The Red Guard Generation and Political Activism in China is Guobin Yang's second single-authored book, succeeding The Power of the Internet in China: Citizen Activism Online (2009). Although both books share a common interest in political activism conducted by ordinary Chinese citizens, there is a major difference: in his new book, Yang focuses on historical materials on the Cultural Revolution-era Red Guard movement, the sent-down youth, and the wave of protest from 1976 to 1980, rather than present-day events. These historical materials include historical documents, retrospective documents, and life histories as well as interviews with former Red Guards and sent-down youth, although the interviews only serve as supplementary materials to primary historical documents.
By examining historical materials, the author successfully brings some new perspectives to the understanding of Red Guard radicalism in the 1960s, as well as to the longer-term biography of the Red Guard generation from the 1960s to the present. However, when it comes to Yang's third goal in writing this book – to offer an account of the transformation of the political culture and political protest in China – his focus on historical materials together with the lack of follow-up analyses of recent events raises some questions on the effectiveness of the author's analytical framework. I will discuss this further after a brief introduction to the book.
In Chapter 1, Yang narrates the tragic story of the collective violence that happened in Chongqing during the Cultural Revolution, where conservative organizations sponsored by Communist Party authorities and rebel organizations that later split into two opposing factions, “fought one another to show and prove that they, and not others, were the true revolutionaries” (p. 19). Yang argues that since this political process was ambiguous and uncertain, it compelled the public to show their faith toward revolutionaries through their observable behavior, which, according to the author, was a conscious enactment of an imagined revolution.
In Chapter 2, Yang argues that the political culture prior to the Cultural Revolution, in which the category of revolution had become hallowed, led to the violent political process discussed in Chapter 1. The author uses memory narratives to prove that the political culture had influenced the Red Guard generation through canonic texts, films, literary works, songs, images, and so forth. It is also suggested that such powerful influence was not purely the result of propaganda.
However, since the author provides strong evidence arguing that the Communist Party deliberately created a revolutionary tradition for the cultivation of the young generation as revolutionary successors, propaganda or political education in the seventeen years prior to the Cultural Revolution did seem to be the decisive factor in building such a political culture.
Chapter 3 is based on an analysis of dissent among the Red Guards, which either challenged Mao Zedong and the rationale of the Cultural Revolution or was denounced as such by Mao and his lieutenants. In Yang's theory, these ideas of dissent were originally efforts to theorize the Cultural Revolution. As physical violence was considered to be “the result of practical revolutionary action,” dissent was considered to be “the outcome of theoretical revolutionary action.”
The author thus concludes that although the appearance of dissent was only made possible thanks to the booming of a Red Guard press, the fundamental principles behind the dissent were the same as those behind the Red Guard's performance of revolutionary violence. From this new perspective, dissenters among the Red Guard generation were no longer viewed as “prophetic thinkers who were ahead of their times,” but as ordinary people who had a strong sense of idealism and passion about revolution and radical social change.
Chapter 4 focuses on the lives of sent-down youth, most of whom experienced a dramatic change from Red Guards/rebels in major cities to farmers in agricultural rural areas. The author uses diaries and letters to show that sent-down youth learned to value personal interest in their struggles for daily existence, and in the end, rejected the official policy of sending young people to do farm labor in rural areas. Yang argues that it was through this process of disillusionment with the Red Guard movement and understanding of the reality of hardship in rural China that the Red Guard generation began to identify itself emotionally with the people, and finally affirm the values of “ordinary life,” which, according to the author, provided the necessary sociocultural foundation for the implementation of the state's economic policies in the reform era.
This is another new perspective introduced by Yang, who calls it “a simple and yet important argument,” because although the link seems to be too obvious to be ignored, it has indeed been ignored. However, it may be something of an exaggeration to say that the Red Guard generation provided the necessary sociocultural foundation for the economic reforms since 1978, especially considering that the Red Guard generation only accounted for a small part of the total population, and that the first reforms began in agriculture.
Chapter 5 focuses on the underground culture movement of the sent-down youth, which included but was not limited to writing letters and poems, singing, storytelling, radio listening, reading, and circulating forbidden books and unpublished manuscripts. The author argued that a “new” culture radically different from the revolutionary culture was born. Ultimately, its widespread circulation underground brought about new understandings of self and society among the sent-down youth, a central aspect of which was the affirmation of personal interest and the values of ordinary life discussed in Chapter 4.
In Chapter 6, Yang moves on to analyze the wave of protest from 1976 to 1980, including the April Fifth Movement, the Democracy Wall Movement, the protests by sent-down youth in 1978–1979, and the democratic election campaigns in universities in 1980. The author's insightful comparison of the three waves of protest in 1966–1968, 1976–1980, and 1989 points out that although the presence of members of the Red Guard generation can be found in all the major protest events, the number of radical activists had declined gradually due to state suppression. In fact, the winnowing out of political radicals disrupted the continuity of democratic protest in PRC history, and “the social movement field in China has always remained decentralized and fragmented” (p. 156). This is an important perspective to help us understand why the recent waves of democracy movements like the Arab Spring have had little impact on China.
Chapter 7 is somewhat disappointing compared with the other chapters, since the author does not introduce any notable new perspectives or methods of analysis. However, it is important nonetheless since Yang finally provides a closure to the story of the Red Guard generations: memories of the Cultural Revolution have been preserved by its participants, although it is remembered selectively.
The author's argument is that the memories are broken and fragmented because the general features are significantly shaped by contemporary politics and the social conditions of specific units of the Red Guard generation as agents of memory. It is also strongly suggested that contemporary memories are factionalized, although the author provides little evidence of this other than the fact that narratives of the memories are transmitted by former faction members.
The concluding chapter is mainly a repetition of the arguments mentioned before, thus making it a little bland, except for the discussion of the mediated activism of the Red Guard generation and their pursuit of “real” communities, which is shockingly abrupt.
Generally speaking, this book offers some intriguing new perspectives on understanding the Red Guard generation, as well as some ambitious new theoretical approaches like the “performance theory” introduced to analyze the collective violence and dissent during the Red Guard movement. Since the Communist Party is trying to erase the memories of the Cultural Revolution, to the extent that, recently, it decided to remove the chapter on the Cultural Revolution from middle-school history textbooks, the author's effort in preserving and promoting the narratives of former Red Guards/rebels is most commendable.
However, I do have some concerns about the author's reference to “the transformation of the political culture in China.” Although it is suggested repeatedly that the political culture has changed in China, it is never made clear what exactly “political culture” refers to. The author has used “political culture” in different ways. In Chapter 2, “political culture” refers to a deliberately created artificial “revolutionary tradition,” while in Chapter 6, it refers to the goals and demands of different waves of protest, and in the Conclusion, it refers to “political activism and protest.” All these political cultures have changed, according to the author. The first one was abandoned by the Red Guard generation, and the latter ones were forgotten in China thanks to state suppression. However, on a macro level, one can easily propose a counter-argument that political culture in China has not changed at all; it is still controlled by the Communist Party, and people's political activism is still greatly influenced by propaganda and brainwashing education, which in fact are consistent with recent demonstrations by Maoist leftists as well as the online left-wing agenda by younger generations. This contrariety suggests that further study on political culture in China is essential.
