Conservatives in the West and Chinese internet users seem to have come to an agreement on one point: 43 years after it officially ended, China's Cultural Revolution has come back to life on the other side of the Pacific; the Black Lives Matter movement protesting police brutality and toppling statues is equal, in its irrational fury and ideological rigidity, to the Red Guard mobs unleashed by Chairman Mao in 1966. The Cultural Revolution analogy is being pushed by conservative and alt-right media outlets from National Review to Spiked; but it has also become extremely common on Chinese social media, the only space in China where people can discuss these topics relatively freely.
That this historical comparison is overblown shouldn't be hard to see: the first act of China's Cultural Revolution came when the students of a renowned all-girls high school in Beijing tortured and beat their own principal to death (the high school is still a prestigious one today, and there is still no memorial or acknowledgment of what happened on site). This marked the start of Beijing's "Red August" of 1966, when a couple of thousand people were murdered by student Red Guards with the encouragement and explicit protection of Mao and of Xie Fuzhi, the Minister of Public Security. Over the next few years, countless innocent people would be killed or pushed to suicide, and countless more would have their lives overturned.
Not only are comparisons between the Cultural Revolution and the BLM movement completely hyperbolic, they also ignore the most fundamental point about China's "Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution": it was a movement launched and promoted directly by a totalitarian leader, for reasons that are still debated today. While people were encouraged to lash out at figures of authority and traditions, the one figure of authority who could not be questioned was Mao himself. Even accidentally spilling ink on one of the characters that made up his name got one person into very serious trouble. It was impossible to oppose the movement or denounce its excesses without risking public humiliation, imprisonment or violent death. The whole of China spoke with one voice, and you could either play along or you could get persecuted.
In contrast, the BLM protests are a spontaneous bottom-up reaction against the brutal and unjustified murder of a black man by the police, the last in a long series. The protestors are very definitely acting against the will of government authority, at least in the US. One only needs to look at the harshness with which they have been met by the police, compared to the free hand that pro-Trump, anti-lockdown protestors carrying guns and assault rifles have been given. In fact, Trump has just threatened long prison terms against those who deface American monuments, memorials and statues - in a tweet, of course.
In spite of how over-the-top it may appear, talk of a 美式文革 (American-style Cultural Revolution) remains popular in China. It is of course not meant as a compliment; if there is one thing that almost everyone in China agrees upon, including the ruling party, it's that the Cultural Revolution was an unnecessary disaster.
It doesn't surprise me that the BLM protests are not particularly popular in China. Chinese political culture decries any form of mass movement, particularly by young people, as naive, manipulable and bound to lead to nothing but trouble. Mass protests in Western countries, from the Yellow Vests to this latest one, are derided in the media as examples of the West's chaos and moral decline compared with harmonious, well-ordered China. Government propaganda is also using the current protests in the US to denounce America's supposed hypocrisy ("they" quash riots on their own soil, but support them when they happen in Hong Kong). That's when government representatives aren't clumsily trying to express support for their "African friends" in America - also on Twitter. The two superpowers' race to the bottom never seems to end.
But these feelings are obviously rooted in more than just government propaganda. The fact is that their historical experience has left many Chinese suspicious of any movement made up of radical, idealistic youngsters attempting to right the world's wrongs and rectify the arts or target historical symbols. It is not uncommon to hear people in China claim that the Cultural Revolution was an example of "democracy" (and indeed, Mao Zedong said that the movement should be accomplished through 大民主, "big democracy", helping to cement the link between democracy and chaos in people's minds). The fact that the BLM protesters are very much targeting their own national leader, rather than worshipping him like the Red Guards were, may not mean much to their Chinese critics. To those who take a cynical view of democracy, this may just mean that someone else is manipulating and stoking the protests rather than the president himself.
There is also an ideological divide within China, which in this case mirrors the one we see in the West. China certainly has a minority of liberal intellectuals, feminist and LGBT-rights activists who are inspired by their counterparts in the English-speaking world. Protesting about discrimination against local minorities is unthinkable, because it relates to "national unity", but other sorts of activism are possible: China has even seen a "MeToo" movement of sorts. The majority of the youth tends more towards illiberal nationalism, however, and it is their views that receive backing from the state. To this group, idealistic, naive Western liberals have become a figure of disdain. That's why 白左, which can be translated either as "white leftists" or "stupid/naive leftists", became a term of abuse on the Chinese internet a few years back. Add the underlying prejudice against black people that is unfortunately strong in China, as in most of Asia, and it is hardly surprising that the BLM movement isn't winning too much praise.
To some extent, it's understandable that images of young activists targeting the statues of 19th century men for being racist would remind the Chinese of the Red Guards destroying temples and statues of Confucius for being "feudal". News of old films and TV series being cancelled because they are deemed racist has compounded the feeling that this is an intolerant, censorious movement. Reports on the temporary removal of "Gone with the Wind" from HBO Max due to racial sensitivities were met with overwhelming scorn in Chinese social media, and more talk of the Cultural Revolution and of "political correctness gone mad". This is a country where most people have far more experience of censorship than of racism, of course, and government censorship does bother many Chinese: when screenshots of the "I can't breathe" tweet by the foreign ministry's spokesperson were posted on Weibo, hundreds of users replied with "I can't tweet".
These attitudes may have a lot to do with nationalism, distance and distorted reporting, but it is striking how much similarity they bear with a certain rhetoric coming from the Western right. This points to how alienated and indeed threatened many conservatives feel by the wave of left-wing identity politics that has arisen in the US and the rest of the English-speaking world over the last few years.
It would be easy to dismiss the constant complaints about the mortal threat that "safe spaces", "cancel culture" and "de-platforming" pose to our freedoms as the whining of people whose privileges and views are for once being challenged. And indeed, the reality is that in Western societies the debate on these issues remains vigorous and quite free on both sides, if acrimonious. Jordan Peterson is a successful university professor constantly appearing on TV, rather than a dissident languishing in jail, under house arrest or even just out of a job, as one might expect if there was anything approaching an actual Cultural Revolution by the "woke left" taking place. If you know what being silenced really means, the right-wing victim complex appears rather ridiculous. Those who claim that toppling old statues is a "neo-Maoist war on the past" might want to ask themselves whether they would have reacted the same way to the destruction of Lenin and Stalin's statues in Eastern Europe after 1989.
I would be the first to agree that the identitarian turn of left-wing politics over the past few years has a troublingly illiberal and regressive side to it, especially in its more radical fringes. Its focus on who is saying something (specifically their race and gender), rather than what is being said, is fundamentally anti-intellectual. Its view of privilege as determined almost entirely by race and gender, rather than by class and bank account, is out of step with the world today. Its overly broad interpretation of the concept of cultural appropriation would lead to hilariously regressive results if it were applied literally (basically we would have to give up on adopting, let-alone adapting, foreign religious traditions, clothing and food). Its post-modern focus on feelings and subjective points of view, rather than facts, makes its claims essentially unanswerable. Any human ideology can become dangerous when its core tenets can no longer be questioned in the public sphere, and it is important to ensure that debate remains free on all sides.
I would also claim, by the way, that the same political movement can be credited with positive outcomes like an increased public awareness of sexual harassment and an increased push for diversity in companies and organizations. But more important than all of this, the current BLM protests are reacting against the unquestionable fact that the US police kills unarmed civilians far more than any civilized country should accept, and black people are disproportionately (although not exclusively) the victims of this. The protestors are pitted against America's most openly racist president in over a century, and the statues of confederate generals and slave owners are a fair target of their fury. I see no reason why they should not receive the support of all those who call themselves progressives.
That this historical comparison is overblown shouldn't be hard to see: the first act of China's Cultural Revolution came when the students of a renowned all-girls high school in Beijing tortured and beat their own principal to death (the high school is still a prestigious one today, and there is still no memorial or acknowledgment of what happened on site). This marked the start of Beijing's "Red August" of 1966, when a couple of thousand people were murdered by student Red Guards with the encouragement and explicit protection of Mao and of Xie Fuzhi, the Minister of Public Security. Over the next few years, countless innocent people would be killed or pushed to suicide, and countless more would have their lives overturned.
Not only are comparisons between the Cultural Revolution and the BLM movement completely hyperbolic, they also ignore the most fundamental point about China's "Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution": it was a movement launched and promoted directly by a totalitarian leader, for reasons that are still debated today. While people were encouraged to lash out at figures of authority and traditions, the one figure of authority who could not be questioned was Mao himself. Even accidentally spilling ink on one of the characters that made up his name got one person into very serious trouble. It was impossible to oppose the movement or denounce its excesses without risking public humiliation, imprisonment or violent death. The whole of China spoke with one voice, and you could either play along or you could get persecuted.
In contrast, the BLM protests are a spontaneous bottom-up reaction against the brutal and unjustified murder of a black man by the police, the last in a long series. The protestors are very definitely acting against the will of government authority, at least in the US. One only needs to look at the harshness with which they have been met by the police, compared to the free hand that pro-Trump, anti-lockdown protestors carrying guns and assault rifles have been given. In fact, Trump has just threatened long prison terms against those who deface American monuments, memorials and statues - in a tweet, of course.
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| A statue of Confucius getting removed by the Red Guards |
In spite of how over-the-top it may appear, talk of a 美式文革 (American-style Cultural Revolution) remains popular in China. It is of course not meant as a compliment; if there is one thing that almost everyone in China agrees upon, including the ruling party, it's that the Cultural Revolution was an unnecessary disaster.
It doesn't surprise me that the BLM protests are not particularly popular in China. Chinese political culture decries any form of mass movement, particularly by young people, as naive, manipulable and bound to lead to nothing but trouble. Mass protests in Western countries, from the Yellow Vests to this latest one, are derided in the media as examples of the West's chaos and moral decline compared with harmonious, well-ordered China. Government propaganda is also using the current protests in the US to denounce America's supposed hypocrisy ("they" quash riots on their own soil, but support them when they happen in Hong Kong). That's when government representatives aren't clumsily trying to express support for their "African friends" in America - also on Twitter. The two superpowers' race to the bottom never seems to end.
But these feelings are obviously rooted in more than just government propaganda. The fact is that their historical experience has left many Chinese suspicious of any movement made up of radical, idealistic youngsters attempting to right the world's wrongs and rectify the arts or target historical symbols. It is not uncommon to hear people in China claim that the Cultural Revolution was an example of "democracy" (and indeed, Mao Zedong said that the movement should be accomplished through 大民主, "big democracy", helping to cement the link between democracy and chaos in people's minds). The fact that the BLM protesters are very much targeting their own national leader, rather than worshipping him like the Red Guards were, may not mean much to their Chinese critics. To those who take a cynical view of democracy, this may just mean that someone else is manipulating and stoking the protests rather than the president himself.
There is also an ideological divide within China, which in this case mirrors the one we see in the West. China certainly has a minority of liberal intellectuals, feminist and LGBT-rights activists who are inspired by their counterparts in the English-speaking world. Protesting about discrimination against local minorities is unthinkable, because it relates to "national unity", but other sorts of activism are possible: China has even seen a "MeToo" movement of sorts. The majority of the youth tends more towards illiberal nationalism, however, and it is their views that receive backing from the state. To this group, idealistic, naive Western liberals have become a figure of disdain. That's why 白左, which can be translated either as "white leftists" or "stupid/naive leftists", became a term of abuse on the Chinese internet a few years back. Add the underlying prejudice against black people that is unfortunately strong in China, as in most of Asia, and it is hardly surprising that the BLM movement isn't winning too much praise.
To some extent, it's understandable that images of young activists targeting the statues of 19th century men for being racist would remind the Chinese of the Red Guards destroying temples and statues of Confucius for being "feudal". News of old films and TV series being cancelled because they are deemed racist has compounded the feeling that this is an intolerant, censorious movement. Reports on the temporary removal of "Gone with the Wind" from HBO Max due to racial sensitivities were met with overwhelming scorn in Chinese social media, and more talk of the Cultural Revolution and of "political correctness gone mad". This is a country where most people have far more experience of censorship than of racism, of course, and government censorship does bother many Chinese: when screenshots of the "I can't breathe" tweet by the foreign ministry's spokesperson were posted on Weibo, hundreds of users replied with "I can't tweet".
These attitudes may have a lot to do with nationalism, distance and distorted reporting, but it is striking how much similarity they bear with a certain rhetoric coming from the Western right. This points to how alienated and indeed threatened many conservatives feel by the wave of left-wing identity politics that has arisen in the US and the rest of the English-speaking world over the last few years.
It would be easy to dismiss the constant complaints about the mortal threat that "safe spaces", "cancel culture" and "de-platforming" pose to our freedoms as the whining of people whose privileges and views are for once being challenged. And indeed, the reality is that in Western societies the debate on these issues remains vigorous and quite free on both sides, if acrimonious. Jordan Peterson is a successful university professor constantly appearing on TV, rather than a dissident languishing in jail, under house arrest or even just out of a job, as one might expect if there was anything approaching an actual Cultural Revolution by the "woke left" taking place. If you know what being silenced really means, the right-wing victim complex appears rather ridiculous. Those who claim that toppling old statues is a "neo-Maoist war on the past" might want to ask themselves whether they would have reacted the same way to the destruction of Lenin and Stalin's statues in Eastern Europe after 1989.
I would be the first to agree that the identitarian turn of left-wing politics over the past few years has a troublingly illiberal and regressive side to it, especially in its more radical fringes. Its focus on who is saying something (specifically their race and gender), rather than what is being said, is fundamentally anti-intellectual. Its view of privilege as determined almost entirely by race and gender, rather than by class and bank account, is out of step with the world today. Its overly broad interpretation of the concept of cultural appropriation would lead to hilariously regressive results if it were applied literally (basically we would have to give up on adopting, let-alone adapting, foreign religious traditions, clothing and food). Its post-modern focus on feelings and subjective points of view, rather than facts, makes its claims essentially unanswerable. Any human ideology can become dangerous when its core tenets can no longer be questioned in the public sphere, and it is important to ensure that debate remains free on all sides.
I would also claim, by the way, that the same political movement can be credited with positive outcomes like an increased public awareness of sexual harassment and an increased push for diversity in companies and organizations. But more important than all of this, the current BLM protests are reacting against the unquestionable fact that the US police kills unarmed civilians far more than any civilized country should accept, and black people are disproportionately (although not exclusively) the victims of this. The protestors are pitted against America's most openly racist president in over a century, and the statues of confederate generals and slave owners are a fair target of their fury. I see no reason why they should not receive the support of all those who call themselves progressives.
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