"To Live" Obscures Chinese Revolution

"To Live"
1994
Directed by Zhang Yimou

Zhang Yimou's latest film portrays the daily life and 
struggles of one family from the Chinese civil war to the 
end of the Cultural Revolution. The film is an accurate 
portrayal in the sense that there are certainly many people 
who could tell stories similar to the film's. But in the 
end, by choosing "apolitical" protagonists, the film 
obscures the most important political question of the 
times: revolution *for whom*. And by concentrating on the 
sacrifices of one family the film downplays the tremendous 
gains the Chinese people made under Maoist leadership.

The film is split into three parts, corresponding to the 
Civil War (the '40s), the Great Leap Forward (the '50s), 
and the Cultural Revolution (the '60s). All three parts 
begin optimistically and capture the Chinese people's 
sympathy for the Communist Party and their enthusiasm for 
the Communist ideal. At the end of the second part, the 
family's son is killed in an accident while helping to 
smelt steel, and at the end of the third, the family's 
daughter dies of hemorrhaging after giving birth in a rural 
clinic.

Many of the local party cadre are criticized as capitalist 
roaders in the last section of the film - although we are 
never presented with enough information to know whether or 
not the attacks were justified. Ironically, the 
protagonists' apolitical perspective (and their tendency to 
try to win favors by "keeping up with the revolutionary 
Joneses") may be due to the fact that their village leader 
actually was a capitalist roader and did not put an 
emphasis on explaining the party's politics to the 
villagers and instead used capitalist methods (like 
material incentives) to organize people. 

The issues involved in the Great Leap Forward and the 
Cultural Revolution were not esoteric. Mao emphasized that 
the people should understand the party's politics and help 
develop and carry out policies. And we can also see the 
importance of the criticism of capitalist roaders today, as 
the return to capitalist methods of planning and 
organization under Deng Xiaoping has eroded many of the 
gains made before 1976.

Western bourgeois critics of communism are calling this 
film a passionate indictment of Maoism (even though they 
cannot tell the difference between Deng and Mao). They 
point to the children's deaths as examples of the Maoist 
state's willingness to "selfishly sacrifice its people" and 
claim that the state could not just allow the Chinese 
people "to simply live." But this criticism misses the 
point: China was an extremely poor nation (thanks to 
centuries of imperialist and feudal domination), so 
disease, poverty, and exhausting work were commonplace 
before and after the revolution. The revolution aimed to 
change the relationships which kept the Chinese people in 
poverty - and in this the Chinese Communist Party largely 
succeeded. For example, life expectancy doubled from 35 in 
the '40s to 69 in the '70s.

For more information, MIM recommends the essay, "Myths 
about Maoism," in the pamphlet, "What is MIM?" ($2) and 
William Hinton's book on the Cultural Revolution *Turning 
Point in China* ($6) postpaid from MIM.