SPIEGEL:
Mr. Wemheuer, the exact founding date of the Communist Party (CP) of China is unclear; it was probably July 23, 1921. Why did it celebrate its 100th anniversary on July 1 with a pompous show, speeches and dances?
Wemheuer:
A very small group founded the party in Shanghai in 1921 and was probably initially unaware of its world-historical significance.
The party then operated illegally.
In 1927, after a massacre by the nationalists, she had to leave the cities and retreat to the countryside.
In the process, many important documents were lost - and later the date of foundation was arbitrarily set to July 1st.
SPIEGEL:
In the celebrations, the party very strongly linked its own history with that of the country as a whole.
Right?
Wemheuer:
There has been a one-party system in China since 1949 and, in fact, there is no clear separation between the state and the Communist Party.
All areas of society, economy and politics are under their leadership.
Of course, other stories can also be told: of uprisings in Tibet or Xinjiang, of resistance and strikes.
But the party tries not only to equate the history of China and the party.
In his speech, President Xi Jinping also made several connections to 5000 years of Chinese civilization history.
It is only the CP that can make all the hopes, wishes and dreams of the Chinese come true.
SPIEGEL:
What role did agents of the Communist International play in the founding?
Wemheuer:
The Comintern had sent two representatives to the party congress, including the Dutchman Henk Sneevliet, who was later executed in the Second World War in the resistance against the Germans.
The founding of the party can only be understood against the background of the Russian October Revolution.
The Comintern had the plan to spark anti-imperialist liberation movements in the colonies and semi-colonies, as they were called at the time.
China played a very important role there.
Enlarge image
Henk Sneevliet was a Comintern agent when the Communist Party was founded in China
Photo: Alamy / Volgi archive / mauritius images / Alamy / Volgi archive
SPIEGEL:
Back then, China was a poor country torn by civil war.
Today there is an urban middle class in the cities, the Chinese have their own space station in space, and the crew has sent a message of greeting to earth on the anniversary.
Wemheuer:
After 1945 only a few non-white countries were able to emerge from poverty and a peripheral status in the world hierarchy.
In the 20th century it was not easy to break away from a subordinate position in these neo-colonial power structures.
SPIEGEL:
How did China do that?
Wemheuer:
The Chinese leadership has followed different development models over time. Despite some modifications, this was the Soviet model with a centralized planned economy, state and collective property until Mao's death. Heavy industry was built up with relative success. At least rudimentary health care and basic education was also ensured in the villages, where 80 percent of the population lived. When Mao died in 1976, China was still a poor country. The new management then created a hybrid model to connect market and plan. Nevertheless, the government quota is high. China is primarily investing in infrastructure, even after the global financial crisis in 2008 when a huge investment program was launched. But there have also been major setbacks along the way,including the famine in the "Great Leap Forward," an industrialization program of the late 1950s. And during the Cultural Revolution around ten years later, one can speak of civil war in some areas of China.
SPIEGEL:
How did the party still survive and stay in power?
Wemheuer:
The KP has always succeeded in repositioning itself after crises and in gaining new legitimacy.
It is an authoritarian regime that persecutes dissidents and at the same time responds to popular protests with concessions.
After the turn of the millennium there were many workers' protests and strikes.
Subsequently, workers' rights were improved, and after the Sars crisis in 2002 and 2003 and the spread of AIDS, collective rural health care was also improved.
The CP has repeatedly reacted to crises with a mixture of repression and reform.
SPIEGEL:
What role does ideological flexibility play?
Wemheuer:
It actually existed from the start.
Mao had already emphasized that »the truth is to be sought in practice«, that one has to redefine one's political strategies again and again on the basis of the analysis of concrete developments.
There is of course also criticism from within the party or from the New Left.
Because it is an obvious discrepancy that officially one still holds on to communism as a long-term goal and at the same time there are billionaires and great social inequalities.
SPIEGEL:
The enormous brutality of the Communist Party is also striking, from internal power struggles to the Cultural Revolution to the suppression of the student protests on Tiananmen Square in 1989.
Wemheuer:
In the 20th century, all of China's governments came to power on the battlefield. In principle, the Communist Party fought continuously until 1949, in civil wars and in World War II. Then the Korean War broke out and there were a million soldiers in Taiwan who, in the 1950s and 1960s, wanted to free the mainland from what they called "communist bandits". These experiences shaped the political culture of the new state. Everyone knew what could happen if they lost power. For example, Mao's second wife, Yang Kaihui, was beheaded and his brother was executed by the opponents of the Communist Party. That practically only ended after the Mao era. But precisely because so many people were persecuted in the Cultural Revolution, there were also attempts to redress this injustice. According to official information, 35 million court judgments revised and many victims rehabilitated, some of the perpetrators punished.
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Felix Wemheuer
China's Great Upheaval: Social Conflicts and Rise in the World System (New Small Library)
Published by PapyRossa Verlag
Number of pages: 270
Published by PapyRossa Verlag
Number of pages: 270
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SPIEGEL:
The KP recently published a new »Brief Story« about itself.
What are the differences to the previous version from 2010?
Wemheuer:
The new version is also based on a resolution from 1981. After the Mao era, the party leadership wanted to draw a line and developed the narrative: Mao Zedong was a great revolutionary, but had also made mistakes, in a sense of overzealousness.
The Communist Party corrected these mistakes and put China back on the right track.
Basically, this is also in the new party history, but takes up remarkably little space.
In 2011 there was talk of starvation in connection with the “Great Leap Forward”.
Now the only thing left to say is: there have been economic difficulties.
SPIEGEL:
What does the official historiography reveal about the thinking of the leadership groups?
Wemheuer:
The KP wants to establish an official, binding interpretation of the story. It examines new party members, it is also part of the central entrance examination for universities. The party leadership of the 1980s was largely a victim of the Cultural Revolution itself and perhaps felt compelled to deal with these issues. Today the global rise of China is very much in the foreground. This is what Xi Jinping said on July 1st: China needs a strong military to prevent it from falling victim again. They will not allow other powers to humiliate, exploit and enslave China.
SPIEGEL:
Apparently the fight against "historical nihilism" is being fought harder. Citizens can report online who is tarnishing the reputation of "martyrs". Critical books are banned, according to the FAZ, including one by Otto Braun, a German Comintern agent who was active in China in the 1930s. Why is the Chinese leadership so sensitive?
Wemheuer:
History is very important for the party to legitimize itself.
This fight against so-called historical nihilism has been going on for several years.
The reasons for this are repeatedly referred to as the fall of the Soviet Union: The Soviet Union allowed the foundations of the state to be called into question.
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, many books based on new Soviet archive finds were also published in China.
So suddenly a wider audience learned that North Korea had started the Korean War - not the US, as was previously claimed.
And because the party had temporarily allowed access to local archives, historians were able to show that the peasants' resistance to collectivization, for example, was much greater than was known.
Enlarge image
Party leader Xi Jinping: "China's success depends on the party"
Photo: Ju Peng / Xinhua / imago images
SPIEGEL:
And that went too far for the leadership?
Wemheuer:
Yes, it was then probably decided to stop that.
I think Xi Jinping's inauguration in 2012 is an important turning point.
Access to archives has become more difficult, and in a recent speech Xi emphasized that action should also be taken against so-called illegal publications abroad.
This affects scientists who published in Chinese in Hong Kong.
SPIEGEL:
Do you also feel influenced by it?
Wemheuer:
Recently, there were sanctions against two Western researchers in connection with Xinjiang, the home region of the Uyghurs. But usually academic research has been off the radar and has not been bothered by the government. I know very few academics who have not received a visa for China. But I can see that the debate is intensifying emotionally in Germany as well. You have to be critical of the Chinese government. However, there are people who are constantly warning about the Chinese world conspiracy and who would like to tear down all bridges to China. It is not good for a factual scientific-academic debate if it is so strongly emotionalized and politicized.