Modern Chinese political history is often narrated as a series of ruptures — isolated tragedies, misjudgments, or “deviations from the correct path.” But if we read 1957, the Cultural Revolution, and 1989 not as disconnected episodes, but as structurally linked moments in a long, conflicted search for political participation and autonomy, a different picture emerges. What appears as “failure” or “radical excess” can also be seen as the recurring collision between mass political aspiration and the logic of centralized power.

This is not a moral drama of heroes and villains, but a systemic one: expectations of democratic participation expanded faster than the political system could absorb — and each attempted opening produced new contradictions that were ultimately resolved through re-closure.

The Anti-Rightist Campaign is often remembered simply as repression of intellectuals. Yet the crisis began in a paradoxical gesture: an invitation to criticize. The Hundred Flowers Movement did not create democratic expectations; it activated expectations that already existed within Republican-era intellectual circles — rule of law, procedural governance, and civic responsibility.

When criticism emerged not as symbolic decoration but as genuine political speech, the state interpreted it not as participation but as threat. What collapsed in 1957 was not merely tolerance for dissent — it was the possibility of good-faith political dialogue between intellectual society and the governing structure.

From that point forward, participation would no longer be mediated through institutional speech, but through mass mobilization.

The Cultural Revolution was many things simultaneously — factional struggle, elite opportunism, and traumatic social upheaval. But it was also, at its core, a radical experiment in popular legitimacy.

Mao’s appeal to the masses did not simply dissolve hierarchy; it redistributed symbolic sovereignty downward. Students and workers began to act as if they themselves were direct custodians of moral and political authority. Mass democracy was not institutionalized — it was improvisational, volatile, and easily hijacked by charismatic “movement elites.” But the psychological shift was real:

Ordinary citizens briefly believed that power could be claimed, not merely received.

This belief would not vanish after the movement ended. Instead, it remained latent — suppressed institutionally, but preserved culturally as memory.

When mobilization re-emerged in 1989, it did not come simply from Western liberal influence or economic anxiety. It drew upon two prior inheritances:

• from 1957 — the unfulfilled hope that reasoned criticism could coexist with authority

• from the Cultural Revolution — the embodied memory that mass action could force authority to respond

The movement did not view itself as rebellion against the system, but as a moral claim within it. In that sense, it was the final — and perhaps last — attempt to negotiate space for sovereignty “from below.”

The resolution of 1989 did more than suppress a protest. It closed the last structural pathway through which democratic expectation might re-enter formal politics. After that point, political participation was redirected into technocratic governance, market aspiration, and private life. Sovereignty ceased to be imagined as a shared moral project, and became a managed abstraction.

What had been gradually constrained since 1957 was, by 1989, conclusively terminated.

Across these three moments, a pattern appears:

1. Expectation opens — intellectual, moral, or popular

2. Institutional absorption fails — participation exceeds control capacity

3. Re-closure occurs — accompanied by narrative reframing to legitimize closure

This cycle is not uniquely Chinese; many modern states struggle with the same contradiction between mass legitimacy and centralized authority. But in China, the compression of twentieth-century transformation made the tension unusually intense.

Each moment did not destroy democracy — it re-defined the boundary of what democracy was allowed to mean.

There was once a vast walled garden. The people who lived outside the wall were told that one day, everyone would share its sunlight.

The first seed was planted when the gate briefly opened, and the gardeners invited the people to speak about how the garden should grow. But when the people spoke too honestly, the gate closed, and the seed was buried deep underground.

Years later, a second seed burst through the soil on its own. The vines climbed wildly, and some among the people declared themselves masters of the garden’s growth. The vines tangled, the branches fought, and in the chaos, the seed was uprooted and scattered.

A long time passed. Then a third seed appeared — carefully tended, cautiously hopeful. The people gathered again, believing that perhaps this time the garden might finally belong to everyone.

But the wall grew higher, and the soil was sealed.

After that, the people stopped planting seeds. Some built houses in the shadow of the wall. Some learned to forget the sunlight. And some — quietly — carried the memory of the seeds in their pockets, like a map to a garden that no longer existed, but had once felt real.

本作品及其附录、结构分析与寓言文本，作者自愿放弃在适用法律允许范围内的一切著作权及相关权利，将其投入公共领域。
任何人可以在未经许可的情况下，对本作品进行复制、修改、再发布、汇编、商业或非商业使用，无需署名、无需通知作者。

This work, including its appendices, structural analysis, and allegorical text, is released under the CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.
To the extent possible under law, the author has waived all copyright and related rights in this work. Anyone may copy, modify, distribute, and use the work, for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notice.

如果某些法域不承认完全放弃著作权，则本声明应视为授予任何人一项无限制、不可撤回、免费的使用许可。

Modern Chinese political history is often narrated as a series of ruptures — isolated tragedies, misjudgments, or “deviations from the correct path.” But if we read 1957, the Cultural Revolution, and 1989 not as disconnected episodes, but as structurally linked moments in a long, conflicted search for political participation and autonomy, a different picture emerges. What appears as “failure” or “radical excess” can also be seen as the recurring collision between mass political aspiration and the logic of centralized power.

This is not a moral drama of heroes and villains, but a systemic one: expectations of democratic participation expanded faster than the political system could absorb — and each attempted opening produced new contradictions that were ultimately resolved through re-closure.

The Anti-Rightist Campaign is often remembered simply as repression of intellectuals. Yet the crisis began in a paradoxical gesture: an invitation to criticize. The Hundred Flowers Movement did not create democratic expectations; it activated expectations that already existed within Republican-era intellectual circles — rule of law, procedural governance, and civic responsibility.

When criticism emerged not as symbolic decoration but as genuine political speech, the state interpreted it not as participation but as threat. What collapsed in 1957 was not merely tolerance for dissent — it was the possibility of good-faith political dialogue between intellectual society and the governing structure.

From that point forward, participation would no longer be mediated through institutional speech, but through mass mobilization.

The Cultural Revolution was many things simultaneously — factional struggle, elite opportunism, and traumatic social upheaval. But it was also, at its core, a radical experiment in popular legitimacy.

Mao’s appeal to the masses did not simply dissolve hierarchy; it redistributed symbolic sovereignty downward. Students and workers began to act as if they themselves were direct custodians of moral and political authority. Mass democracy was not institutionalized — it was improvisational, volatile, and easily hijacked by charismatic “movement elites.” But the psychological shift was real:

Ordinary citizens briefly believed that power could be claimed, not merely received.

This belief would not vanish after the movement ended. Instead, it remained latent — suppressed institutionally, but preserved culturally as memory.

When mobilization re-emerged in 1989, it did not come simply from Western liberal influence or economic anxiety. It drew upon two prior inheritances:

• from 1957 — the unfulfilled hope that reasoned criticism could coexist with authority

• from the Cultural Revolution — the embodied memory that mass action could force authority to respond

The movement did not view itself as rebellion against the system, but as a moral claim within it. In that sense, it was the final — and perhaps last — attempt to negotiate space for sovereignty “from below.”

The resolution of 1989 did more than suppress a protest. It closed the last structural pathway through which democratic expectation might re-enter formal politics. After that point, political participation was redirected into technocratic governance, market aspiration, and private life. Sovereignty ceased to be imagined as a shared moral project, and became a managed abstraction.

What had been gradually constrained since 1957 was, by 1989, conclusively terminated.

Across these three moments, a pattern appears:

1. Expectation opens — intellectual, moral, or popular

2. Institutional absorption fails — participation exceeds control capacity

3. Re-closure occurs — accompanied by narrative reframing to legitimize closure

This cycle is not uniquely Chinese; many modern states struggle with the same contradiction between mass legitimacy and centralized authority. But in China, the compression of twentieth-century transformation made the tension unusually intense.

Each moment did not destroy democracy — it re-defined the boundary of what democracy was allowed to mean.

There was once a vast walled garden. The people who lived outside the wall were told that one day, everyone would share its sunlight.

The first seed was planted when the gate briefly opened, and the gardeners invited the people to speak about how the garden should grow. But when the people spoke too honestly, the gate closed, and the seed was buried deep underground.

Years later, a second seed burst through the soil on its own. The vines climbed wildly, and some among the people declared themselves masters of the garden’s growth. The vines tangled, the branches fought, and in the chaos, the seed was uprooted and scattered.

A long time passed. Then a third seed appeared — carefully tended, cautiously hopeful. The people gathered again, believing that perhaps this time the garden might finally belong to everyone.

But the wall grew higher, and the soil was sealed.

After that, the people stopped planting seeds. Some built houses in the shadow of the wall. Some learned to forget the sunlight. And some — quietly — carried the memory of the seeds in their pockets, like a map to a garden that no longer existed, but had once felt real.

本作品及其附录、结构分析与寓言文本，作者自愿放弃在适用法律允许范围内的一切著作权及相关权利，将其投入公共领域。
任何人可以在未经许可的情况下，对本作品进行复制、修改、再发布、汇编、商业或非商业使用，无需署名、无需通知作者。

This work, including its appendices, structural analysis, and allegorical text, is released under the CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.
To the extent possible under law, the author has waived all copyright and related rights in this work. Anyone may copy, modify, distribute, and use the work, for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notice.

如果某些法域不承认完全放弃著作权，则本声明应视为授予任何人一项无限制、不可撤回、免费的使用许可。