Abstract
This chapter focuses on deviant children and youth in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) from 1959–1964, including those who engaged in mild transgressions like skipping out on Young Pioneer activities, and young people who committed violent acts like school shootings and rape. These examples of deviant children and youth not only enrich our understanding of the nature of everyday life during the PRC, but also help us grasp more clearly exactly where the boundaries of normative behaviour were drawn by the state, teachers, Communist Youth League leaders and parents, and how children and youth interacted with, and sometimes circumvented, these parameters.
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Notes
- 1.
The Maoist period (1949–1976) is often split between the first seventeen years and the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976).
- 2.
Despite the state’s focus on children, there was no single Bureau of Children to carry out a unified vision and cohesive program. Rather, the project of making youthful citizens was cobbled together by different organisations and government divisions, at every level of the state. Thus, in my research at the Shanghai and Tianjin Municipal Archives, I have used documents from the Bureaus of Education, Public Security, Public Health, and Civil Affairs, as well as the Women’s Federation, the China Welfare Institute, the Communist Youth League, and state broadcasting stations. Programs and institutions aimed at children were run by all levels of government, including national, provincial, local, and even neighbourhood committees. Accordingly, this study draws on national Bureau of Education announcements and reports, as well as local accounts of individual students chosen as Exemplary Young Pioneers, speeches by local officials, and local institutional reports. Local, institutional, and district-level materials were collected and compiled at the municipal level, and it is through that curatorial lens that I encountered them.
- 3.
Andrew F. Jones, Developmental Fairy Tales: Evolutionary Thinking and Modern Chinese Culture (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011), http://site.ebrary.com/id/10477348; Margaret Tillman, “The Authority of Age: Institutions for Childhood Development in China, 1895–1910,” Frontiers of Chinese History 7, no. 1 (2012): 32–60; Margaret Tillman, “Engendering Children of the Resistance: Models of Gender and Scouting in China, 1919–1937,” Cross-Currents: East Asian History and Culture Review, no. 13 (December 2014); M. Colette Plum, Unlikely Heirs: War Orphans During the Second Sino-Japanese War, 1937–1945 (Stanford University, 2006).
- 4.
Henrietta Harrison, The Making of the Republican Citizen: Political Ceremonies and Symbols in China, 1911–1929, Studies on Contemporary China (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2000); Zwia Lipkin, Useless to the State: “Social Problems” and Social Engineering in Nationalist Nanjing, 1927–1937 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center: Distributed by Harvard University Press, 2006); Janet Y. Chen, Guilty of Indigence: The Urban Poor in China, 1900–1953 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012).
- 5.
For a description of how women activists interacted with gendered participation in revolutionary activity, see Kimberley Ens Manning, “The Gendered Politics of Woman-Work: Rethinking Radicalism in the Great Leap Forward,” Modern China 32, no. 3 (2006): 349–384. For an overview of the politics of the Great Leap, see Roderick MacFarquhar, The Origins of the Cultural Revolution 2: The Great Leap Forward, 1958–1960 (New York: The Royal Institute of International Affairs, the East Asian Institute of Columbia University, and the Research Institute on International Change of Columbia University by Columbia University Press, 1983).
- 6.
Stephanie Donald argues that depictions of children were an important part of communicating political messages in posters from the 1960s and 1970s: Stephanie Donald, “Children as Political Messengers: Art, Childhood, and Continuity,” in Picturing Power in the People’s Republic of China: Posters of the Cultural Revolution, eds. Harriet Evans and Stephanie Donald (Lanham, MD: Rowan & Littlefield, 1999), 80–96.
- 7.
Alfred L Chan, Mao’s Crusade: Politics and Policy Implementation in China’s Great Leap Forward (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 65–66.
- 8.
During the Anti-Rightist Campaign, accusations that the state was requisitioning too much grain were considered unacceptable. See Felix Wemheuer, “The Grain Problem Is an Ideological Problem,” in Eating Bitterness: New Perspectives on China’s Great Leap Forward and Famine, eds. Kimberley Ens Manning and Felix Wemheuer (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2011), 107–129. For a description of how the Anti-Rightist Campaign affected teachers, see Shuji Cao, “An Overt Conspiracy: Creating Rightists in Rural Henan, 1957–1958,” in Maoismat the Grassroots, eds. Jeremy Brown and Matthew D. Johnson (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015), 77–101.
- 9.
One source, on “incorrect sentences” in Tianjin’s juvenile corrections system (covered in more detail below) notes that one teenaged boy’s transgressions included complaining in politics class that the Great Leap policy of “unified purchase and unified distribution” had resulted in not enough food to eat. See Tianjin Municipal Archives (TMA), File: X53-C-1731-1, “Guanyu jiancha shaonian fanguansuo gongzuo qingkuang he anjian qingkuang de baogao” [A Report on Inspections of the Juvenile Corrections Facility Work Situation and the Situation of Incidents], December 1960.
- 10.
Dali L. Yang, Calamity and Reform in China: State, Rural Society, and Institutional Change Since the Great Leap Famine (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), 37–39; Jasper Becker, Hungry Ghosts: Mao’s Secret Famine (New York: Free Press, 1997).
- 11.
Chen Jian, Mao’s China and the Cold War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001). According to Jian Chen, after the Sino-Soviet split in the 1960s, Mao and his allies within the CCP saw the USSR as “a potential enemy,” and used the specter of Soviet-style revisionism to “mobiliz[e] the Chinese people to sustain [Mao’s] continuous revolution” (84).
- 12.
James R. Townsend, “Revolutionizing Chinese Youth: A Study of Chung-Kuo Ch’ing-Nien,” in Chinese Communist Politics in Action, ed. A. Doak Barnett (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1969), 461.
- 13.
Shanghai Municipal Archives (SMA), File: C21-2-2014-3, “Pan Wenzheng guanyu yiding yao yong jieji he jieji douzhen guandian qu wuzhuang shaonianertong de fayan gao” [A Draft of a Speech by Pan Wenzheng About the Definite Need to Use Class and Class Warfare Viewpoints to Arm Youth and Children], 1962.
- 14.
SMA, File: C21-2-2014-3.
- 15.
TMA, File: X53-C-1731-1.
- 16.
TMA, File: X198-C-1669-2, “Zhuanfa Shijiazhuang qu guanyu zhengding deng zhongxue lianxu fasheng xiongsha he shengchan laodong zhong shangwang shigu de tongbao” [A Report for Shijiazhuang District About Recurring Murders and Work Accidents and Deaths in Zhengding and Other Secondary Schools], 22 December 1961.
- 17.
Even as it became clear that there were not enough jobs to employ all women outside the home, women were still encouraged to participate in activities outside the home, such as neighbourhood committees. See Delia Davin, Woman-Work: Women and the Party in the Revolutionary China (Oxford: Clarendon, 1976), 163.
- 18.
TMA, File: X53-C-1731-1.
- 19.
SMA, File: C21-2-2014-3.
- 20.
TMA, File: X198-C-1014-6, “Shidao jianbao, zhisan” [Third Inspection Bulletin], 1957.
- 21.
TMA, File: X198-Y-582-2, “Genggai shixing erbuzhi zuoxishijian de cankao yijian” [Reference Comments on Changing the Implementation of the Two-Shift System Daily Schedule], 7 October 1954.
- 22.
“Women yao yong geming banfa fazhan xiaoxue jiaoyu” [We Need to Use Revolutionary Measures to Expand Primary School Education], Renmin ribao [People’s Daily], 17 May 1952.
- 23.
TMA, File: X198-C-2100-4, “Jiaqiang xiaowai jiaoyu, zhanling kewai huodong zhendi jieshao Dong Sanjing Lu deng xiaode xingqiri julebu” [Strengthening Extracurricular Education and Occupying the Front of Extracurricular Activities by Introducing the East Sanjing Road and Other Small Sunday Leisure Clubs], 5 November 1964.
- 24.
TMA, File: X198-C-2100-4.
- 25.
SMA, File: C21-2-2014-54, “Zhang Ruixiang guanyu yiding zhanling xiaowai shenghuo zhege zhendi de fayan gao” [A Draft of Zhang Ruixiang’s Speech on Occupying the Battlefield of Children’s Lives Outside of School], 21 November 1962.
- 26.
SMA, File: C21-2-2014-54.
- 27.
Ibid.
- 28.
Ibid.
- 29.
According to Nien Cheng, “the Party did not decree how the people should live. In fact, in 1949, when the Communist Army entered Shanghai, we were forbidden to discharge our domestic staff lest we aggravate the unemployment problem.” Nien Cheng, Life and Death in Shanghai (New York: Grove Press, 1986), 4.
- 30.
SMA, File: C21-2-2014-54.
- 31.
Ibid.
- 32.
Ibid.
- 33.
SMA, File: C21-2-2014-3.
- 34.
Ibid.
- 35.
TMA, File: X198-C-1891-5, “Zhaokai guanyu jiaqiang zai xue xuesheng he shehui qingshaonian ertong jiaoyu gongzuo de tongzhi” [A Report on Convening to Strengthen the Education Work for Students and Unemployed Youth and Children], 31 January 1963.
- 36.
SMA, File: C21-2-2014-3.
- 37.
TMA, File: X198-C-1891-5. Although they make few appearances in official documents during the first dozen years of the PRC, work-study schools, juvenile corrections centers, and re-education through labor programs had existed long before the 1960s. See Frank Dikötter, Crime, Punishment, and the Prison in Modern China, 1895–1949 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002).
- 38.
SMA, File: C21-2-2014-3.
- 39.
TMA, File: X198-C-1669-2.
- 40.
TMA, File: X198-C-1669-2. His father’s possession of a gun was unusual, and the report does not specific why he had a gun and kept it at home.
- 41.
Meaning obscene or decadent.
- 42.
TMA, File: X198-C-1669-2.
- 43.
Ibid.
- 44.
TMA, File: X53-C-1731-4, “Suihan songqu ‘Guanyu zhengdun shi、qu gongdu xuexiao de fang’an’ qing zhuan shuji chu shenpi” [An Accompanying Letter Sent to “The Case Regarding the Reorganization of City and District Work-Study Schools” to Be Transmitted to the Secretary’s Office for Examination and Approval], 14 March 1960.
- 45.
TMA, File: X53-C-1731-4.
- 46.
Ibid.
- 47.
TMA, File: X53-C-1731-1.
References
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Chan, Alfred L. Mao’s Crusade: Politics and Policy Implementation in China’s Great Leap Forward. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.
Chen, Janet Y. Guilty of Indigence: The Urban Poor in China, 1900–1953. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012.
Chen Jian. Mao’s China and the Cold War. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001.
Cheng, Nien. Life and Death in Shanghai. New York: Grove Press, 1986.
Davin, Delia. Woman-Work: Women and the Party in the Revolutionary China. Oxford: Clarendon, 1976.
Dikötter, Frank. Crime, Punishment, and the Prison in Modern China, 1895–1949. New York: Columbia University Press, 2002.
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Tillman, Margaret. “Engendering Children of the Resistance: Models of Gender and Scouting in China, 1919–1937.” Cross-Currents: East Asian History and Culture Review E-Journal, no. 13 (December 2014): 134–173. https://cross-currents.berkeley.edu/e-journal/issue-13/tillman.
———. “The Authority of Age: Institutions for Childhood Development in China, 1895–1910.” Frontiers of Chinese History 7, no. 1 (2012): 32–60.
Townsend, James R. “Revolutionizing Chinese Youth: A Study of Chung-Kuo Ching-Nien.” In Chinese Communist Politics in Action, edited by A. Doak Barnett, 447–476. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1969.
Wemheuer, Felix. “The Grain Problem Is an Ideological Problem.” In Eating Bitterness: New Perspectives on China’s Great Leap Forward and Famine, edited by Kimberley Ens Manning and Felix Wemheuer, 107–129. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2011.
Yang, Dali L. Calamity and Reform in China: State, Rural Society, and Institutional Change Since the Great Leap Famine. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998.
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Brzycki, M.A. (2019). Revolutionary Successors: Deviant Children and Youth in the PRC, 1959–1964. In: Moruzi, K., Musgrove, N., Pascoe Leahy, C. (eds) Children’s Voices from the Past. Palgrave Studies in the History of Childhood. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-11896-9_12
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