Max 1

Max Shu Fan

Aaron Benedetti
UWP 1
May 21 2021

Original from French Revolution, how did ‘left’ and ‘right’ used in Chinese political

environment during 20 centuries

When talking about politics, especially making judgment and perspectives of certain

politicians and strategies been made, sometimes people using “left” and “right” to indicate

politicians’ stances. When I ask what are these 2 words indicating, usually they would draw an

analogy of setting policies to walking down the road and gives an implication of radical and

conservative. But I had heard different definition of these 2 words – “old/new”, “modern

government/religious government”, and even “socialism/capitalism”. As I switched my

environment from China to US, these 2 words became extremely unacquainted, even contrary to

what I heard in China. And with more exploration about these 2 terms, more differentials came

out. Since then, I was wondering how and why these 2 term’s definitions vary among different eras

and places.

The common views on these 2 terms are the definition of radical and conservative. But there

are other people that have different perspective. Some people I surveyed in Beijing believes that

left represent the concept that people tend not to follow and right represent the concept that people

tend to follow. In contrast, there are other people think right and left determine their attitude to the

government’s decision. But when people talking about left and right, they would turn to argue

about 2 different terms – “left-leaning” and “right-leaning”, and the explanation about these 2 new

terms contains all sorts of strange. These 2 new terms never exist in the French Revolution and are

generated in the unique environments in China. Thus, I will discuss about how “left” and “right”
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Max Shu Fan
Aaron Benedetti
UWP 1
May 21 2021

are used in the environment of French Revolution, when it first came out, and mainly the period

before “Cultural Revolution”, when these 2 terms were used frequently in China and politics is

volatile, in order to explain the derivation of “left-leaning” and “right-leaning” from “right” and

“left” in China and the how they are used in Chinese political circumstance.

To begin with, the terms "left" and "right" appeared during the French Revolution of 1789

when members of the National Assembly divided into supporters of the king to the president's right

and supporters of the revolution to his left. The right includes royalists and constitutionalist, pursue

to form parliament as a compromise from each party and keep the royal household to

counterbalance the parliament. They proposed to separate the power to avoid despotism. The left

includes Gironde and the Mountain, pursue to abolish the royal household and form a republic

which managed only by the parliament. The definition of conservatives as right and radical as left

derived from here. (Bobbio) In The great debate, Edmund Burke doubts whether the old French

government so unreformable or unworthy of reform that it is absolutely necessary to overthrow

the whole government at once and clear the ground for a new theoretic, experimental building.

Whereas Thomas Paine believes that as the development of science and logos promoting

knowledge and civilization, the old system will reveal its inadaptability and illegality and thus a

thoroughly revolution is needed to update it.

When Marx and Engels, besides, establishing the theory of socialism, they expound left as

representative of the direction of historical progress and right as their opponent. While Marxism
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Aaron Benedetti
UWP 1
May 21 2021

points out that socialism will inevitably replace capitalism, the leftist group in Chinese political

environment are those who advocates the socialist road. For example, the Spartak Group, the leader

of the November Revolution in Germany, was the left-wing of the Social Democratic Party of

Germany, the predecessor of the German Communist Party. Right, as opposed to left, represent a

force that against the direction of socialist road, is seen as opposing the advance of history. But

being radical cannot be correct at any time, especially when falling into fantasy. The word "Left",

stressed with double quotation marks and capital letter L in order to differ the left that’s correct,

used by Lenin indicates that thoughts are leaving the leaving the reality at that time, falling into

fantasy, and leading to a leap in the dark. During 1910s, when Lenin and Stalin start to refer radicals

and conservatives inside the Party, being radical brought lots of damage to the Party as Vladimir

Lenin wrote in "Left" Communism: An Infantile Disorder. However, these people cannot be

addressed as “Right” since they were supporting the construction of socialism and being right is

standing opposite.

Hence, the term “left-leaning” and “right-leaning” came out used frequently by Chinese

Communists to describe this mistake. “Left”, with quotation marks, is included by “left-leaning”.

No matter the “left-leaning” or “right-leaning”, they all belong to the “left” but they have a bias in

understanding. Those whose perception are behind the actual situation are called right-leaning, and

those whose perception are ahead of the actual situation are called left-leaning. Or, left-leaning as

complete a task “perfectly” and the right as “giving up” on a task. After these terms, “left”, “right”,
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Max Shu Fan
Aaron Benedetti
UWP 1
May 21 2021

“left-leaning”, and “right-leaning”, are introduced to CPC, they are usually to indicate someone’s

political stance, especially someone’s faults (except for “left”). Not only because there unique

meaning in the environment of communism, but also influenced by a traditional Chinese culture–

the doctrine of Moderation which is what Confucius believes a man of noble character should be

just and moderate. The word “middle” was used to describe moderate, which makes Chinese

people think being left and right are derogatory terms in contrary to being moderate.

A typical example of these terms used in CPC during early time in CPC’s history is Wang

Ming, who just came back from Soviet Union, became the leader of CPC. He was criticized for

being right-leaning capitulationism and left-leaning adventurism.

During 1931-1935, Wang Ming is under high morale after winning 4 counterattacks towards

Kuo Min Tang (KMT), the major party in the Republic of China (1912-1949). After he took the

lead, he emphasis “standard warfare”, regularization on martial aspect and proposed to knock sown

every centrist along with KMT instead of rope them in. He tried to copy the victory of Russian

October Revolution by promoting the significance of cities, organizing armed insurrections in

cities and seize some strategic cities. But the red army was outnumbered, not speaking of their

capability of completing such task with limiting weaponry. This caused the failure of anti-fifth

encirclement against KMT and was convicted of left-leaning adventurism. In 1937.11, he became

depressed and pinned the hope of victory against Japanese to the KMT. At that time, the second

collaboration of KMT and CPC just started and formed a united front against Japanese. Wang Ming

proposed that CPC need to give out the command authority of CPC’s army to KMT and count on
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Aaron Benedetti
UWP 1
May 21 2021

them in order to win the war against Japan. (The historical role of Sixth Plenary Session) This

proposal is overruled on the CPC Central Committee during that time due to, according to Mao

Zedong’s words, “Even though the Anti-Japanese War is at priority, we cannot ignore the presence

of class struggle”, and it is defined as “right-leaning capitulationism”.

The 2 examples of Wang Ming reveal the definition of left and right in CPC. Taking the

demonstration into Wang Ming’s case, they work out perfectly. The left-leaning adventurism is

Wang Ming’s fantasy to lead CPC to take over the state power directly, copy the victory of Russian

October Revolution, and completing this perfectly. Under the morale brought by the October

Revolution, he believed a path to socialism have found and it’s suitable to Chinese environment

as well, despite the small amount of working class in China. Whereas the succeed of CPC took a

different road, they took advantage of large number of farmers, “occupying the rural areas and

finally encircling the cities.” (Words of Mao Zedong) The right-leaning capitulationism is after his

fantasy of defeating every enemy in frontline disillusioned, he felt depressed and giving up.

Thinking to hand over the army to KMT and drop out peacefully. Since the Comintern took CPC

as an underdog but took KMT as the lineal heir of communist, Wang Ming think handing over the

army to KMT can be a way for socialism to go further. Nevertheless, the fact is that KMT and CPC

are opponent and a massacre had done by KMT which was aimed to clear all the communists.

However, the result of Wang Ming’s life is dramatic. The Party still kept his duty as a member

of Central Committee and did not give him any sanctions other than let him make a reflection,

even though Wang refused to make and went to Soviet Union to recuperate. (How did Wang Ming
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against Mao) This result shows that CPC do not mean defending “left-leaning” and “right-leaning”

people like defending thieves, or even making them the objects of revolution, but it's just about

preventing a shift to the left-leaning or right-leaning in strategy making and help them change their

mind, like doing a reflection. Since nobody knows where’s the right track, it could be easily to be

leaned to right or left unconsciously.

Nevertheless, during the "cultural revolution" (1966-76), being left-leaning or right-leaning is

accused as crime and people are persecuted to death.

The "cultural revolution" (1966-76) was the result of wrong development of “Left” to the class

struggle. During that time, it caused the death of 20 thousand people, universities were shut down

and resulted in a loss of national income of 500 billion RMB, equivalent to 80% of all infrastructure

investment in the 30 years after the founding of the People's Republic of China and exceeding the

total fixed assets of the country during the 30 years after the founding of the People's Republic of

China. The original purpose is to make sure there’s no revisionism of SU, which was brought up

by Khrushchev, the former supremo of Soviet Union. “People like Nikita Khrushchev, who are

now sleeping next to us, must be given full attention by the party committees at all levels. When

the time comes, [they] will attempt to seize political power and change the dictatorship of the

proletariat into the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.” (Announcement on 5.16) “We should criticize

the ideology of the bourgeoisie and all exploiting classes, reform education, literature and art, and

reform all superstructures that are not suited to the socialist economic foundation, so as to help
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UWP 1
May 21 2021

consolidate and develop the socialist system.” (1966, Decision of the Central Committee of CPC)

But the definition of proletariat and bourgeoisie is too vague, this announcement was utilized by

politicians to attack their opponents and achieve their goal. During that time, students, professors

and researchers became the representative of bourgeoisie and needed to be reform. They were sent

to countryside to participate to labor.

The meaning of this special “Left” was fully explained here. The original purpose of having

cultural revolution is to find and expel the comrades who have the thoughts that are against

communism, which originally indicated with “right-leaning”. Then, it gradually became the

fighting to the right-wing and people include “right-leaning” and fence-sitter into right-wing and

fight against. Since this is the order from the highest government, people who were defined as

right-wing cannot defend themselves, even though Zhou Enlai saved a small number of comrades.

The radical students even formed Command of Rebel to show they are left-wings. Some politicians,

so called “the Gang of Four”, used this opportunity to start political struggle against their political

enemy, along with the strife between Mao, Liu Shaoqi, chairman of PRC, and Lin Biao, minister

of National Defense. In this case, “Cultural Revolution” is also setting up a negative example for

dealing right-leaning faults with severe punishment. Since the definition of true socialism road is

vague, people can be leaned to right or left when exploring the next step on the road. Therefore,

making severe punishment to those politicians would be damaging to the political environment

and reduce people’s enthusiasm of exploring further. Hence, this shows that the disposition of

Wang Ming is appropriate and those is cultural revolution is inappropriate.

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Max Shu Fan
Aaron Benedetti
UWP 1
May 21 2021

In conclusion, since the unique political environment, socialism and proletariat that are already

left in the definition from French revolution, the term that indicate the people’s political stance

varied from purely “left” and “right” to “left-leaning” and “right-leaning”. However, they usually

represent mild faults rather than stances and are stressed when the direction of socialism road is

changing. After Wang Ming’s leaning faults are defined, CPC took a different path than before and

after experience the long march and the War of resistance against Japanese, they finally established

the People’s Republic of China. Hence, compare to the left-wing and right-wing in western world,

which are used to describe the political stance, the corresponding “left-leaning” and “right-leaning”

in Chinese environment are not used as often as those two terms but they represent a changing of

political environment, which have a much more significant meaning in political environment.
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Aaron Benedetti
UWP 1
May 21 2021

Work Cited

Bobbio, Norberto. Left and Right: The Significance of a Political Distinction. 2016.

Levin, Yuval. The great debate: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the birth of right and left.

2014.

Lenin, Vladimir. "Left" Communism: An Infantile Disorder. 1920

Yan, Zhicai. The historical role of Sixth Plenary Session of the Sixth CPC Central Committee.

1989

Mao, Zedong. Selected Works of Mao Zedong. 1991.

Wang, Ming, the website of the Central People's Government of the PRC. gov.cn

Wu, siyao. Xie, lei. how did Wang Ming use the "Gannan Conference" to criticize Mao Zedong in

1931? 2014. cpcnews.cn

Announcement on 5.11. or the announcement of CPC central committee on 1966.5.16

Decision of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on the Great Proletarian

Cultural Revolution. made by CPC central committee in 1966.8.8