Who controls the past in the People’s Republic of China? In 1981, the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party approved the ’Resolution on Certain Questions in Our Party’s History since the Founding of the PRC’. The document was intended to reign in popular interpretations of the last 32 years of Communist rule and put to rest any speculation on how the past, especially the rule of Mao Zedong and events such as the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution, should and might be understood. At a time when people, old and young, were trying to make sense of their past personal experiences during times of extreme political turmoil, the party-state attempted to constrain all public discourse in a desperate attempt to regain legitimacy and authority. As the readings for this week’s lecture illustrate, however, this attempt turned into a spectacular failure. This lecture will discuss why the resolution failed and how it is connected to the politics of history and memory in Communist China. The lecture will ask how popular memory has developed under these circumstances, which points of reference have become crucial to popular memory, how it expresses itself and how we might understand governmental crackdowns on popular protests such as those at Tian’anmen Square in 1989 as part of a desperate attempt to control historical memory. Indeed, the fight over history and memory lies at the heart of state-society relations in China today.

Themes for discussion

Is memory by default ‘unofficial’?
What is ‘party historiography’? It is a helpful term?
What are the techniques and strategies for controlling history and memories in an authoritarian state such as China?
Why was the 1981 Resolution such an important landmark? Why has the CCP been unable to construct a historical ‘master narrative’ despite the 1981 resolution?
Which approaches might be helpful to studying history in Communist China?
If many available documents are produced, authorised, controlled, censored, and archived by branches of the party-state, how does this affect historical inquiry?
How are historical narratives altered in China? Why? And when? Can you discern crucial moments in contemporary Chinese history that gave rise to such alterations and contestations?
What is the relationship between history and ‘propaganda’?

Core reading

Mitter, Rana, ‘Old Ghosts, New Memories: Changing China’s War History in the Era of Post-Mao Politics’, Journal of Contemporary History (2003), 117-31

Mittler, Barbara, ‘Popular Propaganda? Art and Culture in Revolutionary China’, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, vol. 152, no. 4 (2008), 466-89

Weigelin-Schwiedrzik, Susanne, ‘In Search of a Master Narrative for 20th-Century Chinese History’, The China Quarterly, Vol. 188 (2006), 1070-1091

Suggested number of references : 10

Category: Essays