Propaganda Determined by a Historical Background: “learn from Lei Feng” Campaign

Propaganda Determined by a Historical Background: “Learn from Lei Feng” Campaign

I. Introduction

“Learn from Lei Feng” campaign was a nationwide campaign begun in the 1960s in China. The aim of the campaign is to call on people to learn from Lei Feng. Although more than 50 years has passed, recently, a discussion about the authenticity of Lei Feng on Zhihu makes him the focus of people again.

Actually, the controversy over Lei Feng has existed for a long time. Chinese government considers Lei Feng a good model for people to learn from and scholars in China mainly focus on the spirit of Lei Feng rather than its authenticity. However, many scholars abroad suspect the authenticity of Lei Feng and consider him as a tool of propaganda. John Anderson Fraser, a Canadian academic, quotes, “Lei Feng is an invention of the propaganda department.”

However, whether Lei Feng was an invention of the government or not, it can’t change the influence of the campaign in the past 50 years. This article will mainly discuss the campaign in the early 1960s from the aspect of propaganda and reveal the association between propaganda and the historical background.

II. “Learn from Lei Feng” Campaign

According to Lei Feng Wang (雷锋网), a website hosted by the Publicity Department of the Party, Lei Feng, who was born in 18 December 1940, lost all of his family before the age of 7. He began his work in 1956 and joined the army in 1960. He died in 1962 at the age of 22, when he was hit by a telegraph pole struck by an army truck.

Early in 1961, Lei Feng was praised by Lin Biao, the vice chairman of the Party then in the campaign of reading the works of Mao Zedong. However, Lei Feng wasn’t widely known until after his death when Lei Feng’s Diary was found. The diary was full of his desire for serving the people as well as his admiration for Mao Zedong. In 1963, Mao Zedong wrote the famous inscription: “Follow the examples of Comrade Lei Feng” (向雷锋同志学习), after that, a nationwide propaganda campaign began. 5 March every year has become the official “Learn from Lei Feng Day” (学雷锋日) since then. In the campaign, Lei Feng was portrayed as a model citizen and people all over the country were encouraged to learn his selflessness, modesty, and devotion to Mao. Lots of groups were set up to learn Lei Feng. Between 19 March, 1963 to 27 March, 1963, an exhibition of Lei Feng attracted more than 600000 visitors. The authority said that Lei Feng was an inevitable product of the socialism and the Maoism. People were informed that they could make progress as long as they read the works of Mao Zedong and do things under the direction of Mao Zedong. Several songs were written, some of which became so famous that even today, almost every Chinese know them. Take Follow the Good Example Such as Lei Feng (学习雷锋好榜样) for example:

学习雷锋好榜样

忠于革命忠于党

……

学习雷锋好榜样

毛主席的教导记心上

……

In this song, people are asked to endorse the Party and Mao Zedong. It can be viewed as an epitome of the campaign then. After 1966 ,the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution was launched, and the “Learn From Lei Feng” campaign reached its second climax. The campaign shifted gradually to a cult of Mao Zedong in the same period.

III. China in the Early 1960s

In order to analyze the “Learn From Lei Feng” campaign, it’s necessary to look back to the China in the early 1960s.

·Politics

Since 1960, the relation between China and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) had been deteriorating for the divergence derived from their national interests, the conflicts of ideology and many other complex reasons. This made China isolated in the socialist countries then. The Sino-Indian War of 1962 made the relation between China and India reach a new low. India was rebuilding its army with the help of Russia, Britain and the USA then. And with the significant assistance of the USA, Taiwan had a harvest in economy in contrast to mainland China, it had also boasted a battle-ready army of 400000 men. So at that time, China was put in simultaneous feuds with the USSR, the USA and India, the three most populous nations in the world after his own.

Situation inside the country was also worrying. In contrast to the passion and determination people had in the first five-year plan, the Great Leap Forward and the Great Chinese Famine made people feel uncertain of the future. Mao Zedong also pointed out that most cadres didn’t understand what is socialism, let alone ordinary people.

·Economy

The Great Leap Forward was launched in 1958 in order to rapidly transform China from an agrarian economical society into a socialist society through rapid industrialization and collectivization. However, it was actually a disaster for China then. In order to produce steel, lots of farmers left their farms behind, which partly led to the dramatical decrease of the output of crop in 1960 compared to that in 1957 (Table 1).

Table 1. Output of Crop in 1957 and 1960

Type

1957

1960

Rate of Rise (%)

Grain(billion jin)

390.1

287.0

-26

Cotton(million load)

32.80

21.26

-35

Oil crops(million load)

75.42

34.05

-55

Pigs(million)

145.90

82.27

-44

Large Cattle(million)

83.82

73.36

-12

In 1959, the Great Chinese Famine began, according to government statistics, there were 15 million excess deaths in this period. The government