Anti-Spiritual Pollution Campaign

A 39-year-old woman from Shanghai, China told me on March 27, 2010 about a campaign that the Communist Chinese government enacted in 1983 and pursued for what she thought was about a month. She said that during this time, executions occurred in many cities throughout China. The woman, who was 13 years old at the time, once witnessed the public execution of 11 people near her home in Shanghai in 1983. Those executed in that particular incident were males ranging from 17 years old through middle-aged--around 40 years old--with the majority being in their teens or twenties. They were executed by gun shot to the head. After being shot, each of the executed were inspected to confirm death. The families of the dead were then called to remove the bodies. Though people were allowed to be present and watch this execution in person, the shootings were not seen on television, and still today people are not free to discuss the executions publicly.

One or two of those executed in Shanghai were neighbors and former playmates of the eyewitness I spoke with, but she said that she was neither afraid nor particularly sad about what she saw. She assumed at the time that if someone was put to death, they must have done something terribly wrong; they must be very "bad." Afterward, however, she heard people privately say that those executed, or at least the younger ones, did not deserve to be put to death. They had not been charged with a violent crime or even theft. It was then that my eyewitness began to believe that the government was at fault.

Searching on Google with the terms "China 1983," I came upon a short (six lines) article on Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org) entitled "Anti-Spiritual Pollution Campaign." According to that article, the campaign was effective from October 1983 through February 1984 and was directed at eliminating the new "Western liberal" influence in popular culture. I am contributing the above information to that article. A short (four lines) article in Chinese on the same topic, entitled "清除精神污染" ("Qingchu Jingshen Wuran," which means "Anti-Spiritual Pollution"), is also available on zh.wikipedia.org.