“Repaying Blood-Debt” – Mass Crimes in Mao’s China

Seminar with Professor Klaus Mühlhahn, University of Turku

Time: 10:00 – 12:00, Wednesday, 13 December
Venue: Norwegian Centre for Human Rights, Universitetsgaten 22-24, Seminar Room 4th floor
Language: English
Organiser: The China Programme at the Norwegian Centre for Human Rights

The seminar is open for everyone, no advance registration
Fruit, Coffee and Tea will be provided

The historiography of human rights has mainly focused on legal achievements and noble activism, but the darker side of human rights evasion has been elusive. This paper deals with the history of brutality and human rights abuses in the 50's and 60's in China. The paper, however, will go beyond a mere description of cruelties and injustices, but rather will focus on conceptual integration and explanation. It tries to answer the following questions: What made early PRC rule so ruthless and brutal in dealing with alleged enemies? What were the concepts and different kinds of rhetoric that were used to justify this treatment? What were the implications and different manifestations of human rights abuses during that period? The paper will use speeches, accusations, self-examinations and propaganda material deployed in agitation trials as well as in reeducation facilities for reconstructing the culture of violence and brutality that pervaded Chinese society in this period. The paper will in particular explore the mechanism and rituals through which "ordinary men" (Christopher Browning) were first encouraged to commit violent acts against colleagues, friends and even family members, and were later exonerated by the collective. Through these rituals, violence and brutality were sanctioned and “normalized”.

Klaus Mühlhahn is Professor for Chinese Contemporary History at the University of Turku, Finland,  and Director of the Centre for East Asian Studies. He specializes on modern Chinese social and cultural history, including the history of colonialism in china, Chinese criminal justice, Chinese human rights thinking, and the history of violence in China. 

Suggested reading:

"Remembering a Bitter Past” – The Trauma of China’s Labor Camps, 1949-1978, in: History and Memory 16:2 (2004), 108-139.

Zwischen Ablehnung und Akzeptanz - Menschenrechte und Geschichte im modernen China (Between Denial and Acceptance: History and Human Rights in China), in: China aktuell 1/2006, 7-40.