To Destroy Hell: Harry Hongda Wu's Crusade Against the Chinese Gulag
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name-style="western"><surname>Kuiken</surname><given-names>Kees</given-names></name><aff>Kees Kuiken has degrees in social science and the humanities from Groningen University, The Netherlands</aff></contrib></contrib-group><pub-date pub-type="ppub"><month>9</month><year>1994</year></pub-date><volume>9</volume><issue>2-3</issue><fpage>72</fpage><lpage>90</lpage><custom-meta-wrap><custom-meta xlink:type="simple"><meta-name>sagemeta-type</meta-name><meta-value>Other</meta-value></custom-meta><custom-meta xlink:type="simple"><meta-name>search-text</meta-name><meta-value>72 InterviewTo Destroy Hell: Harry Hongda Wu's Crusade Against the Chinese Gulag SAGE Publications, Inc.1994DOI: 10.1177/0920203X9400900204 Kees Kuiken Kees Kuiken has degrees in social science and the humanities from Groningen University, The Netherlands In 1991, Harry Hongda Wu made headlines all over the world when he returned from an investigative journey to the places that had been his "work unit" for almost two decades: China's archipelago of labor reform camps (laogaidui), which Newsweek called "the Chinese Gulag". Travelling incognito, Wu captured much of everyday prison life on video, and managed to interview present and former inmates for CBS, NBC, ABC and BBC. He also gathered data on Chinese products of prison labor marketed by front companies of the labor reform camps. His testimony at Congressional hearings in 1991 resulted in the banning of 24 series of these products by the US Customs Service.' Wu was bom in Shanghai in 1937. In 1961, when he was a student at the Beijing College of Geology, he was expelled from the university as a "rightist counterrevolutionary" who during the preceding years had refused to become "reformed". He was immediately arrested and deported to a laogai camp near Beijing. There he survived the famine of the early 1960s and the "Cultural Revo- lution". Even after his "reclassification" in 1969, he remained a de facto prisoner. During the following decade, he worked in a prison coal mine in Wangzhuang, Shanxi Province. Following the fall of the "Gang of Four", Wu filed several petitions for release. In 1979, he was eventually successful and found a teaching job at the China Geosciences University. In 1985, he obtained a passport and was invited as a visiting scholar to the University of California at Berkeley, at the Department of Civil Engineering. In 1988, he accepted a professorate at Stanford University's Hoover Institution on War, Revoluton and Peace, where he researched his documentary study Laogai: The Chinese Gulag (published by Westview in 1992, with a foreword by Fang Lizhi). In 1992, he became the founding chairman and executive director of the Laogai Research Foundation at Milpitas, California. The Foundation defines laogai as covering "all forms of imprisonment ... controlled by 1 Laogai Research Foundation, Laogai Handbook 1994. Milpitas, CA: 1994, p. 159 ff. (bilingual, in English and Chinese). A brief overview of the laogai system can be found in the appendix to this interview. 7773 the Chinese Communist Party and used to maintain its power". The Foundation's concern is not limited to political prisoners or prisoners of conscience alone, a point in which Wu feels that his position greatly differs from the Chinese dissident community (see the interview below). Wu's autobiography Bitter Winds was published in 1994 in English, Japanese, German and Dutch.' The account of his experiences is even more powerful than Bao Ruowang (Jean Pasqualini)'s path-breaking Prisoner of Mao. The reason is probably because Wu had the good fortune of finding a collaborator, Berkeley scholar Carolyn Wakeman, who allowed a raw, more personal narrative. Pasqualini told his story in the early 1970s to a dyed-in-the-wool American correspondent (Rudolph Chelminski), who retold the story in the smooth magazine style of the period. Carolyn Wakeman followed a different approach. She went with Wu through his piles of scattered notes and helped him shape the structure of the book, but allowed him the freedom to tell his story in his own words. Bitter Winds is the most intimate portrait of the laogai available today. While Pasqualini appeared before a kangaroo court, Wu - neither a famous dissident nor a foreign passport-holder - never saw a judge; a fate he shared with the vast majority of laogai inmates (in Wu's own, rather broad definition of laogai). Both Pasqualini and Wu were released following political changes: the former was freed after the establishment of Sino-French diplomatic relations in 1964, the latter in 1979 after the partial reassessment of the "Anti-Rightist Campaign" of which he had been a victim. Wu's narrative thus also covers prison life during the "Cultural Revolution", with revealing episodes about Red Guard invasions in the camps. A particularly hair-raising part of Wu's story is his account of the reverse culture shock he experienced after his release: the confrontation with his family and old friends, and with those who had betrayed him. There is, however, not a trace of a "hostage syndrome". Wu writes matter-of-factly about his cathartic "return to the camps", armed with a hidden camcorder and accompanied by his Taiwanese wife. Wu's deep sympathy for his less fortunate fellow-inmates is a major theme throughout the book, making it a moving document of human compassion. For the release of the Dutch edition of his book, Harry Wu visited Holland in November, 1994. China Information interviewed him in Amsterdam. Camps Past and Present CI: Professor Wu, why has the term laogai never been a household word to Western readers in the way gulag was long before the Soviet regime collapsed? HW: That is not just particular to laogai. It has always been very difficult to 2 Harry Wu (with Carolyn Wakeman), Bitter Winds: A Memoir of my Years in China's Gulag. New York: Wiley 1994. Dutch edition: Bittere kou, 19 jaar in de Chinese goelag, Baarn: Bodoni 1994. 7874 expose the system, as we have seen in the case of Nazi Germany, in the Soviet Union and now in China. To give an example: as early as the 1930s, black books were already being smuggled out of the Nazi concentration camps. Many people did not believe what they read. Perhaps they thought that the Jewish authors were overemotional. It was only in 1945, when the Nazi regime collapsed, that the archives were opened and the camps liberated by Russia and America, that they had to confront the truth. Before 1945, the International Red Cross paid regular visits to some sanitized concentration camps. I have seen a film of a Jewish girl in a blue and white skirt playing the violin to welcome the visitors. It takes time for such a truth to come out. After Stalin died in 1953, Solzhenitsyn wrote a book on the Gulag Archipelago. The first copies were smuggled out to Paris around 1960. Eventually, in 1974, 21 years after Stalin's death, he won the Nobel Prize for a story mainly focusing on the 1930s and some of the 1940s. As for the Communist leadership in Beijing, it may take even more time to expose them. They control everything. President Clinton recently went to the APEC Conference in Jakarta to shake hands with them. They are very powerful, I am very powerless. But the truth is on my side. CI: I read in Bitter Winds how political change in Beijing influenced the day-today regime in the camps. Has the laogai situation, as a whole, changed for the better or for the worse? HW: First of all, laogai is a political concept, although it literally means "labor reform". Only recently have people begun to understand that the gulag was a political suppression organ. In a similar fashion, laogai is a key part of the political system, without which the Chinese autocracy would simply collapse. The dynamics of the system are such that, if there had not been a gulag in the Soviet Union, there would not have been a Soviet Communist dictatorship. At any time the regime needs such a mechanism. Communism has both an economic and a political side: collective ownership and dictatorship. In order to build a classless society, class struggle became a basic political theory, and this revolutionary basis remained part of all subsequent constitutions of the People's Republic of China: a united working and peasant class, a socialist country, a collective ownership system and the guidance of Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought all are constants in the constitution. In this context, the prison system always serves as a suppression mechanism. Of course, it differs per area and per period: even in the 1950s, camps in Qinghai were different from those located in Shanghai. The population of the camps has also changed. In the 1950s, about 80% to 85% of inmates were so-called "counterrevolutionaries". They were the "enemy class" of the political campaigns of the 1950s, and finally destroyed in the "Cultural Revolution". On 18 August 1966, Red Guards in one day tortured 1,700 people to death in Beijing alone, including two-month old babies and 65-year old pensioners, all because of this "class struggle"! There are now simply not many of the "enemy class" prisoners left, so you also find fewer of them in the laogai camps. 7975 One thing that has not changed is the labeling. Before I torture you, I first give you a label: "bourgeois class", "counterrevolutionary rightist". Now these labels have also been changed: Deng Xiaoping was labeled a "capitalist roader", but he came back as a "revolutionary", and then Jiang Qing was called a "counterrevolu- tionary". Zhao Ziyang was ostracized for supporting "capitalist liberalism". But why do they need these labels at all? Because they are in a "class struggle situa- tion". This fundamental basis has never changed. The "Carceral" and Society CI: Do you feel this labeling is a constant in Chinese society both inside and outside the camps? This point was made in Michael Dutton's Policing and Punishment in China: From Patriarchy to "the People" [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1992]. HW: Yes. China is a police state. Everything is controlled by the police: hukou [household registration], the liangpiao [grain coupons]. But in the camps, like in society, things have changed. First of all, few inmates now come from the so-called "enemy classes". The concept of a fundamental so-called "enemy class" is now dismissed, and all people are supposedly "our own people". Many of these kids have a peasant or worker background, some even come from Communist t cadre families. Now if your father is a police cadre and you yourself a criminal sentenced to five years on a robbery charge, on Family Visit Day your mom will send for a car to fetch you. Similarly, if your father is a mayor, things inside are very different for you than for others. These days, there are many stories about so-called "economic criminals". With their experience in the commercial and economic area, their help is much wanted by the laogai police who want to make money through production. These "crimi- nals" are often treated better than most policemen. In my book Laogai, I quote the example of a prison warden in Wuhu in Anhui Province operating a textile factory. Because the equipment was very old, the quality of their products was very bad, and they could not make a profit in the market. Camp police salaries had to be paid out of their production and there were no bonuses. Then the warden called a meeting, not only for the staff, the police and the social workers, but also for the prisoners - the "normal workers". He told them, "I don't care who you are, but if you can provide suggestions to improve our production I will reward you. If you are a policeman, I'll give you a bonus, and if you are a prisoner, I'll reduce your sentence". One inmate then cautiously suggested to buy a very simple machine and some good steel to make better needles, not only to use in their own factory, but also to sell to others. He knew how to lay his hands on extra-plan steel through his connections. The next day, the prison's Party Committee called a meeting to establish a trading company as a front. The warden made himself the general manager and the prisoner an assistant manager. The prisoner was told to buy a power suit and go out to talk to his connections and buy the steel. And so he did. 8076 He got many perks in return: he could work outside, had lots of pocket money, stayed in five-star hotels, and so on. One day, he heard that he could make money by buying US dollars in Canton and selling in Beijing at a 10% profit. He told the warden about it, and said he had a friend from Hong Kong willing to sell him American dollars. The warden agreed. And then nothing happened. The "assistant manager" just stayed in Guangzhou and did nothing. Eventually, the warden sent a policeman to Guangzhou to track him down, but he bribed the policeman into lending him his uniform so that he could buy a train ticket to Beijing. The last the warden saw of him was a photo of him dressed as a policeman. In the end, the prisoner was sentenced to another twelve years, and the warden committed suicide. CI: This would suggest that far from the Chinese "carceral" having spread into society, as Dutton suggests, it is really falling apart at the seams. HW: If you have money, you can have everything. But this was not the case in the 1950s and the 1960s. When I was in the camps, few people escaped. Where could they go? But today, there are many escapes, because the people no longer care to cooperate with the government, and money can solve everything. For example in Hunan, a certain prisoner was sentenced to death and was to be executed the next day. A RMB200,000 bribe secured his release. This could never have happened in the past. The Way Back CI: Do more people now return from the camps legally after having served their term of laogai? HW: Before 1980, 95% of those who had served their term would not be released. At that time, one never thought: "Tomorrow I'll have served my term, I'll be going home." It was rather: "Tomorrow I will have served my sentence. I'll pack my belongings and move to another barrack." That was the whole idea behind jiuye [forced labor placement]: you could not get out. If there hadn't been a change of policy, I myself would have stayed in forever, because I belonged to the "enemy class". When they arrested me in 1960, I was 23 years old. When I was released in 1979, I was 42. But nowadays, people like me have become too heavy a burden for the labor camp system. They are now laying off lots of people. Among other things, they also consider factors like whether you have a family in the countryside that can take care of you, so that the number of prisoners can be reduced. Moreover, as I already said, the population of the camps has changed. If I were a hooligan sentenced to three years and my father were a mayor, could you keep me in prison after I'd have served my term? No way! These are the new dynamics. But this notwithstanding, "continuous reform" is still an essential part of laogai. Many prisoners still stay in the camps after having served their terms. 8177 Now this is, in a way, understandable. Once you are in hell, they never let you out. Today many so-called dissidents advocate tizhinei gaige - reform within the system. But these people were expelled from heaven, not from hell.3 Whatever may go wrong for them, they can always try to go back to heaven. They even dream of going back. But nobody who has survived hell ever wants to go back there. And in their dreams their only desire is to destroy that hell. ; . ~, j > .i í ~ ' .: . i f. ~ . ,,' .: ' ' :.; . '. I i CI: One interesting theme in Bitter Winds is the reverse culture shock you experienced. Would you like to elaborate on this? HW: I am going to be very frank with you. When I left China, I seemed totally recovered. I spent two years in the University of Berkeley working very hard in the Civil Engineering Department. My first job offer was US$45,000. Nobody realized that I had any psychological problems. But the nightmares were always there. I couldn't forget. And then I thought, maybe I should bring it all out into the open and speak out. And it is true. In China in the 1980s, all the time after my father had gone, I never shed a tear. But when I began to write, and retrieved all these details and realized that all these people were missing, I felt very sorry, very sad. And after that, I felt extremely guilty. These people were honest, straight, and they were destroyed. But when we were actually sharing the same situation, I had not really liked them. So I felt very sorry and guilty, and decided that the world had to know about it. These people were very ordinary human beings like you and me. Like Bigmouth Xing ... he was a peasant, he was a thief, but he was a good guy. That is why it is so amazing that these "dissidents" said to me, "We are only concerned with political prisoners." On Human Rights CI: And this is where your view is different. Their ivory tower and ... HW: That's right! And I thought: "Get out of here!" On May 28, they held a conference at the University of Berkeley to commemorate June Fourth. There was a discussion on human rights and China's future. Although I never joined them, they had invited me as a speaker. Wang Juntao was there, Wan Runnan, Yan Jiaqi, everybody was there, except Fang Lizhi. I listened to the discussions and the petitions to exert pressure on the Chinese government to release the political prisoners. Then I suggested they should change the name of their conference. It was a political rights conference, not a human rights conference. I said, "Do you know that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights does not differentiate between 'good' or 'bad' men, or 'men' or 'women', let alone between 'penal' or 3 Harry Wu is here referring to the relatively privileged position that many Chinese dissidents in exile formerly enjoyed in China. It was "heaven" in comparison to the hell experienced by those in the labor camps. 8278 'political' prisoners?" It is about human beings. Take a bad guy. Tomorrow he'll be executed. Today he's human. He has these rights. Even tomorrow, when he has to die, he is still human. Give him dignity and respect, even if he is a bad guy. I am not talking about his crime. If you are only concerned with high-level "poli- tical" prisoners, you might say, 'Well, here's this bad guy, he killed five people, he raped five women, he deserves punishment, they have to punish him', and then I think you are really, really out of the human rights picture. And then I told them about this Rodney King in Los Angeles, a bad guy with a very bad criminal record. After being beaten up by the police, he sued and got three million dollars in compensation. That could never happen in China. People would say, "Why, the police are not stupid, the judges are not stupid - this is a bad guy! Why would taxpayers pay three million to him?" And I would say: you have to know that he is an individual, he is alone, and hence the government should not violate his human rights. I have been in the camps with many common people, and there was no difference between those people and myself in any sense. CI: When you came out of the camps, the "Gang of Four" went to trial ... HW: I wasn't interested then. It was dog bites dog. Who cares? White dogs, black dogs, who cares about them? Jiang Qing accused Deng Xiaoping of taking the capitalist road and when he came back to power he said, "I am a revolutionary and you are, a counterrevolutionary." Forget about it. These dissidents always try to determine why Zhu Rongji is different, why Li Peng is on this or that side, what stance Jiang Zemin supposedly takes - ridiculous. In reply to those who say in good faith that Qiao Shi is a "moderate closet liberal" (a comment made by Chai Ling), I would say, "When you escaped from Tiananmen Square, Qiao Shi's security people were looking for you 24 hours a day!" When the West requests the release of these dissidents, people like Qiao Shi make a deal. They release a few, replace them, and then they go for the next deal. Concluding Remarks CI: Professor Wu, would you like to make any concluding remarks? HW: The key issue is the mechanism of laogai. If there were even one single concentration camp in Europe today, I think all the governments would stand up and say: "Take it away, we don't want it"; and not simply: "Release a few of those prisoners." So the West is not yet ready to accept the reality of the system in China. And I am not surprised. I already mentioned that Solzhenitsyn was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1974 for his GulagArchipelago, 21 years after Stalin's death. Today China is stuck with a Communist system. The Communists have got the power. They are one of the five Permanent Members of the UN Security Council; they have nuclear weapons; they have economic power. People want their 8379 products, their labor and their markets. Who cares? That is why the Chinese leadership is so powerful. I am powerless. But the truth is on my side, and I am fortunate to have the chance to speak out. Amsterdam, November 1994 APPENDIX For the last four decades, the Communist Chinese summary imprisonment system has been based on three pieces of legislation: 1. The Labor Reform Act (September 1954); 2. Provisonal Measures of the PRC for Dealing with the Release of Reform-through-Labor Criminals on Completion of their Terms and for (Forced) Job Placement (August 1954); 3. The Decision on Reeducation through Labor (August 1957, amended in November 1979). Labor reform (laogai), (forced) job placement (jiuye) and reform through labor (laojiao) can all be imposed by the police authorities without judicial review. These sanctions are executed in so-called labor reform camps (laogaidui), also managed by the police. Within a laogaidui, there are six different types of facilities: a. detention centers (kanshousuo) for pre-trial detention 6fiuliu shencha) and for short-term convicts; b. prisons úïanyu) for long-term convicts; c. labor reform production camps (the laogaidui proper); d. juvenile offender camps (shaonianfany4ngQ e. reeducation-through-labor camps (7aq//aq~n~; f. forced job placement within the camps (liuying jiUye).4 The jiuye camps are "semi-open" units for former laogai convicts who for various kinds of reasons are denied actual release upon completion of their terms, although legally, no more than four years of laogai can imposed. As (former) laogai convicts make up 87% of the population of China's prison system, which implies that fewer than one in every eight prisoners in China ever sees a People's Court, Wu proposes the term laogai for the entire system.5 The official Legal Daily, however, recently announced a new prison law in which China's labor camps will be known simply as "jails". For this and other reasons, the term "Chinese Gulag" would still be more suitable than the less accurate word laogai. 4 Hongda Harry Wu, Laogai: The Chinese Gulag. Boulder, Colorado: Westview 1992, p. 6 ff. See also Amnesty International, China: Punishment without Trial: Administrative Detention. London 1991. 5 Wu, Laogai, p. 10. Wu does not exclude the detention centers from this definition, but his later publications do not include material on the latter category; see e.g., Laogai Handbook 1994, p. 3. 8480 EXCHANGE AND CONFERENCE NEWS , .. Inaugural Speech Prof. Kristofer Schipper z On 2 December 1994, Prof. Kristofer M. Schipper, who has succeeded Prof. Erik Ziircher to the Chair of Chinese History at the Sinological Institute, Leiden University, delivered his inaugural speech. Kristofer Schipper (born in 1934 in Jarnskog, Sweden) studied Sinology and Anthropology in Paris. In 1962, he was appointed as a researcher at the tcole Francaise d'Extr6me Orient, and did fieldwork in Taiwan on Chinese religion, attached to the Academia Sinica. In 1967, he was ordained as a Taoist priest in Tainan. In 1970, he returned to France and was appointed Directeur d'ttudes at the tcole des Hautes ttudes (Section des Sciences Religieuses), occupying the Chair of the History of Chinese Religion. In 1973, he established the Documentation Center for the Study of Taoism, and in 1979, he co-founded, together with numerous other European researchers, the "Tao-tsang Project", in cooperation with the European Science Foundation. Its aim is to compile the first critical and descriptive bibliography of all the works in the 1447 Taoist Canon, the oldest and sole surviving great collection of Taoist writings. ' . Tony Saich Ford Foundation Representative in Beijing On 24 August 1994, Anthony J. Saich, Professor in the Politics and Administration of China at the Sinological Institute, left the university on a three-year leave to take up the position of Representative for China of the Ford Foundation in Beijing, accompanied by his wife, Ms. Zeng Yinyin, formerly teacher of modem Chinese at the Institute. < .. z ' Barend ter Haar Takes up Professorship in Heidelberg On 4 November 1994, Dr. Barend J. ter Haar left the Sinological Institute to take up the position of Professor of the Social and Economic History of China at the University of Heidelberg, Germany. Dr. ter Haar was attached to the Sinological Institute since 1984. After receiving his Ph.D., he was appointed as a Research Fellow of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (1991-1994). He was subsequently attached to the International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS) in Leiden. Tak-wing Ngo Attached to Leiden University . As of 30 January 1995, Dr. Tak-wing Ngo occupies the position of Researcher and Lecturer in Chinese Foreign and Domestic Politics at the Documentation and Research Center for Contemporary China, Sinological Institute, Leiden University. Dr. Ngo has a doctoral degree in Political Science from the School of Oriental and African Studies, London University, and was formerly a Lecturer in 8581 Chinese Politics at the University of Macau and Hong Kong Polytechnic. ' ~ ~ GUEST LECTURES On 17 and 20 October 1994, Prof. Sun Chongtao of the Chinese Academy of Arts delivered two lectures on traditional Chinese theater, with video-presentation. On 13 September 1994, Prof. Roger Ames of the University of Hawaii delivered a lecture on the topic "Confucian Sexism: Gender Construction and Chinese Cosmology". On 17 November, Dr. Stephan Reglar of Wollongong University, Australia, spoke on "Intellectual Debates in China in the 1980s". On 22 November 1994, Dr. Borge Bakken (University of Oslo and Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, Copenhagen) spoke on the topic "Youth, Deviance and the Dangers of Modernity: On Social Control in China". On 23 November 1994, Prof. Yang Guorong of East China Normal University in Shanghai delivered a lecture on "The Significance of Modern Neo-Confucianism". NEW RESEARCH PROJECTS Leiden/Beijing Joint Research Project: "Beijing as a Sacred City" Professor Kristofer M. Schipper of the Sinological Institute has initiated the three-year research project "Beijing as a Sacred City: Liturgical Structures and Civil Society". The project is a cooperative undertaking of Leiden University and Beijing University, to be carried out under the joint direction of Prof. Schipper and Prof. Hou Renzhi. Other participating organisations are the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes and the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (Paris), the Royal Netherlands Academy for Arts and Sciences, and the International Institute for Asian Studies (Leiden). The project, the first of its kind, starts on 1 January 1995 and aims at studying the history, location, and denomination of the approximately 1000 tempels and other sacred places that existed, and were in general still active, in Beijing during the first half of the 20th century. The study of these religious foundations and the relevant historical material is of paramount importance for the understanding of Beijing's "civil society", as these foundations were organized in guilds and corporations (hang), associations and leagues (hui). These were often part of interlocal networks. The goals of the project are to produce a historical map showing the distribution of the temples and other places of worship of Beijing before 1949, together with a booklet containing essential information on each site; as well as a corpus of the approximately 2500 commemorative inscriptions related to these temples which have been preserved but are in danger of 8682 being lost (only one complete set of rubbings still exists). In connection with the project, Prof. Li Xiaocong of Beijing University stayed at the Sinological Institute for a three-month research visit funded by the International Institute of Asian Studies, Leiden. Michel Hockx: Research Project Literary Societies (1911-1937) Dr. Michel Hockx (IIAS, Leiden) is currently engaged in the research project "Literary Societies and the Literary Field in Pre-War Republican China (1911- 1937)". The pre-war Republican era in China (1911-1937) witnessed the birth of modern Chinese literature and the emergence of what may be considered the earliest independent literary field within Chinese culture. One of the most conspicuous features related to the production of literature in this era is the large number of literary societies. This project intends to study the functioning of a number of these societies and the reasons for their formation, with the ultimate aim of gaining a better understanding of the relations between individuals, collectives and ideas within modem Chinese literature. The project relates to larger trends and debates within Chinese studies and specifically sides with those scholars who call for more attention to historical agents and their positions within the literary field. The notion of the field as a "space of relations between positions" stems from Bourdieu, whose work to a large extent inspires the methodology underlying this project. The most important question to be adressed concerns the relationship between individuals, institutions and ideologies within the social microcosm that is a literary society. Earlier treatments of literary societies tend to address these three factors at will without establishing clear boundaries. Using Bourdieu's ideas these factors can be related to the notions of habitus, position and field, making it possible to study literary societies both as literary and social phenomena. After having performed a simple semantic analysis of the various words used in Chinese to designate literary societies, the main research task will be to carry out four case studies of four representative societies. These case studies will analyze the functioning of each society on the basis of its organization, background and affiliations. The case studies will provide a number of relevant categories to be used in a larger general survey of about 50 societies. On the basis of the acquired understanding of the functioning of literary societies, some new light will be shed upon the structure of the literary field and the various strategies that were available to writers within that field. Finally, this new outlook on the literary field will enable us to define key terms of Chinese literary discourse, such as "literature" (wenxue), more clearly than before. Biographical information: Michel Hockx (1964) studied Chinese Language and Literature at Leiden University, The Netherlands and Liaoning and Beijing Universities, P.R.C. He graduated from the Sinological Institute in 1987, and in 1989 joined the CNWS Research School as a Ph.D. student. From 1993-1994 he was a Pre-Doctoral Fellow of the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange. He obtained his Ph.D. degree from Leiden University in 8783 April 1994, and is currently attached to the International Institute for Asian Studies (Leiden). His publications include: A Snowy Morning: Eight Chinese Poets on the Road to Modernity. Leiden: CNWS Research School, Leiden University 1994 (ISBN 90-73782-21-X. 282 pp., incl. index and bibliography. Price: Hfl. 30.00); and "Wenxue yanjiu hui yu 'wu si' wenxue chuantong" (The Literary Association of China and the "May Fourth" Literary Tradition), in .lintian, 1994:2, pp. 158-168. Dr. Hockx is currently organizing an international workshop on "Modem China: The Literary Field" to be held in January 1996 (see below, in the section Future Conferences in The Netherlands). T~ierBremen Joint Project- Rural Urbanization in the PRC Prof. Thomas Heberer (Department of Political Science at Trier University) and Prof. Wolfgang Taubmann (Department of Geography at Bremen University) are currently engaged in the research project "Rural Urbanization in the People's Republic of China", funded by the Volkswagen Foundation. The project runs from 1993 to 1995, and focuses on the role of zhen (towns) for regional economic development. As a rule, most Chinese and Western analyses of the urbanization of rural areas concentrate on providing a general survey or stress pragmatic-strategical aspects. This project, in contrast, intends to identify and explain the conditions and effects of rural urbanization, on the basis of multi-level case-studies. In the period July-October of 1993 and 1994, seven towns in varying states of development were studied and empirical data collected. The seven towns were Jinji (in the city of Wuzhong, Ningxia Province), Dongng (in the county of Wuxi, Jiangsu Province), Zongshizhuang (in the city of Jinzhou, Hebei Province), Yuquan (in the city of Acheng, Heilongjiang Province), Xiangyang (in the city of Guanghan, Sichuan Province), Pingle (in the city of Qionglai, Sichuan Province), and Xinzhou (in the county of Zunyi, Guizhou Province). Using a multi-perspective analysis, it was found that the decisive factors for the specific range of development of the towns are their regional conditions, their local conditions in regard to bureaucracy, local political groups etc., and their external economic relationships (e.g. rural industry). On the basis of the abovementioned case studies, the interplay of regional and local conditions will be examined as factors influencing the success of development in the towns. The researchers' fundamental hypothesis is, that although the regional standard of development provides the rural towns with possibilities for growth, it depends on local conditions whether or not these possibilities are actually used. The main idea of the project is to show the interdependence of socio-economic and urban development in the lowest segment of the urban system. Local conditions and reactions are operationalized, i.e. they are analyzed in terms of different processes, namely the external relationships of the towns (institutional interdependence between the city and the countryside, external relations of local enterprises etc.) and the basic local patterns and conditions of power (the local administrative system, kinds of taxation, elites and civil servants, 8884 forms of ownership etc.). The researchers have investigated the role played by the towns in regard to their hinterland, i.e. the functional position they possess in their area and the changes and transformation processes they cause in their rural hinterland. To show the functional position and impact of towns from the empirical point of view, central goods and services offered by the towns were analysed. The connections and contradictions of the traditional market system and "modem" central place functions were found to be of foremost interest. It has to be examined whether the present conditions existing in the towns cause a disintegration of traditional market structures and thereby a change of the central place system at its lowest level. Not only the possibilities a town offers for the collection and distribution of goods and services have an influence on the transformation processes in the surrounding rural area, but also the local labor market conditions and the possibilities of inmigration directed by local bureaucracy. The data necessary to analyze these processes have also been collected. For more information please contact: Prof. Wolfgang Taubmann, Department of Geography, FB 8, Bremen University, Bibliothekstrasse, D-2800 Bremen, Germany. Tel.: 0421-2183682; E-mail: taubmann@ggr.uni-bremen.de. PAST CONFERENCES Computer Seminar Hong Kong On 12-13 July 1994, a Chinese computing exhibition and seminar was held in conjunction with the Third International Conference on Chinese Linguistics (14-17 July 1994) by the Department of Chinese, Translation and Linguistics in cooperation with the Language Information Sciences Research Centre of the City Polytechnic of Hong Kong. A significant development towards setting a truly "Chinese standard" is the work of an ISO Rapporteur Group to unify current Chinese (GB), Taiwanese (Big 5, CCCll), Japanese (JIS), Korean (KSC) and American (CJK-LNG, Uni- code) encoding standards for Chinese characters in all their forms. Tseng Ka-on, a Hong Kong representative of the ISO Group, told the seminar how in spite of initial Japanese opposition, the ISO working group adapted a Hanzi Character Set in March, 1991. This set is based on regular Hanzi and contains only 2235 simplified characters, but also some Cantonese characters that are in current use in Hong Kong. Subsequent meetings, following ISO 10646 procedures, have now resulted in a proposed international standard based on a four-dimensional coding space with a maximum value of 256 per octet. This new standard, once implemented, will of course have considerable impact on the possibilities to create international access through data networks to CJK libraries worldwide. However, no ISO-based CJK library management systems will be marketed in the foreseeable future. The same appears to be true for such systems based on the Intercode standard. For a review (in German) of recent developments in internationally standar- 8985 dized CJK encoding, see Urs Widmer, "Die neueste Version des CNS-Codes aus Taiwan" (The Latest version of Taiwan's CNS Code), in: Chinesisch & Computer, 1994, No. 9, pp. 71-2. Publisher's address: PC-Labor, Bremen University, P.O. Box 330440, D-28334 Bremen, Germany. (Report forwarded by Kees Kuiken) Conference on Chinese Rural Collectives and Voluntary Organizations Leiden University Eduard B. Vermeer, Frank N. Pieke, and Woei Lien Chong organized an international conference on 9-13 January 1995, hosted by the Sinological Institute of Leiden University, on the theme: "Chinese Rural Collectives and Voluntary Organizations: Between State Organizations and Private Interest". The conference analyzed the functions and position of collective and voluntary organizations vis-A- vis state organizations and rural households. More specifically, it focused on the role of voluntary organizations in the management and development of common property resources. One of the conclusions reached was that the employment of concepts such as "state" and "society" are inadequate to understand what is presently going on in the Chinese countryside, as the intertwining between the various sectors is very powerful. While there is a process of specialization and professionalisation taking place within the policy-making organisations, economic activity has now also spread beyond administrative boundaries, which means that all local conditions are now changing. A whole set of new articulations is arising between local level state agencies and the peasants. The previously unified property and resource control has now split over different types of actors. Many new actors have arrived on the scene, such as cooperatives and technical associations. While some participants stressed the continuity and the limitations posed by the household registration system and the collective ownership of land, others emphasized that there is now much negotiation of these borders. If the present constraints are removed, another kind of economic logic may arise and other kinds of behavior. It was also pointed out that the current success of certain areas is based on pre-reform assets and achievements: the situation in the pre-reform period was far from monolithic and uniform. There is a potential framework of cooperatives drawing on the best elements of the former collectives, who can mediate between the state and local needs and interests. It was emphasized that researchers should establish a basic comparative framework, particularly in terms of geography and ecology, in order to understand how the variations on the local level work. From the administrators' view, an important role of social scientists could be in the construction of pluriform models that are suited to the difference in the level of economic development in each area, instead of a uniform, artificial model of development being imposed upon all areas. Much emphasis was also laid on the need for democratic participation of the peasants. It was pointed out that there is a pressing need for legal 9086 provisions to clarify the role of institutions and to evaluate their performance, regulate their behavior and establish better coordination. Moreover, means should be devised to compensate those who lose out in the changed conditions in the Chinese countryside, and whose continued discontents could endanger the social stability needed for the reforms to continue. For more information, please contact: CRCVO Conference, Woei Lien Chong, Sinological Institute, P.O. Box 9515, 2300 RA Leiden, The Netherlands. Fax: + 31-71-272615; E-mail: dcsinologi@rullet.leidenuniv.nl F'UTURE CONFERENCES IN THE NETHERLANDS Leiden Workshop on Fukien and Taiwan, July 1995 On 5-9 July 1995, the international workshop "Fukien and Taiwan in the 19th and 20th Centuries: Contacts and Contrasts" will be held in Leiden. The conference is organized by the Sinological Institute of Leiden University and the College of Liberal Arts of National Taiwan University. The workshop intends to contribute to an exploration of the characteristic elements of social organization and cultural forms in Fukien and Taiwan. It will explore the processes by which patterns of organizational and cultural expression were transplanted from Southern Fukien to Taiwan, and explore how such patterns were further developed there. Special emphasis will be placed on the way in which traditional social organizations and cultural forms have adapted to the various processes of modernization. The workshop will explore these issues from a multidisciplinary perspective. For more information, please contact: "Fukien and Taiwan Workshop", c/o Dr. E.B. Ver- meer, Sinological Institute, Leiden University, P.O. Box 9515, 2300 RA Leiden, The Netherlands. Tel. + 31-71-272527/Fax: +31-71-272615; E-mail: docchin@rullet.leidenuniv.nl. International Music Conference "East Asian Voices" in Rotterdam The second irnational conference of CHIME, the European Foundation for Chinese Music Research, entitled "East Asian Voices", will be organized in De Doelen in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, on 11-14 September 1995. The Research School CNWS of Leiden University and the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London will cooperate in the organization of the meeting, which is further supported by the European Science Foundation (ESF). The aim of the conference is to bring together specialists of East Asian folk literature and religion, and musicologists and anthropologists who have collected musical materials in the field. The focus of the conference will be on living traditional music and vocal rituals as they can be found in China, Japan, Korea and other East Asian countries. The subthemes of the meeting will be "Voices Addressing the Gods"; and "Voices Addressing Mortals". To this end, the various sessions and workshops will cover Buddhist, Daoist and Confucian traditions as well as several genres of lyric and narrative poetry, including nanguan and pingtan, 9187 rural work songs, wedding songs and funeral laments. Suggested themes for panel discussions are, i.a.: Time and Cadence in East Asian Epic Songs; Folk Songs in History Compared with Present-Day Traditions; "Thanking God" Rituals; Shamans and Mediums; and Buddhist and Daoist Liturgy. One of the aims of the meeting is to work towards a cross-cultural comparison of some of these genres. In addition to presentations of papers and panels, there will be musical intermezzi, as well as film and video reports on recent fieldwork in East Asia. A number of folk musicians from the region will be invited to attend, and there will be an opportunity to interview them. The conference fee is set at Hfl. 150. This amount will cover full participation in the programme (papers, workshops, films, concerts), and a book of abstracts. Papers and presentations will be given in English. The proceedings will be published in two specials issues of the CHIME Journal. Those who wish to present a paper on one of the given themes should send an abstract (one page A4 maximum) before 30 April 1995. Papers may presented in 10, 15, or 20 minutes. A strict time schedule will be observed. Participants should indicate the length of their presentation and the audio-visual equipment that is needed. The Committee reserves the right to decide on the final program, but those interested in participating in a specific panel are requested to make their preference known. More information can be obtained from: CHIME Programme Committee, P.O. Box 11092, NL - 2301 EB Leiden, The Netherlands, Tel.: + 31-71-133123; Fax: + 31- 71-123183; E-mail: Zanten@RULfsw.Leidenuniv.nl. _ Leiden Workshop "Modern China: The Literary Field": Call for Papers Dr. Michel Hockx is currently organizing the workshop "Modern China: The Literary Field", to be held at the International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS) in Leiden, on 24-26 January 1996. The workshop is meant to bring together scholars interested in the social dimension of Chinese society from late Qing times until the present. One of the things that make modem Chinese literature modern is its professional context. At least since the late Qing dynasty onwards, Chinese literature as a form of cultural production has been taking place within a specific social space, which includes writers, critics, journalists, editors, publishers, printers and book sellers. Although this "literary field" did not always possess a large degree of autonomy, its structure remained in existence even during periods of excessive ideological interference. Until recently, it was difficult for scholars interested in modern Chinese literature to understand its context: many of the materials needed to gain insight into the pre-1949 literary field were not available in reprint, while after 1949, many activities were taking place underground. A different situation existed in Taiwan, Hong Kong and other Chinese communities outside the PRC, but these fields were studied far less intensively. Besides this relative lack of information, research and theoretical positions of scholars of modern Chinese literature tended to enhance a relative neglect of 9288 the bonds between literature and society. Whether their approaches were "philo- logical" (concentrating on translation and annotation), "intrinsic" (concentrating on interpretation), "structuralist" (concentrating on formal analysis) or "Marxist" (concentrating on reflection of social conditions), their questions hardly ever displayed an evenly balanced interest in both literature and society. This situation has changed profoundly over the past few years. Researchers no longer have to complain about a shortage of materials and sources, and the prevailing "receptionist", "post-structuralist", "feminist" and "neo-Marxist" approaches of culture allow them to cross boundaries between established disciplines, such as literary criticism and sociology, almost at will. One powerful notion put forward in this context is Pierre Bourdieu's The Literary Field, referring to the entire scala of positions that have been and can be taken by people engaged in literary activities, and that are determined just as much by "rules" of the field as by the specific "dispositions" of these people. The organizer welcomes papers contributing to discussion on the following topics and questions: - the social position of modem Chinese authors; - the structure of the literary field and its various stages of development in mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and overseas Chinese communities; - the various "scenes", including popular, underground, exile literature, etc.; - literary societies, clubs, salons, etc.; - activities of editors, publishers, book sellers, etc.; - the position of women within the literary world; " : '- " - local and regional differences in literary activity; - social reasons for genre hierarchies ("high" vs. "low" literature, etc.); - interaction between Chinese and foreign literary fields, translation strategies, etc. c ~ ~') L"[~~~.'&f' ~ ~',i:",,':.J =,: U. '.....\~ ':' .. :;.. Those interested in taking part in the workshop should send a proposal for a paper, including a one-page abstract, to the address below before 1 July 1995. Proposals will be examined in chronological order. Papers are due before 1 November 1995. Papers are not read during the seminar. During sessions, speakers will give a brief introduction, which will be followed by a discussion, to be opened by a discussant. Each participant will be a discussant for one of the other papers. Papers will be xeroxed and sent to all participants before 7 January 1996. For information and registration: Michel Hockx, IIAS, P.O. Box 9515, 2300 RA Leiden, The Netherlands. Tel.: +31-71-275493 or 272227; fax: + 31-71-274162; E-mail: IIAS@rullet.1eidenuniv.nl. FUTURE CONFERENCES ELSEWHERE IN EUROPE The Newsletter of the "State and Society in East Asia" Network, No. 4, September 1994 lists the following international conferences for 1995: 9389 International Workshop on "China's Cultural Revolution: Political Causes and Social Consequences", Stockholm, 14-15 January 1995. Contact address: Michael Schoenhals, Center for Pacific Asia Studies, Stockholm University, S-10691 Stockholm, Sweden. Fax: +46-8-168810. Second Conference of the European Society for Asian Philosophy on "The Concept of a Person", University of Exeter, 3-5 August 1995 (open for members only). Contact address and applications for membership: Dr. Brian Carr, ESAP Coordinator, Dept. of Philosophy, University of Nottingham, University Park, Nottingham NG7 2RD, UK. < .. "Advanced Workshop on Modern Chinese National Identity", Oslo, June 1995 (final date to be announced). The aim of the workshop is to explore further some of the central issues raised in the collection of papers edited by Lowell Dittmer and Samuel Kim, China's Quest for a National Identity, Ithaca/London: Cornell University Press 1993. Contact address: Harald Bockman, Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, Njalsgade 842300, Copenhagen S, Denmark. Tel: + 45-3154 88 44; Fax: + 45-32 96 25 30; E-mail: harald@nias.ku.dk Nordic Workshop on the History of the Relations Between China and the Nordic Countries, with Emphasis on Diplomacy, Trade and Shipping, 29 September-1 October, Granavollen, Gran, Norway. Granavollen is 45 minutes from Oslo. Contact address: Elisabeth Eide, University Library, Oslo. Fax: + 47-22 85 90 50 E-mail: elisabeth.eide@ub.uio.no Nordic Workshop/Symposium on Orientalism-Occidentalism, October/November 1995. Venue to be decided. Contact address for China scholars: Leif Littrup, University of Copenhagen. Fax: +45-35 32 88 35. E-mail: littrup~a coco.ihi.ku.dk. EVENTS AND EXHIBITIONS IN THE NETHERLANDS Exhibition in Amsterdam of Archeological Finds from Hunan A number of interesting archaelogical objects from the southern Chinese province of Hunan are on show at the Nieuwe Kerk ("New Church") in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, from 20 December 1994 to 18 April 1995, at the exhibition "China's Distant Past". The objects, on loan from the Hunan Provincial Museum in Changsha, include a number of bronzes from the Shang, Zhou, and Tang periods, and a few selected pieces from the famous Tomb of the Marquise. The Nieuwe Kerk is on Dam Square, a 10 minute-walk from the Central Station. The exhibition is open daily from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., including Monday and Easter. The price of the richly illustrated, 123-page catalogue, written by Dr. Jan Fontein, the organizer of the exhibition, is Hfl. 25.00. For more information, call: + 31-20-6268168. 9490 Festival "Leading Ladies" in Utrecht Prior to the International Congress on Women in Beijing, a festival entitled "Leading Ladies" is organized on Wednesday 8 March 1995 in Music Center Vredenburg in Utrecht, The Netherlands, as part of the national campaign that will take place from 8 March to 12 June, in order to inform the public of the themes that will be discussed during the Beijing conference. The festival is organized by Amnesty International and a number of local social and cultural organisations. The program includes a series of lectures, music concerts, dance, and recitations of poetry and prose. A number of well-known women writers will be present, including Jung Chang (Wild Swans), and Anchee Min (Red Azalea). For more information: Intercultural Center RASA ( + 31-30-319676, except on Monday) and COS Utrecht ( + 31-30-311094, except on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday afternoon).</meta-value></custom-meta></custom-meta-wrap></article-meta></front><back><notes><p>1 Laogai Research Foundation, <italic>Laogai Handbook 1994.</italic> Milpitas, CA: 1994, p. 159 ff. (bilingual, in English and Chinese). A brief overview of the <italic>laogai</italic> system can be found in the appendix to this interview.</p><p>2 Harry Wu (with Carolyn Wakeman), <italic>Bitter Winds: A Memoir of my Years in China's Gulag.</italic> New York: Wiley 1994. Dutch edition: <italic>Bittere kou, 19 jaar in de Chinese goelag,</italic> Baarn: Bodoni 1994.</p><p>3 Harry Wu is here referring to the relatively privileged position that many Chinese dissidents in exile formerly enjoyed in China. It was "heaven" in comparison to the hell experienced by those in the labor camps.</p><p>4 Hongda Harry Wu, <italic>Laogai: The Chinese Gulag.</italic> Boulder, Colorado: Westview 1992, p. 6 ff. See also Amnesty International, <italic>China: Punishment without Trial: Administrative Detention.</italic> London 1991.</p><p>5 Wu, <italic>Laogai,</italic> p. 10. Wu does not exclude the detention centers from this definition, but his later publications do not include material on the latter category; see e.g., <italic>Laogai Handbook 1994,</italic> p. 3.</p></notes></back></article></istex:document></istex:metadataXml><mods version="3.6"><titleInfo lang="en"><title>To Destroy Hell: Harry Hongda Wu's Crusade Against the Chinese Gulag</title></titleInfo><titleInfo type="alternative" lang="en" contentType="CDATA"><title>To Destroy Hell: Harry Hongda Wu's Crusade Against the Chinese Gulag</title></titleInfo><name type="personal"><namePart type="given">Kees</namePart><namePart type="family">Kuiken</namePart><affiliation>Kees Kuiken has degrees in social science and the humanities from Groningen University, The Netherlands</affiliation></name><typeOfResource>text</typeOfResource><genre type="other" displayLabel="other"></genre><originInfo><publisher>Sage Publications</publisher><place><placeTerm type="text">Sage CA: Thousand Oaks, CA</placeTerm></place><dateIssued encoding="w3cdtf">1994-09</dateIssued><copyrightDate encoding="w3cdtf">1994</copyrightDate></originInfo><language><languageTerm type="code" authority="iso639-2b">eng</languageTerm><languageTerm type="code" authority="rfc3066">en</languageTerm></language><physicalDescription><internetMediaType>text/html</internetMediaType></physicalDescription><relatedItem type="host"><titleInfo><title>China Information</title></titleInfo><genre type="journal">journal</genre><identifier type="ISSN">0920-203X</identifier><identifier type="eISSN">1741-590X</identifier><identifier type="PublisherID">CIN</identifier><identifier type="PublisherID-hwp">spcin</identifier><part><date>1994</date><detail type="volume"><caption>vol.</caption><number>9</number></detail><detail type="issue"><caption>no.</caption><number>2-3</number></detail><extent unit="pages"><start>72</start><end>90</end></extent></part></relatedItem><identifier type="istex">82137EC618D4F40BE3F581C8C15B711A679A42A2</identifier><identifier type="DOI">10.1177/0920203X9400900204</identifier><identifier type="ArticleID">10.1177_0920203X9400900204</identifier><recordInfo><recordContentSource>SAGE</recordContentSource></recordInfo></mods></metadata><serie></serie></istex></record>Pour manipuler ce document sous Unix (Dilib)
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