The Shengwulian or Sheng-wu-lien (, an acronym for the Hunan Provincial Proletarian Revolutionary Great Alliance Committee, ) was a radical
ultra-left
The term ultra-leftism, when used among Marxist groups, is a pejorative for certain types of positions on the far-left that are extreme or uncompromising. Another definition historically refers to a particular current of Marxist communism, where ...
group formed in 1967 during the
Cultural Revolution
The Cultural Revolution, formally known as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, was a sociopolitical movement in the People's Republic of China (PRC) launched by Mao Zedong in 1966, and lasting until his death in 1976. Its stated goal ...
. The rebel group became known for its opposition to local authorities installed by Beijing and for creatively re-interpreting the Cultural Revolution's official doctrine, becoming active during a period when the political trends of the Cultural Revolution were moving away from mass political mobilization.
Background
The Shengwulian was formed in 1967 during the Cultural Revolution, at a stage when the overall political trends were moving away from mass political movement.
It arose in
Hunan province
Hunan (, ; ) is a landlocked province of the People's Republic of China, part of the South Central China region. Located in the middle reaches of the Yangtze watershed, it borders the province-level divisions of Hubei to the north, Jiangxi t ...
.
The group attracted many people with grievances from having been marginalized in Chinese social life or having been politically targeted.
An organization with loose structure and fluid membership, its ranks included
People's Liberation Army
The People's Liberation Army (PLA) is the principal military force of the People's Republic of China and the armed wing of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The PLA consists of five service branches: the Ground Force, Navy, Air Force, ...
veterans, "Black Devils" (victims of political campaigns, especially people categorized as bourgeois rightists in the 1950s), and
rusticated urban youth. It had ties with
economistic groups and drew broad popular support in Hunan from small neighborhood cooperatives (where wages were generally inferior compared to the state-sector industry).
The ultimate commonality was "all had been persecuted or shortchanged by the state and Party apparatus before and during the Cultural Revolution."
The Shengwulian comprised more than 20 such organizations, which coordinated their activities through a Central Committee (where a representative from each constituent organization sat) and a smaller standing committee.
These groups were forced to unite when the political balance of power swung in favor of rebel Red Guards deemed more reliable by the party center.
Ultimately, the Shengwulian was denounced, including by
Kang Sheng
Kang Sheng (; 4 November 1898 – 16 December 1975) was a Chinese Communist politician best known for having overseen the CCP's internal security and intelligence apparatus during the early 1940s and again at the height of the Cultural Revolut ...
who denigrated the group as "
anarchists
Anarchism is a political philosophy and movement that is skeptical of all justifications for authority and seeks to abolish the institutions it claims maintain unnecessary coercion and hierarchy, typically including, though not necessari ...
" and "
Trotskyists
Trotskyism is the political ideology and branch of Marxism developed by Ukrainian-Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky and some other members of the Left Opposition and Fourth International. Trotsky self-identified as an orthodox Marxist, a re ...
," and suppressed by the Chinese leadership.
Ideology
The Shengwulian was a self-styled ultra-left group.
It sought to emulate the
Paris Commune
The Paris Commune (french: Commune de Paris, ) was a revolutionary government that seized power in Paris, the capital of France, from 18 March to 28 May 1871.
During the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71, the French National Guard had defended ...
as the historical example of popular power and argued that China's "new bureaucratic
bourgeoisie
The bourgeoisie ( , ) is a social class, equivalent to the middle or upper middle class. They are distinguished from, and traditionally contrasted with, the proletariat by their affluence, and their great cultural and financial capital. They ...
" would have to be destroyed to establish a genuinely egalitarian society.
Historian
Maurice Meisner
Maurice Jerome Meisner (November 17, 1931 – January 23, 2012) was an historian of 20th century China and professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. His study of the Chinese Revolution (1949), Chinese Revolution and the China, People's R ...
writes that one of its inspirations may have been
Qi Benyu
Qi Benyu (1931 – 20 April 2016) was a Chinese Communist theorist, mainly active during the Cultural Revolution. Qi was a member of the ultra-left Cultural Revolution Group, director of the Department of Petitions and deputy director of the Secr ...
, one of the last ultra-left intellectuals remaining in the
Cultural Revolution Group
The (Central) Cultural Revolution Group (CRG or CCRG; ) was formed in May 1966 as a replacement organisation to the Central Committee Secretariat and the "Five Man Group", and was initially directly responsible to the Standing Committee of the Po ...
(and who was purged in 1968 around the same time authorities suppressed the Shengwulian).
The Shengwulian opposed
revolutionary committees, arguing that the committees failed to transform the political system and had the practical effect of excluding radical
Red Guards
Red Guards () were a mass student-led paramilitary social movement mobilized and guided by Chairman Mao Zedong in 1966 through 1967, during the first phase of the Cultural Revolution, which he had instituted.Teiwes According to a Red Guard lead ...
from power. The group's tone "was one of frustration at the limitations of the Cultural Revolution, which the Shengwulian faulted for holding back from a structural solution to China's political problems." As Meisner summarized:
Maoist
Maoism, officially called Mao Zedong Thought by the Chinese Communist Party, is a variety of Marxism–Leninism that Mao Zedong developed to realise a socialist revolution in the agricultural, pre-industrial society of the Republic of Ch ...
leadership rejected these ideas, but the Shengwulian's views nonetheless spread beyond its local environment in China and also into the West. Its legacy is one of creative re-interpretation of the official doctrine arising during the Cultural Revolution.
The group's significant political writings include its ''Program'' and
Yang Xiguang
Xiaokai Yang (born as Yang Xiguang; Simplified Chinese: 杨小凯; 6 October 1948 – 7 July 2004) was a Chinese-Australian economist. He was one of the world's pre-eminent theorists in economic analysis, and an influential campaigner for democr ...
's "
Whither China?''
''Whither China?'' argued that the central conflict in China during the Cultural Revolution was not between
Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong pronounced ; also romanised traditionally as Mao Tse-tung. (26 December 1893 – 9 September 1976), also known as Chairman Mao, was a Chinese communist revolutionary who was the founder of the People's Republic of China (PRC) ...
's proponents and opponents, or between the proletariat and the former wealthy, but instead between the masses and a "Red capitalist class" that was "decadent" and impeding historical progress. It was passed hand-to-hand among Rebel
Red Guards
Red Guards () were a mass student-led paramilitary social movement mobilized and guided by Chairman Mao Zedong in 1966 through 1967, during the first phase of the Cultural Revolution, which he had instituted.Teiwes According to a Red Guard lead ...
, spread by authorities as "material to be criticized," and reached a readership of many hundreds of thousands during the Cultural Revolution.
Alluding to Mao's comment that 95% of Party
cadres were good or comparatively good while 5% should be purged, the Shengwulian argued that 90% of the cadres formed a red capitalist class that should be removed and replaced by a political system modeled after the Paris Commune.
Academic analysis
Sociologist
Andrew G. Walder
Andrew G. Walder (born 1953) is an American political sociologist specializing in the study of Chinese society. He has taught at Harvard University and Stanford University, where he joined the faculty in 1997 and is the Denise O'Leary & Kent Thiry ...
writes that the Shenwulian's opposition to a "red capitalist class" "did not issue from a coalition of the marginalized, but
asinstead the product of a split over tactics within the rebel movement, a rhetorical framing of diehard resistance that was not widely shared even within the splinter faction that generated the
'Whither China?''essay."
According to
Jonathan Unger
Professor Jonathan Unger (born 1946) is a journalist and an expert on China. His major works include ''The Transformation of Rural China'' and ''The Nature of Chinese Politics from Mao to Jiang'' (as editor). Unger is currently conducting researc ...
, the Shengwulian became the Cultural Revolution's most famous ultra-left grouping.
References
{{Cultural Revolution
1967 establishments in China
Organizations in Cultural Revolution
Communes
Maoism
History of Hunan
History of Changsha