(August 1964)
Jiang Qing has read this. There is some merit in what it says.
[I]
This marginal note was written on “Report on the Discussion Concerning the Evaluation of Li Xiucheng (No. 10)” published in the Guangming Daily. After Qi Benyu’s article “A Critique of Li Xiucheng’s Autobiography” appeared in the Guangming Daily on July 25, 1964, it sparked a debate over the evaluation of Li Xiucheng. This particular issue mainly compiled the views of Cai Shangsi, head of the History Department at Fudan University, and Wu Ze, head of the History Department at East China Normal University, regarding the question of Li Xiucheng’s evaluation.

Cai Shangsi stated that Li Xiucheng should neither be wholly affirmed nor wholly condemned. He said he generally agreed with Qi Benyu’s opinions, yet they were not entirely identical. Some of Qi’s views were rather one-sided; for example, when analyzing the reasons for Li Xiucheng’s surrender, Qi claimed that Li had built the Grand Prince’s Mansion with excessive luxury and waste purely for personal enjoyment, and further asserted that Li had harbored intentions to surrender long before actually doing so. Such arguments, Cai argued, simply did not hold water. Wu Ze added that the current newspaper discussions tended to reduce the issue of Li Xiucheng to a simple dichotomy of genuine versus feigned surrender, thereby oversimplifying the matter. The claim that Li surrendered out of fear of death, Wu pointed out, lacked persuasiveness. In his view, Li Xiucheng’s surrender was merely a single point along a broader trajectory. To understand that point, one must examine it within the context of the entire line; and to grasp the nature of that line, it is necessary to relate it back to the larger historical picture. Only then can the issue be approached comprehensively. By “line,” Wu referred to Li Xiucheng’s life as a whole; by “surface,” he meant the entire history of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. Li Xiucheng’s surrender was intimately connected with the later phase of the Taiping movement. Without the leadership of the proletariat, a peasant revolution could never succeed. Peasants are inherently prone to division. Throughout history, peasant revolts have invariably ended either in failure or in a transformation into feudalism—such was also the case with the Taiping Rebellion. In its final years, the Taiping regime underwent profound changes on economic, political, and military fronts, gradually shifting toward feudalization. As the Taiping state became increasingly feudalized, the class boundaries within it naturally grew ever more blurred. Consequently, by the time Li Xiucheng was captured, he was no longer the same revolutionary figure who had risen up years earlier. Moreover, by then the overall momentum of the Taiping movement had already been lost. It was precisely under these circumstances that Li came to believe that “heaven’s decree” had been fulfilled, leading him to harbor illusions about Zeng Guofan and ultimately to write his “Autobiography.” Such, according to Wu, were both the historical and the class-based roots of Li Xiucheng’s surrender.
[2]
Refers to the excerpts from the views of Cai Shangsi of Fudan University and Wu Ze of East China Normal University on the evaluation of Li Xiucheng, which were included in “Report on the Discussion Concerning the Evaluation of Li Xiucheng (No. 10)” published in the Guangming Daily.