Rosen, Stanley

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Stanley Rosen. Red Guard Factionalism and the Cultural Revolution in Guangzhou. Westview Replica Edition. Boulder: Westview Press, 1982.

Stanley Rosen’s investigation of the roots of factionalism in Guangzhou’s Red Guard movement is refreshing and successful on several counts. With a brief disclaimer that “the present study focuses less on the elite level and more on the mass level,” (p. 98) Rosen departs from the well-trodden path of reconstructing the machinations of elite power struggles or ideological debates and provides us instead a high level of detail on the tensions within the Guangzhou school system and its constituents. Rosen’s focus on middle school students as “contenders” (p. 3) in an educational system of shifting state priorities does much to enrich and expand on scholarship done by Hong Yung Lee and Jonathan Unger, among others, all of whom have argued for the centrality of the “class factor” (chengfen) as a social basis for factional divisions.

Perhaps even by today’s standards, but certainly considering the date of its publication (1982), this is a groundbreaking work. The book is thorough and meticulous in its analysis of the data at hand at the time. Of special note is the wealth of information collected from questionnaires and interviews that Rosen conducted with approximately 100 former students, teachers and Red Guard leaders from Guangzhou during the years 1971-76 and 1980. Rosen not only employs statistical data to support his case but also innovatively reconstructs maps of school locations and residential neighborhoods to consider—albeit briefly—the role of geography in Guangzhou’s Cultural Revolution, for instance differences between “good” neighborhoods near key schools, working class and commercial districts, and high cadre neighborhoods. This last line of analysis certainly merits closer investigation in future studies.

This is as much a book about the intricacies of competition within the school system itself as it is about the divisive events of the Cultural Revolution. The first two chapters, which deal with the pre-GPCR education system in Guangzhou, are most instructive in illuminating the contradictions between state priorities and shifting policies regarding the criteria of academic achievement (chengji), class origin (chengfen) and individual political performance (geren biaoxian). During the 1960-66 period under question, the evidence provided demonstrates that tensions and cleavages had already divided the key players who would lead later factional struggles, particularly the students of revolutionary cadre (and military) origins and students of upper/middle and intellectual class origins. In the remaining four chapters, which chronicle and analyze factional characteristics and variations in Guangzhou’s Red Guard movement from inception to dismantlement, Rosen argues convincingly for his theory that “the arrival of the GPCR in one sense prevented a resolution of these [pre-1966] contradictions dividing China’s students; in another sense, however, the GPCR provided a lighted stage upon which these contradictions could be publicly played out.” (p. 5)

The strength of this study is its careful avoidance of oversimplification regarding the factors dividing the Red Guards. Far from merely repeating earlier theories on the social bases of Red Guard factionalism, Rosen states from the outset that “a fuller understanding of the GPCR must take into account the divisions within factions as well as between them” (p. 6). Thus, his discussion of the wendou (“struggle-with-words”), wudou (“struggle-with-force”), and jin’gen (“closely-following”) lines of division (p. 221) shows the limitations of class label analysis and disaggregates the Rebels and Conservatives by revealing their respective subfactions.

Despite this book’s compelling thesis and strong factual support, the fact remains that twenty years have elapsed since its publication. Hence, new studies and recent scholarship have called Rosen’s social-basis approach into question. Most notable is the pioneering work of Andrew Walder, who challenges the validity of structural theory and contends that factionalism was due more to “political choices” rather than predispositions stemming from social background (Andrew Walder, JAS 61.2, May 2002, p. 437-471). Another important concern is how this sort of “class background” analysis refers primarily to official classification of social and political status, labels which should perhaps be distinguished from purely sociological categories. As these are evidently very relevant historical questions which demand further inquiry, Rosen’s work definitely merits careful study as an expositor of social-basis explanations of factionalism. It is hoped that new availability of archival sources and statistics will help shed more light on these important questions. Moreover, since this case-study’s focus is Guangzhou, it would be interesting if new research would explore the validity of class-based factionalism on a larger scale or in other locales.

Rosen’s study is persuasive and worthwhile to read. While the “[omission of] a systematic statement of his conclusions” was described as slightly unsatisfying and “unfortunate” by one reviewer (Graham Young, AJCA 11, Jan. 1984, p. 197), it seems a relatively minor complaint, and the astute reader should not have much difficulty in comprehending the key issues within. In a classic case of not judging a book by its cover, those who are not deterred by the lithographed fonts and presentation—which had one reviewer calling for a “paperback [version] at a less exorbitant price” (Lynn White, JAS 42.4, Aug. 1983, p. 938)—will be rewarded with an in-depth case study of how factionalism in the Cultural Revolution was as much an outgrowth of pre-1966 social divisions as it was a cause of divisiveness in Chinese society.

Dahpon Ho