This chapter looks at the publication of a series of books in Guangdong in the 1990s on the “Pine Hill incident,” a miscarriage of justice that took place during land reform (1950–1953) and directly implicated Tao Zhu, an important figure in the CCP’s post-Cultural Revolution pantheon of veteran revolutionary leaders. The process leading to the publication of these volumes – which, the chapter argues, should be understood as a form of moral rehabilitation – sheds light on the complex dynamics of research and publication on sensitive topics in the context of partial transition. The volumes’ author and his collaborators made effective use of institutions, policies, and discourses that emerged during the 1980s to overcome major obstacles to publication, but Tao Zhu’s prestige at the central level ultimately limited the extent to which facts relating to the Pine Hill incident could became part of the public record. The chapter thus illustrates both the way local narratives on party history could emerge in the post-Mao period and the limited ability of such narratives to challenge those of the Party Center.

This chapter brings together two seemingly separate aspects of Hainan Island’s history during the Chinese Communist revolution and into the early People’s Republic. These two aspects are the anti-localism political campaigns of the 1950s through which local leadership was punished or removed for favoring local priorities over national ones, and the relatively high revolutionary participation by women in the Communist fighting forces of Hainan. This chapter uses recent Chinese and Western scholarship, as well as memoir and oral history, to examine how traditional gender roles were reinforced through the anti-localism campaigns, even during what were otherwise some of the most radical moments of the early PRC. The popular revolutionary drama Red Detachment of Women took several forms, including ballet and opera, and as a cultural artifact it stood in for the history of women fighters on Hainan from its first performances in the early 1960s. Like the anti-localism campaigns, Red Detachment of Women, as a didactic drama, reinforced patriarchal and mainland control over Hainan, and this chapter aims to illuminate some of the ways in which this happened.

During his ascent to power in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, Mao had “packed” the CCP upper echelon with people who had sided with him in the many internal power struggles in the party, especially those who had served with him in the First Front Army. Yet even this strategy was insufficient to maintain Mao’s absolute power in the party. When the unexpected shock of the Great Leap Forward led to a precipitous fall of Mao’s prestige within the party, a rival coalition composed of Mao’s former allies emerged to sideline him. Even a formerly loyal protégé such as Deng Xiaoping began to display streaks of independence.

Even at an abstract theoretical level, the power configuration in China after the 1969 9th Party Congress was highly unstable. On the one hand, Mao continued to be an active and powerful chairman of the party. On the other hand, Lin Biao, the anointed successor, had a great deal of control over the military. Without the possibility of other powerful factions in the party to check a potential fight between Mao and Lin, both sides had much temptation to eliminate the other if they believed they had sufficient power to do so (Acemoglu et al. 2008: 162). Fortunately for Mao, he had cultivated two disparate groups to help him govern China in the event of a purge of Lin Biao: the Fourth Front Army (FFA) and the surviving scribblers. Mao’s strategy of cultivating the tainted FFA paid off handsomely. Instead of having to concede to Lin Biao’s reluctance to carry out self-criticism or being forced to rely on Lin’s followers, Mao forced Lin’s hand, knowing that he could credibly threaten Lin with replacing the Lin Biao faction with FFA veterans. After Lin Biao fled, Mao carried out his threat and eradicated close associates of Lin Biao wholesale from the military, replacing them with veterans of the FFA. The Lin Biao incident on September 13, 1971, finally led to the full installation of the coalition of the weak.