THE TRIAL OF A COUNTERREVOLUTIONARY
Tz'ong, Mi
This article originally appeared in Yellow River, a magazine published in Hong Kong by Dormer Red Guards. The magazine is recognized as reliably informative, and in a note accompanying this piece...
...in confrontations between peasants and landowners, he had not been known for speaking softly...
...And with that, their deliberations were concluded...
...When a thing like that is said twice, does it count twice...
...Clasping their heads, the five young men wracked their brains in an effort to remember everything that had happened to them from the moment they had reached the age of reason until the instant they had walked into that room...
...Meanwhile, Teng K'ing-hsan, entirely taken up by his work and completely unaware of what was being hatched against him, wielded his hoe by day and by night read and reread his citations...
...Family status: born of a family of bad elements...
...And yet it was no longer possible for the cell to give up, to leave Teng K'inghsan in peace...
...Then he himself fell ill and died...
...I had absolutely no idea he was attacking Comrade Chiang Ching and Chairman Mao...
...Problem No...
...When he read the verdict of the masses, the cell secretary who had laboriously staged the entire affair suffered a twinge of conscience...
...Nobody's forcing you to say you're guilty," the cadres retorted jovially...
...Shortly thereafter, the father sent his elder son to fight in Korea...
...Teng K'ing-hsan to the stake...
...they visited around the village and gossiped with the locals...
...Teng K'ing-hsan was done for...
...Here is one example: 'The yi da san fan movement was born in February 1970...
...He was able to continue his studies, he joined the Communist Youth League, he was president of his student association...
...Three times a day, the village's "little red soldiers," organized in slogan bands, spread through the streets, bawling their heads off...
...In any case, anything would be better than having nobody at all to attack...
...He returned home, became a substitute teacher, and after six months was dismissed...
...He and cadres from the popular militia were constantly going in and out...
...Sex: male...
...On countless occasions, he disobeyed them...
...This procedure is quite simple...
...The number of people claiming to have heard the story of the snake rose from 5 to 20...
...Some people began to envy other production brigades, which had been able to discover written counterrevolutionary slogans...
...The place where Teng K'ing-hsan had delivered himself of these remarks—originally, according to his five comrades, in his own house—was extended to embrace the fields where he worked and all publicly frequented spots in the village...
...The political commissar of the production brigade had set up his bed in the barn...
...The problem was that Teng K'ing-hsan was no talker, nor was he a slacker in his work...
...EDS...
...He's the man we need...
...Brought to bay, Teng K'ing-hsan wrote "ren zui—I acknowledge my crimes...
...To clear himself, he insisted energetically, "It was Teng K'ing-hsan who told me that...
...Shang, which means to ascend, also signifies to present a request to a much higher authority...
...The reader will not find the slightest embellishment introduced for literary effect...
...It is certain that he must have complained about it, and made reactionary remarks...
...They were all ears, straining to miss nothing...
...The village was plastered with posters...
...How with those three little characters bu shu shi could a mere individual invalidate the allegations of the Party, whose authority is absolute, and of the all-powerful masses...
...The Study Group, or Recourse to the Thought of Mao Tse-tung WHEREUPON the cadres availed themselves of an infallible procedure...
...And thanks to the depositions in their possession, the cadres speedily flushed five young men who were habitually quite close to Teng...
...It was then that, thanks to an inspired idea of the Party secretary in the production brigade, they finally did hit on someone to attack...
...This reexamination absolutely does not mean that this trial presents us with any problem but, on the contrary, that we want it to be more effective, to strike down the class enemy even more cruelly...
...Well, of course," they cried...
...The facts related in this second series of statements were not without their piquancy...
...The court puts its trust in the masses, and the masses put their trust in the Party...
...looking distraught, he merely kept repeating in a low voice, "I haven't said that, I haven't said that...
...In these circumstances, a "struggle meeting" is not slow to materialize, at which certain members find themselves covered with infamy...
...The date is November—, 1970...
...Some people had well understood that if, at such a moment, they expressed their absolute fidelity to the Party, their visceral hatred of the class enemy, it could stand them in very good stead...
...other people in order to demonstrate their own purity...
...With the help of the documents the cadres had submitted, it was easy for the study group to fluster them...
...And this time, the cell secretary could consider himself content...
...This is not an accident...
...The Sentence Twenty-four names, written in close-set characters, appear on an official poster of the regional Public Security office...
...And I to a peasant family belong...
...Was not his fate precisely the fate of those who do not follow the Party line...
...Mobilizing the Masses THE TARGET for the current class struggle was now established, yet there was still no evidence against Teng K'ing-hsan in hand...
...the boy burst into tears and cried...
...They knew well enough that whatever Teng K'ing-hsan wrote at the bottom of the indictment, his case was settled in advance...
...All he did was to beg his friends under his breath to speak with a little more conscience...
...And please also be sure to enclose a stamped, self-addressed envelope...
...Wherever one turned, one heard nothing but "death," "enemy," "struggle," "confessions...
...I will redeem myself...
...He made the following analysis: "Obviously, Teng K'ing-hsan talks very little...
...Refuse to make a denunciation...
...They left it up to the Party to pass judgment...
...A strenuous and at the same time adroit effort was expended to this end by the production team with which Teng worked...
...The endless waves of the dictatorship of the masses had engulfed Teng K'ing-hsan...
...For him this would be even more disastrous than to "recognize his crimes...
...A copy of the Teng K'ing-hsan dossier was sent to each production team...
...All everyone in the people's commune knew was that living conditions were much harder than before, that now you had to put up with the worst without a murmur...
...What an idea to make a counterrevolutionary out of him...
...Once these explanations have been tendered, the witnesses are reassured, and find that their memories are quickened in an altogether exceptional way...
...He went back to work in the fields, to live in rhythm with the seasons, as his forebears had done...
...But the cadres, who did know, told each other: "It's all owed to the struggle against Teng K'ing-hsan...
...Within the people's commune, tension had peaked...
...Everyone held his peace, waiting for the next person to speak up first...
...on that score, one could rest easy...
...At that time, the yi da san fan movement was at its apogee.' The poster is written in lapidary style: a few characters suffice to trace the destiny of a man...
...The easy understanding of earlier days was destroyed...
...Well then, all you have to do is write `I haven't said that.' You're free to write down what you want...
...A psychological tension had built up in everyone...
...Once the witnesses, having replied in the affirmative, have affixed their seal at the conclusion of their deposition, one can say that the control is finished...
...They no longer tried to decide for themselves what was criminal or what was constructive, but to the best of their ability laid all their cards on the table...
...So painful were their cogitations that they came to the point of saying to each other: "Suppose we went after somebody who, let's say, sort of resembles a class enemy...
...Irrigation ditches were dug...
...Was the class enemy far too wily, or were the cadres too dull-witted...
...They know quite well that in this world there is something that is called the law...
...The cadres than began to conduct minute inquiries among the people for the purpose of making up their dossier...
...This Is How One Must Go About It" AS RECORDED, the 81 depositions added up to more than 10,000 characters...
...It was then that the cell secretary delivered the stab in the back: "He won't sign...
...another had gone so far as to talk about the story of "Ta Chi cajoling King, Tz'u...
...And if Teng K'ing-hsan had fallen so low, was that not because the Party had cast him out...
...As of that moment, Teng K'ing-hsan stopped being the son of a poor peasant and became the younger brother of a bad element...
...DEAD...
...he was someone who repeated his two stories against Chairman Mao at every opportunity, not even trying to be discreet...
...In these circumstances, to attack them as "class enemies" would convince no one...
...As for the 2T'a Chi is the concubine, legendary for her frivolity and cruelty, of the no less legendary King Tz'u, the last emperor of the Shang dynasty...
...they foresaw a probable change in target...
...He was locked up in the production brigade prison (also known as the cowshed...
...The Three Controls" IN CHINA, the judicial system functions with great circumspection...
...As the judgment of the basic Party cell, he wrote: "Was able to cooperate...
...261 Who Is Teng K'ing-hsan...
...Let him be shot...
...The first part of the document comprised the charges pending against him...
...This is the last step before judgment, in the proper sense of the term, is handed down...
...After the Cultural Revolution, on the grounds that the 267 masses must participate in the administration of Justice, the judicial organisms enlarged the power of the masses to intervene in dictatorial government...
...People went home early and holed up in their houses, there to smoke the cigarette of boredom...
...When the moment arrived for the last meeting, the situation shaped up like this: on the one hand, the tribunal, which had confidence in the masses, would take into account their statements and abide by their verdict...
...We translate from a version—translated from the Chinese into French, with notes by Jacques Seurre—that appeared in the September 1977 issue of the French left Catholic journal Esprit...
...Unthinkable...
...The cell secretary offered this analysis: "Teng K'ing-hsan is a person on whom the sun used to shine, and who now has every kind of problem imaginable...
...Several cadres were discouraged when they read the documents...
...What was he to answer...
...back in his own country, he fancied he could behave arrogantly toward his superiors...
...Situations like this, in which every individual feels threatened, are necessary if people are to lose every vestige of common sense and end up "criticizing" and "denouncing...
...He was lost, and he knew it, yet he still refused to sign...
...However that may be, at the end of several days there was not the shadow of a class enemy in sight...
...It explains how the masses were mobilized, and how a production team of 73 workers produced 81 "freely tendered denunciations...
...The magazine is recognized as reliably informative, and in a note accompanying this piece the editors state that they vouch that: "What is related here conforms wholly to reality...
...The cell secretary himself hadn't the slightest idea...
...In point of fact, the Public Security comrades, who had made no mention of laws, had said to the masses: "Our dictatorship is the dictatorship of the masses...
...Then they read the depositions aloud, and they ask the witnesses if their testimony conforms to the facts...
...In the course of the meeting, a fair number of people were mentioned who were blabbermouths, or slackers, or even individuals who, when it came to taxes, contrived to get off a little too easily...
...After a few years, he has to cast his skin...
...His five friends spoke with special zeal...
...In his situation, no one would have dared come forward in his defense...
...in fact, he was always ready to pitch in and give somebody else a hand...
...The "soft" groups can go on for as long as two months, at the end of which time the sturdier members have grown gaunt, and the rest become actually sick...
...Extremely dissatisfied with the Party and with socialism, he is animated by a savage hatred for our great leader Chairman Mao, and for this reason he has aroused the indignation of the masses...
...Even though they were busily working, "pioneers of the agrarian reform," and "positive elements" were summoned, one by one, to this office...
...we must place confidence in the Party...
...The cell secretary had had a further inspiration...
...He was the same as before—hard-working, reserved, except that he had become even more taciturn...
...Cadres from other villages with experience in the matter of class struggle were temporarily transferred to work with the members of the local commune...
...even death would not suffice to expiate such a crime...
...he was forever saying, "Let us render thanks for all these things to Chairman Mao...
...The cadres felt as if they were awaking from a bad dream...
...So the entire commune had to deliberate on Teng's (retouched) dossier...
...To whom did the credit for all this redound...
...At the bottom of the poster is the oldfashioned symbol of power, the purple seal...
...For the Chinese, as thousands of novels and folktales attest, the vixen is not only as sly as her mate but epitomizes dangerous, lascivious, spellbinding femininity—the slut, as we would say...
...For the sake of the Party, and to carry out the tasks it had prescribed—also to protect their own prestige—the cadres had henceforth to lead this political struggle to its conclusion...
...All this contributed greatly toward raising the level of class-consciousness in everyone, stimulating zeal for work, and producing such great changes here that one can say the whole region has been shaken up from top to bottom...
...The lively hum that pervaded their leisure hours, when people play chess or chat, was silenced...
...The others are the names of people sentenced to prison terms ranging from seven years to life...
...And add the notation: `Perfidious attitude...
...Individual status: student...
...Anxiety, the sense of a duty unfulfilled, gripped all the cadres...
...Under the auspices of the five-starred red flag, he had a happy childhood...
...Therefore, when the Party is preparing trials, it always harks back firmly to the principle: "Let us have confidence in the masses...
...This is why—and the comrades from Public Security who come to collect the appraisals of the masses energetically stress the point—one could not fill in the spaces purposely left blank with things like "I firmly support the punishment the authorities will decide on" or other such banalities...
...And after all, what could better underscore a person's class position than such a bellow...
...It reveals the contempt that China as a whole has long felt for Chiang Ching and that is owed in no small measure to pure and simple misogyny...
...In the Teng case, when the fresh depositions, reviewed and corrected by the regional Public Security, were read aloud, the cell secretary could not contain his admiration: "They have really done a fine job...
...His father had been a pioneer in agrarian reform...
...Morning, noon, and night...
...Deserves clemency...
...In 262 the search for a target, the production brigade summoned all cadres, including basic-level cadres, and all "positive elements" from each village to a big meeting...
...There can be no doubt that he is dissatisfied with his fate...
...However, the two counts of the indictment were overwhelming...
...A few people rushed up onto the platform to pull his hair and slap him as the others present clapped...
...The third and last of the examinations is made by Public Security comrades attached to the regional Court of Justice...
...On the other hand, only those members of the people's commune who followed the Party could be considered as being part of the whole, "the masses...
...To make Comrade Chiang Ching a T'a Chi, as wily as a fox and Chairman Mao a tyrant like King Tz'u...
...Translated, from the French by ADRIENNE IOULKE q To Our Contributors • When sending manuscripts, please make sure that you do not send your only copy...
...1: Choosing the Target in the Class Struggle IT SHOULD BE SAID that at the time the yi da san fan movement was spreading rapidly throughout the country...
...let us lean on them...
...Shot dead...
...they became a fresh, provisional target...
...So that this study session would end without their being harassed, they were ready to say or do no matter what...
...But that proves that he has an inner life that he is obliged to keep secret...
...above all, to a man their social origins were irreproachable...
...And so the cell secretary was right to note in an activity report: Our production brigade launched valiantly into a class struggle and bagged the counterrevolutionary element Teng K'ing-hsan...
...This is what he confessed: in 1967, when Chairman Mao went swimming in the Yangtse, Teng K'ing-hsan had said, "The Chairman sloughs his skin the way snakes do...
...The portrait of Teng K'ing-hsan was variously drawn butalas— it remained the portrait of an ordinary peasant, nothing more...
...His older brother was demobilized...
...At the meeting, they yelled: "To insult Chairman Mao is a crime that deserves ten thousand deaths...
...He lost his mother when he was very young...
...Unhappily, in actions as in words, none of these people looked anything like typical "class enemies...
...However, given the fact that the prisoner Teng King-hsan has been able to make a sincere confession of his criminal thoughts, the court has shown clemency in sentencing him to only 15 years' imprisonment, with deprivation of his civil rights for a period of three years following his release...
...At the worst, that meant you might be suspected of being a "buddy" of the enemy, one of his "acolytes...
...Thanks to the proceedings undertaken by the triple union of Party, masses, and organisms of Public Security, a counterrevolutionary element had been reduced to impotence...
...Age: 26...
...More than a dozen people came forward in turn to accuse Teng K'ing-hsan...
...And now—it will no doubt seem hard to believe—the individual who was Teng K-ing-hsan, the work that he had contributed to the commune, the number of mouths to be fed for which he could be responsible—all that was now relegated to second place...
...Urged to redeem themselves also by a meritorious action, the three other youths confirmed the 265 two accusations...
...One alone sufficed to entail the death penalty...
...And once the movement's run its course—well, we could rehabilitate him, and that would be that...
...After her downfall, Chiang Ching was caricatured with notable consistency as a bespectacled vixen...
...His father wanted him to kowtow before the photograph of Chairman Mao...
...Which is why these Public Security comrades are not content simply to read the statements aloud...
...Our Dictatorship Is a Dictatorship of the Masses" WITH REGARD to how the dictatorship of the proletariat was to be practiced in China, Chairman Mao left only a very anodyne note: "Our dictatorship is a dictatorship of the masses...
...Under Party guidance, denunciations that first had been made blindly had gained in political depth, had taken on a clear political tinge...
...Teng K'ing-hsan...
...Next, he failed to pass the entrance examinations to the university...
...Put down ren zui, and have done with it...
...They conduct minute inquiries, seek out all the details...
...AT THE TIME of the Liberation, Teng K'inghsan was only four years old...
...The Party was protecting Teng K'ing-hsan...
...The fellow who had got himself in trouble with girls listened to the cell secretary tell him that he would have to redeem his past errors by some meritorious deed, failing which he would be dubbed a "bad element...
...So as not to intimidate the witnesses, they often explain: "We trust the basic organisms of the Party, we trust the masses...
...The consequences of that would be terrible...
...attack, yes—but whom...
...Persists in offering opposition...
...We will always be on the side of the medium poor peasants...
...The five young men who knew Teng K'inghsan well did present themselves, little red book in hand, and more dead than alive, at the production brigade quarters where the study group was to meet...
...this made it permissible to proceed to an arrest...
...Well, there's 266 nothing to do but let a middling poor peasant sign in his place...
...Put down bu shu shi...
...negative in people's daily lives...
...Thus, a host of details that have been left in the dark emerge into the light, thanks to hints proffered by the Public Security comrades, and evidence that has presented problems on the level of logic is little by little clarified...
...Communications emanating from the central authorities, editorials in the Nan fang Ribao (The Southern Daily, the Kwangtung regional newspaper), not to mention all instructions handed down through channels, were stressing one point: the yi da san fan movement must "strike down the counterrevolutionaries whose sabotage activities are obvious but must also ferret out the class enemy, no matter how well hidden he may be...
...Immediately, everyone was gripped by the same fear—fear of finding himself implicated...
...All avenues were closed to him except a confession of guilt...
...mutual mistrust reigned...
...He who refuses to give a full account of himself is resisting the Party...
...So it is not surprising that when people were asked to give their opinion about the sentence to be imposed on Teng K'ing-hsan, they could say things like "But according to what must one determine the sentence...
...Everything— the depositions made and the talk current in the village—combined to show up the weakness of the cell secretary's hypotheses...
...And from that point on, whether Teng K'ing-hsan admitted his errors or not, he was going to find it hard to extricate himself...
...After hours, they delivered long harangues on the fundamentals of obtaining confessions in the course of the struggle...
...He could say nothing...
...And this Teng K'ing-hsan had also understood perfectly well, and this is precisely why the courage to sign failed him...
...Apparently, the idea of resuming attacks on those "four types of bad elements" that had long since lost the power to sabotage anything at all had not even occurred to the yi da san fan leaders...
...They were as little inclined to confess they were "ignorant in the matter of class struggles" as they were unwilling to entertain the idea of reverting to bygone "revolutionary situations...
...Roughly, there are two kinds of groups, the "hard" and the "soft...
...The cell secretary wanted more statements in evidence...
...3The spontaneity with which the cadres associate the foxy T'a Chi and Comrade Chiang Ching may seem surprising...
...There, popular sentiment erupted...
...One former pioneer of the agrarian reform, with the outspoken self-confidence of an old working hand who could still do his job, even went to see the cell secretary and defended Teng K'ing-hsan: "The young fellow works well...
...2 Was that not a transparent allusion to Chairman Mao and Comrade Chiang Ching, his wife...
...There is one point on which the masses are very vulnerable...
...therefore, they would disclose Teng K'ing-hsan's secrets...
...And from then on, everything went well for Teng K'ing-hsan...
...It was first transmitted, together with the arrest warrant, to the office of the "Triple Union for Public Security"—i.e., union of the masses, the Party, and the Public Security itself—in the people's commune...
...In order to "persuade" him to sign, the production brigade called all the members of the people's commune together in a struggle meeting...
...An untranslatable expression that, word for word, means "three ascents, three descents...
...These young men wanted to be cleansed of their crimes...
...This Teng K'inghsan and the Teng of the first dossier were two people...
...The three controls were completed...
...And so his son could, with full confidence, sing with the other village children: "Red is the fire,/red is the hearth...
...It goes without saying that the government undertook responsibility for educating the younger son...
...What was one to do...
...No cadre wanted to allow the prestige of the Party to be shaken and to leave the entire commune with the feeling that its Party cell secretary was flying in the face of common sense...
...He comes from a good family...
...And so the struggles and the condemnations have the effect of stimulating production, and it is for the good of China and for the sake of her future that Teng K'ing-hsan rots in his cell...
...Confronted by these two judgments—"that he be shot" and "deserves clemency"—the court opted for the middle way: there resulted a sentence of fifteen years' imprisonment...
...To his certain knowledge, he had never uttered the remarks that his dossier set forth...
...Hsia, to descend, means in this context that the given authority "deigns" to respond...
...Roads were built that once upon a time allegedly would have taken up too much ground, or would not have been profitable, etc...
...he had only to follow its path to be assured a brilliant future...
...hard" groups, they operate according to certain basic maxims: "He who is recalcitrant invites severe punishment...
...After some days of this silent offensive, the cell secretary deemed that the moment had come to move into action...
...The people in Public Security call this san Shang san hsia.4 The Teng K'ing-hsan dossier passed through these three scrutinies...
...However, the year he was to take his university entrance exams, a scandal turned his life upside down...
...That way, we could create an atmosphere of class struggle...
...Meetings are held, naturally, after a full and often exhausting day's work...
...he was admired by his entire production team, feared and respected in his village...
...The group disbands when everyone cries for mercy...
...Now, properly completed, the dossier held together perfectly...
...In it, Teng K'ing-hsan appeared as a chatterbox...
...He had numerous posters put up, with such slogans as "No matter how deep he burrows, we will root out 263 the class enemy," and "Since he will not lay down his arms, let us exterminate the enemy," and "Every confession merits clemency, any resistance deserves severity," and "Grave wrongdoers will be brought to account, but coerced accomplices will not be pursued...
...The Public Security comrades commence by reading a few quotations from Chairman Mao: "We must place confidence in the masses...
...From experience, the members of the people's commune had realized that a "political struggle" would be taking place in their village...
...The struggle hardened: because more people were now implicated, the prevailing fear was aggravated, and again denunciations flowed in, this time more detailed, more exhaustive...
...It was often borne in upon Teng K'ing-hsan: "You owe absolutely everything to the Party...
...How much is one counterrevolutionary statement worth...
...One single thought obsessed everyone: "How do I behave to be correct...
...According to procedure, Teng King-hsan was supposed to append to the enumeration of his crimes either the notation ren zui ("I acknowledge my crimes") or the notation bu shu shi ("The above does not correspond to the facts...
...When the boy who had talked about the story of T'a Chi cajoling King T'zu learned that it had such dreadful implications, he was horrified...
...What should he do...
...In order "not to accuse an innocent person unjustly, not to allow a guilty person to be at liberty," it is obligatory, once judgment has been handed down on a man, to proceed to at least three examinations of his dossier...
...I confess...
...Custom requires that in handing down a sentence the court refer to these final comments vouchsafed by the masses and the Party cell concerned...
...They established a "study group" to consider the thinking of Mao Tse-tung...
...No one knew exactly...
...And as had been the case with similar earlier movements, yi da san Jan was becoming the essential business of every production unit, whose leaders were cudgeling their brains: "Fight, yes...
...The term bespeaks a verticality of relationship and bears a strong feudal stamp, yet conveys a remarkable suggestion of humor...
...He was leading an uneventful life when h was thrown into the Party's jails...
...The name is a contraction of two separate slogans that may be rendered in English as "Attack the sabotage activities of counterrevolutionary elements" and "Fight corruption, waste, and the black market...
...On mountainsides that heretofore had been cleared reluctantly, terraced rice fields were constructed...
...The Teng K'ing-hsan affair was closed...
...This is how one must go about it...
...But the articles that comprise the law— who has ever seen them...
...at best, of not having a well-defined position and of sympathizing with the enemy's disaffection...
...The secretary of the Party cell in Teng K'ing-hsan's production brigade had, like all the rest, to face up to this difficult problem...
...Eight are the names of persons condemned to death...
...On the other hand, everyone does know that they entail something formidable...
...At that point, ostensibly because he was sabotaging the reforestation policy, his superiors slapped the label "bad element" on him...
...He accepted all this uncomplainingly...
...The entire region experienced veritable upheavals...
...At least twice a day, the bicycle of the cell secretary was to be seen parked near the door of the team's office...
...One of the five young men had had trouble with girls...
...To expose his counterrevolutionary spirit, let us begin with his close friends, with people he tells everything to...
...For him, the slogans current at the time—"An end to great fortunes," "Share the land," "Exchanges of dwellings"—signified as many changes for the better in his family's situation...
...That would mean "being recalcitrant," obviously, and they would then apply to him the principle "For the greatest wrongs the greatest remedies...
...The formation of such groups had been advocated by the Chairman himself, but today no one knows for sure just what function he had meant to assign them...
...he did not even dare visualize them...
...That's why he must go swimming often...
...Word that Teng K'ing-hsan would be the target spread quickly if unofficially through the village...
...At the bottom of the document, a two-paragraph space was left blank so that the masses as well as the basic Party cell could record their comments...
...268 It had some repercussions—positive, in an intensification of labor...
...The dossier was next forwarded to the hsian jail, where comrades in the hsian Public Security reviewed it...
...lived, prior to his arrest, in the hsian [prefecture] of—, People's Commune of —, Production Unit of —. The thinking of the prisoner Teng K'ing-hsan is reactionary on all counts...
...And when the storm of voices had subsided, the words "We firmly demand that the counterrevolutionary element Teng K'inghsan be shot" filled the space on the document that was reserved for the judgment of the masses...
...Between 1967 and 1969, he actually broke out into repeated venomous attack against Chairman Mao...
...The whole room thereupon echoed: "Yes...
...The cadres urged him to sign, but to no avail...
...He casts his skin in the water...
...That was the worst of all...
...3 From the basic-level cadres up to the cell secretary, everyone was most pleased: all the efforts of the last days had not been in vain...
...The final signature read: "The Commission of Judicial Inquiry of Public Security for the region of —." At the top of the page appeared the red seal of the Revolutionary Committee of Public Security...
...The "dossier concerning the counterrevolutionary crimes of Teng King-hsan" as well as the "warrant for the arrest of the counterrevolutionary element Teng K'ing-hsan" had been drawn up and was at the disposition of the higher authorities...
...In this, the first of the three examinations, the Union office deemed the dossier valid...
...That is to say that the courts place themselves at the orders of the masses also when it comes to sentencing...
...Party members from other villages hurried over en masse...
...We respect their judgment," without knowing themselves how to pass sentence on Teng K'ing-hsan...
...And in fact, he did think that for him the Party was a kind of guardian angel...
...And what's more, he's perfectly correct in dealing with other people...
...What do I do to get out of this so that the tragedy that has befallen Teng K'ing-hsan never happens to me...
...At the foot of the platform, people grew impatient: insults exploded...
...and yet he would have been hard put to prove that the masses had misrepresented him: the people who would have been able to clear his name were the principal witnesses against him...
...And he signed: Prisoner Teng K'ing-hsan...
...His biggest crime was the he had shopped on the black market...
...So it behooved them to discover where the enemy was hiding...
...To bring certain mechanisms that spring from the collective unconscious into play against an individual pays off better than a close Marxist analysis...
...He went so far as to flout the prohibition against going into the hills to cut wood for one's own use...
...what with the cadres' suggestions, followed by the young people's embellishments, the guilt of Teng K'ing-hsan was established at last...
...The possibility of its surfacing at a "criticism meeting" depended ultimately on mobilizing the masses: it was up to them to supply the production brigade with abundant proofs of Teng K'ing-hsan's guilt...
...THE EDITORS...
...At the mere sight of Teng K'ing-hsan they moved away as if he were a leper...
...All of which highlights once again a celebrated phrase of Chairman Mao: "When put into practice, the class struggle is a thing of overwhelming efficacy...
...None of this had much to do with being a counterrevolutionary...
Vol. 25 • July 1978 • No. 3
