Filial Affection as Political Failing: The Children of Rural Class Enemies under the Maoist Emotional Regime

Abstract

Scholars have shown that the Chinese Communist Party under Mao Zedong was highly attuned to the role of emotions in human thought and action, and developed sophisticated techniques to channel them toward its political aims. How did individuals experience the system of normative emotions that developed from these political projects? This article addresses this question from the perspective of one particular group, those whose families were classified as “landlords” or “rich peasants.” It shows that those from such backgrounds were expected to renounce any filial emotion and to develop hostility toward their parents, an expectation that put most of them in a situation of acute emotional conflict. The article goes on to explore the ways in which people responded to this conflict, concluding that for the majority the conflict could be temporarily avoided but could not be resolved. It further argues that the larger-scale assault on the parent–child bond that took place during Cultural Revolution, which was widely denounced in post-Mao discourse, is best understood not merely as an extreme manifestation of the party’s anti-traditionalism, but as the broadening of practices that had developed primarily in connection with rural class enemies.