Abstract

This essay defines Maoism as an experiment in intimate governance and an attempt—albeit a failed one—to dismantle the divide between political leaders and ordinary people. The Communist Party’s claim to intimacy with the people needs to be constantly reenacted in the relationship between party cadres and ordinary citizens––a cadre’s gestures, habits, and attitudes are magnified and scrutinized under the lens of party legitimacy. The special privileges (tequan, 特权) of party leaders are what I call metrics of exceptionality, which separate the party from the people. The promise to govern on the basis of intimacy with the people did not eradicate ruling class entitlements and arrogance but delegitimized them and opened them up to public scrutiny. Although the process of eradicating privileges was always several steps behind their elaboration and intensification, the former was a normative goal that shaped how ordinary citizens perceived and interacted with party cadres. This dual movement in opposing directions still constitutes the fundamental contradiction of China’s political system as seen from within. This essay revisits and examines crucial historical junctures in the People’s Republic of China as framed by popular contestations of special privilege. The fact that in the post-Mao period, party leaders still speak in the language of intimacy, proximity, and distance indicates the aesthetic importance of this relationship in party ideology, despite public complaints regarding its absence. Even when intimacy as a political mode of communication is able to communicate nothing but its own failure, the proximity between the party and the people takes center stage as the aesthetic foundation of party legitimacy.