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William Hinton. Hundred Day War: The Cultural Revolution at
“Written with the novelist’s skill,” William Hinton’s Hundred Day War is an engaging
book. It vibrantly tells us the story of
People’s fates and their struggles are honestly recounted in Hinton’s
book. The key actors were the
“revolutionary” students. Tsinghua’s Cultural
Revolution actually began with a small group of high-level cadre students who first
rose up and overturned the university authority in the June of 1966 (99). It was only after Wang Guangmei’s work team entered
the campus that Kuai Dafu, the famous rebel leader, emerged. Because of opposing work team, Kuai was
labeled as a counterrevolutionary; therefore, after Liu Shaoqi was attacked,
Kuai became a national hero and eventually the leader of all Tsinghua rebels at
the end of 1966. With the support of Wang
Li and Qi Benyu, the high-level leaders of the Cultural Revolution Small Group,
Kuai organized liaisons all over
The second theme is the ideological two-line struggle in education
field. The old revisionist line of Liu Shaoqi,
represented by Jiang Nanxiang is that education should train students to be experts
of various specialties, thus students should concentrate on regular study and
experts should be in charge. On the
other hand, Maoist line says education should enable one to become a toiler
with socialist consciousness and culture, thus school-time should be shortened
and student should take part in production and struggles (25). Using the accounts of several prominent
professors, Hinton shows us how the “revisionist education” was unwelcome and
how the Maoist line transformed the education and remolded intellectuals. Here, he gives the Maoist line many credits.
In developing the above two themes, Hinton also pays attention to other
characters than the student rebels and catches many minor differences of these
people. The contrast of the Tsinghua
Party committee’s vice secretary Liu Ping and the Party’s secretary Jiang
Nanxiang was especially remarkable. Liu
Ping joined the Party as a middle school student and was trained in Yan’an
Resistance University; loyal to the party though, as an “outsider” he did not
have a clear idea on how to be a university administrator. Being a Tsinghua graduate who had led Tsinghua’s
December 9th movement in 1935, Jiang Nanxiang, on the contrary, was clear and persistent
in his regular education policies.
Criticized by Mao in 1957, Jiang did not take Mao’s educational policy;
during the Cultural Revolution, Jiang still did not give up his idea and was
not released until the end of 1970s.
However, in the Cultural Revolution, Liu Ping admitted totally his “line
mistakes” and was reinstated by the Party in 1971. This nuance was captured by Hinton, revealing which
cadres were the targets of Mao—people with independent and different thoughts with
Mao needed to be removed resolutely. Moreover,
subtly and accurately, Hinton also notes that at the end of fighting, only a
few hundred students were at the campus.
Written in the summer of 1971, Hinton could only interview a handful of
people. However, one finds his account surprisingly
accurate.[1]
More important, Hinton is very conscious
of the ongoing political and ideological struggles: “A dogmatic, sectarian
spirit still colors some people’s thinking. What actually happened tends to get
mixed up with what should have happened (5).”
The unsaid verdict of Kuai Dafu, still waiting for the explanation of
the exposure of Lin Biao, says Hinton, is a good example for us to see how political
trends forbad people to think factually.
Though being conscious, however, it is still hard for Hinton to get out
of the bounds of the political rhetoric of 1971. 1971 was the time when Worker’s Propaganda Team
dominated the campus; it was also the time when the two-line struggle was most
intense—no one dared to defend anything of the previous education, everyone was
praising the Maoist line and using it as the justification for their own
struggles. Also, Hinton’s personal
political view forced him to justify the Cultural Revolution and to put the shameful
armed struggle at an appropriate position.
All these blurred Hinton’s sights.
In his conclusion, apart from the accurate chronology of the student
struggles, i.e., the majority of students rebelled only after the work team
entered the campus; Hinton still believes that the students “rose up en masses
against the revisionist education (6).” Also,
he gives the Worker’s Propaganda Team great credit and believes its victory of
reuniting students convincingly demonstrated the power of the Marxism-Leninism-
Mao Tse-tung Thought that the team represented (8). These conclusions are clearly influenced by
the contemporary political atmosphere. It
is regrettable that Hinton, in his honest narration, have illuminated us to get
out of the rhetoric could not escape from the rhetoric himself.
Such flaws cannot besmirch the contribution of Hinton’s Tsinghua
recount. It enhances much of our understanding
of those students, their actual practices of the “revolutions”, and the influence
of the political dogmatism. It is truly “a
classic description of the Culture Revolution (Andrew Watson, 494).”
Xiaowei Zheng
© Copyright 2003.
All Rights Reserved.
[1] After comparing with the article based on
documents, Tang Shaojie, “Qinghua Wu Dou Yu Xuan Chuan Diu Jin Zhu,” Bai
Nian Chao (2000, no.9), one finds that Hinton’s book is quite accurate and
reliable.