Anarchist movement in China?

[boiler]

Are there any Anarchist movements in China? Is there much of a history of Anarchism in China?

[Brandon's Impotent Rage]

Any current anarchist movements? Not that I know of.

But there IS a history of Anarchism in China. Quite a long one, if you were to go by what some scholars would say (some call Lao Tzu, the founder of Taoism, the first Anarchist).

But if you want someone for modern Anarchism, you can't do any better than anarchist/author Ba Jin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ba_Jin). He was a big fan of Kropotkin and Emma Goldman.

[Skyhilist]

I don't know how likely is that we'd know a lot about modern anarchists in China if they existed in large numbers due to the fact that they could surely not make their political views public or they would risk being targeted by the government.

[Trap Queen Voxxy]

Ai Wei is pretty cool.

http://chinadigitaltimes.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/AiWeiWei.jpeg

As Brandon said there is a rich history of Anarchist thought and practice in China however due to the nature of the PRC, most contemporary activity is largely clandestine, which makes knowing anything of value as an outsider difficult.

[WilliamGreen]

You have to be very careful in China being anything but within the united front for politics.

I have some comrades down there but they are mostly limited to small graffiti/banner messages to try and continually work on class consciousness and freedom issues.

And this is done in small affinity groups where the people know each other in and out.

Like an above poster mentioned. China doesn't take not towing the line lightly.

Like a lot of "communist" states it's holding back the struggle.

[Atsumari]

China has a very rich history of anarchism and was pretty influential until the Russian Revolution which convinced many in China that Marxism is the way to go for revolutionary politics. If you have a large library at your university, you should be able to find lots of books on the topic.

[genjer]

Anarchist ideas from Europe were introduced in the late 19th Century as Chinese anti-Manchu revolutionaries looked to radical movements in Russia and Western Europe for inspiration. Anarchism grew in influence until the 1920's, winning adherents among the intelligentsia, students, and exile communities. The Chinese anarchists were organized in many cities, often engaged in factional disputes with one another (there was even an "anarchist party," the Pure Socialist Party .. other anarchists did not like the name or the fact that it was a political party, hehe). And they were active in the anti-imperialist May Fourth Movement, the anti-feudal New Culture Movement, early labor unions, and the pro-labor May Thirtieth Movement.

Many anarchists in China, like other countries, were won over to Bolshevism by the success of the Russian Revolution, and they helped build the Communist Party (CPC) and Nationalist party (KMT). The Chinese anarchists who went "red" included CPC founder Li Dazhao and his most illustrious disciple, Mao Zedong. It is often said that key elements in Maoist thinking, like economic voluntarism and the peasantry as a revolutionary class, derived from anarchist influence on the early CPC.

The fortunes of anarchism in China declined after 1927 when the CPC was smashed and fled to the countryside to form a peasant army. Anarchists were divided over what course to take; some went underground, while some stayed active on the remaining left wing of the GMD for a while before being persecuted themselves. Eventually Chinese anarchism disappeared from the historical radar, like the Trotskyist groups and a small left communist circle in Shanghai, two other tendencies who got caught in the crossfire of the Civil War and Sino-Japanese War.

I believe that some Chinese Anarchists fled to Taiwan or HK after 1949, while others accommodated themselves with the new PRC regime on the mainland. However I am not aware of any info about anarchist political activity after 1930, can anyone recommend some reading?

[Illegalitarian]

I believe that the left-com/anarchist spirit was alive and well during the Cultural Revolution and played a big part in the formation of the Shanghai Commune.

The Beijing Workers' Autonomous Federation was also filled with anarchists and heavily influenced by anarchist thought, a movement responsible for a little protest you may have heard of... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiananmen_Square_protests_of_1989



Who was that really cool Trotskyist/leftcom Chinese revolutionary who opposed Mao in the early days of the civil war?

He was basically the PRC's Trotsky, but less influential due to being pushed out of the movement very early on. Still, though, you could tell that that Chinese government still loved to hate him, Deng bashing him after the rise of his regime as late as 1977.

[boiler]

Anarchist ideas from Europe were introduced in the late 19th Century as Chinese anti-Manchu revolutionaries looked to radical movements in Russia and Western Europe for inspiration. Anarchism grew in influence until the 1920's, winning adherents among the intelligentsia, students, and exile communities. The Chinese anarchists were organized in many cities, often engaged in factional disputes with one another (there was even an "anarchist party," the Pure Socialist Party .. other anarchists did not like the name or the fact that it was a political party, hehe). And they were active in the anti-imperialist May Fourth Movement, the anti-feudal New Culture Movement, early labor unions, and the pro-labor May Thirtieth Movement.

Many anarchists in China, like other countries, were won over to Bolshevism by the success of the Russian Revolution, and they helped build the Communist Party (CPC) and Nationalist party (KMT). The Chinese anarchists who went "red" included CPC founder Li Dazhao and his most illustrious disciple, Mao Zedong. It is often said that key elements in Maoist thinking, like economic voluntarism and the peasantry as a revolutionary class, derived from anarchist influence on the early CPC.

The fortunes of anarchism in China declined after 1927 when the CPC was smashed and fled to the countryside to form a peasant army. Anarchists were divided over what course to take; some went underground, while some stayed active on the remaining left wing of the GMD for a while before being persecuted themselves. Eventually Chinese anarchism disappeared from the historical radar, like the Trotskyist groups and a small left communist circle in Shanghai, two other tendencies who got caught in the crossfire of the Civil War and Sino-Japanese War.

I believe that some Chinese Anarchists fled to Taiwan or HK after 1949, while others accommodated themselves with the new PRC regime on the mainland. However I am not aware of any info about anarchist political activity after 1930, can anyone recommend some reading?

Thanksyou for this, its very helpful, giving me a bit more knowledge of Chinese anarchism :)

[boiler]

I believe that the left-com/anarchist spirit was alive and well during the Cultural Revolution and played a big part in the formation of the Shanghai Commune.

The Beijing Workers' Autonomous Federation was also filled with anarchists and heavily influenced by anarchist thought, a movement responsible for a little protest you may have heard of... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiananmen_Square_protests_of_1989


I don't think I have heard of the Beijing Workers' Autonomous Federation, I must look into it, sounds very interesting. I was wondering for a while now was there any anarchist influence in the cultural revolution.

Thanks for this bit of info :)

[Illegalitarian]

No problem!

The Cultural Revolution was far more decentralized, or at least less monolithic, than it's made out to be.

It was kind of like a religious scenario, with the Red Guards in various areas having their own interpretations of Mao's vague political speeches and writings, so a plethora of different ideas came about and were implemented thanks to being given the green light on purging "capitalist in-roaders" from the party and basically taking over their positions and implementing various economic and political models on a local level.


There were probably other anarchist and left-com-influenced communal structures around the country that were lesser known, over shadowed by the Shanghai Commune (loosely based off of the Paris Commune) due to the size of the city and the fact that it was managed by a member of the infamous Gang of Four. Hell, the countryside of China is still pretty loosely governed, there could still be communities that operate in this fashion out there.

[genjer]

I believe that the left-com/anarchist spirit was alive and well during the Cultural Revolution and played a big part in the formation of the Shanghai Commune.
I'm afraid not, they were all Maoists. The 1967 "Shanghai Commune" was neither democratic, proletarian nor spontaneous; it was an experiment set up by Mao's party center and backed by the army, and they wrote it out of existence with the flick of a pen.


The Beijing Workers' Autonomous Federation was also filled with anarchists and heavily influenced by anarchist thought
Do you have a source for that? Wouldn't be surprising, but I had no idea the BWAF was any more anarchist than any other breakaway union or wildcat strike committee.


Who was that really cool Trotskyist/leftcom Chinese revolutionary who opposed Mao in the early days of the civil war?
Not sure who you are talking about. Chen Duxiu? Many people on the left of the CPC (or to the left of it) were accused of the T-word but probably "innocent" of the charges. The story of Trotskyism in China actually deserves its own discussion/thread.

[boiler]

Iv read a good bit about the cultural revolution, but mainly books from a maoist prospective. I really like the idea of the state becoming more decentralized. I think there was a lot of good done in the cultural revolution but it failed in the end. I considered myself a Maoist for a while mainly because what Iv read about what was done during the cultural revolution. But I don't consider myself one now. I think where all the attempts at building socialism failed was that the people didn't play enough of a part and ultimately the power ended up in the hands of a few people. I suppose that's how I'm getting an interest in anarchism as of late.

[Illegalitarian]

I'm afraid not, they were all Maoists. The 1967 "Shanghai Commune" was neither democratic, proletarian nor spontaneous; it was an experiment set up by Mao's party center and backed by the army, and they wrote it out of existence with the flick of a pen.

It looked nothing like the actual Paris Commune as it was supposed to, but there were definitely anarchist influences in the inner workings of the experiment and with the idea of its creation.

I'm not saying it was CNT-FAIsville, but there were some interesting things going on there with workers autonomy, albeit still lorded over Hongwen and his goons.



Do you have a source for that? Wouldn't be surprising, but I had no idea the BWAF was any more anarchist than any other breakaway union or wildcat strike committee.

The Struggle for Tiananmen: Anatomy of the 1989 Mass Movement by Nan Lin, I believe, goes into a bit of detail about the split that almost happened within the union from the anarchists v. social democratic elements, with the social democratic leadership not wanting to "push things" too far due to the very large amount of anarchist/communist members within who had helped advance their position so far already. I've read several books on the matter so don't quote me on that, but I do believe it was this one!


Not sure who you are talking about. Chen Duxiu? Many people on the left of the CPC (or to the left of it) were accused of the T-word but probably "innocent" of the charges. The story of Trotskyism in China actually deserves its own discussion/thread.

That's him.



Iv read a good bit about the cultural revolution, but mainly books from a maoist prospective. I really like the idea of the state becoming more decentralized. I think there was a lot of good done in the cultural revolution but it failed in the end. I considered myself a Maoist for a while mainly because what Iv read about what was done during the cultural revolution. But I don't consider myself one now. I think where all the attempts at building socialism failed was that the people didn't play enough of a part and ultimately the power ended up in the hands of a few people. I suppose that's how I'm getting an interest in anarchism as of late.


I'm no Maoist, but I do think the idea of Cultural Revolution is a pretty brilliant one in so far that any sort of communist movement will definitely have to deal with cultural questions in order to truly bring forth meaningful change.

[genjer]

It looked nothing like the actual Paris Commune as it was supposed to, but there were definitely anarchist influences in the inner workings of the experiment and with the idea of its creation.

I'm not saying it was CNT-FAIsville, but there were some interesting things going on there with workers autonomy, albeit still lorded over Hongwen and his goons.
I'm afraid this is wishful thinking. It wasn't just "not .. CNT-FAIsville." it was neither proletarian nor anarchist in the least. It was the replacement of a pro-Liu Shaoqi municipal government with a pro-Mao Zedong "rebel" municipal government, draped in left rhetoric, but ultimately owned and staffed by loyal Army men and their hand-picked Party associates. There may have been the sliver of "anarchist influences" in the "idea of its creation" in Mao's head but you are assuming a lot from the names and slogans that really wasn't true.

Any notion of workers' autonomy in the "GPCR" is a myth, created to give popular legitimacy to a bureaucratic charade organized from Beijing. A handful of workers did try to take advantage of the chaos, as an opportunity to organize independently, but that got them repressed by the same PLA units whose military power created the "Shanghai Commune" in the first place.


The Struggle for Tiananmen: Anatomy of the 1989 Mass Movement by Nan Lin, I believe, goes into a bit of detail about the split that almost happened within the union from the anarchists v. social democratic elements
Thanks, I'm going to try to track this book down at a library and give it a read. I hope what you're saying is true because I had no idea there was an anarchist scene in Beijing at that time. For now though, a google books search turns up zero results for "anarchy," "anarchist," and "anarchism" in that book.

I know that during the repression of the movement, the CPC and the PLA used the term "lumpen hooligans" to describe workers who built and defended barricades for the students the square, so it wouldn't surprise me if they called them "anarchists" as well - but the government calling someone an "anarchist" does not him/her a real anarchist make.

Are you sure that there were any real "anarchists" or "social-democrats," as in people who actually subscribed to anarchist theory or called themselves anarchists, or explicitly moderate socialists of the left-KMT variety? - Or are you just using those terms abstractly to describe the more radical/anti-authoritarian and moderate/pro-Party tendencies, respectively, within the BWAF?



I'm no Maoist, but I do think the idea of Cultural Revolution is a pretty brilliant one in so far that any sort of communist movement will definitely have to deal with cultural questions in order to truly bring forth meaningful change.
You are confusing two things here. There is the "idea" of cultural revolution in Chinese history, starting 1912 (google/wiki "New Culture Movement"), and then there is the Cultural Revolution starting 1966 (google/wiki "Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution"). Sorry I can not posts links to those two articles because I am a new user. :(

Chinese revolutionaries (liberal, socialist, anarchist, Nationalist and Communist alike) demanded a "cultural revolution" since the 1910's and 1920's. This concept/slogan was basically a rallying point for authors and intellectuals to criticize feudal, imperialist, and sexist prejudices in Chinese society.

Then there was the "Cultural Revolution" aka the "Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution" which was an official government program, dictated by Mao, from 1966-1971/1976 (Mao officially ended it in '71 but later he said it was still happening so scholars often say it ended in '76 with the downfall of the Gang of Four). The official GPCR was organized by high echelons of the Communist Party of China, and could best be described as a faction war between the center-left and center-right of the CPC. The Left (led by Mao and Lin Biao) mobilized the army (PLA) and whipped up popular support to crush the Right (Liu Shaoqi and others). Then Mao turned against his own popular "rebel" committees (the extreme left of the CPC), murdered Lin Biao and his family, ended the GPCR, and allied China with the USA under Nixon. Mao's "party center" rehabilitated the rightists, including Deng Xiaoping, and put them back into power, all before Mao died.

[共产主义不放松]

I'm from China.Our organization is called China Joint Commission on the left, please join China's Baidu Post Bar 人民万岁

[pariscommune1966]

The historians Arif Dirlik and Peter Zarrow have both written extensively on the history of anarchism in China.


The Beijing Workers' Autonomous Federation was also filled with anarchists and heavily influenced by anarchist thought, a movement responsible for a little protest you may have heard of...

I don't know where you're getting this from. The BWAF was an important part of the protest movement but there's little basis to say that it was "filled" with anarchism or that it had anything at all to do with anarchism, unless you completely deprive anarchism of any complete meaning - the entire protest repertoire of the workers who were involved in 1989, ranging from their tactics to their demands, were very conventional in the sense that they called on the Chinese state to honor its ideological commitment to the working class being leaders of society, by, for example, taking steps to stop corruption and official malfeasance, regulating prices in a context where workers were facing declines in real wages under the impact of rapid inflation, and demands for basic social guarantees and social justice. They were certainly not calling for the overthrow of the CPC or the downfall of all organized government in China.

[boiler]

The historians Arif Dirlik and Peter Zarrow have both written extensively on the history of anarchism in China.


Can you recommend any books they wrote? Do you have any links to any of their writings?

[The Feral Underclass]

This is a very good book. It's quite dense, but definitely worth a read: Anarchism in the Chinese Revolution by Arif Dirlik (http://www.amazon.com/Anarchism-Chinese-Revolution-Arif-Dirlik/dp/0520082648)

Mao was originally an anarchist and anarchism had a popular following, but typical of anarchism at different points of history, questions of organisational effectiveness and coherency became problems, which is why many Chinese anarchists sought out more pragmatic solutions in Bolshevik methodologies. I think very early Mao found a very interesting balance between the two tendencies.

[boiler]

This is a very good book. It's quite dense, but definitely worth a read: Anarchism in the Chinese Revolution by Arif Dirlik (http://www.amazon.com/Anarchism-Chinese-Revolution-Arif-Dirlik/dp/0520082648)

Mao was originally an anarchist and anarchism had a popular following, but typical of anarchism at different points of history, questions of organisational effectiveness and coherency became problems, which is why many Chinese anarchists sought out more pragmatic solutions in Bolshevik methodologies. I think very early Mao found a very interesting balance between the two tendencies.

Thank you for this I will definitely have to get myself this book.

Yeah I have read Mao was an anarchist in his early years. I wonder was that where he got some of his ideas for cultural revolution.

[Sixiang]

Anarchist ideas from Europe were introduced in the late 19th Century as Chinese anti-Manchu revolutionaries looked to radical movements in Russia and Western Europe for inspiration. Anarchism grew in influence until the 1920's, winning adherents among the intelligentsia, students, and exile communities. The Chinese anarchists were organized in many cities, often engaged in factional disputes with one another (there was even an "anarchist party," the Pure Socialist Party .. other anarchists did not like the name or the fact that it was a political party, hehe). And they were active in the anti-imperialist May Fourth Movement, the anti-feudal New Culture Movement, early labor unions, and the pro-labor May Thirtieth Movement.

Many anarchists in China, like other countries, were won over to Bolshevism by the success of the Russian Revolution, and they helped build the Communist Party (CPC) and Nationalist party (KMT). The Chinese anarchists who went "red" included CPC founder Li Dazhao and his most illustrious disciple, Mao Zedong. It is often said that key elements in Maoist thinking, like economic voluntarism and the peasantry as a revolutionary class, derived from anarchist influence on the early CPC.

The fortunes of anarchism in China declined after 1927 when the CPC was smashed and fled to the countryside to form a peasant army. Anarchists were divided over what course to take; some went underground, while some stayed active on the remaining left wing of the GMD for a while before being persecuted themselves. Eventually Chinese anarchism disappeared from the historical radar, like the Trotskyist groups and a small left communist circle in Shanghai, two other tendencies who got caught in the crossfire of the Civil War and Sino-Japanese War.

Great post. I would just like to add that anarchism became popular among Chinese intellectuals starting in the 1910s as Chinese students became involved in the French anarchist work-study program in which Chinese students could work in a Parisian factory to pay off their tuition at a French school. This program was set up by French anarchists to try to spread their ideas to people from the third-world. Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiaoping took part in this program. Mao contemplated doing so as well but he found he lacked sufficient funds at the time and decided to stay in China to try to organize workers at home.

Interestingly, the famous Anyuan miners who Liu Shaoqi and Mao helped organize a strike with in early 1920s, were already quite politically radicalized. They were already in a large anarchist mine workers' union by the time Mao showed up. The leadership of the union fell apart due to political debating and possibly one of them dying if I remember correctly. It was at that point that the young CCP organizers, having amassed some popularity among the miners, took leading roles.


I believe that the left-com/anarchist spirit was alive and well during the Cultural Revolution and played a big part in the formation of the Shanghai Commune.
I am going to have to agree with genjer on this one and say you are seeing what you want to see. I see no evidence whatsoever of any people involved in the Shanghai Commune having any way of ever being aware of such a thing as anarchism, let alone being influenced by anarchist ideas. All sides involved in the Cultural Revolution claimed to be Maoists.


Who was that really cool Trotskyist/leftcom Chinese revolutionary who opposed Mao in the early days of the civil war?

He was basically the PRC's Trotsky, but less influential due to being pushed out of the movement very early on. Still, though, you could tell that that Chinese government still loved to hate him, Deng bashing him after the rise of his regime as late as 1977.
I think you mean Chen Duxiu. Chen only turned to "Trotskyism" after losing chairmanship of the CCP. Up until that point, he faithfully carried out every single directive that the USSR's agent adviser to the CCP told him to do. Chen was apprehensive about the first United Front but told to do so anyways and he continued to publicly support it until he was removed from office by the party in response to the failure of the first united front. He was accused of not applying Marxism-Leninism to China's specific conditions. I don't even know if he actually ever read Trotsky, let alone subscribed to his ideas. He certainly became a critic of Moscow at that point, though. His influence on Chinese politics was negligible after losing his position, however.


It looked nothing like the actual Paris Commune as it was supposed to, but there were definitely anarchist influences in the inner workings of the experiment and with the idea of its creation.
I would be shocked to find any evidence of anyone involved in the Paris Commune's creation even being aware of such a thing as anarchism let alone the ideas of anarchist theorists. What evidence do you have for this "influence?"


I'm no Maoist, but I do think the idea of Cultural Revolution is a pretty brilliant one in so far that any sort of communist movement will definitely have to deal with cultural questions in order to truly bring forth meaningful change.
Good good. :D


I'm afraid this is wishful thinking. It was the replacement of a pro-Liu Shaoqi municipal government with a pro-Mao Zedong "rebel" municipal government, draped in left rhetoric, but ultimately owned and staffed by loyal Army men and their hand-picked Party associates. There may have been the sliver of "anarchist influences" in the "idea of its creation" in Mao's head but you are assuming a lot from the names and slogans that really wasn't true.
Agreed although I would include the "helicopters" (those red guards and workers who quickly rose up in party ranks because of the Cultural Revolution) along with those "loyal Army men and their hand-picked Party associates."


Any notion of workers' autonomy in the "GPCR" is a myth, created to give popular legitimacy to a bureaucratic charade organized from Beijing. A handful of workers did try to take advantage of the chaos, as an opportunity to organize independently, but that got them repressed by the same PLA units whose military power created the "Shanghai Commune" in the first place.
I wouldn't call it "a bureaucratic charade organized from Beijing." The bureaucracy by 1965 was dominated by Liu Shaoqi's supporters and prodigies. Mao had lost most institutional support by 1965 aside from in the PLA. We cannot forgot the significance of the student red guards during this time period. They were the ones most openly out in the streets and villages proclaiming the Cultural Revolution. The bureaucracy was certainly not organizing the GPCR. The Red Guards ousted many of the bureaucrats!


I know that during the repression of the movement, the CPC and the PLA used the term "lumpen hooligans" to describe workers who built and defended barricades for the students the square, so it wouldn't surprise me if they called them "anarchists" as well - but the government calling someone an "anarchist" does not him/her a real anarchist make.
"Hooligans" was definitely a CCP catchphrase of 1989. As was the use of the word "乱" meaning "chaos, rebellion, uprising, revolt." It was the same word that Deng used to describe the GPCR.

[cyu]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mao_Zedong

securing a job as assistant to the university librarian Li Dazhao, an early Chinese Communist, Mao was influenced by Peter Kropotkin's anarchism but joined Li's Study Group and "developed rapidly toward Marxism" during the winter of 1919.

He continued organizing the labour movement to strike against the administration of Hunan Governor Zhao Hengti, particularly following the execution of two anarchists.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism_in_China

anarchists compromised their positions since doing so allowed them to gain access to power positions in the Nationalist government that they theoretically opposed. Jing Meijiu and Zhang Ji would both be elected to the Republican parliament. Shifu and the Guangzhou group declared that by doing so they were traitors to the cause and proved their lack of commitment to the movement, but both men continued to call themselves anarchists and were active in promoting anarchism clear up to the late 1920s.

In the United States, anarchists had been almost alone in the labor movement in explicitly opposing racism against Asian and Mexican workers, and when Emma Goldman came to speak in San Francisco in the 1890s there were several thousand Chinese workers in attendance. many thousands of Chinese workers in North America - particularly those working in California and the Pacific North-West - became members of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). Their defense of Chinese immigrants who were being subjected to systematic harassment and discrimination won them a large base of membership among Chinese workers, and widespread support among the Chinese community in North America.

the strong anarchist participation in the Chinese union movement and the willing reception that they met may owe something to this earlier relationship between Chinese workers and anarchist Revolutionaries.

It was anarchists who first pointed to the crucial role that the peasants must play in any serious revolutionary attempt in China, and anarchists were the first to engage in any serious attempts to organize the Peasants.

In 1919 the anarchists played a significant role in the May 4th Movement which swept the country. It was at this time that the first Bolsheviks started organising in China and began contacting anarchist groups for aid and support.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ba_Jin

Hugely impressed by Emma Goldman, whom he later referred to as his "spiritual mother", Li started a lifelong correspondence with her.

In France, Li translated many anarchist works, including Kropotkin's Ethics, into Chinese, which was mailed back to Shanghai anarchist magazines for publication. Alexander Berkman was one of many anarchist leaders he met there.

The trials of Italian immigrants Sacco and Vanzetti filled the fervent writer with anger and Ba Jin worked tirelessly to champion their release. Vanzetti apparently was moved enough to reply to the young man from his American prison, with a package of anarchist texts for his readings. Their short correspondence ceased when Vanzetti was executed, along with Sacco, on August 23, 1927. Li published in late 1932 the short story The Electric Chair (电椅) to protest against their execution.

During the Cultural Revolution, Ba Jin was heavily persecuted as a counter-revolutionary. His wife, Xiao Shan, died during the Revolution after being denied medical care, and the manner of her death traumatized Ba Jin for the rest of his life. He was rehabilitated in 1977, after which he was elected to many important national literary posts.