Resistance as Victimization

In early 1949, as the first PRC minister of public security, Luo Ruiqing, was determining the course of social control efforts around the country, he was concurrently instituting some of the first such efforts in the capital city. Addressing the large “lumpenproletariat” (youmin wuchanzhe 游民无产者) population was a first order of business. According to Luo, brothels, vagrant gangs, and theft rings were political problems that threatened internal security (Dutton Reference Dutton2005, 150). They were also social problems, the disastrous legacy of the pre-revolutionary “old society.” As Mao had argued in Reference Zedong and Minoru1939, “China's colonial and semi-colonial status created a vast number of unemployed people in both the countryside and in the cities. Having no legitimate way to make a living, they were forced, against their will, to seek a living through illegitimate professions” (Mao Reference Zedong and Minoru1939, 7). Mao, as well as Beijing's top official, Politburo member Peng Zhen, had long argued that lumpenproletarians could not be considered enemies but that they did possess a dual nature: at once victimized members of the laboring masses and untrustworthy elements with “parasitic inclinations.” This “two-faced” quality led them to “waver” between revolution and counterrevolution (Mao Reference Zedong and Minoru1939; Peng Reference Zhen1941, 5). As early as 1928, Mao insisted that “the only way” to win over these wayward proletarians was to carry out intensive thought reform “so as to effect qualitative changes in these elements” (Mao Reference Zedong and Minoru1928; Schram and Hodes Reference Schram and Hodes1992, 3:94).

In keeping with those instructions, Chief Luo worked with Beijing's highest governing body, the Municipal Committee, to carry out the “internment and reform” (shourong gaizao 收容改造) of “prostitutes” (jinü 妓女), a group limited to women who sold sexual services, and “beggars” (qigai 乞丐). The latter term was shorthand for a heterogeneous group of internees whom reeducation-center cadres variously described as “beggars, petty thieves, pickpockets, and disbanded soldiers,” as well as “disaster victims,” “hooligans,” and “vagrants” (BMZ 1949e; Cao Reference Zixi1994; Li Xiaowei Reference Xiaowei2007, 61; ZBQ 1991, 466). By the end of 1950, the Beijing Public Security Bureau had captured roughly 8,000 suspects, and after investigating and processing the detainees, the Bureau of Civil Affairs had interned more than 5,000 individuals, in eight reeducation centers for prostitutes and five for beggars (BGA 1950, 1988; BMZ 1949a, 1950b).Footnote ⁴

These institutions were staffed by a diverse crowd, including veteran revolutionaries, recent college graduates, and employees of the ousted Guomindang government. The cadres detailed their activities in a series of reports, which they submitted to their superiors in the Bureaus of Civil Affairs and Public Security, which submitted their own reports, in turn, to the national ministries and the Municipal Committee. Those bodies sent similar paperwork to the Government Administration Council (headed by Zhou Enlai) and to the Central Committee of the Communist Party (chaired by Mao Zedong). These documents were edited and revised as they moved up the chain of command, but on the subject of internment and reform, they were entirely consistent on one key point: the lumpenproletariat did not welcome incarceration.Footnote ⁵

When the beggars arrived at the reeducation center, according to the Bureau of Civil Affairs, “they were in a state of panic. They fought, ran away, and feigned madness.”Footnote ⁶ Young children, collared for panhandling or picking pockets, apparently wailed and pounded the floor with their fists, begging to be allowed to return home (BMZ 1949a, 1949f). According to Tan Ying, an older revolutionary who had come out of retirement to help with internment and reform, most of the cadres were unprepared for the “chaos” they encountered in the reeducation centers, as angry inmates hid, played dead, scaled walls, and attacked their captors (BGA 1988; Liang Reference Ke1999, 9). Cadre Pei Di, who was twenty-five in 1949, recalled that on the second day of the internment, a prostitute opened her dressing gown and flashed the soldier guarding the door. When he looked away, “the half-naked prostitute cried, ‘Sisters run! The People's Liberation Army won't dare fire on us!’” According to Pei, the internees then escaped into the streets (Yang Min Reference Min2010, 76).

In December 1949, the Bureau of Civil Affairs described the first few days of its internment efforts: “Our cadres were few, and we lacked experience. . . . There was a seizure of power by the internees. Internees ran away in groups. It was only quelled after one person was beaten to death” (BMZ 1949a). In fact, this scene, in which newly incarcerated lumpenproletarians rioted and ran away while others launched hunger strikes and fistfights, is essentially a set piece, appearing regularly in both primary and secondary accounts of reeducation efforts across the PRC (BGA 1949; Hershatter Reference Hershatter1997, 312–13; Li Peiyi Reference Peiyi1987; Li Runshan Reference Runshan1995, 187; Liang Reference Ke1999, 9; Mi and Gao Reference Shiqi and Changwu2007, 42; TMZ 1951; Yang Min Reference Min2010, 76). The ubiquity of this textual resistance must, in part, reflect the very real opposition reeducators surely encountered. Cadres were under orders to report problems. The Beijing Public Security Bureau had instructed subordinates to summarize “all the facts” about “every phase of Beijing's work,” and this imperative was reinforced by the standardized work report format, which includes a section summarizing successes and achievements, “and then shifts into critique mode” (Diamant Reference Diamant2009, 427; see BGA 1949).

Yet cadres did more than report the mere fact of resistance. As we shall see, they also interpreted that resistance in a specific way, attributing the “bad behavior” of their charges to the pernicious effects of life on the streets or in the brothels, insisting on a direct connection between internees' past experiences and their defiance of the state. Thus, cadres did not just recount resistance; they deployed it. Reading (and writing) opposition in this fashion allowed reeducators to argue that thought reform projects were necessary and just. The causes reeducators attributed to internee opposition confirmed the assertion that there was something terribly wrong with many members of the Chinese nation, which sanctioned the Party's efforts to reform them.

City leaders employed this rhetorical strategy when they commented on the “chaos” in Beijing's reeducation centers. In July 1949, the Municipal Committee wrote that beggars and vagrants ran away and fought with cadres because “they were all absolutely terrified”:

Newly interned prostitutes were similarly afraid, according to the Committee, because “they were under the influence of the evil propaganda spread by brothel owners,” including rumors that prostitutes “would be allocated as wives, gifted to Red Army soldiers, or sent to the Northwest to reclaim wasteland” (BSW 1949a).Footnote ⁷ Misinformation was not the only cause of resistance, according to reeducators who also argued that internees opposed the Communists because imperialism, feudalism, and capitalism had inflicted severe psychological and emotional damage. When reformatory cadres described rebellious prostitutes, they claimed the internees' “suspicion and anxiety” were the result of their having been “oppressed to such a profound degree” that “they saw artifice everywhere and did not trust people easily” (BMZ 1950b).

Throughout 1949 and 1950, reformatories sent multiple reports about aggressive, hostile internees to the Bureaus of Civil Affairs and Public Security, but cadres insisted they were not responding in kind. Rather, reeducators claimed to be following both Beijing's local regulations and nationwide reeducation guidelines produced by the Ministry of the Interior. First and foremost, those rules instructed cadres to treat internees as “members of the laboring masses” whom “thousands of years of feudal, bureaucratic control had forced into bankruptcy and unemployment” (BMZ 1949g; DZG 1994, 82; MZB 2003, 4–5). The Municipal Committee insisted that beggars and prostitutes were not enemies, and officials kept reformatories administratively and spatially distinct from prisons. In Beijing, as in most municipalities, Civil Affairs units took responsibility for lumpenproletarians, while Public Security organs handled counterrevolutionaries and criminals (DZG 1994, 74, 92). The police took an active role in Civil Affairs-run reeducation efforts around the country, but most reformatories employed staffs comprised primarily of teachers and social workers. As local and national officials trained these rehabilitators, they urged them to use consciousness-raising and compassionate persuasion (BMZ 1949d; BSW 1949b; DZG 1994, 85; Hershatter Reference Hershatter1997, 309–10; Li Peiyi Reference Peiyi1987, 187–89; A. Smith Reference Smith2013).

Yang Yunyu, who went on to serve as deputy-minister of education, was the longtime Party member in charge of rehabilitating Beijing's prostitutes. She later told interviewers that she and her staff focused on convincing internees that while the pre-revolutionary society had fomented brutality and exploitation, the new socialist society would foster solidarity and mutual aid (Mi and Gao Reference Shiqi and Changwu2007, 43). For interned beggars, the message from their rehabilitators was similar: “Cadres and beggars often go about their daily activities together. . . . If someone has something to say, they say it, without holding back. We comfort the beggars, teach the beggars, and solve problems on the beggars' behalf” (BMZ 1949f).

In 1949 and 1950, reeducators claimed that their charges were obstinate and even violent in their opposition to reform, but because that resistance was motivated by fear and low consciousness, according to cadres, it was appropriately and effectively eradicated with compassionate education (A. Smith Reference Smith2013, 108–14). In May 1949, rehabilitators reported that beggars were “in a volatile state,” absolutely “unwilling to study,” but “as cadres raised their consciousness, they gradually changed their attitude toward studying.” Within a month, the beggars were apparently “studying diligently” and “regularly and enthusiastically offering their comments” (BMZ 1949a, 1949f). In 1950, cadres claimed to have similarly mollified combative prostitutes: “We explained the government's reasons for closing brothels and the policies toward prostitutes. . . . We backed up our words with our actions.” Through “sincerity and compassion we warmed the hearts” of the prostitutes, “broke through their suspicions, and turned their doubt turned into trust. . . . The majority is now studying enthusiastically. There is order and stability” (BMZ 1950b). When the Municipal Committee excerpted these accounts in its own reports to the Central Committee, it juxtaposed fear-fueled riots with discussions of newfound solidarity. The Committee reported that compassionate consciousness-raising had successfully eliminated most opposition by “calming internee anxieties” and building a “harmonious atmosphere inside the institutions” (BSW 1949a, 1949b).

Two years after the start of Beijing's internment and reform efforts, reeducators had not yet managed to eradicate the lumpenproletariat, but cadres and officials continued to cast resistance (almost entirely) as a residual effect of old-society devastation. When Civil Affairs Chief Dong Ruqin reported to the Beijing People's Government in June 1951, he remarked, “We have run into a number of problems during the internment of beggars. The beggars were on the streets for a very long time under the old society and this gave rise to undesirable mindsets.” To solve these problems, Dong continued, “We must carry out long-term capture and relatively long-term reeducation and reform” (Dong Reference Dong1951).

Reformatory cadres followed Chief Dong's lead. Reeducators continued to explain resistance by reiterating the extent to which the internees had been oppressed by the old society, which allowed them to confirm the Communist assertion that previous regimes and institutions did indeed have negative effects on Chinese people. During a 1951 effort to provide vocational training to beggars, for example, a civil affairs cadre described the “students'” mindsets: “Their class status is complicated. They love ease and comfort, but they despise labor” (BMZ 1951b). Some “beggar intellectuals accepted [joining a labor team] in theory, but because of their mindsets, they were afraid of suffering” and therefore refused to engage in production. These “beggar intellectuals” were quoted as saying, “Every day I see the form and I think about signing up . . . but once I hear ‘labor,’ I get angry” (BMZ 1951b).Footnote ⁸ This tendency to “despise labor,” allegedly inculcated by an old society in which physical work was considered a base occupation, was precisely the mistaken idea for which these individuals were undergoing reeducation (A. Smith Reference Smith2013, 139–74).

The report also discussed famine victims from the countryside who were caught begging or picking pockets in Beijing. Cadres insisted that these individuals were targeted for reeducation not because desperate situations forced them to take drastic measures, but because of their persistent tendency to rely on charity or crime rather than their own labor. That they did indeed possess such a tendency was evidenced by quoting a famine victim: “In the winter when I have nothing to do, I wander into the city and go to [the reeducation center] to hang out. I wait until I get some new clothes, and come spring, I go home.” Along with several similar examples, these quotations were said to “fully demonstrate that their [the internees'] parasitic mindsets were quite serious” (BMZ 1951b).

That same year, the Ministry of the Interior ordered reeducators to deliver “patriotic education” that “exposed the evils of American imperialism” as part of the nationwide campaign to generate support for China's participation in the Korean War. Staff accordingly designed curriculum to teach internees “to clearly distinguish friends from enemies . . . to oppose America . . . to increase the forces with which to Resist America [and] Aid Korea” (BMZ 1951a, 1951b; MZB 2003). Quotations from individuals who disagreed with these patriotic principles were marshaled to illustrate how necessary this kind of education was, to support claims that these individuals had indeed been affected by years of imperialist exploitation. For example, one internee allegedly argued, “America has the atomic bomb. We can never compete. China should learn from America.” Clearly, argued the report writer, internees held the damaging and humiliating belief that China was “inferior as a nation,” or that “China is bad and foreign countries are good” (BMZ 1951b).

The new PRC government urged incarcerated and non-incarcerated citizens alike to organize “their personal narratives into categories of pre-liberation suffering and post-liberation opportunity” (Hershatter Reference Hershatter2002, 58), and this old society/new society narrative was “the principal foundation-stone on which the legitimacy of the Chinese party-state existed after 1949” (Cohen Reference Cohen and Wasserstrom2003, 33). Embedded in this temporal construction was a claim about the necessity of revolutionary social reforms, including incarceration-based reeducation. According to the Communists' mobilizational rhetoric, China was in dire need of radical social transformation. Ultimately, the truth of that exhortation to revolution depended on the veracity of the claim that the Chinese people were sick and that reform and reeducation were the only cures. Beijing reeducators were attempting to verify that diagnosis, at least for their internees.

There was, however, a crucial corollary to assertions about the nature and significance of internee opposition. As “necessary” as opposition was to this rhetoric, it was just as important that internees ultimately cease to resist. The CCP insisted it had the solutions to China's most serious problems. When reeducators interpreted internee defiance as stemming almost exclusively from those same problems, they effectively argued that this particular form of resistance would be temporary. And as they wrote about their work, reeducators indeed asserted that compassionately administered consciousness-raising was the antidote to opposition. Reports from low-level cadres and members of the Municipal People's Government alike all insisted that, as Zhang Jiexun wrote in Reference Jiexun1950, “After receiving ordinary education alone, the vast majority of internees underwent a profound transformation” (Zhang Reference Jiexun[1950] 1988, 310; see BMZ 1949d, 1949e, 1949f, 1950b, 1950e; BSW 1949a, 1949b; BZF 1950a, 1950b).

They regularly modified their success claims with “most” and “the vast majority,” but if reeducators suspected, between 1949 and 1951, that some members of the lumpenproletariat might ultimately refuse to reform, neither cadres nor officials seem to have spent much time attempting to sort the potentially unreformable from the larger group of internees, all of whom were described as badly behaved, hostile, and recalcitrant. Rather, discussions about rehabilitation focused on positive results, arguing that even aggressively confrontational internees became compliant and enthusiastic after compassionate cadres provided clear information and education. In reports written by both cadres and their superiors, resistance was almost invariably the first half of a “before-and-after” couplet that employed recalcitrance as the foil for reform. “After education,” the Municipal Committee told the Central Committee in 1949, “even the small number of very insolent [internees] no longer openly resisted” (BSW 1949a).

There is, of course, substantial evidence, even in these polished reports, to suggest a darker reality inside early-PRC reeducation centers. Superiors frequently accused reformatory staff of beating, humiliating, and even hanging and murdering internees (BJC 1953; BJJ 1953a, 1954b; BMZ 1949e, 1950d; BSW 1949b; Chen Qiyuan Reference Qiyuan1951; NCK 1952a, 1952b, 1953a; Wu Yunfu Reference Yunfu1953). Yet the idealized vision of compassionate and effective reform that comes through in these sources is significant because official claims about reeducation practice were to change dramatically over a few short years. Agents of the state initially contrasted the gentler form of rehabilitation practice they endorsed for the lumpenproletariat against the much harsher treatment they envisioned for more antagonistic resisters, such as counterrevolutionaries (Dutton Reference Dutton2005, 150; Hershatter Reference Hershatter1997, 310; Huang and Wang Reference Hongshan and Weiping2010; Liao Reference Shengping2009a, 28; Ruan Reference Qinghua2008, 159; A. Smith Reference Smith2013). By 1957, however, the newly codified sanction of Reeducation through Labor had all but erased that distinction, even in the most idealized of official sources.

Failure to Reform

By 1953, the People's Government operated 920 reeducation centers countrywide, with a staff of more than 10,700 employees and a fluctuating population of roughly half a million lumpenproletariat-internees (Wu Yunfu Reference Yunfu1953; ZBQ 1991, 466; ZMD 2003, 4–5). In Beijing, a weekly work report from the Bureau of Civil Affairs claimed that as of May 3, 1953, there were still more than 2,300 internees housed in Beijing's reeducation centers (BMZ 1953b). According to the April intake numbers, 175 internees arrived in that month alone (BMZ 1953b). Authorities in the central government ministries were not pleased with these numbers (Renmin ribao 1953; Wu Yunfu Reference Yunfu1953). As the costs of post-revolutionary national reconstruction were exacerbated by expensive Korean War efforts and disappointing agricultural production, reeducation centers were one of many expensive programs that came under fire as even the central Social Relief Committee began to call for drastic reductions to the social services budget (Zhao Reference Xiyue1953).

By 1953, Beijing had repeatedly revised its internment and reform policies in attempts to limit the “appropriate targets for internment,” streamline internee processing, and ensure that targets were quickly reforming and joining production teams (BZF 1951; Wu Yunfu Reference Yunfu1953; Zhao Reference Xiyue1953). As early as 1951, a new line had been added to the official internment regulations: “Those with the ability to labor must accept labor reform and education. Disobedience will be punished according to the seriousness of the offense” (BMZ 1951a). Yet throughout 1952 and 1953, the Public Security Bureau (PSB) tallied the beggars, prostitutes, and petty thieves that “continued to appear endlessly” on Beijing's streets, and the Bureau of Civil Affairs complained regularly about former internees who had “returned to their old trades” after reeducation (BMZ 1952, 1953a, 1953b).

It was in that context that the Municipal Committee reviewed a series of complaints about “troublemakers” in capital-city reeducation institutions where, according to staff, “a portion of the internees absolutely refuses to obey the cadres.” Reeducators from more than one reformatory had reported that their work units were “in chaos” because cadres were unable to control their charges (BSW 1953). The Committee's 1953 report on the situation drew on and exemplified the discussions about resistance that were becoming more and more common by the mid-1950s. The individual acts of opposition recounted in 1953 were not essentially different from the problems reeducators had been documenting since 1949, but unlike those earlier reports, the 1953 summary did not conclude with the formulaic affirmation: “after education, the vast majority underwent a transformation.” Instead, the Committee concluded flatly, “Cadres in the centers have criticized and educated [the internees] many times, all to no avail” (BSW 1953).

This discursive change is significant, signaling the earliest phase of a crucial shift in the way the PRC dealt with recalcitrant members of the lumpenproletariat. The transformation of the resistant internee, from low-consciousness-afflicted member of the wayward masses to fully cognizant quasi-criminal, culminated in the 1957 Reeducation through Labor Decision, which remains in effect. The case of Beijing suggests that this major shift in thought-reform policy began to take shape in 1953 at the level of individual internees. In that year, reeducators working for the Bureau of Civil Affairs began “giving up” on particular inmates and following the instructions of municipal authorities, which stipulated that “internees who have received education many times but have failed to reform should be sent to the Public Security Bureau for reform through forced labor” (BJJ 1953b, 1953c).

Civil Affairs reformers had always had the option of sending internees to the PSB, but prior to 1953, transfer reports suggested that cadres reserved this action for individuals who had committed serious crimes (such as murder) or cases of mistaken identity (such as brothel owners found to be impersonating prostitutes to avoid harsher penalties) (BGA 1988; BMZ 1949d, 1950b; NCK 1952b). In 1953, however, cadres began reporting that they were regularly transferring internees from the ostensibly more lenient Civil Affairs institutions to prisons operated by the police. The charge was “failure to reform.”

A beggar and petty thief named Lu Ming was a case in point. In August 1953, Lu had been undergoing reeducation for more than a year, but staff still considered his “mindset” to be “extremely reactionary.” Rehabilitators asserted that Lu Ming was the head of a clique that met in secret to design strategies for opposing the cadres. At one point staff discovered that Lu was encouraging fellow internee Fan Laohu to fight his reeducators. To counter Lu's influence, reformatory chief Wang Fuguan claimed he met with Fan and educated him about the need to obey the cadres. Fan apparently began to “vacillate,” the step that Mao (Reference Zedong1957a), for one, claimed preceded successful reeducation. But Lu Ming encouraged Fan to stay active in the opposition. “As it is revolution,” Lu reportedly said with clear irony, “we need to wage revolution until the bitter end” (BMZ 1953a).

Cadres documented a host of other violations, from fabricating the details of his personal history to mocking his frustrated rehabilitators for their ineffectuality. (“Wang Fuguan, you couldn't knock out two steamed buns!” Lu reportedly cried.) However, by reeducators' own accounts, none of the individual accusations against Lu were necessarily grounds for the prison transfer he received. Indeed, cadres, and even officials, attributed equally rebellious quotations to so-called “model reeducatees,” as evidence of pre-transformation recalcitrance. Certainly, at least on paper, criticizing cadres or the Communist Party was rarely an unforgiveable offense (BMZ 1951b; ZNW 1953). And that Lu Ming lied, defied his reeducators, and fomented discord also seems fairly benign when compared to the alleged activities of other internees, whose “bad behavior” cadres used as the “before” portraits in stories of successful reform. According to a report written the same month as Lu Ming's transfer, cadres had identified another internee, Li Lin, as a similarly combative “troublemaker.” Li was allegedly “famous for refusing to obey ” and “fomenting discord,” but after patient reeducators continued to work with Li, his “mindset underwent a transformation.” The report vaunted the reformed Li Lin as a model internee, who, in a reversal of his earlier behavior, now served as an activist and “provided information to the leadership” (BJJ 1953b).

The primary difference between Lu's story and Li's was that Li reformed while Lu continued to resist. Lu Ming was not alone. In the month of his transfer, the Bureau of Civil Affairs wrote to the PSB about the nine “most badly behaved internees in all of Beijing's reeducation centers” (BMZ 1953a). Included in the nine were Lu Ming, his friend Zhao Jinghe, and seven other “hooligans” accused of “shirking labor” and “resisting discipline.” Once again, each of the individual charges against the nine catalogued the same mundane acts of resistance for which other internees had been forgiven: running away, fighting, criticizing the government, refusing to eat, and shirking labor. But for “the nine” there was no corresponding “after” story of transformation. Instead, the Bureau of Civil Affairs concluded with an increasingly familiar refrain: “These internees have received education many times but have failed to reform. . . . We propose to send them to your department [the PSB] for reform through labor” (BMZ 1953a).

In November 1953, three months after cadres in Beijing transferred “the nine” to labor camps, Secretary-General of the Central Social Relief Committee Wu Yunfu confirmed the central government's position that resistance could be tolerated but refusal to reform should be met with a prison sentence. “When internees make mistakes,” instructed Wu, “use criticism, warnings, demerits, public repentance, and other such methods. But those who have made serious mistakes, and have received education many times but have failed to reform, or those guilty of criminal behavior, should be sent to Public Security” (Wu Yunfu Reference Yunfu1953). That same year, internment regulations approved by municipal committees across the country, including in Nanjing, Zhengzhou, Shanghai, and Chongqing, all noted that reeducators should transfer to Public Security Bureaus any internees who “received education many times but failed to reform” (CQ 1953; NJ 1953; ZSH 1953; ZZ 1953).

To demonstrate compliance with central government instructions, Beijing's Municipal Committee notified its superiors that, by the end of 1953, reeducation-center cadres had already taken action against some of the capital city's worst offenders and that decisions were pending on the others. Of the “troublemaker” it dubbed “female hooligan Zhuang Ti,” the Committee wrote, “Zhuang Ti has long not participated in labor. She spends her days starting fights with other internees.” Alleging that Zhuang had not responded to repeated reeducation attempts, the Committee concluded, “Cadres simply have no methods for dealing with her, and in November, we asked the Public Security Bureau to arrest her” (BSW 1953). The Committee also noted the similar transfer of an internee named Deng Meili, a twenty-eight-year-old former prostitute. According to her reeducators, Deng was in a reformatory common room when an internee named Li began laughing. “Because she did not like being laughed at,” Deng allegedly attacked Li, using as weapons a water jug and the plank barring the door. Cadres broke up the fight, but later that night, when Li was asleep, Deng launched a second attack, which ended in bloodshed. The report claimed that this was not the first incident involving Deng Meili, and cadres insisted they “had no way to educate her” (BJJ 1953b; BSW 1953).

As was the case for “the nine,” the reported incidents involving expelled internees Zhuang Ti and Deng Meili were all of a fairly ordinary nature. Zhuang and Deng were both accused of fighting, but more than a year after their expulsions, an interned beggar and petty thief named An Jiayin reportedly attacked a number of people in his institution, including his small-group leader. In fact, An apparently suspected that his offenses were sufficiently serious to earn him a transfer; cadres claimed he launched a hunger strike because he was afraid he was about to be “sent to the courts” (BJJ 1954c). Yet, unlike Zhuang and Deng, An Jiayin remained in a Civil Affairs reeducation center because he reportedly “recognized his mistakes” after receiving education (BJJ 1954c). The only substantive difference between unpunished but resistant internees, on the one hand, and Zhuang and Deng, on the other, is that cadres claimed the former eventually complied.

The point here is not that there was no single act antagonistic enough to earn a labor-camp sentence for a resistant reeducation-center internee. Secretary-General Wu allowed that internees who made “serious mistakes” or those “guilty of criminal behavior” might also be transferred to prisons, and reeducators probably could have argued that when Lu Ming organized a clique dedicated to disrupting reeducation-center operations, he was guilty of a counterrevolutionary offense (Wu Yunfu Reference Yunfu1953). Furthermore, at least one cadre alleged that Lu had a gun hidden somewhere inside the reeducation center, and several of the other transferees were accused of “stealing from the government,” all examples of “criminal behavior” (BMZ 1953a). The point, however, is that cadres did not characterize their decisions in that way, arguing instead that expelled internees were guilty not of crimes or even of successive attempts to oppose or obstruct reeducation efforts, but of failing to respond to reform.

In 1953, Bureau of Civil Affairs' records documented at least fifteen prison transfers for the year.Footnote ⁹ In a half-year report from 1954, the Municipal Social Relief Committee reported that year to date, 467 internees had been discharged from capital-city reeducation centers. Of those, twenty-four had been transferred to the police (BJJ 1954a). The Bureau of Civil Affairs later confirmed these numbers, noting that the internees in question had “received education many times but had failed to reform” (BMZ 1954b). If these numbers suggest that only a small portion of internees was transferred to the PSB, such was an important component of the official claims. With a total internee population of more than 2,500, identifying fewer than fifty “potentially unreformable” internees in an eighteen-month period supported reeducators' ongoing assertion that only a “small number of bad elements” were unwilling to reform. Alleged “troublemakers” may have been numerous (several hundred in the Municipal Committee's 1953 summary), but reeducators claimed that many of these individuals responded to tougher methods and made at least some progress toward reform (A. Smith Reference Smith2013, 201).

If the fact that thousands of beggars and prostitutes were still interned in 1953 led to a loss of faith in the efficacy of reeducation, neither cadres nor officials expressed those doubts in their reports. In and after 1953, reeducators repeatedly concluded anecdotes about internee resistance with the hopeless-sounding assertion, “We have no methods to deal with these individuals,” but they were not complaining about a general dearth of effective reform strategies. Instead, they asserted that for all of their expertise and their impressive record of success, they still had no methods with which to reform particular resisters (BJJ 1954d; BMZ 1954a, 1954c). This was a critique, not of thought reform, but of those who failed to respond to it. As late as November 1954, the Social Relief Committee claimed that, despite the problems they had with resistance and recidivism, 90 percent of internees were now accepting cadre discipline and participating in production. The November report concluded, “This demonstrates that our measures for reforming vagrants are practical and correct” (BJJ 1954a).

When reeducators transferred an internee to the Public Security Bureau, they signaled their belief that tried-and-true Civil Affairs methods would not prove effective in reforming that individual. It is, of course, unclear how reeducators distinguished resistance that was precursory to successful reeducation from opposition incorrigible enough for a labor-camp sentence, and there was almost certainly an element of capriciousness in their transfer decisions. But the argument cadres and their superiors were making is clear: Most lumpenproletariat resistance was symptomatic of victimization; it was not counterrevolutionary in nature. Reeducators claimed they could successfully eradicate ordinary, non-counterrevolutionary opposition. According to agents of the state, then, if resisters failed to respond to reform, their resistance was different in nature to that of the majority.

Thus, after 1954, reeducators did not revise their assertions about the nature or resolution of most internee resistance. However, cadres and officials did begin to argue that because “the vast majority” had already been reformed, those members of the lumpenproletariat still interned, or still engaged in “improper occupations,” were increasingly likely to be incorrigible. In 1956, the Ministry of the Interior issued a directive about future work with “vagrants” (a categorical term that now included prostitutes).Footnote ¹⁰ The Ministry used claims about the success of reeducation efforts to suggest the particularly deviant nature of “vagrants” who remained unreformed:

Two months later, in September, the Bureau of Civil Affairs corroborated the Ministry's claim, boasting that of the 15,670 beggars and petty thieves Beijing had interned between May 1949 and September 1956, only 2,337 remained in reeducation centers, and of those, 2,136 were very young, very old, disabled, or ill, and therefore would have difficulty supporting themselves in any case. There were, according to the report, only 201 internees who had the ability to labor but were not doing so. The Bureau similarly reported that of the more than 1,500 prostitutes it had rehabilitated since 1949, “the vast majority” was participating in industrial or agricultural production. Among the reeducated prostitutes and beggars, the Bureau claimed, there were even those who had been honored as labor models (BMZ 1956).

The same report, however, claimed that the internees who remained in state custody were of a particularly obstinate sort: “There are still many problems inside the reeducation centers . . . [internees] are retaining their old habits . . . We don't have effective measures to stop this” (BMZ 1956). Crucially, even in 1956, failure to reform was not an irrevocable designation, and reeducators still left room for the possibility that an internee's bad behavior might someday become the “before” half of a successful reeducation story. When reeducators reported that after more than six years of reeducation, some women were continuing to “turn to illicit prostitution,” cadres still acknowledged that both economic difficulties and cadre mistakes might be to blame for some of this recidivism (BMZ 1956). Yet, while no judgment was final, cadres and their superiors had clearly become quite pessimistic about the future rehabilitation prospects for lumpenproletarians who had not yet reformed.

On August 3, 1957, when the State Council issued its landmark “Decision” on Reeducation through Labor, it codified incorrigibility as a punishable offense, citing “individuals who have received education many times but have failed to reform” as appropriate targets for internment in reeducation-through-labor facilities. The regulations also listed a number of individual offenses, including prostitution and refusing to participate in production, but these itemized charges also hinted at a refusal to reform (GWY 1957). Reeducators had been targeting such behaviors for eight years, and work units in 1957 were still advised to attempt to educate and mobilize offenders before contacting the Public Security Bureau. Thus, reeducation-through-labor detainees were all, theoretically if not always in practice, individuals who had “received education many times but had failed to reform” (BJZ 1999; BSW 1958; GWY 1957).

The 1957 Decision transferred responsibility for all PRC reeducation centers to Public Security. Although Civil Affairs units were expected to play a continuing role, the Decision reversed the earlier division of labor and ordered Public Security agents to carry out the daily work of reeducating lumpenproletariat internees. As Fu Hualing (Reference Hualing2005) has shown, the Decision represented the fusion of what had previously been two separate projects, the effort to suppress counterrevolutionaries and the drive to eradicate urban “social problems.” Eight years after the start of Beijing's reeducation efforts, prostitutes, beggars, and counterrevolutionaries were all subject to the same sanction.

The Unreformed Minority

The case of lumpenproletariat reformatories suggests that anti-state resistance from members of the oppressed masses was essential to early-PRC rhetoric because it validated claims about the devastating effects of the old society and the transformative power of socialist “truth.” This “necessary resistance” meant that cadres and officials interpreted internee opposition as the legacy of victimization and not as evidence of counterrevolutionary intent. Resistance almost certainly had a similar rhetorical function in other contexts, since lumpenproletarians were not the only (non-enemy) individuals the state cast as resisters. Mao (Reference Zedong1957a) contended that most people in China, including workers, peasants, and Communist Party members, would initially react to reeducation with “hesitation, reconsideration, reluctance, and vacillation.” This was the case, Mao asserted, because all individuals in China suffered from “mindset problems” that led them to resist social and ideological change.

To give but one example, cadres working on social relief efforts regularly blamed ideological damage for resistance among the “ordinary masses” by noting that many urbanites were receiving social relief but refusing to participate in production because of the old-society belief that labor was a base occupation (A. Smith Reference Smith2013, 142–46). Yet social relief reports, including those published in the press, also repeatedly claimed that thought reform offered a resolution to such problems. Writers reliably asserted that “after education and consciousness raising,” most people began “enthusiastically participating in labor” (Chen Qiyuan Reference Qiyuan1951; Gao Reference Gao2004, 121; Zhao Reference Xiyue1953). The language the state used to describe the reeducation of non-interned urbanites might suggest that non-antagonistic resistance occupied a “necessary” place in CCP rhetoric about “the oppressed masses” more generally (beyond the limited case of reeducation centers). But discussions about labor and ordinary citizens certainly highlight an important component of Party discourse about benign forms of opposition: reformers insisted they could eradicate non-counterrevolutionary resistance with reeducation. The process was gradual, but for most individuals, as Mao (Reference Zedong1957a) argued, thought reform was expected to produce results: “The more reeducation one undergoes, the more one feels the need for it” and ultimately “over ninety percent will eventually bring themselves around to accepting reeducation.”

Proving the extent of old-society damage and demonstrating the Communists' ability to eradicate the causes and effects of victimization were both central to revolutionary rhetoric. In reformatories, cadres needed to show that their charges resisted rehabilitation, but reeducators also needed to demonstrate they were doing their job effectively. Thus, in a sense, non-counterrevolutionary resistance had an expiration date. The records from Beijing suggest that the expiration date, the point beyond which reeducators were unwilling to cast resistance as benign, was not absolute. A year after Lu Ming and Zhuang Ti were transferred to the Public Security Bureau, for example, An Jiayin attacked his fellow internees and fought with his reeducators, but reformatory staff held out hope for his eventual rehabilitation.

Even in 1957, as the Reeducation Decision took a stringent line on ostensibly incorrigible resisters, reeducators still claimed to tolerate opposition they believed to be non-antagonistic. In that year, Mao (Reference Zedong1957b) affirmed a similar position, claiming there were “still certain contradictions between the government and the people,” and when the People's Daily annotated Mao's view, the editorialist explained, “The contradictions between the masses of the people and their leaders are not opposing in nature” (Renmin ribao 1957). Yet it was clear that something in the official attitude toward opposition had changed by 1957. Reeducators, who had once cast nearly all opposition as a natural and necessary step on the path to reform, were increasingly likely to portray resistance as evidence of deviance, and the Reeducation Decision suggested that Civil Affairs reeducators were no longer confident that their methods would produce change in any internees who had not yet reformed.

When the state recategorized obstinate lumpenproletarians, classing them as more similar to counterrevolutionaries than social-relief recipients, the judgment was not necessarily that the as-yet unreformed were ultimately unreformable. At least theoretically, Reeducation through Labor was to have a rehabilitative component. But Mao had implied that some 10 percent of individuals might never accept reeducation, and rehabilitators seemed to suspect that at least some of their charges were members of that minority group. By 1957, reeducators and their superiors claimed that “the vast majority” of beggars, prostitutes, and petty thieves had already been reformed. Police records and other sources certainly suggest this claim was exaggerated, but when the leadership of the Communist Party made claims about the characteristics and behavior of the masses, those claims, hyperbolic or not, served as powerful normative statements. On resistance, the Party line was clear: opposing the government was a normal, expected, and even necessary response to social and political change, and such opposition was characteristic of the majority. But the masses reformed. The unreformed stood apart from that majority, by definition.