Week 9-Mao’s Ordinary Men: Analysis of Collective Killings in Rural China

Identification Perpetrators in Rural Collective Killings

• General Responsibility: Official state records such as xianzhi (county gazetteers) provide limited information on perpetrators. However, testimony from survivors, victims' families, and retired cadres consistently identifies local cadres and militia members as the primary agents of collective killings.

• Mechanism of Action: Killings typically followed a mass rally involving the entire village. Local leaders and militias were responsible for rounding up members of "Four-Type" families once the scope of the killings was determined.

The Case of Sanjiang Commune (Quanzhou County, Guangxi):

• The Event:

  • Seventy-six members of Four-Type families were killed by being pushed off a cliff.

• The Organizer:

  • Identified by both the xianzhi and provincial documents as Huang Tianhui, the commune's militia commander.

• The Planning Process:

  • On October 2, 1967, Huang held two meetings. The evening meeting included mass organization activists and militia leaders above the rank of platoon.

    • Huang’s Justification: He cited reports that "Four Types" in Daoxian County, Hunan, had conspired for armed insurgencies. He urged preemptive action: "We must wipe out their entire family because keeping their children alive will amount to preserving the root of evil."

• Internal Debate: The public security chief argued for "strategic" limits on victims. The commune accountant noted that some families were mixed with poor or middle peasants through marriage or adoption.

• Final Consensus: Adopted children and females married into Four-Type families were spared. However, Huang claimed policy justification from the district level (though unspecified) to proceed with the massacre.

  •  A Witnessed Protest: Jiang Yingying, a village teacher and landlord’s daughter, questioned the policy justification. She was silenced with clubs and killed.

Collective Action and State Affiliation

• Non-Prescribed Duties: The author argues that perpetrators were not simply following bureaucratic orders. They "proactively innovated" or "willingly embraced" killings. Collective killings were "made," not merely implemented.

• Newly Constituted Identities: Participants transitioned from routine bureaucratic operations to "newly constituted identities" during these action events, operating outside the bounds of "contained politics."

• Significance of State Affiliation: While the actions were emergent, the capacity to stage them was derived from state ties. Incentives were shaped by previous routine institutional life and indoctrination in class-struggle attitudes.

Classification of Participants:

• Organizers: Local officials (village/township level) motivated to show power and adhere to radicalized Maoist principles. They often sought to prove their loyalty to superiors in a competitive environment.

• Killers: Those who performed the "dirty work," often elite militia members. Some displayed psychological disturbance or homicidal glee, using the events to improve social standing.

• Enablers: Upper-level leaders who had the potential to stop the killings but chose to look the other way.

Perspectives on Perpetrators: The "Ordinary Men" Debate

• Christopher Browning (’Ordinary Men’ Thesis): Studied Reserve Police Battalion 101. Argued that killers were ordinary working-class men who acted due to obedience to authority and peer pressure rather than primal hatred.

• Daniel Jonah Goldhagen and Michael Mann: Challenged Browning, suggesting killers were either deeply ideological (eliminationist anti-Semitism) or elite party members immersed in genocidal ideology.

• Benjamin Valentino (Strategic Model): Argues that mass killing is a rational choice by top leaders. He suggests that ground-level killers are selectively recruited from those with sadistic impulses.

• Yang Su’s Integration: The author treats all actors as rational to explore motives, but agrees with Valentino that cold-blooded killers were often community misfits. In China, perpetrators were peacetime leaders for whom killing was a one-time tactical innovation rather than a routine duty.

Socio-Economic Context and Career Pressures

• The Hukou System: (similar to ho khau) Residents were divided into urban (cadres, workers) and rural (peasants) segments. Rural life was characterized by manual labor and food scarcity, especially during the "starving months" of April and August.

  • The Struggle to Exit the Village: For young people, escaping rural status (hukou) was possible through three routes:

    1. Education: High school/college exams (admission rates were approximately 1%)

    2. Military Service: Often only a temporary exit.

    3. Political Activism: Becoming a village activist to earn a state-payroll position.

• Case Study: Lian and Jin Huofeng:

  • Lian, a talented graduate, lost her chance due to pregnancy and school closures during the Cultural Revolution.

  • Jin Huofeng, with a "ruthless character" and patronage, became the head of the village public security office and eventually a township cadre.

Institutional Stagnation and the Zero-Sum Game

• Cadre Stagnation: Bureaucratic expansion slowed significantly after 1956. By 1965, the total number of cadres had only grown to approximately $12$ million, despite a $16\%$ increase in the general population.

• Mobility as Zero-Sum: Career advancement required another's demotion. Political campaigns functioned as mechanisms for purging incumbents to make room for new "red" recruits.

• Statistical Trends in Guangdong and Guangxi (Table 5.3 & 5.4):

  • In $1962$, Guangdong had $15,300$ cadres enter rank while $39,800$ left.

  • In $1962$, Guangxi had $13,400$ enter while $27,700$ left.

• Risk-Aversion Incentives: Paradoxically, the fear of demotion pushed cadres to adopt more radical behaviors to prove their "redness" and loyalty.

Case Study: Tao Zhu – The Victimizer Victimized

• Background: Tao Zhu was once the Party's propaganda chief and a legendary hardliner in Guangdong and Guangxi. He presided over the pacification of bandits in Guangxi, reporting that of $40,000$ killed, "one third may or may not deserve death."

• The Purge: In 1966, Tao was labeled the "No. 1 Loyalist" to capitalist power-holders. He was detained and died in $1969$.

• Institutional Logic: Tao’s career path illustrates how campaigns like the "Land Reform Rectification" were used to purge local cadres (up to $80\%$ in some areas) to make room for northern cadres deemed more loyal. The "errors" of peaceful land reform were often pretexts for these purges.

The Logic of Radicalization

• Tactical Innovation: According to Doug McAdam, movements require new tactics to prevent a "lull of mobilization." In 1967, traditional struggle rallies (using bamboo dunce caps weighing $25\,kg$ or animal cages) had lost their shock value, leading to the innovation of collective killing.

• Danwei Mobilization and Competition: Superiors rewarded quantifiable results. To avoid being labeled "backward," local leaders inflated statistics or staged extraordinary, violent events to demonstrate compliance.

• The Monitoring Problem: Information flow was distorted. Superiors could not distinguish between disloyalty and policy failure. Work-teams often colluded with local cadres to radicalize events, as seen during the Great Leap Forward ($30$ million deaths).

Profiles of Direct Organizers and Killers

• Guan Youzhi (DAFD Chief, Daoxian):

  • A veteran who felt indebted to the Party. He organized killings without explicit orders, justifying them through rumors that the "Four Types" wanted to "change the color of the sky."

• Yuan Lipu (District Mayor, Daoxian):

  • Organized a "grand sweep" that claimed $569$ lives in three days. He ignored a military directive to stop the killings, claiming the slogans of the time ("rebellion is justified") validated his "creative power."

• County-Level Enablers (Binyang, Guangxi):

  • Wang Jianxun and Wang Guizeng oversaw killings that resulted in $3,883$ deaths.

• Psychological Profiles of Killers:

  • Zheng Mengxu (Xiaojiang Village): A former "shiftless drifter" who killed his neighbor, Sha Kaichu, and four others. Informants suggest he was motivated by an inferiority complex and personal animosity.

  • Hu Maochang: An illiterate, "lazy" man who volunteered for a killing squad and killed seven people, including two toddlers, with a knife. He was rewarded with $55\,yuan$ (more than a year's dividends).

  • Yi Wansheng: An $86$-year-old unrepentant killer and cannibal who mutilated a teenager and ate his liver, justifying it as "class struggle."

Conclusion: Killing as Public Ritual

• The Symbolic Nature of Violence: Killings were not hidden; they were accompanied by gongs, drums, and banquets. The act was a public ritual intended to clarify power hierarchies.

• Motivation Recap: Participants were "ordinary men" motivated by personal gain or loss avoidance. However, they were distinguished by state affiliation, ideological conviction, and, in some cases, psychological disturbance.

• The Role of Specialists in Violence: The Cultural Revolution elevated those in the PAFD and PSD (specialists in violence) who used the mass movement to consolidate their new administrative power by neutralizing potential rivals through extreme displays of terror.