Struggle session
| Struggle session | |||||||||
 Mao-era propaganda for struggle sessions | |||||||||
| Chinese name | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Simplified Chinese | 批斗大会 | ||||||||
| Traditional Chinese | 批鬥大會 | ||||||||
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| Tibetan name | |||||||||
| Tibetan | thamzing | ||||||||
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A struggle session (simplified Chinese: 批斗会; traditional Chinese: 批鬥會; pinyin: Pī Dòu Huì) was a form of public humiliation and torture used by the Communist Party of China in the Mao Zedong era, particularly during the Cultural Revolution, to shape public opinion and to humiliate, persecute, or execute political rivals and class enemies.[1]
In general, the victim of a struggle session was forced to admit to various crimes before a crowd of people who would verbally and physically abuse the victim until he or she confessed. Struggle sessions were often held at the workplace of the accused, but were sometimes conducted in sports stadiums where large crowds would gather if the target was famous enough.[1]
During Mao's leadership, the Chinese people attended many different types of struggle sessions, sometimes consisting of 100,000 people. During the 1950s when Mao's Government began the Land Reform movement, poorer peasants seized the land from their landlords, who were given the title of exploiting class (simplified Chinese: 剥削阶级; traditional Chinese: 剝削階級; pinyin: bōxuē jiējí), and an estimated 2 million landlords were swiftly executed after being subjected to a struggle session.
Etymology
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According to Lin Yutang, the expression comes from "批判" (pinyin: pīpàn; literally: "to judge") and "鬥爭" (pinyin: dòuzhēng; literally: "to fight"), so the whole expression conveys the message of inciting the spirit of judgment and fighting. Instead of saying the full phrase "批判鬥爭" (pinyin: pīpàn dòuzhēng), it was shortened to "批鬥" (pinyin: pīdòu).
Origins and purpose
Struggle sessions developed from similar ideas of criticism and self-criticism in the Soviet Union from the 1920s. The term refers to class struggle; the session is held to benefit the target, by eliminating all traces of counterrevolutionary, reactionary thinking. Chinese Communists resisted this at first, because struggle sessions conflicted with the Chinese concept of saving face, but struggle sessions became commonplace at Communist Party meetings during the 1930s due to public popularity.[2]
Accounts of struggle sessions
Margaret Chu, writing retrospectively for the Cardinal Mindszenty Foundation's Mindszenty Report, in November 1998, gave this account:
| “ | ... the Cultural Revolution began and I was transferred to another labor camp.... Two years after I had been in this new camp, I received a parcel from my family. Immediately, an inmate accused me of giving something out of it to another prisoner. I was dragged to the office. Without any investigation, the officer assembled the entire camp to start a struggle session against me. In the session the officer suddenly asked me whether I had committed my alleged original crime leading to my 8-year sentence. I was stunned. It then dawned on me that this session was in fact prearranged. The parcel was only a pretense. Their real motive was once again to force me to admit all my alleged crimes. "I did not commit any crimes," I asserted firmly. Immediately two people jumped on me and cut off half of my hair. The officer screamed again: "Are you guilty?" I replied firmly again, "No." Two people then used a rope to tie my hands back tightly. It was connected to a loop around my shoulder and underneath my armpits. It was knotted in such a way that a slight movement of my hands would cause intense pain. This struggle session lasted for two hours. Afterwards, they untied me and handcuffed me instead. The handcuffs became a part of me for the next one hundred days and nights....[3] | ” |
Anne F. Thurston, in Enemies of the People, gave a description of an infamous struggle session for the professor You Xiaoli:
| “ | You Xiaoli was standing, precariously balanced, on a stool. Her body was bent over from the waist into a right angle, and her arms, elbows stiff and straight, were behind her back, one hand grasping the other at the wrist. It was the position known as "doing the airplane." Around her neck was a heavy chain, and attached to the chain was a blackboard, a real blackboard, one that had been removed from a classroom at the university where You Xiaoli, for more than ten years, had served as a full professor. On both sides of the blackboard were chalked her name and the myriad crimes she was alleged to have committed. [...]
The scene was taking place at the university, too, in a sports field at one of China's most prestigious institutions of higher learning. In the audience were You Xiaoli's students and colleagues and former friends. Workers from local factories and peasants from nearby communes had been bused in for the spectacle. From the audience came repeated, rhythmic chants [...] "Down with You Xiaoli! Down with You Xiaoli!" "I had many feelings at that struggle session," recalls You Xiaoli. "I thought there were some bad people in the audience. But I also thought there were many ignorant people, people who did not understand what was happening, so I pitied that kind of person. They brought workers and peasants into the meetings, and they could not understand what was happening. But I was also angry."[4] |
” |
Lately, the term "struggle session" has come to be applied to any scene where victims are publicly badgered to confess imaginary crimes under the pretext of self-criticism and rehabilitation.
Disuse after 1978
Struggle sessions were disowned in China after 1978, when the reformers led by Deng Xiaoping took power. Deng Xiaoping prohibited struggle sessions and other kinds of Mao-era violent political campaigns.
In September 2013, Xi Jinping has taken his "criticism and self-criticism" campaign on the road, attending a series of meetings where Hebei provincial cadres were made to admit shortcomings and offer ideas for correcting their behaviour. Xi has instructed regional officials to "promote self-criticism and criticism" to implement his "mass line" campaign, which he said is necessary to eliminate formality, bureaucracy, hedonism and extravagance among rank-and-file cadres.[5]
See also
- Zhen Fan
- Futian incident
- Anti-Bolshevik League incident
- Two Minutes Hate, Orwell's 1984
- Self-criticism in Communism
References
- 1 2 Lipman, Jonathan Neaman; Harrell, Stevan (1990). Violence in China: Essays in Culture and Counterculture. SUNY Press. pp. 154–157.
- ↑ Priestland, David (2009). The Red Flag: A History of Communism. Grove Press. p. 246. ISBN 978-0-8021-1924-7.
- ↑ "A Catholic Voice Out of Communist China - November 1998 Mindszenty Report". 2008-03-13. Archived from the original on 2008-03-13. Retrieved 2011-03-07.
- ↑ "Enemies of the People". Worldandischool.com. Retrieved 2011-03-07.
- ↑ Hsu Shang-li (27 September 2013). "Xi Jinping promotes criticism, self-criticism campaign". Want China Times. Retrieved 23 September 2015.