作者：Lewis Lin
编辑：李晶
责任编辑：李聪玲 校对：程筱筱 翻译：吕峰
引言：历史书写与责任问题 任何一个现代国家的合法性，都离不开对自身历史的解释能力。历史不仅是过去的记录，更是现实政治进步的基础。中共自1949年执政以来，发动并主导了一系列深刻改变中国百姓命运的政治运动，这些运动在中共的叙事中往往被描述为“必要的历史阶段”或“探索中的曲折”。然而，随着档案逐步解密、幸存者回忆、出版、以及国内外学者的研究积累，诸多问题无法回避：这些政治运动造成了何种规模的社会伤灾难？责任与机制又是如何运作？ 本文将以史学研究与公开资料为基础，系统梳理中共执政以来若干关键政治运动的背景、实施方式与社会代价，并讨论其制度性成因。一、土地改革与“镇反”：革命暴力的制度化起点
1949年后，中共迅速在全国范围内推行土地改革。其目标是摧毁传统乡村精英结构，重构契合中共的政治与社会秩序。根据官方文件与后来的研究，土地改革的目的并非是经济政策，更重要的是广泛的阶级划分与暴力清算。 1950—1952年的“镇压反革命运动”（镇反）是中共建政初期最重要的政治清洗之一。根据中共内部后来披露的数据，被处决人数在数十万到上百万之间。学者如杨继绳、丁抒等通过地方档案推算，认为这一数字可能更高。 值得注意的是，镇反并非失控的暴力，而是高度制度化的政治行动：中共政权明确下达“杀人指标”，要求公开处决以震慑社会，司法程序高度简化甚至取消，这奠定了一种政治逻辑：中共政权可以在“政治需要”之下，合法化大规模剥夺人民生命的行为。二、大跃进与饥荒：政策失误还是结构性灾难？
1958年开始的大跃进，被官方长期解释为“急于求成的错误”。但自20世纪80年代以来，国内外学者逐步形成共识：1959—1961年的大饥荒，是20世纪全球最严重的由中共党人人为制造的饥荒之一。 关于死亡人数，研究估计从1500万到4000万不等。即便取最低值，也已构成巨大的社会灾难。关键问题不在于数字争议，而在于中共政权的制度机制；虚报产量：中共各级政府层层加码的政治压力导致粮食产量被严重夸大；强制征购：中共政权在已知粮食不足的情况下继续高额强征农民的粮食；信息封锁：实情被系统性压制，各级政府默许甚至参与欺懣虚报；责任豁免：政策制定者与执行者皆不承担直接后果。多项研究指出，这场饥荒并非自然灾害，而是由中共高度集权体制下的欺懣虚报至决策情报失真所引发。三、文化大革命：权力斗争与社会崩解
1966—1976年的文化大革命，是中共历史上破坏性最强、影响最深远的政治运动。官方定性为“十年内乱”，但对其深层机制的讨论始终限制。
文革的显著特征包括：以意识形态忠诚取代法治与专业标准；鼓励民众对民众间相互仇恨争斗的政治暴力；系统性羞辱、迫害知识分子等精英群体；国家机器在相当时期内被中共政权夺去基本治理功能。研究者指出，文革不但是单纯的“个人错误”，而是在缺乏权力制衡的体制中，最高领袖意志被无限放大的结果。死亡人数难以精确统计，但学界普遍认为至少数百万非正常死亡，更多人和家庭遭受终身创伤。四、1989年政治风波：改革限度的边界
1989年的学生运动与随后发生的武力镇压，是改革开放后最具标志性的政治事件之一。尽管官方至今对相关资料严密控制，但国内外研究已基本还原事件脉络。
这场由北京知名大学生发起的8964运动，关键意义在于：表明中共的政治改革有不可逾越的红线；军队被用于对付国内民众与中共政权之间的政治冲突；形成一段长期的历史禁区与记忆断裂。
此后，中共在经济领域继续改革，但在政治领域确立了高度警惕与严厉控制的中共党国路线。五、有限反思与制度性遗忘
改革开放后，中共对部分历史问题虽有进行过有限反思，如：为冤假错案平反，否定文革，调整经济路线等；但这些反思具有明显边界，不追究最高决策层的制度责任，不允许民间独立研究，不形成可问责的政治机制，其结果是，历史被“技术性纠错”，却不能及造成重大灾难的权力责任人和中共党国政权体制本身。罪恶没有被追究、体制没有被纠正。六、制度视角下的总结
从历史角度看，上述政治运动并非孤立事件，而是呈现出一致的结构特征：权力高度集中，缺乏独立司法与监督，信息垄断，中共的意识形态凌驾于民众的生命之上。这使得整个社会的个人悲剧能够不断被制度性复制，而不仅仅依赖于个体的“坏人”。
历史研究的现实意义，目的不应该限于制造仇恨，而更应该在于理解政权的机制。只有当社会能够正视制度性错误，承认生命不可替代的价值，历史才可能真正成为未来的警示，而不是灾难循环的节奏。然中共对他们执政过程中人为造成的诸多如此在重大历史灾难问题上的回避、粉饰、掩盖，必让这个政权下的历史悲剧和灾难不断重演！
Lewis Lin: A Historical Review of Major Political Campaigns Launched by the Chinese Communist Regime and Their Social Costs
Author: Lewis LinEditor: Li JingManaging Editor: Li ConglingProofreader: Cheng XiaoxiaoTranslator: Lyu Feng
Abstract
Since the founding of the People’s Republic of China, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has launched multiple large-scale political campaigns that have inflicted immense suffering on the Chinese population, including the loss of tens of millions of lives. Behind these campaigns lay the CCP’s imperative to preserve its authoritarian rule and to manage internal power struggles within the Party.
Introduction: Historical Writing and the Question of Responsibility
The legitimacy of any modern state depends fundamentally on its capacity to interpret and confront its own history. History is not merely a record of the past; it constitutes the foundation for political accountability and social progress in the present. Since assuming power in 1949, the CCP has initiated and directed a series of political campaigns that profoundly reshaped the fate of the Chinese people. In the Party’s official narrative, these campaigns are often framed as “necessary historical stages” or as “twists and turns in the process of exploration.”
However, as archival materials have gradually become available, survivor testimonies have been published, and both domestic and international scholarship has accumulated, a number of questions can no longer be avoided: What was the scale of social devastation caused by these political campaigns? Through what mechanisms were responsibilities exercised and obscured?
Drawing on historical research and publicly available sources, this article systematically reviews several key political campaigns under CCP rule, examining their backgrounds, modes of implementation, and social costs, while also discussing their underlying institutional causes.
I. Land Reform and the “Suppression of Counterrevolutionaries”: The Institutionalization of Revolutionary Violence
After 1949, the CCP rapidly implemented land reform across the country. Its objective was not merely economic redistribution, but the destruction of traditional rural elites and the reconstruction of a political and social order aligned with the Party’s rule. According to official documents and later scholarly research, land reform functioned less as an economic policy than as a process of mass class labeling and violent liquidation.
The Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries (1950–1952) was one of the most significant political purges in the early years of the PRC. Data later disclosed within the Party indicate that the number of executions ranged from several hundred thousand to over one million. Scholars such as Yang Jisheng and Ding Shu, drawing on local archives, argue that the true figure may have been even higher.
It is crucial to note that the violence of the suppression campaign was not accidental or uncontrolled. It was a highly institutionalized political action: the regime issued explicit “killing quotas,” mandated public executions as a means of social intimidation, and drastically curtailed or abolished judicial procedures. This established a political logic in which the CCP could legitimize the large-scale deprivation of life under the banner of “political necessity.”
II. The Great Leap Forward and the Famine: Policy Error or Structural Catastrophe?
The Great Leap Forward, launched in 1958, was long portrayed in official discourse as an error born of excessive haste. Since the 1980s, however, a broad scholarly consensus—both in China and internationally—has emerged that the famine of 1959–1961 was one of the most severe man-made famines of the twentieth century.
Estimates of excess deaths range from 15 million to 40 million. Even the lowest estimate constitutes an immense social catastrophe. The core issue is not the precise number, but the institutional mechanisms that produced it:
Falsification of production figures: Political pressure at all administrative levels led to systematic exaggeration of grain output.
Compulsory procurement: The state continued to requisition grain at high levels even when food shortages were already known.
Information suppression: Accurate reports were systematically blocked, while deception and false reporting were tolerated or encouraged.
Absence of accountability: Neither policy designers nor implementers bore direct responsibility for the consequences.
Numerous studies have concluded that this famine was not the result of natural disasters, but rather of distorted decision-making caused by extreme centralization, systemic falsification, and information failure within the CCP’s political system.
III. The Cultural Revolution: Power Struggles and Social Disintegration
The Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) stands as the most destructive and far-reaching political campaign in CCP history. Officially labeled a “ten-year catastrophe,” deeper analysis of its structural mechanisms has long been constrained.
Key characteristics of the Cultural Revolution included: the replacement of legal norms and professional standards with ideological loyalty; the encouragement of mass-on-mass violence and social antagonism; systematic humiliation and persecution of intellectuals and other elite groups; and, for extended periods, the effective paralysis of state governance. Scholars have emphasized that the Cultural Revolution was not merely the product of individual error, but the consequence of an unchecked system in which the will of the supreme leader was infinitely amplified.
While precise mortality figures remain contested, academic estimates commonly suggest that at least several million people died unnatural deaths, with countless others and their families suffering irreversible trauma.
IV. The 1989 Political Crisis: The Limits of Reform
The student-led movement of 1989 and its violent suppression constitute one of the most defining political events of the reform era. Although official information remains tightly controlled, domestic and international research has largely reconstructed the sequence of events.
The significance of the 1989 movement lies in several respects: it demonstrated the existence of non-negotiable boundaries to political reform under CCP rule; it marked the deployment of the military against domestic civilians in a political conflict; and it created a long-term historical taboo and rupture in collective memory.
In the aftermath, the CCP continued economic reforms while entrenching heightened vigilance and stringent control in the political sphere, consolidating a party-state model characterized by economic liberalization without political pluralism.
V. Limited Reflection and Institutionalized Amnesia
Since the onset of reform and opening, the CCP has undertaken limited forms of historical reassessment, such as rehabilitating victims of wrongful convictions, repudiating the Cultural Revolution, and adjusting economic policies. Yet these reflections have clear boundaries: they avoid assigning institutional responsibility to the highest decision-making levels, prohibit independent civil research, and fail to establish mechanisms of political accountability.
As a result, history has been subjected to “technical correction” without confronting the systemic structures or power holders responsible for catastrophic outcomes. Crimes remain unaccounted for, and the underlying political system remains fundamentally unchanged.
VI. A Structural Perspective: Concluding Observations
From a historical perspective, these political campaigns were not isolated घटन, but manifestations of consistent structural features: extreme concentration of power, absence of independent judicial oversight, monopolization of information, and the elevation of Party ideology above human life. Under such conditions, individual tragedies are endlessly reproduced by the system itself, rather than arising solely from the actions of a few “bad actors.”
The contemporary significance of historical research should not lie in the cultivation of hatred, but in the understanding of political mechanisms. Only when a society confronts systemic errors and affirms the irreplaceable value of human life can history serve as a genuine warning for the future rather than a recurring cycle of catastrophe. The CCP’s persistent evasion, embellishment, and concealment of the man-made disasters that occurred under its rule all but ensure that historical tragedies and social calamities will continue to recur under the same regime.
