Collective Killings in Rural China during the Cultural Revolution

Cambridge Studies in Contentious Politics

by Yang Su

The violence of Mao's China is well known, but its extreme form is not. In 1967 and 1968, during the Cultural Revolution, collective killings were widespread in rural China in the form of public execution. Victims included women, children, and the elderly. This book is the first to systematically document and analyze these atrocities, drawing data from local archives, government documents, and interviews with survivors in two southern provinces. This book extracts from the Chinese case lessons that challenge the prevailing models of genocide and mass killings and contributes to the historiography of the Cultural Revolution, in which scholarship has mainly focused on events in urban areas.

Genres: China, History

322 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2010

Reviews

[风花 · Rating 3 out of 5]

实在是写的太平庸，无特别的理论创新，甚至对历史的解释都有些“理论先行”

[Austin Barselau · Rating 5 out of 5]

Professor Yang Su’s “Collective Killings in Rural China during the Cultural Revolution” offers a paradigm-shifting perspective on the horrors of the Cultural Revolution. Where primary source material is sparse, Su draws on leaked internal party documents and interviews with county residents to provide a new frame of understanding how conflict arose amidst the state-directed chaos of Maoism.

Su provides evidence for what he terms the “community model” for collective killings, which argues that the killings primarily occurred in townships and villages - rather than in urban centers - and were spontaneous events, not the implementation of formal premeditated state diktats. Such emergent events occurred where state control was weakest and legal constraints the least binding (I.e., furthest from party centers of control), and were fueled by local leaders and party cadres determined to prove their zeal for creatively implementing Mao’s social engineering projects. As Su writes, “perpetrators did not follow, they acted; collective killings were not implemented, they were made.”

Su’s entirely original scholarship provides a new lens of how conflict arose and sustained itself during the Cultural Revolution, reframing the conflict as one of emergent rural chaos and radicalism rather than one originating at the hands of a well-oiled state bureaucracy effectuating policy down to the local level.

[MA · Rating 3 out of 5]

三十三十书系的第三本书，之前对于文革历史认知的一片空白如今开始由阅读的回忆录、学术著作与纪实类小说慢慢填充起来，终于开始建起了基本架构。但不知为何，关于这段历史的学术著作总是令人感到丧失了某些温度，抑或是有一些过分冷静的分析，而这些分析往往指出认为这一悲剧的产生并非政府有意而为之，而是政治控制的强行贯彻与政治控制的失序共同造成。就如此书一般，对集体杀戮的解释便是中央政府并非有意为之，而是地方具有很大自主性从而酝酿出这一行为。这一切的逻辑又好像让人回到了一种“上面其实初衷是好的，但下面并未实施好，上面并非有意造成悲剧，是下面自己走偏了路”的感觉。但对于身在其中的人而言凡事都可以此为解释或许太过残酷了，无论从理智上还是感受上都难以接受。虽然书中也提及了上面一系列政策导致的结构性问题促使了悲剧的酿成，但他又一再强调各个地方的特殊性，最后着重点仍是落在地方的自主性导致了集体杀戮的大规模出现。书中最后也在探讨如何杜绝大规模屠杀与种族灭绝的出现，作者表示或许制裁独裁者也并无什么用，可以尝试其他从民间启蒙的方法。虽说是有几分道理，但重点是在那种政治环境下外界是否能真的从民间进行改变属实值得商榷。

[he chow · Rating 2 out of 5]

作者不了解中共的成立史，也不了解中國歷史本身，有點遺憾。有高華的視角，擷取了文革一塊孤立的社區屠戮事件，而且出發點是基督徒的“愛你的鄰人”，感覺有非常詭異之妙。奧古斯都說希律王不是人因為他連自己的兒子都殺，但對中共國人來說，希律王是過於公正的明君了。

這種學者給我的印象是：吃過了黃油麵包的紀實性報導文學的大陸記者。十年前還覺得報道真相是勇氣，但既不給出路也不給退路，只是玩鞭屍遊戲，那五千年的偽史換哪一位懂簡體字的都可以來鞭屍。

某種意義上，【獻忠】卻是比【同志】更妙的一個敬稱。

[MichaelBIAN · Rating 5 out of 5]

as a sociological research, this book completed both empirical research and theoretical constructs based on related research.

[Rokhsan · Rating 4 out of 5]

作者借鉴了动员模型和崩溃模型分析了这样的集体杀戮，因为没有明确的国家政令，其变量有距离，人均收入，党员人数，少数民族/客家人占比，是否发生武斗，GOV主导是否为南北派系混合

[Gottfried Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

主要是分析性的內容，寫作形式近於報告，有些影響可讀性。