their leaders. Furthermore, it gave more leeway for the revolutionary regime to pursue the realization of its utopian conception of a new society (Meisner 1977). 2. HOW DID THE CCP CONSTRUCT THE PROBLEM? (I.E., WHAT’S WRONG? WHO’S RESPONSIBLE?) By the eve of the great revolution of 1949, the desire for peace, intellectual sympathy toward Socialism, and the development of nationalism fueled the cry for change among the populace. But where was this development going to lead China? Mao’s view guided Party policies since the late 1930s, then directed government actions after 1949. In his classic On New Democracy (1940), Mao presented a clear description of China’s problems: What are China’s old politics and economics? And what is her old culture? From the Chou and Chin Dynasties onwards, Chinese society was feudal, as were its politics and its economy. And the dominant culture, reflecting the politics and economy, was feudal culture. Since the invasion of foreign capitalism and the gradual growth of capitalist elements in Chinese society, the country has changed by degrees into a colonial, semi-colonial and semi-feudal society. China today is colonial in the Japanese-occupied areas and basically semicolonial in the Kuomintang areas, and it is predominantly feudal or semi-feudal in both. Such, then, is the character of present-day Chinese society and the state of affairs in our country. The politics and the economy of this society are predominantly colonial, semicolonial, and semi-feudal, and the predominant culture, reflecting the politics and economy, is also colonial, semi-colonial, and semifeudal. What we want to get rid of is the old colonial, semi-colonial and semifeudal politics and economy and the old culture in their service. In China, it is perfectly clear that whoever can lead the people in overthrowing imperialism and the forces of feudalism can win the people’s confidence, because these two, and especially imperialism, are the mortal enemies of the people. Mao’s perceptions of the realities of the old China were not entirely out of contact with the reality. The gentry class had functioned for centuries as a proxy of the government and was interested in preserving the status quo. They were assumed by the Chinese Communists to be the backbone of rural order and were held responsible for the backwardness (or “semi-feudal” status) of China. Moreover, China, as described above, was indeed on the verge of being colonized. Following the war against japanese invasion, full-scale military confrontation broke out between the CCP and KMT troops. The latter was regarded as the proxy for bankers, landlords, and foreign powers (mainly USA and UK). After they won the civil war, the CCP was involuntarily dragged into another war with American armed forces in the Korean peninsula (Whiting 1960:45; Chesneaux 1979:32; Bruggerl 981:64; Meisner

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1986:78; Fairbank and MacFarquhar 1990:288). Whiting maintains that there were indications that China knew of an impending attack, but “beyond this, there seems little ground for concluding that China anticipated direct involvement in the war” (Whiting 1960:45). Most historians seem to support this view. To make things worse, the remnants of the KMT troops on Taiwan were in effect protected by the Seventh Fleet of the United States, an action regarded by Beijing as a de facto military occupation. Under such circumstances, the CCP readily manipulated the situations at hand and held foreign powers, static social structure, and the incompetent old government accountable for China’s problems. We should notice one additional aspect of Mao’s characterization of the problem. He described China’s situation from a class struggle perspective. In his Analysis of the Classes in Chinese Society (1926), Mao classified the Chinese people into five classes: 1. the landlord and the “comprador class” (the term “comprador” refers to those Chinese agents employed by a foreign establishment in China to be in charge of its Chinese employees and to act as an intermediary in business affairs) 2. the middle bourgeoisie 3. the petty bourgeoisie 4. the semi-proletariat 5. the proletariat. He notes: The basic reason why all previous revolutionary struggles in China achieved so little was their failure to unite with real friends in order to attack real enemies…. To sum up, it can be seen that our enemies are all those in league with imperialism—the warlords, the bureaucrats, the comprador class, the big landlord class and the reactionary section of the intelligentsia attached to them. The leading force in our revolution is the industrial proletariat. Our closest friends are the entire semi-proletariat and petty bourgeoisie. As for the vacillating middle bourgeoisie, their right-wing may become our enemy and their left-wing may become our friend but we must be constantly on our guard and not let them create confusion within our ranks. (Mao Selected Readings 1971:20–22) Thus, the fundamental objective of New Democracy was to draw a correct line, during this phase of the revolution, between “people” and “enemies” (Brugger 1981:51–52). Alternatively, to use the CCP terminology, the new democratic revolution was at a phase such that revolutionary classes dominated the other classes (see discussions in Cohen 1964: Chapter 3). Mao’s prescription for a successful revolution served as the foundation of his seminal essay On New Democracy (1940) which officiated as a guide for the Chinese Communists in the following decade (Cohen 1964:79–80). Moreover, “Mao’s use of the category ‘the people’ defined on the basis of attitudes toward principal projects of the political system, continued at least through the ‘Correct Handling’ speech of 1957” (Starr 1979:204). In spite of the fact that the real backbone of the Chinese revolution was the peasantry, Mao’s remarks conformed well to orthodox Marxism-Leninism. It should be noted,

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however, that while class categories in China remained largely unchanged, exactly which class at what time constituted an “enemy of the people” appeared to be defined by the CCP instead of by the masses. As history evolved, Mao did more than use ideological terminology to characterize concrete situations; he tried to transform the theory into practice. His language indeed speaks of his motives; a motive aimed at agitating the masses. In this sense, language becomes action. 3. WHY DID THEY DEFINE THE PROBLEM IN THIS WAY? Ideology, social-historical conditions, and concerns about the “viability” of revolution may explain the way the CCP defined the problems of China. A genuine belief of Marxism among early CCP leaders perhaps was a truism. Dogmatic Communists tend to believe that history is dominated by only one kind of rationality, namely, changes in material conditions necessarily change the course of history. Indeed, Marx took a firm position against such a superficial generalization of humankind (Fromm 1980 [1961]:9–11). Marx opposed this kind of philosophical materialism because it was not derived from the study of real economic and social life of mankind (Fromm 1980). In this perspective, the Chinese Communists were orthodox Marxists. For one thing, Mao himself firmly believed in the idea that human wills can win over natural obstacles. Regarding the revolution, the CCP conducted in-depth observations of the country life of the Chinese people, and then developed their version of revolutionary theory. Articulating humanity as a revolutionary concern was not unreasonable. While adhering to certain orthodox Marxist notions, the CCP granted full attention to social-historical contingencies. In his On Practice, Mao noted that “Marxists recognize that in the absolute and general process of development of the universe, the development of each particular process is relative, and that hence, in the endless flow of absolute truth, man’s knowledge of a particular process at any given stage of development is only relative truth” (Mao Selected Readings 1971:42–45). For example, Mao asserted that China was not ruled by a proletarian dictatorship during its early years, but was governed under a “New Democracy.” As Mao later explained, “New Democracy” was the stage of bourgeois-democratic revolution. Therefore, the middle-bourgeoisie should be spared, unlike the Soviet model. The fact that Mao included the national bourgeoisie into the “people” category clearly shows that his “people’s democratic dictatorship” was something different from a proletarian dictatorship (Cohen 1964:84). This has important implications, as we shall see below. Mao had made it a rule that political projects, definition of “enemy,” and phases of the revolution can be changed. Yet, as Starr observes, “the division of the society into friends and enemies, the image of that division as being one between the vast majority and a tiny minority, and the view that democracy was appropriate among the people, dictatorship appropriate toward enemies, remained throughout this period” (Starr 1979:204). In short, policies were implemented to pave the way for a viable total revolution. However, policies were neither vague nor all-embracing. This pattern can be seen from the way in which the CCP promoted its revolution. Structurally, pre-1949 China was a society in which “no social class associated with new capitalist forces of production and exchange arose to assume the dominant position

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in Chinese society that the gentry was forced to abandon” (Meisner 1979:7; see also Duara 1988). It renders political power relatively independent from social and economic power. Empirically, the CCP, severed from urban associations, had to rely on the peasants to complete the revolution. The peasants could not have cared less about a utopian Communist society, but they did have a clear sense of who their enemies were. Western colonial powers rendered social situations in modern China revolutionary (Meisner 1979). In turn, revolutionary situations transformed revolutionary ideas into dynamic social forces. By consciously manipulating this milieu, the CCP made, as their first priority, the task of launching propaganda campaigns aimed at instigating nationalist sentiment against the enemy and garner sympathy for the Communists (Mao 1929). just three days after the PRC was promulgated, a National New China Bookstore Publishing Working Conference was held for 17 days to orchestrate the propaganda works of all New China Bookstores. It illustrates what emphasis was put on the task of disseminating propaganda by the CCP (RMRB 10–21–49). The Communist vision of the New China certainly was not the only one, perhaps not even the most popular one, available to the Chinese people before the consolidation of the 1949 revolutionary victory. There would have been no need otherwise to launch massive campaigns to arouse the political consciousness of the people immediately after 1949. The KMT had been propagating the Three Principles of the People by Dr. Sun Yatsen for many years. Even Mao himself recognized that Dr. Sun’s Principle of Democracy largely coincided with his idea of “People’s Democracy” or “New Democracy,” providing that the leadership of the working class must be added as a precondition. Nevertheless, there were major ideological differences between the CCP and the KMT. In short, Dr. Sun Yat-sen and major leaders of the Nationalist Party wanted to build new China with the help of science and democracy. Their model countries were the nation-states such as the Great Britain, Japan, and the United States. By contrast, the Chinese Communist vanguards focused their attention on what the French and Russian had fought against, namely, feudalism and class oppression (Fairbank 1987). Nonetheless, both parties considered anti-imperialism a task of the highest priority and both tried to organize a highly centralized party as a useful device to achieve that goal (Bianco 1967). Whether one defined the old China as “feudal” or simply as “backward,” there was no disagreement among major political contenders in China on questions such as the need for radical change and immediate action. But, what was to be done? Mao had framed a clear strategy with which to face the challenge (Selected Readings 1971:371–388): From the time of China’s defeat in the Opium War of 1840, Chinese progressives went through untold hardships in their quest for truth from the Western countries. Hung Hsiu-chuan, Kang Yu-wei, and Sun Yat-sen were representatives of those who had looked to the West for truth before the Communist Party of China was born. Chinese who then sought progress would read any book containing the new knowledge from the West…. They represented the culture of Western bourgeois democracy, including the social theories and natural sciences of that period…. Only modernization could save China, only learning from foreign countries could modernize China. Among the foreign countries, only the Western

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capitalist countries were then progressive…. The Chinese in those days regarded Russia as backward, and few wanted to learn from her…. Imperialist aggression shattered the fond dreams of the Chinese about learning from the West. It was very odd why were the teachers always committing aggression against their pupil? The Chinese learned a good deal from the West, but they could not make it work and were never able to realize their ideals…. Doubts arose, increased and deepened…. Sun Yat-sen advocated “arousing the masses of the people” or “giving assistance to the peasants and workers.” But who is to “arouse” them or “give assistance” to them? Sun Yat-sen had the petty bourgeoisie and the national bourgeoisie in mind. As a matter of fact, they cannot do so. Why did forty years of revolution under Sun Yat-sen end in failure? Because in the epoch of imperialism the petty bourgeoisie and the national bourgeoisie cannot lead any genuine revolution to victory…. Our twenty-eight years have been quite different…. To sum up our experience and concentrate it into one point, it is the people’s democratic dictatorship under the leadership of the working class (through the Communist Party) and based upon the alliance of workers and peasants. This dictatorship must unite as one with the international revolutionary forces. This is our formula, our principal experience, our main programme. Aside from historical contingencies, there may also be a psychological element of Mao’s choice of ideology. The French historian Bianco has made a very penetrating observation on this point (1967:50–51): …the development of modern China was dominated by the interacting pressures of imperialism and over-powering social ills. The force of these pressures permanently eliminated the center as a political power, and, in theory, the way was left open for two conflicting experiments, one national, the other social. …as it turned out, the revolution was both social and national. Marxism proved itself the most effective system (the most effective “ism”) not only for attacking social inequities, but also for restoring a national pride that had been sorely tried for a century. Here was a doctrine borrowed from the West that condemned the West, especially with the addition of Lenin’s anti-imperialist gloss, a doctrine that put China on the road to the modernization she so clearly needed while sparing her the humiliation of aping more advanced nations and forever lagging in their wake. Given what Mao said about the origins of China’s problems, it appears that Bianco’s remarks are plausible. The question that remains to be debated concerns the extent to which we can say that Mao “alone” set the course for revolution in China. More likely than not, the CCP leadership collectively shared with Mao the same ideas such as division of friend and foe and dictatorship of the people over the enemy. A discussion of

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this topic is beyond the scope of the present study. It may well be that the Chinese Communist leadership consciously chose to adhere to Marxism-Leninism, but their choice could not possibly escape from the influence of historical circumstances, a point made by Marx himself (The Eighteenth Brumaire 1951). 4. HOW DID THEY PROPOSE A POLICY OF GENOCIDE AS A SOLUTION TO THIS PROBLEM? Again, On the People’s Democratic Dictatorship (1949) offers a very clear explanation of what should be done to handle the enemy: “You are too irritating.” We are talking about how to deal with domestic and foreign reactionaries, the imperialists and their running dogs, not about how to deal with anyone else. With regard to such reactionaries, the question of irritating them or not does not arise. Irritated or not irritated, they will remain the same because they are reactionaries. Only if we draw a clear line between reactionaries and revolutionaries, expose the intrigues and plots of the reactionaries, arouse the vigilance and attention of the revolutionary ranks, heighten our will to fight and crush the enemy’s arrogance can we isolate the reactionaries, vanquish them or supersede them. We must not show the slightest timidity before a wild beast. We must learn from Wu Sung on the Chingyang ridge. As Wu Sung saw it, the tiger on Chingyang Ridge was a man-eater, whether irritated or not. Either kill the tiger or be eaten by him—one or the other…. Why must things be done this way? The reason is quite clear to everybody. If things were not done this way, the revolution would fail, the people would suffer, the country would be conquered. (Selected Readings 1971:371–388) Indeed, as a humanist, Marx did not believe that social change had to be bloody and he never ruled out the possibility that transition from capitalism to socialism could be peaceful (Ritzer 1992; Zeitlin 1990). Why, then, did the CCP, as a self-proclaimed Marxist Party, propose a genocidal policy to eliminate a whole category of its own people who could have otherwise constituted a very productive force in the new China? To answer this empirical question would require an intensive research. Again, a brief generalization will have to suffice. Based on what we have learned from other similar cases, it seems safe to say that a genocidal policy can be nurtured by general historical heritage, social-political situations, and prevalent ideologies of the host society. Most important of all, it is closely associated with the need of a new state to legitimize itself and to impose a new discipline on a recalcitrant population (Melson 1992). The People’s Daily continually called on citizens to show their patriotism. Saving energy was a patriotic move; increasing production was a patriotic move; putting down the Black Death was a patriotic move. By the same token, eliminating whatever enemies might exist was also considered a patriotic action. The government’s core concerns were to consolidate political power and establish a true national economy. To those ends, positive moves were encouraged and possible

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obstacles were to be eliminated. By far, the most threatening obstacle would be the “enemy.” In the beginning, it may well have been a matter of practical necessity for the government to eliminate all real and potential enemies. In a de-classified 1950 report entitled “Effects of operations in Korea on the internal situation in Communist China,” the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) concluded that “…during the Korean war increasingly drastic control measures have been instituted and there has been an intensification of popular dissat isfaction…the decline of popular support and the apparent necessity to impose greater restrictions and demands upon the home front have resulted in the regime’s speeding up its efforts to consolidate further its control of the country. Terroristic measures to suppress ‘counter-revolutionary activity’ have been reinforced.” Enemies are real in the sense that, if unsuppressed, the “counterrevolutionaries” were always capable of overthrowing the still wavering new regime and stage a comeback. Peasant revolts were prevalent throughout China’s two millennia of recorded history. Those who succeeded in toppling the old dynasty acquired legitimacy, became emperors themselves while those who were overthrown or defeated in the power contest would be declared bandits and pay the price for their failure, usually with their heads. Since the reward was huge and punishment cruel, it makes sense for every revolutionary leader to fight first for success and then suppress any elements that might endanger his throne. Conversely, the rank and file held the same expectations from their leaders. Put in another way, and this is an important point, if the imperial court was so corrupt as to arouse a revolution, it should have lost its legitimacy long ago. Hence, a successful revolution automatically grants legitimacy to the new regime (Fairbanks and MacFarquhar 1990). Legitimacy was accepted even if it meant sacrificing individual liberty (Fitzgerald 1964:146–148). Such was the widely accepted view of “orthodox legitimacy” in ancient China. Armed with this cultural tradition and encouraged by the fact that the KMT’s 26-year rule was extremely unpopular among the majority of people, the CCP was ready to take over and heavy-handedly reconstruct the country. On the other hand, enemies were ideologically constructed. Whatever the characterization, it all boiled down to one simple formula: whoever/what-ever stands in the way of revolutionary national transformation shall be rendered expendable by the Party. Indeed, the very act of defining enemies became an effective tool of legitimating whatever policies the Party and the government deemed proper. Once a definition was formed and implemented, killing became a righteous act. In other words, domestic genocide becomes a policy of justice. It is critical to note that to the extent that such genocidal intent is devoid of moral concern, it has to be somehow “justified” by the perpetrator in order to reduce resistance. Again, we need to see the contents of those justifications in order to understand how political rhetoric embodies the interactive relationship between language and historical conditions. 5. HOW DID THEY PROPAGATE/LEGITIMIZE GENOCIDE? Some enemies are highly visible and can be constructed in a way that appears logical to the Party. For example, invasion of and intervention in China, and the atrocities created by foreign powers were perceptible realities. Hence, the category of “agents and lackeys of imperialism” was readily accepted as “enemies of the people” by the Party and

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imposed upon the masses. Other enemies appeared to be arbitrary creations. For example, “counter-revolutionaries” would include former KMT officials, robbers, bandits, country tyrants, and embezzlers. Some of them were common criminals, some were status groups that may function as local authorities, and some were simply employees of the old government. Another example is that bureaucratic working style was characterized as an “enemy” while, in fact, the political practices of the Chinese Communist did not derail from this course (Fairbank & MacFarquhar 1987:48). Repeatedly, the authorities called for a fight against and the elimination, extermination, or suppression of the enemy. One can hardly avoid concluding that it was the awareness of and the willingness to manipulate the effects of labeling that was the true driving force of the CCP policy. By drawing on previous studies, we can quickly grasp a very general picture of the whole “story.” The following depiction is primarily based on Frederick Yu’s (1955) crucial study The Propaganda Machine in Communist China—with Special Reference to Ideology, Policy, and Regulations, as of 1952. In The Propaganda Machine, Yu concludes that Chinese Communist propaganda strongly emphasized the concept of class struggle. The central purpose of the Communist propaganda was “to awaken, heighten and sharpen the class consciousness of the masses,” upon which the real power of the regime was said to be founded. The Chinese Communists did their job with great skill. The new China rests on a balance of coercion and persuasion. The People’s Liberation Army (PLA), the Public Security Department and the People’s Court were mobilized to educate “the people” and to control “the enemies,” which sometimes meant physically killing them with quotas. The CCP Central Committee issued the directory (drafted by Mao) on October 10, 1950 demanding that cadres at all levels must “firmly kill all counter-rev-olutionaries that deserve to die” (see Hu Wha 1985:51–55). On May 16, 1951, the CCP Central Committee issued a classified notice demanding that the PLA and the CCP, as a whole, must firmly carry out resolutions of the Third National Conference of Public Security. The resolutions specifically indicated that in rural areas, killing, as a rule, should not exceed five per thousand of the local population. In urban areas, the quota was 0.5 per thousand. Under special circumstances, exceeding the limits could be allowed by the CCP Central Bureau after an appeal was filed (see Appendix). Every means of human communication was adopted. The Chinese did not create new forms of communication. They were essentially following the Soviet model. However, the tactic of mass persuasion was a distinctive Chinese creation (Liu 1971). The organization and function of the propaganda network, according to Yu (1955:13; see also Liu 1971) are as follow: The Party’s Department of Propaganda determines both the general line and the specific course of propaganda; the…government agencies control all the available mass media; and the “operational propagandists corps,” largely composed of members of the Party and the New Democratic Youth Corps and other “aggressive activists,” handle all agitation activities. Although the PRC government never used the term “genocide” to describe its policy, it tried to justify those policies which might actually inflict genocidal effects on the

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population. One may recall that the Nazis articulated and well-planned for extermination (“vernichtung” in German). The “ethnic cleansing” in Bosnia is a thinly disguised way of saying the same. To construct a new Khmer culture is another way of disguising deliberate mass killing. To that end, a very well-organized network of propaganda was established to smooth the way for mass killing, as amply documented by previous studies (Yu 1955 1964; Houn 1965; Schurmann 1971). An examination of the contents of the propaganda will provide a clear sense of the kinds of words that were used to empower genocide by the PRC.

III. DEFINITIONS OF THE TERMS Definition is no small matter in studying genocide. Indeed, definitions have effectively precluded certain groups as legitimate victims of the crime. The United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide (UNGC) defines genocide as “any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group as such: A. Killing members of the group; B. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group C. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part D. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group E. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group (Article II, UNGC 1951). That definition excludes political groups as victims of genocide, hence was heavily criticized. This study expressedly focuses on the political groups as targeted by the state government for destruction. The definition does not include political groups as victims of genocide. In reality, political groups were attacked most frequently by Communist state governments. The case of China is an example. 1. GENOCIDE Genocides vary in magnitude as well as in origins, processes, and consequences. The term “genocide” used in this study refers to what Melson (1992) coined as “total domestic genocide.” Following Melson (1992:2, 26), delineation of partial, total, and total domestic genocide can be described as follow: PARTIAL GENOCIDE Actions taken in pursuit of a public policy whose intent is to kill a large proportion of a collectivity or category and to undermine its status and political power, while stopping at extermination and leaving its cultural institutions largely unchanged.

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TOTAL GENOCIDE Actions taken in pursuit of a public policy whose intent is either a) the extermination of a collectivity or category, usually a communal group or class, or b) the killing of a large fraction of a collectivity or a category including the families of its members, and the destruction of its social and cultural identity in most or all of its aspects.” TOTAL DOMESTIC GENOCIDE Total genocides that do not involve the killing of groups outside of the state boundary. Consistent with Melson’s conceptualization, Fein (1990:24) proposes a sociological definition that includes the following elements: 1. It should clearly denote the object and processes under study and discriminate the later from related processes; 2. It should stipulate constructs which can be transformed operationally to indicate realworld observable events; 3. The specification of groups covered should be consistent with our sociological knowledge of both the persistence and construction of group identities in society, the variations in class, ethnic/racial, gender, class/political consciousness and the multiplicity and interaction of peoples’ identities and statuses in daily life; and 4. It should conform in the implicit universalistic norm and a sense of justice, embracing the right of all non-violent groups to co-exist. Accordingly, Fein suggested the following definition: Genocide is sustained purposeful action by a perpetrator to physically destroy a collectivity directly or indirectly, through interdiction of the biological and social reproduction of group members, sustained regardless of the surrender or lack of threat offered by the victim. (for more detailed discussion, see Fein 1990:24–30) The only significant difference between Melson’s and Fein’s definitions is that Fein tries to emphasize that victims should already be subdued or non-violent. To be sure, the Chinese genocide is a total domestic genocide that was carried out despite the lack of threat posed by the victims. 2. REVOLUTION American political scientist Samuel Huntington defines revolution as this: “A revolution is a rapid, fundamental, and violent domestic change in the dominant values and myths of a society, in its political institutions, social structure, leadership, and government activity and policies” (cited in Goldstone 1994:38). For Lenin, as he wrote in The Two Tactics, “revolutions are the festivals of the oppressed and the exploited. At no other time are the masses of the people in a position to come forward so actively as creators of a new social

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order” (in Connor 1968:109). This study uses the term to indicate a total revolution, i.e., a political revolution followed by a social revolution. The Blackwell Dictionary of Twentieth-Century Social Thought (1993) defines a revolution as more of a process than an event and notes that revolutions differ in scope. In general, according to the Dictionary, a political revolution entails transformation in the polity’s structure and political culture, including the reigning ideology and political myth. A social revolution, by contrast, implies a broader change of order in society including the polity, the economy, the social structure, and the culture. Political scientist Alan Liu (1996:33) defines political revolution as a work of the revolutionaries who first try to seize and change the institutions of the state, then attempt to broaden their political agenda to radically change society. Liu argues that a social revolution is mass participation in changing the mores, habits, customs, and values of a people. Within the massive literature on revolution, there is one widely accepted definition derived from the structural perspective. A social revolution, to follow Theda Skocpol’s (1979) argument, is delineated by a mixture of Samuel Huntington’s and Vladimir Lenin’s definitions. Accordingly, social revolutions can be defined as rapid, fundamental transformations of socio-economic and political institutions that are accompanied and in part are brought about through class upheavals from below (Skocpol 1979:4). These scholars unanimously acknowledge the distinction between political and social revolutions. They also indicate a close connection between the two. My contention is that the Chinese revolution comprises both political and social revolutions that fall in line with Liu’s definition, with the understanding that mass participation may have been mobilized rather than voluntarily organized. 3. TOTALITARIANISM The concept of totalitarianism was first used to describe the novel forms of dictatorship that emerged in Europe between the two World Wars. To a large degree, the image of totalitarianism still refers to an expression of fear of the power of despots to control and coordinate the lives of millions of people by brainwashing and indoctrination (Tormey 1995). More specifically, the term refers to modern single-party regimes that “deliberately seek to manufacture consensus in favor of a small ruling elite by creating organizations of mass regimentation, by monopolizing all means of cultural production (especially the mass media), and by deploying various mechanisms of social control. These include propaganda, ritual politics to enforce an elaborate cult of the leader and the nation, and various techniques of coercion ranging from legal restrictions on basic freedoms to systematic terror” (Outhwaite & Bottomore 1993:673). 4. PROPAGANDA In his classic Propaganda, Ellul observes that over time American authors have tended to accept the definition given by Lasswell: “Propaganda is the expression of opinions or actions carried out deliberately by individuals or groups with a view to influencing the opinions or actions of other individuals or groups for predetermined ends and through psychological manipulations” (cited in Ellul 1965:xi). To this predominantly psychological definition, Ellul argues, re-education and brainwashing that were used on

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prisoners of war, and public and human relations between the ordinary people should be added as necessary parts of propaganda. Public and human relations are propaganda, Ellul (1965:xii) explained, “because they seek to adapt the individual to a society, to a living standard, to an activity. They serve to make him conform, which is the aim of all propaganda.” In a narrower sense, we find in propaganda “techniques of psychological influence combined with techniques of organization and the envelopment of people with the intention of sparking action” (Ellul 1965:xiii). Propaganda is an institutional product. Drawing from the social construction of reality perspective to examine the social processes and structures that may influence international radio broadcasting, Philo Wasburn (1992:82) proposes that the defining characteristic of propaganda is that the message sender had “intended to have some politically relevant effect or effects on a defined audience or audiences.” Despite the political intent of the message sender, according to Wasburn (1992), audiences can still depend on the organization to bring them the news. Depending of a variety of psychological and social conditions, people may or may not think what media materials they have produced or consumed represented the truth. However, how the audience reacts to the news may not be so important as perceiving of media, from the social construction of reality perspective, as “practices of those having the power to determine the experience of the others” (Molotch and Lester 1974:111). Examining media news from this perspective may enable researchers to look not for “realities,” but for “purposes” which underlie the strategies of creating one reality instead of another (Molotch and Lester 1974). Not intending to construct ideal types, Wasburn (1992:79–90) summarizes four major categories of propaganda—factual, bureaucratic, linguistic, and sociological—to support his claim that a total absence of political intents is rare in almost all governmental informational programs world wide. Factual propaganda presents information intended, by the agent, as verifiable. Whether the claims are true is not relevant. Bureaucratic propaganda is possible when access to direct or alternative sources of information is unavailable to the audience. Linguistic propaganda constituted what Mueller (1973:24) terms as “directed communication” which usually occurs in political systems where all social and economic institutions are subordinated to the interests of the dominant group or party. In other words, it was “overt, organized effort to manipulate language to meet political needs and goals.” For practical purposes, such efforts usually seek to categorize a political relationship in order to rationalize perpetuating the relationship, or to redefine terms so that descriptive meanings change without substantially changing the emotion that the terms express. The following paragraphs from the RMRB editorial well illustrate the above point: 06–06–51 Correctly using language to express ideas, today, holds great political significance in every task under the guidance of the Communist Party. During and prior to the KMT era, the language used by officialdoms had only limited influence and function; therefore, although their writings are of poor quality and intolerably lengthy, it did not have much impact on people’s life. It is a completely different matter in the China ruled by the Chinese Communist Party. Every document, every report, every newspaper, and every publication of our Party offices and government

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institutions existed for the purposes of disseminating the truth, directing missions and the methods of completing the missions. They have tremendous impacts on the masses. Therefore, it is necessary to make viable that every document, report and publication is capable of conveying ideas via correct language, to enable the masses correctly grasping the ideas and consequently produce correct material strength. (all translations of the editorials, unless otherwise specified, were done by this author) Sociological propaganda presents a “symbolic universe,” to use the terms of Berger and Luckmann (1966:95–104), that aimed at providing ultimate legitimation of the institutional order and explanation of the world. This study also utilized Wasburn’s approach to propaganda analysis, which starts from the perspective of the senders “political intent.”

FORMATION OF GENOCIDE—REVIEW OF THE RELATED LITERATURE THE CHINESE GENOCIDE FROM 1949 TO 1953 WAS AN EVOLUTION THAT INVOLVED revolution, totalitarian regime, Maoist ideology, and the use of propaganda to legitimate genocidal policies against ideologically constructed enemies of the people. The interconnectedness of these factors is presented in Figure 3–1 below. Each element will be elaborated upon in the following section.

Figure 3–1: Evolutional Model of Genocide in China. Figure 3–1 graphically describes what happened in China during the post-revolutionary five-year period. In the views of the CCP, the Party had successfully completed in 1949 the “people’s democratic revolution,” namely, to overthrow the KMT government through protracted guerilla fighting and a full-scale civil war. The next move would be to step through the transltion period, which involved tasks of rebuilding the country in their own image, recovering the economy, and completing the long-promised land revolution so as to fundamentally change the social structure. When these were done, the final move of establishing a socialist society would be undertaken. The process of transitioning into the phase of socialist construction would be long so that the foundation of socialism could be established on solid ground (Zhou 1984 [1953]:105). Following this transitional period, industrialization and collectivization on a national scale would gradually lead the nation toward the realization of Socialism. The unidirectional arrows linking the three stages indicate the direction of development intended by the CCP. Nevertheless, actual historical development had thwarted this planned course. The Korean War unexpectedly broke out just days before

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the Land Reform movement was to begin and the Central Government had already planned large-scale demobilization of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). Brugger notes that “by a curious quirk of fate, the decision was taken for large-scale demobilization on 24 June 1950, the day before hostilities broke out on the 38th Parallel and the Korean War began” (1981:64). The surprised PRC government waited several months to make proper response to this event. The Land Reform Law that went into effect on 30 June was moderate, compared to the one executed in the pre-1949 liberated areas. By autumn, when the newly liberated areas were to begin the reform, the PLA was fully engaged in the Korean War. Consequently, agrarian policy became much tougher. In addition, the most elite PLA troops were gathering along the Southeast coast, waiting to recover their last territory— Taiwan. The war provided an excellent opportunity for Chiang Kai-shek to attempt a military comeback. It also encouraged the secret agents, sympathizers of the old regime, and all those vested interests with the previous government to sabotage the very existence of new China. Radicalization of internal policies against such reactionary elements as landlords, remnant KMT troops, secret agents, and any agents of imperialism was observed as strongly associated with Chinese involvement in the Korean War (Brugger 1981; Fairbank 1989; Meisner 1989). Indeed, extermination of internal enemies was both a necessary part of the still unfinished civil war and rationalized as necessary to the newly arising war effort against external threat. The first Five-Year Economic Plan began in 1953, the Korean War formally ended in july 1953, and the new constitution was being discussed in the same year, which signified full consolidation of red China. The CCP determined that one core line of action in consolidating the new regime was to destroy the enemies through mobilizing mass actions. This was partly due to Communist ideology, partly to a contingent event, and partly conditioned by social structures of the old China. As a general policy guideline, the proposed actions of eliminating enemies were then justified by the People’s Daily as something unavoidable, or even necessary, to consolidate the new People’s Republic, to protect the new “people,” and to serve the cause of state building. Previous theories of genocide offer some useful clues in explain why domestic measures against the “enemy” became sterner once China engaged in the war. However, not enough information was provided to know how the “enemies” were constructed, situated, and disseminated throughout the nation to prepare the majority of people for mass killings. The following discussions review literature on the preconditions of genocide, then explores how a linguistic perspective can enhance our understanding of this social phenomenon.

I. PRECONDITIONS The underlying thesis of this study is that by analyzing the propaganda of a genocidal state and interpreting it in light of the conception that language can perform the social function of coordinating diverse actions, we may achieve a clearer insight into how constructed realities can serve to legitimize the enactment of genocide. To do that, I must first identify the mass killings occurred in China (1949–1953) as a case of total domestic genocide, then proceed to discuss the case from the linguistic perspective to clarify some important sociological issues associated with genocide.

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Table 3–1: Instances of Genocidal and Nongenocidal Outcomes by Revolutions and Other Conditions Conditions

Revolution followed by war or threat of war

Outcomes Total Domestic Genocide

Other Massacres, Partial & Non-genocidal Total Genocides Repression

Armenian Genocide, Holocaust, Genocide of the Gypsies, Destruction of the Kulaks, Cambodian “Autogenocide” *Chinese genocide of people’s enemies

French Revolutionary Terror, Vendée, partial genocide of Poles, Russians, and others by Nazis, expulsion of Vietnamese Boat People

Other (e.g., coup, None secession, civil war, revolution without war or threat of war, counterrevolution, war without revolution, colonialism)

Expulsion of Cuban upper and middle classes

Melos, Genghis Khan, Apartheid, Colonial destruction Of ‘reservation’ “native” peoples, Armenian of ‘native’ massacres of 1894–96, Russian pogroms, Massacre of Indonesian Communist Party (1965), Biafra, Kurds In Iraq (1988, 1991), East Timor

Source: R.Melson (1992:279). *Added by this author.

Political scientist Melson, in his Revolution and Cenocide (1992), argues that only five historical cases qualified as total domestic genocides under his strict definition (see table 3–1). I propose to add a sixth case: China. Melson carefully delimited the propositions of his model: “total domestic genocide is likely to occur only under circumstances of revolutions that lead to war and is not likely to happen in other contexts” (Melson 1992:278). Furthermore, revolutions and wars are among the necessary but not sufficient conditions for total domestic genocides. Revolutionary movement often produces byproducts: a regime attempts to refashion its domestic society according to new political myths. Such revolutionary regimes are most likely to exclude certain classes. Often labeled as “enemies of the people” those classes would be considered as unworthy of the new moral universe and subject to abuse. The crucial elements for a total domestic genocide, according to the above table, are revolution and war. However, the acts of actual killing and the destruction of class identity are still contingent on two more conditions. The class or groups must be already labeled as the “people’s enemy” in league with the regime’s foreign foes. Moreover, the policy of destruction must appear to those in power as a feasible and worthy option and it has to be justified, on the part of the ruling élites, by ideology (Melson 1992:278–281). We will see shortly how does this pattern fit in the Chinese experience. Table 3–2 compares three socialist states and delineates the

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Table 3–2: Comparisons of Selected Total Domestic Genocides U.S.S.R.

China

Cambodia

Time span

1929–1936

1949–1953

1975–1978

Perpetrator

State government; ruling party

State government; ruling party

State government; ruling party

Ruling Party

Communist Party

Communist Party

Khmer Rouge

Ideology of Total revolution ruling party

New Democracy

Total revolution

Victims groups

Total genocide: Kulak (capitalist farmers who owned land, farm animals, machinery and hired at least 3 wage laborers) Partial genocide: Ukrainians and other minorities

Total genocide: landlords, class enemies Partial genocide: agents of KMT network, remnants of KMT cadres, secret societies, religions affiliates, urban bourgeoisie, party cadres

Total genocide: urban middle class, landlords. Partial genocide: communal groups overseas Chinese, Vietnamese, Chams; Buddhist monks

Number of victims

11 million*

800,000–3 million*

2million*

External war before revolution

World War I

World War II

Invasion by North Vietnam (1970– 1973)

Civil war before genocide

1917–1921

1945–1949

1968–1970 against Sihanouk 1970–1975 against Lon Nol

External war during genocide

None (Stalin did fear of a Korean War (1950–1953) potential Capitalist invasion)

Cambodia invaded Vietnam in 1977 and Vietnam countered in 1978

Modes of genocide

Dekulakization movement, deportation, artificial famine, labor camps, war atrocities

Mass killing, forced deportarion, wanton killings, over work, malnutrition

Mass movements (Land Reform, Suppression of Counterrevolutionaries, ThreeAnti, Five-Anti, Resist-US AidKorea); killings, labor camps

*Vicrim numbers drawn from Gurr and Harff in Fein ed. (1992:35–36).

essential facts that indicate what occurred in China between 1949 and 1953 as a case of total domestic genocide. Although there are differences among the three total domestic genocides presented in Table 3–2, in terms of their processes and consequences, the three cases share similar historical conditions and have a similar course of development. The

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linkages between war, revolution, and ideology in these cases provide a further commonality. The Chinese Communists asserted that in the end they would obtain a total revolution just as the Socialist USSR did. However, during the 1949–1953 period, the CCP claimed that they were completing the bour-geois-democratic phase of the revolution, which they termed “New Democracy.” In reality, “New Democracy” was no more than a hollow and purely ideological claim (Meisner 1974:61). According to Mao, the “New Democracy” phased in because conditions for socialism were not yet ripe. The new state, under the people’s democratic dictatorship, was to unite the national bourgeoisie and the petty bourgeoisie as well as the proletariat and the peasantry under the leadership of the proletariat. In fact, over 80% of the CCP members were peasants. Even as late as 1957, only 17% of the members were workers (Meisner 1974:70). No explicit claims were made that the CCP was a peasant party, yet the true revolutionary class was the peasantry. On the one hand, the “New Democracy” was indeed a bourgeois-democratic revolution, judging from the fact that major measures such as national unification, qualified market economy, and the industrialization that the new state undertook in the early years were “capitalist” in essence. In that sense, Mao’s perception was an accurate reflection of historical realities of China at that time (Meisner 1974:62). On the other hand, this revolutionary ideology obscured the Marxist demand for an organic relationship between political parties and social classes. What was demonstrated in Maoist practice was that those who possess a “proletarian consciousness” existed independently of the actual presence of the proletariat and they were not part of the peasantry, either. As Meisner observes, “A revolutionary elite (the party and the leaders) holds the socialist goal firmly in mind and directs the mass movement towards its realization” (Meisner 1974:47). In the case of China, it appears that directing the minds of the masses assumed by the CCP leadership more importance than directing their deeds. Fein (1990) compares seven different studies that deal with genocides occurred in the 1975–90 period and reaches the same conclusion: ideological genocide requires ideologies, class status, and dictatorship as precondi-tions. Table 3–3 reproduces her findings. The top half of Table 3–3 shows the necessary conditions for each type of genocide; the bottom half considers the types of victims. Fein asserted in this comprehensive review of the sociological treatment of genocide that no stream of sociology since 1945 has considered genocide as the focus of study. When sociologists have recognized genocide, no satisfactory explanations have been provided. She argues that retributive genocide occurred as a result of actions taken to eliminate a real or potential threat. The most common situation was tribal conflict in plural societies, especially after decolonization. The case of 1972 Burundi mass killings has often been cited as an example (Smith 1987; Fein 1979). Despotic genocide refers to those massacres that aimed to spread terror among real or potential enemies; for example, allied bombing of Dresden during the Second World War and the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (Markusen 1991; Kuper 1981). Developmental genocides most typically occur as a result of conflicts between settler groups against indigenous peoples such as the case in Brazil’s genocidal treatment of its rain forest tribes that started in the 1970s (Chalk and jonassohn 1990; Dadrian 1975). In general, these models tend to

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assume that genocide resulted from communal or ethnic conflicts between groups in a plural society.

Table 3–3: Likely Preconditions and Victims of Genocide TYPE:

Ideological Retributive Developmental Desporic

PRECONDITION Ideology

+

−

−

−

Threat to domination of perpetrator by part or whole of vicrim’s collectivity

−

+

−

−

Dictatorship (likely precondition)

+

−

−

+

Conflict with indigenous people

−

−

+

−

Working class

−

−

−

−

Middle class

+

−

−

−

Educated class

+

+

−

+

Middleman-minority; strangers

+

−

−

+

Hunting and gathering people

−

−

+

−

VICTIMS’ SOCIO-ECONOMIC STATUS

Source: Helen Fein (1990:30)

By contrast, victims of ideological genocide were defined ideologically instead of communally. In these cases, genocide was materialized to implement a belief. The implication of Fein’s argument, in my opinion, is that this kind of genocide could happen in some places only if conditions are right. Harf, among others, generalizes that: 53 Revolutionary one-party states are the likeliest offenders. Genocides occur with alarming frequency during or shortly after the revolutionary takeovers. Especially dangerous are situations in which longstanding ethnic rivalries erupt and radicalized groups armed with a revolutionary ideology gain the upper hand. Communist ideologues tend to be most aggressive in their length of democratic experience is inversely related to the occurrence of geno/politicides (Harff 1988:23–24; see also Melson 1992; Chalk and Jonassohn 1990). Fein creates a typology, presented here as Table 3–3. She claims that “there seems much agreement between earlier scholars on which cases fit into the specific types” despite some disagreement of labeling (Fein 1990:30). For her, an ideological genocide involves ideology, dictatorship, and class status as necessary preconditions. The sufficient condition, then, will have to be explored case by case. Ideological genocides do not occur easily; many preconditions had to be present. Fein’s typology lacks an account of the

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process through which conditions evolved into activities. I created Table 3–2 to account for the process. Genocides of different types and with various origins are not rare before the twentiethcentury history (Chalk and jonassohn 1990). Literally every type of group can be a potential target of genocide, whether based on their ethnicity, social-economic status, or even political beliefs. However, the twentieth century is said to be “an age of genocide” that is far bloodier than anything that came before (Smith 1987:21). Moreover, “virtually everyone acknowledges that genocide is primarily a crime of state” (Fein 1990:12). Since the 1970s, social scientists have attempted to understand why modern states choose to kill a large segment of their own people. Sociological analysis of the Holocaust, by far the most well-known case of a major genocide, is said to have challenged “orthodox approaches to the sociology of morality and politics” (Freeman 1995:207). Except for conflict theorists, most sociologists tend to perceive society as a moralizing device. Immoral crimes such as the perpetration of genocide, from this orthodox sociological point of view, should only be considered as deviant. Rummel challenges this view: …I surveyed the extent of genocide and mass killing by governments since 1900. The results were shocking: according to these first figures— independent of war and other kinds of conflict—governments probably have murdered 119,400,000 people—Marxist governments about 95,200,000 of them. By comparison, the battle-killed in all foreign and domestic wars in this century total 35,700,000 (Rummel 1990:xi). In a later study, Rummel revises his figures and specifically stated that “From 1900 to 1987, state, quasi-state, and stateless groups have killed in democide (which includes genocide, massacres, extra-judicial executions, and the like) nearly 170,000,000 people” (Rummel 1995:3). Even if we are cautioned that the number of victims provided in that study is a very rough estimation, the actual number of deaths still is terribly high. Significantly, these were mainly state crimes. Moreover, with few exceptions, most totalitarian Communist regimes are “megamurderers” (a term coined by Rummel [1994:3] that refers to state governments which murdered at least one million of their own people). The later part of the literature review will consider reasons ‘why’ genocides occurred; suffices it now to point out that, in accordance with Rummel’s argument, ideology has played a major role in the making of genocide/democide in totalitarian states. In turn,”…democide becomes a device of rule, as in eliminating possible opponents, or a means for achieving one’s ideological goal, as in the purification of one’s country of an alien race or the reconstruction of society” (Rummel 1995:5). As Irving Horowitz indicated in the forward of Death by Government, Rummel’s work points to “one crucial aspect that stands out above all others: the need to revise our sense of the depth of the horrors committed by Communist regimes on ordinary humanity” (Rummel 1994:xiii). Rummel (1990) sharply reoriented his research in response to the realization that the total number of people killed by governments (domestic and foreign) was almost four times the number killed in international and domestic wars and revolutions. Rummel puts it: “It was as though a nuclear war had already occurred” (Rummel 1990:xi; emphasis

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in the original). This statistical fact implies that genocide is no more deviant than war in human history. Yet, while devices of war-prevention have developed considerably since 1949, no effective measures of genocide-prevention have been promulgated. Solutions of genocide are scarce largely because origins of many seemingly insane genocides, particularly those committed in this century, remain incompletely explained. This is due, at least in part, to insufficient conceptualization. A more promising approach to understanding genocide is to acknowledge that the potential for the occurrence of genocide resides in all communities. When conditions are right, genocide may be nurtured and materialized in any society. Structural theorists of genocide have argued that genocide is not an inexorable outcome of any social structure but a possible result of decisions people make (Kuper 1981:56). If genocides are caused by decisions, one needs to study the constraints inhibiting genocide as well as the favorable conditions and polarizing processes which make it more likely (Fein 1979, 1984; Chalk and jonassohn 1990; Harff and Gurr 1990). Tedd Gurr and Barbara Harff (1988) have conducted another major study that attempts to identify cases of genocide. In one of their studies of post World War II mass killings, Gurr and Harff (1988; see also Harff 1992) identify 44 episodes of genocides. Certainly, they could not foresee what has happened in Rwanda and the former republics of Yugoslavia during the past few years. They did, however, identify three useful components to recognize genocides: (1) many noncombatants are deliberately killed, (2) the death toll is higher than one thousand, and (3) the event is usually protracted, lasting at least six months. Gurr and Harff’s study, however, only examined cases that occurred in states with a population over one million people. Hence, there are possibly small-scale massacres left unrecorded. From this survey, Helen Fein recalculated their estimates for the same period and concluded that genocides resulted in “over twice as many deaths as have wars during that period. Similarly, both types of state-sponsored massacres killed up to 2.6 times the number of people dying because of natural disasters between 1967 and 1986” (Fein 1990:83). Harff characterizes genocide as “the promotion and execution of policies by a state or its agents that result in the deaths of a substantial portion of a group…. In policies,…groups are defined primarily in terms of their political opposition to the regime and dominant group” (1992:27–28; see also Harff and Gurr 1989). In their survey research of post-1945 genocides, Harff and Gurr conclude that, among the 44 identified genocides 23 of them happened during or in the immediate aftermath of civil wars and rebellions. As to the number of victims, the genocides committed by the PRC (1951–52) and the Khmer Rough of Cambodia (1975–79) accounted for 800,000–3,000,000 victims respectively. The former Soviet Union (1929–1936) was responsible for 11 million murders. It should be emphasized that during different periods, these Communist regimes, along with Indonesia, Pakistan, and Uganda, were repeat perpetrators of genocides. What is significant is that those committed immediately after the revolutionary victory caused the highest number of victims. The apparent interlocking effect of war and revolution surfaced from Gurr and Harff’s study as favorable conditions for genocide. Harff and Gurr sketch out an explanatory scheme for the causes of genocide:

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The likelihood that geno/politicides will occur is increased among states of lesser international status, in states with new élites and regimes, in states with a history of repressive policies against groups, in societies with persisting internal cleavages, and among those states in which élites use their power to differentially reward groups for perceived loyalties. Revolutionary takeovers are particularly likely to lead to geno/politicides when ideological considerations target groups outright as expendable. Groups not fully incorporated into the social structure are likely targets. (1990:15) Thus, a new state undergoing revolutionary transformation or a war, with the state leadership armed with a totalitarian ideology appears to be a highly qualified candidate for the perpetration of genocide. A better place to look for supporting evidence for this argument is to examine those states where genocide did not occur. This leads us to discuss the relevance of regime types to genocide. REGIME TYPES Scholars such as Rummel (1994) and Lijphart (1977) propose that liberal democracies, with their decentralized political authority and higher tolerance of pluralism, are less likely to commit domestic genocide than would be totalitarian regimes such as China and Cambodia. However, not all students of genocide agree. Western democracies have committed genocides during the past centuries. Many studies mentioned the American Indians as a possible case of genocide (Marger 1994; Porter 1982; Letgers 1988). Thorton (1987) examines the population history in America since 1492 and concludes that diseases and warfare largely accounted for the population collapse of the Indians. He observes, collective massacres by states and settlers took the most lives. For example, miners and settlers in Texas, California and Oregon committed genocidal massacres that killed perhaps as many as 225,000 Indians (Thorton 1987:48–49). Chalk and jonassohn (1990) argued that it was a “ethnocide,” primarily caused by a policy of forced assimilation, and that there was lack of evident of intentional annihilation of the Indians by the government. Nevertheless, they do indicate that the federal government “stood ready to engage in genocide as a means of coercing tribes when they resisted ethnocide” (Chalk and jonassohn 1990:203). Stressing the relationship between language and violence, Hauptman (1988) was cited by Fein (1990) as arguing that ideologies played an important role in the occurrence of the genocidal massacres of Indians. The Indians were labeled as sinners against God, hence outside any universe of white obligation; and the aggression on the Indians was justified by ideologies of progress (Hauptman in Fein 1990:81–82). Liberal democracies have committed genocides beyond their national boundaries. The indiscriminatory bombings of major German industrial cities during World War II were actually targeted at residential areas instead of at factories and the decision was secreted away from the public by British and American governments (Markusen and Kopf 1995). That certainly constitutes a genocidal massacre, if not yet a genocide (Rummel 1994). The japanese people who were killed as a result of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and

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Nagasaki were considered “enemy people” other than posing any actual security threat to the United States. That episode qualifies as a “democide” (Rummel 1994). Europeans, through colonization and settlement, decimated native peoples in the new continents and states. For example, the settlement of Australia accompanied violence with the appropriation of the land, early decline in the native birth rate, and lack of official intervention leave no doubt “in black or white minds that the ‘dying out of the black race’ is an inevitable course of event. That constituted a relationship of genocide between the white settlers and the indigenous tribes” (Barta 1987; Diamond 1988). Chalk and Jonassohn (1990) did not mention the Australian case as a genocide. They depict how the indigenous people of Tasmania, an island off Australia, were slain, raped, enslaved, officially hunted, finally deported to reserved to die and classify it as a genocide. ETHNIC DISCRIMINATION Historically, plural societies are most likely to engender conflicts that may amount to genocide (D.Horowitz 1985:95–149). Scholars such as Simpson and Yinger (1985) observe that inter-group conflicts sometimes become so severe that physical destruction of one by the other becomes an accepted goal. Their studies neglect to explain the reasons for and the manner in which such a goal comes to be accepted by the perpetrating group. Van den Berghe (1981) argues that “middlemen-minorities” (MM’s), defined as powerless alien minorities who migrate to other societies to fill in niches not filled by native classes, are often targets of ethnic discrimination. These groups include such prominent examples as jews in Europe, Armenians in Turkey, and overseas Chinese in Indonesia and Malaysia. They have been “repeatedly victimized throughout human history” (Van den Berghe 1981:140). Other researchers present accounts of middlemen minorities that have not become victims, and there are other groups which have been victims that are not MM’s (Fein 1987). Even though we accept the thesis that human beings have a natural propensity to be aggressive to groups other than their own, that does not necessarily lead to genocide. Scholars who focus on the host society instead of the victims have devised some socio-psychological explanations of genocide based on clinical and experimental evidence. Staub (1978) argues that our readiness to hurt others may have been established through early socialization in subordination to authority, lack of empathy and values of moral exclusiveness. Milgram’s (1974) experimental findings stress role expectation and group pressure to conformity, which may render ordinary people as pitiless bystanders. Origins of the Holocaust can be attributed largely to the widespread antiSemitism in Europe in general, and in Germany in particular (Goldhagan 1996). Armenians are traditionally an unwelcome ethnic group in the Ottoman Empire (Melson 1996; 1992). Stalin’s mass murder and hunger policy not only aimed at the invented class of ‘Kulaks’ but also at the Gypsies and Ukrainians (Conquest 1986). There is abundant evidence of racist or ethnic discrimination in various genocides. That, however, does not explain cases in which genocides are absent in many plural societies, for example Switzerland and Belgium (Lijphart 1977; D.Horowitz 1985). In the case of the PRC, during the early 1950s, the government was well-known for its merciless policies against the landlords and its willingness to use terror against those

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foolish or daring enough to resist the state’s will. However, the Chinese government largely spared the national minorities, such as Muslims in the Northwestern region and various ethnic tribes in the Southwestern region, from being disturbed by political movements, even though “Han Chauvinism” is no less racial than anti-Semitism in any sense. Furthermore, the employment of a moderate policy to deal with minorities was a measure of expediency, to be sure, since the policy was later criticized within the CCP leadership for being soft (Dreyer 1976). It nonetheless illustrates that racism does not necessarily lead to genocide. Specific conditions that lead to genocide need to be accounted for case by case. Take the Holocaust as an example. As Melson (1992) argues, the Nazi party was empowered by a historical opportunity to materialize its racist ideology. The evolution of that structural opportunity, he maintains, is independent of the ideology. TOTALITARIANISM “Wars are common to all sorts of social systems. Genocide…is the operational handmaiden of a particular social system, the totalitarian system” (I. Horowitz 1997:36). Totalitarianism can be a fertile ground for the nurturing of genocide, for a number of reasons. In general, the Nazi Germany and the Fascist Italy during the 1930s and 1940s as well as the Communist Party rule of the Soviet Union during the same period were cited as typical examples of totalitarian systems. Common features between Nazism and Fascism have been identified by observers such as Georges Sorel: stress on violence, combination of voluntarism with elitism, and centrality of public myth (Stanley 1976). Other common elements of the three movements that have been identified include antiliberalism, use of a “totalitarian vocabulary of combat,” an emphasis on mobilization, and the strong state (Gleason 1995:32). The first major work that states what Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and the Soviet Union had in common, according to Gleason (1995), was done by Carl j. Friedrich (1954) who treated totalitarianism merely as an extreme form of autocracy. Friedrich and Brzezinski (1956:9) also developed a widely quoted syndrome of totalitarianism: The ‘syndrome,’ or pattern of interrelated traits, of the totalitarian dictatorship consists of an ideology, a single party typically led by one man, a terroristic police, a communications monopoly, a weapons monopoly, and a centrally directed economy. Thus, we see that the literature on totalitarianism not founded on a unanimous definition of the term. Earlier, I have briefly defined totalitarianism as the combination of a number of governmental conducts. That definition was by no means authoritative in that over the years “the debate about totalitarianism in Europe and the United States has often displayed regional and national colorings as well as generational ones” (Gleason 1995:216). For example, one recently published American textbook of political sociology defines totalitarianism as “a form of government run by a single party that controls all aspects of society” (Lourvetaris 1997:62). By contrast, some art critics saw totalitarianism as responsible for the production of “identical conceptions of art and the

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same brand of official art” in the above mentioned three movements (Haftmann 1960 vol. 1:303; see also Golomstock 1990 for discussions about the popularity of the term among art critics from the former Soviet Union). From Marcuse’s (1964) point of view, totalitarianism even became a culture devoid of alternative possibilities, rather than a dictatorship. In that sense, according to Marcuse, the Western capitalist world became more thoroughly totalitarian than even the Communist world. A major factor distinguishing totalitarian states from all other polities is the possession of a totalistic ideology by the ruling élites (Tormey 1995). Ideology was related by students of genocide such as Kuper (1984), Fein (1984), Chalk and Jonassohn (1990), Melson (1992) and Rummel (1994; 1995) to the state government’s motive to reconstruct the society. As Fredrich and Brzezinski (1965:88–89) explained, a totalistic ideology “…is concerned with total destruction and total reconstruction, involving typically an ideological acceptance of violence as the only practicable means for such total destruction. It might accordingly be described as a reasonably coherent body of ideas concerning practical means of how totally to change and reconstruct society by force or violence, based upon an all-inclusive or total criticism of what is wrong with the existing or antecedent society.” Internalization of such an ideology may lead the individual to view everything that already exists as a barrier to the realization of a better society. That is to say, social life itself must be changed, often through a revolution. Moreover, there can be only one moral code, created by the revolutionary party. As Gleason observes, students of China used the term totalitarian in the 1950s largely as an easy way of suggesting a Soviet comparison, not in the sense of creating another totalitarian model (Gleason 1995:107). The Belgian art historian Pierre Ryckmans (1987), who wrote about Chinese culture and politics under the name Simon Leys, did use totalitarianism as a way to gain an understanding of China. He maintains that analyzing China without using the word totalitarian was like describing the Sahara without using the word sand. He describes China as follows: a political system where all social ties have been entirely replaced by state-imposed organization and where, consequently, all groups and all individuals are supposed to act only for goals which both are the goals of the state and were defined as such by the state…[Such a system would] consist in the utter destruction of civil society, whereas the state and its organizational instruments are the only form of social life; all kinds of human activity—economic, intellectual, cultural—are allowed and ordered (the distinction between what is allowed and what is ordered tending to disappear) only to the extent of being at the service of state goals (again, as defined by the state). Every individual (including the rulers themselves) is considered the property of the state (cited in Gleason 1995:107)

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Even if one disputes the tenability of the above remark, it offers a life-like simulation of what a totalitarian system can be capable of creating. That having been said, one has to face the reality that a society is shaped by the people who live in it. Hence, a new people should also be created to ensure that orthodox values, opinion, or behavior shall meet no challenge in the new order. How is this to be done? Irving Horowitz (1976) considers genocide as an act of a state intended as the ultimate means of social control. Moreover, in his view, genocide is an act that can only be executed by a totalitarian state. The linkage between ideology and genocide was manifest mainly through the uncovering of the Cambodian genocide. Since 1979, the genocide committed by the Khmer Rouge has brought to the forefront the issue of direct impact of Marxism in legitimizing genocide (Hawk 1984; Jackson 1989). As jackson (1989) documented, the Khmer Rouge purged and re-purged itself to achieve ideological purity and internal security. The question then arises as to how an official ideology finds its way into the everyday life of the ordinary people. In the Cambodian case, Ponchaud argues (in jackson 1989), Khmer culture as well as the absence of intermediate structures may have helped the revolutionaries to transform the traditions of their people with such apparent ease. Ponchaud depicts the Khmer culture as “the revolt of the hinterland indigenous peoples against the foreigners; it is the rising up of the youth against the elders and the ancestors” (in Jackson 1989:152). Essentially, these ideas have a clear Maoist imprint on them (Kenneth M.Quinn in Jackson 1989:215–240). In that sense, the Chinese revolution also bore the stamp of the CCP culture. Still, that does not adequately explain how the Party culture came to be stamped on the people. A part of the answer lies in the fact that totalitarian states all tend to control the media, hence the construction of realities. Another part of the answer is found in the approaches of a strong state, which has the capacity to manipulate rhetoric as a device to enhance its legitimacy. Rummel (1994) describes the occurrence of genocide as a process of “utopianism empowered.” Essentially, the phrase denotes a combination of near absolute state power and the ideology of Marxism, whether explained by Lenin, Stalin, Mao Tse-tung, or any other Marxists. State power is required because, from Rummel’s point of view, philosophy needs to be empowered by the state. According to Rummel, Marxism “had a universal perspective: it was a theory about reality (dialectical materialism); about the best society (Communism); about implementing public policy (a socialist dictatorship of the proletariat); praxis was to be absolute in scope, absolute in power, and absolute in technique.” In addition, he continued, “Absolute ideas plus absolute power of the state could mean only one thing: the state and its monopoly of force was the instrument of ‘progress’, of utopian change” Rummel (1994:84–85). Impressed by the fact that ideology and its propagation appear to be of such supreme importance to Fascist and Communist regimes alike, both Friedrich Hayek (1944) and Hannah Arendt (1949) concluded that totalitarianism is a specifically modern phenomenon. Unlike Hayek, however, Arendt believes that socialism is not to be blamed for the rise of totalitarianism. What is to be blamed is ideology per se, in Arendt’s view. An ideology, she explains, is a set of ideas that purports to provide an all-encompassing explanation for social and historical development. All ideologies, Arendt asserts, share this dogged essentialism. It follows that possession of an ideology can lead to an attitude of intolerance.

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An apparent paradox in this logic is that, if all ideologies potentially promote intolerance of those who do not accept them, we need to explain why liberalism or even democracy as an ideology does not produce intolerance toward dissent. State leadership is not automatically led by its ideology to be intolerant. It has a choice. However, alternatives available to the state leadership are limited by both internal and external conditions. For example, when a country is facing a war or revolution, alternatives available to the government in handling things become limited. This tends to radicalize its government. Some historians argue that such was the case in China during 1949 to 1953 (Meisner 1987; Fairbank 1987). When state government does choose to use non-coercive means to implement the official ideology, what does it do? Tormey (1995:61) observes that the striking similarity among the regimes of Hitler, Stalin, and Mao, includes “their attempts to manipulate information to create the desired impression of omnipotence and infallibility.” There is no doubt that these state leaders attempted to control the sources of information. Why? Friedrich and Brzezinski note that interviewers of USSR citizens often discover that “even those who profess the most violent hostility to the Soviet system tend to think in patterns instilled into them by that regime” (1965:143). By effectively controlling public communication, a totalitarian state government is perfectly capable of creating a discourse for people to use, hence regulating their thoughts and actions. This is a true defining character of totalitarianism. Totalitarian leaders appear to have been well aware of the fact that control of what people know about the world greatly enhances a government’s ability to influence the beliefs and actions of their citizens. In W.I.Thomas’ well-known words “if men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences” (Thomas and Thomas 1928:572). The Maoist version of coercive persuasion demonstrates how effective it can be to “reform” people’s minds and behaviors. Governments of capitalist democracies also seek to control what their citizens think about (Krasnow, Lonley and Terry 1982). Freedom of the press in the United States, according to Harold Evans (1991), is more of a myth than a reality. However, Evans does indicate that, compared to other countries, control over the media in America is far lighter. More importantly, to the extent governments of capitalist democracies seek to control the media, they rarely, if ever, resort to the use of terror. Martin Linsky (1986) analyzes postal reform in the United States in the late 1960s and concludes that efforts to win favorable publicity are absolutely essential to effective governance. It was the enhancement of stability that seems to be the facilitating force for media control in a democratic country. A totalitarian state is defined by the possession of a totalitarian ideology by its leadership. The ideology needs to find a way to get into the everyday discourse of the ordinary people. Coercion was an apparent option. Media control, as a form of social control, can be an effective alternative method toward the same end. It is clear that all state governments use coercive force to implement policies, that all leaders of most states possess ideologies of one form or another, and they are keenly aware of the potential effects of media control. However, capitalist democracies seldom propose to construct a new social order through large-scale social struggle. They rarely pursue ideological ends through coercion. Their goal of manipulating the media tends to be limited to enhance established governance rather than facilitating a utopia. These are typical forms of conduct that occurred only in newly established revolutionary states. Merely possessing

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an ideology itself is not a sufficient condition of genocide. A crisis, a war, or a revolution that leads to merciless pursuit and use of power may be required. TOTAL WAR Sociologists in general pay little attention to the notion of total war (Freeman 1995). One notable exception is Markusen (1991, 1992; also Markusen and D.Kopf 1995). Total war and genocide during the twentieth century, says Markusen (1995), have resulted in unprecedented loss of human lives and property destruction. Yet, he maintains, both terms “remain semantically unfocused and conceptually vague” (Markusen 1995:35). According to Sallagar (1969:2), “what characterizes an all-out, or total, war is that it is fought for such high stakes that the belligerents are willing, or compelled, to employ, not all weapons they possess, but any weapons they consider appropriate and advantageous to them” (emphasis in the original). Students of genocide generally agree that war tends to create social and psychological conditions conducive to the outbreak of genocide and genocidal killings (Kuper 1984; Dadrian 1975). In particular, civil wars are said to be “probably one of the most likely settings for genocide in the future” (Huttenbach 1988:297). Three critical points are in order: 1. Wartime aggravates feelings of vulnerability and/or intensifies feelings of invincibility. In both cases it functions as an essential psychological element to the radical phases of revolutions that turn genocidal. 2. Wartime permits states to become more autonomous and independent of domestic and foreign public opinion, thereby encouraging radical solutions to social and political “problems.” 3. Wartime conditions may close off other policy options, leaving genocide a strong choice for an already radicalized regime. (Melson 1992:273; see also Markusen and Kopf 1995:243) That wartime atmosphere helped to spawn the Terror of the French Revolution is a good example of the above argument (Skocpol 1979:187–188). In the Communist China, the Land Reform Movement was launched one day after the PLA entered the Korean War. The Suppression of Counter-revolutionaries Movement started a little later. Other major campaigns were staged when the Korean War had well passed its peak. By far, the first two movements created more intended and unintended deaths than did all the others during the first five years of the revolutionary regime. The interconnection between war and genocide is, at least, a reasonable doubt. Groups that were singled out for genocidal destruction were often viewed as in league with a foreign foe. The KMT was for a long time portrayed by the CCP as a proxy of Western “imperialist powers” who were blamed for many of China’s political, economic, and social problems. The Vietnamese in Cambodia were regarded as an ally of its hostile neighbor—Vietnam. They were labeled as such on grounds of ideology and ethnic discrimination. That was enough to send them half way into their coffins. Both total war and genocide are conducted by nation-states and are rationalized as being necessary for the enhancement, protection, or restoration of national security (Markusen 1995). States propagate ideologies to defend their use of violence. It is

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important to secure the cooperation of ordinary citizens who are needed to actually carry out the killing project. In the cases of the Holocaust, Stalin’s Great Terror, and Mao’s China, governments concluded that propaganda campaigns to legitimate the mass killing were essential. REVOLUTION Revolution necessarily involves violence (Walt 1994; Calvert 1990; Huntington 1968; Moore 1966; Brinton 1965). Like war, revolution may result in pervasive terror, including genocide. Not all revolutions lead to genocide. However, where a total domestic genocide does occur, revolution appears to become a necessary condition. If we focus on contemporary revolutions, i.e., those that occurred since 1945, there is one noticeable commonality: the extent to which they shared a common intellectual culture, i.e., Socialism (Colburn 1995:15). Unlike Marxian and modernization theorists of revolution that predominantly consider revolution a response to the developing economic capacity of the society, Colburn views revolution as “an explosive interaction between ideas and reality, between intention and circumstance, between political activity and social context” (Colburn 1995:13). He examines 22 cases of post-1945 revolutions and concludes, “once the revolution is underway, their (the participants) thinking and behavior influence the revolutionary process. In turn, the course of the revolution, its ebbs and turns, inescapably shapes the outcome.” For him, historical records of the many contemporary revolutions show that there is little necessary linkage between structural origins and outcomes. Instead, Colburn (1995:13) seems to agree with what Daniel Mornet says about the French Revolution, “The origins of the Revolution are one story, the history of the Revolution is another.” Comparing the violence of the Chinese Cultural Revolution and the Cambodian revolutionary terror, Kenneth Quinn (in Jackson 1994) argues that Pol Pot was implementing Mao’s plan (of totally transforming customs and habits) with Stalin’s method (ruthless terror). Quinn (1994:236) observes that “the answer seems to be that the Khmer Rouge turned to the youngest members of the poorest levels of the Cambodian society to recruit cadres who would willingly destroy the old society because they resented it and had little stake in it.” The same can be said of post-revolutionary China in the early 1950s. One critical question rises: How can the idea of destroying the old society, as an ideology, be imposed on the people? Coercion certainly is one option. Sensing the dominant tendency of an expanding centralized administration in a modern society, Max Weber suggested a long time ago that legitimate violence was a means of domination specific to the state (Gerth and Mills 1946:78). Nevertheless, force is only a part of the requirements to rule a country. In my opinion, the revolutionary ideology and the revolutionary government’s will to impose its ideology offers a promising explanation for this mystery. The will to impose an ideology on the populace and the power to do so may be the strongest when a revolutionary government was newly founded. Karl Marx first sensitized us to the unique feature of a modern state in The Eighteenth Brumaire (in Tucker 1978:594–617): “…this executive power, with its enormous bureaucratic and military organization, with its ingenious state machinery, embracing wide strata, with a host of officials numbering half a million, beside an army of another half million, this appalling parasitic

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body…enmeshes the body of French society like a net and chokes all its pores” (see also Skocpol [1979] for discussions of the expansion of the army and bureaucracy in postrevolutionary France). Although the Chinese revolution has its historical origins, the above-stated conditions may or may not be related to the policies implemented by the CCP during the revolutionary aftermath. As a policy, genocide was the product of conscious choice by the state government or by the ruling CCP élites. We may recall the instances in Table 3– 1 which shows that revolutions, and war, do not invariably lead to total domestic genocides, although they do produce a large number of partial and total genocides. For certain groups, revolution can increase the danger of becoming the target of genocide. Those groups, however, were already labeled by the state as “enemies of the people” or “class enemies.” In China, according to Mao’s view, the existence of those deemed by the Party to posses “proletarian ideas” was sufficient to confirm the existence of a revolutionary class (Meisner 1979:47). Similarly, the existence of those deemed by the Party to possess counter-revolutionary ideas was sufficient to verify the existence of a “counterrevolutionary class.” These “domestic enemies” were then treated socially and politically as such, disregard whether or not they actually constituted a security threat. In the case of China and other socialist countries, the labeling was systematic and in accordance with the official ideology. To the extent that revolution constitutes a necessary precondition of genocide, the centrality of ideology is evident in the experience of China. Indeed, William Sewell (cited in Skocpol 1994) contends that terror develops inevitably out of the ideology of revolution. In China, those who did not agree with, or did not show enthusiasm for, the revolutionary ideology was considered to be committing treason against the will of the people. Those not embracing the ideology become an “enemy of the people” and deserved destruction so as to protect what the revolution had already accomplished, such as new government, new symbols, new institutions, and new vested interests. Revolutionary leaders acquire their legitimacy in terms of what they propose to do to better the life of people. In his examination of the French Revolution, Furet (1981:56–59) argued that the leaders stand for a better new world, so good that simply by rejecting that ideal may be considered as “anti-modern,” “counterrevolutionary,” or “reactionary.” If the majority of people agree that “feudalism,” “bureaucratism,” and “imperialism” are responsible for their poverty, poor health, and the widespread deprivation by the landlords; and if the Communist Party was fighting to eliminate these evil things, it should not be a surprise that people will support it. Notice, however, people are responding to what is promised to happen, not to those who make the promise. Whether the promised solutions were realized or not is of less relevance here. The crucial point is that if millions of poor peasants perceived the utopia as a genuine possibility and acted to bring it about, then we are truly witnessing a process of words empowering deeds. After the political part of a revolution has succeeded, i.e., a change of government, the creation of new institutions, the establishments of new order and so on, the system’s continuing success relies on both persuasion and coercion (Schein et al. 1961:44). Essentially, that amounts to taking the population firmly in control because the line between coercion and persuasion was blurred by the fact that persuasiveness rested to a considerable degree upon coercion and controlled terror (Barnett 1956:125). To

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radicalize people by instigating them to kill appears to have been an effective tactic to keep the revolution going in China during its Land Reform movement. People were encouraged to be hostile to the landlords. For centuries, the life and death of these peasants, said to have constituted 80% of the population, had been subjected to the will of the landlords. What tactic could be more effective and symbolic than to make the peasants fully aware that “they” were empowered now by allowing and encouraging them to kill the landlords during a public trial? Referring to killings and cruelty in the Land Reform in south China, Mao was quoted as saying, “Once the masses are aroused, there is no way to stop them” (Chow 1960:105). Firmly grasped by the Party, the hierarchy of government itself also served as a device of social control. The control was performed mainly through close supervision of neighborhood associations by the Public Security police, and the so-called Public Security committee network that was organized nationwide in every village, factory, institution, and organization in the country (Barnett 1964). Indeed, the system of social and political control provides the government with the opportunity to eliminate potential threats and challengers from below—paradoxically termed as the “people’s enemies.” Indeed, the total web of organizational and ideological controls created a situation in which “there seems to be little likelihood of successful organized opposition to the Communists within China, regardless of the state of ‘public opinion’” (Barnett 1964:51). Who constitutes the enemy will have to be carefully combed out from official propaganda materials because its criteria vary as societal conditions change. One thing is certain: the “enemies” are symbolically constructed, and politically treated as such. Mao’s proposed policy of treating the counterrevolutionaries without leniency (as manifest in his 1949 article On People’s Democratic Dictatorship) was given constitutional standing in Article 7 of the 1949 Common Program, and carried over in Article 19 of the 1954 Constitution (Tang and Maloney 1957:312). The concept creates real consequences nationwide because the enemies are conceived as real by the mass. Ideology, as empowered by the state, created a political rhetoric that helped legitimate the implementation of public policies, including those with genocidal consequences. Without the presence of a revolutionary milieu, such as a centralized and stronger state, strong sense of insecurity, and overconfidence in subduing obstacles (Walt 1994), it is doubtful whether the empowering effect of language can be strong enough to facilitate a genocide.

II. LANGUAGE AS MEDIATOR Melson’s comparative study of the Arminian genocide, the Holocaust, and the genocide in Stalin’s USSR leads him to believe: “Excluding a group from the post revolutionary definition of what constitutes a member of the people and labeling it as ‘enemies of the revolution’ is a necessary if not yet a sufficient condition for genocide” (Melson 1992:271). Thus, language is a precondition of genocide. Melson’s study clearly indicates that, given the condition of war and revolution, there must still be pre-existing labels, exclusion from the new moral universe, and a perception of the feasibility of genocide on the part of the state leadership to make genocide possible. Indeed, I would argue, the idea of “exclusion from the new moral universe” would yield more explanatory power if

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rephrased as “destined to vanish in the new symbolic universe.” Here is what Liu Shao-qi said: “Comrades! If the masses were all conscious, united, and free from the influences of the exploiting classes and from backward phenomena as some people imagine, then what difficulties would still remain in the Revolution? Such influences of the exploiting classes not only existed long before the Revolution but will continue to exist for a very long time after the victory of the Revolution and after the Exploiters have been kicked out of their position of political power by the exploited classes.” (cited in Hinton 1966:188; emphasis in the original) The “symbolic universe” had been established for use in the new people’s republic. It was the exclusion of “the exploiting classes” and “backward phenomena.” It was predicted that the targets would continue to exist long after the victory of the revolution. Throughout the entire period under examination, elaborated in my discussions of the research findings, the RMRB was faithfully echoing the calling of this new “universe.” If one is to look for the political “intent” that creates propaganda, here it is. This intent contains very important implications. Earlier, I have described “symbolic universe” as a “constructed frame of reference” for people to make sense of their everyday life. Once such frame of reference becomes standardized, people are likely to assume that everything is in the “right” place and no longer question the authority, hence legitimacy, of the source that evokes this symbolic universe. Moral or not, under this circumstance, is not at issue. If the “enemy” exists and threatens the general welfare of the “people,” it is only legal and rational to get rid of the enemy. As Edelman notes (1988:126), “To give the problem explicit verbalization is to question it and begin to look for a solution.” People may not like the way the enemy is handled (beaten to death, starved to death, treated as non-human), but they are unlikely to step in and protest if they think the government has the legitimacy (hence, authority) to do that. After all, the policy objective was for the enemy to vanish and death was not their only option, what more can a good citizen ask the government to do? The above rationale is misleading. Seldom, in a democratic polity, does the citizen consciously feel compulsive to accept certain constructed reality. In addition, as I have mentioned earlier, enforced reality does not necessarily be less convincing than those accepted voluntarily (Berger and Luckmann 1966). The dark implication of the “official story” or the state-sanctioned “symbolic universe” is that innocent people can be killed by their own government for political reasons and few of their fellow citizens would consider such conduct illegitimate. Moreover, since everybody has an opportunity to be the next target, people are likely to internalize the new “universe” in order to reduce their own anxieties. This, in turn, all the more reinforces the mass support the government garners. Both before and after 1949, the Chinese Communist Party consistently put the task of disseminating effective propaganda as the first priority of their revolution. On December 1929, Mao Tse-tung set down as a rule that “…propaganda work is the Red Army’s most important task. To neglect this task is to neglect the Red Army’s core mission, which equals to assisting the ruling class in undermining the Red Army’s strength” (Mao

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1977[1929] Vol. 1:106). The Central Committee decision of january 1, 1951 reiterated that “one of the inborn duties of a Communist lies in the incessant effort to carry out propaganda among the people” (RMRB january 3, 1951; see also Yu 1955). Consequently, the Party demanded to establish a nation-wide propaganda network that aimed to “guarantee the victory of people’s revolution and the task of national construction.” If one would accept the principle described by Best (1993:121) that “language never leaves society,” here is a good example. The embedded situations behind CCP’s rhetorical strategies were: the needs for regime consolidation and state building. The explicit purpose of constructing this propaganda network was to reinforce the connection between the Party and the masses. Specifically, it was designed to derive impetus and effectiveness from the transmission of mass enthusiasm to the responsible propaganda agencies of the Party. In part, this move reflected the centuries-old political culture of China: the grass root villages seldom had direct connection with the dynastic government. People’s voices were seldom heard by the imperial courts. The new socialist society would change this circumstance. In appearance, it was a policy based on good will and one should not deny that all modern government should be able to establish close ties with the people in order to be a successful administration. However, for the non-Party groups and the “democratic parties” in China, their independent opinion was likely to disappear when being blanketed into the propaganda apparatus (Steiner 1951). In reality, political control seems to be the end in itself instead of the means to an end. Mass execution and mass propaganda all amount to one thing: the calculated determination of the Party to take the population firmly in control, hence preventing its power from being challenged by “controllable phenomena” such as counter-revolutionary activities or corrupt bureaucracy (Steiner 1951:435). For the Chinese Communists, as well as Communists elsewhere, the Party should always be the vanguard of the people. Yet, it was the attempt to reform “enemies of the people” that distinguished the CCP from other Communist Parties (Schein 1961:23). For the most part, the Chinese Communists consistently asserted that thoughts decide actions and thus used propaganda to reinforce control. The notion contradicted the orthodox Marxist view that material conditions are, by far, the most important determinant of human behavior. Mao’s voluntarist view of revolution, reinforced by the “Yenan experience,” led him and the party to believe that “revolutionary consciousness could conquer all material obstacles and mold historical reality in accordance with their ideas and ideals” (Meisner 1979:34; see also Townsend 1980:80). As a remote city in the northern Shangxi Province, Yenan hosted the headquarter of the CCP during most of the time of the civil war. The legacy of “Yenan experience” was multi-faceted. Among them, the CCP witnessed how discourse and power produced each other, “deliberately, with great shrewdness, and with consequence” (Apter and Saich 1994:2). At the same time, CCP’s proven capability to mobilize poor peasants in remote rural areas does not guarantee that the same thing would happen in the process of the construction of Socialism, especially in urban areas. Thus, mass mobilization to arouse people’s political consciousness became an essential task. Historian Guillermaz observed that the CCP accomplished the task in the following manner:

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The methods used for dealing with the masses between 1949 and 1953 were aimed at ensuring the transformation of the ideology of the population and all hostile, mistrustful, or merely lukewarm reactions on the part of the individuals. The advance of the Chinese Communist armies was followed everywhere by propaganda and information meetings. In every branch of the administration, every school, every enterprise, every quarter street, and village, the Party—or rather the Army Political Department—organized session of infor-mation and pseudo-discussions, which were compulsory for at least one member of each family. The sessions provided a methodical training in popular Marxism, approached generally from a scientific point of view: the theory of evolution (evolutionism), Darwinism, the role of work in the physical and mental development of the individual and society, the transformation of society thanks to new methods of production, and so on. Next came the modern themes, primarily the denunciation of feudalism, imperialism, and bureaucratic capitalism, “three mountains crushing the Chinese people,” which the Party wanted to eliminate for good. Finally, the construction of a new society was announced. (Guillermaz 1976:19–20) A female university graduate, Chang Su, joined the Land Reform team in 1951 to help the peasants accomplish the land revolution by awakening their political consciousness and encouraging them to struggle with the feudal forces. She kept a personal account of how she perceived the social situations in a rural Sichuan village and how the cadres get their jobs done (Seldon 1979:243–254): For eight days we attended lectures given by experts on land reform, both about policy and method. Then we set off on our assignment…. Hsinglung hsiang embraces thirteen villages, with a population of 14,200 and 28,000 mou of land…. Chengtu was freed in December 1949…. Then from October 1950 to April 1951 the “four-point movement” was carried through in the Southwest China villages: the liquidation of bandits, the overthrow of local tyrants, the reduction of rent, and the refund of extortionate deposits paid to the landlords. All this paved the way for the land reform. During the four-point movement, twenty-seven reactionary leaders in Hsinglung hsiang had been arrested and tried by the people’s court. Those who committed murders were sentenced to death…. The peasants were eager for land reform. But they were not yet fully awakened politically…. Because the bandits had been arrested and the landlords seems quiescent, even humble, they overlooked the fact…that there were still hidden counter-revolutionary landlord elements and tyrants…preparing to sabotage the reform…. The leader of our small group was Chang Hua-sung, a poor peasant himself…. He had only just learned to read and write. The day after our arrival in Village Number 1, hundreds of peasants gathered at a mass meeting…. This really marked the beginning of the

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land reform. At this meeting, the work team leader did much to explain the government policy on how the reform should be carried out. When the peasants returned to their own villages, the discussions continued on various questions related to land reform. We of the work team acted as counselors to the peasants at these discussions…. The problem discussed was how to root out the remaining influence of the reactionaries and their agents, so that the land reform should not be sabotaged…. I had heard before of the cruelty of the Szechuan landlords. Now I heard from the mouths of the peasants themselves about the ruinous rents they paid, of beatings and terror…. The conference of the peasant delegates lasted for three days. Thirteen active counter-revolutionaries were exposed…. When an accusation meeting was held in our own village, two bandits were accused by the people…. Similar meetings were taking place in other villages. A few days later, the county people’s court came to circuit to Hsinglung hsiang and, after accusations and evidence produced by the peasants, sentenced several of the counter-revolution-aries…. From the first day of our arrival, we had read with the peasant activists newspapers and documents on the land reform. We had given them short talks on the history of the revolution, the Communist Party, the world struggle for peace…. Now, after the establishment of the peasants’ representative conference, the peasant representatives gathered every morning for study and discussion…. For three days, the elected peasant representatives of the thirteen villages of Hsinglung hsiang gathered to discuss how to determine class status…. it became clear to everyone that the meaning of class differentiation is to make a clear demarcation line between our enemies and ourselves…In small and big meetings, peasants also learned the policy and standard and the significance of class differentiation, and applied it to concrete cases Finally the masses agreed on each case at a mass meeting. However, each case was submitted to the district people’s government for ratification…. The rich peasants were also classified at a mass meeting…. Then the peasants held small group meetings, to decide their own status among themselves…. The name lists and class status of every inhabitant were posted up for all to see; the peasants’ on a red board; the rich peasants’ on a yellow board; and the landlords’ on a white board. If anyone felt he had been wrongly classified, he was free to appeal within fifteen days to the county people’s court for a reclassification…. Gathered for the homeward journey at the hsiang work team headquarters, Kui Ping, the team leader, assessed the work of the twelve Peking comrades. He pointed out our particular success in two things. We

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had successfully helped in rousing the political consciousness of the peasants. The fact that the accusation meetings against the counterrevolutionary despots were effective had a decisive influence in mobilizing the masses and dealing successfully with the land--lords. The other good point was that we had strictly performed our duty as propagandists of government policy and had encouraged the peasants to do what they could and ought to do. I used more than two pages and 744 words to replicate this rarely available first-hand observation of the most important movement in China in the early 1950s because it offers very rich information. The paragraphs illustrates how a new “symbolic universe” (class differentiation) was constructed in a village and how “condition categories” (hidden counter-revolutionaries preparing for sabotaging) were filled with “clients” (local tyrants and counter-revolutionaries identified accordingly). The diary also recorded major institutions involved in the Land Reform: village cadres, People’s Court, District People’s Government, Peasant Association, and Propagandists from Beijing. It indicates that “everyone” is classified and that the People’s government has the final say in ratifying a person’s class status. In a less explicit manner, the author of the diary seems to have taken what they had been told to teach the peasants for granted. It also demonstrates clearly that most jobs were conducted through groups meetings, discussions, and person to person communication. Even a local leader was barely able to read and write. Whatever information given to the peasants was “eagerly absorbed.” For those people who wish to see more detailed descriptions of terror, a determinant of genocide, they can find enough information in Hinton’s book: Fanshen: A Documentary of Revolution in a Chinese Village (1966) and in other similar literature. To put the above record in perspective for my study, it is evident that propaganda and institutional support were mobilized to realize an official policy, which aimed to maintain a newly constructed “frame of reference.” It just so happened that some bad elements would have to be eliminated, according to this “frame.” Words kill. The propaganda was “extremely effective” in transforming the thoughts of the mass, according to Barnett (1964:80). Lifton (1956) and Schein et al. (1961) were also convinced that it was effective. “On the surface,” Barnett wrote in his November 1952 report on the Chinese propaganda, “China appears to be rapidly becoming a regimented country of ‘yes men’ who simply parrot the Party line.” However, he was prudent in evaluating the ultimate result of group indoctrination. “The younger the persons exposed to the indoctrination, and the longer the indoctrination process, the more likelihood there is of genuine belief in the new ideology” (Barnett 1964:102). Political scientists such as Frederick Yu (1964), who paid special attention to Chinese Communist propaganda, offered further illuminating observations. Yu recorded that, in 1951, a then Chinese Catholic University Professor, Yeh Chang-ching, joined hundreds of other professors in a land reform program in the Kiangsu province. Professor Yeh was struck with the peasants’ vocabu-lary and noted the following 33 words he found on the lips of every peasant in his daily conversation (interpretations added by this author). 1. Ming Chueh (To understand clearly) 2. Ling Tao (To guide [verb], authorities [noun]) 3. Tou Cheng (To struggle)

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4. Ya Po (Oppression) 5. Mu Piao (Objective) 6. Ssu Hsiang (Ideology) 7. Tao Lun (Discussion) 8. jo Tien (Weak spot) 9. Chi Chi (Aggressive) 10. Cheng Tse (Policy) 11. Feng Chien Shih Li (Feudalistic forces) 12. Tung Chih’ (Govern) 13. Piao Chun (Standard) 14. Chueh Wu (Become conscious) 15. Yen Chiu (Research) 16. Tsung Chieh (Conclude) 17. Che Ti (Thoroughly) 18. Jen Wu (Task or assignment) 19. Po Hsiao Chi Tu (System of exploitation) 20. Pu Fa (lllegal) 21. Wen Ti (Problem, issue, question) 22. Chien Cha (Investigation) 23. Chiao Liu (Exchange of ideas or experience) 24. Pu Chung (To supplement) 25. Kai Chan (To start or develop) 26. Tuan Chieh (Unity or to unify) 27. Cheng Chih Wei Feng (Political prestige) 28. Pao Pi (Accomplice) 29. Chu Yao (Most important) 30. Ken Chu (According to) 31. Yu Tien (Advantage) 32. Ho Fa (Legal) 33. Ho Li (Resasonable) Professor Yu pointed out, many of these terms are typical Communist jargon; most of them have new connotations, and “almost all of them were not expressions commonly used before by Chinese peasants” (Yu 1964:91–93) The list was sent to 12 professors who had been born in China but were then living in the United States. In their opinion, only five of the expressions (# 4, 6, 21, 32, 33) would conceivably have been used by peasants before 1949. None of them thought that Chinese peasants would have understood such expressions as ling tao (authorities), chueh wu (consciousness), tsung chieh (conclude), chiao liu (exchange of ideas) or tou cheng (struggle). The implication of the above observation is clear and important: the peasants had acquired a new vocabulary that symbolized the Communist ideology. The more completely those vocabularies were internalized, the more the individuals’ understanding of their society would be shaped by the vocabularies. Indeed, the greater success dominant groups have in imposing and reinforcing belief in the legitimacy of a system, the less resistance they will face in the exercise of their power. Consider the post-WWII German as an example. Examining linguistic differences between the West and East Germany version of the Duden dictionary, Mueller observes that “…the belief in

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legitimacy results in voluntary submission to political domination even if particular policies are contrary to the interests of the citizens” (Mueller 1973:133). Mueller cited various studies and concluded that a socialist version of the German language was more conspicuously influenced by terminology from the sciences, the military, and the state ideology. According to Mueller, the evidence indicated ideological indoctrination of the German language has succeeded in East Germany. Since the semantic space is structured by predefinitions, the individual is hindered in evolving his/her own interpretations. Mueller contends that “if an individual has spent most of his life in a political system dominated by directed communication, his language and consciousness will be shaped accordingly” (Mueller 1973:42). Such seemed to be the case in China during the early 1950s. Notice that the information was addressed to the individual. Modern propaganda, “first of all, address itself at one and the same time to the individual and to the masses” (Ellul 1965:6). The scale was massive: at least one member of the family was obliged to attend the propaganda meeting. There were multiple channels to convey the message. More importantly, mobilization was swift whenever the leaders deemed it proper to escalate the propagation of certain themes into a national campaign. The impression was that the government was really enjoying wide popularity and being responsive to people’s wishes. The mechanism of mobilization was: “The Party leadership chose various watchwords and slogans on the selected theme and quickly and discreetly sent them out to the provincial Party apparatus. These members, backed by the cadres in the administrative system and mass organizations, stirred up vast demonstrations in which the participants pressed the government to take action and sent circular letters and telegrams to neighboring provinces and localities urging them to take part, an old practice inherited from the Republican era. Soon, the whole country was in tumult, so that the Party and the government could intervene officially, seeming to reply to the indignation and wishes of the population.” (Guillermaz 1976:20) It was impossible to escape from the constant molding and remolding of thoughts in one form or another (Guillermaz 1976; see also Barnett 1964). The Chinese Communists had the reputation of “Sininizing” theories to serve the need of practice. Emphasis on thought reform as executed through mass persuasion became an integral part of the ruling ideology of red China. The emphasis on thought reform should not be dismissed as merely an expression of the Chinese Communists’ zealous will to construct a utopia. It reflected a century-old Chinese political tradition (Fairbank 1987). Fairbank argued in the Cambridge History of China (vol. 14:1–24) that the traditional role of any Chinese ruling groups was the family head, and its practical mission was to manage. Further, territorial unity and social order had been regarded as part of the natural order in China for centuries. Fulfillment of both of the above expectations requires a powerful central government. Hence, the Chinese always regarded a highly centralized authority as a necessity for state management. Its authority, in turn, should be maintained by moral norms. Moreover, the central authority must be strengthened by rites, ceremonies,

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propagation of orthodoxy, and repression of dissident ideas. Such orthodoxy can only be changed through violent revolutions from below. It was also influenced by historical experience. During the Yenan era, power within the CCP was constituted, at least in part, “through the use of interior languages, symbols, and interpretive networks” (Apter and Saich 1994:2). Even with heavy-handed measures available to the new government, ideological conformity was far from complete. It was clear to the new government that remolding people’s thoughts was a necessary step toward enhancing its legitimacy. Although the new realities that they wished to construct were expressed in their Communist jargon, the very act of making propaganda activity as “the” most important task before them clearly illustrates the importance the Chinese Communist leadership assigned to language in political life. Words, of course, do not become acts by themselves. “The mass media,” as Schurmann points out in his earlier book, “present the language to be used; discussion is the process of transforming language into meaning and action” (Schurmann 1971 [1966]:63). Small groups, never larger than 20 to 30 persons each, proved to be an ideal arena where thorough indoctrination, cooperative activities, and mutual surveillance individuals were effectively manipulated and coerced to comply with the party line (Barnett 1964). Hence, the masses were “prepared” for the policy decisions to be employed through standardized language by the media. After a policy decision was made, follow-up discussions continued to employ carefully chosen vocabularies for the cadres to use in implementing that policy (Schurmann 1971:62–68). In such a way, ideological indoctrination served to inform the people for practical administrative purposes. The process, in turn, also served as a tool for the state leadership to utilize organizations in consolidating its political foundation. In both cases, language, or, specifically, standardized language, was in action. A brief review of contemporary Chinese history will show the course through which CCP rhetoric was effectively harnessed for political objectives. There is strong evidence to suggest that historical events and structural elements of the host society influence the Party’s political rhetoric considerably. The Chinese Communist Revolution began in 1921 under the banner of “anti-feudalism” and “anti-colonialism.” In essence, the two “antis” amounted to the same thing. The argument flow as follows: The KMT troops supported the landed gentry. The U.S. supported the KMT and Chiang Kai-shek in resisting the people’s revolution. Therefore, both were identified by the CCP as “people’s enemies.” The fighting against the Americans and against the KMT support of landlords (feudalism) were viewed as two sides of the same coin. For the CCP, the “scientific solution” for China’s problems was Marxism-Leninism as interpreted by Mao Tse-tung. Particularly during the Land Reform campaign, the above reasoning dominated local propaganda proceedings (Ong 1955:8). The eight-year Anti-japanese War enabled the CCP to put their thoughts into action. To a considerable extent, that hastened the collapse of the KMT regime. After seizing power, the CCP tried to reconstruct the country according to its own image. It used the apparently effective tactic of mass persuasion it had developed in remote border areas ruled by the Communists. A series of government-sanctioned political movements was initiated in both rural and urban areas between 1950 and 1953. Those who did not show signs of supporting the official ideology and simply stood in the way of state building were singled out for liquidation. In 1954, the Constitution of the People’s Republic of

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China was promulgated, regional administration and military regions both phased out at the same time, indicating the full consolidation of the red government. During this consolidating period, probably over two million landlords, 2.8 million KMT cadres, supporters of the KMT, middle class industrialists and businessmen, and criminals were liquidated in the name of the people and the revolution (Fairbank & MacFarquhar 1987; Shih 1956; Meisner 1979). A similar pattern can be found in cases of the Cambodian genocide (1975–1978) and in Soviet Russia during the Stalin era (Jackson 1989; Melson 1992). The Communist revolution was a revolution that fights for ideas. The battles were fought not only with rifles but also with words. This study has argued that the occurrence of total domestic genocide is related to the need of new states and/or regimes to maintain legitimacy and to impose a new form of discipline on a recalcitrant population. The need for state-building and social reconstruction produced by a revolution formed as fertile soil for, and the ideology of the state leadership played the role of midwife of, genocide. I use the term “state building” in two senses: 1. For a gov-ernment to maintain unchallenged central control over what is regarded as national territory; 2. For a government to promote general socio-economic development of the society and political participation of the populace (see Townsend [1980: chapter VIII] for discussion). In essence, one of the underlying requirements of policies of development is the requirement of mobilization, which can be achieved by rhetoric. The overall pattern, in China, can be briefly summarized as follows: A weak regime was blamed for its inability to defend the integrity of state territory and/or to maintain social order. Revolution broke out and a new regime was established, adhering to an ideology that stresses the necessities of constructing a whole new people, hence a new society. The leadership of the new state attempted to define who are the new “people” and who are not. A class, an ethnic minority, a religious community, even the majority of the population may be in danger under the new regime. Those excluded from the new society were denied even the basic right to existence. A large number of the “non-people” died either directly executed or killed indirectly through hunger, ill treatment, or forced labor. As the regime gradually consolidated its power, stern measures against the “people’s enemies” lessened, although general repression against dissidence still prevailed. Political rhetoric, during different phases of this state building process, functioned as a tool to construct a problem, assigning responsibility to constructed trouble-makers, legitimating radical policies against those groups, and calling for order once the “enemies” were brought under control It is anything but new in politics for the manipulation of language to serve the need of the state. The desire to do so, if situated in a totalitarian state apparatus, can have unthinkable effects. To quote Cranston (1977–78:18), “the most totalitarian system is the one where the penetration of the regime into the soul of the individual is complete.” We only need recall Orwell’s description in Nineteen Eighty-Four (1977) of Big Brother’s regime attempting to construct precisely the manufactured reality that Arendt describes in her classic The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951). There is near-total control of the media; every “fact” is subject to constant scrutiny by the party; lies and propaganda surround the entire population every moment of the day. The ultimate end of such a system, by Orwell’s account, is absolute power. Power is required for such a system to come into being, or for a totalitarian regime to become totalitarian in the first place. This

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power, as Arendt indicates insightfully, is acquired not as an end but as a means to construct a brand new world. In conceptualizing propaganda as an instrument of war, Paul Smith, Jr. (1989) notes that there is a significant difference between Eastern and Western conceptions of political warfare. For the West, among other things, revolutionary propaganda should be legitimated by and bound under the rules of Limited War, which suggests that killing may or may not be involved and the essence is a contest of political will using various forms of compulsion. Thus, propaganda is aimed primarily at external targets. By contrast, the East bases its power on thought control. The Communist leaders were aware, Smith jr.argues, that “force alone cannot impose and sustain social cohesion and…in the age of mass literacy, control over access to the mind is the point of departure for control over political behavior” (Smith, jr. 1989:17). Whether the state leadership is true to its words is not at issue. The new government needs power to safeguard its revolutionary achievement. One sure way to reach that end appears to be to achieve power capable of impairing its subjects’ capacity to think critically. This power would be guided by, but cannot be reduced to, ideological discourse, which must be supported by concrete situations to acquire currency among the general public. For instance, “counter-revolutionaries” included common criminals and KMT secret agents. To depict the “counter-revolutionaries” as lackeys of “imperialist countries” may sound vague for the peasants, but they can readily understand that the counter-revolutionaries are those who burned their houses or killed their relatives. As the criteria expanded, the implication of that label was carried over. Ideology (in the informal sense that people consistently hold some central ideas of their political culture) is alive and well in industrialized democracies. Even in countries where an established order has prevailed for a long time, the existence of ideology in political life and evidence of governmental manipulation of such ideologies is no less true than in the newly established states. There are qualitative differences, however. According to Wasburn (1982:234–267), analyses of political ideologies in industrialized Western countries, such as the United States of America, tend to be microanalytic (in the sense that those required to pay need reassurance that the demands on them are justified), ahistorical and focus on social and political stability. By contrast, political ideologies such as Communism were concerned with historical development and change, which more often than not were brought about through conflicts between such broad social strata as classes, institutions, and peoples. These ideologies sought to put into practice their vision of order through collective political action. As Wasburn notes, at least in the industrialized West between the 1950s and 1980s, ideologies originated from elite sources and ideologies emerged from everyday life experiences of the mass were different. Moreover, the latter tended to have greater effect on national political behavior. Different visions of order, i.e., stability versus construction, between different idea systems, as discussed above, may help to partially explain why domestic genocide seldom occurred in the former category (Wasburn 1992:257). Ideology can thus be manipulated to help maintain the stability of an established order. Alternatively, it can be used to justify an intended new order that has not yet been constructed. Either way, ideology is expressed mainly through discourse. In turn, discourse is transformed by a historical juncture of various social, economic, and political

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conditions into a lethal weapon. It is under this context that I argue “words kill” in the Chinese genocide between 1949 and 1953.

DATA AND METHOD I. PRIMARY DATA RESEARCH GUIDE TO PEOPLE’S DAILY EDITORIALS 1949–1975 The People’s Doily (RMRB) editorials, 1949–1953. (Sample image opposite.) Careful readers may quickly notice that, given the fact that the majority of the Chinese people were illiterate (a report in 1955 stated that about 70% of the 116,000,000 “youths” at that time were still illiterate, see Liu [1971:22]), to use printed material as my primary data requires some justification. It was true that newspaper was used as a major source of education (meaning “indoctrination”). However, the slim circulation of newspapers and backward transportation system made it impossible for the Chinese people to read the material timely and widely. For the CCP, this was not a problem. Contents of newspaper, particularly the editorials, were read to the public under various conditions. It could be done through loudspeakers in factories or after-work discussion groups in rural villages. Films, operas, songs, parades, signs and essentially every available means of human communication were utilized to convey the message. Moreover, as Schurmann points out, “discussion is the process of transforming language into meaning and action” (Schurmann 1971 [1966]:63). Specifically, small groups, with the size of 20–30 people each, served as the main arena where thorough indoctrination, cooperative activities, and mutual surveillance individuals were effectively manipulated and coerced to comply with the party line (Barnett 1964). Hence, the masses were “prepared” for the policy decisions to be employed through standardized language mostly by receiving the message verbally and express their understanding and support of the Party line verbally as well. Such meetings and expressions were compulsory and were held intensively. Since the content used for indoctrination come from the same source and that ethnographical method is not possible for this study, to use the RMRB as my primary data should be acceptable.

II. SECONDARY DATA Previous studies on modern China: books, journal articles, memoirs, collected works of major CCP leaders such as Mao Tze-tung, Liu Shao-qi and Zhou En-lai. Publications will include those in English and in Chinese.

III. THE RESEARCH METHOD This study analyzes the complete collection of the RMRB editorials that appeared between October 1949 and December 1953. There were 681 articles in total. The core theme is to find out what was said about the enemy and what was proposed to deal with them. My analytical scheme is, first, to categorize them into sub-sets of enemies. Then, I try to locate the key words—all those “enemy” terms explicitly used by the CCP. Next, I

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divide the entire period under examination into three stages for the purpose of embodying the words with concrete social and historical situations. Finally, I sum them up on a monthly basis and interpret the results with reference to historical or biographical accounts of the history during that time. IN CCP’s OWN WORDS The Common Program, adopted by the First Plenary Session of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Congress on September 29, 1949 as the interim constitution, clearly stated: Article 1…. This republic opposes imperialism, feudalism, and bureaucratic capitalism,… Article 6. The People’s Republic of China abolishes the feudal sys tem… Article 7. The People’s Republic of china must suppress all counterrevolutionary activities, severely punish all KMT counter-revolu tionary war criminals and other obdurate arch counter-revolution ary elements who collude with imperialism,… Reactionary ele ments, feudal landlords, bureaucratic capitalists in general, must according to law, also be deprived of their political rights within a necessary period after they have been disarmed…; but they shall at the same time be given a means of living and com pelled to reform themselves through labor to become new men. If they continue their counter-revolutionary activities, they shall be severely punished. (see Selden ed. 1979:186–193) Based on this official document, at least four major categories of enemy are already identified: imperialism, feudalism, bureaucrat-capitalism, and counter-revolutionaries. Later, as I digest the editorials and other news stories, I discovered that other things such as the Black Death, forest fire, bad working style, and corruption were also singled out by the CCP as “enemy of the people.” Since they do not belong to any of the established sub-categories, I lump them together into the “unaffiliated adversary” category. Thus, I constructed the five major types of enemy. Next, I look for the key words. I decide to use feudal, imperialist, bureaucratic, capitalist, and counter-revolutionary as affixes and to locate all variations of these core terms from among the editorials. Some elaboration is in demand here. The Common Program treated bureaucrats and capitalists as belong to one category. It meant to represent the KMT officials and businesses that made profits by supporting the KMT to fight the civil war. Since both the KMT and the supporting interests of the KMT have close ties with capitalist countries such as the United States and the Great Britain, they also represented part of the evil capitalist plot of dominate the whole world with a“corrupt system.” Thus, bureaucrat-capitalist and elements related to capitalism are put into this category. However, “bureaucracy” and “bureaucratic management system” are put into the “Unaffiliated Adversary” category. Why so? Because these were associated with bad working styles demonstrated by state and Party officials. It was a natural product of institutionalization. These terms do not refer to the abolished old order.

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How do I explain that “feudal landlords” belongs to the “Feudalism” category, while “reactionary landlords” is classified as “Counter-revolutionaries”? Landlords do not become reactionaries or counter-revolutionaries unless they resist the Land Reform or refuse to be reformed through forced labor. According to the rule, if the landlords accepted “people’s decision” to pay off their “debts” to the peasants and show sincerity in their repentance of ever being a “blood-sucker,” they could change their class status after five years of forced labor and accumulated good record of behaviors during that period. However, once the person is labeled as a “reactionary landlord,” a public trial and execution on the spot would often be the only end that person may meet. That destiny, by the way, often was the same fate of all “counter-revolutionaries.” Thus, for every enemy category, a coding sheet was created. All key words of a specific category are listed on the first row. Each key word is then used as a column and cut into 31 cells to represent every day of the month. The same procedure is repeated for all categories and all key words. Each sheet will be duplicated for 51 copies because there are 51 months to be recorded. Consequently, I can trace when and how many times a specific term appeared on a single editorial. The Common Program was not created solely by the Chinese Communist Party. However, it is evident that the CCP strongly support the general guidelines on the “enemy” issue. Historically, when the CCP began their military revolution, the initial slogan was to overthrow “feudalism” and “Imperialism.” By July 1, 1949, Mao singled out the landlord class, bureau-crat-capitalist class, KMT reactionaries, and imperialism as the targets of dictatorship because these were “non-people.” Two months later, representing the CCP to address the First Session of The Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, Liu Shao-qi further specified “imperialism,” “feudalism,” and “bureaucrat-capitalism” as the major enemies of the Chinese people for “over a hundred years” (Liu Selected Works 1981:432–435). I feel confident that the five major enemy categories and their affiliated terms can sufficiently weave into the “symbolic universe” of the “enemy vs. people” situation in the perception of the CCP. Therefore, the task of coding follows. The coding rule is designed to capture the subject matter-the enemy-and projected actions against them. Specific delimitations are discussed in the following section. CODING 1. The unit of analysis is a complete sentence, be it simple or compound. 2. The focus of the exploration is on the themes instead of the grammatical structure of the sentences. 3. The time span is between October 1, 1949 and December 31, 1953. (The CCP was born in 1921 and has committed colossal massacres ever since. It would make sense to extend the analysis far beyond the date of October 1949 to achieve a much complete understanding of how the CCP propaganda worked to facilitate massive killings. However, it must be reiterated that this study defines total domestic genocide as a state policy to destroy a domestic group in part or in whole. It is only after October 1, 1949 that the People’s Republic of China became an independent state. It was internationally recognized as such much later. Thus, if one wishes to hold the state

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government responsible for the genocide, the starting date of the analysis should not be earlier than October 1, 1949.) 4. Only those sentences of which the contents were associated with the PRC would be considered. I want to find out how the PRC government intended to treat some of its “unwanted population” and nothing beyond this. For example, the 09–02–53–1 (there were two editorials that day) editorial was written to praise the revolutionary achievement of the Vietnamese people. Although a good portion of the article contained such key words as French imperialists, imperialist invasion and antiimperialist bloc, it did not, however, contain any sentence that directly involved China. Hence, the whole article was considered irrelevant and left uncoded. On the data sheet, entries for this date were recorded as zero. In another case, the 12–27–53–2 editorial commented primarily on the suppression of so-called traitors by the Soviet government, which was irrelevant to China. On the last paragraph, however, the editorial proposed that the CCP should learn from this lesson and should not give the “imperialist reactionary forces” and their lackeys any opportunity to sabotage the nation. This paragraph was consequently coded to contain two key words— “reactionary forces” and “reactionary lack-eys.” 5. The key words are confined to those terms and their variations that had been specifically described as “enemies” by the CCP. For example, “American imperialism” was first mentioned as the “dead enemy” of the Chinese people on january 5, 1950. Affiliated terms include “American imperialist war-mongers,” “American imperialist invasion policy,” “American imperialist terrorist policy,” and so on. These were all counted as key words. These terms were explicitly defined and applied by the CCP, not from the researcher’s inferences. To test the reliability of this coding scheme, I asked two of my colleagues, who have received their college education in Taiwan and are highly proficient in reading the traditional Chinese characters, to code three sample editorials (01–05–50 for the pre-war phase, 05–04–50 for the war time, and 10–01–53 for the post-war period; the phases of revolutionary development described below). I also coded the same sample editorials myself. It turned out that our coding results matched perfectly on the “feudalism” and “bureaucrat-capitalism” categories all time. As for the “unaffiliated adversary,” “imperialism,” and “counter-revolutionaries” categories, our coding results also matched perfectly for the pre-war and wartime. The only variation appears in our coding for the 10–01–53 editorial. It happened because they have failed to observe the rule that only those sentences that were directly associated with China would be coded. That being clarified, our coding results again matched. Except for this test, I did the coding manually and alone. Therefore, I assume all the responsibility for any possible coding errors. PHASES OF POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT For theoretical reasons, elaborated below, the data was divided into three stages:

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1. THE REVOLUTIONARY AFTERMATH (OCTOBER 1949–OCTOBER 1950) I determined that the first phase should start from the day the PRC was inaugurated and stop at the end of October 1950 (several days after the People’s Liberation Army [PLA] quietly entered the Korean War). This strategy is somewhat arbitrary but not without justification. It was generally agreed among historians that before the Communist China intervened the Korean War there was no evidence that the new Republic was facing a serious security threat (Meisner 1986). Even the PRC leadership did not initially perceive the War as a direct threat to China (Whiting 1960: chapter 4). Therefore, I believe it is reasonable to treat October 25, 1950 as a turning point from which the internal development of the Chinese society was steered into a somewhat unanticipated course by the war. Starting from this phase, the CCP devoted itself to the task of “enemy hunting.” Specifically, enemies expressed in nouns. Analyzing genocide from a psychological perspective, Hirsch and Smith (1994:387) observe that “once such people are defined as members of the ‘out-group,’ as no longer protected, as not among the privileged members of the society, the creation myth becomes a tool of destruction.” Moreover, Hirsch and Smith (1994:388) cited Bollinger (1980:79) as saying that when political leaders want to target a population for abuse, they produce negative characterizations that are usually linguistically expressed in “disparaging nouns, not disparaging adjectives.” Indeed, Hirsch and Smith (1994:388) maintain that when those with political authority use terms such as vermin, traitors, enemies of the people, it “is a clear sign that the society is moving in a genocidal direction.” (see also Kuper 1982; Thompson and Quets 1990). Nevertheless, it is also assumed in this study that propaganda was intended to arouse mass actions to eliminate, instead of merely dehumanizing, the target groups. Hence, those verbs that were linked to the key words in the same sentence were also identified and recorded in an attempt to find out what kind of genocidal practice was intended by the CCP. In general, if the sentence was describing an enemy, the most common structure is (Subject+Verb) or (Adjective+Subject+Verb). If, on the other hand, the sentence contained “solutions” to deal with the named enemy, the sentence would most probably appear as (Verb+Subject+Noun) or (Subject+Passive Verb). However, I did not pursue this part of the linguistic universe of the RMRB because the task would constitute another independent study. 2. WAR CLOUDS (NOVEMBER 1950–JuLY 1953) This is the most critical period for the PRC in terms of its legitimacy maintenance. There was a major external war going on. In addition, waves of political campaigns were launched to “purify” the society and pave the way for socialist construction. Targets and major goals of the campaigns are listed in Table 5–5 (p. 97 of the current study). Most historians agree that the War aggravated tensions in domestic politics. Some historians argue that some of the drastic measures taken by the Chinese government against its internal enemies could have been implemented one way or another even if the

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Korean War had not occurred (MacFarquhar 1993; Meisner 1986). According to MacFarquhar (1993), measures to deal with counterrevolutionaries had been drafted before the Korean War, and the vacillating bourgeoisie and Western-oriented intellectuals had clearly been targeted for ideological transformation. He contends that war had contributed to harsher campaigns, but had provided leeway for the Party leadership to press on with other tasks as well (MacFarquhar 1993). The war effect was most ardent in domestic politics. I have mentioned earlier that the demobilization of troops was postponed. Literally every major political movement was launched after June 1950. The first and long-awaited campaign, the “Land Reform” movement, was actually launched one day after the Korean War broke out. The next campaign, “Suppression of Counter-revolutionaries,” was initiated probably due to the involvement in the Korean War, and it exacerbated the ruthlessness of the land reform (Rodzinski 1989). The “Three-Anti” movement was launched mainly to correct “bad working styles” brought about by bureaucracy. Naturally, previous KMT officials that remain in the office became the true targets for elimination because it was them who had brought in the corruptive working style. The “Five-Anti” campaign aimed to eliminate the burgeoning elements of capitalism. In reality, it was an attempt to take control of the “national capitalists” that had been tolerated up to then because their expertise in business management was indispensable for state building. However, since enough cadres were trained to fill in their place, and because the revolution has come to the initial stage of socialist construction, the “national capitalists” should be out of the way. Starting from January 1953, another political movement—“New Three-Anti”—was launched to attack the bureaucracy again. It was the only campaign that continued after the end of the Korean War. Apparently, it has much less to do with the war and more to do with fundamental problems of the institutionalization of the new republic itself. It is a virtually unanimous opinion among students of modern Chinese history that more blood was shed than would have been just due to the war (Fairbank 1987; Meisner 1987). However, the first two movements evoked most direct killings and executions, while the latter three recorded more suicides. In short, this was the critical period to implement genocidal practices on all enemies of Communist China. Therefore, I consider the whole period when China was engaging in the Korean War as the major phase of genocidal development in that country. Based on the above assumption, one may expect to find more terms of destruction, be it nouns or verbs, in the propaganda material during this period. 3. TARGETS DESTROYED (AUGUST 1953–DECEMBER 1953) As early as in November 18, 1952, the RMRB was already urging its readers to prepare for massive socialist constructions. Specifically, the government was planning a campaign to realize national industrialization, agricultural collectivization, the elimination of private handcraft businesses, and the nationalization of all privately owned industries (Mao 1977:89). For the CCP, conditions were ripe for the construction of a socialist China. Early in the spring, with the exception of Taiwan and Tibet, successful land reforms have destroyed the social and economic foundation of “feudalism” in China. After mid-December 1952, major military conflicts ended between the American troops and the Sino-Korean armed forces in Korea. Unable to win a decisive victory, the

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Americans reluctantly decided to discuss a permanent truce, which was realized on July 27, 1953. The bloody Suppression of Counter-revolutionaries Campaign was over in March. The first Five-Year Economic Plan in China began the same year. By now, the PRC had passed the recovery period and was heading toward a period of massive construction. The People’s Congress at different levels was instituted and a constitution was being drawn up. Revolutionary order was established and there was substantial evidence of a true consolidation. Soon after the Armistice Agreement was signed in Korea, the RMRB was propagating the “General Line during the Transition Period” that signaled further consolidation of the government. If nothing went wrong, full materialization of socialism was expected to follow the transitional period. Unfortunately, Mao launched the disastrous Great Leapforward Movement in less than a decade and caused perhaps several other millions of innocent death through man-made famine. Nevertheless, that period could constitute another case of genocide that is worthy of a separate study. Since the war had rendered domestic politics much bloodier than would have been otherwise, one would reasonably anticipate that the end of war would lead to milder references to any enemies still existing within the country. Much more emphasis would presumably be put on issues related to industrialization, economic development and agricultural collectivization and the like. Under these assumptions, I will examine what the ruling CCP said about the country’s situation in spring 1953 and prospects for development.

IV. SPECIFIC TREATMENT OF SUB-PROBLEMS Earlier, in the discussions of the problem settings of this study, I have raised five subproblems (see pp. 9–21) in an attempt to “situate” the words used by the CCP propaganda. Parts of the answers to these sub-problems have already been offered in that section. Some answers could only be offered after the entire process of linguistic analysis is completed. A brief summary of my methodological treatment to these issues here should suffice.

Table 4–1: Methodological Treatment of SubProblems in this study. Problem Number

Task

Data Needed Theory

Data Source

Problem 1

Defining genocide

Library research

Problem 2

Identify a genocide in China (1949– Historical data 53)

Library research

Problem 3

| What were the social-historical conditions confronting the CCP leadership early on?

Historical data

Library research

Problem 4

How did the CCP define the problem?

Media contents, Historical data, mainly drawn from

Library research People’s Daily

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CCP literature Problem 5

. Why did they define the problem in this way?

Theory and historical data

Library research

Problem 6

How did they propose a genocidal policy as a solution of this problem?

Media contents

People’s Daily (Ren Min Rih Bao)

Problem 7

How did the CCP propagate the necessity of a genocidal policy?

Media contents and historical data

People’s Daily, library research

V. TREATMENT AND INTERPRETATION OF THE DATA This study only analyzed editorials because editorials were considered as more direct policy proclamations of the state government than were news articles (Oksenberg & Henderson 1982). In addition, if I chose to explore all pages of the RMRB, the sheer volume of news articles would be prohibitively large for one study to deal with. Hence, selectivity was required. The primary data were analyzed using content analysis. Content analysis methods were widely adopted by early students of propaganda (Lasswell and Leites 1949; Lerner 1951; George 1959). It is particularly well-suited to the study of communication and to answering the classic questions of communications research such as: “Who says what, to whom, and how?” (Babbie 1992:313–4). However, the questions of “why” and “with what effect,” cannot be properly addressed via content analysis. In fact, the issue of media effect on an entire population is impossible to pursue in this project. The best I can do is to provide an implication of why something particular was said at a particular time. Therefore, media content was interpreted in light of a the-oretical understanding of genocide and propaganda as well as knowledge of the history of the Chinese case. These editorials were evaluated in light of the government’s practical concern for disseminating messages to a huge, largely illiterate, population that amounts to approximately 450,000,000 in 1936 (Spence 1990:424; Tawney 1966:23–24). Table 5–3, shown in the next chapter, demonstrates that the “enemies” can be boiled down to only one “people’s enemy” category. As a whole, everything that falls in the “enemy frame” was targeted for elimination by the ruling Party. Within this category, however, there were at least five major sub-categories: “unaffiliated adversary” (those who cannot be affixed to any of the other sub-categories but were still identified clearly as “enemies”), “imperialism,” “feudalism,” “bureaucrat-capitalism,” and “counterrevolutionaries.” Variations in the framing of the appearance of these key words were counted by the month and year to identify their different importance during the prewar, war, post-war periods. Researchers often focus their attention on the fewer highfrequency words because they wish to infer that “the higher the frequency in a certain set of categories, the higher the document scores on a particular scale or dimension” (Bailey 1994:312; see also Weber 1990; Roberts 1997). My approach is designed to convey a more complete picture of the data. To make genocide happen requires more than verbal action. Therefore, at least one contextual factor must be taken into account: the projected actions against the enemies.

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The RMRB is often described as the Chinese Pravda. At least until 1989, Moscow had Pravda as the Party newspaper and Izvestia as the government’s propaganda institution. In Beijing, the RMRB speaks for the Party and the People’s Government of China (Yu 1964:110). Between 1949 and 1950, this newspaper largely followed an eight-page or six-page plan. From 1951 to the end of 1953, it followed more strictly a four-page plan that canceled the literature supplement and lumped together the national politicaleconomic news and international news into one page. The general make-up was as follows: Page 1:

Current Events

Page 2:

National News, Features and Letters and Literature Supplement

Page 3:

Education, Science and Culture

Page 4:

International News and Advertisement

Page 5:

(Sunday edition only) Pictorial

Page 6:

(Sunday edition only) Resist US and Aid Korea Special Edition

According to Yu (1964), most of the daily newspapers in Communist China at that time were not very different from the RMRB in appearance or content—all strictly followed the party line. Radio and the speakers network were operated under similar circumstances. Radio broadcasting often relayed broadcasts from the New China Agency broadcasting, and local cadres read the RMRB through the loudspeaker system. That essentially means no competitive voice existed in China during that time. To put it another way, if one regards meaningful language as a coding system, the communist China apparently had a singular system in which the CCP dominated all institutions that were capable of creating different visions of the world other than the Communist version. The system was tightly controlled by the state government and this functioned as a coordinating device whereby “all agencies of indoctrination are linked together and made to serve a common purpose” (Houn 1965:4). This is common practice in totalitarian regimes. Moreover, the CCP propaganda appeal “is all-embracing, addressing itself to the whole person” (Houn 1965:3). According to Houn, the Chinese political culture does not hold indoctrination objectionable, and that “the experience of direct communication from the seat of national power is new and exciting” (Houn 1965:2). As such, the characterizing features of the Chinese propaganda were favorable conditions at the bottom and the political intent of the top state leadership to mobilize the majority of the population for state building. Information, whether in the form of pamphlets, films, blackboards, or group discussions, was addressed to the individual almost every night and in every corner of the country. According to Houn (1965:45–51), the task of propaganda was well planned. Institutionally, the government was directing the school system, organizing adulteducation courses and mobilizing the mass organization as the major means of achieving its propaganda objectives. The CCP, by contrast, had a sole control of the mass propaganda network established in 1951. The network consisted of millions of propaganda officers and reporting officers. As of September 1952, there were approximately 68,000 reporting officers and 2,920,000 propaganda officers nationwide. Propaganda officers (ideally one for every 100 persons) operated in factories, towns,

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villages, farms, and mass organization. They retain their original positions while serving. Reporting officers are senior propaganda officers. They were mostly party members who held responsible positions in the party, the government, and other agencies on various levels. The topics and content of the reports were chosen or approved in advance by the secretary of the appropriate party committee and after delivering a report to the masses the reporting officer was required to submit an account of his work to the party secretary (Houn 1965:50). The advance of the PLA was followed everywhere by propaganda and information meetings aimed at ideological indoctrination. More importantly, the information was placed within clearly defined frames—mass organizations (Guillermaz 1976). Starting from the summer of 1950, mass campaigns were launched through a similar mechanism, graphically described below (see Chart 4–1):

chart 4–1: Mobilization Mechanism of Mass Campaigns The Party initiated campaigns, but it gave the appearance of merely responding to mass demands which is a totally democratic thing to do. This model operates as diagrammed above (Chart 4–1). Institutional arrangements were vital. According to Yu (1955:21), the government had under its control “the school system, the press, theaters, posters, radio, mass meeting, motion pictures, various forms of literature and art, and all other media of communication that are able to shape the minds of men” Parallel to the administrative branch offices, the CCP had about 250,000 branch offices and a total number of 5,800,000 members at the grass root level to serve as the backbone of the propaganda enterprise (Yu 1955:16). Under each of the Party branches, there was a department or committee of propaganda headed by a Party member. The Party constitution ruled that each branch office had to perform four major tasks: 1. To carry on propaganda and organizational work; 2. To pay constant attention to the sentiment and demands of the masses; 3. To recruit new members; 4. To educate the Party members. With the exception of Item 3, “all the listed duties of a Party branch are concerned with propaganda” (Yu 1955:16). The Party branches are the most important units behind every propaganda drive. Moreover, they have a sole autonomy in carrying out propaganda duties, namely “the choice of methods and approaches in implementing the directives

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from the higher Party organization” (Yu 1955:17). Aside from formal governmental directives, the RMRB editorials functioned as a unique source for the cadres to figure out exactly how a policy should be implemented.

Chart 4–2: Propaganda-Related Institutions of the PRC in the Early 1950s. (Source: Frederick T.C.Yu. 1955. The Propaganda Machine in Communist China. Texas: Air Force Personnel and Training Research Center. Pp. 21.) So far, I have discussed the general background, individual characteristics, and propelling mechanisms of major mass campaigns. Edelman, in his discussion about reference of political signs constitute political and social history, argues:

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News about politics encourages a focus upon leaders, enemies, and problems as sources of hope and of fear, obscuring the sense in which they are creations of discourse, perpetuators of ideologies, and facets of a single transaction. A strategy for analyzing politics as spectacle must begin with language that highlights the controversial perspectives inherent in these terms and calls attention to the social formation they conceal. (1988:2, 120) Here, I wish to convey the image that, in each campaign, the authority chooses a target and those groups were destined to “vanish” through physical destruction or through transformation. Since the CCP did not perceive humans as the only possible source that capable of creating enemies, The “enemy category” may not exactly match what Best I will now turn my attention to the “targets.”

FINDINGS AND INTERPRETATIONS SOCIAL SCIENTISTS HAVE PROVIDED US AN UNDERSTANDING OF THE ORGANIZAtions that disseminated CCP propaganda during the early 1950s. They have also evaluated the possible political impact on the soci ety of the various political campaigns. This study examines its content. First, I discuss the major studies. The Research Guide to People’s Daily Editorials, 1949–1975 (Oksenberg & Henderson 1982, Research Guide hence-forth) is a somewhat comprehensive index of the RMRB editorials. However, at the time the Research Guide was published, there were 25 editorials that could not be located at the University of Michigan, 24 of which were published between Oct. 1949 and July 1951. Some of these articles contain very important information about the genocidal intent of the CCP leadership, such as the one entitled “Punish Severely Incorrigible CounterRevolutionaries” (11–13–49) and another called “Current Main Tasks in Building the People’s Regime” (09–12–50). In addition to the undesirable defect of missing data, the Research Guide was essentially an effort to index “policy statements” of the CCP. Without specific theoretical concerns, the editors of this Research Guide offered a bird’s eye view of the CCP propaganda, yet stopped short of offering an interpretation. The following tables are based on the Research Guide which has served as a precursor to further analysis. The subjects used to index the editorials fall into 21 categories (as shown in Tables 5–1 and 5–2). The index is organized in outline form, and that outline has been reproduced as a Table of Contents which precedes the index itself. Each editorial was indexed exhaustively for both its major and minor themes. One editorial generally contains about five or six themes, although the number of themes varies. In addition, often more than one editorial was published on the same day. To cope with these problems, the authors divided the themes into two categories: 1. If more than one paragraph in an editorial was devoted to a subject, it was classified as a major theme; an asterisk was added by the authors for easy identification. 2. If a subject was discussed in one paragraph or less, it was a minor one. (For other technical details, please see the Research Guide 1982:xiv–xvii). I began by counting the frequencies of the indexed items under each of the 21 categories and summarizing those appeared between 1949–1953. I first counted the minor themes to get a general picture of the frequency distribution of each theme. Then I counted the major themes (i.e. those with the asterisk) with the aim of spotting the issues that appeared to be of importance to the CCP. The more frequently a theme appeared among the editorials, the more likely it was an important issue. Curiously, in 1949, the most frequently mentioned minor theme was the USSR, 18 paragraphs, higher even than the news paragraphs devoted to the domestic economy of China (17). Other than that, the government and administrative regions received approximately equal attention from the RMRB editors (15 and 13 respectively). Apparently, although the single most salient issue was the USSR, the new regime’s overarching concern was with its domestic affairs. This also seems to support historians’ observation that Communist China was very concerned about international recognition, at least from the leader of the Socialist Pact.

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During the following year, 1950, North America moved into the center of limelight (91 paragraphs). The Economy (78) and government (71) received far less attention from the CCP. That is understandable given the de facto Sino-American war in Korea in late 1950. From then on, the economy was always the most frequently discussed topic. Aside from the economy, “campaign” was the most salient issue in the RMRB editorial in 1951. Almost all major campaigns were launched in 1951, which explains why the issue received significant attention that year. Military issues received the highest attention in 1952. In 1953, CCP related topics were the most discussed issues. Between 1949 and 1953, there were 3121 paragraphs containing minor themes (Table 5–1). Among them, those dealing with the economy amounted to 20.2% of the total. Chart 5–1 graphically shows how the Communist Chinese leadership viewed economic affairs. That is hardly a surprise since the first and utmost task of the new government was to rebuild the economy that was shattered by the civil war. Only in 1950 did the subject of North America rank as the number one concern for the RMRB editors. In the same year, paragraphs devoted to issue subjects of the “CCP” and “government” were nearly as many as those devoted to economy. PRC involvement in the Korean War and its military confrontation with the KMT remnant troops in Taiwan can explain this phenomenon. The number of paragraphs devoted to mass campaigns was at its peek in 1951, when most of the major campaigns were being most vigorously pursued. The RMRB did not publish editorials on a daily basis. Sometimes there was no editorial at all and sometimes there was more than one on a single day. Furthermore, editorials usually contained more than one theme. Thus, one may encounter the same title under several different subject headings. My selection of the 1949 data only covers the last three months of that year because the PRC was established in October 1949. Therefore, when interpreting the frequency distribution of a theme over time, one has to be very careful. The frequency suggests issue salience but it does not infer the sequence of an event. For instance, a higher frequency appeared during the high tide of a campaign. Using the Research Guide, I found that nearly onethird of the minor themes appeared in the RMRB editorials was constantly given only little attention. Other than that, the economy, the super powers, and the body politic of China occupied a disproportionate amount of space in the editorials during the 1949–1953 period. This sounds quite “normal” for a revolutionary regime in its early years.

Table 5–1: Minor Themes of the People’s Daily Editorials 1949–1953 THEMES/ Economy YEAR

CCP

North America

USSR

Military

Campaigns

1949

17

7

7

18

2

0

1950

78

72

91

48

34

15

1951

110

45

45

32

58

69

1952

104

32

59

47

69

54

1953

385

136

62

81

62

86

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Sum

694

292

264

226

225

224

% of Total

22.2

9.4

8.5

7.2

7.2

7.1

THEMES/ YEAR

Education, Government Asia Culture & Health

Demographic, International Class, Relations Occupational Groups

National Leaders

1949

8

15

4

2

6

2

1950

46

71

49

37

39

12

1951

45

30

36

14

30

23

1952

45

9

45

33

40

19

1953

69

66

42

74

29

37

Sum

213

191

176

160

144

93

% of Total

6.8

6.1

5.6

5.1

4.6

3

THEMES/ YEAR

Regions Of China

Europe

Mass Australia & International Middle East Organizations New Zealand Communist Parties

1949

13

5

3

2

2

0

1950

10

13

7

0

4

0

1951

29

16

1

1

1

1

1952

13

14

1

4

4

1

1953

21

27

14

0

4

3

Sum

86

75

26

7

16

5

% of Total

2.8

2.4

0.8

0.2

0.5

0.1

THEMES/ YEAR

Democratic Parties

Africa

South America

Sum

%

1949

0

0

0

113

3.6

1950

0

0

0

626

20

1951

1

1

0

588

18.8

1952

0

3

0

596

19.1

1953

0

0

0

1198

38.4

Sum

1

4

0

3121

–

% of Total

.0

.0

.0

–

100

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Chart 5–1: Minor Themes of the People’s Daily Editorials, 1949–1953 by Number of Paragraphs Major themes presented by the People’s Daily editorials between 1949 and 1953 reveals a somewhat different picture of China during that time from the one given by the minor themes (Table 5–2 and Chart 5–2). “Government” (15) was the main concern of the ruling CCP in 1949. The economy (9) received even less attention than that given to the USSR (12) and was equal to coverage devoted to “Regions of China” (9). This is quite a different picture from the one depicted by minor themes. In 1949, Mao acclaimed that the immediate tasks at hand were to reinforce the state apparatus and to construct the economy. The CCP institution of propaganda faithfully mirrored those objectives. In 1950, “North America” (64) moved into the center of editorial focus. A close examination of the Research Guide shows that the majority of the editorials clustered under the categories of “U.S. and Korea,” “U.S. and P.R.C.,” and “U.S. and Taiwan.” This is consistent with China’s historical concerns with these countries and issues. The data corroborated the fact that CCP propaganda was highly event-dependent. However, the Research Guide tabulations do not present the wording of the editorials or the extent of their ideological coloring. Somewhat contradictory to common sense, the economy was not the overarching concern for most of the year. In 1950, it was treated equally with the theme of “government” (38 individually, which amounts to 11% of that year’s total editorial space). In 1951, the economy (37) became the most salient theme for the first time, with “campaigns” (36) following closely behind. Intuitively, one may expect the military theme to be most salient since the Korean War was at its height in 1951. The editorials, however, highlight the domestic front. The war imposed great strain on China’s barelyrevived economy, and created widespread bitterness toward the CCP among the overtaxed and probably over-mobilized peasants (Meisner 1987). The Chinese government

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has every reason to attend to economic problems under such circumstances. As to the campaigns, their high salience is natural because three of the most important campaigns were launched during that year. As noted above, previous studies have related mass campaigns as a chief device of popular mobilization and that widespread violence is associated with the process. Unfortunately, the repressive nature of those campaigns cannot be conveyed by merely examining the Research Guide. To the extent one can safely say that the war helped mobilize mass campaigns more effectively than could have been accomplished otherwise, one cannot infer that the war helped to facilitate genocidal practices simply by a perusal of the Reseorch Guide’s space allocations.

Table 5–2: Major Themes of the People’s Daily Editorials, 1949–1953 THEMES/YEAR Economy

North America

Military

Education, Government Campaigns Culture & Health

1949

9

4

2

6

15

0

1950

38

64

19

19

38

10

1951

37

21

19

22

17

36

1952

32

32

36

24

4

21

1953

123

41

42

31

27

24

Sum

239

162

118

102

101

91

% of Total

19.4

13.1

9.6

8.3

8.2

7.4

THEMES/YEAR

CCP

USSR

Demographic, Class, Occupational Groups

Asia

International Relations

Regions of China

1949

3

12

1

2

5

9

1950

31

22

19

26

16

5

1951

4

12

6

13

8

2

1952

4

15

12

8

11

0

1953

39

18

32

16

10

0

Sum

81

79

70

65

50

18

% of Total

6.6

6.4

5.7

5.3

4.1

1.5

THEMES/ YEAR

Europe

Mass Organizations

National Leaders

Australia & International Middle East New Communist Zealand Parties

1949

5

2

2

2

0

0

1950

4

3

2

0

4

0

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1951

2

1

3

1

0

1

1952

1

1

3

0

1

0

1953

7

9

0

0

1

1

Sum

19

16

10

3

6

2

% of Total

1.5

1.3

.8

2

.5

.2

THEMES/ YEAR

Democratic Parties

Africa

South America

Sum

%

1949

0

0

0

79

6.4

1950

0

0

0

320

25.9

1951

1

1

0

207

16.7

1952

0

0

0

205

16.6

1953

0

0

0

423

34.2

Sum

1

1

0

1234

% of Total

.1

.1

.0

100

The fact that military themes became the most discussed subjects (36) in 1952 demands a close look at the data. The Korean War armistice negotiations began in July 1952 and continued for an entire year. Combat between the warring factions was diminishing until late 1952 when a major battle broke out and the PLA scored another major victory. That may explain extensive media coverage of the warfare. By the end of 1952, the Chinese government had started to devise the first five-year economic plan, and to declare the end of the New Democracy. That led to unprecedented attention on economic affairs in 1953 (123, which amounted to 29% of the total indexed paragraphs of that year). The military theme, however, remained high on the agenda in 1953. It was largely because POW negotiations went on with difficulty and sometimes gave an air that combat between the warring parties might break out at any moment. However, the Research Guide does not enable us to see how closely the editorials followed the developments of the Korean War. From 1949 to 1953, the Chinese history was marked by impressive social and economic accomplishments (Meisner 1979). To some extent, this was reflected in the RMRB editorials since so much emphasis was put on these issues. The evidence seems to support the argument that the contents of the RMRB editorials have largely reflected the policy priorities of the ruling CCP as well as general conditions in the Chinese state. This appears to be the case, in my opinion, because the researchers of the Research Guide were indexing editorials between 1949 and 1975, and during most of this time Communist China was under “normal” conditions. Severe political repression and frequent political terror that cost no less than 2,000,000 lives (Meisner 1979:81) also marked the same period. The scent of terror as well as the critical international and domestic situations that challenged the PRC in its first five years cannot be ascertained by the editorials under the index scheme of the Research Guide. Historians have observed that nothing in the PRC was non-political, that political ideas must be practiced through

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actual actions (Yu 1964:23–25), and that political rhetoric can empower mass killing through the process of mass persuasion. Critical issues as these must be revealed and documented by other means.

Chart 5–2: Major Themes of the People’s Daily Editorials, 1949–1953 by Number of Paragraphs Although a helpful tool, the Research Guide is insufficient to capture the impact of the content of the editorials and the atrocities committed by the government of China in its early, formative years. Tabulations such as the Research Guide are static and fail to reveal the dynamics of political process spurred by rhetoric. A close examination of the editorial topics, identified by the Research Guide, reveals that the People’s Daily, as an official propaganda agency of the CCP, devoted a large proportion of its editorial spaces to discussions of such issues as the economy, central/local government, campaigns, social welfare, and education during the 1949–53 period. One might expect to read articles that address these kinds of issues from any daily newspapers in an established capitalist democratic state. Several critical questions, though, cannot be answered merely by a careful reading the headlines of the editorials: 1. How was the issue of the “enemy” elaborated? How were the contents of these editorials framed by Communist terminology? 2. How was the CCP terminology related to the authority’s political intent of eliminating its enemies? 3. To what extent can the contents of these commentaries, or de-facto policy directives, enhance our understanding of the formation process of genocidal practices in China?

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These questions may be more comprehensively answered by a combination of a detailed content analysis of the individual editorials and an in-depth examination of the socialpolitical context within which the editorials functioned as supplementary policy directives. The previous tables were derived from the editorial index of the People’s Daily. In so far as the Research Guide provides a useful tool for the major and minor topics presented by the newspaper, it certainly reveals nothing of the widely reported terror at that time. It appears that all reports of the uncontrolled riots, killings, torture, etc. were blacked out by the authorities. However, Mao had specifically instructed that every major movement had to be accompanied by massive propaganda activities to educate the masses (Mao Selected Works Vol. 5:39–45). While even a paragraph referring to Africa was indexed, there was little mention at all about executions, trials, and revolts. These, perhaps, were lumped together into the category of “public security.” We know that the mass campaigns did not proceed peacefully and bloodlessly; we know of the massacres and coercive methods employed. We cannot naively assume that their absence in the People’s Daily editorials means they did not happen. It is vital to my study to analyze the contents of the editorials in great detail and attempt to locate the language patterns that fueled the fire of the massacres and mass destruction that occurred during this time. In addition, we must interpret the findings with the help of historical materials. The Communist revolution was essentially political warfare, and, like every kind of warfare, it had to achieve two objectives: elimination of enemies and the winning over of friends (Yu 1964:19). Historically, the CCP had accumulated experiences in using political discourse as boundaries to separate insiders and outsiders and to define and elevate difference between the two (Apter and Saich 1994:5). Indeed, the opening sentences of Mao’s Selected Works, drawn from his analysis of the classes in Chinese society in 1926, read: Who are our enemies? Who are our friends? This is a question of the utmost importance for the revolution (Mao 1971 [1926]:11). However, the line between friend and foe shifts from time to time. Thus, “the choice of targets form the basis of Communist propaganda strategy” (Yu 1964:19). Who were the “enemies”? Table 5–3 lists the key words used by the author to track the frequency of their appearance in the RMRB editorials. Subsequent discussion will rely upon these terms. To simplify presentation, I will not bracket every term each time it is used. It should be remembered that expressions such as “American imperialist” and “feudal landlords” were specifically and continually employed by the Chinese Communist Party during the early 1950s to refer to its enemies. The negative connotations of these terms must be understood within such a context. For those readers who possess advanced knowledge of the Chinese language, I encourage them to read the Chinese characters to acquire a more precise understanding of the CCP’s terminology. Table 5–3 lists the main categories of enemies as represented by the key words and their variant forms. Careful readers may have noticed that economic, political, and ideological factors were all considered in defining these “class enemies.” Put another way, the revolution is a class struggle between the “people” and the “non-people.” What will be the outcome of the struggle? To Mao, history is a record of class struggles, some classes triumphed and others were vanquished (Mao 1977 [1949] Vol. IV:428). As he made clear in the 1949 On People’s Democratic Dictatorship, enemies must be opposed, fought against, and eliminated. This is the core line of reasoning that guides the CCP

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propaganda. As later historical developments reveal, the Party made great efforts to delineate who or what would be considered an “enemy,” but seldom explicitly state the extremist line of action. Rather, they plainly practiced it. To begin with, let us briefly discuss what “enemy” terms manage to permeate the everyday discourse of the Chinese people and how was it done. According to political scientist Liu, the CCP’s tactic of mass persuasion can be described in terms of four principles: insulation, emotional arousal, simplification, and politicization. The task is complete only when a person has “cultivated the habit of using some key ideological concepts to interpret his personal experience” (Liu 1971:30–31). The readers may recall that in 1951, a then Chinese Catholic University Professor, Yeh Chang-ching discovered 33 new Communist terminology already circulating on the tongues of peasants in the Kiangsu Province, an area liberated after 1949. The CCP relied heavily upon small group discussions to review and reinforce their indoctrination effects and achieved success quickly. Michel Oksenberg recorded an interview in early 1960s that illustrates Mao’s success in controlling people’s perceptions of the dominant values of the group through media monopoly and the manipulation of the topics discussed in small-groups (Oksenberg in Lewis ed. 1970:322). I believe the case is exemplary to describe what had occurred in China in early 1950s: Interviewer: When the government tells someone to do something, why does he do it? Informant: Two particular penalties are the most operative sanctions— criticism (which leads to struggle) and labor reform. People fear labor reform, which is very difficult and bitter. People wish to avoid criticism and struggle for many reasons, but one reason is that it results in one’s friends having to criticize you. This is unpleasant, and it breaks the solidarity [or unity] that exists among one’s friendship group. Lifton, in his examination of the thought reform of Chinese intellectuals, described the small group model as effective most of the time (Lifton 1956:75–86). According to Houn (1965:57), that effectiveness “lies in the traditional cultural pressure which inclines the individual to put greater value on his group membership than his individuality.” Through trial-and-error, the Chinese Communists have discovered the same human reaction as found by social scientists in group experiments: “that mere participation in discussing the execution of a matter tends to influence participants to accept it. Furthermore, by requiring Party leaders to participate in group discussions, the general mood and reactions of the rank toward Party authority can be detected” (Liu 1971:31).

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Table 5–3: CCP-Constructed Enemy Labels

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The above list of key words (Table 5–3) clearly indicates that the Chinese Communists, much like the French revolutionaries, did not regard people as their sole enemy. Thoughts, institutions, and natural phenomenon could all be enemies as well. This seemingly irrational hostility toward almost everything of the old society can be logically explained. The particular targets that are identified may not be so important as the way in which they were identified. Specifically, targets vary from time to time, yet the process of targeting an enemy remains and sometimes expands. It was the pursuit, or the systematic and sustained use, of this tactic that rendered the revolutionary government genocidal.

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At the outset, revolution must indeed have an enemy to fight against. For the Chinese peasants, that “natural enemy” was land and poverty. The popular mentality among illiterate peasants is difficult to perceive, although contemporary CCP texts have provided “official stories” to account for it. However, it would not be far off the mark to say that village social structure at the “rice-roots” level largely responsible for the gross poverty in Chinese villages. This same social structure also constituted the political and cultural milieu within which countless rebels had been nurtured in the past two millenniums (Fairbank and Goldman 1998). Duara (1988) provides elaboration for the above argument through examination of the sub-county administration in rural Northwest China during the 1900–1942 period. He coined the term of “cultural nexus of power” to describe the village social structure. In sum, there was hierarchies of lineage kinship, markets, religions, even water control plus the networks of patrons and clients or of relations by marriage, that formed the “framework within which power and authority were exercised” (Duara 1988:15–41). The frame of reference grounds “the analysis of culture and legitimacy within the organizational context in which power is wielded.” That serves well, in perspective for this study, as a way to understand the old “symbolic universe” prior to the Communist revolution. In short, village leaders derive their authority from the whole interweaving

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interconnection of family ties, commercial transactions, religious observances, voluntary associations, and interpersonal and legal relationships that constituted the cultural nexus of village society. To use Duara’s own words: “The affiliation of symbolic values to these organizations lent the nexus an authority, which enabled it to serve as an arena for the expression of legitimate leadership aspirations in local society.” (Duara 1988:5). Within this context, considerations of prestige, status, and social responsibility were important motives for leadership. Material profits play a much lesser role. Duara argues, war and banditry helped alienated the local leadership from politics that, in stable times, hinges on personal relations between patron and clients. However, he maintains, it was the modernizing reform initiated by the Qing imperial government that fundamentally shattered this rural structure. The reform, according to Duara (1988:216– 243), requires to treat the local village as a new fiscal entity to finance modern schools, administrative units, and defense organizations. Thus, tax collection was no longer based on individuals or on private property as before. Consequently, well-off patrons withdrew as village leadership. Respected peasants began to avoid acting as middleman. Meanwhile, large property owners moved to the city. A“local tyrant” type of tax-farmers took over the leadership. The unprecedented state intervention in the villages resulted in a curious paradox in the Chinese experience of state building: “the expansion of the fiscal power of the Chinese state occurred concomitantly with growing anarchy in local society” (Duara 1988:73). Villages, thus, became the arenas for predators of political power to contest with each other. This was the context within which the CCP and the KMT contested for state leadership, before the CCP finally succeeded in 1949. To a considerable extent, postrevolution PRC government was still trying to fill in the power vacancy created by the disassociation of conventional leadership from the old cultural nexus. On the one hand, due to lack of qualified cadres to take control of villages, informal relations were encouraged to help the Party take control of the population. On the other hand, various state-controlled organizations were established to consolidate the Party’s monopoly of power. Perceived from this perspective, we can already understand why “feudal landlords,” “local tyrants,” “brigands,” “feudal clannish thought system,” or even “imperialist church school” were constructed as enemies. These were the established power holders or devices of socialization that can be the rival leadership at rural villages. Perceived from another perspective, if unable to maintain the momentum, the revolutionary movement itself may quickly wither up. Furthermore, as historian john Dunn reminds us, “the legitimacy of revolutionary élites in the process of struggle comes from their claim to be able to solve some of the problems of their societies” (Dunn 1989:15). Starr also points out that if a revolution, as in the Chinese case, is defined as a protracted class struggle, this theory necessitates an explanation for the continued presence of class enemies. For instance, to assert an emerging bourgeois class in the socialist society is a logical precondition to support a theory that envisions protracted class struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. An extended period of the existence of class enemies in a socializing society implies that “the new order established by the revolutionaries is itself responsible for the creation of new enemies” (Starr 1979:97). As Arendt points out, state terror was applied by the Soviet Communists not to against the dissenter but the “potential enemy” (Arendt 1951:400–403). In Mao’s words, it is

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almost a virtue to constantly fight with the enemy: “I hold that it is bad as far as we are concerned if a person, a political party, an army or a school is not attacked by the enemy, for in that case it would definitely mean that we have sunk to the level of the enemy” (Mao 1967 [1939]:8). Identifying new enemies, within the new frame of reference of “protracted class struggle,” proves to be effective in maintaining the revolutionary

Table 5–4: Projected Actions Against Five Major Enemies The numbers after each word indicate frequency of appearance of that word/phrase over time

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passion and reinforcing the legitimacy of the revolutionary government. Indeed, as I browse through the editorials, the most striking matter to me is that wherever there were words for enemies, there were words for actions against the enemies. This characteristic of the editorials was consistent, which enables me, through a content analysis of the editorials, to track down both the CCP’s intent and tactics of action against its enemies. It appears that the CCP was using a number of “verbs” interchangeably (Table A number of synonymous terms were counted as one word with higher frequencies of usage. I know that the current table still contains a good number of words and phrases that appear to be synonymous for those students who possess advanced knowledge of the Chinese language and history. The table was left that way to demonstrate the scope of projected actions intended by the CCP against its enemy. Table 5–4 has included all

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projected actions that appeared in the RMRB editorials for at least three times during the time under investigation. I have determined that it is too trivial to list those that appeared only once or twice. Several points not immediately shown in the table are noteworthy enough to be mentioned briefly. Among other things, I must reiterate that the Chinese Communists regard things, humans, and natural disasters as legitimate “enemies.” There was no clear differentiation among them, in terms of projected actions. The phrase of “give way out” (which means to let them barely live) was ascribed for only once to those who belong to the “Feudalism,” “Bureaucrat-capitalism,” and “Counter-revolutionary” categories. It was never ascribed to those who fall into the “Unaffiliated Adversary” and “Imperialism” categories. Apparently, not all enemies were treated equally. This means that the regime had a finely-honed sense of enemy groups and devised policies to hunt down and eliminate specific groups of individuals. The most frequently used word of action was “Fan/Fan Dui” which could mean stop, oppose, combat against, resist, punish, eliminate or kill, depending on the context. For example, “fan-bureaucracy” means to eliminate bureaucratic working style and those bad thoughts assumed by the Party to be associated with the bureaucracy. “Fan-imperialism” most often means to oppose and/or to expel foreign colonial powers. It could also mean to eradicate ideological and cultural influences caused by Western colonialist power in China. In the latter case, those persons who were perceived by the Party to have possessed or promulgated such bad influences would become targets of destruction. Indeed, one might get the impression that the true “action” proposed by the CCP can be boiled down to only one: “Fan Dui.” What remained to be determined was the scale of action: can the enemy be transformed or remolded, hence rendered impotent; or must it be eradicated physically? Whatever deemed as proper by the Party, actions must be carried out to the extreme, that is, until the target disappears ultimately. An exploration of the “action” words indicates that the enemies were never destined to “death” alone. However, if a local cadre explicitly urged the enraged masses to eliminate the enemy for nearly 300 times and proposed only once to allow the enemy to be remoulded within the extended period of 51 months, one would suspect that the cadre did not truly wish to spare the enemy. Indeed, if we look at the top 15 words of each category (Table 5–4), we may quickly discover that when referring to the “imperialists,” the CCP tended to put itself in a defensive position. Otherwise, the party was inclined to take the initiative of attack. Actions such as resist, beat back, hold back, and win over were much less frequently suggested in categories other than the “imperialism” category. By contrast, lethal actions such as eliminate or annihilate were always high on the agenda in other categories. Between categories, there are also notable differences in verbal trends. Some enemies may receive severer treatment than others. However, the overall pattern depicts intentional punishment for all enemies. Indeed, suppose we are looking at a spectrum of severity, few lie in the gray area and the predominant majority of projected actions lie in the destruction rather than the construction pole. Enemies must be opposed, suppressed, and, destroyed-either through reeducation, transformation, or physical extinction. Table 5–4 helps the reader quickly grasp the general image of the kind of ends those class enemies were destined to meet. Even before the revolutionary victory, Mao had planned for the destiny of the people’s enemies. In his 1949 New Year’s message, foreseeing the coming victory, Mao urged the

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Party, the Army, and all Chinese people to “carry the revolution through to the end,” because “the enemy will not perish of himself” (Mao 1977 [1948] vol. 4:301). In that article, Mao demanded unswerving persistence in “overthrowing imperialism, feudalism, bureaucrat-capitalism…and the reactionary rule of the Kuomintang.” Specifically, he wanted domestic enemies completely “destroyed” and foreign enemies totally “expelled.” So, the new China must expose, fend off, and eliminate the imperialists. All patriotic people must act toward that goal. Internal enemies were to be destroyed as well. This included the feudal elements, counter-revolutionaries, and other, unaffiliated adversaries. By contrast, the “bureaucrat-capitalists” received mild verbal treatment largely because the KMT, as a collective representative of the “bureaucrat-capitalist class,” had already been expelled from the mainland and the “national capitalists” were still useful elements in rehabilitating the national economy. Moreover, it was ideologically permissible for the CCP to allow them to exist since the revolution was still at its bourgeoisie democratic phase. A glance at the action words suggests at least two things: that the Chinese Communists were faithful to their words; and that they took active steps to transform words into deeds. The CCP was faithful to its own words in the sense that they have declared in 1921 that the Communist revolution in China was fundamentally “antifeudal” and “anti-imperialist.” It took actions to eliminate even the remnants of those two enemies and their cohorts after the revolutionary victory. It should be noted at this point, however, that long before the revolutionary success, Mao consistently perceived “imperialism” as the principle enemy of China. He viewed the warlords, the bureaucrats, the comprador class, the landlord class, and the reactionary section of the intelligentsia as collaborators with the Western colonizers in China (Mao 1971 [1926]:18; Carnoy 1984). In practice, as described earlier (see Ong 1955), “anti-imperialism” would become identical with “anti-feudalism” for propaganda purposes. In theory, the logic of identifying imperialism with feudalism needs elaboration. To link imperialism with feudalism in China was largely justified by the perception, on the part of the CCP, that domestically the KMT was supported by the upper classes and internationally it was backed by foreign states such as the United States. However, since the revolutionary victory, both the KMT and major Western powers were expelled from the mainland. From the point of view of the CCP, only some remnant thoughts and bad elements of “capitalism” were to be dealt with in China since all the physical presence of the Western states had been rooted out and the KMT government had been toppled. The Americans were not even “occupying” Taiwan at that time. There was no factual ground upon which Mao can perceive “imperialism” as a principal enemy of the new China. The label was invoked either for ideological reasons or for mobilizing the masses. Although the Chinese Communist Party intended nothing less than a great social revolution, the Chinese revolution itself had very little to say about a bourgeoisie state. Rather, the revolution occurred in a de facto colony, or a “semi-colonial country” as Mao put it. Theoretically, this situation suggests that, before a social revolution could be materialized, the Chinese people had to be liberated from total domination by the European colonial powers (Carnoy 1984). Furthermore, in the early 1950s, the CCP still considered itself a member of the Communist International. Hence, ideologically, the “imperialists,” in general, and the “American imperialist,” in particular, were enemies

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even before the Korean War began. Indeed, as Chart 5–5 will illustrate later, it would make few wonder why the “Imperialism” category was always the most salient theme over time. Understood within this context, the rhetoric of the RMRB editorials would appear to be more sensible and realistic. Propaganda it was. Nonetheless, the propaganda was well grounded in general social conditions, and was dependent upon ideological concerns, which helps explain the unusual salience of themes such as the “Imperialism.” The social movements (campaigns) as presented in Table 5–5 were “major” national campaigns. They are herein focused upon for two reasons: 1. Because previous students of modern Chinese history have indicated that theses campaigns caused significant numbers of deaths; 2. All the major enemies and their accomplices were vigorously pursued during these campaigns. It is not my intent to give the impression that the PRC did nothing but cause deaths in its early years. Quite the contrary, there were social movements that produced positive results such as the movement that greatly reducing illiteracy in the expansive rural areas, preserving forests, protecting women’s rights, and promoting healthy ways of life throughout the country. Campaigns were techniques to achieve certain policy goals. It was the intention behind the goals, as conveyed through media contents, that is the central concern of the current study. However, it is essential to understand roughly what the individual campaigns were trying to accomplish in order to make sense of my subsequent arguments. All starting and concluding dates in Table 5–5 are approximate, as most campaigns were disguised by the CCP as spontaneous mass movements.

Chart 5–3: Overall Patterns of the Use of Five Major Sub-Categories of People’s Enemy

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Table 5–5: Comparison of Major Movements Launched Between June 1950-July 1953 Time span

Policy goals

Key targets

Consequence

Land Reform

October To eliminate the Landlords, rich 1950– May landlord gentry as a peasants 1953 class To demonstrate the credibility of the CCP as a fearful force to the peasants. To confiscate and redistribute landlord land. To collect tax to support the new regime

Landlords as a class diminished. Tens of thousands of landlords died of resistance, execution, or suicide About 43% of China’s cultivated land were redistributed to about 60% of the rural population (MacFarquhar 1993:36). Poor and middle peasants benefited. Improvement of productivity dubious.

Suppression of Counterrevolutionaries

December 1950– March 1953

To restore order, to consolidate People’s Democratic Dictatorship, and to support other social movements.

Spies, bandits, former KMT party cadres, officials and military officers who engaged in active resistance to the new government. Religious heads and local figures who were potentially capable of creating alternative leadership

Order established. Terror reigned. Tens of thousands killed or committed suicide, millions detained and forced to labor ([Stavis 1978:29] quoted in. MacFarquhar 1993:37n)

Three Anti

January 1951– November 1952

Corruption, waste, and bureaucracy.

Urban cadres, especially those in financial and economic departments who, in the perception of the CCP, had become corrupt as a result of their dealings with the bourgeoisie.

Over 8 million state employees participated in the movement, 4.5% of them punished (Li 1990:95). Fewer public executions but tens of thousands of suicides (Chow 1960:115, 133).

Five Anti

January 1952– November

To deepen the Three-anti movement

Lawbreaking capitalists, particularly large

More than 920,000 killed, more than $22 billion worth of

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Resist America Aid Korea

To clear out “five evils”: bribery, tax evasion, theft of state property, cheating on government contracts, and stealing of economic information

June 1950– To help July 1953 neighboring Korea resist American invasion and to prevent China from being invaded as well

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capitalists. National bourgeoisie as a class

property confiscated (Tsai 1994:106)

To eradicate worship or fear of Americans, or desire to make friends with the Americans. Encouraged donations for purchasing weapons. To link the movement closely with other production activities.

Greatly intensified the use of official violence in all major social movements.

I. THE REVOLUTIONARY AFTERMATH (OCT. 1949–OCT. 1950) This study argues that under specific socio-historical conditions, language use can facilitate genocide, and did so in the case of China between 1949 and 1953. Moreover, it is through media that these forces were coordinated in facilitating the execution of genocide. The Common Program, the interim constitution of the PRC from 1949 to 1954, states directly in Article 1 that “This Republic opposes imperialism, feudalism, and bureaucratic capitalism….” Article 7 further specifies that “…The People’s Republic of China must suppress all counterrevolutionary activities, severely punish all KMT counter-revolutionary war criminals and other obdurate arch counter-revolutionary elements who collude with imperialism, commit treason to the fatherland and oppose the cause of people’s democracy. Reactionary elements, feudal landlords, bureaucratic capitalists in general, must, according to law, also be deprived of their political rights within a necessary period after they have been disarmed and their special power abolished; but they shall at the same time be given a means of living and compelled to reform themselves through labor to become new men. If they continue their counter-revolutionary activities, they shall be severely punished.” (Selden 1979) At the hands of the Chinese revolutionary vanguards, and for Communist revolutionaries elsewhere, the chance for a total revolution to materialize could be at its highest

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immediately after they won the revolution or civil war. They had millions of combathardened soldiers, another million experienced public security forces, and the legitimacy of shaping a new society derived from the popular belief that the revolution was intended to overthrow the old order. The difficult part of their task, however, was to maintain the revolutionary passion for the purpose of state construction, as manifested by the following paragraph: 11–13–49 The remnant of the KMT reactionaries will not be willing to die. They would try every means to carry out counter-revolutionary espionage after they were overthrown permanently. Therefore, we must not be selfcomplacent. Rather, we must continue to heighten alert, firmly liquidate all counter-revolutionary activities, consolidate revolutionary order, and defend the interests of the people and the fatherland of the people. To build a new country, and perhaps a new society, it was essential for the Party to get the population to think and to act in accordance with its official line. To build a socialist new China, the national economy had to recov-er, be followed by full-scale land reform, then “democratic” reformations. For these tasks to be accomplished smoothly, “enemies,” in the broadest sense of the term, had to be eliminated or remoulded (11–21–49; 01–05– 50; 07–09–50). As the RMRB editorial puts it: 01–05–50 Only through the complete expulsion of the American imperialist aggression power and the elimination of the KMT remnant bandits, can the Chinese people be completely liberated. Either through voluntary self-education, through forced re-education by the Party, or though coercive persuasion, the “enemies” had be to transformed into new people. If they resisted, they would have to be destroyed. The policy constructed new realities for the Chinese people. It also required people to change their thoughts and actions accordingly. What did they want people to think about may vary. For example, the purpose of Land Reform was to “liberate the productive forces” on June 30, 1950; and it became an act to “abolish the ruling class” on July 16, 1950. The demand for people to act according to the will of the Party was consistent. Specifically, the task of suppressing the enemy must be carried out in all jobs: 09–12–50 The people’s democratic dictatorship includes being democratic to the people and being dictatorial to the enemy; both should be practiced throughout all tasks, particularly in the task of regime building. The CCP also paid close attention to the details of imposing its policy. For example, the 10–21–50 RMRB editorial gives practical instructions concerning how to treat lawabiding landlords and unlawful landlords:

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10–21–50 Those unlaw ful landlords who threaten, lure, and bribe the cadres and the peasants should be punished by the People’s Court in accordance with the severity of their crimes, in addition to the appropriation of the bribery. Unlawful landlords who conducted counter-revolutionary crimes such as invent rumors to confuse the masses, espionage assassination, and armed rebellion should be severely punished by law; their leaders must be firmly suppressed, be sentenced of long imprisonment or to death. Only by doing so can we stop those unlawful landlords’ counter-revolutionary crime of impeding land reform, and guarantee the full realization of land reform…. As to those law-abiding landlords, as a rule, they will be given opportunities to reform themselves through labor and be given a way out…. Peasants should organize themselves, monitor closely any impeding activities done by the landlords. In most cases of revolution, civil wars frequently ensue after the revolution has overthrown the old order. In China, a civil war had already been fought before the revolution’s victory. Aggression by a foreign country did not occur until late 1950, although historically and ideologically the Chinese Communists always perceived the Western capitalist countries as both real and potential threats to their country (Mao 1928). Chiang Kai-shek, according to the Chinese Communist historian Hu Wha (1985:51–52), had leftover 2,000,000 “political bandits” (namely, remnant troops), 600,000 counterrevolutionary secret agents, and 600,000 reactionary party cadres on the mainland. These so-called reactionary remnant forces were dealt with heavy blows after the promulgation of the PRC. According to the CCP’s official history text, Seventy Years of the Chinese Communist Party (Hu ed. 1991), from October 1949 to June 1950, “nearly one million KMT armed bandits were extinguished” (Hu 1991:265). The remnants of these so-called “armed bandits” became active again after the outbreak of the Korean War. The unexpected Korean War was described by Communist historians such as Lee Chian-wei (1990:58–63) as being a great driving force for state construction. Similarly, the Three-Anti campaign was launched to help implement the policy of increasing production and decreasing defense spending. Indeed, 35 years later, Chinese historians such as Hu Wha (1985:46) went so far as to claim that the Resist-US Aid-Korea campaign had motivated such “social democratic movements” as Land Reform, Suppression of Counter-revolutionaries, Three-Anti, Five-Anti, and Intelligentsia Thought Reform. At the same time, the official propaganda campaign was urging people to increase production and practice austerity to support the Korean War (RMRB 01–21– 52). The implications of this pressure on the Chinese population were: China must increase production to support a war that, in their perception, if not won could destroy the new Republic. More importantly, if there were bandits, counter-revolutionaries, and spies sabotaging the country’s industrial and agricultural production, they could not hope to win the war. To make things worse, none of these movements was launched in isolation. The movements would either blend with each other or function as a joint effort to promote production. I would argue that, for propaganda purposes, actions and the causes of those action were indeed used interchangeably. To fight the “American imperialists,” they need

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to increase production. Lazy bones such as the landlords would have to learn how to contribute to the state. To increase production, China must create a stable international and domestic environment. To volunteer to join the army was considered a token of patriotism and a contribution to the general effort of increasing national production. Counter-revolutionary activities had to be put down so that the nation could concentrate on production. Those who dared to undermine this effort had to be punished severely. Once the war was won, counter-revolutionaries would no longer dare to move around and engage in sabotage. Hence, the people should put all their efforts into winning the war. So it goes on and on and all boils down to the need to mobilize for state building. From the CCP’s perspective, the genuine “people” would support state policies unconditionally. Those who did not show signs of support towards the government or simply blocked the way of state building would have to choose between re-education, reformation, or being removed. Execution, labor to death, and brainwashing all worked for the removal of these unwanted elements. The CCP was armed with an intent to eliminate the enemy and could thus portray its enemies as less than human. For example, the second editorial on the Oct. 2, 1949 RMRB shouted to “break the claws and teeth of instigators of war” (meaning to oppose the “American Imperialists”). Another example is the Sep. 14, 1950 editorial that urged Party cadres to oppose “commandism,” a working style that could only happen when the cadres are contaminated by KMT thoughts. The action of eliminating “commandism” was to be “absolute and without any exceptions” and the general guideline was to “cure the illness and save the patient.” Within the realm of “unaffiliated adversary,” the CCP focused on “bureaucracy” and “waste” as their prime targets for destruction. Indeed, throughout the entire period under examination, the Chinese Communists reiterated that “bureaucracy” and “waste” were two sides of the same coin (07–15–50). Bad things such as corruption, political indifference to the mass, damage/loss of state property, even a bad harvest could be attributed to bureaucracy (03–24–50). Although bureaucracy was not a new phenomenon in the West, the trend toward bureaucratization has greatly accelerated during the last century (Blau and Meyer 1971; Beetham 1987). By contrast, in China, bureaucrats had been the predominant political power for over a millennium and the legacy of being ruled by a bureaucrat-gentry class for such a long time is still being felt until the present (Huang 1985; 1981). The tendency to replace administration with ritual and valuing morals over efficiency is characteristic of the Chinese bureaucracy—then and now (Huang 1985). In addition to this historical legacy, bureaucratization has been a common course of development among modern revolutionary regimes, including China. Therefore, bureaucracy was at once a pre-existing problem and a re-emerging concern for the new Chinese leadership. Between july and August 1950, the CCP demanded rectification and consolidation in schools, Party branch offices, the public security system, and the State Control system. Other than that, one natural calamity, the plague, in the Northwestern region, grabbed their highest attention for several months.

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Chart 5–4: Pre-War Frequency Appearance of the “Unaffiliated Adversary” Category Western “imperialism,” especially “American imperialism,” appeared to be the most important subjects for the RMRB. Notably, the frequency of the term “American imperialism” became extremely high after july 1950. Even so, this dramatic change was not caused solely by the Korean War. In those editorials that dealt with economic sabotage, state building, land reform, commercial banks, and the rectification movement, “imperialists” were singled out repeatedly as causes of China’s problems in these areas or as a potential threat to China’s future. Naturally, war contributed to the increasing salience of this enemy. Earlier, in January 1950, the presence of the term was largely due to a single editorial that protested American aid to Taiwan, which was war-related as well. The Chinese Communists were determined to eliminate “feudal forces,” which represented the number one internal enemy of the Chinese people. Chart 5–6 shows that the feudal landlords, feudalism, and feudal forces were the most salient targets in this category. The landlords were a clearly identifiable category of enemy. However, feudalism could mean a great number of things. Warlords, compradors, secret societies, clan organizations and their leaders, or whoever might potentially be influential in a rural village, could fall into this category. The CCP considered itself the sole authority of the new China. This attitude had far reaching implications. If a local authority other than the Party branches or government offices existed, that must be a preexisting feudal force or reactionary remnant. Essentially, this is how the CCP constructed the old symbolic universe to legitimate the creation of the new order.

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Chart 5–5: Pre-War Frequency Appearance of Enemies in the “Imperialism” Category Indeed, if applied elsewhere, this line of reasoning could fit squarely into the category of “counter-revolutionaries” without difficulty. What matters is the construction of feudalism and the presentation of this constructed reality to the people. It should be remembered that feudalism in China refers to something different from its commonly understood meaning in the West. To characterize the ancient Chinese society as “feudal” is a Communist construction. Indeed, in Mao’s perception, everything belonging to the old society was necessarily “feudal” (Huang 1993:344). The CCP constructed historical reality as such, and the step had profound political consequences. The CCP envisioned a systematic reconstruction of Chinese society. Renaming was a precursor to reconfiguring. For example, the RMRB editorial of April 16, 1950 clearly stated that after the landlords, as a class, had been destroyed and the feudal land system eliminated, family ties, religious bonds, and gender relationship would be radically altered: 03–08–50

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Chart 5–6: Pre-War Frequency Appearance of Enemies in the “Feudalism” Category Since the feudal marriage system was born with the feudal society, it shall and must die with the death of the feudal society. This is the iron law of history. In the old liberated areas the feudal land-owning system, as the economic backbone of the feudal society, has been eliminated; rule by landlord-gentry, as the political order of the feudal society, has been toppled too; therefore, the feudal marriage system, as one of the feudal social orders of the feudal society, would perish as well. Mao also affirmed:”… As for the clan system, superstition, and inequality between men and women, their abolition will follow as a natural consequence of victory in the political and economic struggles” against the landlords (Mao 1977 [1927] vol. 1:70). Feudal forces control political authority, support economic exploitation of the peasants, dictate primary social units, and even dominate gender relationships. In short, it was a rival to the new regime. Mao argued that enemies were just like a tiger, “a man-eater, whether

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irritated or not. Either kill the tiger or be eaten by him—one or the other” (Mao 1971 [1949]:377). Mao’s remarks serve as a good footnote for Edelman’s argument: “The construction of problematic enemies often becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, for it catalyzes counteractoins and conflict escalation” (Edelmen 1967:203). Here, the prophecy was not only predicted but was also fulfilled by the claimmaker—the CCP. Compared to the harsh verbal treatment launched against the “imperialists,” “feudal elements,” and “unaffiliated adversaries,” “bureaucrat-capitalists” received minimum attention from the RMRB editorials during the pre-war period (Chart 5–7), for possible reasons that these people were still useful for state-building purposes in 1950 and 1951. The most provocative enemy, by far, are the “counter-revolutionaries.” Even within this category, there appear clusters of specific groups that receive higher attention than others. As Chart 5–8 illustrates, the “KMT remnants” (including its head Chiang Kaishek) and “secret agents” constitute the bulk of this enemy category. Concern for counter-revolutionaries, KMT remnants, and secret agents was high during November 1949, then subsided quickly during the following months. It again increased dramatically in july 1950, then gradually disappeared by October 1950, when the PLA quietly entered the Korean War. By Chinese historians’ accounts, between january and October 1950, there were 818 counter-revolutionary riots nationwide. Tens of thousands of cadres and activists were killed. In Guanxi Province alone, counter-revolutionaries burned and destroyed 25,600 buildings and robbed over 200,000 head of cattle (He 1989:39). In response, the PRC government launched three major strikes (in March, July, and October) against these enemies and extinguished “nearly one million” armed bandits in 1950 alone (Seventy Years of the CCP 1991:274). Throughout the entire campaign, which ended by the end of 1952, 2.40 million “armed bandits” were eliminated (He 1989:42). In appearance, the high numbers of enemies no doubt constituted a threat, and would by themselves justify severe measures in dealing with the counter-revolutionaries. In reality, Chinese bandits had historically been composed of poor peasants struggling to survive in a bleak environment of worked-out soil, harsh winters, and unstable river systems subject to floods. For example, the Nian rebellion that disturbed the Qing Empire in mid-1850s was originated from such a context (Spence 1990:184–188). In May and June 1950, there were four editorials (05–10–50, 05–29–50, 06–01–50, 06–02–50) acknowledging that famine was prevalent in Northern China. Millions of acres of wheat were flooded, tens of thousands of people were starving in early May, and the situation only stopped to deteriorate until june. In one of the most seriously affected villages, 459 out of 884 families had nothing to eat (05–10–50). The authority had to stop the starving people not to eat wheat seeding in June. There is no data available to verify how many of the eliminated “bandits” were actually starving refugees trying to stay alive by robbing grains. I believe the number must have been considerable. A substantial number of these armed bandits were unorganized forces and many of them had close local associates in their areas of activity, wherein the villagers hated the KMT but disliked the CCP as much. The CCP succeeded in rooting out so many class enemies without facing a major authority crisis by employing a mixture of scapegoating and dehumanizing. For instance, the 07–09–50 editorial urged the Public Security

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Department to reinforce its effort in protecting economic constructions. The justification for this demand was as follows: 07–09–50 The secret agents attempt to obstruct the constructive work of the Chinese people and to render the Chinese people in permanent poverty and backwardness…. All those bandits, secret agents, and spies sent by the KMT reactionary remnants “are controlled by the American imperialists behind scenes,” “are the running dogs of the imperialists.”… The KMT reactionary remnants, landlords, declining economic opportunists and the bandits and secret agents that serve for these reactionary forces are likely to hook up each other, and launch relentlessly struggles against us under the command, organization, and support of the American imperialism.

Chart 5–7: Pre-War Frequency Appearance of Enemies in the “Bureaucrat-Capitalism” Category

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Chart 5–8: Pre-War Frequency Appearance of Enemies in the “Counter-Revolutionary” Category It is much easier to rationalize such mass massacres when the individuals are viewed as “man-eating tigers” and “running dogs” rather than as starving souls. The Chinese Communists were now accusing internal enemies of collaborating with external enemies in an attempt to destroy the new Republic. As Chart 5–3 indicates, with the exception of “bureaucrat-capitalism,” all of the other four categories of enemy reached their first peak of salience in July 1950, to a level that had not been reached during the previ-ous nine months. During the following two months, only the “imperialism” category became dramatically more pronounced, as opposed to the diminishing frequency of the “unaffiliated adversaries,” “counter-revolutionaries,” and “feudalism.” The language pattern strongly suggests that Korean War had a great impact on the CCP’s sense of crisis, both internally and externally. To this point, the RMRB editorial themes were presented in a fluctuating fashion. Seldom has there been a theme that remained highly visible for more than three months. Successful propaganda must continue (be repeated) for a long time in order to condition the masses to accept the claims that were made (Ellul 1965). However, Ellul cautioned that repetition must be discontinued when the public has been conditioned. Otherwise, repetition at that point would begin to irritate and provoke fresh doubts. Whether the Chinese Communists propagandists had consciously applied this principle to their practices or had merely followed their instincts is a matter of conjecture, and beyond the immediate concerns of this study. This is only part of the prewar propaganda. Chart 5–3 has indicated that the five major themes were presented continuously throughout the 51month period. The importance of individual themes changed frequently, which is not

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surprising because even the content of propaganda may be very inconsistent in the long run (Ellul 1965). The point is that some calculated themes were articulated and actions were stirred. During the pre-war period, the CCP was concerned about imperialism, feudal forces, counter-revolutionaries, and, to a lesser extent, bureaucracy. None of these themes appeared overnight. But the fact that variations in the salience of each of these themes shifted at different times strongly suggests that historical contingencies and political leaders’ perception of reality may have played an important role in influencing the language pattern of the RMRB editorials. These editorials served as guidelines for the millions of cadres who drafted and put into practice their individual tactics of enacting policy. On the one hand, cadres were predisposed to read newspaper editorials. The CCP’s philosophy of leadership stresses direct contact between the people and cadres, and cadres must keep constant alert to people’s needs. Policies were formed on the basis of cadre reports and subsequent authoritative directives or instructions would be issued, if necessary (Lewis 1963:70–72). When no specific instructions were given, they turn to the RMRB for reports of “models.” For instance, the RMRB editorial of January 4, 1952 argued the importance of mobilizing the masses when launching the Three-Anti campaign. On the front page, two matching stories reported that the Nanjing City People’s Congress made it an official resolution to launch the movement with extreme vigor. The second story reported that the successful experience of Nanjing was because relevant bureau chief took initia-tives to develop the campaign. On the third page, two features further elaborated what conclusions were reached by the CCP members in Tianjin City in their discussions of the origins and prevention of corruption, and how the Broadcasting Bureau of the Central People’s Government launched the campaign within the institution. On the other hand, the CCP gives special attention to the press in early 1950s mainly due to the press’ ability to print documents and instructions. In accordance with its intent to build authority, the CCP wanted to use the press to transmit and instruct regional cadres on organizational matters (Liu 1971:136). Here is what the RMRB said: 04–23–50 The issue that is confronting the Party, the government, the military, the people, and particularly the news workers is…how to make our newspapers become a more powerful weapon to disseminate propaganda to the masses, and to agitate and organize them in the life process of state building. Since newspapers were concentrated in urban areas, at least from 1949 to 1952, they were essentially a medium for the literate and urban. Therefore, cadres, bureaucrats, students, and professionals were the groups most likely to make use of newspaper information, especially the editorials that were published to rationalize Party policies (Liu 1971:149). At the mass level, the press contributes to the CCP’s effort of building authority through intensive and extensive collective newspaper reading, particularly during the 1949–52 period (Liu 1971:139–140). The People’s Daily reported on February 6, 1952 that, in October 1951, Kiansu Province had 11,207 newspaper reading groups with 203,700

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members, including workers, peasants, soldiers, cadres, students, monks, and nuns. Supplementing the collective newspaper reading, oral agitators also conduct their work in the field, in peasants’ homes, and in the production teams’ meeting place. The press teaches people a new and uniform political language through contextualizing every reported event according to the Party line, hence serves as a tool of political socialization (Liu 1971:144). Examining ideology and organization of early years of the PRC, Schurmann noted that Party activity at regional levels were of great importance in carrying out policies, and “they have considerable scope for decision making” (Schurmann 1971:153–154). Nevertheless, the CCP works on the principle of “concentrated leadership and divided operations” whereby general targets were set by the Central Committee but where scattered units of production were allowed operational independence (Brugger 1981:37). Schurmann gives an example to illustrate how this general guideline has actually worked. The case was a meeting of district committee secretaries of Kwangtung Province, held between November 13–23, 1955, and reported in detail by the Nanfang Jihpao (Southern Daily). The meeting started on November 13 with the reading of a general policy report concerning collectivization and the strengthening of Party organization in the rural areas. The First Secretary of the Kwangtung Province (himself a member of the Central Committee), Tao Chu, made the report. This was followed by three days of vigorous small-group discussions in which concrete problems were voiced. A three-day plenary session followed, marked by reports of various district committee secretaries. Following this was again three-day small-group discussions. The meeting ended with a summary report by Tao Chu on November 23. The following day several follow-up sessions were held by top Kwangtung Party cadres and 85 local Party cadres. Meetings, group pressure, and verbal agitation were the main devices to disseminate policy objectives.

II. WAR CLOUDS (NOV. 1950–JULY 1953) About one month before the People’s Voluntary Army secretly intervened into the Korean War (Oct. 19, 1950), the publicly declared major missions for the CCP were regime building, relief works and demobilization: 09–12–50 Every branch office of the Civil Administration Department currently has three major tasks at hand: democratic regime building, relief work (including famine/disaster salvation, take care of the families of military personnel, and urban social security), and demobilization. It seems clear that the Chinese government was busy in their internal affairs, judging from the above editorial. The same article also explicitly expressed the Party’s will to eradicate the reactionaries, feudal landlords and bureaucrat-capitalists and the better this task is performed the more consolidated state dictatorship toward the enemies. External threat, at this to this point, has not been associated to internal enemies.

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The People’s Liberation Army, under the name of “Chinese People’s Volunteer Troop,” intervened in the Korean War on October 25, 1950. According to Chinese sources, the PLA actually crossed the Yalu River at dusk on 19 October 1950. First contact between the Chinese troops and the United States army occurred on 25 October 1950 (CCP 1991. Seventy Years of the CCP. Beijing: Party History Publishing House.). The Korean War lasted for 21 months. Most political campaigns were launched and largely completed during this period (RMRB 11–17–52). Indeed, the CCP itself considered 1952 as the end of the recovery period and initiated the first 5-year economic plan in 1953. As in the pre-war period, the CCP was still relying heavily on newspaper for disseminating its policy objectives to the populace. The following paragraph well illustrates the official view of the CCP on the political role of newspapers: 03–10–51 The publication of people’s newspapers is essentially a task of ideological propagation. The major interests that people have in the people’s newspapers are to understand what kind of viewpoints, guidelines, and policies that the People’s Government and the Chinese Communist Party have devised in dealing with important contemporary issues, to share the working experiences of other administrative areas reported by the press, and to express their opinions through the newspaper…. There is no other propaganda tool that is capable of influencing the masses with greater magnitude, speed, and correctness than the newspaper. Economically, the military move may have cost China dearly. CCP historian Yao Hsu (1980) was cited as saying that China spent over 10 billion US dollars for the Korean War. Most of its loan money from the Soviets (1.34 billion between 1950–1957) was used to support the Korean War (Fairbank and MacFarquhar 1991:296; Chinese edition). Moreover, wheat production in 19552 and 1953 was disappointing due to cold temperature, drought, flooding, and various other reasons (05–17–53). Famine was prevalent during these twos years. On May 9, 1953, the RMRB editorial recognized that there were more than 10 million people suffering famine and in some areas grain prices were so high that hungry people could not afford to buy (05–09–53). Requisition of surplus grain for war purposes might have exacerbated the situation, although the CCP never publicly recognized it. Militarily, Chinese elite troops suffered tremendous loss. According to the official CCP history, over 1.3 million troops participated in the Korean War, with some 360,000 casualties (Li 1991:54). The United Nations declared, however, that the combined casualties of the PLA and North Korean armed forces were 1.897 million (Wang 1990:101). The war forced the indefinite postponement of liberation of Taiwan. It also greatly enhanced the Mainland Chinese people’s national pride and their confidence in the government (Meisner 1986; Fairbank and MacFarquhar 1991). The war heightened the potentiality of a KMT comeback and created an urgent need for the CCP to prevent espionage and sabotage. A war victory would enhance the authority of the Chinese government and lend the ruling Communist Party more leeway in handling domestic affairs. It also further justified the use of drastic measures against the counter-

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revolutionaries. For instance, the 04–28–51 and 05–04–51 editorials alerted the public the danger of counter-revolutionary espionage and urged the expansion of suppression moves: 04–28–51 A large number of people are not yet courageous enough to be active when they see that the counter-revolutionaries are only arrested. They would become daring enough to actively assist the People’s Government in informing and accusing the criminal activities conducted by the counter-revolutionaries only when they have witnessed the counterrevolutionary leaders were killed by the People’s Government. 05–04–51 The American imperialists, through manipulating various kinds of relationships, activate the secret agents and species directly or indirectly controlled by the Chiang Kai-shek bandit gangs to destroy our efforts of construction by means of vicious explosion, arson, and poison…. It deepens the hatred toward them and strengthens the determination of exterminating them by the people. Not many new terms emerged during the wartime period. In the “unaffiliated adversary” category, there were six new terms: complacent thought, bourgeoisie corrupt thought, theft of state property, self-contending thought, unrealistic working style, and public opinion oppressor. Six new terms appeared in the “imperialism” category as well: USUK government, American ruler, USA, American aggressor, American government, and Japanese militarists. No new terms are found in the “feudalism” category, but there were four new enemies in the “bureaucrat-capitalist” category: unlawful merchants, bourgeois monopolist bloc, capitalist design thought, and bourgeois design thought. There were also six new “counter-revolutionaries”: corrupt person, corruption, bad elements, conspirator, lawbreaker, and embezzlers. The most notable pattern of language usage in this period is that, if the five categories were juxtaposed, the category of “Feudalism” will almost disappear and only two groups of enemies would remain prominent in the “bureaucratcapitalism” category—bourgeois class and opportunists (see Chart 5–9). In absolute numbers of the frequency of appearance, the rank order of the five major enemies is: Imperialism (4104), counter-revolutionaries (3048), unaffiliated adversary (1808), bureaucrat-capitalism (640), and feudalism (340). The attention put on the “Imperialism” category by the RMRB editors, who were under direct leadership of the Party’s Central Committee, was 12 times more than on the “Feudalism” category. The Chinese Communists made it clear from the beginning that their revolution was essentially “antifeudal” and “anti-imperialist”. The biggest imperialist enemy was the Western powers that had been expelled from China in 1949. Now, less than a year later, they were already invading China’s border with Korea. As a major effort to root out “feudalism” in China, the Land Reform movement was launched during the same month that the PLA went into the Korean War and ended two months before the armistice was signed between Sino-Korean forces and United Nations allied troops. In terms of its scale, extension of time, and symbolic meaning, the Land Reform should have been “the” movement that attracted the most attention. In reality, the language pattern revealed by the RMRB editorials did not show this trend. Rather, the

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RMRB editorials contents revealed a constant urge for mobilization. On May 29, 1951, the “core task” for the Party was the implementation of the Land Reform. Five months later (10–25–51), the core task shifted to “Resist-US AidKorea.” It then changed into “Increase Production and Practice Austerity” in the next month (11–20–51). Ideology, nationalism, xenophobia, and historical atrocities committed by Western powers in China combine to explain the difference in the treatment of the two groups of “enemies.” No single factor seems to be comprehensive and satisfactory enough by itself. One can even legitimately suspect that the CCP deliberately manipulated the label, and the commensurate historical situation, to weed out potential domestic enemies that were allegedly associated with the situation and were labeled as such by the Party. The editorial contents clearly reflected the political leaders’ perceptions of reality. The following are just a few examples: 12–26–50 After the public, visible, and armed enemies are defeated, the hidden, invisible, and unarmed enemies still exist, and they “will fight with us in a deadly struggle.” 05–21–51 In Changshou District of the Shanghai City, the Winter Security Services Team organized by the 88 alleys in the District exposed nearly 700 counter-revolutionaries, and in many regions there are reports of moving stories such as children informed the authority that their father is a secret agent…. Because of active participation of the masses in the movement of informing and accusing the counter-revolutionaries, the People’s Government and the Public Security institutions under its command have acquired millions of helping hands. Theorists of “social construction of social problem” have long argued that social situations are important in influencing the individual’s perception of the society, but in the end it is the individual’s perception toward specific conditions that drives him/her to take action accordingly (Spector and Kitsuse 1987; Miller and Holstein 1993). In China in the early 1950s, it was the state leadership that made claims and there were no alternative sources to verify or counter-construct their claims. They had a totalitarian control over the media and the state. What was constructed may become reality and the consequences were horrifyingly real. The “Unaffiliated Adversary” category (Chart 5–10), which included various types of enemies, attracted constant attention in the editorials. Among others, wastefulness and bureaucratism were frequently attacked. The CCP consistently asserted that waste was brought about by bureaucracy (07–15–50, 08–03–50, 02–07–51, 11–09–51, 11–20–51, 01–02–52). During the Three-Anti and Five-Anti campaigns of 1951, bureaucracy was considered the primary source of corruption. To remedy the problems of bureaucracy meant to turn against the party cadres and government officials at all levels. In appearance, this seems to suggest that the CCP was consciously trying to save itself from the “normal” post-revolutionary development of institutionalization and bureaucratization. In reality, this step was an alternative measure of consolidating the regime.

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Chart 5–9: Wartime Frequency Appearence of Major Enemies Compared in Rank Order

Chart 5–10: Frequency Appearance of Enemies in the “Unaffiliated Adversary” Category During War Years

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A large number of former KMT officials and military officers maintained their original positions after the Communist takeover because, due to the sudden victory, the CCP did not prepare enough cadres to staff all the positions vacated by the KMT personnel. For various reasons, the CCP did not trust these people, who easily became the first targets during campaigns (Fairbank and MacFarquhar 1991). The most prominent examples are the Three-Anti and the subsequent Five-Anti campaigns. 01–12–52 The People’s Government inherited a good proportion of the personnel from the old Financial Department institutions,…nationally, the inherited officials and newly-recruited personnel amount to approximately 70% of our financial cadres,…they were contaminated with bad working styles of the old society, which oftentimes could not be eliminated quickly, and some of the individual officials were not yet remoulded at all. 01–21–52 Did we not witness everywhere the legacies of the KMT bureaucratcapitalist institutions after the people have overthrown the KMT reactionary rule? In dealing with these wicked legacies, there is no alternative but to firmly weed them out. 01–22–52 The reason why such phenomena as serious corruption, wastefulness, and bureaucratism in all levels of economic institutions were not eliminated during the long past,…was because many leading cadres in these institutions were being attacked by erosive bourgeoisie thoughts and were rendered inert ideologically…. All state-run enterprises…must use whatever means necessary to maintain their purity and health, to foster their combat power, and never to allow any erosion done to them by the bourgeois class. 04–09–52 In the grandiose revolutionary struggle of the “Three Anti,” we must cut off the noxious sore and rotten muscle, as many as possible and without the slightest hesitation. Only when the rotten muscles were cut off can the fresh new muscles grow. Here, dehumanization was skillfully used. In appearance, the Party was attacking a number of bad conducts. In effect, the category was filled with “clients” destined to be eliminated. Under the name of eliminating bureaucracy, waste, and corruption, “the class of pre-Communist civil servants was systematically eliminated” (Rummel 1991:228). Consequently, waves of suicides occurred in the larger cities. As many as 200,000 people may have killed themselves and many more disappeared (Chow 1960:133). Still many others were sent to labor camps that were established with at least one in each of over 2,000 prefectures (Rummel 1991:229). It should not be surprising that the category of “Imperialism” was highly salient during wartime. As Chart 5–11 graphically shows, the USA, “American imperialist,” “Western imperialism,” and “imperialists” were the main constituents of this enemy category.

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Among them, the “American aggressor” and the USA emerged after the Korean War began, hence they are related more specifically to the war. By contrast, other terms within the same category showed up early and seemed to be manipulated for ideological purposes. For instance, the November 5, 1950 propaganda guideline of the CCP indicated three working principles: 1. To hate the USA, because it is the dead enemy of the Chinese people 2. To hold the USA in disdain, because it is a corrupt imperialist state 3. To despise the USA, because it is a totally vincible paper tiger (cited in Wang 1990:126–127) The Americans were portrayed as enemies, downgraded ideologically to inferior human; and, finally, actions were called for to beat them: 11–06–50 We can never wait for the enemy to mercifully grant us the time and environment for peaceful construction, but can only acquire them by firm struggles. 03–01–52 The American invaders…prove themselves not only an extremely vicious enemy of the world security and justice, but also an extremely hateful, disgusting, and lying devil. 10–17–52 As early as during the Sino-Japanese War, the great leader of the Chinese people comrade Mao Tse-tung has stated: “In this world, all Imperialists are our enemies.” Very little space was devoted to “feudalism.” The landlords, as a major target to be eliminated from the “feudalism” category, are now re-framed as the “reactionary landlord class,” and situated in the “counter-revolutionary” category because all “reactionaries” are necessarily counter-revolutionary. However, even within the “counter-revolutionary” category, the landlord class does not constitute a major cluster. The most notable targets in the “feudalism” category were the “feudal clannish thought system” and the “feudal marriage system.” The “feudal clannish thought” refers to the patriarchal social system still dominating the Chinese society at that time; and the “feudal marriage system” was characterized by early marriage, arranged marriage and marriage broker. Often, a woman daring enough to ask for a divorce may to beaten to death by her husband, parents in law, or clan members of either family and no social sanction will be imposed on the perpetrators. These kinds of events were cited and condemned by the RMRB editorials earlier (03–08–50 and 04–16–50). Since the Land Reform ended only a little earlier before the Korean war armistice was signed in July 1953, I find it difficult to accept the assumption that major enemies in the “feudalism” category had largely been eliminated that there was little need to deal with them during wartime. It is almost equally unacceptable to assume that the Korean War had absorbed the entire attention of the CCP that it had no time to spend on other matters. If that is the case, it would be difficult to explain why the “bureaucrat-capitalist” category

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received four times more editorial attention than the “feudalism” category. I should note, furthermore, the essence of “anti-feudal” was even more important than “anti-imperialist” for the Chinese Communist revolution. More likely than not, I believe the “feudal forces” such as the landlords and heads of secret societies were plainly labeled as counterrevolutionaries and weeded out by the local authorities. After all, why bother the moderate way of persuading these unwelcome people when the state needs all the energies to face a major external crisis?

Chart 5–11: Frequency Appearance of Enemies in the “Imperialism” Category During War Years As in the pre-war phase, treatment of other enemies did not differ much from this mode. In addition, we have to keep in mind that there were simultaneously four to five major campaigns underway in 1951 and 1952. It was not infrequent to see two or more campaigns mixed as one. For example, the 11–23–51 editorial accused corruption as the biggest enemy of the “Increase Production and Practice Austerity Movement”, hence the Tree-Anti and the Increase Production movement should go hand in hand (see also 12– 07–51). Some campaigns aimed at urban enemies, such as the Three-anti and Five-anti movements. Others dealt primarily with rural problems such as the Land Reform and the New Marriage Law campaigns. Land Reform had to be launched in areas where local order had been secured and only during the winter. Suppression of Counterrevolutionaries could go on all year round. Some areas could introduce a certain movement earlier than other regions.

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Chart: 5–12: Frequency Appearance of Enemies in the “Feudalism” Category During War Years Ultimately, there would be no escape from each campaign. Naked terror and coerced mobilization in campaigns was a matter of degree, depending on the victims’ class identity, residency, and/or sheer luck. Under Communism and Nazism, full agreement with the regime’s “party line” did not save certain groups from the revolutionary terror (Cassinelli 1960:89). Indeed, Cassinelli (1960) argues, it was not the dissenters but the “potential enemy” to whom the terror was applied. In China, the people’s democratic dictatorship can always redefine the political status of any class to transform them into enemies. The following two examples well-illustrate how different labels were applied to a specific target group by the CCP: 01–05–52 …because in terms of damaging our state constructions, the corruptive embezzlers, the Imperialists, and the counter-revolutionaries are the same. 02–17–52 The lawless merchants have become the enemy of the People’s Volunteer Army and traitor of our fatherland…

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We see disproportionately frequent references of the “American imperialist,” “Western imperialism,” and “imperialists,” with the high tide being reached between November 1950 and June 1951. Indeed, the RMRB published a bi-weekly “Resist-US Aid-Korea Special Edition” on Sundays. This special edition, still being published by the end of 1953, portrayed the Americans around the world with negative images. The labels remain unchanged both before and after the war. Both before and after this period, however, these terms appeared much less frequently, compared to the wartime. This pattern strongly suggests that the Chinese government was manipulating a preexisting situation to serve current political objectives. The “Bureaucrat-capitalism” category had only one significant enemy—the “bourgeois class”—and it was most prevalent when the Three-Anti campaign was underway. During the same time, the “bourgeois oligarchic robber group” was the second most visible enemy in this category. Outside of these two groups, “capitalism” received constant but comparatively insignificant editorial attention. The issue of capitalism would not be tackled until after the end of the war. Intrinsic problems of bureaucracy, on the other hand, have a long history in China, even without the presence of capitalism. This problem was frequently addressed by the RMRB in the general “Unaffiliated Adversary” category. My earlier discussions of the pre-war propaganda have pointed out that bureaucracy was a pre-existing label used to mobilize action during a specific time for contemporary political purposes. Here, the CCP was dealing with internal enemies, yet dehumanization and ideological dogmatism was still evident: 02–07–52 We would never tolerate the attack of the bourgeoisie on the leadership of the proletariats. We absolutely admit that some industries and businesses run by the bourgeoisie are still useful to the general welfare of the state and people’s life, and are needed by the people at the current stage. However, the management style of the bourgeoisie is tainted by such conducts as benefiting themselves at the prices of others, sacrificing the collectivity to favor the individuals, and blindly pursuing profits…we cannot help but to be aware of the fundamentally reactionary side of bourgeoisie thoughts. 02–26–52 During the first three years after the victory of people’s revolution, the remaining influence of KMT reactionary rule and the contamination of bourgeoisie thoughts have seriously poisoned some parts of our Party’s organic body and our revolutionary teams with serious corruption. Where resistance was weak, the spread of the poison of corruption has nearly collapsed the individual organs and grave danger will appear if these poisons are not swiftly, firmly and fundamentally cured by surgeries. The first example indicates that the bourgeoisie was considered by the CCP an ideological enemy although the professional expertise of this enemy still was useful to the Party for state building purposes. The second example illustrates that a pre-existing

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label was mobilized again to deal with a newly rising problem. In both cases, the enemy was destined to be destroyed completely to preserve the purity and health of the Party.

Chart: 5–13: Frequency Appearance of Enemies in the “BureaucratCapitalism” Category During War Years Wartime editorial focus on the “counter-revolutionaries” of the RMRB reached its alltime high during early 1951. This fact alone demands further exploration into that category. Among other things, the “Counter-revolutionary” category has a number of clusters. References to “counter-revolutionaries” and “counter-revolutionary crimes” skyrocketed between February and june 1951. In july 1951, when armistice talks began in Korea, references dropped to only two from 59 the previous month. In addition, during these months, the prominence of “secret agents,” “Chiang Kai-shek’s remnant troops” and, to a lesser degree, the “KMT cohorts,” occupied the center of the editorial limelight. Another prominent group was the “embezzler” and “corruption,” two sides of the same coin. This group was attacked most from December 1951 to April 1952, the high tide of the FiveAnti campaign. All other enemy terms within this category appeared only sporadically and hardly reached a significant degree.

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Chart: 5–14: Frequency Appearance of Enemies in the “CounterRevolutionary” Category During War Years Chinese historians claim that from january to October 1950 there were 818 counterrevolutionary events (Li 1990:75). During the same year, nearly 40,000 cadres and activists were killed by counter-revolutionaries nationwide (He 1989:39). Therefore, during the campaign of “Suppression of Counter-revolutionaries” 710,000 counterrevolutionaries were killed, 1,290,000 imprisoned, 1,230,000 kept under constant surveillance and restraint, and 2,400,000 armed bandits were eliminated (He 1989:42). Those imprisoned were held in more than 2,389 labor camps and many died there (Shih 1956:22). The task of eliminating the “bandits,” along with the whole campaign of suppressing the counter-revolutionaries was completed by spring of 1953. However, references to “counter-revolutionaries” remained low during most of 1950. A dramatic increase of attention to this group began in December 1950 and receded again in july 1951. The pattern of language use as described above follows the general development of the war. It suggests that harsh treatment toward the “counter-revolutionaries” was continuous but that the government manipulated the external crisis at that time to reinforce the mobilization of the masses. Overt resistance to the new regime was openly suppressed during 1952, especially in the countryside. Such resistance decreased dramatically in 1953 (Shih 1956:50, 70–71).

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However, enemy labels that specifically attached to armed resisters such as “Chiang bandit,” “Chiang’s reactionary armed forces,” and “KMT remnant brigand,” appeared frequently only before june 1951 and began to disappear from the enemy list subsequently. The KMT and “secret agents,” presumably controlled by the “American imperialists,” constituted a highly salient enemy in early 1951. Both before and after this time, “secret agent” was not a significant enemy label. Even in those months after October 1949, when the PLA was still fighting with the KMT troops on the mainland, concern for “counter-revolutionaries” was comparatively significant for only two months. It can thus be seen that editorial attention on this subject did not accurately reflect the existing social and political conditions at that time. This can be explained in several ways. One possible explanation is that there were at least four major campaigns underway from late-1950 and mid-1951. During this time, the same group of people could be cross-classified as several kinds of enemies. If this were the case, the bad elements would have been purged quickly. However, according to the CCP records, there were still large numbers of counter-revolutionaries in 1952. The answer lies more likely in the political motives of the CCP leadership. Remnants of the old enemies were numerous. Former supporters, such as the peasants and the national capitalists were turning into new enemies due to excessive taxation, misrule, and ideological requirements. Beyond the Northern border, moreover, there were truly strong enemies fighting with the PLA. In an attempt to win the battle both internally and externally, a scapegoat was found, internal resistance minimized through indoctrination, and mobilization for support continued. The CCP reframed pre-existing enemies through propaganda into an imminent security threat to the country. The people may have attacked these bad elements, either voluntarily or by coercion, to unleash their own bitterness and frustrations accumulated in the normal course of daily existence. Those who did not have immediate interests in the campaign were still mobilized because they could not afford to show disinterest in any of these campaigns. The language used and the pattern of turning words into deeds in this enemy category lends strong support to what has been argued earlier: that political language does not necessarily reflect the reality, but can reflect the perceptions of reality and the underlying political needs of the state leadership.

III. TARGET DESTROYED? (AUGUST 1953–DECEMBER 1953) For the past three years (1950–1952), widespread terror was enacted in the name of revolution or the people. Although all visible external threats to the revolutionary regime had disappeared, there were still domestic “enemies” to be destroyed. At least 800,000 and as many as three million non-combatants died during the revolutionary aftermath. What did the official propaganda say about it? What justification was given? Decades ago historians suggested that class enemies in China would face their destiny even without the war (Meisner 1979). That was a judgement, perhaps a sound one, which was not proven, given the information available at that time. Now, we can find evidence to support that speculation. Linguistic analysis of the RMRB editorials during this period suggests that earlier speculation had a foundation. For example, the 09–13–53 editorial

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indicated that the “American aggressor” was capable of instigating another war anytime; hence, the Chinese people should continue to fight with this enemy. No new enemy terms emerged in the post-war period. I anticipated that after the Korean War, official propaganda would shift its focus of attention. Specifically, there would be a substantial reduction in the frequency of those terms referring to military actions, mass support of the Resist-America Aid-Korea Movement, secret agents, and sabotage. Furthermore, because 1953 was the first year the CCP introduced the 5–year economic plan and the beginning of “socialist construction period” in China; discussions of practical policy issues would be altering attention on the enemies of whichever type. However, my analysis of the RMRB editorials did not fully confirm the above expectations. Among other things, no enemy categories disappeared, although some groups almost did. The most notable example is the “feudalism” category. To be sure, landlords no longer existed. Still, there were scattered references of “feudal organizations” and “feudal exploitation.” On November 19, 1953 (page 3), the Central Government concluded that the New Marriage Law campaign has significantly changed the fundamental structure of the society, despite the fact that “feudal forces” remained influential in rural areas. In fact, the “feudal exploitative system” was addressed again in the 11–20–53 editorial to justify that productive forces were liberat-ed because the Party had eliminated feudal exploitation. As a result, peasants were assumed by the Party to have held much more surplus grains than they have already recognized, and these should be sold to the state credit unions to support state constructions. Here, an old label was mobilized again, but this time for constructive purposes. In other categories, most of the enemy labels became much less important in terms of frequency of appearance. Categories such as “capitalism,” “unlawful merchants,” and “secret agents,” among others, even appeared more frequently than they did during the wartime period. It should be noted that post-war “secret agents” referred mostly to those accused of being active in the POW camps in Korea. The existence of these secret agents, though posing possible threats to Chinese troops abroad, hardly had any direct impact on the Chinese people. However, it was the power of the label, not necessarily the “labeled entities,” that was being pursued. The existence of enemy spies in the POW camps necessitated more propaganda against the “imperialists,” harder work to promote production, and greater effects to weed out whatever internal connections those spies might have established with Chinese society. The following words exemplify what the CCP had in mind: 09–13–53 The American aggressor mob…after the signing of the armistice, is still publicly supporting and assisting the Chiang Kai-shek bandits to dispatch a large number of secret agents to Che Ju Island and to POW camps elsewhere, openly holding captured Chinese Volunteer Army soldiers against their will…. It is not willing to accept defeat in Korea, and it has the potentiality of plotting provocations any time. In response, people of Korea, China and the entire world must be extremely alert and to continue the struggle insistently.

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Inconsistency is a characteristic feature of propaganda (Ellul 1965). One label attached to two types of enemies really indicates the government’s political intent. “Secret agents” no longer threaten the Chinese people within the country’s borders. Still, in the eyes of the CCP Central Committee, “secret agents” controlled by Chiang Kai-shek and the “American imperialists” were harming the Chinese troops, forcing them to defect to Taiwan, and putting them in permanent custody (RMRB 09–13–53; 09–24–53; 10–15– 53–1; 11–03–53; 12–05–53; 12–08–53). Patriotic Chinese people were, then, expected to stand against such outrageous violence (or imperialist conduct) (RMRB 12–08–53). Once mobilized, the people’s power could be directed either for constructive or for destructive purposes. Since the enemy category was originally constructed in a way that any of its “client” must disappear ultimately, the labeling becomes a self-fulfilling process. In addition, it was the ruling CCP that would make the final decisions that would steer the course of action of the masses. Therefore, the Party can continue to pursue the constructed enemies to enhance its legitimacy. For a time, the “actions” projected by the RMRB showed moderation toward the enemies. In August 1953, the CCP demanded the following actions against the enemies (table 5–6):

Table 5–6: Projected Actions Against Major Enemies in August 1953 Enemy

Imperialism

Fcudalism Bureaucratcapitalism

Counterrevolutionaries

Defeat 1*

Oppose 2

Transform 1

Transform 1

Transform 1

Oppose 1

Defeated 1

Distinguish 1

Drag out 1

Avoid 1

Counter 1 Transform 1 Drag out 1

*The numbers after each word indicate frequency of appearance of that word/phrase. The CCP probably became moderate towards its domestic enemies because the new Republic was by then consolidated enough to be immune from threats by minor enemies. Kuang-sheng Liao (1976) has discovered a similar pattern during the early stage of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1969–1979) in China. Employing multivariate analysis to examine mass media contents (RMRB, 1967–1969), Liao discovered that “…the regime utilized the denunciations of external enemies and the mass protests to generate support for internal mobilization during a time when the ordinary political system was disrupted” (Liao 1976:607). Moreover, it is highly likely that such manipulation of external issues for internal purposes would “occur more frequently during authority crises than in times of domestic tranquility” (Liao 1976:610). Instead of merely calculating the frequency of reference to a specific theme, my study tries to identify what kinds of actions were articulated by the authoritative RMRB. These

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are official expressions of intent by the ruling party. The avenue of investigation seems to indicate a conclusion different from the one given by Liao’s. Either by accounts of the CCP or by Western historians, the year of 1953 indicates the revolutionary regime’s full consolidation of power. Nonetheless, there was an increase of hostility toward both internal and external enemies. By November 1953, editorial treatment of enemies has changed as shown in Table 5–7. As we have already seen, the CCP expected people to take actions to back up their own words. The words “resist” and “oppose,” always radicalized to the extreme, indicate a matter of life and death. This change can be understood as a “word power” that the CCP had devised and with which it tried to manipulate the masses. Mao claimed, “I hold that it is bad as far as we are concerned if a person, a political party, an army or a school is not attacked by the enemy, for, in that case, it would definitely mean that we have sunk to the level of the enemy” (Mao 1971 [1939]:161). In other words, the way to demonstrate that the party has achieved a great deal is to provide evidence that the enemy was attacking the people, the party, and the state “wildly.” No matter how awkward Mao’s line of reasoning may sound to an outsider, it guided the Chinese Communist Party.

Table 5–7: Projected Actions Against Major Enemies in November 1953 Enemy

Imperialism

Feudalism Bureaucratcapitalism

Counter revolutionaries

Topple 1

Oppose 5

Eliminate 2

Overcome

Oppose 4

Point to 1

Avoid 2

On alert 2

Prevent 1

Overcome 3

Erase 2

Stop, hinder 2

Defeat 2

Extinguish 1

Recognize 2

Bet on 1

Oppose 1

Overthrow 1

Cannot rise 1

Criticize 1

Disintegrate 1

Repel 1

Repel 1

Rid of 1

Topple 1

Spit at 1

Crushl

Watch out 1

Overcome 1

Accept 1

Cleanse 1 Fightl Hinder 1

Warn 1 Can’t deny 1 Shattered 1

Sever from 1

*The numbers after each word indicate frequency of appearance of that word/phrase. The PRC was of considerable size and strength by 1953. Under CCP rule, the landtenure system was abolished and the landlords as a class were eliminated. Chinese troops fought the world’s strongest military power to a standstill. Domestic production in most areas had reached its highest pre-war levels. Inflation was reduced to 15% in 1951 (Fairbank and MacFarquhar 1987:77) from an overall rise of 700% in 1949 (Chesneaux 1979:17). By 1953, there were no visible signs of an authority crisis in China. Why, then, there was increased hostility toward “Capitalism,” “Capitalist ideas,” the “American aggressor,” the “American imperialists,” and “secret agents,” even though those terms

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had been withering away for several months? I would argue that it was due to the need for mobilization and the recognition that language could be a powerful tool to that end. Targets can never be destroyed completely, although the way they are addressed by the authority may change. For example, during the latter half of August 1953, the RMRB published four editorials that discussed such issues as college education reformation, job allocation for college graduates, elementary education, and short-term high school for workers and peasants (08–16–53; 08–17–53; 08–27–53; 08–29–53). In each of the four editorials, “the old system” was blamed for creating current problems. Even though the KMT was not singled out in these cases, it left no doubt that the old system could only be the one under the “KMT reactionary rule.” Neither for the destruction of an enemy nor for explicit constructive objectives, the old ghost was targeted again just to wash the ruling CCP’s hands off the responsibility of providing inadequate education resources to its people. This is precisely what Young (1991) described as the “defense mechanism” that would prevent the CCP from being challenged for its monopoly of power. The history of the Chinese Communist Party indicated that different phases of development necessarily created different enemies. One can even go so far as to say that the Communist regime thrived on the creation of new targets and the destruction of old ones. This has been implied by Marxist revolutionary doctrine. Marx envisioned a transition period between capitalist democracy and Socialism. The proletariat would be the dominant class in the new social order, and with time, even this class would disappear and a classless Socialist society created.

Chart 5–15: Post-War Frequency Appearance of Enemies in the “Unaffiliated Adversary” Category

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Chart 5–16: Post-War Frequency Appearance of Enemies in the “Imperialism” Category However, Marx asserted, “No social order ever perished before all the productive forces for which there is room in it have developed; and new, higher relations of production never appear before the material conditions of their existence have matured in the womb of the old society itself” (Marx 1978 [1859]:5). Thus, the transitional period could be lengthy. This, in turn, could result in unintended dilemmas. To quote G.D.H.Cole, “When…a Socialist party definitely devotes itself to an attempt to make Capitalism prosperous, in order to increase the bargaining strength and improve the immediate conditions of its own supporters, it is hard for it to avoid placing itself in the power of Capitalism. The conditions requisite for the restoration of Capitalist prosperity may easily be irreconcilable with the simultaneous pursuit of a constructive Socialist policy” (1964 [1948]:191).

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Chart 5–17: Post-War Frequency Appearance of Enemies in the “Feudalism” Category This seems to be the dilemma that the CCP was confronting in late 1953. During their bourgeois democratic revolution, the Chinese Communists had indeed bettered the standard of living of its supporters. Now, as they launched the first 5-year economic plan to pave the way for socialist construction, side effects of capitalist ways such as confidence in constant profit seeking, bureaucratization, individualism, and liberalism quickly surfaced. This may explain why, in July 1953, another Three-Anti Movement was launched again to eradicate “bureaucratism,” “commandism,” (indicates a working style of implementing policies merely through direct orders) and “violations of the law and of discipline.”

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Chart 5–18: Post-War Frequency Appearance of Enemies in the “Bureaucrat-Capitalism” Category IV. SUMMARY The general context within which a policy of genocide evolved and matured in China during the early 1950s, as elaborated by the above discussions, was that old troubles had not gone away completely, new situations arose and mobilization was constantly required. However, bloodshed during the post-war period was far less than during the previous two phases. This supports my earlier thesis that genocide requires a crisis. Even though political mobilization was pursued through the same pattern, genocidal killings became less likely without the presence of conditions that might constitute an imminent crisis. However, what actually constituted an imminent crisis was constructed through media manipulation under the control of the Party. Three tentative summations can be made from the above analyses. First, the enemy categories constructed by the CCP reflected the party’s ideological commitment, the general cultural heritage of Chinese society, and historical contingencies that confronted the revolutionary regime at that time. The landed gentry dominated Chinese society by

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controlling the land-tenure system and by manipulating clan organization and religious traditions. However, it was the CCP that first characterized this phenomenon as “feudal” and portrayed this group of people as a class whose very existence stood in the way of the Party’s consolidation of authority. Bureaucracy had a history in China almost equal to that of the landlords. Nonetheless, to associate the bureaucrats with capitalism was a Communist creation. The old regime was painted as an ideological enemy in order to draw a clear line between the Communist revolution and previous peasant revolutions. The Communists wished to build a new society, or a utopia, not just replace an old dynasty or old republic.

Chart 5–19: Post-War Frequency Appearance of Enemies in the “Counter-Revolutionary” Category Western Imperialist aggression as a problem for China was a modern phenomenon. However, its influence was enormous. In a sense, Western colonialism had given birth to Communism in China. It also prepared the Chinese people for a Communist takeover from the old regime by arousing their nationalist sentiments over a long period. To portray the Western colonial powers as imperialists not only reflected the CCP’s ideological commitment to socialism, but also reflected its political loyalty to, hence

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dependence on, the Communist International. Counter-revolutionaries were simply a product of the revolution. The Chinese Communists pushed their revolution for 26 years before they succeeded in 1949. Not only the Communist themselves, but the people who had been ruled by them, had experienced 26 years of KMT counter-revolutionary terror, which in itself could constitute another partial genocide (Rummel 1991). The idea of consolidating the revolutionary victory so that counter-revolutionary terror shall never return in itself nurtures terror on a massive scale (Rummel 1991). Second, the overall language pattern that the CCP used to attack its enemies does not accurately reflect the general social, economic, and political development of the PRC during the early 1950s. For example, the category “counter-revolutionaries” was used to mean different things at different times. During the last three months of 1949, or the first three months of the new Republic, combat between KMT remnant troops and the PLA were still underway in the Southwest region. The Hainan Island was liberated as late as April 1950. During that time, the term of “counter-revolutionary” was insignificant in the RMRB editorials. Variants of the KMT label were many, but mostly portrayed the old regime’s remnants as a hated political group. It would be difficult to assume that counterrevolutionaries were less active in the first five months of Communist rule of China than they were a year later. Yet, editorial attention attributed to this term does show this pattern. How do we make sense of this? With the advantage of hindsight, I would assert that the CCP leadership had decided to remove these unwanted elements from the society. However, using naked terror to pursue this goal would render the revolutionary regime no different from the corrupt KMT. Through the media, the CCP skillfully manipulated a view of the Korean War and purported evidence of sabotage activities to symbolically transform retaliation into an act of protecting the revolution and the motherland. The manner in which the term “capitalism” was manipulated by the RMRB serves as another example. On the one hand, throughout the pre-war and war periods, capitalism was of little concern to the CCP except, perhaps, for its ideological importance. By 1953, the proportion of the private economy in modern industries was reduced to less than 20%, from over 50% in 1949 (Fairbank and MacFarquhar 1987). On the other hand, individual farmers and handicraft businesses together produced two-thirds of the national gross product. It would be a big stretch of the imagination to assume that capitalism had become a mighty evil force to be dealt with. Why, then, did this label become so salient in late 1953? Could it be a mere precaution to remind the people that improving production and tolerating the “national capitalists” did not mean a tacit approval to the development of capitalism? Could it more possibly be the case that a fully consolidated Chinese government had determined to get rid of its last unreliable partner by portraying the bourgeoisie and the national capitalists as obstacles to the construction of Socialism? There is no sufficient hard evidence at my command to support either argument, though a combination of factors appears likely. The CCP propaganda was probably targeting both goals. The above two examples strongly suggest that the editorials did not accurately reflect social realities but, rather, reflected the realities constructed by the political leaders. Perhaps the CCP leadership genuinely believed in its perceptions of the political world, or perhaps they were consciously attempting to structure their followers’ understanding of it. The important point for this study is that the CCP leadership was committed to the

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assumption that the media could help them achieve what sheer brute force could not easily attain. Third, the CCP showed little mercy toward its enemies. Mao’s 1949 essay On the People’s Democratic Dictatorship made a clear exposition of this issue. For him, the army, police, court and other parts of the state machine are tools for one class to oppress another. For the oppressed classes, they are tools of suppression. They are violence; by no means something merciful. Even though the government seldom directly commanded killing; even though it proposed the transformation of the bad elements into “useful new men;” members of the designated groups ultimately died in the numerous labor camps during the “reborn” process. According to the 1998 Laogai Handbook, published by The Laogai Research Foundation that located in California, forced labor was an established practice since 1949. There are still more than 1,000 labor camps identified by name and location as of 1998. My analysis of the projected actions against the major enemy groups reveals excessive usage of destructive terms against all categories of enemies. I should emphasize, to “oppose” something, for the Chinese Communists, was not merely to protest its existence verbally. The party demanded action by its members. To be against the enemy meant to oppose and combat the enemy and to make the enemy disappear using whatever means necessary. As vanguards of the masses, Communists guided and coerced the Chinese people to think and act as they did to follow the party line. It was within this context that the list of “action words” served as an important indicator of the CCP’s expressed motive to destroy its internal enemies. Furthermore, it is against the background understanding that every Chinese government office had a parallel CCP party branch to “support” (read “command and monitor”) its functions that I argued that a “policy” of genocide was being actively pursued. Genocidal policies were initiated by the ruling party and sanctioned by the government. The party controlled the government; therefore, there were no governmental decisions without party resolutions.

WORDS KlLL—CONCLUDING DlSCUSSIONS I FIRST DISCUSSED, FROM A WEBERIAN PERSPECTIVE, THE RELEVANCE OF LEGITIMACY maintenance to this study. By assuming the position that ideas often set the course of collective action, although often under conditions beyond their control, I drew heavily the literature on “social construction of realities” to serve as the backbone theory of my study. The concrete situations that embody the content of language were: war, revolution, and requirements for state building. They also serve as preconditions of genocide. Then, drawing from secondary historical materials, I argued that a case of total domestic genocide had occurred in China during the 1949–1953 period. China was rarely used as a case study of genocide and case studies employing a linguistic perspective are virtually non-existent. The difficulty of comprehending a foreign language may have been a major problem of studying the Chinese case. That difficulty is surmountable. However, I explored current theories of genocide and discovered that the role of language in the making of a total domestic genocide has largely been neglected. Political sociologists could dwell their energy in the future on this major issue. As presented above, this study assumes a strong connection between language, state, revolution, ideology, and genocide. Sociologically, there is an intrinsic importance to an examination of the relationship among these forces. Writing in the late 1980s, Duara (1988) concludes that it was becoming increasingly clear that “there was no single factor—such as landlordism or imperialism—that brought the Communists to power in China; if there was one, it was their ability to mobilize along a range of local grievances: from wife beating to concealed land. One significant set of local grievances was a product of state-society relations: heavy taxation, abuse of politics, and pursuing offices for personal profits” (Duara 1988:252–253). To probe the state-society relationship linguistically is an attempt to echo what constructionist sociologists have advocated for years, that “the process of definitions and not the ‘objective conditions’ is the central concern” of social problems (Spector and Kitsuse 1989:7). There are other theorists of social constructionism such as Best (1990, 1991; see also Spencer 1996) who focuses on the content of claims as well as the broader cultural context in which the claims of social problems were registered. I would add, quickly, that no process of definitions can adequately be examined without reference to objective conditions, either. This study tries to take up an emerging theme in political sociology, namely, media politics, and apply it to a historical case. Through the presentation of the research findings and corresponding theoretical discussions, I hope that I have achieved that goal. Some scholars have articulated that total domestic genocide results from an intentional state policy that aims to eliminate tens of thousands of its own people. For the perpetrator such as Mao, however, the policy as such was intended to “purify” an ailing society. Genocide or not, the fact that millions of people were killed by their own government

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remains the same. For a social scientist, one does not even need to go into moral debate to enhance one’s substantial understanding of this kind of episode. Instead, to treat seriously what the perpetrators have publicly articulated and to explore the history of each genocide linguistically may shed light on our comprehension of the origins of this particular social phenomenon. Recall what Edelman has said about political language: “A strategy for analyzing politics as spectacle must begin with language that highlights the controversial perspectives inherent in these terms and calls attention to the social formation they conceal” (1988:2, 120). Precisely because the CCP wanted to create a “pure” socialist society that it constructed an “ailing” society. The Party wanted the people to internalize the idea that curing the ailing organisms of the society was the right thing to do. Once this theme became one of the threads that weaves the symbolic universe or the “condition category” of “enemy vs. people in a protract class struggle,” whatever harsh measures adopted against the target groups would not meet much protest. It is in this sense that I argue the CCP used the policy of genocide to maintain its legitimacy. Words is the lingual branch of action (Mills 1940). When words are situated in specific conditions and structures, specific consequences can be anticipated. However, perceived as a kind of power, word also has two “faces.” It can either enable or disable the execution of certain conducts. For example, the Nazi German hardly considered “transformation” as an option to erase the “jewish Problem.” Jews were dehumanized as germs that only deserve to be treated as materials. Thus, they were systematically collected, classified, exploited for labor, destroyed if defects (e.g., bad health) were present, and their bones were grounded into ashes to help manufacture fertilizer. Just like killing a whale, nothing was wasted, except a life. The dehumanization of anti-Jewish propaganda constituted “an important aspect of German’s self-definition” (Staub 1989:104), which enabled the implementation of Holocaust. Alternatively, I would add, it disables protest and resistance by the majority of the population. By contrast, the Chinese Communists proposed to transform enemies into useful new people, or even into friends. Yes, dehumanization was also part of the official propaganda against “people’s enemy.” Yet, the enemy was defined not on ethnic ground but on class basis. There are always class enemies inside the people that attempt to destroy the fruit of socialist revolution by corroborating with class enemies from outside. Hence, the need to eliminate the enemy is constant. just like the dehumanization of the jews in Nazi propaganda, the constant existence of class enemies and the need to eradicate them constituted a permanent aspect of new China’s self-definition. A constructed problem became an important part of the broader social culture. Those who refused to be reformed must die. Since the People’s Government has already shown the broadest possible leniency in treating the enemy, further tolerance of their disobedience can only endanger the “people’s republic.” By reframing pre-existing enemies in this manner, Communist propaganda disabled the will of the majority of people to resist genocidal practices perpetrated by the government. It should be acknowledged that different political spectacles, or frames, can compete for an audience in an open society. What if a totalitarian party, armed with totalistic ideology, dominates the society? What if a set of government-sanctioned discourses dominated the market of opinion? Media monopoly by corporate interests may not be so threatening to people’s daily lives in a plural society as in a society wherein even the

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exchange of unofficial ideas can be a matter of life or death. Whoever controls the media shall be able to shape our perceptions of the world through language construction over a period of time, a process which may ultimately “pattern” our response to certain media content, such as a constructed social problem. Imagine replacing the term “constructed social problem” with “genocide.” The media is not a neutral channel to convey popular sentiments to the leaders of the government, neither does the media manufacture genocide by itself. The perpetrator of total domestic genocide must be a state because it alone has the power and authority to conduct a genocidal campaign. A genocidal state is distinct in its capacity, not will, to carry out genocidal policies. That capacity comes not only from the state government’s ability to physically and culturally eliminate an unwelcomed sector of the populace, but also from its ability to neutralize the majority from resisting the genocidal practices. For the first part, bureaucratic organization and state sponsorship are prerequisites. For the second part, massive scale propaganda campaigns can be effective measures. The Chinese Communist Party has proved itself an expert in both areas. Over the past 50 years, this state had killed millions of its own people, for all kinds of reasons, by various means and rationalizations, yet it still managed to hold on to power. Though lacking solid research results to support this speculation, I believe that successful propaganda had played a very important role in maintaining the legitimacy of the government. As I have mentioned earlier, the bloodiest period of the PRC was between 1949 and 1953. In comparison to the Soviet Russia, China faced far more difficulties in constructing Socialism, but was less violent and bloody during its formative stages. How did the regime manage to achieve this? Political scientists and historians at times seem to agree that loud speakers and terror have helped to accomplish the job. Killing through terror is, of course, more readily perceptible, hence resistible, than killing through loudspeakers. I would not deny that “words kill” is a polar case to present the possible consequence of political use of language. I even acknowledge the possibility that the Chinese government probably was quite successful in relying more on the manipulation of language, and less on killing, to maintain its legitimacy. However, this is in no sense indicating my approval to actual conducts of the Chinese government. To construct certain status groups as ailing organisms of the society so that the government can legitimately murder them is not acceptable in any human community. Yet, the possible results that political discourse could be capable of bringing about worth our due attention. As Edelman points out,”…language is the key creator of the social worlds people experience, not a tool for describing an objective reality” (Edelman 1988:103). Theoretically, language use can be an important tool with which a government can carry out genocidal practices. Empirically, there must be hard evidence, such as institutional settings and archival records to prove the existence of genocidal practices. I have provided the CCP directives that specified quotas of killing the counter-revolutionaries. Archival evidence recording the number of executions of the “imperialists,” “capitalists,” or “feudal elements,” have not been released, although estimates of such numbers can be found in many historical accounts. However, through my discussion of the available historical records and content analysis of the RMRB editorials, I do wish to impress my readers: that the title of “enemy” can be applied to anyone at anytime. Mao had an idiosyncratic notion of “class”: as long as there are people possessing “proletarian ideas,” this fact alone is sufficient to confirm the existence of a revolutionary

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class (Meisner 1979:47). Similarly, other classes could be defined as such. Correct class background, loyalty to the party, ideological orthodoxy, or merely acquiescence did not make any individual immune from repression. Drastic measures against those class enemies were justified as a necessary step to complete and consolidate the revolution. To that end, types of enemies were created based on a combination of Marxist-LeninistChinese nationalist ideologies. The CCP launched at least five major social and political campaigns, in which the party constantly called on the people to fight against their enemies: “imperialism,” “feudal forces,” “bureaucrat-capitalists,” “counterrevolutionaries” and whatever (not necessarily “whoever” since human was not the sole possible target) designated by the Party as “enemy of the people”. The official views were conveyed, through the Propagandist Network and various other organizations, down to every street in the city and every household in the rural area every day and night. Constructed enemies were treated as real and this had a real effect: creating an acquiescent atmosphere for the implementation of genocidal practices by the government. Thus, words killed by the millions. During the Cultural Revolution (1969 to 1979), millions of civilians died because of this government-sanctioned movement (see Rummel 1991; Harff and Gurr 1988). By all measures, the time examined in this study was even bloodier and more devastating than the Cultural Revolution (Rummel 1991). What is happening now in Tibet and Xinjiang Province may turn out to be partial genocides. The PRC is now undergoing a social transformation far different from the one they faced 50 years ago. It is premature to know whether or not a revolutionary situation may occur in Tibet or Xinjiang. The crime of counter-revolutionary was formally abolished several years ago. However, ethnic unrest in Xinjiang Province was reported to have stirred widespread arrests and secret executions, resulting in thousands of deaths. A lack of information and access to the area have prevented the human rights groups from either identifying a developing genocide or stopping a possibly ongoing one. Under such circumstances, a linguistic analysis of the Chinese government’s older propaganda is relevant to the contemporary situation. It is highly instructive to see how the CCP leaders still employ the official ideology of constructing a socialist nation in legitimating its policies. Lessons can be learned for the current situation in China, an area that deserves much more attention from students of political sociology than it has received until now. Elsewhere, massive killing of Albanians in Kosovo in 1998 and 1999, perpetrated by the possibly racist Serbian government, could possibly constitute a total domestic genocide in the end. If we can understand the Yugoslavian language and conduct a discourse analysis of the official propaganda the Serbian government used to attack the Albanians, I am confident that many patterns of language use similar to those described in this study would be found in the Serbian press or broadcast material. Throughout the literature review, I have shown that factors such as xenophobia, ethnic discrimination, totalitarianism, war, and revolution, alone, do not lead to genocide. Rather, revolution, war and ideology jointly constitute fertile soil for genocide. That having said, even when these conditions are all present in a country, geno-cide may still be avoided. Consider Cuba as an example in which factors of revolution, war, and ideology were present but not genocide occurred. The world has witnessed partial and total genocide taking place in countries that share very few common conditions. It is, then, worth asking why these states chose genocide to

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solve a real, or perceived, internal crisis. The counter-revolutionaries in China did present a potential threat to the new regime. However, killing the defenseless landlords, religious heads, and former KMT officials was quite a different matter. As long as members of these “classes” behaved themselves, it certainly was not necessary for the regime to physically exterminate them. In fact, even Mao himself had reiterated this point (Mao 1949). War can radicalize domestic politics; class enemies are often viewed as the proxy for external enemies. When a new regime engages in or just sense the danger of an external war during its consolidating stage, the war atmosphere is very likely to raise the level of coercion and violence involved in domestic political campaigns, especially given the fact that war almost always leads to more centralized state power. Moreover, moderate measures tend to be regarded as ineffective to solve the urgent crisis. But, then, even the German Nazis launched an effectively propaganda campaign against the Jews before their implementation of the “final solution.” The heart of the move is about legitimacy and power. As I have already mentioned earlier, the constructed problems— “Jewish Problem” or “people’s enemy”—came to be an integrated part of the symbolic universe that people in those societies employed to make sense of their world. That is, discourse serves to legitimize policies. For the Nazis, legitimacy empowered its policy of genocide. For the CCP, genocide serves to maintain legitimacy. We now come to the point at which total domestic genocide becomes a policy consciously chosen by the state leadership. The perception of what could be the most effective way to achieve political control in the mind of the political leaders may have been influenced by their social or educational background and the general historical conditions confronting the society under consideration. There are other studies addressing these themes. In the Chinese case, after the leaders chose the policy of genocide, they recognized that such a policy could not be implemented peacefully. The policy required legitimation. Therefore, it is essential to explore what did Party leaders impress the population and how such a policy was framed as legitimate or even necessary. It is through an exploration of these crucial points that I wish to locate the linkage between political rhetoric and politics. What Mao, and presumably the whole CCP, had envisioned was a transformation of “the peasant into a modern producer with a commitment to the collective good and the elimination of selfish individualism” (Quinn in jackson ed. 1989:223). Mao’s statement is not necessarily a “dream,” or an intention to deceive the Chinese people. China needed to be modernized then, as many Third World countries do now. To that end, a “new people” may have to be created and a strategy devised quickly and effectively. Mao had accumulated rural experience and developed administrative skills over his years of guerrilla warfare against the Nationalist government. He realized that the old society and its binding norms and values could only be restructured through radical means (Mao 1927). Among other things, changing the language, hence the thought and actions of the people appeared to be both a desirable and necessary step to be taken. Mao envisioned the same utopia expressed by Communist revolutionaries in the USSR and other “people’s democracies.” The utopia might have been pursued without resort to mass killing. The Chinese case clearly demonstrates that the Communists were pragmatists as well as idealists. When the state leaders began to realize that the masses, as well as party members, did not support their ideals, or readily comply with their demands, they tended to make greater use of coercive power. As disillusionment and

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resistance from the masses grew stronger, the regime felt more threatened and it became more likely that the state leaders would resort to force to secure, first, their ruling power, and then the revolution. Nonetheless, it was the ideology of total revolution that had steered the political perceptions of the state leaders as well as party cadres, who ultimately were responsible for choosing the means to achieve the ends. Political rhetoric was used as a weapon for state building. Ideology in and of itself does not produce genocide. Lenin was correct in identifying crisis and ideology as two of the necessary conditions of revolution. The same can be said of genocide. For a total domestic genocide to occur, there must exist conducive conditions and ideology, and an intensive interaction between the two. What is noteworthy is that ideologies differ from each other. It depends on how the perpetrators perceive the situation and interpret the ideology. Again, linguistic analyses could provide useful clues to understand their perceptions pertaining to the problems and the solutions. Historical evidence supports the suggestion that revolution and war together produce an environment conducive to the occurrence of genocide. Moreover, with the help of the ideology held by the revolutionary vanguard, it is more likely that language construction justifying genocidal practices will be used as a tool of state-building and social transformation bythe newly established government. We can cautiously, but with certain confidence, add that this may be a valuable warning signal to spot the development of a genocide.

APPENDIX THIS IS THE COVER PAGE (SEE FOLLOWING PAGE) OF A CLASSIFIED DOCUMENT issued by the Chinese Communist Party Central Bureau on May 16, 1951. The following 7 pages was the resolution of the Third National Public Security Meeting, which the CCP regarded as appropriate and correct and urged the Party and the military to firmly carry it out. The resolution specifically instruct cadres to kill the counter-revolutionaries with quota: no more than 1 out of 1,000 in rural areas, and 0.5 out of one thousand in urban areas. Moreover, within the Party, the People’s Government, the People’s Liberation Armed Forces, the education and cultural sectors, the businesses, all religions, all democratic parties, and civil organizations, the counter-revolutionaries who were sentenced to death should be executed about 10% to 20% in principle and send the rest of them to labor camps. “Only by doing so,” says the document, “can we acquire social sympathy, avoid making mistakes ourselves, disintegrate the enemy and put the task of completely exterminating the enemy in a favorable light, and preserve massive labor power for our state constructions.” For those villages and cities where the quotas of killing have already been met, the CCP asks them to “stop massive killing.”

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INDEX 5-year economic plan, 112, 128, 137 Abandon gentry position, 17 Abolished all Chinese custom, xiii land-tenure system was, 153 counterrevolutionary was formally, 164 old order, 63 special power, 107 the feudal system, 62 the ruling class, 108 word blindness, xviii Abolition clan, superstition, 106 Accomplices, enemies and their, 95 Accumulation of grievances, 10 Accusation (meeting, 51) Achievement (revolutionary, 58, 64) Acquiescence (144, xxiv) Action(s) by government, 5 carried out deliberately, 24 collective political, 58 coordinating diverse, 4, 29 coreline of, 29 course of collective, 141 immediate, 16 language becomes, 14 lingual branch of, 142 mass, 28, 66 meaning and, 55 military, 128 of eliminating “commandism”, 101 patriotic, 18 projected, 64, 70, 90–93, 130, 140, systems of, 3, take accordingly, 115 thought and, 5, 147 thoughts decide, 49 to back up, 130 words for, 90 Activists cadres and, 20, 51, 106, 126, Activity

Index

142

government, 23 human, 40 Party, 111 Political, 44 Propaganda, 55 Counter-Revolutionary, 18 Actors verbalized by, 4 Administration centralized, 44 Civil, 112 regional, 56 replace, 101 successful, xiv, 49 Adult-education, 71 Adversaries unaffiliated, 94, 106, 110 Adversary unaffiliated, 63, 65, 70, 101, 114, 115, 123 Affiliation of symbolic values, 89 Africa, 77, 80, 83 Aftermath of civil war, 35 revolutionary, 45, 66, 98, 128 Against constructed enemies, 6, 15 foreign imperialist, 10 imperialism, 7, indigenous peoples, 33 Japanese, 12 reactionary elements, 28 the enemy, xvii, 20, 27, 29 the Qing, 10 Agenda, 82, 93 political, 23 Agent(s), and lackeys, 19 by a state or its, 36 Chinese, 13 propaganda intended by, 25 secret, 28, 30, 58, 86–87, 100, 106, 109, 114–115, 126, 127–129, 131 Aggression by a foreign country, 100 imperialist, 16, 99, 138 on the Indians, 36 Aggressor American, 114, 119, 128, 129, 131, Agitation verbal, 20, 112 Agitators oral, 122 Agrarian policy, 28

Index

Alan, Liu, 23 Albanians in Ksovo, 145 Alienation, xv Alliance of workers and peasants, 16 All-out war, 43 Alternative symbolic universe, xvi information sources, xix, 25, 115, media, xix method, 42 Ambition, colonial in China, 9 America, 36, 42, 58, 76, 79, 128 Americans, 56, 68, 94, 97, 119, 123, Anarchy, 89 Ancestors, 40 Annexations, 8 Annihilation, 36 Anti-colonialism, 56 Anti-feudal, 94, 121 Anti-feudalism, 56 Anti-imperialism, 8, 16, 94 Anti-imperialist, 17, 65, 94, 114, 121 Anti-Japanese, 56 Anti-jewish, 143 Anti-liberalism, 38 Anti-modern, 45 Anti-Semitism, 37–38 Apartheid, 29 Armenians, 39 Armistice Agreement, 68 Korean War, 114, 121, 126, 145 negotiations, 80 Arrests, 145 Arson, 10, 114 Asia, 11 Assassination, 99 Assimilation, 36 Association, Peasant, 52 Associations urban, 15 neighborhood, 46 voluntary, 89 Attitude, of intolerance, 41 Audience and power, xix defined, 24, 25 competition for, 143 Austerity, practice, 100, 115, 121 Australia, 37, 77, 80 Austria, 8 Authorities

143

Index

local, 20, 121 Authority, 48, 73, 89, 94, 109, 111, 113, 115 centralized, 55 crisis, 130, 131, 153 dominant, xvi institutionalized, xix of the new China, 105, 125, 155 Party, 88 political, xxi, 36, 66, 83, 106 subordination to, 37 Autocracy, 38 Backbone of rural order, 12 of Chinese revolution, 14 or propaganda, 72 of feudal society, 106 Backwardness of China, 12 poverty and, 109 Baikal Lake, 8 Balance of coercion and persuasion, 20 Bandit(s), 85–87 armed, 106, 127 Chiang, 114, 129 Chinese, 109 liquidation, 50, 127 political, 100 remnant, 99 war and, 89 Banditry, 89 Bankers, 12 Battle-killed, 33 Beijing, 13, 52, 112 Belgium, 8, 38 Biafra, 29 Bitterness, 79, 128 Blackboards, 71 Bloc imperialist, 65, 85–86 monopolist, 114 Bloodshed, 137 Blood-sucker, 63 Bombing of Dresden, 32 Bombings, 36 Bookstore, New China, 15 Bosnia, 21 Bourgeoisie, xiv, 67, 94, 126, 139 petty, xiv, 14, 16 middle, 13, 14 national, 31

144

Index

145

state, 95 corrupt thought, 114, 118 Brainwashing, 24, 101 Brazil, 32 Brigand, KMT remnant, 87, 89, 127 Britain, 8–10, 15, 63 Brumaire, the Eighteenth, 17, 45 Bureaucracy, xiv, xv, 4, 45, 63, 97, 101, 110, 115, 118 and waste, 101 army and, 45 corrupt, 49 eliminating, 119 problem of, 123 product of institutionalization, 63 Bureaucrat-capitalism, 63–65, 70, 86, 92–94, 107, 109, 114, 123, 124, 130, 131, 135 Bureaucrat-capitalist, xiv, 63–64, 94, 106, 112, 114, 118, 121, 145 class, 64 Bureaucrat-gentry class, 101 Bureaucratism, 46, 85, 115, 118, 137 Bureaucratization, 101, 137 institutionalization and, 118 Bureaucrats, 13, 63, 94, 101, 111, 138 Burma, 8 Burundi, 32 Businesses private, xiv KMT officials and, 63 handicraft, 68, 139 industries and, 126 Businessmen, 56 Bystanders, 37 Cadres, 20, 30, 44, 52, 54–56, 70, 72, 89, 99, 100, 101, 110 village, 52 qualified, 89 Party, 100–101, 112 regional, 111 Calamity, natural, 101 California, 36, 140 Cambodia, 4, 29, 40 China and, 36 Vietnamese in, 43 Cambridge History of China, 7, 55 Campaigns propaganda, xxii, 15, 44, 143 major, 43, 76, 95, 118, 121, 127 political, 67, 75, 112, 145–146 mass, 71, 72, 77, 79–83 Candidate for the perpetration of geno-cide, 36 Canton, 8 Capability to mobilize poor, 49

Index

146

Capitalism, 129, 131, 137–139 foreign, 12 to socialism, 18 bureaucratic, 50, 62–65, 70, 86, 92–95, 98, 109, 114, 123 burgeoning elements of, 67 Capitalists, 63, 144 bureaucrat, xiv, 94, 106, 112, 145 bureaucratic, 62, 98 national, xiv, 67, 94, 97, 127, 139 Categories people, xx class, 14 of propaganda, 25 condition, 52 of enemy, 63–64 Catholic missionary, 8 University, 52, 84 Cattle, 106 CCP action proposed, 94 Against the enemy, 91 And KMT, 11, 90 Became moderate, 131 Branch offices, 72 Capability to mobilize, 49 Constructed symbolic universe, 106 Creation of, 7 Culture, 40 Defined by, 14 Democratic phase of revolution, 31 Economic plan, 129 Enemies constructed, 139 Enemy hunting, 66 Genocide servers, 147 Genuine people, 102 Ideological enemy, 127 KMT portrayed by, 43 Leadership, 7, 17, 38, 62, 140, 146 Main concern in 1949, 79 Manipulated the situations, 13 Not enough cadres, 119 Perception of enemy, 73 Perception of the, 64, 96 Policy priorities, 82, 100 Power within the, 55 Prevent espionage, 114 Promoted its revolution, 15 Propaganda guide, 121 Propaganda, 69, 71, 75, 79, 84 Pure socialist society, 143 Quota of killing, 145

Index

Regime building, 113 Rhetorical strategies, 48, 56 Sense of crisis, 111 Sole authority, 106 Supporters, 127, 137 Xiv–xvii, 19, 28, 61, 68 Centrality of ideology, 45 Chalk, Frank, 32, 33, 34, 36, 37, 39, Challengers from below, 46 Changes language, xxii radical, 7 in material condition, 14 Changshou, 115 Characters Chinese, 65, 84 Charisma Mao as a, xiii Chauvinism, Han, 38 Chengtu, 50 Chen, Tu-hsiu, 10 Children, 21, 115 Chingyang Ridge, 18 Church school, 85, 89 CIA, 18 Civilians died of, 145 Clan, 105–106, 121, 138 Class(es), xviii, 5 Analysis of the, 13 behaved themselves, 147 bourgeois, 95 compradore, 13 dominated the other classes, 13 exclude, 30 exploiting, 47 gentry, 12 in Chinese society, 83 landlord, 15 native, 37 oppression, 16 social, 15, 31 struggle, 20 the oppressed, 139 upper, 94 working, 17 Cleansing, ethnic, 21 Cleavages, internal, 35 Clients of the categories, xx filled with, 52 patrons and, 88 destined to be eliminated, 119

147

Index

148

Coast, Southeast, 28 Coercion the uses of, xv and persuasion, 20, 46 techniques of, 24 an apparent option, 42, 44 attacked bad elements, 128 the level of, 147 Cohesion to maintain, xvii sustain social, 58 Cohorts enemies and their, 94 the KMT, 126 Collaborators intelligentsia as, 94 Collectivization agricultural, 68 and the strengthening of Party, 112 industrialization and, 28 Colonialism, 29, form of, 9 anti-, 56 Western, 138 Colonialist Western, 93 Commandism oppose, 101 to eradicate, 137 Committee CCP Central, 20, 48, 111, 112, 114, 129 Public Security, 46 Party, 71 of propaganda, 72 Communication political, xix human, 20, 61 directed, 25, 54 public, 42 person to person, 52 direct, 71 media of, 72 Communism, xxi the best society, 41 political ideologies, 58 and Nazism, 124 in China, 139 Communists Chinese, xviii, 7, 10, 20, 31, 49, 55, 88, 94, 100–101, 105, 109, 110, 114, 137 purge of, 11 Dogmatic, 14 opposition to, 46

Index

149

Soviet, 90 build a new society, 139 brought to power, 141 pragmatists, 147 Comprador class, 13, 86, 94 Conformity with the party line, xxi Consciousness awaking, 51 language and, 54 of the masses, 20 political, 15, 22, 50, 51 proletarian, 31 revolutionary, 49 Consolidation China’s, 5, 28, 48, 56, 130 in schools, 101 of authority, 138 of the 1949 revolutionary, 15 substantial evidence of, 68 Conspirator, 87, 114 Constitution interim, xiv, 62, 99 new, 28 1954, 47, 56, 68 Party, 72 Constructionism, social, 142 Constructionist social, xx sociologists, 142 Consultative, Chinese People’s Political, 62, 64 Contamination, of bourgeoisie thoughts, 126 Control of the “national capitalists”, 67 of the country, 18 of the mass propaganda network, 71 of the media, 57 of the Party, 138 of what people know, 42 of the state, xvii of villages, 89 social, 24 thought, 3 under Britain, 9 Coolies, 8 Corruption, 63, 97, 101, 111, 114, 118, 119, 121, 126 Counter-construct, 115 Coup, 29 Courts imperial, 49 Crimes

Index

immoral, 33 state, 34 counter-revolutionary, 99, 126 Crisis and ideology, 147 authority, 109, 131 CCP’s sense of, 110 external, 121, 127 genocide requires a, 42, 138 internal, 146 Criticism total, 39 Cruelty in the Land Reform, 46 of the Szechuan landlords, 51 Cuba, 29, 146 Cult of the leader, 24 Culture and legitimacy, 89 Chinese political, 71 intellectual, 44 Khmer, 21, 40 of Western bourgeois democracy, 16 old, 12 political, 23, 48, 58 social, 144 totalitarianism even became a, 39 Curtain, bamboo, 6 Custom, rule by means of, xiii Death destined to, 94 innocent, 68 matter of life and, 131, 144 of people, 5 the Black, 18, 63 toll, 35 unintended, 43 Decolonization, 32 Deficit, trade, 9 Dehumanization, skillfully used, 119, 123 of anti-Jewish propaganda, 143 propaganda against people’s enemy, 143 Democide, 5, 34, 36 Democracy as ideology, 41, 82 New, 13–14, 30–31 among people, 15 people’s, 16, 98 capitalist, 137

150

Index

bourgeois, 16 Denmark, 8 Denunciation of feudalism, 50 Deprivation by the landlords, 46 Despots power of, 24 counter-revolutionary, 51 Destruction confrontation and, xx enemy of the people, 45 genocidal, 43 mass, 83 myth becomes a tool of, 66 of an enemy, 131 of “class enemies, xxii of civil society, 40 of class identity, 30 of old ones, 137 of the Kulaks, 29 physical, 21, 37, 73 policy of, 31 property, 42 saving China from, 11 targets of, 93, 101 total, 39 Determination to overthrow the ancient regime, 9 of the Party, 49 of exterminating, 114 Determinists, Linguistics, xviii Differentiation class, 51, 52 enemies, 90 Directives authoritative, 110 CCP, 144 de-facto policy, 83 implementing the, 72 Directory drafted by Mao, 20 Disagreement among major political contenders, 16 Disaster The Boxer Rebellion, 10 natural, 35, 90 salvation, 112 Discipline on a recalcitrant population, 18, 56 the law and, 137 Discourse

151

Index

152

analysis, 145 and power, 49 created by the Party, xix daily political, 3, 5, 83, 84, 144 for people to use, 42 government-sanctioned, 143 ideological, 58 ideology is expressed mainly, 59 creations of, 73 serves to legitimize policies, 146 Discrimination, ethnic, 37–38, 43, 145 Diseases and warfare, 36 Disillusionment and resistance from the masses, 147 Disobedience, tolerance of, 143 Dissatisfaction, intensification of popular, 18 Dissidence, prevailed, 57 Divorce, 121 Doctrine borrowed from the West, 17 Marxist revolutionary, 137 Dogmatism, ideological, 123 Domination legal rational, , xiii, xv political, 5, 54 violence was a means of, 44 total, 95 Drought, 113 Dynamics of political process, 82 Economics, 12 Economy change of order, 23 directed, 39 domestic, 76 market, 31 national, 18 national, 94, 98 politics and, 12 private, 139 recovering, 28 Editorial RMRB, 25, 62, 72, 75, 76, 79, 82, 90, 95, 99, 100, 101, 105, 106, 110–115, 121, 123, 126, 139, 144 contents clearly reflected, 115 index, 83 indexed, 75, 76 that protested American, 105 topics, 82 amount of space, 79 Editorials acknowledging famine, 109

Index

153

characteristic of, 90 considered as policy proclamations, 69 dealt with economic sabotage, 105 functioned as supplementary policy directives, 83 not on a daily basis, 77 read to the public, 61 the old system” was blamed, 131 to rationalize Party policies, 111 translation, 25 Education adult, 71 during the 1949–53 period, 82 forms of, 10 inadequate, 137 indoctrination, 61 page 3, 70 re-, 24, 101 reformation, 131 self-, 99 Effectiveness propaganda network, 48 thought reform, 88 Efficiency administrative, xv moral over, 101 Elements bad, 52, 95, 114, 127, 128, 140 capitalist, 12, 63, 67 common for movements, 38 counter-revolutionary, 98 feudal, 94, 106, 144 for total domestic genocide, 30 in the mind, 5 landlords, 50 of the host society, 56 of the old order, xiv reactionary, 28 revolutionary, 62 suppress any, 19 unwanted, xviii, 101, 139 Elimination of constructed enemies, xiii of references, xix of the enemy, 20, 83 true targets for, 67 of private handcraft businesses, 68 by the ruling Party, 70 of the KMT, 99 of selfish individualism, 146 Elite PLA troops, 28, 113 revolutionary, 31

Index

ruling, 24 sources and ideologies, 58 Elitism, 38 Embezzler(s), 19, 87, 114, 123, 126 Emotion, xv, 25, 64 Empathy lack of, 37 Emperor, 10 Empire bureaucratic, 8 Encirclement of the, 8 Ottoman, 37 Qin, 8, 10 Qing, 109 Employment, of moderate policy, 38 Enemy biggest, 121 categories, 63, 64, 73, 109, 138 constructed by the CCP, 138 dead enemy, 65 definition of, has two fronts, xvii hunting, 66 ideological, 126 imperialist, 114 labels, 127, 129 measures against, 29 mercy toward, 139 most threatening obstacle, 18 of the people, 14, 31, 45, 60, 143 people over, 17, 48 people, 36 potential, 90, 123 punishment for all, 93 suppression of, 20, 99 targeting, 88 the most provocative, 106 to vanquish(eliminate), xxi, 93, 101 who constitutes, 46, 84 Enterprise every, 49 propaganda, 72 Enthusiasm for the revolutionary ideology, 45 mass, 48 Entities objective, xvi labeled, 129 Environment bleak, 109 conducive to genocide, 147 for peaceful construction, 119

154

Index

international and domestic, 100 Episode, 3, 6, 10, 36, 142 Epoch of imperialism, 16 Erosion, 118 Escalation, conflict, 106 Espionage counter-revolutionary, 98, 113 assassination, 99 and sabotage, 113 Essentialism, 41 Ethnicity, 5, 33 Ethnocide, 36 Europe, 23, 37, 39, 77, 80 Western, 10 Europeans, 37 Evolutionism, 50 Execution(s), 11, 83, 101, 144 direct killings and, 67 discussing the, 88 extra-judicial, 34 mass, 49 number of, 144 of genocide, 98 of policies, 35 on the spot, 63 public, 97 secret, 145 Exhortation, xviii Expedition, Northern, xiv, 11 Expertise in business, 67 professional, 126 Exploitation, 85 economic, 106 feudal, 128, 129 Exploiters, 47 Explosion, 114 Extermination of a collectivity, 22 of the enemy, 20 of internal enemies, 28 vernichtung, 21 Famine, 5, 30 man-made, 68 salvation, 112 was prevalent, 109, 113 Fan, 93 Fan-bureaucracy, 93 Fan-imperialism, 93 Fanshen, xvii, 52

155

Index

156

Fascism, 38 Fatherland, 98, 123 Feudalism, 45, 64, 65, 92, 105, 110, 114, 119, 121, 128 and class oppression, 16 anti-, 56, 94 denunciation of, 50 forces of, 12 identified, 63 in China, 68, 95 This republic opposes, 62, 98 Films, 61, 71 Five-anti (Movement), 30, 67, 100, 118, 121, 126, Floods, 109 Foe(s) foreign, 31, 43 friend and, 17, 83 Foreigners, 8–10 against the, 40 Frame of reference, xiii–xiv, xvii, 47, 52, 89, 90 France, 8–10, 45, Freedom(s) of the press, 42 to systematic terror, 24 Gangs, bandit, 114 Gender, 22, 105–106 Genocide(s), 44 episodes of, 35 Arminian, 47 an age of, 33 are absent, 38 becomes a policy, xxii, 19, 45, 137, 146 Cambodian, 40, 56 candidate for, 36 case, 36–38, 68, 141 Chinese, xv, 27, 59 Committed by the PRC, 35 conditions of, xviii, 35, 42, 47 constructed social problem, 143 definition, 22 democide, 34 determinants of, 52 despotic, 32 developmental, 32, 147 effects, 21 empower by the PRC, 21 execution, 98 fertile soil for, 145 formation of, 27–59 ideological, 31–33 killings, 33, 43

Index

157

language a precondition, xx, 47 legitimize, 19, 40 perpetration, 33, 36 post-1945, 35, 44 preconditions of, xx, 25, 31, 33, 45, 141 prevention, 21, 34 product of conscious choice, 45 retributive, 32 theory of, 3, 29, 34, 141 total domestic, xxii, 3, 21–23, 29–31, 44, 45, 56, 64, 141–143, 145–147 utopianism empowered, 41 victims, 4, 21, 32 Gentry, 15 class, 12, 97, 101 bureaucrat, 101 landed, 56, 106, 138 Germany, 9, 37 Nazi, xvii, 4, 38, East, 54 Germs, dehumanized as, 142 Government Central, 28, 55, 111, 128, Chinese, xx, xxii, 6, 8, 38, 67, 79, 82, 112, 113, 123, 139, 140, 144, 145 District people’s, 51, 52 KMT, 28, 94 People’s, xiv, 70, 113–115, 118, 143, PRC, 21, 28, 64, 89, 106, Revolutionary, 44, 45, 88, 90 Soviet, 65 State, xvii, xix, 4–6, 21, 30, 34, 39, 41, 42, 45, 64, 69, 71, 143, Totalitarian, xiii Grains robbing, 109 surplus, 113, 129 Great Leapforward Movement, 68 Grievances accumulation of, brought by, 7 local, 141 the peasant, xiv Groups communal, 22, 30 constructed, xv counter-revolutionary, xx discussion, 61 dominant, 54 enemy, xvii, 93, 114,–115, 140, ethnic, 37 excluded, xxi ideologically excluded, xxi legitimate victims, 21 out-, 66

Index

political, 21, 139 reading, 111 religious, 21 ruling, 55 settler, 32 stateless, 34 status, 19, 144 target, 35, 43, 45, 66, 73, 123, 142 unemployed, 8 victim, 30 Guanxi, 106 Guerrilla(s), 4, 147 Guideline, 29, 64, 101, 110, 111, 113, 119 Guo, Ting-yi, 7–11 Gurr, Tedd, 3, 5, 30, 34–35, 145 Handbook, Laogai, 140 Handicraft, 9, 139 Handmaiden, 38 Hatred, 10, 114 Health poor, 46 purity and, 118, 126 bad, 142 Hierarchies of lineage, 88 Holland, 8 Holocaust, xv, 4, 29, 33, 37, 38, 43, 47, 143 Hongkong, 9 Horrors, 34 Hostilities, 28 Humanity, 4, 14, 34 Humiliation, 17 Hunger policy, 37 killed through, 57 Huntington, Samuel, 23, 44 Ideas absolute, 41 and ideals, 49 and instructions, xviii and reality, 44 and social processes, xvi are free to compete, xix body of, 39 capitalist, 131 curing the ailing organisms, 143 dissident, 55 division of friend and foe, 17 Maoist imprint, 40 matters, xv

158

Index

new, xvii of consolidating the revolutionary, 138 of destroying the old society, 44 of exclusion from, 47 of people’s democracy, 16 political, 82 proletarian, 45, 144 revolutionary, 15 set the course, 141 systems, 58 that human wills, 14 that political rhetoric, 5 unofficial, 143 using language to express, 25 Idealists, 147 Ideals, 16, 49, 147 Identity new, xx collective, xxi cultural, 22 class, 30, 123 Ideologies differ from each other, 147 drew from Western, 8 genocide requires, 31 internalization, 39 nationalist, 145 no less true, 58 perpetuators of, 73 political, 58 prevalent, 18 purity, 40 role in the occurrence, 36 share essentialism, 41 states possess, 42 states propagate, 43 Ideology, 14, 31, 58, 116, 141, 146 as empowered, 47 belief in the new, 52 centrality of, 45 centrality of, 45 Communist, 28, 54 destroying the old society as an, 43 empowered by the state, 47 explain the way ccp, 14 expressed though discourse, 59 imposed on the people, 44 imposition, xix making genocide, 34, 40 manipulation, 58 Mao’s choice, 17, 27 non-coercive means to implement, 41

159

Index

160

of total revolution, 147 official, xv, xvi, xxii, 45, 56, 145 propagation, 41, 113 racist, 38 reigning, 23, 55 revolutionary, 31–33, 44 totalistic, 39, 144 totalitarian, 36, 42 transformation, 49 Illiteracy, 95 Illness, cure, 101 Ills, social, 17 Image according to its own, 28, 56 negative, 124 of a traditional society, 7 of enemies, 6 of Mao, xiii of that division, 15 of the kind of ends, 95 of totalitarianism, 24 sample, 61 that the CCP, xiv to convey the, 73 Immigrants, 8 Immolation, Chinese people’s, 4 Imperialism, 45, 50, 62–63, 70, 85, 93, 98, 110, 114, 141, 145 against, 7 agents and lackeys of, 19, 28 American, 65, 109 anti-, 16 epoch of, 16 in league with, 13 overthrowing, 12, 64, 94 pressures of, 17 Western, 8, 105, 119 Imperialist(s), 17, 85–86, 93 American, 84, 86, 95, 99, 100, 101, 105, 106, 114, 119, 123, 127, 129, 144, anti-, 17, 65, 94, 114, 121, 123 eliminate the, 94 foreign, 10 French, 65 Western, 12, 138 Implementation of genocidal practices, 145 of Holocaust, 143 of public policies, 47 of the “final solution”, 146 of the land reform, 115 Indians, American, 36 Indicator, of the CCP’s expressed motive, 140 Individualism, 137, 146

Index

Individuality, 88 Indoctrination all agencies of, 71 brainwashing and, 24 effects, 84 group, 52 ideological, 54 resistance minimized through, 127 thorough, 55, 61 Indonesia, 35, 37 Industrialists, middle class, 56 Industrialization, 28, 31, 68 Industries and businesses, 126 modern, 139 privately owned, 68 Inequities, social, 17 Inflation, 131 Insecurity political, 10 sense of, 47 Insiders and outsiders, 83 Instigators of war, 101 Institution propaganda, 70, 79 Security committee network in, 46 Institutionalization and bureaucratization, 118 of the new republic, 67 product of, 63 Instructions be issued, 110 concerning landlords, 99 press’ abilities to print, 111 to seal them, xviii Insulation, persuasion principle, 84 Intellectuals, 67, 88 Intelligentsia, 11, 13, 94, 100, Interaction among social, cultural,, 3 between history and language, 5 between ideas and reality, 44 conditions and ideology, 147 of peoples’ identities and statuses, 22 Intervention in China, 19 in the villages, 89 lack of official, 37 Intimidation, diplomatic, 8 Intolerance, 41 Invasion American, 97

161

Index

162

imperialist, 65, 85 in China, 19 of foreign capitalism, 12, 86 Iraq, 29 Italy, 8, 38 Japan, 7–11, 15 jewish Problem, 142, 143, 146 jews campaign against the, 146 in Europe, 37 in Nazi propaganda, 143 were dehumanized, 142 jiangsi Province, 11 Kai-shek, Chiang, 11, 28, 56, 87, 100, 106, 114, 126, 129, Khmer Rouge, 4, 21, 30, 35, 40, 44 Kiangsu Province, 52, 84 Killings and cruelty, 46 and executions, 67 genocidal, 43, 138 mass, 29, 30, 32, 34, 64 uncontrolled, 83 KMT, 11, 15, 43, 95, 107, 132 26-year rule, 19 CCP and, 12, 15, 89 cohorts, 126 collapse of, 56 counter-revolutionary war criminals, 62, 86, 98 era, 25 government, 28, 94 legacies, 118 officials, 19, 63, 67, 118, 146 reactionaries, 64, 86, 98 remnant bandits, 99 remnant brigand, 127 secret agents, 28, 58, 106 supporters, 11, 56 thoughts, 101 troops, 12, 13, 28, 56, 127 Korea, 68, 76, 97, China’s border with, 114 POW camps in, 129 US and, 79 Korean War, 12, 18, 28, 30, 67, 82, 95, 105 armistice, 80, 126 at its height, 79 casualties, 113 Chinese involvement in, 28, 68, 77 impact on the CCP’s, 110

Index

ourbreak, 100 PLA entered, 43, 66, 106 Kosovo, 145 Kuang-sheng, Liao, 130 Kulaks, xxi, 29, 37, Kurds, 29 Kwangtung Province, 111, 112 Labels existing, 47 enemy, 85–86, 127, 129 different, 123 Labor camps, 30, 119, 127, 140, 141 exploited for, 142 forced, 57, 63, 97 reform through, 62, 88, 99 to death, 101 Laborers, Chinese in WWI, 10 Lackeys, 58, 65, 85 Land Reform campaign, 56 editorials that dealt with, 105 ended, 121 full-scale, 99 implementation, 115 institutions involved, 52 Law, 28 Movement, 28, 30, 43, 46, 67, 100, 114 not be sabotaged, 51 resist, 63 ruthlessness, 67 team, 50 Landlord 5 million, 5 activities done by, 100 against, 38 as a major target, 119 class, 13, 64, 121, 131 defenseless, 146 elements of, 28 feudal, 62–63, 89, 98, 105, 112 history in China, 138 hook up, 109 hostile to, 46 KMT support of, 56 landlord-gentry, 106 landlordism, 141 law-abiding, 99 no longer existed, 128 proxy for, 12

163

Index

164

seems quiescent, 50 Szechuan, 51 to eliminate the, 97 victim groups, 30 yoke, xvii Land-tenure system, 7, 131, 138 Language (see Introduction, 3–6), 128 and historical condition, 19 and violence, 36 as mediator of genocide, 47–59, 98, 131 becomes template, xix capabilities, 5 changes, xxii characterization, 162 construction, 143, 147 contents of, 141 education and, 11 empowering effect of, 47 incapacities, 5 legitimacy-maintenance via, xv manipulate, 25 manipulation of, 6, 57, 144 meaningful, 71 patterns, 83, 110, 115, 127, 138, 145 speaks of motive, 14 transforming into meaning, 61 Laogai, 140 Laos, 8 Lawbreaker, 87, 114 Leaders CCP, 7, 14, 17, 31, 38, 62, 69, 75, 127, 139, 145, counter-revolutionary, 114 military, 10 Party, 88 political, xix, xxi, 5, 66, 110, 115, 139, 46 reactionary, 50 revolutionary, 45, 114, state, xxi, 36, 41, 47, 55, 56, 58, 71, 89, 115, 128, 146, 147, 114 totalitarian, 42 Leadership CCP, 38, 54, 55, 67, 75, 127, 139 CCP’s philosophy of, 110 Communist, 7 defense mechanism, xxi legitimate, 89 of the working class, 16, 31, 126 political, xix, rival, 90 state, 36, 41, 47, 56–58, 71, 115, 128, 146 values, 23 League with imperialism, 13

Index

with the regime’s foreign foes, 31, 43 Leeway for the revolutionary regime, 11 for the Party leadership, 67 in handling domestic affairs, 113 Legitimacy acquired, xiv, 19, 45 and power, 146 authority, 48 belief in, 54 claim to, xix culture and, 89 enhance, 41, 130 foundation of, 9 legal-rational, xiv maintenance, xiii, xv, 56, 67, 141, 142, 144 of Chinese society, 11 of revolutionary elites, 90 of shaping a new society, 98 political, xxii problem of, xvi to maintain, xiii Legitimation is the process, xv maintenance, xvii policy required, 146 three types, xiii ultimate, 25 Lemkin, Raphael, 3 Leniency, 46, 143 Lenin, Vladimir, 14, 17, 23, 41, 56, 145, 147 Liao, Kuang-sheng, 130 Liberalism, 41, 137 anti-, 38 Liberty, individual, 19 Linguistics determinists, xviii social, xvii Liquidation of bandits, 50 singled out for, 56 Literacy mass, 58 Liu, Allen, 23 Liu, Shao-qi, 20, 47, 61, 62, 64, 84, 89, 112 Loot, 10 Loudspeaker(s), 61, 70, 144 Loyalty, 138, 144 Lukewarm, 49 Magistrates, village, xvii

165

Index

166

Malaysia, 37 Management bureaucratic, 63 business, 67 state, 55 style of, 126 Man-eater, 18, 106 Mao, (Tse-tung), xiii–xvii, 4, 11–17, 20, 31, 41, 43, 46, 48, 56, 62, 64, 68, 79, 83–84, 91, 95–96, 101, 107, 120, 131–132, 143, 145, 147, 148 Marcuse, Herbert, 39 Maritime Customs, 9 Market, 89 economy, 31 of opinion, 144 shares, xix Marriage feudal system, 85, 106, 107, 122 New Marriage Law, 129 relations by, 89 Marx, Karl, 10, 14, 17, 18, 45, 138 Marxism, 11, 14, 17, 40, 41, 50 Marxism-Leninism, 14, 17, 56 Marxist-Leninist-Chinese, xv Marxists, 14, 41 Masses agitating, 14 Arousing, 16, 46 Class consciousness of, 20, 47 Confused, 100 Dealing with, 49 Discourse of the, xix Disseminate propaganda to, 112 Educate, 83 Enable, 25 Enraged, 94 Imposed upon, 19 Influencing, 114 Minds of, 31 Mobilizing, 51, 128 Of the people, 23 Participation of, 116 Party and, 48 Power of the, xviii Resistance from, 148 The course of action, 130 To condition, 111 Vanguards of, 141 Were “prepared”, 55, 61 Materialism, 14 Mechanisms of social control, 24 of major mass campaigns, 72

Index

167

Media Chinese, xix contents, 69, 95 control, 40, 42, 57, 115 forces coordinated, 44 manipulation, 138, 139 mass, xxii, 20, 24, 55, 130 monopoly, 84, 143 of communication, 72 of external issues, 131 of language, 6, 57, 145 of such ideoiogies, 58 of the topics, 84 politics, 142 psychological, 24 Mediator, language as, 47–59 Meetings information, 49, 71 group, 51–52 Megamurderers, 34 Meiji Restoration, 7 Meisner, Maurice, 8, 11, 12, 15, 28, 31, 41, 45, 49, 56, 66–67, 79, 82, 113,128, 144 Melson, Robert, xx, 18, 21–22, 29–31, 33, 37–39, 43, 47, 56 Memory politics of, 3 of fearful people, 6 Merchants, xix, lawless, 123 unlawful, 87, 114, 129, Message(s) convey the, 54, 61 disseminating, 70 receiving, 62 sender, 24 Meyer, Marshall, 101 Middle—bourgeoisie, 14 Middleman, 32, 89 Middlemen—minorities, 37 Mid-wife of genocide, 56 Milieu cultural, 88 manipulating, 15 revolutionary, 47 Militarists, Japanese, 114 Miller, Gale, xx, 115 Mills, C.Wright, xxii, 3–4, 5, 142 and Gerth, 44 Minority(Minorities), 30 alien, 37 ethnic, 57 national, xxi, 38 tiny, 15

Index

Misrule, 127 Missionaries American, 9 Catholic, 7 Mobilization coerced, 121 constantly required, 137 emphasis on, 38 internal, 130 mass, 49 mechanism of, 54, 72 need for, 131 of the masses, 127 political, 138 popular, 79 requirement of, 57 swift, 54 urge for, 115 Model of genocide, 27 operates, 72 small group, 88 sociological, xv Soviet Russian, 11, 14, 20 totalitarian, 39 Modernization could save China, 16 fruit, 9 in China, 8 road to, 17 state-led, 7 theorists, 44 Mo-jo, Guo, 10 Mommsen, Wolfgang, xiii, xv Monarch rule, xiv constitutional, 7 Monks, 30, 111 Monopoly communications, 39 media, 84, 143 of force, 41 on power, xxi, 89, 137 Moore, Barrington, 44 Morality and politics, 33 Mornet, Daniel, 44 Motives are words, 3, 5 as social instruments, 4 for leadership, 89 language speaks of, 14 of the CCP, 128

168

Index

political, 127 Movements created, 43 democratic, 100 evoked killings, 67 Five-anti, 121 major, 98 mass, 30 political, xxii, 38, 56 social, 95, 97 three, 39 Mueller, Claus, xix, 25, 54 Muslim(s), 9 in the Northwestern region, 38 Nagasaki, 32, 36 Nanjing, 8, 110 Nanfang Jihpao, 112 Nation, 28–29 -states, 15, 43 to sabotage, 65 could concentrate, 101 Nationalism, 11, 115 Nationalists, 11 Nationalization of all privately owned industries, 68 Navy, 7, 9 Nazi Party empowered, 38, 146 Nazism, xxi, 38, 123 News, 24, 63, 69, 70, 73, 76, 111 Newspaper analysis of, 6 cadres to read, 110 circulation, 61 disseminating its policy objectives, 112 makes use of, 111 Moscow, 70 of our Party, 25, 70 topics presented, 83 Nexus of power, 88 cultural, 88, 89 Nian Rebellion, 9, 109 Non-coercive means to implement, 41 Noncombatants, killed, 35, 128 Non-people, 57, 64, 84 Non-professionals, xix Norms, xiii, 147 social, 4 moral, 55

169

Index

Northeast, 11 Northwestern Region, 38, 89, 101 Nuns, 111 Obligation, white, 36 Officers propaganda and reporting, 71 military, 86, 97, 118 Officialdoms, 25 Organizations clan, 105 feudal, 128 mass, 54, 71, 80 of mass regimentation, 24 state-controlled, 89 state-imposed, 40 utilize, 55 Oksenberg, Michel, 69, 75, 84 Ong, Shao-er, 56, 94 Operas, 61 Opinion independent, 49 public, 43, 46, 86, 114 Opium War, 8, 16 Opportunists, 86, 114 economic, 109 Opposition political, 35 organized, 46 Oppressor, opinion, 85, 114 Option worthy, 31 apparent, 42 policy, 43 coercion is one, 44 only, 48 to erase, 142 Oregon, 36 Organisms, ailing, 142, 144 Organization bureaucratic, 143 clan, 105, 138 defense, 90 efficiency and, xv feudal, 129 imposed, 40 in the country, 46 in the rural areas, 112 mass, 54, 71 military, 45 of mass regimentation, 24

170

Index

171

of the American imperialism, 109 of the propaganda network, 20 of the PRC, 111 other, 146 Party, 72 restructured, 11 that disseminated CCP propaganda, 75 utilize, 55 Orthodoxy, 55, 144 Orwell, George, 57 Ottoman Empire, 37 Outhwaite, William, 24 Outsider, 83, 131 Ownership land, 8 railway, 10 Pakistan, 35 Parallel, 38th, 28 Participation mass, 23 political, 57 in discussing, 88 active, 115 Party Chinese Communist, 48, 64, 84, 95, 100, 113, 131, 137, 143, Communist, xvii, 6, 10, 16, 18, 25, 27, 30, 38, 46, 51 culture, 40 line, xxi Nationalist, 11, 15 Nazi, 38 peasant, 31 political, 90, 130 purity, 126 revolutionary, 39 single (one), 24, 33, 39 Passion, revolutionary, 90, 98 Patient, cure the illness and save the, 101 Patriotism, 18, 100 Patrons networks of, 88 well-off, 89 Patterns force a person into its, xvi instilled into, 42 of language, xxi, 83, 145 Payment, of indemnities, 9 Peace desire for, 11 struggle for, 51 Peak

Index

172

of that peasant revolution (1854–55), 9 Korean War had well passed, 43 four categories of enemy reached, 109 Peasants, 15, 16, 51, 111 CCP members were, 31 Chinese, 88 debts to, 63 empowered, 46 exploitation of the, 106 over-mobilized, 79 poor, 49, 109 rich, 51, 97 should be punished, 99 vocabulary, 52 Peasantry, 14, 31 Peking, 51 Peninsula, Korean, 12 People category, xx Chinese, xix, 5, 10, 12–15, 50, 61, 62, 64, 65, 84, 94, 95, 99, 105, 109, 112, 113, 119, 128, 129, 138, 140, 146 constructed, xx control of, 42 discourse for, 42 enemy of the, 14, 31, 36 45, 63, 70, 85, 123, 143, 145, 146, imposed on, 44 major interests, 113 non-, 57, 64, 84 ordinary, 24, 37, 40, 42, patriotic, 94 whole new, 57 Peoples indigenous, 32, 40 interaction of, 22 native, 29, 37 social strata, 58 Perception(s) Chinese population, 100 cognitive, xix leaders’, 110, 115, 146, 147 Mao’s, 12, 31, 105 of reality, xxiii, xx, 128, 143 of the CCP, 64, 94, 97, 139 of the dominant values, 84 of the feasibility of genocide, 47 of their own situations, 4 political subjects’, xviii Perpetrator, 5, 19, 22, 30, 32, 35, 121, 142, 143, 147 Perpetuators, of ideologies, 73 Persistence and construction, 22 unswerving, 94

Index

Personnel Air Force, 74 KMT, 118 military, 112 Persuasion coercion and, 20, 46 coercive, 42, 99 in words, xviii mass, xxii, 6, 55, 56, 82, 84 terror, xiv Petty-bourgeoisie, xiv Philosophy needs to be empowered, 41 CCP’s, 110 PLA, 20, 28, 43, 66, 71, 80, 106, 112–114, 127, 138 Plague, 101 Pogroms, 29 Poison, 114, 126 Pol Pot, 44 Poles, 29 Police, xvi, 39, 46, 86, 139 Policies against the landlords, 38 by the state, 35, 101, 113 foreign and domestic, 6 formed, 110 genocidal, xiii, xviii, xxi, 6, 27, 140, 143 internal, 28 justify, 21 legitimate, xx, 145, 146 of development, 57 Party, 12, 19, 111 public, 47 to hunt down, 93 to implement, 15, 35, 42, 45, 137 Politicides, 33, 35 Politicization, mass persuasion, 84 Polities, xiii, 39 Polity, 7, 23, 48 Populace change among, 11 disseminating policy objectives to, 112 language imposed upon, xxii participation of, 57 sector of, 143 to impose an ideology on, 44 Population 168 million, xiv Chinese, 100 entire, 69 for abuse, 66 genocidal effects on the, 21

173

Index

history in America, 36 impress the, 146 in control, 46, 49, 89 local, 20 over one million people, 35 recalcitrant, 18, 56 ruined the, 8 rural, 97 they govern, xx to mobilize, 71 to think and act, 98 unwanted, 64 wishes of the, 54 Porter, Jack, 36 Portugal, 8 Poverty, 46, 88, 109 POW, 24, 82, 129 Power abolished, 98 absolute, 57 aggression, 99 and authority, 143 competition, xvii colonialist, 93 combat, 118 contest, 19 cultural nexus of, 88 economic, 15 élites, 35 executive, 45 exercise, 54 foreign, 9 from being challenged, 49 legitimating, xix military, 131 monopoly of, 137 national, 71 of despots, 24 of the label, 129 of the masses, xviii on thought control, 58 political, xvii, 11, 15, 17, 18, 22, 101 state, 41, 146 to define words, xxi to make genocide, 5 two faces, 142 Practices Communists propagandists, 110 genocidal, xxi, 5, 6, 68, 80, 83, 143–147 media as, 24 of the CCP, xiv political, 20

174

Index

175

Pravda, 70 PRC, xiii, xiv, xxi, xxii, 15, 20–21, 28, 35, 38, 56, 64, 66–68, 74, 77–78, 82, 89,95,98, 100, 106, 111, 131, 138, 144, 145 Preconditions, 6, 29, 31–33, 141 Prescription for a successful revolution, 13 Press attention to, 111 in the United Sates, 42 material, 6 reported by, 113 to shape the minds of men, 72 Pressure cultural, 88 group, 37, 112 on the Chinese population, 100 Pride, national, 17, 113 Problems and the solutions, 147 As sources of hope, 73 China’s, 12–14, 17, 56, 105 Concrete, 112 Constructed, 146 Current, 131 Economic, 79 Of bureaucracy, 118, 123 Of the institutionalization, 67 Of their societies, 90 Political, 43 Rural, 121 Social, xx, 4, 142 Production capitalist forces of, 15 concentrate on, 101 cultural, 24 domestic, 1 31 Increase Production And Practice Austerity, 115, 121 increase, 18, 100 methods of, 50 of identical conceptions, 39 promote, 129, 139 relations of, 137 teams meeting, 111 wheat, 113 Program, Common, (interim constitution) xiv, 47, 52, 62–64, 98 Proletariat and the bourgeoisies, 90 and the peasantry, 31 dictatorship of the, 41 semi-, 13 would be dominant, 137 Propaganda, 27, 63, aimed at external, 58

Index

anti-jewish, 161 categories, 25 campaigns, 15 CCP, 20, 64, 69, 71, 75, 84, 139, 145 Communist, xix, 22, 57, 83 disseminate, 111 effective, xxii, 48, 52, 110, 144 feature, 145 genocide and, 71 guideline, 119 inconsistency, 129 institution, 79, 85 institutional product, 24 local, 5 mass, 53, 83 modern, 54 Nazi, xviii, 143, 146 network, 21 official, 6,50,82, 100, 128 political intents that create, 47 proceedings, 56 reframed enemies through, 127 state, xiii use of, 27 Propagandist(s), operational, 20 of government, 52 Chinese Communist, 110 Network, 145 Prosperity, Capitalist, 137 Prostitutes, 10 Protests, mass, 130 Proxy government, 11,12 for bankers, 73 of Western imperialist powers, 43 for external enemies, 146 Prussia, 8, 10 Pseudo-discussions, 50 Publication of conveying ideas, 25 Purification of one’s country, 34 Pye, Lucian, 7 Qin Empire, 8, 9 Qing Empire, 109 imperial court, 9 imperial government, 89 Quinn, Kenneth, 40, 44, 146 Quota(s) of killing, 20, 144

176

Index

Race killing because of, 5 alien, 34 black, 37 Racism does not lead to genocide, 38 Radicalization of internal policies, 28 Radio social structures that may influence, 24 and the speakers, 70 under government control, 72 Ranks and file, 19 confusion within, 13 order of the five major enemies, 114 reactions toward the Party, 88 revolutionary, 18 Rape, 10 Rationality, 14 Rationalizations, kill by, 144 Reactionaries, 86, and their agents, 51 are necessarily counter-revolutionary, 121 foreign, 17 KMT, 64, 98 landlords do not become, 63 plots of the, 18 to eradicate, 112 and their agents, 51 are necessarily counter-revolutionary, 21 foreign, 17 KMT, 64, 98 landlords do not become, 63 plots of the, 18 to eradicate, 112 Readiness to hurt others, 37 Realities constructed, xiii, xvi, xviii, xxii, 29, 40, 141 definitions of, xvii new, 55, 99 of the old China, 12, 31 perceptible, 19 social, 139 Realization of a better society, 39 of its utopian conception, 11 of land reform, 99 of Socialism, 28, 31 Rebellions, 5, 36 armed, 99

177

Index

Boxer, 9 Nian, 9, 109 Taipin, 8, 9 Rebels, 88 Reclassification, 51 Reconstruction of Chinese society, 105 of society, 34 social, 56 total, 39 Recovery period, 68, 112 Rectification and consolidation, 101 movement, 105 Reeducation, 24, 93, 99, 101 Reference elimination of, xix frame of, xiii, xvi, xvii, 47, 52, 89, 90 milder to any enemies, 68 of political signs, 73 Reformation college education, 131 democratic, 99 for the removal of, 101 Refugees, 109 Regime penetration, 57 Regimentation mass, 24 Regimes ancient, 9, 28 attempts to refashion, 30 Communist, 4, 14, 34–35, 41 imperial, 10 new, xvi, 18, 19, 56 radicalized, 43 revolutionary, 11, 30, 101 single-party, 24 sympathizers, 28 totalitarian, 6, 27, 36, 71 Region(s) administrative, 76 border, 11 military, 56 Northwestern, 38, 101 of China, 79 Southwest, 38 Relationship among these forces, 141 gender, 105, 106 ideas and social processes, xvi individual and the state, xviii

178

Index

language and historical conditions, 19 language and social condition, 4 language and violence, 36 legal, 89 political parties and social classes, 31 political, 25 state-society, 142 the individual and the state, xviii various kinds of, 114 white settlers and indigenous tribes, 37 Relevance of legitimacy maintenance, 141 of regime types to genocide, 36 Reliability of coding scheme, 65 Religion(s), 30, 88 Remnants of KMT troops, 13, 106 of KMT cadres, 30 KMT reactionary, 86, 109 feudal and imperialist, 94 armed bandits, 100 of the old enemies, 127 as a hated political group, 139 Removal, of unwanted elements, 101 Reports district committee secretaries, 112 of “models”, 110 of moving stories, 115 of uncontrolled riots, 83 were chosen, 71 Repression against dissidence, 57 immune from, 144 non-genocidal, 29 of dissident ideas, 55 political, 82 Republican era, 54 Republics of Yugoslavia, 4, 35, 145 Requirements for state building, 141 ideological, 127 of policies, 57 to rule a country, 44 Reservation, 29 Resistance by the majority of the population, 143 from the masses, 147 landlords died of, 97 overt, 127 the less, 54 to reduce, 19 was weak, 126

179

Index

180

Resist-US Aid-Korea, 30, 100, 115, 123 Resolutions, of the Third National Conference of Public Security, 20 Responsibility assigning, 57 of providing inadequate education, 137 social, 89 Restoration of Capitalist prosperity, 137 of national security, 43 Revolts Muslim, 9 peasant, 18 mention about, 83 Revolution Cultural, 44, 130, 145 Revolutionaries Communist, 99, 147 Counter-revolutionary, 5, 18, 19, 20, 43, 51–52, 58, 63, 65, 67, 68, 70, 75, 86, 95, 98, 100–1, 105–106, 109, 110, 113–115, 121, 123, 126, 131, 138–139, 144–146 product of revolution, 138 revolutions as work of, 23 French, 88 in China, 146 in the USSR, 148 line between reactionaries and, 17 revolution as a work of, 23 the new order established by, 91 to transform the traditions, 40 Revolutions are the festivals, 23 contemporary, 44 from below, 55 peasant, 138 phases of, 43 that lead to war, 30 viability, 14 violent, 55 wars and, 34, 45 Rhetoric CCP, 48, 56 mobilization can be achieved by, 57 of the RMRB editorials, 96 political, 5, 7, 19, 47, 82, 146, 147 to manipulate, 41 war, 11 Rice-roots, 88 Riots, 83, 106 Ritual politics, 24 administration with, 101 Ritzer, George, 18 Rivalries, ethnic, 33

Index

181

RMRB, 6, 15, 25, 47, 48, 61, 62, 66, 68–70, 72, 75–77, 79, 82, 83, 91, 96, 100, 101, 102, 106, 107, 111–116, 122, 124, 127, 129–131, 140, 145 Road, to the modernization, 17 Robbers counter-revolutionaries include, 19 group, 123 Roberts, Carl, 70 Rodzinski, Witold, 67 Rule by landlord-gentry, 106 CCP, 131, 139 democide becomes a device of, 34 imperial, 9 legal-rational, xiii legitimate, xv Mao’s, xvii Monarch, xiv of the Soviet Union, 38 reactionary, 94, 118, 126 to observe, 65 Rummel, Rudolph, 4, 5, 11, 33–34, 36, 39, 41, 119, 138, 145 Russia, 4, 8, 9, 16, 56, 144 Rwanda, 35 Ryckmans, Pierre, 39 Sahara, 40 Saich, Tony, 49, 55, 83 Sanction, social, 92, 121 Sapir, Edward, xviii, xxii Scapegoat, 127 scapegoating, 109 Scheme analytical, xx, 6, 62 coding, 65 explanatory, 35 index, 82 interpretative, xix School(s) imperialist church, 89 information meetings, 49 modern, 89 not attacked by the enemy, 90, 130 short-term high, 131 system, 71, 72 Schurmann, Franz, 21, 55, 61, 111 Secession, 29 Secretaries, Party, 71,111,112 Sector, unwelcomed, 143 Selden, Mark, 62 Self-definition, German’s, 143

Index

Self-education, 99 Semi-colonial, 7, 12, 95 Semi-feudal, 7, 12 Semi-proletariat, 13 Serbian, 145 Servants, civil, 119 Settlers, 36–37 Seventh Fleet, 13 Sewell, William, 45 Shalom, Stephen, 5 Shanghai, 9, 10, 115 Shangxi, 49 Shapiro, Michael, 5 Sichuan, 10, 50 Signal, warning, 147 Sikkim, a protectorate, 8 Simon Leys, 39 Simplification, persuasion principle, 84 Simpson, George, 37 Sincerity not as issue, xx repentance, 63 Single-party, 24 Sino-American, de facto war, 76 Sino-Japanese War, 9, 11, 119 Sino-Korean armed forces, 68, 114 Skocpol, Theda, 23, 43, 45 Slogan(s) Boxer Rebellion, 9 initial, 64 Nazi, xxi watchwords and, 54 Small-groups, topics discussed in, 84 Smith, Paul, 57, 58 Smith, Roger, 32, 33 Socialism commitment to, 138 common intellectual culture, 44 conditions for, 31 construction of, 49, 139, 144 democracy and, 137 foundation of, 28 Marxist, 10 materialization of, 68 not to be blamed, 41 sympathy toward, 11 transition from capitalism to, 18 Socialization devices of, 89 early, 37 institutions of, xix political, 111

182

Index

183

Societies ailing, 142 migrate to, 37 people in, 146 plural, 32, 37–38 revolutionary, xxi secret, 30,85–86, 105, 121 socialist, xv the problems of, 90 traditional, 7 with persisting internal cleavages, 35 Sociologists, 7, 32, 33, 42, 141–142 Sociology, xvii, 32–33 political, xxi, 39, 142, 145 Solutions final, 146 of genocide, 34 problems and the, 147 promised, 46 scientific, 56 sentence contained, 66 to social and political problems, 43 Southeast coast, 28 Sovereignty Chinese, 9 Soviets, 113 Spain, 8 Speakers and terror, 144 network, 70 Species, secret agents, 114 Spectacle(s) political, xxi, xxii, 143 politics as, 73, 142 Spence, jonathan, 7, 9, 10, 70, 109 Spencer, William, xx, 142 Spheres of influence, 8 Spies, 97, 100, 109, 129 Stability enhancement of, 42 political, 58 Stalin, Joseph, 30, 37, 41, 43, 44, 47, 56 Standard knowledge, xvii living, 24, 137 moral, xv policy and, 51 Stanley, J., 38 Starr, john, 14–15, 90 State, xiii, xiv, xvi, xviii, xix, xxii, 12, 18, 22, 23, 29, 31, 34–36, 38,40,41 crime of, 33 empowered by, 41, 47

Index

genocidal, 29 in Communist China, xviii leadership, xxi, 36, 41 power of, 41 revolutionary, 7 state-building, 56, 106, 147 state-led modernization, 7 state-run enterprises, 118 totalitarian, xiii, xix, 34, 39–40, 42, 57 Status groups, 19, 144 Staub, Ervin, 37, 143 Steinberg, Danny, xviii Steiner, Arthur, 49 Strain on Chinese economy, 79 Strata government, 45 social, 58 Strategies of political engineering, xv creating reality, 25 rhetorical, 48 Structure fundamental, 11, 128 grammatical, 64 institutionalized, 5 political, xiii, polity, 23 rural, 89 social, 7, 10, 13, 23, 28, 34–35, 88 Struggles class, 84 economic, 106 firm, 119 ideological, 7 relentlessly, 109 revolutionary, 13 Styles bad working, 63, 67, 118 Success achieved, 84 continuing, 46 dominant groups have, 54 fight for, 19 of a political system’s, xix of the 1911 revolution, 10 policy implemented with, xviii revolutionary, 94 Suicides, 68,97,119 Sun, Yat-sen, 9, 15–16 Superstition throw off, xvii abolition, 106

184

Index

185

Supplement, literature, 70 Suppression counter-revolutionaries, 30, 43, 67–68, 85, 97, 100, 121, 127 expansion of, 113 of the enemy, 20 rebellion and, 9 so-called traitors, 65 Surgeries poisons cured by, 126 Surrender, by the victim, 22 Surveillance mutual, 55, 61, constant, 127 Sweden, 8 Switzerland, 38 Symbols political, xviii new, 45 power through the use of, 55 Syndrome of totalitarianism, 38 Systems idea, 58 of action, 3 political, 25 river, 109 social, 38 totalitarian, xix, Tabulations Research Guide, 79, 82 Tactics legitimate, xvii The Two, 23 CCP’s, 90 of enacting policy, 110 Taiwan American aid to, 105 Americans not occupying, 94 and Tibet, 68 defect to, 129 Formosa, 9 KMT troops on, 13, 77 liberation of, 113 U.S. and, 79 Takeover revolutionary, 33, 35 Communist, 118, 138 Talks, armistices, 126 Tang, Peter, 47 Targets and major goals, 67

Index

can never be destroyed, 131 destroyed, 68 external, 58 for destruction, 67, 93, 101, likely, 35 new, 137 notable, 105, 121 of dictatorship, 64 of ethnic discrimination, 37 particular, 88 set by the central committee, 111 the choice of, 83 the first, 118 would continue to exist, 47 Tariff, Chinese, 9 Tasmania, 37 Taxation excessive, 127, 141 Tax-farmers, 89 Temple, Robert, 7 Tensions in domestic politics, 67 Terminology CCP, 13, 84 Communist, 83 from sciences, 54 ideological, 14 the only source for, 3 Terror controlled, 46 counter-revolutionary, 138 do the job, xiv naked, 121, 139 political, 82 reign of, xxi, 128 reported, 83 revolutionary, 29, 43–44, 123 spread, 32 state, xxii, 90 systematic, 24 willingness to use, 38 Terrorist, American imperialist, 65 Terry, Herbert, 42 Texas, 36, 74 Theaters, 72 Thoughts and actions, 42, 99 bad, 93 bourgeoisie, 118, 126 could be enemies, 88 decide actions, 49 in one form or another, 55 KMT, 101

186

Index

of the mass, 52 put into action, 56 remnant, 94 Threads that weaves the symbolic universe, 142 Threats potential, 46, 100, 129 external, 128 immune from, 130 Tianjin, 111 Tibet, 8, 68 Tide, the high, 79, 123, 126 Tiger man-eating, 18, 106, 109 paper, 119 Timor, East, 29 Tolerance of pluralism, 36 of their disobedience, 143 Tormey, Simon, 24, 39, 41 Torture, 83 Totalitarianism, 23, 24, 38–42, 57, 145 Townsend, james, 49, 57 Trade deficit, 9 Traditions feudal social, 85 religious, 138 transform, 40 Traitors authority use, 66 by the Soviet government, 65 of our fatherland, 123 of revolution, 11 Tranquility, domestic, 130 Transformation as an option, 142 be rendered, 19 enemies be opposed through, 93 ideological, 67 in the polity, 23 of society, 50 of the bad elements, 140 of the ideology, 49, 67 of the peasant, 146 polity’s structure, 23 revolutionary, 36 social, 145, 147 vanish through, 73, 93 Transition from capitalism to socialism, 18 period, 28, 68, 137 Transportation system, 61 Trans-Siberian railway, 8

187

Index

188

Treason against the will of the people, 45 to the fatherland, 98 Treaty(ies) ports, 8 unfair, 9 Three-anti Movement, 97, 100, 110, 118, 121, 123, 137 Trial public, 46, 63 little mention about, 83 trial-and-error, 88 Tribes coercing, 36 Ethnic, 38 Indigenous, 37 Rain forest, 32 Troop, 85–87 American, 68 Chiang Kai-shek’s, 126 Chinese elite, 113 demobilization of, 67 enemy, 85 expand, 11 foreign, 9, 10 KMT, 12, 13, 56, 77, 138 PLA, 28, 129, 131 United Nations allied, 114 Volunteer, 112 Trouble-makers, 57 Truce, permanent, 68 Turkey, 37 Typology, created by Fein, 33 Tyrant(s) country, 19 local, 50, 52, 87, 89 Uganda, 35 UK, 12, 85, 91, 114 Ukrainians, 30, 38 Uncertainty of meanings, xxi UNGC, 21 Unification national, 31 of China, xiv Union, Soviet, xxi, 4, 35, 38–39 Unions, credit, 129 Universe(s) development of, 14 linguistic, 66 moral, xx, 30, 47

Index

189

symbolic, xvi–xviii, 25, 48, 52, 89, 105, 142, 146 State-sanctioned, 48 Universe-maintenance, xvi Upheavals, class, 23 USA, 12, 114, 119 USSR, xxi, 4, 31, 41, 47, 76, 77, 79, 80, 147 US-UK, 85, 114 Utopia as a genuine possibility, 46 construct, 55,138 facilitating a, 42 Mao envisioned, 147 Utopianism empowered, 41 Validity, knowledge, xvi Van den Berghe, 37 Vanguards Communist, 15 Chinese revolutionary, 98 of the masses, 140 Vermin, 66 Victims already be subdued, 22 class identity, 123 groups, 30 legitimate, 21 middlemen minorities, 37 number, 5, 34, 35 of ideological genocide, 32 state governments murdered, 4 types, 32 Vietnamese, 29, 30, 43, 64 Violence appropriation of the land, 37 Coercion and, 146 Ideological acceptance of, 39 Language and, 36 Outrageous, 129 Revolution involved, 44 Stress on, 38 Suppression are, 140 Use of, 43 Vocabularies carefully chosen, 55 internalized, 54 of motives, 3, 4 typical, 5 Voluntarism, 38 Volunteer army, 100, 112, 123, 129

Index

Walt, Stephen M., 44, 47 Wang, Kiang-min, xix, 113 Warfare diseases and, 36 political, 57, 83 media coverage of, 82 guerrilla, 147 Warlords, 10, 13,85, 94, 105, War-mongers, American imperialist, 65 War-prevention, 34 Wars civil, 35, 43, 100 continue to play, 10 deaths, 35 foreign and domestic, 33, 34 human cost of, 5 revolutions and, 30 straws that broke the camel’s back, 9 World, 23 Wartime, 43, 65, 114, 119, 121, 123, 126, 129 Wasburn, Philo, xv, 24, 25, 58, Wastefulness, 115, 118, Watchwords, 54 Water control, 88 Weapons available to the state, xxi monopoly, 39 not all, 43 Weber, Max, xiii, xv, 44, 70, Weberian perspective, xv, 141 Wha, Hu, 20, 100 Wheat flooded, 109 production, 113 Whiting, Allen, 12, 66 Winter Security Services, 115 Womb of the old society, 137 Women as chattels, xvii rights, 95 inequality between men and, 106 Word(s) blindness, xvii can be an aid, xiii do not become acts, 55 empowering deeds, 46 has two faces, 142 lingual branch of action, 142 of action, 93, 140 of motives, 4 power, 130 substance of, xxi

190

Index

support the killing, xxii, 52, 59 used by the CCP, 69 used to empower, 21, 46 words-mediated actions, xvii work, xvii Workers peasants and, 16 members, 31 news, 111 school for, 131 Worldview change of, xix official, xvii Wu, Sung, 18 Xinjiang Province, 145 Yalu River, 112 Yangzi Valley, 8 Yao, Hsu, 113

191