Bao Tong on the 50th anniversary of the Anti-Rightist Campaign

This essay was broadcast exclusively on RFA’s Mandarin service June 14 under the title, 论反右派斗争的非法性-为反右派斗争五十周年作:

On the illegality of the anti-rightist struggle–written on the 50th anniversary of the Anti-Rightist Movement.

By Bao Tong

What sort of a crime is denying the leadership of the Party or reversing the direction of socialism? Citizens have a right to express agreement or disagreement with the Party’s leadership or with the direction of socialism. This is a legal act. The State and the law have a responsibility to protect it, not the right to punish it. Didn’t “we” allow tens of millions of people to starve to death through the “progress” achieved through the Party’s leadership and socialism, and persecute two hundred million more? The label “murderous spirit” should rather be applied to Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping, who wiped out 550,000 people.

On June 8, 1957, by the decree of Mao Zedong, an anti-rightist announcement entitled “Why is this?” appeared in the People’s Daily. Deng Xiaoping immediately took charge of the anti-rightist rectification working group set up by Party central, and rooted out 550,000 “rightists” from among five million Chinese intellectuals nationwide.

Their collective crime was to have criticised the Party’s policies and work style. The fate of those 550,000 was as follows: some died right there during the struggle sessions; many died later in prison or labor camp, or as a result of kangaroo courts and summary executions. A small number survived to see their relatives suffer discrimination and oppression.

After the bankruptcy of the Cultural Revolution, there was a continual call for the repudiation of the Anti-Rightist Campaign. But the erstwhile head of the anti-rightist leadership working group, Deng Xiaoping, was unwilling to do this. He said the anti-rightist struggle of 1957 must be upheld. He reason was, “I (Deng Xiaoping) have said before that at that time there really were people with a murderous spirit who wanted to deny the legitimacy of the Party’s leadership and to reverse the direction of socialism. If we hadn’t fought back, we wouldn’t have been able to progress. The mistake was to enlarge the movement.”

The resolution “Concerning a number of historical problems concerning the Party’s leadership” which reaffirmed this illegal struggle, was based on his decree, and set the tone for what followed at a single stroke.

What sort of a crime is denying the leadership of the Party or reversing the direction of socialism? Citizens have a right to express agreement or disagreement with the Party’s leadership or with the direction of socialism. This is a legal act. The State and the law have a responsibility to protect it, not the right to punish it. Didn’t “we” allow tens of millions of people to starve to death through the “progress” achieved through the Party’s leadership and socialism, and persecute two hundred million more? The label “murderous spirit” should rather be applied to Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping, who wiped out 550,000 people.

As for Messrs Zhang Bojun, Luo Longji and Chu Anping, these gentlemen were all great moderates, tolerant, and widely respected.

Cases are not the same as ideology. Whether an idea is supported or rejected should depend on whether or not it accords with reality. The rightist faction didn’t do anything wrong. It’s not a crime to criticize the Communist Party. It’s the other way around. The anti-rightist struggle was illegal. No “Anti-Rightist Law” has ever been passed by any legislative body in China. There is no legally accepted definition of a “rightist”. There are no legal guidelines for court proceedings against a ‘rightist’. Neither is there a benchmark by which to determine what sentence should be passed on one.

The Chinese Communist Party’s rectification working group on rightists was not a legislative body or a judicial organ. It had no right to determine the fate of any Chinese citizen. Isn’t it said that all people are equal before the law? If anyone believes that this Party or this working group had the right to announce that any faction was an enemy of the people, thereby gaining some toehold for an argument, I should like to ask them if that right extends to anyone who might also like to enter the ring, and announce that this Party and this working group is an enemy of the people?

Deng Xiaoping’s actions had no basis in law and he was only able to call on the spirits of “The Communist Party leadership” and “the direction of socialism”, showing his true lack of legal understanding.

No wonder that, while Deng had the help of some polemicists and politicos, not a single genuine legal professional was willing to pollute themselves by getting involved with this.

The Anti-Rightist Campaign was a turning point for the Chinese Communist Party. It lit the way for the Party’s continued journey into illegitimacy following its seizure of power. Most of its victims were intellectuals, and by the time we had got to the Great Leap Forward and the Communes, the peasants and workers had become their masters. The first Anti-Rightist Campaign closed the mouths of people outside the Party; its extended version closed the mouths of Party officials, too.

The Anti-Rightist Campaign used words to imprison people; by the Cultural Revolution, the use of both language and violence was openly advocated; by the massacre of June 4, 1989, blood smeared tanks and assault rifles had been added on too.

The anti-rightist struggle was a signpost pointing towards the utter
decadence of the Communist Party as it continued on its pursuit of absolute power. If its extreme leftism was temporarily and deliberately explained away or covered up as ‘overexcitedness’ during the early campaigns against the landlords, by the time of the Anti-Rightist Campaign, this simply wouldn’t wash.

During this movement, as part of its quest for absolute power with no rival, the Party leadership nakedly trampled national laws underfoot and destroyed the Constitution, mounting a massive and illegal attack on freedom of expression and ideological freedom.

This act destroyed 550,000 free spirits, in an experimental sacrifice. Once the leadership had got its hand in, it unleashed an endlessly repeated series of scenes of tragedy and torment, one after the other; no curtain in between.

If China wants to build a republic, a civilization, it must utterly
repudiate the actions of the Anti-Rightist Campaign. The Communist Party leadership has refused to do so for the past 50 years. So perhaps we should send out the message loud and clear: the Anti-Rightist Campaign was illegal and unconstitutional!

It should be made clear that even that working group that was set up by Party center with the specific purpose of denouncing people in struggle sessions was illegal and unconstitutional. Such a thing can only be allowed to happen under one-party authoritarian rule: it has no place in a modern, civilized society.

Beijing
June 14, 2007