Chang-tai Hung - Politics of Control: Creating Red Culture in the Early People’s Republic of China

One night in January 1949, Tsinghua University professor Zhang Xiruo (18891973), accompanied by two Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) soldiers, paid a surprise visit to the renowned architecture scholar Liang Sicheng (19011972) at his home. The famed university, located in northwestern Beiping (renamed Beijing on October 1, 1949), had just fallen to the Red Army. For several weeks, Beiping had been under siege. This was a critical moment in the ongoing civil war (19461949) between the Nationalist Party, or Kuomintang (KMT), which controlled Beiping, and the Communists, and the Communists were unmistakably gaining an upper hand. The visitors came with a request. Liangs aide, recorded what happened:

They said that the purpose of their visit was planning for a military assault on Beiping in case negotiations for a peaceful settlement with [KMT] commander General Fu Zuoyi [18951974] broke down. If the PLA was compelled to take the city by force, then [the Communists wanted] to take every measure to protect venerable architecture. These sites needed to be clearly identified. The soldiers then placed a military map on the table and asked Liang to mark down the locations of prized buildings.

Liang Sicheng was deeply touched by this unexpected request, which was so unlike the usual behavior of local KMT authorities, who, according to Liang, showed little respect for Chinas historic buildings. He had been frustrated when these officials ignored his repeated requests for the preservation of old buildings and temples. In Liangs eyes, the Communists were true protectors of Chinese culture. Liang happily complied with the request. He did not realize that the visit of the PLA soldiers was part of an overall city takeover plan of Mao Zedong (18931976) and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) senior leadership. Capturing Beiping peacefully would mean that numerous lives and treasured buildings would be spared, which would be a major political victory for the CCP. The Communists could project themselves as protectors of the city, which was home to magnificent palaces and memorable buildings.

Liang badly misinterpreted the situation. A few years later, in the mid-1950s, he would come into bitter conflict with the Communist rulers, who ordered the demolition of Beijings age-old city walls and buildings to develop a new industrial center. His censuring by an increasingly dictatorial CCP was typical of the Partys monopolistic control over peoples cultural activities and thoughts.

When the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) was officially founded on October 1, 1949, the most critical issue was controlling culture and peoples minds. Mao and senior Party leaders were determined to institute a new ideology and new values. This entailed refashioning traditional norms and archaic institutions by forcefully introducing nationalistic ideas and socialist aspirations.

The process of cultural control in China started long before the Communists actually came to power in 1949. The desire to change the country according to a new socialist image had its historical roots in the Yanan era (19361947) in Shaanxi Province in a movement known as the Rectification Campaign. Mao, in his famous 1942 Talks at the Yanan Forum on Literature and Art, one of the principal documents of the movement, contended, to defeat the enemy we must rely primarily on the army with guns. But this army alone is not enough; we must also have a cultural army, which is absolutely indispensable for uniting our own ranks and defeating the enemy. The cultural army implied a new generation of writers, artists, and intellectuals who would write in Marxist language, uphold Party doctrines, and make every effort to serve the revolutionary cause. The Yanan Talks laid the foundation for the Communists future cultural control of the nation in that it set up the iron perimeter of what could or could not be penned or painted.