Today Huanqiu Times published a good commentary, “Young Students Should Not Be Encouraged to Rush to the Front Line of Conflict,” which says:
Middle school students are minors. Their minds are not yet mature enough, but they are full of enthusiasm and highly sensitive. They have few worries and little social pressure, so they fear nothing and have strong explosive force and impact. They have no clear political interests to demand, nor any stable beliefs, so they are easily pushed along by adults, either becoming an expression of the correct social psychology or being led in the wrong direction.
Since the founding of New China, the most striking eruption of middle school students’ power was the Cultural Revolution. The main force of the “Red Guards” was young students, including middle school students; the main force behind house raids, struggle sessions, smashing cultural relics, and the “great link-ups” everywhere was also them. The impulsiveness of middle school students and how easily they could be exploited were fully revealed during those ten years.
In every normal peaceful country, the task of middle school students is to study, and they are not encouraged to take direct part in national political events. It is immoral for adults to use minors to achieve political ends. Calling on middle school students to charge into battle is a feature of revolution.
These three paragraphs are right on target, very accurate. But Huanqiu Times seems to have intended to criticize those who “can wreck stability with just a click of the mouse” — accusing them of fanning the flames after this tenfang incident, and of lavishly praising those active post-90s, fearing nothing so much as disorder. Yet once these accusations reached the “stinky public intellectuals,” they were immediately turned around and used to criticize our Young Pioneers system.
These two directions are not contradictory either. On the one hand, whether one is thinking of the practical danger of settling accounts later, or of the minds of children and adolescents, it is not appropriate to incite children to charge into battle. No matter how much one emphasizes freedom, equality, and democracy, discussions of equal political participation are generally made within the adult sphere; children should not directly participate in political activities.
On the other hand, this criticism by Huanqiu Times did in fact touch upon a major and deeply rooted problem in China since the founding of the state, namely the problem of youth education. Whether or not the editorial writer was intentional, it truly hit the nail on the head.
For children, educational activity is not merely a neutral conduit for transmitting knowledge; it is also an ideal environment constructed by the older generation for the future. In a certain sense, the educational environment a child inhabits is an idealized microcosm of the political environment that this society seeks to shape. The real “politics class” does not lie in that special course named “ideological and political,” but in the educational environment as a whole — the layout of the classroom, the status of the teacher, the way lessons are taught and exams are given, and so on, all permeate a society’s understanding of “excellence,” “authority,” and “justice.”
Every society has its own standards for measuring excellence, authority, justice, and so on, and these ideals are intrinsically linked to the standards embodied in the educational environment — what kind of student is a good student? How should such excellence be encouraged? What kind of authority does the teacher possess? How is that authority exercised? Is competition among students necessary, and if so, how does it take place? Questions like these are closely bound up with the political ideals of the whole society.
Chinese people value honesty and modest propriety, so obedient, hardworking children are good children, while freedom = laxity = mischief, and making one’s own decisions = being clever by half.
The existence of morning exercises and class cadres is even more distinctively Chinese. I long ago wrote about the “disciplinary” significance of morning exercises: “They imperceptibly, and even in a way unrecognized by those who promote them, implanted the habits of the barracks into generation after generation of Chinese children — marching in step is taken for granted, aligning the formation is taken for granted, obeying orders and observing discipline is taken for granted… No one would doubt the meaning of ‘orderliness’; even the mischievous rebels usually agree that ‘orderliness’ is authority, except that they themselves want to resist authority a bit. Very few people would suspect that ‘orderliness’ itself may be utterly absurd, a collective madness, something inconceivable, something shocking and outrageous…”
China’s morning exercises were introduced from Japan and also learned from the Soviet Union. After its defeat, Japan once suspended morning exercises, precisely because it felt they were too “militaristic.” As for a situation like China’s, in which hundreds of millions were fully mobilized and morning exercises were embedded throughout the entire basic education stage, that is undoubtedly shocking and outrageous. The problem is that when we were children, we did such shocking and outrageous things every day, yet remained completely unaware of it, and even thought that lining up for exercises every day was only natural. That is the meaning of so-called “discipline” — not in its content, not in whether one is practicing calisthenics or tai chi, but in the form itself: this large-scale mobilization, collective organization, uniform pace, and regular drill ultimately made us take it for granted that walking in neat formations during a National Day parade is something glorious rather than something humiliating.
If the existence of morning exercises is shocking and outrageous, then the existence of class cadres can also be called bizarre and uncanny. Of course, when we were children we did not think there was anything strange about class cadres; indeed, even until before I stepped through the gates of philosophy, I would never have thought to reflect much on this thing. But in fact “cadres” as such are an oddity, and class cadres are even more eerie and inexplicable.
So it really is helpful to learn foreign languages if one wants to reflect. When you try to translate “干部” into English, you are forced to notice that this is actually a uniquely Chinese concept. It originally came from the Japanese translation, and traces back to the word Cadre in French or Italian, which originally meant backbone or something of that kind, but in the end the word was clearly reborn in China. So much so that in the Wikipedia entry one has to list separately: “Cadre, an office-holder in the People’s Republic of China.” 干部 includes many meanings: important person, civil servant, staff member, backbone, leader, public servant, and so on, yet none of these words can replace it. What cadres really are may perhaps be glimpsed in the concept of “class cadres.”
Are class cadres the holders of power in the class? Apparently not, since classmates will obey the teacher’s instructions, and class cadres themselves do not possess the authority to command. Are class cadres merely workers who diligently serve their classmates? Apparently not either, because after all they also have the flavor of leaders. In fact, the status of class cadres depends on the authority of the teacher; class cadres help the teacher do the work and also carry out the teacher’s authority.
Class cadres are first and foremost doers, though they do these tasks ostensibly for the good of their classmates; in the end they are helping the teacher do work, not helping the classmates do work. In fact, a primary or middle school student has very little work that must be done. For example, some routine labor and cleaning tasks could be directly supervised and guided by the teacher, blackboard newspapers and similar publicity activities could be done away with altogether, and as for cultural and recreational activities or sports competitions, these are not daily affairs and do not require permanent officers in charge. In short, class cadres in fact have very little work to do. Even if they do need to do some work, it is either unnecessary assignment or something that can be accomplished through spontaneous and improvised organization without any permanent post. And yet it is precisely by taking on this actually unnecessary work that class cadres establish the necessity of their existence.
Because class cadres help the teacher do work (even if they really are doing it for the students’ “good”), they need to answer to the teacher rather than to the classmates. As for what exactly counts as being for the good of the classmates, the criteria are of course also controlled by the teacher and the school. Sometimes class cadres are directly appointed by the teacher; sometimes classmates may elect class cadres, but those elected are either the best students (mainly in terms of grades) or the most popular ones, and not the ones with the strongest opinions or those most able to represent the classmates’ views. In fact, being a class cadre does not require much in the way of one’s own opinion; one only needs a good “background” (academic performance or popularity) plus “work ability” (the ability to help the teacher and go along with things). If class cadres sometimes also need to pay attention to classmates’ opinions, it is mostly in order to report them to the teacher, to act as the teacher’s eyes and ears, and thus help maintain order in the class, rather than to represent students in making demands to the teacher.
In fact, our understanding of “cadres” is similar. Cadres are indeed those who do the work, who “serve the people.” But it is always service “for the people’s own good,” and in fact they answer to the leadership rather than to the people; the standard for what counts as good for the people still lies with the leadership or the revolutionary mentors. Sometimes cadres are directly appointed by leaders; sometimes they are also elected by the people. But what people elect is always a “good person,” elected for his good background or popularity, not for his own opinions. Cadres do not need much by way of personal opinion; cadres are united as one, following leaders and mentors, and in principle there is no dispute over opinions.
A “cadre” has power, but this authority comes from “above,” from the mentor. The responsibility of cadres lies in doing work — much of which was originally unnecessary or could have been organized spontaneously — rather than in holding opinions.
It is easy to imagine that the West does not have “class cadres” in the Chinese sense, but instead has “class representatives,” which are similar in form to representatives under a system of representation. The responsibility of class representatives is not to serve classmates, but to represent classmates and make demands on their behalf. In China, even when one speaks of “representatives,” it usually refers to representation in terms of image, not in terms of opinion.
Of course, I think the concept of class cadres is terrible, and it can and should be abolished. But you may also think that class cadres are better than class representatives. Here I am merely saying that some of the subtle patterns in this basic education process reflect certain fundamental political patterns of this society.
Finally, let us talk about the “Young Pioneers.” China’s youth are “pioneers.” Yet they are also cherished and protected, and one does not want children to rush out too far, nor to be too free and unrestrained. Broadly speaking, it is probably a posture of holding the child from behind and pushing them forward.
More often than not, children are not really in the front at all, but are being supported from behind by adults.
Children provide all kinds of shields for what to do and what not to do — because this will affect children’s physical and mental health, because that will affect children’s healthy growth, therefore this cannot be broadcast, that cannot be watched, this must be restricted, that must be banned. The world, too, seems arranged for children’s minds into a stark black-and-white scheme: not good people or bad people, but friends or not friends… When the adults are called upon to step forward, they still hide behind the children — “it’s all for the children.” I need to make money, I need to support my family; for the sake of the children, I must behave myself, I must be honest and proper, I cannot be the first bird to stick its head out.
Chinese society has always been patriarchal, and the relation between parents and children corresponds to the relation between officials and the people. This correspondence itself is not bad, but there are many ways of following the way of the parents. Whether a father leads the child from the front or supports the child from behind are different ways of walking. Just as I mentioned the four orientations of the “kingly way,” China’s parent-like officials are roughly positioned behind and below the people.
China’s parent-like officials are always holding the children from behind, with their whole hearts set on the children, but they never step forward themselves, nor do they let the children escape their control. Even if not all officials merely use children as shields to hide themselves, even if many officials do indeed love the people as if they were their own children and cherish them devotedly, this mode of support in fact is not conducive to children’s independence. A better model would be for the father to walk in front, clearing the path for the child, setting a good example, and guiding the child to follow step by step. But in the end, when the child’s wings are fully grown, he will always deviate from the father’s track, or even surpass the father.
Children do indeed need to be cherished, but what the elders should do is take the role of vanguard or rear guard, rather than hold the child in the palm of their hand and on the top of their head.
It’s been quite a few days since I last wrote a blog post. Today I don’t seem to be in very good shape, and what I’ve written is rather messy. Let’s leave it at that for now~
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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