Public space for memory in contemporary civil society: freedom to learn from the mirror of the past?

China Quarterly

Volumn , Issue 160, 1999, Pages 1019-1035

  Mazur, Mary G ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 33747579416     PISSN: 03057410     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/s0305741000001429     Document Type: Article

References (36)

1. Information about the meeting from Ding Yuan. Also from Deng Yun and Deng Yanyan, son and daughter of Deng Tuo, both of whom were present at the meeting, through personal communication with the author. Sadly, Ding Yuan died in September 1998 in Beijing.
2. The rehabilitations of the men had been decreed by the Party in 1979.
3. People had gone to prison in 1992 for holding memorial meetings in opposition to government policy on such meetings. See Baogang He, The Democratic Implications of Civil Society in China (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1997).
4. Mary G. Mazur, "A private ceremony to mourn Deng Tuo, Wu Han, Liao Mosha and Liu Ren," The China Quarterly, No.151 (September 1997), pp. 654-58.
5. Wu Nanxing, Sanjia cun zhaji (Notes from a Three Family Village) published in Qianxian (Frontline), 1961-64. Timothy Cheek, Propaganda and Culture in Mao's China: Deng Tuo and the Intelligentsia (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1997); Roderick MacFarquhar, The Origins of the Cultural Revolution, Vol. 3, The Coming of the Cataclysm 1961-1966 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).
6. Information on the company from personal communication with Zhang Lina.
7. Information on publishing and the role of the agent from an interview August 1997 with the Editor-in-Chief of China Social Sciences Press, Wang Junyi; Zhang Lina as an agent; and the personal observation of the present author while arranging with Zhang for the publication of a book; also from discussion with Chinese colleagues who have published their own books over the past 20 years and been subject to the changing publishing situation.
8. Ma Zimei [Mary G. Mazur], Shidai zhi zi Wu Man (Son of His Times, Wu Han), Irans. by Zeng Yuelin et al. (Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue chubanshe, 1996); Deng Tuo, Deng Tuo shijl (The Collected Poems of Deng Tuo) (Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue chubanshe, 1993); Liao Mosha, Wengzliong zazu (Essaysfrom Prison) (Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue chubanshe, 1994). Although the biography of Wu Han is a Chinese translation of my biography of Wu Han, for the purposes of this discussion about public space it could be by anyone.
9. Renmln ribao, Beijing rlbao, Beijing wcmbao, Guangming ribao, Zhonggiio qingnian dushubao, Beijing qingnian bao, Xinwen chuban bao, Wenhui bao and the Zhongyang dianshitai were all represented by reporters.
10. Son of His Times Publisher's Symposium Tapes, Beijing (26 May 1996) (hereafter called Symposium Tapes), transcribed and translated by Deng Yun and Su Zhi.
11. For one version see MacFarquhar, The Origins of the Cultural Revolution, pp. 439-458.
12. Symposium Tapes. Zheng's thought that this book might not sell was mistaken. Within a year all 6,000 copies of the run were sold out, an interesting fact in observing the extent of public space and civil society in China.
13. Former members of the Beijing Municipal Party Committee attending were: Zhang Wensong, Zheng Tianxiang, Song Ting, Cui Yueli, Wu Weicheng, Li Jun and Su Shuangbi. Among the six Democratic League members attending were Tao Dayong and Jin Ruonian
14. See MacFarquhar, The Origins of the Cultural Revolution.
15. Voices on the tapes reveal the deep feeling, as well as the strong opinions, of the speakers. First-hand accounts of the meeting to the present author by Sha Luyin, Yu Xixian and Deng Yun who were all present bear out the intensity of the opinions and feeling expressed.
16. Cui Yueli, Symposium Tapes. Italics added.
17. Tao Daying, Symposium Tapes. Italics added.
18. Su Shuangbi, "Guanyu 'Wu Han wenti' xingzhi de gaoceng zhenglun" ("The high-level debate on the nature of the 'Wu Han problem' ") in Yanhuang chunqiu (China's Past) (May 1997), pp. 28-37. The seeming anomaly of the title Deputy Editor-in-Chief probably indicates that Su was the managing editor under the chief editor. A historian and journalist, he had been an aide to Wu Han in the Beijing Historical Association and had assisted Deng Tuo in his efforts to counter the criticisms of Wu in late 1965.
19. For example see MacFarquhar, The Origins of the Cultural Revolution.
20. Kang Sheng, "1965.9 to 1966.5 - The great events of the struggle of the two lines on the cultural battle line," u.p. For Kang Sheng's life, see MacFarquhar, The Origins of the Cultural Revolution, pp. 290-96. Kang has been called by MacFarquhar "the most cynical hit-man of Mao's Cultural Revolution swat team," p. 296.
21. Su Shuangbi, "The high-level debate," p. 29, quoting from Kang Sheng, "The great events."
22. Su Shuangbi, "The high-level debate," pp. 28-37.
23. As quoted from Kang Sheng in ibid. p. 35. Italics added.
24. Ibid. p. 36. Italics added.
25. Ibid. p. 29
26. Information on the management of Yanhuang chunqiu from Ding Yuan and Du Daozheng through personal communication, March 1998.
27. Personal communication, 25 April 1998, from Sha Luyin after an interview with Su Shuangbi and Wang Hongzhi in Beijing, PRC on behalf of this author.
28. When we refer to "public space" or "public sphere" we are talking about a space in socio-political relations, in the polity, where no single governmental entity dominates, where only individuals and groups communicate and act. The actions of people in that sphere will accord with their culture and its values.
29. For a helpful survey of the literature on the nature of civil society in China see Timothy Cheek, "From market to democracy in China: gaps in the civil society model," in Juan Lindau and Timothy Cheek (eds.), Market Economics and Political Change (Boulder: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998), pp. 219-252. Two important collections of articles on civil society, pro and con, in China are Modem China, Vol. 19, No. 2 (April 1993) and Timothy Brook and Bernard Frolic (eds.). Civil Society In China (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1997). In these two volumes articles of special import include: Philip C.C. Huang, " 'Public sphere'/'civil society'," Modem China, Vol. 19, No. 2 (April 1993), pp. 216-240; Frederic Wakeman, 'The civil society and public sphere debate: Western reflections on Chinese political culture," Modern China, Vol. 19, No. 2 (April 19.93), pp. 108-138; Roger DesForges, "States, societies, and civil societies in Chinese history," in Brook and Frolic, Civil Society in China, pp. 68-95. Also of particular interest are David Kelly and He Baogang, "Emergent civil society and the intellectuals in China," in Robert Miller (ed.), The Developments of Civil Society in Communist Systems (Sydney: Alien and Unwin, 1992), pp. 24-39; and three articles by Heath Chamberlain: "Civil society with Chinese characteristics? Review essay," The China Journal, No. 39 (January 1998): pp. 69-81, "Coming to terms with civil society," The Australian Joiimalof Chinese Affairs, No. 31 (January 1994), pp. 113-17, and "On the search for civil society in China," ModemChina, Vol. 19,No.2(April 1993), pp. 199-215. Two recent works make persuasive and salient contributions to the debate: Tianjin Shi, Political Participation in Beijing (Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 1997) and Baogang He, The Democratic Implications of Civil Society in China (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1997).
30. Adam Seligman, The Idea of Civil Society (New York: The Free Press, 1992).
31. Quinten Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith (eds.), Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci (New York: International Publishers, 1971); Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991); Brook and Frolic, Civil Society in China.
32. For examples see the work of F. W. Mote, "The growth of Chinese despotism," Oriens Extremis, Vol. 8 (1961), pp. 1-41; John \V. Dardess, Confucianism and Autocracy: Professional Elites in the Founding of the Ming Dynasty (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983) and John D. Langlois (ed.), China Under Mongol Rule (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981). Also see R. Bin Wong, "Confucian agendas for material and ideological control in modem China," in Theodore Huters, R. Bin Wong and Pauline Yu (eds.), Culture and State in Chinese History, (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997) pp. 303-325.
33. See Mary G. Mazur, "The United Front redefined for the party-state: a case study of transition and legitimation," in Timothy Cheek and Tony Saich (eds.), New Perspectives on State Socialism in China (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1997), pp. 51-75.
34. Timothy Brook, "Auto-organization in Chinese society," in Brook and Frolic, Civil Society in China, pp. 19-45; Wong, "Confucian agendas," p. 324.
35. C. Wright Mills has dealt with the development of "public" in distinction to "mass" opinion in The Power Elite (New York: Oxford University Press, 1956), pp. 303-304.
36. Baogang He, The Democratic Implications of Civil Society in China, has an important discussion on what he sees as "semi-civil society" in the 1990s.