‘Tiger hunts’ revisit a bloody era in China’s history

September 12, 2013 2:35 pm

‘Tiger hunts’ revisit a bloody era in China’s history

By Frank Dikotter

As in the 1950s, malicious ideas such as democracy must be erased, writes Frank Dikotter

On a wintry day in February 1952, two victims, their hands tied behind their backs, were marched off to the execution grounds of Baoding, the provincial capital of Hebei, just south of Beijing. They were shot in the heart rather than in the head. Hundreds of thousands of enemies of the regime had faced the firing squad since the red flag was hoist above Tiananmen Square in October 1949 but this case was different. Both victims were central actors in the local party hierarchy. It was the defining moment of a campaign against corruption Mao Zedong had unleashed against the party itself. There were mere “flies” who needed to be swatted, the chairman explained, and there were “tigers”. Everywhere tiger-hunting teams tried to outdo each other, encouraged from above by Mao.In the country’s northwest, 340,000 cases of corruption were uncovered, although Xi Zhongxun, the man in charge of the region, said that in reality there could well be three times as many culprits.

Today, Xi’s son runs the country, and again there is talk of “flies” and “tigers” threatening the party’s legitimacy. Under President Xi Jinping, not a day passes without state media announcing newinvestigations into party officials.

But 60 years ago, under cover of popular approval and publicity for exceptional cases, something more sinister was happening. One by one, the remaining voices of opposition to Communism were silenced. Millions of “intellectuals” – students, teachers, professors, scientists and writers were forced to prove their allegiance to the new regime. Ideological education became the norm, as sessions of self-criticism, self-condemnation and self-exposure followed one another until all resistance was crushed and the individual broken, ready to serve the collective. Those unable to resist the pressure committed suicide.

Today, too, the anti-corruption drive coincides with an ideological “rectification campaign”. As in 1951-2, there are malicious ideas such as democracy, freedom and constitutionalism that must be stamped out. Only a few weeks ago, it was reported that several people were arrested simply for expressing online their dissatisfaction with the government.

Behind the publicity given to a few cases of government corruption, the business community also came under sustained attack in 1951-2. Recalcitrant entrepreneurs were locked up in their offices for days, occasionally dragged out to confront the workers in “struggle sessions” during which they were demeaned, humiliated and sometimes beaten. Terror drove a few to denounce each other. Captains of industry shook with fear as they stood on the stage, desperately hurling accusations at each other, reported Bo Yibo, minister of finance, to Mao. In Shanghai alone, more than 640 businesspeople killed themselves in two months.

Today the campaign to subordinate the business sector to the state is less bloody, but as a headline from The Washington Post recently put it: “A Lot of CEOs Get Taken Hostage in China.” There is a spate of “anti-corruption” investigations into business, many of them foreign. The biggest foreign company in the spotlight is British drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline, accused by the police of having used up to Rmb3bn in bribes to doctors to boost sales. All are scrambling to comply with endless regulations, many of which have not been enforced in the past.

After the communists “liberated” China in 1949, one of the biggest challenges in the party ranks came in 1954. Less than a year after Joseph Stalin died, Mao purged Gao Gang, a powerful official suspected of being too close to the Soviet Union. By turning on Gao and his acolytes, the chairman managed to rally the other senior leaders behind him. Bo was one of those who turned on Gao, maybe out of genuine dislike, possibly for political advancement. Bo Xilai, his son, is on trial today. A few months after his secret trial, Gao tried to shoot himself but missed (he later swallowed enough sleeping pills to end his life). A witch hunt followed, with other leaders denounced and sent to the gulag for scheming against the party. Bo Xilai’s trial is public – or almost. But his followers are falling one after another. The echo of the 1950s is not surprising: this is, after all, how one-party states create unity.

Mr Xi has openly declared his admiration for Mao. In July 2012 he visited a village from which the communists attacked Beijing in 1949. Standing on the holy ground, the president vowed that “our red nation will never change colour”.

Some foreign observers have interpreted his defence of the Maoist legacy as a rhetorical move designed to assuage those on the conservative wing of his party. But it is always prudent to take leaders of one-party states at their word rather than try to second-guess them. Since Mr Xi appears to have taken more than a page from his country’s history, maybe all of us who have an interest in the People’s Republic would do well to study the early years of the regime as carefully as he does.

The writer is a historian and author of ‘Tragedy of Liberation: A History of the Chinese Revolution’