Fateful Embrace of Communism } 11
to superior understanding of the laws of social development and a trajectory
of history, through “socialist construction” to culmination in a communist
society of true equality, fraternity, and justice. In the early years of the PRC,
these ideas held considerable attractive power. But throughout PRC history,
the standard Marxist-Leninist legitimizing narrative was supplemented by a
nationalist anti-Japanese narrative. During the Mao years, the CCP stressed
its putative leadership role in defeating Japan in the bitter eight-year-long war
of resistance (July 1937–September 1945). In this narrative, it was the CCP,
leading the heroic Chinese people, who defeated Japan. The Nationalists of
Chiang Kai-shek were reduced to a marginal or even negative role. Chiang’s
Nationalists were supposedly fearful of Japan and/or of the roused and armed
Chinese people, and prone to sympathy, and perhaps even collaboration, with
Japan. The Chinese people won, defeated Japan, because they, led by the CCP,
pushed aside pusillanimous KMT leadership and made revolution as well as
fighting Japan.
After 1978, under Deng Xiaoping’s rule, the content of the anti-Japan nar-
rative began to change. About 1982, Deng decided that stepped-up nation-
alistic indoctrination of China’s youth was necessary to limit the appeal of
bourgeois ideas flooding into China with the opening. Nationalism, Deng
realized, would constitute a more effect bulwark against “bourgeois liberal”
ideas than old-style Marxism-Leninism. Gradually, during the 1980s, the
CCP’s ideological apparatus began to elaborate the narrative of China’s cen-
tury of national humiliation. The most dramatic shift was in the treatment of
China’s traditional heritage. During the Mao era, that heritage was rejected
as “feudal” and “counterrevolutionary.” After 1978, China’s imperial past was
rehabilitated and lauded as rich with the glory and grandeur of the Chinese
people. Appropriate teaching curricula were developed and patriotic memo-
rials and museums scattered around the country. The narrative of the anti-
Japan war of resistance was also rescripted. Rather than stressing class and
partisan differences and revolutionary struggle against KMT cowardice and
venality, the new story line stressed the unity of all Chinese in the struggle
against Japan. New historical knowledge was made available attesting to the
significant role of Nationalist armies and leaders. The war became a struggle
of the entire Chinese people, not a revolutionary struggle against “reactionar-
ies” inclined toward capitulation. This new narrative also had the advantage
of appealing to ethnic Chinese in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the Southeast Asia
diasporas.
After the powerful challenge to its own Leninist rule in spring 1989, followed
by the collapse of Leninist parties across Eastern Europe and in the USSR, the
CCP realized the diminished attractiveness of traditional Marxist ideology.
It turned, instead, to intensified use of aggrieved nationalism to legitimize its
power. The CCP now stressed its role as defender of China against malevolent
powers seeking to injure and humiliate it. This new regime legitimization had