Surviving the Valley of the Shadow of Death: Cai Yongchun in the Cultural Revolution

Abstract

This article examines the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) as a history of trauma for Chinese Protestant intellectuals. Using Cai Yongchun—a graduate of Yenching and Columbia University—as an example, the article aims to 1) demonstrate the overwhelming conformity demanded by the Communist regime and 2) analyze how Christians like Cai sought to align with official lines through intellectual reconstruction. In sum, the party viewed Christian intellectuals as deeply suspect due to their religious and Western affiliations, thus targeting them in successive campaigns that began in the 1950s and culminated in the Cultural Revolution. Despite state marginalization, Christian intellectuals like Cai persisted in their patriotism, eager to remain relevant even amid ideological fanaticism. Active adaptation as such, however, facilitated the hegemonic project of revolutionary subject formation that championed the Communist leadership as the custodian of truth. Cai came to experience a fundamental and perpetual denial of the self, pressuring him to become an ever more faithful follower of Mao and his words. Nevertheless, the proletarian redemption proved elusive, and the old Christian identity resilient.