Sun Peidong (Associate Professor, Department of History, Fudan University; HYI Visiting Scholar)
Chair/Discussant: Elizabeth Perry (Henry Rosovsky Professor of Government, Harvard University; Director, Harvard-Yenching Institute)
Co-sponsored with the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies
Masterminded by Mao himself and drafted by the CCP’s top theorists, the Nine Polemics (jiu ping 九评) made ideological and media preparations for the launching of the Cultural Revolution. The core issues in these polemics concerned the necessity to fight Soviet-style revisionism and prevent its happening in China, the need to forestall the American strategy of peaceful evolution, and the urgency to cultivate China’s younger generation as revolutionary successors. The Nine Polemics had a profound influence on the Cultural Revolution generation. Its polemical style and powerful rhetorical flourishes would soon become a model for Red Guard polemics. Famous passages from the Nine Commentaries were memorized and later became rhetorical resources for debate in the Cultural Revolution. This talk shows how the Nine Polemics produced such powerful influences by analyzing its organized dissemination and the context of its reception. Based on previously untapped archival sources, as well as oral histories specifically collected for this project, the analysis focuses on what aspects of the Nine Polemics are remembered and how they are remembered. A key finding shows that radio broadcast played a crucial role in disseminating the Nine Commentaries and strengthening their influences through the voices of the radio anchors.
Upcoming Events
Visiting Scholar Talks
Ancient Cultural and Diplomatic Relations of Funan with China and India: An Assessment of Early Texts and Recent Archaeological DiscoveriesThursday, March 30, 2023
Visiting Scholar Talks
What has Jesus to do with Modernity in Republican China?Wednesday, April 5, 2023