Aftermath of Online Commentary on the Film Youth

During the Cultural Revolution, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) launched a nationwide campaign to “Smash the Four Olds.” Buddhist statues in temples were mostly destroyed and burned. (Public Domain)

[People News] Recently, a sudden wave of public opinion about Feng Xiaogang’s film Youth emerged on the mainland internet. Many netizens suddenly became highly interested in the topic of the Cultural Revolution and responded enthusiastically from different angles, creating a brief period of lively discussion. Youth is set against the backdrop of the Cultural Revolution, yet it remains at arm’s length from it; watching this film alone, one cannot grasp the essence of the Cultural Revolution at all.

The enthusiastic responses from netizens were merely using the topic as a pretext, each taking what they needed, “using the past to satirize the present,” and lightly expressing their own feelings. Of course, people chose different angles and held different sentiments, but using the shell of Youth to vent pent-up frustration was something they all shared.

Some therefore worried whether the Cultural Revolution might return; some asserted that the Cultural Revolution had never ended; some accused young people of not understanding the Cultural Revolution and engaging in wild speculation; others hoped that a Cultural Revolution–style era of chaos might bring vitality.

The Cultural Revolution had several important hallmark features: first, Mao Zedong always controlled the overall situation; second, party and government organs at all levels were destroyed, and almost all cadres were dismissed; third, mass confrontation and armed struggle beginning with the Red Guards; fourth, massive destruction of the national economy; fifth, Mao’s invention of the “three-in-one” revolutionary committees; sixth, lawlessness, with “great chaos leading to great order”; seventh, internal party power struggles reaching a peak, with Mao ending his life isolated and alone; and eighth, Deng Xiaoping cleaning up the aftermath, with reform and opening up saving the Party.

Viewing Youth through these eight points, the film does not even touch the surface of the Cultural Revolution. The Cultural Revolution was not accidental; it was a continuation of multiple prior political movements. Apart from Mao, no one else could have launched a Cultural Revolution. The entire process of the Cultural Revolution was wholly dependent on Mao’s supreme status. One sentence from Mao outweighed ten thousand others; workers, peasants, merchants, students, and soldiers listened only to him. As a result, governments at all levels nationwide collapsed, yet the CCP did not. From beginning to end, Mao could, by personal likes and dislikes alone, still lever the world.

How was Mao able to do this? It was because, since the founding of the regime, the CCP’s top leaders—Liu Shaoqi, Zhou Enlai, and others—lavished limitless praise on him, shaping him into a godlike existence. Relying on his immense prestige, Mao commanded the entire nation, pointing where to fight and everyone obeyed; no one dissented, no one disobeyed. The whole Party, the whole army, and the entire populace went mad, until in the end he destroyed even himself.

Xi Jinping has emphasized that the first thirty years cannot be negated by the latter thirty years, nor can the latter thirty years negate the former thirty years—that is to say, the CCP’s more than seventy years of governance have been correct from beginning to end, and the Cultural Revolution is therefore not entirely unjustifiable. This is the residual demon of Xi Jinping’s Red Guard mentality. Given Xi’s background, he can never reach Mao’s overwhelming prestige. If Xi today were to try to launch a Cultural Revolution, there would not be many people in all of China who would listen to him or act on his instructions. If he were to go mad and start a Cultural Revolution, he would surely destroy himself first.

When Mao launched the Cultural Revolution, his initial intention was lawlessness—like a monk holding an umbrella, beyond all rules. After throwing the world into chaos, he then said that great chaos would lead to great order. One could say he achieved this, although the “great order” was not real order, but merely pasting paper over the holes in the state to barely block the wind. Xi cannot even do this; how would he have the courage to launch a Cultural Revolution?

In the final analysis, mainland netizens invoking the Cultural Revolution to express their feelings are simply dissatisfied with present society. Each takes what they need, using the Cultural Revolution as a vehicle to vent their own unspeakable political demands. At the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, the masses overthrew governments at all levels, dragged officials out for struggle sessions, and party officials became prisoners; some died, some were crippled. The people’s dissatisfaction with the government was vented to the fullest. Such scenes fill today’s netizens, dissatisfied with reality, with imaginings of venting political resistance.

During the Cultural Revolution, Red Guards and worker-peasant mass organizations seized local power. Based on Mao’s fragmentary remarks, they had full say in local governance. This leads today’s netizens to develop a kind of taken-for-granted expectation, believing that once the Cultural Revolution comes, officials will fall, the people will “have the final say,” and good days will arrive.

In the later period of the Cultural Revolution, Mao invented the “three-in-one” leadership structure, forming revolutionary committees composed of military representatives, veteran cadres, and representatives of mass organizations. This new power structure replaced the single-party-cadre control that had existed since the founding of the CCP. Mao’s aim was to allow grassroots demands to reach the ruling team, preventing officials from engaging in revisionism and becoming detached from the masses.

This invention, cobbled together behind closed doors, was entirely born of peasant-style fantasy, and reality ultimately became the greatest satire of it. Within the CCP system, the people’s interest demands never make it onto local government agendas. The mass representatives in the “three-in-one” bodies, lacking social oversight, ultimately still degenerated into bureaucrats themselves. Government administration continued to be decided by a small number of people; only the membership of the body changed, while the institutional defects remained exactly the same.

Youth almost does not depict the Cultural Revolution at all. In Youth one cannot see the origins, development, or any clues of the Cultural Revolution. It is merely used by netizens as a pretext, hoping to use extraordinary means to smash this era of restless hearts and create a new world. As for how to smash it and what kind of new world to create, no one examines this in depth; it is merely about venting and indulging in wild thoughts.

However, mainland people’s demands to have a say in state administration, to participate in local decision-making, and to oppose party cadres monopolizing power and preying on the people—these political demands have been vented through rhetoric yearning for the Cultural Revolution. The masses do not ask about causes or origins; they only ask about outcomes and appearances. This is the reason Youth suddenly became popular.

Netizens shouting “Long live the people” reflects this kind of grassroots political demand and is a reaction against “the Party leads everything.” Objectively speaking, this is not a good sign for the CCP. This online incident also reflects the fragmentation of today’s Chinese society: a chaotic world, moral collapse, and a loss of social cohesion, superficially resembling the chaotic times of the Cultural Revolution.

With public sentiment yearning for change, yet not daring to speak of universal values, people can only use the great chaos of the Cultural Revolution as a vessel for their sorrow. The result is the bizarre phenomenon of fervent adoration for the film Youth. (From the author’s Facebook) △