Campaign against mental pollution in China

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The campaign against mental pollution ( Chinese  清除 精神 污染 , Pinyin Qīngchú jīngshén wūrǎn ) was a political campaign that turned against Western influences and their effects on thought. It was led by conservative factions within the Chinese Communist Party and lasted from October 1983 to December 1983. In general, its proponents wanted to suppress Western-inspired liberal ideas among the Chinese people, a by-product of the economic reform and opening-up policies that began in 1978.

According to Deng Liqun , the party's propaganda chief at the time of the campaign, mental pollution is “a deliberately vague term that encompasses any kind of bourgeois import from eroticism to existentialism ” and is intended to refer to “obscene, barbaric or reactionary materials, vulgar Taste in artistic performances, indulging in individualism ”as well as statements that“ run counter to the social system of the country ”.

The campaign peaked in mid-November 1983 and was largely forgotten in 1984 after Deng Xiaoping's intervention . However, elements of the campaign were reprocessed during the campaign against bourgeois liberalization in the late 1980s against the general secretary of the liberal party Hu Yaobang .

Emergence

According to Richard Baum, emeritus professor of political science at UCLA and China observer, it can be said that the campaign against intellectual pollution owes its origins to the Twelfth Party Congress in September 1982, at which Deng Xiaoping announced his intention to mark China's path to economic modernization and continue liberalization, a process that he initiated in 1978. In an attempt to maintain the balance between the conservative and moderate factions in the party, Deng shifted his liberalization focus to further economic developments. He also called for China's "socialist ideological civilization" to be further built so that the socialist ideological orientation would be preserved and China would be protected from the undesirable social effects of the "bourgeois liberalism" that began trickling in since the opening policy in 1978. During the party convention, Hu Yaobang warned that "capitalist forces and other forces hostile to our socialist cause will try to corrupt us and harm our country." Hu urged party members to remain true to communist ideals and disciplines .

The Twelfth Party Congress also laid the foundations for the establishment of a new constitution, which was passed by the National People's Congress in December of that year. The constitution rejected the ultra-left ideology of the Mao era, ensured greater protection of the dignity and civil liberties of citizens, and advocated a proper, institutionalized and accountable legal system. However, the new constitution also added significant restrictions. For example, it stipulated that citizens' freedom of privacy and correspondence would only be protected until the interests of the state required them to be restricted.

After the revision of the constitution at the end of 1982, the critical academic discourse grew. Scholars called for greater respect for human dignity and freedoms and for a reconciliation between socialist and humanist ideals. In the spring of 1983 the demands for a more humanistic society reached a climax, with scholars openly criticizing the excesses of the socialist dictatorship.

Although some Chinese officials, including Deng Liqun, saw some value in the writings of humanist intellectuals in June 1983, fears grew that criticism of this kind could severely undermine the political and ideological foundation, i.e. the legitimacy of the Communist Party. In June 1983, at the opening of the 6th National People's Congress , Zhao Ziyang gave a speech warning of growing liberal tendencies in academic and artistic circles, and criticizing such developments as representing a decadent ideology that contradicted the goals of socialism stand. Zhao linked these tendencies in literary and artistic circles with increasing crime, murder, rape and corruption cases, and blamed the increasing crime rate for the "political and ideological apathy". He called on law enforcement to strike with a tough campaign to suppress counter-revolutionary and criminal activity.

After Zhao's speech, conservative party magazines began to link the recent crime wave with the scientific discourse on humanism. For example, the editors of the Rote Fahne stated that “different types of crime must inevitably arise where the influence of bourgeois extreme individualism ... still exists. [...] When we speak of 'grace' and 'humanism' it will be a great violation of our duty ... to the cause of socialism ”.

The campaign

In October 1983, during the Second Plenary Session of the Twelfth Party Congress, Deng Xiaoping accused several types of individuals and intellectual developments of undermining party goals. On the left, it targeted the rest of the leftist ideas of the Cultural Revolution and those who came to power by following Lin Biao and the Gang of Four, respectively. In order to reassure the conservative factions, he also criticized intellectuals and party members who had turned their attention to questions of humanism . Deng criticized humanism as “un-Marxist” and said that “it misled the youth”. He stressed the need to combat the "intellectual pollution" brought about by liberalization .

Although Deng tried to warn party comrades not to take extreme measures to remedy left or right-wing problems, shortly after the speech, the state press published high-pitched attacks on bourgeois liberal ideas of humanism and condemned the mental pollution that such liberal ones cause Create influence. Deng Liqun, a prominent conservative in the party, is said to have been behind the attacks on humanism and intellectual pollution. It was also described that mental pollution could take many forms, including excessive individualism, an irresistible craving for money, the practice of "feudal superstition" and the spread of pornography. Western hairstyles, clothing, and facial hair have also been criticized as symptomatic of mental pollution.

Der Spiegel reported that the writer Bai Hua, once famous for his criticism of Mao, was suddenly attacked in public for advocating a political course that contradicts socialism. In Szechuan, the police confiscated a thousand books as "vulgar". In the province of Hubei , six magazines that were published after the fall of the Gang of Four had to cease publication because of "poor quality". Pornographic Video Sellers Arrested in Kuangtung Province ; in Canton the hotel owner Li Hua was fined for one of the singers showing too much leg in his café. Other symptoms of mental pollution that have been denounced include the revival of religion in Tibet, posting advertisements for foreign products, interacting with foreign athletes, taking an interest in sentimental songs, allegedly fashionable haircuts, or wearing overly eccentric clothing ... As fears arose in the population that there might be a new cultural revolution and nobody knew what right behavior and what was mentally polluted, and even two senior editors of the Beijing "People's Newspaper" had lost their posts, found in Assemblies are held in every province, district, and city to allay these fears.

Richard Baum mentions that whatever Deng Xiaoping was up to, had gotten off track. His son Deng Pufang warned that this campaign could undermine his reform efforts and reputation if carried out too vigorously. In December 1983, less than two months after the campaign began, Deng Xiaoping intervened to end the fight against mental pollution.

bibliography

  • Christopher Hudson, The China Handbook (Regional Handbooks of Economic Development), Routledge, 1997, ISBN 978-1884964886
  • Richard Baum, Reform and reaction in post-Mao China: the road to Tiananmen, Routledge, April 1991, ISBN 978-0415903189

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Pico Iyer, China: Battling Spiritual Pollution , Time Magazine, November 28, 1983, accessed November 9, 2016
  2. ↑ Thomas B. Gold, “Just in Time!”: China Battles Spiritual Pollution on the Eve of 1984 , Asian Survey, Vol. 24, no. 9, pp. 947-974, University of California Press, September 1984, accessed November 9, 2016
  3. ↑ a b c Richard Baum, The Road to Tiananmen: Chinese Politics in the 1980s , The Politics of China: The Eras of Mao and Deng by Roderick MacFarquhar, Cambridge University Press, January 13, 1997, p. 348, accessed September 9, 1997. November 2016
  4. ↑ Tony Saich, Governance and Politics of China: Third Edition , The fourth constitution of the People's Republic of China, Review of Socialist Law 9.2, p. 412, pp. 113-24, 1983, accessed November 9, 2016
  5. ↑ Richard Baum, The Road to Tiananmen: Chinese Politics in the 1980s , The Politics of China: The Eras of Mao and Deng by Roderick MacFarquhar, Cambridge University Press, January 13, 1997, p. 352, accessed November 9, 2016
  6. ^ Zhao Ziyang, Report on the work of the government , July 4, 1983, accessed November 9, 2016
  7. ^ Roderick MacFarquhar, The Politics of China: The Eras of Mao and Deng , Red Flag (Hongqi) 17, page 414, September 1, 1983, accessed November 9, 2016
  8. ↑ Richard Baum, The Road to Tiananmen: Chinese Politics in the 1980s , The Politics of China: The Eras of Mao and Deng by Roderick MacFarquhar, Cambridge University Press, January 13, 1997, p. 355, accessed November 9, 2016
  9. ↑ Richard Baum, The Road to Tiananmen: Chinese Politics in the 1980s , The Politics of China: The Eras of Mao and Deng by Roderick MacFarquhar, Cambridge University Press, January 13, 1997, accessed November 19, 2016
  10. ↑ “The Chinese cannot live without emperors” , Der Spiegel, December 12, 1983, accessed on November 19, 2016