THE THREE STAGES OF THE CAMPAIGN FOR THOUGHT REFORM IN COMMUNIST CHINA HU SHIH

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP83-00423R000100030001-6
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 14
• Document Creation Date: December 27, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 12, 2013
• Sequence Number: 1
• Content Type: REPORT

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IttliLLLUIMIA
THE THREE STAGES OF THE CAMTAIGN FOR THOUGHT REFORM IN COMMUNIST CHINA
HU SHIH
1 b 9 tx 4
According to Mr. Edward Hunter, the new terms "Brainwashing" and
"Brain-changing" were coined by the plain people of China.
It seems quite possible that those plain folks in my country
who invented these succinct and picturesque terms most probably had in
mind some such old Chinese tales like the one told by Pu Sung-ling
and translated by Herbert A. Giles in his "Strange Stories from
a Chinese Studio" (pp.56-65). The story tells of a Mr. Chu who
was "an egregious dunce" and could not even pass the first
examinations for civil service. But, by a strange accident, he
became an intimate friend and companion of the Infernal Judge in
night
the Courts of Purgatory, who frequently visited him at/hip home
les
and drank with him vast quantity of wine. One night Mr. Chu
got tipsy and fell asleep, leaving the Judge drinking by himself.
In his drunken sleep, Mr. Chu seemed to feel a pain in his stomach,
and waking up he saw that the Judge had cut open his body and was
carefully arranging his inside.
"Don't be afraid", said the Judge, laughing, "lam only providing
you with a more intelligent heart. ...Your heart (the seat of
the intellect) wasn't at all good at writing compositions, the
proper orifice being stuffed up. I have now provided you with
a better one which I procured from Hades".
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The Judge of Purgatory then quietly put back his friend's viscera
and closed up the opening, securing it with a bandage tied tightly
around his waist. He took the old heart and left him.
"From that moment", so the story goes, "Chu became an apt scholar",
composed fine essays, and "passed first on the list for the bachelor's
degree, and then among the first five for the master's degree". His
old comrades who had been accustomed to make a laughing-stock of him,
were not astonished to find him a full-blown chu-jen
Some such folk tales probably furnished the background out of
which have come the apt terms of "Brain-washing" and "Brain-changing",
which the plain folk of China naively conceive as somekind of
almost painless surgical operation by the magic power of an
Infernal Judge of the Courts of Purgatory.
But what the Chinese Communists call "Thought Reform" is a much
more complicated and difficult affair. Indeed it is a trememdous
undertaking involving thousands and tens of thousands of people
and requiring long months and even long years of concentrated
political effort, political pressure and mass pressure, endless
self-criticism and criticism of self-criticism, and endless
confessions of error and self-debasement.
Mao Tse-tung, in his "The People's Democratic Dictatorship"
published July 1, 1949, made this statement on the policy of
Thought Reform:
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"The People's State protects the people. Only when there is the
People's State will it be possible for the people to use democratic
methods on a Nation-wide and all-comprehensive scale to educate and
reform themselves, to free themselves from the influence of re-
actionaries at home and abroad (which influence is at present still
very great, and will continue to exist for a long time, and cannot
be eliminated Quickly), to reform the bad habits and bad ideas acquired
from the old society, not to allow themselves toll on the erroneous
ways led by the reactionaries, and to continue to advance and develop
toward a Socialist and a Communist society. The methods we use in this
work will be the democratic methods of persuasion, not the methods of
coercion.
If
This brief paragraph summed the objectives and the methods of the
Communist campaign for Thought Reform. The Objective is to
"protect the people", to protect them from going wrong: it is to
educate and "remould" (kai tsao) the people, to free them from the
influence of reactionaries at home and abroad, and to reform (kai
tsao) their bad habits and bad thoughts acquired from the old society.
The methods are to be "the democratic methods of persuasion", that
is, the methods of "Criticism and self-criticism"
Even as Mao was proclaiming "the Peop;e's Democratic Dictatorship"
(July 1, 1949), a program of Thought Reform had already been
rigorously carried out in Manchuria and North China. The North
China University of the People's Revolution was only one of the
better known large centers of Thought Reform, to which many
thousands of young and old men and women who had or were suspected
to have had ties with the old regime, were sent for indoctrination
and reform. The students there, numbering at all times from eight
to ten thousand, once included two former mayors of Peiping as
well as my own younger son. The "Thought Conclusion" of my
son in which he denounced his father as an enemy of
the People and his own enemy, was published in Red China in
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September, 1950, after he had been there for nearly a year.
Many older people were kept there for much longer time.
Beginning with fall opening of the schools in 1949, there was
established in every school, from the primary grade to the
university, what was called "the Big Course" which consisted
of nine hours per week of "Political Science" taught by
trained Communist teachers, and which all teachers as well as
all students were required to attend. Small Study Groups were
formed to discuss and analyse the contents of the Big Course,
and to apply them to the personal and professional thinking and
conduct of every member of each group.
Many university professors of national and international reputation,
such as Feng Yu-lan and Ch'ien Tuan-sheng, were sent to the interior
rural areas to participate in "land reform". This, was a part of the
Thought Reform Program, and its purpose, as Feng Yu-lan has vividly
described in his report, was to make those intellectuals go through
the actual practices and the mental and emotional experiences of
confiscation of land and farming implements from the small landlords
and of their redistribution to the landless. When they were participating
in these "reforms" in the interior, they had also to undergo the new
experience of being subjected to the questioning and criticism, of self-
criticism by the local party agents and the masses. Professor Ch'ien
Tuan-sheng testifies . that this questioning and criticism in the rural
areas was the most effective method he had ever experienced in his own
ideological re-education.
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This relatively long period from early 1949 to the fall of
1951 was the First Stage of Thought Reform.
The Communist Party and Government had by this time (1951) secured
control over a-aumlier-ef all? institutions of higher learning including
the Catholic and Protestant universities and the Rockefeller-founded
Peiping Union Medical College. Party organizations were formed in all
colleges and universities, of which there were 24 in the Peiping and
Tientsin area alone. Representatives of the Party sat in the
administrative committees of all these institutions.
But the few older universities, - notably Pieta and Tsing Hua -
were internally still more or less intact, and because of their
academic standing and national prestige, and because of their long
tradition of political independence, were still capable of putting
up a measure of resistance to the interference and control of
tbe '?arty representatives in their institutions. They were twice
successful in actually resisting the Communist Government's program
for a thorough reorganization and regrouping of the universities and a
thorough revision of the university curriculum in the direction of
lowering standards and shortening the years of study.
Under ihe government program of university reorganization, there
was to be only two types of universities: (1) the comprehensive
university which is to be confined to the Humanities, the
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(2)
physical sciences, and the social sciences including law; and the
technical university, either of Technology, or of Medicine, or of
Agriculture. Peking University, for example, was to merge with
Yenching University and form a comprehensive university by giving up
its colleges of Medicine and Engineering: and Tsing Hua was to give up
its colleges of Letters and Social Science and become .a University
of Technology. Opposition from the two universities was so strong that
the Communist vice-minister of Education had to make a verbal promise
that those two universities were not to be included in the scheme
or reorganization, and the whole program was postponed for many
months. (See the published 1952 confessions of Dean Chou Plei-yuan
and other professors of Tsing Hua, and of Professor Shen Shih-hua
of Peita's college of Engineering.)
But the really important issue at stake was the universities' resistance
to Party Control. I quote this revealing paragraph from Dean Chou
P'ei-yuan's confession published in the Kuangming jihpao on
April 8, 1952, when the struggle was all over:
'My understanding of the (Communist)?Party organization inside the
university was also quite wrong._ I have been using the .!professional'
standards' of the bourgeois class to judge the Party comrades, whom
I regarded as too young and professionally beneath my standards. I
have therefore subjectively and erroneously concluded that they were
not to play any important role in matters concerning unversity
teaching and administration. During all these past three years,
I have ignored the importance of the the ideological leadership
of the Party in the university and never consulted the Party
organization in all important questions of university administration."
This resistance to Party control was intolerable and must be crushed
at all cost. The leading universities, and Peita and
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Tsing Hua in particular, therefore, must be beaten, humiliated
and forced to surrender whatever spirit Of independence was left
in them. This, as all the 1952 confessions undoubtedly indicate,
was the real motive and the real cause for the launching of the
big-scale campaign of Through Reform which began in the last week
of September, 1951.
This Second State of Thought Reform was called "the Study Movement
of the Teachers of all Schools of Higher Learning in the Peking
and Tientsin Area". It included all the 24 universities and colleges
and all the scientific research institutes in that area. Three
thousand thachers took part in the beginning, and the number grew to
6188 in November and to 6523 in early December.
The press frankly reported that "this Study movement for ideological
reform was not only to lay the foundation for a systematic and
long-term study of Marxism-Leninism and Mao Tse-tung thought, but
also to serve as "the primary condition for the reform of higher
education." The heads of the universities were ordered to set the
example of self-criticism by making frank and self-debasing confessions.
The students in these institutions were mobilized to bring pressure
on the teachers by cheering and welcoming them in their "voluntary"
effort to study and reform.
The Study meetings were soon directed to concentrate on one big
question: Wham do we serve? And against whom do we fight?
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The answer was: of course we serve the people and fight our enemy.
Who are our enemies? Our enemies are the imperialistic USA and all
those reactionaries who have been poisoning the people with thoughts
and ideals of American origin.
So the teachers, who had had the misfortune of an American education, had
to make solemn confessions of their past errors of worship of America and
love for America, and solemnly pledge, henceforth, to despise and hate
America. The sole exception was Prof. Pan Kuang-tan of Tsinghua who con-
fessed tha, while he had never been guilty of worshiping America, he could
not yet have the heart to hate America.
And the professors of Peking University had to hold many meetings to
accues and repudiate Hu Shih; those of Tsinghua University, to accuse and
repudiate Mei Yi-chi(Y.C.Mei); and those of Nankai University, to accuse and
repudiate Chang Poling. But the arch-reactionary of them all was Hu Shih
who is said to have spread the poisonous thoughts of individualism,
liberalism, and reformism(that is, melioriam as opposed to revolutionism)
for ove r 30 years and whose evil influence is said to be still deep-rooted
in the country. So the campaign to "accuse Hu SOih and criticize ourselves"
was extended to Shanghai in early Dec 1951, and to South China in the
last days of the year.
But all this was not enough. Loud professions of complete ideological
reform, of hating and despising America, of declaring Hu Shih's thoughts
as "enemy thoughts",---all this was not enough to bring about a complete
breakdown of the
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spirit of independence in the leading universities, and to secure a
complete political control of those institutions by the Party.
Therefore, there had to be a Third Stage in the campaign for Thought
Reform--which came in the first months of 1952 in the form of the 3-anti
campaign and its speedy application to the universities.
The "3-anti# campaign was anti-corruption, anti-waste and anti-bureaucraticism.
All were criminal charges under the Communist regime.
The students and the junior staff of the universities were quickly mobili-
zed to expose all forms of corruption, vaste and bureaucratic practices in
all the universities and colleges. Very little evidence of corruption was
unearthed. Of bureaucraticiam, there was plenty; every sign of political
independence, every word of gesture of intellectual arrogance toward
the Party representaitv9, every move of resistance to government policy
of university reorganization or curriculum revision, was bureaucraticism.
But the most spectacular exposures came under the charge of waste,?waste
of the People's money in the over-stocktiling of sciehtific laboratory equip-
ment and materials, in the wilful purchase of expensive foreign(especially
American) equipment and materials when cheaper but equally serviceable
home-made goods could have been substituted, and in the wasteful loss and
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destruction of these materials through faulty storage and careless
handling. Of all these forms of waste, there was a vast amount of
alleged evidence.
There was speedily organized a gigantic "exhibition of the anti-waste
Campaign in the Peking Schools of Higher learning", which was open to
the public. The press reported that "on the basis of incomplete estimates
made in ten leading universities alone(including Peita, Tsinghua, Yenching
university-, the Normal University, the Catholic Fu Jen university, and the
Peiping Union Medical College), the wasteful accumulation and careless
destruction of equipment and materials has resulted in a total loss of
S50,800,000,000!
money amounting to JMP$50-,4040y000-1 This sum of money is enough to buy
34 jet fighter planes! It is also enough to pay for the livelihood of the 1002
university professors in the whole area of Peking for four years and
five monthsf' All these are great crimes against the People.
So the Party comrades got the goods on the professors and the adminis-
trators of the universities. The universities were loudly criticized
and publicly condemned. A Kuang ming Jihnao reporter described thus
the plight at Tsinghua university:
"During the 3-anti war, after the entire student body had
enthusiastically assisted their teachers in exposing the ugly
faces of their bourgeois class ideblogies, the vast majority
of professors were now able to see clearly the dirt and poison
in themselves, and have now begun to acknowledge the real
danger of the whole ugly situation. In their meetings of
milt criticism and self-criticisn, very many professors were
saying in tears: !My body is full of poisonous germs, and I
only now wakeup --as if from a dreamt!"
These humiliating and terrorizing reports of the official press
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(which, of coutsel no one dared to contradict or deny) give us ample
hints of the enormity of the political pressure and the awful pressure
of "the masses" as represented by the incited student body.
This third and political stage of Thought Reform by means of the
3-anti campaign at last succeeded in crushing the spirit of political
indepepdende in the universities. "Not until the 3-anti campaign did I
discover my real errors.., .1 now profoundly reali ze that my bureau-
craticism has made me a criminal against the people" so confessed Professor
Liang Ssu-cheng, son of the great Liang Chichao and head of the
Architecture School at Tsinghua, who tiad been one of the strongest
opponents to the Communist government's plan of university reorganization
and revision of cirriculum. And Dean Chou Pei-yuan of Tsinghua, another
leader in the opposition to the reorganization plan, was made to say:
"The three-anti campaign led by Chairman Mao has at last awakened me from
a terrible nightmare. I now acknowledge that the Party is the leader
in all our work, and that it is our most faithful and most loving
friend.... Henceforth, I shall resolutely obey the leadership of the
Party, and shall closely rely upon the Party in carrying on my work".
"I thank the Party, and I thank Chairman Mao. The Party has educated
me and enabled me to see the light."
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Thus was finally achieved the main and real objective of the entire
campaign for the ideological reform of the intellectuals. The spirit
of independence and resistance was apparently crushed?--not by thought
reform?--not by the "demodratic methods of persuasison", ---but by force
and intimidation. At least all overt manifestations of that spirit
disappeared. The Communist governmentis policy of university reorganization
and curriculum revision was carried out last summer in all Red China. It
met no opposition from any quarter.
4HHHHHHHHOH8HH8K-
How far has the Communist Party and Government succeeded in washing or
changing the brains of the Chinese intellectuals? Some intellectuals
were apparently capable of achieving an easy and quick success in thought
reform. Such was the case of Professor Pei Wenichung? the geologist and pale?
ontologist who attained world fame as the first discoverer of the Peking
Man. In an eloquent confession published three years ago, het proudly pro?
claimed that he had readily completed his thought reform in being able to
successfully apply Marxism?Leninism to all three sciences in which he was a
workerx, namely, geology, paleontology and archaeology. His confession
was prominently given the first place in a volume of earliest confessions
published in 1950. He had attained.
Other stubborn intellectuals, howerver, seemed to make very slow progress
in this business. One of the outstanding examples of this type is Pro?
fessor Chin Yueh?lin, the logician and philosopher of Tsinghua university.
In his most recent
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confession published on April 17,1952, he tells us that he had been
"studying" for thought reform ever sime March and April of 1949--
exactly 4 years ago. By 1951, he still made no great progress. So he was
ordered to study Mao Tse-tungIS essay "On Practice". "Then by the spring
of 1951" , he tells us, "my tYlingking came near to a sudden change....
Two years of piecemeal understanding culminating in the study of the Essay
on Practice, has mad d MB recognize that dialectic materialism was in es-
sense quite different from the old philosophies. The old philosophies are
I meta-physical and basically anto4scientific? whereas dialectic and ma-
terialism is scientific philosophy; it emphatically is the truth".
And'he goes on to confess: "In the 1951 discussion on the revision of
university curriculum, I further recognized that the duty and function
of the department of philosophy in a university was to train propaganda
workers for Marxism-Leninism".
All these confessions of a "sudden change" or sudden awakening frum a
most rugged individualist should be considered successful "briin-washing"
0
and even "brain-changing"4et his Red Masters apparently were not satis-
fied. Ft* he was made to go on "studying" long after his 2sudden change" in the
spring of 1951, and was still publishing more se1f4debasing criticisms
during the 3-anti campang of 1952. And a report reached me last November
that he was among the six intellectuals "purged" in that month.
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Perhaps real brain-washing and real brain-changing afe after all
impossible tasks,--miragles, which could only be performed by
some Infernal Judge of the Courts of Purgatory. Perhaps my former student
Mao Tse-tung showed some real wisdom when in July 1949, he remarked parenthe-
tically that "the influence of reactionaries at home and abroad..,
will continue to exist Lor a long time, and cannot be eliminated
quickly."
END
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