The Cult of the Red Martyr: Politics of Commemoration in China

Abstract

Facing an increasing number of deaths among its rank and file in the wars against Japan and the Kuomintang (Nationalists), the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) began to promote the cult of the red martyr during the late Yan'an era, and then developed it in a systematic fashion after the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949. In the 1950s, the CCP cultivated the cult to honour those who had died in the revolution with commemorative practices such as the launching of the Martyrs' Memorial Day and the building of a national cemetery — the Babaoshan Revolutionary Cemetery — in the western part of Beijing as a place of national pilgrimage. The cult served the purposes of diverting attention from the destruction of war, justifying armed conflict as a means to fight enemies, providing psychological comfort for the bereaved, and, finally, educating future generations about socialist goals, serving, in the words of Zhou Enlai, 'to commemorate the dead and inspire the living'. However, the CCP's political aims did not always dominate how the cult was interpreted, for the bereaved often expressed less political and more emotional views about their grief and personal loss. In recent years, as revolutionary fervour wanes and material gains have come to dominate the lives of the Chinese people, war memorials have fallen into oblivion. The cult is rapidly losing its influence, and, with that, the Party's ability to control its people is deteriorating.