Revolution: There and Back

Bredsdorff, a Danish academic, writes about China from the perspective of two periods working there, in 1965/66, and 1976. During his first term there he experienced the Cultural Revolution first hand. During his second term he observed the fall of the 'Gang of Four' and the resurrection of Deng Xiaoping. Bredsdorff reflects upon and writes about these events as an outsider. But acknowledging that limitation - as Bredsdorff clearly does - the reader still gains some valuable insights.

In the past there was a dearth of Chinese books about these events, so turning to eyewitness accounts from western sources, such as Bredsdorff's and Harrison Salisbury's, seemed a reasonable, indeed inevitable, response. I am not so sure that this still show more applies. I am conscious of the increasing number of first hand accounts by Chinese who lived through these times. I am also conscious of my own caution about attempting to understand history from the accounts of those 'inside' or 'swept up' in it. I think, in fairness, these events were so momentous that it takes many perspectives to convey a sense of them, and to make sense of them.

Bredsdorff's account is far too narrow - constrained (as he acknowledges) by his position and his privilege - to give a full view of these times. But it is for exactly that reason a valuable insight into how the western view of those events was formed and how it has subsequently evolved. Bredsdorff has a lot to tell us about the difficulty of 'knowing' what is going on in China, even for someone who is experiencing it at first hand. But his two experiences in China ten years apart, during which he saw two regimes overthrown, gave him the opportunity not only to observe the Chinese reaction to these events, but also to press his Chinese hosts on how they managed to hold or reconcile seemingly contrary positions during these periods.

The conclusion he presents is that, at least among the academic circles he moved in, there has always been a great deal of political realism and cynicism. For the most part it is not shared with westerners, and within Chinese society it is usually only expressed extremely obliquely and even then in coded metaphor and imagery. Bredsdorff seems to leave the question hanging as to whether this is a dangerous expression of the traditional subordination of personal views to the interests of stability and social order (represented by the State), or in fact a natural and very sophisticated behaviour within a political system that is far older, and possibly far more subtle, than which we are used to in the West.

I started this review with a clear view of Bredsdorff as the outsider, the man whose only advantage was to throw light on the miscommunication that exists between Chinese and Western perception and understanding of events and living in two very different political systems. But perhaps in this final analysis the outsider has the ability to say something about the character of the system that he stands outside of. That this sophisticated and very subtly coded approach which characterises the Chinese popular involvement in the political 'world' is subject to being hijacked by those who are prepared to eschew subtlety and use raw force. And that is a observation that is not specific to the West or to China, but a universally applicable caution.

I'd rate this book very highly, at two levels. Firstly it is an interesting insight for anyone thinking about working in China, particularly in academia. Although things change, some things always stay the same. On the second level, as a sketch of a theory about the interplay between the Chinese people and their political systems, it is acutely relevant and a pointer to not just what was happening forty or fifty years ago, but what might happen in China in the next fifty. And that, these days, should interest every thinking person. show less

香港大學歷史系