River Elegy

Political controversy about Heshang arose and attracted attention from the Party's top leadership when a university president phoned Hu Qili, a pro-reform officer who was a member of the Standing Committee of the Politburo and the Central Secretariat, and warned him that the series might stir up student unrest.[9] Hu immediately contacted the minister of Radio, Film, and Television, requesting that he re-evaluate the series. Meanwhile, Zhao Ziyang, Yang Shangkun, Deng Pufang (Deng Xiaoping’s son) and some other Politburo members privately screened Heshang. While Zhao and Deng had supportive attitudes toward the film, a few members of the Politburo were offended by Heshang’s harsh criticism of Chinese traditions and the Party’s policies since 1978, as well as its attack on Leninist theories. Confused by the divided opinions expressed from the top leadership, CCTV held internal meetings to discuss whether it should terminate broadcasting Heshang, but it did not reach a decision until the series was completely broadcast.[10]

Heshang was so popular that many audiences requested a repeat of the show after its first run. Given that the documentary had aroused much tension among the Party’s top leaders, the Ministry of Radio, Film and Television ordered CCTV to revise the original version of the film before it could be broadcast again. In the repeat version, politically sensitive contents were either removed or toned down. The deleted contents included the film’s supportive attitude toward the 1986 student demonstrations and its call for the government to establish dialogue with Chinese citizens; criticism against government corruption, inflation and the CCP’s ignorance of the mentally and economically impoverished situation of Chinese intellectuals; as well as criticism against the CCP’s policies and its mismanagement that caused such “man-made disasters” as the 1987 great forest fires in Daxing’anling, and the 1988 Shanghai hepatitis epidemic.[11] The revised Heshang was aired in August 1988 and triggered even greater debates. At the Third Plenum of the 13th Central Committee, Wang Zhen, the then vice president, fiercely attacked Heshang by giving a long speech to criticize its “counter-revolutionary” contents. Wang insisted the film not only posed “vicious vilification” toward Chinese people, but it was also “anti-Party and anti-socialism.” Wang also criticized the “blue sea civilization” that was promoted in the film as “bandit civilization and bandit logic.”[12] While some party leaders supported Wang's view, Zhao Ziyang, backed up by Yang Shangkun, argued that artistic work like Heshang conveyed cultural rather than political implications, so it should not be discussed at a political meeting. The debates between the two sides continued after the conference, until Zhao Ziyang was forced to issue two principles in dealing with the Heshang controversy. The principles urged the Party to allow the public debates without taking an official stand on the documentary, and stressed that any Party leaders’ personal opinions toward the documentary did not represent the viewpoint of the Party as a whole.[13]

The debates about Heshang were also carried on among intellectuals. Two major liberal newspapers, the Science and Technology Daily of Beijing and the World Economic Herald of Shanghai, sponsored a symposium to discuss issues raised in Heshang. Positive comments mainly praised the film as a courageous work that called for the Chinese to re-examine their traditional culture in order to get rid of the ideological obstacles that hindered the nation's further development.[14] Some intellectuals such as Yang Zhenning and Li Zhengdao, the Nobel-Prize winners, criticized the film by pointing out that “a person [who] denies its own culture does not have a future.”[15] In addition, criticism against Heshang stressed that the film was biased and it only represented the “elitist grumblings” (gaoji laosao).[16] For instance, the film wrongfully employed western criteria to judge China's social realities and attributed the country's current problems to the backwardness of its traditional culture. It also regarded the Great Wall, the Yellow River and the Chinese dragon as isolated symbols that represented conservativeness of Chinese traditional culture in comparison with the blue sea that symbolized the superiority of western civilization. In response to the criticism, Yuan Zhiming, the co-author of the sixth part of the documentary, argued that Heshang was not a scholarly work but rather a type of cultural product that aimed to call for Chinese people to “think about the historical heritage standing in the way of modernization”. He emphasized that opening policy could not be successfully implemented, if China merely promoted economic openness without learning from western ideas and embracing cultural pluralism.[17]

In Taiwan and Hong Kong, newspapers and TV program reported the “Heshang fever” debates in P.R.China. People who held positive opinions toward Heshang shared the same standpoints with the ones in mainland China, whereas others criticized the film's “arbitrary” attack on Chinese traditional culture and Confucianism. Some Taiwanese believed that the documentary was wrong to blame China's backwardness on Confucianism. They argued that the Communist regime and its policies, rather than Confucianism, hindered the development of the nation's modernization. For instance, critics said that Taiwan had achieved rapid development by successfully combining Confucianism with western democratic ideas.[18]

After the CCP's crackdown on the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, the Party criticized Heshang as one of the anti-communist work that mistakenly advocated bourgeoisie-liberal ideologies and provoked student unrest. It also launched intense nationwide media attacks against the series. During a CCTV self-criticism meeting that was broadcast on the evening news across China after the June 4 crackdown, Hong Mingsheng, the vice director of Chinese Central Television, said that "'River Elegy' was a propaganda coup for bourgeois liberalization [...], it provided theoretical and emotional preparation for the recent turmoil and rebellion."[19]