Rectification Movement Research Articles

Finding the ‘other’ from within: how the CCP survived the legitimacy crisis after China’s Great Leap Famine

Much of the literature echoes the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s official explanation of the Great Leap Famine (1959–1961) to argue that the Party survived the legitimacy crisis posed by the famine by blaming the weather. While several have suggested that the CCP held the local cadres responsible for generating the famine, little evidence had been gathered to show how this was done. This article reconciles the above arguments by asserting that the CCP, by exploiting the urban–rural informational asymmetry, employed a dual propaganda approach that combined an urban explanation that blamed the weather with a more important rural strategy that admitted the famine’s man-made nature but shifted the blame onto local leaders, to direct the responsibility away from the Party centre. By leveraging local government archives in Henan Province’s Nanyang Prefecture, this study analyses how the Party propagated the rural explanation through the Rural Party Rectification Movement (1960–1961) to placate immediate peasantry discontent and reconstruct long-run famine memories. Interviews conducted in 2021 show that the re-engineering of the famine narrative contributed to the peasants’ distrust of local cadres. This perception persisted over time, at least partially affecting the peasants’ willingness to cooperate with local policies in the 1990s.

The Impact of History Textbooks on Young Chinese People's Understanding of the Past: A Social Media Analysis

History textbooks are the only history books that the majority of people read in their lives. This article investigates the impact of history textbooks on young Chinese people's understanding of their nation's modern history, as revealed on the popular microblogging site Sina Weibo. We analysed posts related to history textbooks and their representations of three contentious turning points in the communist historical narrative: the May Fourth Movement of 1919, the nationalist assault on the communists in 1927, and the Yan’an Rectification Movement of 1942. Widespread engagement with and recollection of history textbook content indicates a substantial impact of these textbooks on people's understanding of the past and a willingness to relate that past to the present. Responses to textbooks vary widely, from acceptance of the textbook narrative and the expression of strong patriotic and emotional connections to the past as presented in textbooks to open and angry critique.

Love your idol in a ‘cleaned’ way: Fans, fundraising platform, and fandom governance in China

In 2021, a top-down rectification movement called ‘Clean Up’ impinged on Chinese idol fandom culture. This movement triggered discussions about the transforming governance strategy over fandom and broader Chinese Internet users. This article explores the complexity and shift of governance on Chinese idol fans by examining the digital fandom fundraising platform Taoba. Drawing from the walkthrough analysis of xiufen (fans of idol competition shows), we investigate three key stakeholders: platform, state, and xiufen fandom, to reflect on wider Internet governance issues in China. We argue that Chinese idol fans like xiufen are subject to a governance structure where power relations between different players are highly complex and entangled. The state-corporate-society co-opting mode of governance has evolved toward what we termed ‘coercive co-opting’, in which digital platforms and users conform with the imaginaries and ideologies of the state, while the authorities still intervene in an intimidating and suppressive manner.

How the Red Sun Rose: The Origins and Development of the Yan'an Rectification Movement, 1930–1945 Gao Hua (translated by Stacy Mosher and Guo Jian; foreword by Joseph Esherick) Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 2019 xviii + 812 pp. $70.00 ISBN 978-962-996-822-9

How the Red Sun Rose: The Origins and Development of the Yan'an Rectification Movement, 1930–1945 Gao Hua (translated by Stacy Mosher and Guo Jian; foreword by Joseph Esherick) Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 2019 xviii + 812 pp. $70.00 ISBN 978-962-996-822-9 - Volume 243

How the Red Sun Rose: The Origins and Development of the Yan’an Rectification Movement, 1930–1945, by Gao Hua. Translated by Stacy Mosher and Guo Jian. Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2018. vii+812 pp. US$70.00 (cloth).

<i>How the Red Sun Rose: The Origins and Development of the Yan’an Rectification Movement, 1930–1945</i>, by Gao Hua. Translated by Stacy Mosher and Guo Jian. Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2018. vii+812 pp. US$70.00 (cloth).

How the Red Sun Rose: The Origins and Development of the Yan'an Rectification Movement, 1930–1945. By Gao Hua. Translated by Stacy Mosher and Guo Jian. Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2018. xx, 812 pp. ISBN: 9789629968229 (cloth).

How the Red Sun Rose: The Origins and Development of the Yan'an Rectification Movement, 1930–1945. By Gao Hua. Translated by Stacy Mosher and Guo Jian. Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2018. xx, 812 pp. ISBN: 9789629968229 (cloth).

The Investigation on Woman Discourse in Yan’an Period before the Rectification Movement ― Focusing on the ‘Home Discourse’ in Women of China(1939-1941)

The Investigation on Woman Discourse in Yan’an Period before the Rectification Movement ― Focusing on the ‘Home Discourse’ in Women of China(1939-1941)

“Hope” and “Change”: An Empirical Study on the Eight Provisions of the CPC Rectification Movement Based on Authoritative Data Released by the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection Supervision Website

Since 18th CPC National Congress, the anti-corruption campaign shows a new political life in China. Based on the data from 2015 to July 2016, this paper analyzes the effectiveness and trend of the implementation of the eight provisions from the following three perspectives. The number of violations of cadres and their administrative level was significantly negatively correlated. The main purpose of the eight provisions is to build a low administrative level of anti-corruption strategy. The township level cadres are the main target group of rectification education. All the experiences and lessons of the rectification movement are a valuable heritage of the purity and style of the party construction, and the eight provisions have the characteristics that are precise, scientific and sustainable, and transform the old constraints, old ideas. The psychology of “governance” and “change” reflects the affirmation of social groups to fight against corruption. The eight provisions as a valuable monitoring resource should achieve the optimal allocation and maximize the social marginal benefit. The Power of Chinese government and the activity has consisted. They are willing to make a difference. Members of the Political Bureau are the third energy of Chinese reform or economy.

Hong taiyang shi zenyang shengqi de (review)

Reviewed by: Hong taiyang shi zenyang shengqi de David Cheng Chang (bio) Gao Hua 高華. Hong taiyang shi zenyang shengqi de 紅太陽是怎樣升起的: 延安整風運動的來龍去脈 (How did the red sun rise over Yan'an? A history of the Rectification Movement). Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2000. 705 pp. Paperback $24.00, isbn 962-201-920-X. Published in Hong Kong and now in its seventh printing but banned in China, Nanjing University history professor Gao Hua's Hong taiyang shi zenyang shengqi de is a historiographical tour de force, in terms of both sources and analysis. Unparalleled in scope and depth, and nuanced in approach, Gao Hua's work offers the most complete and convincing account of the Rectification Movement (1942–1945) to date. By tracing the Rectifications origin's and discussing its long-term consequences (來龍去脈), Party historian Gao makes a major contribution to the study of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in general. While it confirms the fact that the campaign emancipated the Party from Soviet-influenced dogmatism and unified the Party in its preparation for the final showdown with the Kuomintang (KMT), this book shatters the Party's orthodox version of this crucial history as a salubrious thought-reform process. In sharp contrast to the Party line and earlier Western scholarship influenced by Edgar Snow and John Service's impressions, and anti-Vietnam War sentiment (e.g., Selden 1971),1 Gao defines the campaign as a political process directed by Mao, in which Mao employed his political preponderance (shi 势) "to thoroughly reconfigure the upper structure of the Party, to redistribute upper-level power with himself as the absolute master." In terms of methods (shu 術), Mao applied his innovative dual process of thought reform and coercive cadre examinations and purges. In the realm of ideology (dao 道), Mao "used his own ideas and thoughts and fundamentally transformed the ethos of the CCP from a Russianized party to a party of Mao" (p. xii). Gao takes pains to argue that the Rectification dealt a fatal blow to any remnant of "the May Fourth idealism of freedom and democracy" within the Party and thus laid the foundation for a "total Mao Zedong-ization." Gao further emphasizes that "the institution of a full gamut of new Party traditions, concepts, and paradigms bearing Mao's hallmarks would change the lives and fate of several hundred million Chinese after 1949"(p. xii). This is an unmistakable reference to various political campaigns in the People's Republic of China (PRC), particularly the Anti-Rightist Campaign (1957) and the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976). In a sense, this book suggests that the origins of the Cultural Revolution should be sought in the 1940s, not in the 1950s as MacFarquhar has done in his famed trilogy.2 [End Page 515] Gao's book has two major strengths. One is its exhaustive and astute use of a wide range of available sources, including published official accounts, memoirs by former officials, rank-and-file participants of the campaign, Soviet observers, and CCP defectors. To sift through such an immense amount of data, which encompass complex and ever-evolving relationships between hundreds of historical actors in the span of decades, requires extraordinary sensitivity and tenacity. Gao states, "It could be said that my extensive life experience in the PRC and my wide-ranging reading of relevant historical materials sharpened my sensitivity, and gradually enabled me to read behind the lines" (p. 653). Second, while eschewing "excessive interpretation" in theoretical analysis (p. 654) and focusing on delineating historical facts, Gao draws from traditional Chinese concepts and he proposes an incisive analytical framework of "dao, shu, shi" (道術 勢), and offers a number of illuminating insights, such as the "double-faced" Mao and the "double-personality" of the CCP body politic. Historiographical Contribution In the fine tradition of "carrying the red flag to attack the red flag," Gao effectively uses CCP sources to subvert CCP orthodoxy. As Gao notes in his epilogue, with a few rare exceptions, the vast majority of archives related to the Rectification are still classified, including those pertaining to the CCP Politburo, Secretariat, the Central Organization Bureau, and the former Central Bureau of Social Affairs (Yan'an KGB). It is noteworthy that Gao acquired all his sources...

The Rise of Mao and His Cultural Legacy: The Yan'an Rectification Movement

(2003). The Rise of Mao and His Cultural Legacy: The Yan'an Rectification Movement. Journal of Contemporary China: Vol. 12, No. 34, pp. 225-228.

The Anti-Rightist Movement and Its Ideological and Theoretical Consequences

Abstract There were some setbacks in the international communist movement after the CPSU Twentieth Congress exposed Stalin's mistakes, as social riots broke out in some East European countries such as Poland and Hungary and some workers, students, and peasants in China also created disturbances. At the time, Mao Zedong maintained that the disturbances created by small numbers of people were nothing but "a pond of spring water rippling when the wind rises"; he also sensed problems in the political life of the Party and the state, as the ruling party's status was likely to bring about bureaucratism and a "special privilege" mentality among officials so that they would become divorced from the masses and reality. In the spring of 1957 the CCP Central Committee decided to launch a rectification movement involving the whole Party. Long before that, at the preparatory meeting of the Party's Eighth Congress, Mao had called for carrying forward the Party's glorious traditions and effectively combating subjectivism and sectarianism. He said, "Why did Stalin make mistakes? Because on a number of issues his subjective thinking failed to correspond with objective reality. Such cases still occur frequently in our work today." So it was necessary to combat subjectivism as found in the socialist revolution and socialist construction. To combat sectarianism was to "unite with those who have differences with you, who look down on you, or who show little respect for you, those who have had a bone to pick with you or waged struggles against you and by those at whose hands you have suffered." On April 27, 1957, the Party Central Committee issued instructions for the rectification movement: "Another universal and thoroughgoing rectification movement against bureaucracy, sectarianism, and subjectivism is going to be carried out in the Party"; the methods to be taken were to proceed in the way of "a gentle breeze and a mild rain, " seeking truth from facts, and making appropriate criticisms and self-criticisms. "Criticisms should be encouraged in a freewheeling style, and the principle of ‘saying all you know and saying it without reservations, blaming not the speaker but being warned by his words, correcting mistakes if you have made any and guarding against them if you have not’ should be firmly upheld." In order to mobilize the nonparty personages to air their views, Mao Zedong invited leading members of the democratic parties and some public figures without any party affiliation for a talk on Tiananmen Rostrum on April 30, and he proposed analyzing contradictions in every aspect, centering around the topic of handling contradictions among the people, and asked them to "effectively make an attack" in the fields of higher education, general education, literature and art, and science and public health, and to have their opinions published in newspapers, otherwise the bureaucracy could never be abolished. He also talked about questions of entrusting nonparty personages with responsibilities but without the authority inherent in their posts, of institutionalizing the Party committees in schools, and working for greatness and success.

Notes to the Text

1. Zhang Ruxin, formerly a secretary to Mao Zedong, was heavily involved in the Rectification Movement. The author Shen Yi, in her Remembering Comrade Zhang (Huinian Zhang Ruxin tongzhi) (included in Memoir of the Central Research Institute in Yan'an [Yan'an zhongyang yanjiuyuan huiyilu]) (Changsha: Hunan renmin chubanshe, 1984), ed. Wen Jize, Li Yan, Jin Ziguang, and Qiu Dingyi (Beijing, 1984), presented the following description that can help us understand Zhang Ruxin's personality.

The Protest of Wild Lily: The Execution of Wang Shih-wei

In the spring of 1942 the Chinese Communist Party in Yenan launched the Rectification Movement (Cheng-feng yun-tung) to train its cadres and control their ideology. This Movement has left a legacy of profound significance. It could be considered the forerunner of many later campaigns, such as the Hundred Flowers Movement and the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. During the Rectification Movement a voice of protest was heard in Yenan. voice came from The Wild Lily, an article written by Wang Shih-wei, representing one of the earliest protests against Communist party rule. A native of Honan, born in 1906, Wang was a writer and translator active in the literary circle in Shanghai. After the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War in 1937 he went to Yenan in response to the patriotic appeal of the Chinese Communist Party. There he turned a dissident and later was executed.

The Korean Minority in China: A Model for Ethnic Education

The educational system in China's Yanbian Prefecture presents a relatively successful model for Korean ethnic education. Koreans in China have a much higher percentage of literacy and middle school and college graduation than the national average or any other minority nationality. Despite the integrationist impulses of the Chinese nationality policy during the Rectification Movement and the Cultural Revolution, the Korean minority has successfully sustained its ethnic identity. Central to the well-being of the Korean minority in China is its continuing achievement of the highest level of educational attainment. Within the moderate nationality policy currently enunciated by Beijing, the ethnically based education system of the Korean minority in Northeast China presents a program to be studied and emulated by other minority nationalities.

The Fading of Wild Lilies: Wang Shiwei and Mao Zedong's Yan'an Talks in the First CPC Rectification Movement

Previous articleNext article No AccessStudiesThe Fading of Wild Lilies: Wang Shiwei and Mao Zedong's Yan'an Talks in the First CPC Rectification MovementTimothy CheekTimothy Cheek Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Volume 11Jan., 1984 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.2307/2158685 Views: 20Total views on this site Citations: 6Citations are reported from Crossref Journal History This article was published in The Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs (1979-1995), which is continued by The China Journal (1995-present). Copyright Australian Journal of Chinese AffairsPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article: Ideology and the Party in Law, (Dec 2020): 29–148.https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108864596.002Rogier Creemers Party Ideology and Chinese Law, (Dec 2020): 31–63.https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108864596.003Rogier Creemers The Privilege of Speech and New Media: Conceptualizing China's Communications Law in the Internet Era, SSRN Electronic Journal (Jan 2014).https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2379959Eddy U Reifications of the intellectual: representations, organization and agency in revolutionary China, The British Journal of Sociology 64, no.44 (Dec 2013): 617–642.https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-4446.12036Çağlar Üngör China Reaches Turkey? Radio Peking’s Turkish Language Broadcasts During the Cold War, All Azimuth: A Journal of Foreign Policy and Peace 1, no.22 (Feb 2016): 19–19.https://doi.org/10.20991/allazimuth.167301Roderick MacFarquhar, John K. Fairbank The Cambridge History of China, (Mar 2008).https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521243360

III. Enthusiastically Throwing Themselves into the Criticize Lin Rectification Campaign

Abstract Just when the people of the whole country struggled to consolidate the proletarian dictatorship along the line of the Ninth Party Congress which sought victory through unity, Lin Piao, Ch'en Po-ta and company jumped out and madly opposed the Ninth Party Congress line. In August 1970, during the Second Plenum of the Ninth Party Congress, a counterrevolutionary plot by Lin Piao's anti-Party group was smashed and Chairman Mao's directive calling on the people to "read and study carefully, understand Marxism," and "carry out education on the ideological and political fronts" initiated the criticize revisionism rectification movement on a nationwide scale. In line with Chairman Mao's directive, the July 1 Commune Party committee first organized the cadres and the masses to read and study earnestly. With fervent revolutionary enthusiasm the broad poor and lower-middle peasants, the masses of commune members, and the revolutionary cadres studied the works of Marxism-Leninism and of Chairman Mao, criticized revisionism, and enhanced their ability to distinguish between true and false Marxism. In order to adjust to this situation, many brigades set up political night schools.

11 After Reading "A Biologist's Thoughts on Writing Reform"

In the current Party rectification movement, the bourgeois rightists have seized the chance to express opinions freely, to produce many anti-Party, antisocialist falsehoods. Even writing reform, which everyone has been actively promoting under the Party's leadership, has become a target of their attack. Rightist Zhang Bojun fired the first volley in this battle early in the campaign at a conference convened by the United Front Office.† Ignoring objective reality, he made the slanderous accusation that a small minority had taken charge of China's writing reform. Other people brought out many facts to refute this point, leaving him without a thing to say. Many poisonous ideas concerning writing reform have also appeared in some periodicals they control. One example is an article in Guangming ribao [Kwangming Daily] of April 28 of this year, entitled, A Biologist's Thoughts on Writing Reform.‡ Square Chinese characters have a long history in our country, and they have become deeply rooted in some people's ...

Bring the Agricultural University Down to The Countryside

In accordance with Chairman Mao's teaching that "there must be a revolution in education" and under the impetus of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, at the end of 1971, our institute ran the south Shensi teaching base in an old temple in Lung-kang-ssu, Nan-cheng hsien, setting up the field of specialization in agricultural crops. In the spring of 1972, we started taking in worker-peasant-soldier students from the various hsien of south Shensi. For the last two years, with the Party's basic line as a platform, the base's Party organization has plunged into launching the rectification movement to criticize Lin Piao, angrily criticizing the revisionist line in education being pushed by Liu Shao-ch'i and Lin Piao. Recently, it has also angrily criticized their advocacy of the doctrines of Confucius and Mencius and their criminal acts of promoting restoration and turning back the wheel of history. Thus, it has pushed the revolution in education to unceasing and intensive development. Under the enlightenment of Chairman Mao's "May 7 Directive," the base's revolutionary teachers and students have struggled to make education serve proletarian politics. In coordination with production labor and the Three Great Revolutionary Movements, they have taken a joyful first step on the road to bringing the agricultural university down to the villages.

Mass Line and "Mass Criticism" in China: An Analysis of the Fall of Liu Shao-Ch'i

]he Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (GPCR) was a unique event, but understanding of this event and its meaning within the broader context of the Chinese political system may be enhanced if we use more general concepts of political action to abstract certain characteristics for special attention. The concepts line and and self-criticism (also known as struggle) seem particularly appropriate for such an analysis for three reasons: They avoid the dangers of prematurely or uncritically applying Western concepts to political realities which are embedded in a different context of cultural meanings; they are central concepts in the vocabulary of Chinese Communist political action, and as such have been beneficiaries of both primary analyses by Chinese political thinkers and secondary analyses by Western social scientists; the explicit methodology of the GPCR is couched in the same language originally used to set forth the implications of these concepts, suggesting that their use as explanatory models corresponds with the subjective intentions of the Maoist sponsors of the GPCR. The GPCR may be understood as an attempt to unite and selfcriticism with the line by opening inner-Party struggle to participation. This attempt, however, took place in a social context quite different from the one in which the line formula originated, and had entirely different consequences. This study of mass criticism begins with a brief summary of the changes which have taken place since original formulation of the line model during the Cheng-feng rectification movement at Yenan. This is followed by an empirical description, based on content analysis of the Chinese official and Red Guard press criticisms for a 34-month period (from January 1967 to October 1969) of the operation of the model in the new circumstances of the campaign against Liu

On the Improvement of Educational Work

Middle-level education and citizen's education [see glossary] in the Border Region has in the past suffered from serious problems of dogmatism and old-fashioned orthodoxy, thus departing from and even opposing the needs of the Border Region and of the Border Region peoples. The senior cadre meeting of the year before last and the third meeting of the Government Committee in the spring of last year pointed out a clear and correct policy: for the purposes of the War of Resistance Against Japan and of service to the Border Region peoples, the education of cadres comes first, citizen's education second. That is, we must change those aspects of education that are not relevant to carrying on the War of Resistance and not relevant to the Border Region and its people, thus making education fully compatible with revolutionary San-min chu-i [Three People's Principles] (which is to say, the New Democracy) and with the spirit of the Ten Great Policies,* and suitable to the present needs for construction in the Border Region. The Conference on Rectification of Studies in Middle-Level Schools during the first half of last year and the rectification movement in the various Middle Schools during the second half of last year generated criticism of old-fashioned orthodoxy and dogmatism; this is a great step forward and is a key transformation of middle-level education in the Border Region.