A Chinese Rebel beyond the Great Wall

"During Mao Zedong's Great Leap Forward, hundreds of thousands of famine refugees in the recently founded People's Republic of China set their sights on the agricultural promise of Inner Mongolia. Cheng Tiejun was one of those refugees, arriving in Inner Mongolia in 1959. In 1966, as the PRC plunged into the tumultuous events of the Cultural Revolution, he joined the millions of students and young intellectuals in the Red Guards, who saw in the early days of the Cultural Revolution an opportunity to shape a new nation embracing freedom and equality. In Inner Mongolia, however, that year saw the Party-led destruction of the Mongol-centered autonomous polity led by Ulanhu. In the years after the fall of Ulanhu's administration, the region descended into a living hell for Mongols. Even those among the rebels were accused of being Ulanhu sympathizers and tortured for information. At the heart of this book are Cheng's first-person recollections of his experiences as a rebel. These are supplemented by a close examination of the documentary record of the era--as patchwork and censored as it is--from co-authors Mark Selden and Uradyn E. Bulag. The final chapter offers a theoretical framework to understand such persecution. Its goal was not to destroy the Mongols as a people or as a culture--that is, it was not a genocide. It was, however, a "politicide," an attempt to destroy an officially and politically recognized nationality in possession of an autonomous region, forcing Mongols to assimilate as "ethnic minorities" within a "Chinese nation." This unusual narrative provides urgently needed primary material to understand the events of the Cultural Revolution, while at once offering a novel way to understand contemporary Chinese minority politics"--