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Today is the birthday of Rudyard Kipling (born December 30, 1865). Like most people these days, I’m not wild about Kipling’s colonialist baggage, but I do like this quote: “If history were told in the form of stories it would never be forgotten.” Something to think about as I write another chapter of the dissertation and prepare my lectures for next semester. I’m not a huge fan of the RFA and I rarely, if ever, link to it but this piece written by Bao Tong is an interesting take on the events of the pivotal 3rd Plenary Session of the 11th Party Congress. Bao Tong’s account departs from the triumphalist narrative of Deng Xiaoping kicking open the doors of reform and launching the country on a trajectory of modernization and development. According to Bao Tong’s version, reform was not on Deng’s original agenda, rather what made this moment truly special was the way in which the rank-and-file members of the Central Committee, following the lead of Hu Yaobang and Chen Yun, upset the apple cart. We were looking ahead to modernization. But after Chen Yun and Hu Yaobang caused trouble, the members of the Party Central Committee kicked up a fuss en masse, overturning Hua and Deng’s planned framework. Pretty soon, everyone had turned their attention to talking about the past, and then the debates came thick and fast. What were they talking about? They were talking about the Cultural Revolution, the Lushan meeting, the unresolved “political cases,” and Mao Zedong. From the point of view of Chairman Hua and vice-chairman Deng, I’ve been taking some time going through December articles and posts on a few of my favorite sites and ran across the case of Yang Shiqun, a political science professor whose critical comments of Chinese culture and the government incited his students to report him to the authorities. Articles relating to the case can be found on EastSouthWestNorth and David Bandurski has a good overview at China Media Project. Personally I was taken by something Professor Yang wrote on his own blog where he invokes a comparison similar to one I made last year between the current academic/intellectual climate among students in the PRC and that of the May Fourth Period. According to Professor Yang:* I was summoned to speak with my leader today. He said that some students in my <Ancient Han Language> course have denounced me to the Public Security Bureau and the City Education Committee for criticizing the government. An investigation is being conducted. I did not know whether to laugh or cry at the idea that students at the East China University of Political Science and Law should still have Cultural Revolution-era thinking and will resort to all and any methods to denounce their teacher as Today is the day after Christmas and the spirit still hangs in the air (especially if you’re like me and your Christmas is a five-day multi-state slog between family homesteads.) It is also the birthday of Mao Zedong (born 1893). With that in mind, who really rules the season?* I say we sort this out once and for all, so with apologies to both Dr. Jack Ramsay and Bill Simmons,** let’s break this down, Dr. Jack style: RED OR EXPERT? Santa Claus definitely brings the red. It’s a key part of his fashion palette, plus you have poinsettias, holly berries, candy canes, Reindeer noses, etc. That said, is there any doubt? Mao may have frequently dressed in a suit of “Christmas tree” green but he was all about the Red: Red Army. Red Book. Red Guard. ADVANTAGE: Mao IDEOLOGY? One of the two is famous for seizing goods produced by an enslaved, isolated population and redistributing them to people deemed to be worthy of receiving said goods based on an arbitrary set of lists that his minions check every year judging people on their ability to adhere to previously announced ideological guidelines. The other is Mao. ADVANTAGE: Draw ORGANIZATIONAL ABILITY? Mao compelled a billion people to abandon their fields and spend Samuel Huntington, a legend in academia, passed away on Christmas Eve at the age of 81. Like them or loathe them, his ideas were highly influential among scholars, policy makers, and the reading public. His 1996 book, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order theorized that the world was divided into cultural ‘zones’ and that the differences between those cultures would define the post-Cold War age. Personally, I wasn’t a huge fan but that might be because I think culture is overrated. That’s not to say that “culture” (as a thing, if a thing difficult to define) doesn’t exist nor that this thing “culture” is unimportant. Rather, the excessive focus on culture (or nation, or ethnicity, pick your poison) tends to obscure as much as it illuminates, and in fact can be quite destructive. ‘Culturally incompatible’ is too often lobbed about by those opposed to ‘foreign’ concepts (such as, say, human rights in China or women’s rights in Saudi Arabia) as if such an ill-defined phrase could ever be the final word on a particular subject. (The rhetorical equivalent of Michael Corleone hissing at his wife “Don’t ever ask me about my business” in the Godfather).* Problems |
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