The Everlasting Empire (35 page)

This said, a sizable group within the newly emerging intelligentsia has inherited and perpetuated the tradition of the imperial literati as wideranging sociopolitical critics and as bearers of a solemn political mission. This numerically small but politically and culturally extraordinarily important group will stand at the focus of my discussion in this section. These men and women had to navigate their way in the aftermath of the collapse of the sociopolitical system within which Chinese intellectuals had operated for more than two millennia, and amid the profound ideological crisis that accompanied the end of the imperial order. They had to formulate anew their “True Way”: a value system that would fit the new circumstances and allow them to resume the traditional role of the intellectuals as moral and political guides of society.

This task was performed primarily by a young generation of politically active intellectuals whose worldview was formed in the last years of the Qing or in the early years of the Republic, and who were not constrained by venerated imperial traditions. For them, patriotism (often coupled with many other “isms”) replaced the erstwhile commitment to the throne; while the burning desire to save the country from domestic and external perils led some of them to turn their backs on the past, in what Lin Yü-sheng laments as “totalistic iconoclasm.” Not only was the imperial political system discarded as obsolete and inadequate; the very “national essence,” namely, the Confucian cultural legacy, was stigmatized as an obstacle on the road to modernity. Chen Duxiu (1879–1942), the renowned leader of the iconoclastic “New Culture Movement” and the future first General Secretary of the CPC, plainly declared in 1916 that the “national essence” should be sacrificed lest “our nation … die out because of its unfitness for living in the modern world.”
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These words epitomize the choice made by many—although by no means all— young intellectuals of the first decades of the twentieth century. For the sake of the supreme political goal of national salvation, any cultural change was permissible. Facing the choice between their two roles, as political leaders of the society and as custodians of its cultural values, these intellectuals decisively opted for the former, thereby facilitating tremendous cultural and intellectual change in the world’s oldest continuous civilization within an amazingly short historical period.

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The New Culture Movement began in 1915 as an internal ferment within the intellectual community; but four years later, it merged with patriotic upheaval to give birth to the May Fourth Movement of 1919, one of the most significant events in China’s modern history. It began as a tiny demonstration against the unjust treatment of China in the soonto-be-signed Versailles Treaty, but it grew into a powerful wave of protests against warlordism, against corrupt politicians, and against political and cultural stagnation. Both major Chinese political parties of the twentieth century, the CPC and the (renovated) GMD, were born in the immediate aftermath of these events, which are widely considered the true watershed in China’s path to modernity. While many recent studies aim at “decentralizing” the May Fourth Movement from the narrative of China’s entrance into the modern age, the movement’s overall importance is undeniable; Mao Zedong himself viewed it as a turning point in the history of China’s “bourgeois-democratic revolution.”
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That a tiny intellectual community could reshape the political dynamic in China in the heyday of the warlord era testifies to the ongoing power of the men of letters and to their exceptional political potency. And yet, while intellectuals continued to play an important role throughout much of subsequent Republican history, soon enough new trends emerged that were not conducive to the future political and cultural leadership of the intellectuals in Chinese society.

The intellectuals’ eventual loss of their leadership position was curiously linked to the processes that they themselves had set in motion, namely, the collapse of the monarchy and the advancement of new, participatory modes of mass behavior. In the republican polity the intellectuals lost their erstwhile function as speakers on behalf of the people before the throne; and they no longer sought to fulfill the role of the natural representatives of “the masses.” Rather, their overt goal was “to enlighten” or “to awaken” the people and to advance their political and cultural emancipation. In the process, even the traditional written language, the hallmark of the literati’s culture, was sacrificed and replaced (in 1920) with the colloquial language, a move that was meant to put an end to the intellectuals’ traditional elitism. This assault on elitism in the cultural sphere eventually hastened the end of the intellectuals’ dominance in the political sphere as well. As noted by Vera Schwarcz, while during the May Fourth Movement intellectuals still retained the sense of their “unique cultural mission” and behaved as undisputed social leaders, soon thereafter their position changed. They “could no longer hold on to their previous self-image as pioneer-prophets of enlightenment… [and] transformed themselves into
zhishi fenzi
—members of a politicized intelligentsia, or, more literally, knowledgeable members of a larger, classconscious body politic.”
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In the 1920s, as politically involved intellectuals were losing both political prestige and the elitist stance characteristic of the imperial literati, a new sociopolitical force emerged that began filling in the void. The newly formed Leninist parties (primarily the CPC, but to a certain extent also the GMD) began replacing the scholar-officials of the past as a new ruling stratum. Like the imperial literati, these parties acted as a political and ideological elite, supposedly united by common values, and having preferential access to sources of political power and social prestige. Many intellectuals were active in the formation of both parties, and some preserved important positions within their party’s establishment, which allowed them to sustain their traditional role as the rulers’ advisers; yet theirs were individual success stories. As a social stratum the intellectuals were no longer considered exceptionally fit to hold office; gone was their political leadership. The CPC’s victory in the lengthy civil war and the establishment of the People’s Republic in 1949 marked the end of an active political role for intellectuals outside the Party establishment. The new power configuration was completed.

Mao Zedong’s period in power (1949–1976) was greatly disadvantageous to the intelligentsia as a whole. No longer the collective possessor of correct values (a position they had lost to the proletariat), the intellectuals—especially those who remained politically involved—witnessed an unprecedented assault on their stratum, which peaked in the tragic farce wherein scores of professors and students were rusticated in order to “learn from poor peasants” and remold their consciousness. The decade of the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), during which the intellectuals were defined as the “stinking old ninth [category of class enemies],” marked the nadir of their status. Yet even under these adverse circumstances the erosion of the intellectuals’ power was neither unidirectional nor irreversible. Their traditional prestige, their ideological expertise, and their widely respected contribution to the nation’s rejuvenation and to the revolutionary movements—all these prevented the complete marginalization of the intelligentsia even under Mao Zedong. Prior to the Cultural Revolution, many intellectuals remained prominent within the Party establishment, continuing to seek the restoration of their traditional role as moral and intellectual leaders of society, or what Timothy Cheek somewhat derisively calls the position of “priest-rentiers, serving the cosmic state (Confucian or Leninist).”
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The continuation of traditional patterns is clearly evident in the relations of some of these establishment intellectuals with the Party leadership led by the quasi-emperor, Mao Zedong, as traditional dramas of loyal self-sacrifice were repeatedly reenacted.
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Moreover, even campaigns that targeted intellectuals (and, no less significantly, periodic attempts to court them, as in the “Hundred Flowers” movement of 1956–1957) testify to the ongoing importance of

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that stratum. Being designated as the “stinking old ninth” was humiliating, to be sure; but behind the humiliation were Mao’s profound fears of the intellectuals’ ability to influence the state in a negative (“revisionist,” “capitalist,” or “bureaucratic”) direction.

In retrospect, Mao’s fears were justified: shortly after his death, the intellectuals briefly reemerged as a powerful stratum, whose support was crucial to the successful restoration of Deng Xiaoping and the subsequent dismantling of radical aspects of Maoist practices.
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Furthermore, in the 1980s China witnessed a brief revival of the intellectuals’ political importance as a social group, and this revival was not limited to establishment figures. In the aftermath of Mao’s era the country searched intensively for a new course of development, and the prestige of those with demonstrable ideological expertise soared. By the late 1980s, as the Party leadership vacillated between conflicting programs, intellectuals became particularly vociferous, and their impact on the country’s political dynamics rapidly increased. It peaked in 1989, when, in an emulation of the May Fourth Movement, student demonstrations on Beijing’s Tiananmen Square intoxicated much of the country’s urban population, bringing millions to voice their grievances and to protest against corruption and against the ineptitude of the Party leadership. At the end, the beleaguered Party elders fought back, brutally suppressing the student movement; but the power of a tiny student community to trigger broad protests caused many observers to refocus on perceived continuities in the intellectuals’ political role in traditional and modern China. For a short while it seemed that the pendulum had swung back to 1919, and that the Beijing protests would change the course of China’s history.
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Twenty years after these events, with the advantage of hindsight, it is possible to contextualize the 1980s within the gradual process of erosion of the intellectuals’ power, and to conclude that the student movement’s temporary success did not mark the intellectuals’ return as autonomous actors to the forefront of political processes. The student radicals’ ability to influence national politics derived from a peculiar confluence: an atmosphere of intensive ideological search for a new course coincided with deep cleavages within the CPC leadership; but once these factors had ebbed, the intellectuals’ impact on social and political life receded as well. While the termination of the class-oriented discourse enabled the intellectuals to recoup some of their cultural prestige, and their position within the Party and the government has markedly improved since the end of Mao’s era, this stratum has by no means been reconstituted as China’s political elite. The changes in China’s political and social structure that I have outlined, which weakened the intellectuals’ leadership, appear currently to be irreversible.

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It may be tempting here to speculate that in due time the CPC—despite the obvious ideological, organizational, numerical, and social differences—might replace the imperial scholar-officials as China’s cultural, ideological, and sociopolitical elite. The transformation of the Party from a revolutionary organization of have-nots into a managerial organization—one that successfully absorbs members of newly emerging professional and economic elites—lends credibility to this comparison. Like the literati of the past, the Party lays claim to exclusive understanding of the proper ways to ensure China’s international prestige, domestic stability, and prosperity; and it is because of their monopoly on this collective wisdom that its members are supposed to have preferential access to government positions. Party members are, moreover, expected to cultivate their morality, to behave public-mindedly and “serve the people” in a quasi-Confucian fashion, and as such they are expected to be moral leaders of society.
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Yet the Party is still much weaker than the imperial educated elite in terms of its ideological cohesiveness, and in terms of its ability to secure ideological hegemony over society. Should these weaknesses be overcome (which currently appears unlikely, at least in the short term—but see more below), the comparison of the CPC to the literati of the past may become even more appealing.

As for “pure intellectuals,” their political reemergence does not seem likely. Massive expansion in higher education has eroded their elite status, despite its partial resurgence in the 1980s; while the ongoing diversification of employment opportunities and a proliferation of prestigious careers outside the government, and outside the public sphere, further decrease their erstwhile political engagement. The only notable exceptions to this dissociation of the intellectuals from politics are influential “establishment intellectuals” and their peers who find ways to promote their ideas and ideals through the Party organization or through a variety of affiliated think tanks, which have become increasingly important for decision makers in recent decades. In contrast, those intellectuals who opt to disengage from the governing structures are losing their political impact. Cheek predicted in 1994 that “the price of autonomy for Chinese intellectuals will be not only to let go of their priestly vocation,… but to become as irrelevant as Western intellectuals in their nations’ politics.”
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This may be too gloomy, but Cheek’s estimate does grasp current trends— at least with regard to a significant segment of the intelligentsia.

ELITES AND THE “MASSES”

Descending the traditional social ladder, we arrive at two groups whose positions changed dramatically in the wake of the twentieth-century up