PEKING STYLE HOW INTELLECTUALS FARE UNDER THE DICTATORSHIP

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31092, 22 June 1966, Page 12

PEKING STYLE HOW INTELLECTUALS FARE UNDER THE DICTATORSHIP

(By

MARCEL MARIEN

in the “Guardian”, Manchejfcrl

(Reprinted bp arrangement!

In China, intellectuals and students suffer most from the dictatorship, because of the direct control exercised over them by the Communist Party. The system of rustication which is used against them is particularly severe, and the reasons for it are several and confused.

There are at least 15 million births a year, but China cannot create more than one million new jobs a year. Birth control has come too late to resolve a problem that cannot be postponed. Much of the surplus labour has to be sent back into the country to strengthen the agricultural sector. So newly qualified architects, doctors, musicians, lawyers, and chemists go off to till the land. The absurdity of the system is apparent, but this is not its real gravity. As feeding of the rusticated has to be done on the spot, millions of men, come to burden a rural consumption which is already reduced to the most basic level. Rustication The rustication of the intellectuals is called the “hsiafang” in Chinese, which means literally “to go down.” Instituted by law on August 17, 1957, it resulted from the attitude of the intellectuals in the campaign of the “hundred flowers." At the beginning of my stay in China, the “hsiafang” policy was being fiercely but sporadically applied. I came across it directly for the first time at a banquet to which I had been invited to celebrate the lunar new year. A Chinese woman got up to speak, and my interpreter confided, with a broad grin, that she was announcing “good news”: three of our “comrades” were lucky enough to have been selected for work in the country. It jeems from the sudden change of expression on the face of one of my colleagues that their departure had been kept secret. Several minutes later, it was the party secretary’s turn to change his expression. Disfigured with rage, he glared at' one of the girls who was leaving, who doubtless should sarcastically have thanked the party for the honour done her. My interpreter refrained from translating his strictures.

A little later, in March, 1964, there was a huge exodus: 7700 people left Peking. After this, several smaller groups left, and then, at the end of August, the announcement of large-scale rustication broke like a clap of thunder. This would be permanently, and no-one selected would be exempt. Neither age nor the evidence of a year already served, not even bad health, would enter into the balance.

In Peking meetings followed each other for eight days at a stretch, at the end of which

those who would form the first wave were singled out. These would be let off all work and given political indoctrination to prepare them for their work in the country. Two hundred

This article by a Belgian who worked for 18 months in Peking, mostly for the Propaganda Ministry, provides an interesting background to announcements by Peking newspapers of sweeping reforms in Chinese universities.

employees of the Foreign Language Press (about a fifth of the whole staff) were part of that first convoy, headed by the director himself, a former Vice-Minister of j Culture. Some went to the' North-east (Manchuria), but most reported in Hopei Province. Tip of the Iceberg As with everything else in China, the new measures' were only the tip of the! iceberg. The length of stay| was indefinite, but people! talked of three and a half, years—two and a half in the' country and one in the army.! Later on, I learnt that there! were no exact instructions, j except that the length of I absence depended on the work to be done. Once more, many couples were separated. Among the first to leave were, I noticed, the more intelligent elements, the ones most suspect in the eyes of the party. No humanitarian considerations entered into the selection. I am thinking here of a man of 55, the only support of a chronically sick wife and five children, with a monthly salary of 55 yuan (£8), who managed somehow or other to make ends meet by translating to supplement his regular work. 1 am thinking of a woman who had been exempted, a short time before, from helping with the harvest on the outskirts of Peking—because she was tubercular.

Once in the country the new arrivals were forbidden to supplement their diet by having food sent from the town: and were obliged to “conform” to the life of the peasants on whom they were billeted. That meant sharing the brick bed on which the whole family slept, from the grandmother to the smallest infant. (They were refused pyjamas!)

In secondary schools and universities, whole classes were selected for rustication, although students in their last year were not necessarily chosen. At Peking University, I for instance, the second from 'the final class in classical i literature was entirely removed with the exception of three foreign girls—a Belgian, a Vietnamese, and a Korean, for whom the course went on as if nothing had I happened. Elsewhere the class stayed ! and the professor hit the road ■ to the country. In these cases, | supervision of the class was relegated to the most gifted pupil—actually, the most conformist —who passed without any transition to the grade of professor. The rusticated students were refused any further contact with their interrupted studies: they were forbidden to take books, except, it goes without saying, the works of Mao. The large-scale departures took place in the middle of October and the total for Peking alone reached 125.000. Since then, forced migration has increased, and an article in “Peking Information,” on July 19, 1965, mentions millions of students going to set up in the country every year, to become peasants “of a new sort.” The article notes that “they work assiduously and live very simply. They face with gaiety difficulties, the tiredness, the hard tests, and the dirty work of carrying dung and fertiliser.” Naturally, the Chinese press presents these rustications as voluntary. The reality is different. They are carried out by methods of terror. Not only do the rusticated face atrocious living conditions. What is worse is the hostility of the peasantry. There is not a group of exiles that does not take a cook (the 200 deported from the Foreign Languages Press numbered three in their ranks). The kitchens are set apart, and with good reasons: the exiles run the risk of being poisoned by the peasants. The cases of collective poisoning, especially numerous when the people’s communes were [founded, have obliged the ' party to take this elementary precaution. The exijes are not held in less close vigilance for this. They are forbidden to walk about ■ alone, especially at night, and there have been innumerable murder cases unsolved because the whole village hangs together against the intruders. Effective Restraint The total lack of legality and the discretionary power of the party secretaries make it impossible to foresee the nature of reprisals against the refractory. There is no doubt that this uncertainty is a more effective restraint than an exact punishment. Chinese society is so organised that everyone is shut up in his own circle and can make no contact outside it. Witness the girl who

Witness the girl who categorically refused to go on th e “hsiafang.” At first she was not worried. Every morning she went to the office as if nothing had happened. But after several weeks she was called before the party secretary, who told her that she was sacked. Such a dismissal, noted in the victim's work book, makes it impossible for him or her to find another job. Forced unemployment then takes away the right to normal rations, even if the money can be found. This is why there are no “deportees” in China, only "volunteers."