Memoir of a Chinese Maverick

...Instead he pursued his passion for literature and keeping detailed diaries...

...one is judged on one’s actual behavior...

...In the Maoist period there was little chance to reverse one’s fortunes...

...In 1994 he left the country to teach Chinese language and literature at Yale University...

...Refusing to do so can easily lead to a worse job assignment or a longer sentence...

...Hu Ping, longtime editor of the overseas prodemocracy journal Beijing Spring...

...Since the author has neither the name recognition nor the political stature of many recent awardees, his literary prize is a strong indication of the quality of his writing and his courage—both fully conveyed by Susan Wilf’s fluid translation...

...Kang himself points out that at various stages he “stuck out like a sore thumb,” because he did not say or do even the minimum necessary to satisfy local Maoist officials...

...Reviewed by Stanley Rosen Director, East Asian Studies Center, and professor of political science, University of Southern California Kang Zhengguo’s compelling memoir has been well-known in the Chinese community as a result of its publication in Hong Kong in 2004 and Taiwan in 2005...

...He believes that “dissenting voices [are] essential forces of progress,” that “independence” from the scrutiny of others is vital, and that even after moving to the United States he had a “moral obligation to further the cause of freedom” in China...

...There was tremendous anger accumulating against the Communist Party’s stultifying control of society that required only an official sanction to be released...

...Of course, despite the control the Party-state continues to exercise over society, one can see significant differences in the way Chinese citizens are now treated...

...Kang is refreshingly candid in reporting that the majority of people he spoke to while visiting home, including his brother, had become pragmatic...

...Altogether he spent a total of 14 years in prisons and at hard labor before he was released as “rehabilitated” in post-Mao 1979, and was allowed to complete his education and begin teaching—but was kept under surveillance...

...In addition, the author demonstrates why to this day the Party-state feels threatened by the society it governs, and why the leadership has made “social stability” its prime objective...

...In the “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution,” for example, the cult of Mao Zedong raised the Chairman’s status to that of a living God, yet this was simultaneously an unprecedented time to engage in unfettered intellectual activities and the most bourgeois of pastimes...

...As Perry Link observes in his incisive Introduction, the book is refreshingly free of the political jargon and the ideological lenses that mar so many memoirs of life in post-1949 China...

...And Kang’s incarceration in 1968 brought him in contact with a professor of English, which would have been impossible had he remained on the outside...

...Jiang and Chen still live in China, under close watch...

...Returning home for a family visit in 2000, Kang also had an undesired opportunity to juxtapose the behavior of the state security services in the Maoist and reform periods...

...Kang’s beautifully written memoir is a valuable resource that allows each reader to comprehend the subtleties of China’s current treatment of political dissent...

...In contrast to virtually all of his classmates at Shaanxi Normal University, he eschewed any interest in Communist Youth League or Communist Party membership...

...Previous winners included Doctor Jiang Yanyong, a Communist Party member and high military official who exposed China’s initial cover-up of the SARS outbreak...

...But his whole experience reminds us of the great number of talented people who were simply buried over the years by the incessant political campaigns, never to reach their potential...

...The present government has arguably sought to define what is considered unacceptable behavior that could lead to warnings or an arrest...

...The last explains his mailing banned magazines and books, plus some of his own critical writings in overseas Chinese publications, to mainland acquaintances who remained skeptical of the regime...

...In the Maoist era, with its emphasis on class struggle, a person’s “class origin” often determined his fate...

...Hu and Kang now live inthe United States...

...Forme, Kang’s intimate memoir is especially valuable, first of all, because it sheds light on interpersonal relations in Maoist China, and on the daily struggle to survive in a highly authoritarian system...

...We see repeatedly the power of petty local officials to arbitrarily determine one’s fate, how even the simplest request requires some “negotiation,” and the importance of sheer luck...

...After the initial surge in the fall and winter of 1966-67, when anyone could become a target, those who opted out of factional struggles were generally left alone and had the leisure to pursue their interests...

...For him it led to being expelled from the university in 1964, at the age of 20, and marked a subversive...

...But one risks crossing the line through the written word, whether in print or on the Internet...

...For instance, when an old friend of the author’s grandfather who had become a high official made him the “Buddhist representative” on a local consultative committee, he not only avoided the excesses of the land reform campaign but prospered...

...Kang, though, hastens to note that many of the basic rights denied under Mao are still being denied...

...Indeed a prominent reviewer of the Chinese edition admiringly reflected on Kang’s utter lack of political consciousness until his participation in the 1989 student movement...

...Thus the central government is caught in a dilemma: It knows that its power depends on local officials—no matter how corrupt—to keep order, yet is also fully aware of the dangers of increasing mass disaffection...

...One aspect of this memoir that sets it apart from others is its breadth It starts with the establishment of the People s Republic in 1949 (when the author was five years old) and continues to 2003...

...Once he ran afoul of the authorities he was always under suspicion...

...They felt things had gotten better and “seemed to disapprove of the overseas prodemocracy activists and their activities...

...Moreover, as Kang discovered, dossiers could easily be manipulated to reclassify individuals as landlords or counterrevolutionaries after they had become politically suspect...

...That was particularly true for students, since the schools were all closed in 1966...

...Kang’s ordeal also reveals the importance of one’s dossier...

...He was subjected to a “returnee interview” and placed in confinement until he signed a “confession” stating he had been sending back forbidden material from the United States...

...Ironically, the obsession continues to provide local authorities with arbitrary power: They can defend any perceived challenge from below by asserting to higher levels that their seemingly harsh actions are promoting social stability, although they are fueling more social unrest...

...TO WHAT EXTENT have conditions changed under China’s reform program...

...Given the recurring damaging programs instituted from 1949 to 1976, however, practically no one could completely escape victimization...

...Second, Kang’s account of the injustices of everyday life helps us understand the pent-up rage Mao was able to unleash in the Cultural Revolution...

...Other ironies abound...

...In fact, it won the “Contribution to Contemporary Chinese Language Prize” in 2006...

...This enables Kang to compare Maoism with Deng Xiaoping’s “Second Revolution” and the reform program that has turned China from a marked by scarcity, common poverty and self-defeating grand schemes to a hybrid market economy affording opportunities for wealth, conspicuous consumption and the avoidance of politics...

...Third, Confessions yields many insights into the state’s relationship with its citizens...

...It is very clear that the “facts” in the case of a person accused of some misdeed are generally far less consequential than the individual’s willingness to accept the authorities’ “verdict...

...In 1968, Kang was sentenced to three years in the labor camps merely because he had sent a letter to the Moscow University Library in 1967 asking for a copy of Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago...

...Under the deliberately unwritten rules governing political dissent in China today—and Perry Link properly notes the insidious nature of its enforced self-censorship— criticism of the state in private discourse or at a public event like an academic conference apparently is acceptable...

...Such persecution is no longer practiced...

...His “maverick” behavior was a source of constant frustration for his parents, siblings, friends, and later his wife...

...Significantly, he owed his relatively good treatment and quick release to his position at Yale and the efforts of his American supporters, which would have had no impact in Maoist days...

...Although a mainland edition of Confessions is unlikely to appear, one can be certain many copies of the Hong Kong version are circulating there...

...and Chen Ziming, imprisoned for his alleged role as one of the “black hands” behind the 1989 prodemocracy student movement...