No End to China’s Forward- and Backward-Thinking Cultural Revolutions

It seems China’s Communist Party just took a page from Mao Zedong’s “Revolutionary Writings.” During the Communist Revolution and Long March, he declared: “No Political party can possibly lead a great revolutionary movement to victory unless it possesses revolutionary theory and knowledge of history and has a profound grasp of the practical moment.” Consequently, possessing revolutionary theory and knowledge of history may now entail criminalizing attacks on revolutionary heroes. As for a profound grasp of the practical moment, the Chinese ruling party is evidently mining data directly from workers’ brains on an industrial and military and transportation-infrastructural scale.

Revolution Is Not a One Time Event
The South China Morning Post just revealed that China passed a law making it a crime to attack revolutionary heroes and martyrs. Stepping up efforts to police and preempt historical discussions and enforce ideology, the Communist Party also banned any criticism or questions about folklore surrounding the 1949 formation of the People’s Republic by Communist revolutionaries. The new law, rubber-stamped by the National People’s Congress, moreover prohibits acts that glorify historical episodes considered unpatriotic, such as Japan’s 20th century invasion of China. Violators or any intellectual dissidents will be pursued by the state and persecuted.

This isn’t the first time China has reverted to a forward- and backward-thinking revolution. Indeed, Mao’s Proletariat Cultural Revolution abolishing private enterprise and land ownership turned Chinese culture into a revolutionary battleground too. Along with expressing contempt for formal education: “I do not approve of reading so many books,” his criticism spread to the theater and arts. Calling for an attack on old customs, old habits, old culture, and old thinking, Chinese youth organized into the Red Guards to assault some leaders and intellectuals. Chess sets and kites were even confiscated and destroyed.

If Qin Rules, He Will Rule the World
Forward- and backward-thinking is being pursued as well with the government-backed surveillance projects that uses brain-reading technology to detect changes in emotional states. Workers at Hangzhou Zhongheng Electronics now wear caps so management can track their brainwaves. The data is then used to adjust the pace of production and redesign workflows to supposedly increase the efficiency of the workers by manipulating the frequency and length of break times and reduce mental stress. The same wireless sensors that constantly monitor the wearer’s brainwaves and stream the data to computers that use AI algorithms are being tested on the military and at the helm of high speed-trains too.

Some fear this kind of forward- and backward-thinking cultural revoltuion slips back to China’s first emperor, Qin Shi Huangdi. He not only turn China into the most enduring uniformed state in world history, but he built a new social and political order defined by the Great Wall. Throughout all of China, his strict centralization and severity-symbolized by the Great Wall that kept nomadic tribes out while keeping subjects in-ruthlessly imposed cultural, linguistic, economic, and technological unity. Marking his reign with “Year One,” it is rumored he gave orders to bury alive 400 Confucian scholars and burn all existing books. Just as Confucianism. other philosophies and teachings were replaced by Legalism.

Selfless Past Always in the Present and Future
There’s been other kinds of forward- and backward-thinking revolutions too. The ill-conceived Great Leap Forward, which pushed collectivized farming and industries, caused famines that left so many people dead Mao justified how the dead fertilized the land. Both the 1919 May 4th Movement, that gave birth to China’s Communist Party and tried freeing the peasantry, and the 1989 Chinese People’s Movement, which consisted of emancipating the mind, ended in bloodshed. Nor was it decided if humankind, especially the young, might create a relatively selfless psychology of the new women and men who could build a technologically advanced Communist economy or Democratic society.

Regarding China’s technologically advanced Communist economy, the latest forward- and backward-thinking battlefront is Cyberspace. Not only does the Ministry of Culture track users and vet music, but it’s banned usernames and political, pornographic, anime, anti-censorship, and environmental websites. The latest sensation to be censored is Britain’s Peppa Pig, which officials think is a “negative influence” on young adults and the country‘s pre-school children. Its “dark social” matter and netizens have evidently turned Peppa into a symbol of “shehuiren,” slang for “slacker” and someone who’s not in step with the Communist Party‘s ideology.(1) They’ve also embedded police in Internet companies.

To Wake a Tiger Use a Long Stick
Since taking power in 2012, President Xi Jingping also appears to have embodied China’s forward- and backward-thinking revolutions. He may even be the “new woman and man” who can build a more advanced society. Not only did he enhance “patriotic” education and call for tighter ideological discipline across society, but teachers who criticized Mao were silenced or sacked. In addition to the state control media rolling out a series of polished media campaigns that remind citizens of the party’s historical accomplishments, Xi was also allowed declared “President for Life” while term limits were removed. In such a system, how much opportunity does a “people’s party” really have at ruling?

Mao believed that historical experience was written in blood and iron. He could of added forward- and backward-thinking revolutions as well. Indeed, did cultural revolutions really allow a hundred flowers to bloom? Or a hundred schools of thought to contend? That said, given China’s new and criminalized attacks on revolutionary heroes-followed by tracking and persecuting any violators, or the mining of data directly from workers’ brains and the ongoing battle over Internet censorship, the Chinese Communist People’s Party officials may want to also remember an old Chinese saying. In other words, even Mao and the Gang of Four had to admit that: “In waking a tiger, use a long stick.”

Dallas Darling is the author of Politics 501: An A-Z Reading on Conscientious Political Thought and Action, Some Nations Above God: 52 Weekly Reflections On Modern-Day Imperialism, Militarism, And Consumerism in the Context of John’s Apocalyptic Vision, and The Other Side Of Christianity: Reflections on Faith, Politics, Spirituality, History, and Peace. He is a correspondent for www.WN.com. You can read more of Dallas’ writings at www.beverlydarling.com and www.WN.com/dallasdarling.

(1) www.businessinsider.com. “China Bans Peppa Pig to Combat ‘Negative Influence’ of Foreign Ideologies,” by Alexandra Ma. April 30, 2018.