As someone engaged in research on massacres that occurred during China’s Cultural Revolution, I am happy to write a preface for Tan Hecheng’s book, not only because it is an outstanding record that reinforces the Chinese people’s collective memory of the Cultural Revolution, but even more so because it provides a powerful deconstruction of Mao Zedong’s mythos of peasant revolution.
Mao’s peasant movement is undoubtedly a quintessential element of the mythos of the Chinese Communist Revolution. In his early years, Mao advocated the Hunan peasant revolution of the Northern Expedition era and directed training for the Guangzhou peasant movement, and he later took special delight in claiming that it was his understanding of peasant issues that ultimately led to his victory over Chiang Kai-shek. The first political campaign after the founding of the People’s Republic was the Land Reform movement, which set the first cornerstone for the new China. Although victory does not always go to the just, history has almost always been written by the victors. That is why the injustice and inhumanity of Mao’s peasant movement mythos has seldom received the challenge it deserves from the academic or even the dissident community.
At first glance, it would appear that Tan’s firsthand investigative record of what occurred in Hunan’s Dao County (Daoxian) and its environs from August to October 1967 has nothing to do with Mao’s peasant movement. It is hardly a coincidence, however, that this tragic incident occurred in Hunan, and that many of its organizers and perpetrators declared that they were imitating the peasant revolution that Mao led in that province a half century earlier, and referred to their actions as a “second Land Reform.” Tan Hecheng’s massive record of blood and tears thus presents the reader with a very simple and convincing inverse logic: if the spillover from Mao’s peasant movement could cause such catastrophic lawlessness and terror in peacetime a half century later, during the Cultural Revolution, how could it claim even the most basic humanity and justice in its original manifestation during wartime and then as “violent land reform” at the dawn of the People’s Republic?
One of the pillars of the revolutionary mythos that Tan Hecheng deconstructs is that of the legitimacy of struggle against the “class enemy” (landlords, rich peasants, and their offspring) and the justice of their physical extermination. The Daoxian massacre resulted in 9,093 deaths by unnatural causes, and around 90 percent of the victims were landlords and rich peasants or their offspring. According to a “conservative estimate” that the American scholar Yang Su arrived at on the basis of figures published in 3,000 county gazetteers, some 750,000 to 1.5 million people died of unnatural causes through the phenomenon of “collective killings” that became pervasive in the Chinese countryside during the Cultural Revolution, and the majority of these victims were “black elements” and their offspring. Although the killers of Daoxian used all sorts of pretexts, claiming that “landlords and rich peasants were joining the rebel faction to prepare for an insurrection” with the intention of “killing poor and lower-middle peasants,” the facts have proven that this was a complete fabrication and falsehood.
Tan Hecheng’s investigation shows us that “black elements” and their offspring were an underclass suffering horrendous social bias who had become so disempowered under the long-term dictatorship of the proletariat that even as they faced their deaths, they didn’t dare ask the simple question, “Why do you want to kill me?” Furthermore, “the ages of victims ranged from 78 years to ten days old.” There is no justification, whether in international law, in China’s own laws, or even in the superficial policies of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), for killing unarmed and peaceful citizens, not to mention women, the elderly, and children. For a long time, there was a popular saying in China’s official and even academic circles that “everyone made mistakes” during the Cultural Revolution. After reading Tan Hecheng’s record, however, the reader will quickly realize that there was a social grouping of at least hundreds of thousands of people—the black elements—who never did anything wrong during the Cultural Revolution; they were victims, pure and simple. In my view, the fault that can be found with them is that in facing this cataclysmic slaughter, they never rose up in resistance to protect the lives and rights of themselves and their families.
The second pillar of the revolutionary mythos that Tan Hecheng deconstructs is the sacredness of class struggle. His investigation shows that many of the “poor and lower-middle peasant” killers had previous histories of hooliganism, graft, pillage, rape, and acts of sadism, and that they acted not out of some glorious revolutionary ideal but out of naked lust, rapacity, and evil. Furthermore, around 11 percent of the victims were themselves “poor and lower-middle peasants” who had previously offended their killers in political campaigns or through some kind of financial dispute.
It is worth mentioning that according to the internal documents revealed by Tan, this terrifying incident involved about half of all of Daoxian’s cadres and CCP members. For a party and regime that have always extolled their “communist ethics,” this intense irony lays bare the bloodthirsty nature of the revolutionary mythos.
Incidents such as the Daoxian massacre have often been depicted as “spontaneous movements” by the masses that spun out of control. Yet, Tan’s in-depth investigation provides ironclad evidence that there were hardly any instances of spontaneous killing among the “poor and lower-middle peasants.” Rather, in every case there is evidence of instigation by cadres and People’s Armed Forces officers. Furthermore, most of those who directly participated in the killings were militiamen whose brutality was rewarded with extra allowances and work points from their production teams. Clearly, the Daoxian massacre and the many other notorious slaughters of the Cultural Revolution were results and extension of the actions of the Chinese Communist state machinery.
Given that the organizers and perpetrators saw themselves as engaging in a “second Land Reform,” the author felt compelled to carry out even more in-depth investigation and comparison, which helps the reader perceive the violence in Daoxian as a continuation and development of the earlier Land Reform movement. As during this movement, killing orders were issued at rallies by “people’s courts” and were carried out through savage means by ordinary people. Some killers openly referenced the “Land Reform experience” by demanding that their victims hand over “movable assets” allegedly hidden away during the first Land Reform movement, and dividing the spoils pillaged from victims’ homes.
Tan Hecheng’s investigation goes even further back to investigate how victims came to be designated “landlords” or “rich peasants” during the first Land Reform movement. He finds that these people were not the kind of tyrannical landlords depicted in revolutionary operas, but that they were hard-working, law-abiding people whose assets technically qualified them as members of the rural middle class. I believe that after reading Tan’s book, every reader with a sense of conscience will understand the injustice and inhumanity of the Chinese Communist revolution and will recognize the innately bloodthirsty quality of Mao’s revolutionary mythos.
Regrettably, mainland China still has many people loyal to Mao and his revolution, and Tan’s investigation tells us that some of these Maoists were the killers in the Daoxian massacre. In May 1984—eight years after Mao’s death—China’s new leadership decided to send a task force to Daoxian to investigate this shocking incident. “As soon as the Task Force arrived, it was surrounded by opposing voices. … Some said, ‘Chairman Mao is dead, and the landlord’s restitution corps has arrived!’ Some said, ‘What are you doing and why are you speaking for the landlords and rich peasants?’ Some went hungry and sleepless as they wailed, ‘Chairman Mao, Chairman Mao! Come back and save us!’ Some even poisoned or hanged themselves in protest.” This abnormal phenomenon presents the reader with a simple and compelling logic: if mainland China does not thoroughly denounce Mao Zedong’s revolutionary theory and deconstruct the mythos of his peasant movement, China could someday experience another Cultural Revolution and further tragedy on the scale of the Daoxian massacre.
We must be deeply grateful for the courage of Tan Hecheng. Although living in mainland China in an environment bereft of freedom of expression, he has provided the world with this outstanding record of historical truth and a monumental subversion of the revolutionary mythos.
Song Yongyi
(librarian and professor at John F. Kennedy Memorial Library of California State University)