Xi Jinping’s Empire of Tedium
坦蕩怡天壽 ・ 其貳
This is Part II of My Father Bao Tong, a biographical essay by Bao Pu written to commemorate the life of Bao Tong.
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Bao Tong (鮑彤, 1932-2022), former Director of the Office of Political Reform of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (hereafter, CCP) and the highest-ranked party member of the CCP to be imprisoned after the June Fourth Massacre of 1989, died on 9 November 2022, at the age of ninety.
This biographical essay by his son Bao Pu 鮑樸, a publisher and veteran human rights advocate, was completed on 14 November 2022, and was published in Yibao 議報 on 17 November 2022; this translation is of a revised version of the essay.
A serviceable translation of Bao’s text by Sonia Song was published in the English-language version of Yibao on 23 December 2022. This second translation is perhaps justified by the extent to which the occasional annotations — all of which are those of the translator — might assist readers to understand both the particular trajectory as well as the wider context of Bao Tong’s brave and remarkable life.
I thank both Bao Pu for his gracious permission to translate this finely crafted essay into English, and Geremie Barmé for bringing it to my attention and encouraging me to attempt this translation of it. My thanks also to Geremie for his suggestions.
The first part of this translation of Bao Pu’s essay appeared three years to the day after the original was completed, on 14 November 2022. This is Part II.
— Duncan M. Campbell
20 November 2025
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Related Material:
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A Portrait of a Good Man — My Father Bao Tong
Part II
坦蕩怡天壽——我的父親鮑彤
Bao Pu 鮑樸
Translated and annotated by Duncan M. Campbell
Bao Tong & the Party
The Constitution of the Republic of China was adopted in 1946, the same year that the Civil War broke out. Given that the Kuomintang government imposed its “Temporary Provisions Effective During the Period of Communist Rebellion” the provisions of the constitution were effectively suspended, putting paid to the efforts that political activists that dated back to the Xinhai Revolution of 1911. At that time, Sun Yat-sen, the leader of that revolution, encapsulated the core problem of Chinese politics as being that the people were like “a dish of loose sand” 一盤散沙. Unity, Sun averred, was the only solution. At that time, Wu Shichang was also of the view that re-establishing political authority was an urgent necessity. For me, however, it was equality that I yearned for and I had made it my goal to strive in that direction. In the words of a song that we sang at the time: “See that mountain over there, what a fine place it is. Rich man, poor man, all the same” [山那邊啊， 好地方，窮人富人都一樣]. For me, the CCP encapsulated that message. (Autobiography)
My first contact with the CCP was in the winter of 1946. At the time, all the most outstanding students in my class were close to the Party, some of them had even become underground Party Members. Much of our time was spent huddled together studying, debating and in political meetings. One of our activities that left a particular impression on me was the Party’s strategy to welcome the Marshall Mission, led by US General George C. Marshall [from late December 1945 to January 1947] and aimed at averting a full-scale civil war between the KMT and the CCP. (“Interview with Bao Tong,” recorded 2018-2020, edited)
Once the KMT imposed what was in effect martial law, my closeness to the Communists meant that for the first time I experienced real political pressure and, at times, I even felt a sense of danger. At the time, I encapsulated my feelings in a poem titled “The Thermometer”: “With my own blood, scarlet red,/ I will stand witness to humanity’s warmth. …”
Standing on a lonely corner
Braving the tricks played by fate,
Devoting my life to others,
Until my life is taken from me.
Unconcerned, stern
Facing the slaughter to come,
With my own blood, scarlet red,
I will stand witness to humanity’s warmth.
My poem appeared in the “Literary Supplement” of Ta Kung Pao in Shanghai either in late 1948 or early 1949. I used to have a newspaper clipping but the Red Guards destroyed it when they ransacked our home in August 1966. (Old Broom, People’s Daily Publishing House, 1988)
My acceptance of the CCP was more gradual than my embrace of The People, but once the CCP had captured power by force of arms and had established a new order, I consciously embraced the Party and joined up. (“Interview with Bao Tong,” recorded 2018-2020, edited)
At the beginning of 1949, my classmate Jiang Shuming 蔣叔銘 at Nanyang Middle School asked me: “In your view, where does the hope for China lie?” “In democracy,” I replied. “And in your view, who is it that can implement democracy?” I replied that I doubted that the Kuomintang was interested in implementing democracy, moreover, the China Democratic League [a major political organisation at the time] was too weak to do so. That only left the CCP. Jiang said he completely agreed with me and later he became the one who acted as my sponsor to join the Party, a process that required me to write a formal declaration of my understanding of the Party. At the time, this was pretty much what I wrote out in my exercise book. (Jiang Shuming eventually killed himself by jumping into a well during the Cultural Revolution.)
A few days later, Jiang told me that: “A representative of the organization would like to meet up with you for a chat tomorrow. At 7 am, go to Pétain Park (now called Hengshan Park) with a copy of Ta Kung Pao in your left hand. It doesn’t have to be that day’s edition, but make sure that the masthead is visible. You’ll be approached by someone who will ask you the time. You should respond that although you don’t have a watch you believe that it’s about 7 o’clock.”
This was how I made my first direct connection with the CCP. Subsequently I learned that the person I met was Zhang Xiaojun 張效浚, Director of the Oversight Committee for High Schools in the Southern Districts of Shanghai. After our conversation, I swore my allegiance to the Party and was duly inducted as a member. I was required to declare that I would: devote my life to the struggle for communism; that the interests of the revolution stood above all else; that I would obey party discipline and to safeguard the secrets of the party; faithfully carry out the decisions of the party; be a model for the masses; and, learn from the masses. Before I left, Zhang removed a slip of paper from inside the heal of his shoe. It was a copy of “How to Become a Communist Party Member”, written in 1939 by Chen Yun (陳雲, 1905-1995)[12] in which he outlines the meaning of the oath of allegiance.
[Note 12: Chen Yun was one of the most prominent leaders of the revolution. Although he played an important role in the initial stages of the post-Mao reforms, Chen would later be identified with conservative hard-line opposition to the increasing role of the market in the nation’s economic life. During the 1980s, Chen also played a significant role in identifying and supporting promising future party leaders, including the up-and-coming Xi Jinping.]
That day — the 12th of April 1949 — was an especially significant moment in my life. From one minute to the next, I felt that I, an insignificant drop of water, had merged with the historical torrent represented by the CCP, a political organisation that was devoted to the liberation of all of mankind. In a split second, it seemed as though I had gone from “being” to “purpose,” and that from that moment on my life would have a wholly new unprecedented “significance.” (Autobiography)
The next month, the People’s Liberation Army took control of Shanghai and in June, the Organisation Department of the East China Bureau of the CCP required all local underground party members to register. It was the first time that I had filled in a form and I approached it with the utmost seriousness, making sure that my writing was as neat as possible. The People’s Liberation Army had come south from Shandong and it urgently needed to appoint a number of cadres to help manage the conquered city. Probably because the educational levels of underground party members like me was regarded as being relatively quite high, seven of us were seconded to the Organisation Department to help sort through the trunks of personnel files they had on hand. The only requirement was that you had to have a neat hand. (“Interview with Bao Tong,” recorded 2018-2020, edited)
On a morning in early July 1949, right after I had finished the first part of an examination for journalists — I was planning to take the second part that afternoon — Liu Fengfei 劉鳳飛 searched me out so that he could tell me about being seconded to the Organisation Department of the East China Bureau. At the time, I had no clue what the Organisation Department did, and even Liu couldn’t enlighten me. He said something about it being a “Leadership Body.” So I replied: “I’m in the middle of my qualifying exams and they’ll run for another day and a half.” “This is the organisation’s decision, so off you go!,” Liu replied. “Go where?,” I asked. “The District Study Committee” came the reply. “Tell them you’re there ask to ‘transfer your party registration’.” Again, I had no idea what this meant but, fortunately, since the decision had been made for me, the actual process was simple. When I got to the offices of the District Study Committee, I encountered Qian Qichen [錢其琛, 1928-2017][13], who without hesitation tore out a page from a notebook and wrote: “This is Comrade Bao Tong, a member of our party. He will be working for the Organisation Department of the East China Bureau. Please arrange to have his party registration transferred there.” As it transpired, transferring party registration was formally the responsibility of Zhang Xiaojun, the Organisation Committee member [who had inducted me into the party], but in his absence, Qian was acting in his stead. And so I moved, one step at a time: first from the District Study Committee to the Municipal Youth Committee to the East China Youth Committee. By that evening my party affiliation was lodged at its final destination: the Organisation Department of the East China Bureau.
[Note 13: Qian Qichen was to go on to enjoy a stellar career as Foreign Minister (1988-1998) and Vice Premier (1993-2003). He was also a member of the party’s ruling politburo. In the 1980s, Chen had been involved in the successful settlement of border disputes with the Soviet Union; after the June Fourth Massacre in 1989, he was largely responsible for the gradual normalisation of relations between the People’s Republic of China and the West.]
At the time, the provisional offices of the various organs of the East China Bureau were in Development House, a seventeen-storied building on the southwest corner of the intersection of Jiangxi Road and Fuzhou Road. It had originally been the headquarters of T.V. Soong’s [宋子文, 1894-1971] China Development Finance Corporation 中國建設銀公司 [established in 1934 to fund infrastructure development, in particular railways. It was later mired in Soong’s network of corruption].
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Having reported for duty, I was issued with a laissez-passer that allowed me free access to the “Second Unit of the Huai River Squadron”, that was the alias under which the underground party organisation was operating in Shanghai at the time. To maintain secrecy, the organs of the East China Bureau were referred to by the original designation used by the army when they had made their way south from Shandong. “Turn up here tomorrow morning to start work,” I was told. “From now on, you will be living here. We have camp beds, but you’ll need to get bedding from home.”
It was late by the time I got home that day and I told my parents that I would be starting work the following morning. My father was stony silent but my mother exclaimed in shock: “What about your studies?” “No more study,” I replied. Before joining the Party, study had been my bounden duty, but now that I was a Party member, my duty was to serve the revolution. I was unwavering, despite the misgivings of my mother. In the early hours of the next day I set out from Rue Amiral Bayle with a bed’s worth of thin blankets under my arm. As I walked to Fuzhou Road, I hummed “Our troops have arrived” all the way. I had embarked upon my revolutionary career. (Autobiography.)
I was one of the three men and four women who had been selected to join the East China Bureau Organisation Department. Two were university graduates, the rest of us only had high school diplomas. One of our number was a fellow called Gu Weiqing [顧慰慶, b. 1932], the son of Yu Hsiu Ku [顧毓秀, 1902-2002],[14] and we grew close in part because while he had an opinion about everything, I was quite the opposite and generally took his lead. (‘Interview with Bao Tong’, recorded 2018-2020, edited.)
[Note 14: An electrical engineer, novelist, poet and musician, Ku graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Between 1938-1944, he served as Deputy Minister of Education. After 1949, he returned to the USA where he taught at the University of Pennsylvania. During his time at Shanghai Jiaotong University, he taught Jiang Zemin 江澤民, future Party General Secretary of the CCP.]
I was with the East China Bureau Organisation Department from July 1949 until early 1954 and from the beginning I was very excited to be working there, in part because it made me feel that I was involved in the great affairs of the nation, but also because of the absolute freedom that we had to debate things among ourselves. We had no inhibitions, even to the extent that one could suggest that Mao Zedong was not representative of the CCP. Over meals, eight of us to a table, in whatever combinations we wished, we would discuss all sorts of issues. Then, as soon as the Communists had established political domination over China, they stopped recruiting new members. According to Liu Shaoqi [劉少奇, 1898-1969], new members were previously united by a sense of mission when faced with an enemy. Anyone who lacked courage or didn’t have the requisite revolutionary fervour was not interested in joining up. But, as soon the Communists were in control, all kinds of ambitious people and opportunists wanted to join and their motives varied. After all, some just wanted to find a job. The policy of not accepting new party members lasted until 1951, when it was necessary to recruit “Land Reform activists”. It would later be more than obvious that many new recruits had less than pure motives, something that was particularly evident during the Great Leap Forward some years later.
(In 1959, when I was in Ningxia. On one occasion I was having a chat with Yang Cang [楊滄, 1916-1983]; originally the secretary of a prefectural party committee in Guangdong he was then serving as Director of the Organisation Department of the Ningxia Autonomous Region. He told me that in 1958 during the Anti-Rightist Movement he had a falling out with Li Jingying [李景膺, 1907-1981], First Secretary of the Provincial Committee. Li, he said, demanded the peasants produce a harvest of 1000 catties of grain per mou of land, whereas Yang thought that 800 catties would be a more realistic target. Yang was accused of having “Rightist Tendencies,” even though it actually turned out that a mou of land could only produce 400 catties of grain. That is to say, they had both been wrong, Li more so than Yang. Nonetheless, the upshot of the disagreement was that Yang was accused of being an “Opportunist with Rightist Tendencies.” What he told me left a deep impression on me, it was one that I have never been able to forget.)
In 1950, Zhang Xiushan [張秀山, 1911-1996], Second Secretary of the party’s North-eastern Bureau led a delegation of workers from the Organisation Department on a study tour of the Soviet Union which was received by Otto Wille Kuusinen (1881-1964), then Director of the Organisation Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (hereafter, CPSU). He and his comrades gave the Chinese delegation detailed briefings on their internal structure as well as of the Departments of Industry, Agriculture, Communications and Transport, Planning and Financial Management and Trade. These became the model for the Chinese party’s own state organisational structure.
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During the winter of 1951, I was sent on my first official trip to Jinan in Shandong province to participate in a Statistics Working Meeting of the Shandong Bureau convened by Kang Sheng [康生, 1898-1975].[15] In 1953, in imitation of the cadre system of the Soviet Union, I was dispatched to undertake a period of hands on study at the Shanghai Electrical Machinery Plant, under the leadership of Zhou Baorui 周保瑞 (later, Director of the Foreign Affairs Office of Shandong Province) and Yin Bangchang 印邦昌. That same year, modelled as it was on the CPSU, the Organisation Department of the party’s central committee established its own departments of industrial management, transportation, finance, trade culture and education, and so on. This was the first step in setting up party organisational structures to control all aspects of China’s social life. The Organisation Department also issued an order for 100 county-level cadres from the six regional organisation departments be seconded to it so as to enhance centralised control regional cadres. The East China Bureau nominated Li Jun 李均, the Director of the Cadre Department, myself, and Gao Cimin 高慈民 and that’s how in late 1953 I ended up being posted to the central organisation department in Beijing.
[Note 15: From the 1940s onwards, Kang Sheng, who had spent time in the Soviet Union in the 1930s studying the methods of the Soviet NKVD, had oversight of the CCP’s internal security and intelligence gathering activities. He was later to play a critical role in the persecutions and violence of the Cultural Revolution. In 1980, Kang was posthumously expelled from the party, accused of involvement with the Gang of Four, which was then about to go on trial. Kang Sheng was also known for his calligraphic hand and his talent as a minor painter in the traditional style.]
In January 1953, when news of Joseph Stalin’s death reached Beijing my father claimed that he wept for the Soviet leader. Or so he told us; neither my elder sister nor I ever saw my father cry, regardless of the circumstances.
On the 27 April, 1957, the Central Committee issued its “Instructions Regarding the Rectification Movement” [which followed in the wake of the Hundred Flowers Campaign 1956, one that led to nationwide criticisms of the party. The ‘rectification’ in 1957 was a purge aimed at silencing internal critics of the party and imposing a regime of re-education through labour on many of them]. … Since I always responded enthusiastically to Central Committee appeals, I asked to be sent to the countryside [as part of a movement avowedly aimed at improving the “work style” of party cadres]. In early May, I was in a group of five sent to Zunhua County in Hebei Province to undertake a period of self-correction through manual labour. (Autobiography)
[In June 1957, Bao wrote to his wife that:]
“The organisation is in the midst of the Anti-Rightist Campaign, and we are required to study the relevant documents until the beginning of August. The problems are numerous. I’m unsure whether the nature of this contradiction is one within the people, or is it one between the enemy and us? Are the Rightists on the side of the people, somewhere in the middle or are they the enemy? I asked this during our small group discussions and am still not entirely convinced by the explanation I received. That’s why I don’t feel that the Anti-Rightist Campaign is about contradictions within the ranks of the people, but rather one that it is one between the enemy [who opposed socialism] and us. Then again, the way that the Central Committee is handling the campaign would seem to indicate that it considers that the movement should be seen reflecting contradictions within the people. I can’t make sense of any of it, no matter how hard I try. What do you make of it? (Letter from Jiang Zongcao to Bao Tong, 31 June, 1957 [Note: Or so the original letter is dated.])
[Note: Bao Tong was right to be confused since Mao Zedong’s original aim in launching the Hundred Flowers Campaign in 1956 was to let people air grievances so as to forestall the kind of popular rebellion recently witnessed in Hungary resulting from repressive one-party rule. The outpouring was so clamorous and widespread, however, that Mao and Deng Xiaoping, who was in charge of the logistics of the movement, turned on their critics and carried out a nationwide purge that saw over half a million people jailed, exiled or punished. The party’s evaluation of the 1956-1957 period remains contradictory and ahistorical nonsense.]
I returned to Beijing in July 1957 having finished my mandated stint of labor reform and before I even had a chance to report on my impressions of the countryside, I found myself embroiled in the “Struggle against the Rightists” and soon found that I was one of the targets of the campaign in the Organisation Department. (Autobiography)
They demanded that I confess my rightist views. I responded that, “Yes, I’m sympathetic towards all of the rightists and am in agreement with their opinions [which were by and large critical of the overbearing nature of the party’s autocracy and the inefficiencies that resulted from it].” I was warned that this was no joking matter and I was told to provide evidence upon which I revealed that I had notebooks full of my thoughts. In fact, whenever I heard a good point made by someone in the countryside, I had made a note. Furthermore, I also considered the views of people like Zhang Boju [張伯駒, 1898-1982], Luo Longji [羅隆基, 1896-1965], Chu Anping and Fei Xiaotong [費孝通, 1910-2005] to be praiseworthy,[16] and I said as much in my notebooks. Because of what I said, the organisation had no choice but to launch a formal criticism process of me and I was subjected to criticism sessions [and rounds of self-castigation] for some six months. (“Interview with Bao Tong,” recorded 2018-2020, edited)
[Note 16: Zhang Boju was a leading modern collector and connoisseur of Chinese painting and calligraphy, as well as being a leading scholar of poetics and opera. Zhang joined the China Democratic League in 1947. Declared to be a Rightist in 1957, he was subsequently accused of being a counter-revolutionary during the Cultural Revolution. His name was only cleared after his death.
Luo Longji was a political scientist and life-long advocate for human rights who graduated from Colombia University in 1928. He was attacked during the Anti-Rightist Campaign of 1957-1959 and repeatedly persecuted until his death, on the eve of the Cultural Revolution.
Fei Xiaotong was an influential anthropologist and sociologist. His views on ethnic policy have played an important role in the People’s Republic of China. A victim of the Anti-Rightist Campaign as well, Fei was later struggled against during the Cultural Revolution. Rehabilitated in 1980, he served as one of the judges at the trial of the Gang of Four.]
Although I had been working in Beijing all along, I’d had no occasion to encounter the Organisation Department of the Central Committee. One evening, when we were holding a branch Livelihood Meeting (Party meetings at the time were always held in the evening, so as not to interfere with work), out of the blue someone moved the motion that I be asked to state my understanding of my younger brother’s case, since he had been named as a Big Rightest in the Organisation Department and was presently being struggled against. At the time, I knew nothing of his circumstances and was stunned by the motion, though the meeting soon moved on to other topics. Later on, once the Organisation Department had reined things in, the matter was clarified and then closed. When I asked him about it sometime later, he said: “I simply confessed.” (Memoir of Bao Tong’s elder sister, Wu Linghua)
During the Cultural Revolution, three people were accused of having shielded me during the Anti-Rightist Movement of 1957, something that supposedly allowed me “to wriggle through the net” [that is, avoided punishment]. They were An Ziwen 安子文 (1909-1980), minister of the department, Liu Zhiyan 劉植岩 (1918-1967), head of the Cadre Management Directorate, and director of the Research Office, Zhao Han 趙漢. I believe that it might have been quite possible that Liu Zhiyan had indeed protected me since he was always very solicitous of me. But, my first encounter with Zhao Han was in 1958 and I didn’t meet An Ziwen until 1960, it seems very unlikely that they would have tried to shield me from attack in 1957. Regardless of whomsoever did shield me, in January 1958, the Organisation Department made an official determination that although I had been found guilty of harbouring serious rightist tendencies, I should be treated leniently and not punished [as a Rightist, that is, purged, exiled or jailed]. Regardless, I was soon sent off with some thirty other cadres who were similarly deemed to be in need of “tempering and reform” [through physical labour]. Zhao Han went with us. (Autobiography)
[Note 17: Having joined the CCP in 1927, after 1949 An Ziwen held a series of important party-state posts and he was a member of the party’s Central Committee. Dismissed and persecuted during the Cultural Revolution as a counter-revolutionary, he was rehabilitated in 1978.
Liu Zhiyan held a number of important government posts until his arrest as a counter-revolutionary in 1966. He jumped to his death from the building in Sichuan where he was being held.]
End of Part II
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Source:
- 鮑樸，坦蕩怡天壽——我的父親鮑彤，《議報》，2022年11月17日