See all those languages up there? We translate Global Voices stories to make the world's citizen media available to everyone.

Learn more about Lingua Translation  »

China's New ‘Black Five’ Categories – Social Threat or Core Strength?

During the Cultural Revolution in China, the term ‘Five Black Categories‘ was used as a political label for cracking down on five social and political groups – landlords, rich farmers, anti-revolutionists, ‘bad-influencers’ and right-wingers. Many innocent people were prosecuted as a result or even killed, and even the Chinese government admitted that the political struggle was a man-made “disaster” [zh].

However, recently Chinese state media has revived the political labels to describe another five groups – human rights lawyers, underground churches and religions, dissidents, online opinion leaders and social minorities.

The new ‘Black Five Categories’

A historical photo showing the public execution of people from the “Black Five Categories” during the Cultural Revolution. Public domain photo via Molihua.

The article [zh] concerned, written by Yuan Peng, the head of United States Studies under the China Institute of Contemporary International Relation (CICIR), was published in the China Daily overseas edition on July 31, 2012. It accused the U.S. government of penetrating China's grassroots communities to create the conditions for political change, and declared that the ‘new five black categories’ have become U.S. allies.

Beijing lawyer Zhang Kai was among the first to comment on [zh] the political propaganda on social networking platform Weibo:

环球时报英文版刚采访我关于新黑五类的看法。采访中陡然悟出了个道理：新黑五类分别代表五类基本价值，维权律师代表宪政、法治，地下教会代表信仰自由不受官方干涉，网络领袖代表表达自由，异见人士代表自由派或政治权利，弱势全体要求公平正义。而这五类价值恰恰是现代社会最核心的价值。

Global Times just interviewed me for my opinions on the ‘five groups,’ I enlightened to something during the interview. The ‘five groups’ represent five fundamental values. Human rights lawyers represent the law and the constitution. Underground religions and churches represent the fight for freedom of belief. Internet personalities represent freedom of expression. Dissidents represent the fight for political rights. And the minority groups represent the fight for justice. These are the core values of a modern society. (Epoch Times’ translation)

All Chinese people are “black fives”

Human rights lawyer Xiao Guozheng, however, looks into the new black five categories and concludes [zh] that 100% of Chinese people fall into the categories:

公权力对个人的损害才是可怕的、大规模的、长期的，尤其是：当遭受公权损害，而无从得到公正、及时、有效的司法救济时，任何一个貌似强大的人——不论其多么富有（如重庆被黑打的亿万富翁）、多么位高权重（高至国家主席，如刘少奇）——在强大的公权绞肉机面前，都是弱势群体。遑论本有的弱势群体。
请比对一下：你是不是属于弱势群体？
黑五类占国人比重多大呢？我认为是100%

The harm done by the [unrestrained] public authority is horrible and pervasive. No matter how strong, powerful (such as our former President Liu Shaoqi) and wealthy (such as the billionaire in Chongqing) a person is, once s/he becomes the victim of the public authority and cannot be protected by a fair and effective judicial system, they will become the minorities under the unrestrained public authority grinding machine. Not to mention that the existing marginalized group is already the majority.Please ask: Do you belong to the minority group?If you ask what is the proportion of black fives to the nation's population. I would say 100%.

No wonder that news commentator, Yan Jiawei, believes [zh] the new political label will create no real effect:

从袁鹏抛出的所谓“新黑五类论”里，只能有一个正确的解读，那就是他所说的这“五类人”，恰恰就是当前中国社会的中坚力量，新生力量，抑制贪腐，捍卫民主与法治的力量。真正体现出中国人的道德与良心的力量。也正是这些人，才是推动着中国社会实行变革，推动中国社会向民主转型的主力军。国安智囊提出“新黑五类论”，意欲阻止中国的公民维权运动和民主转型，注定是徒劳无功的。

The only interpretation of Yuan Peng's “New Black Five Categories” is that they represent the core strength of Chinese society. A new power to counter corruption, defend democracy and legal justice. They represent the power of morality and conscience which drives the transformation of Chinese society towards democracy. The think tank of national security puts forward the theory of New Black Five Categories to obstruct the citizen rights movement and democratic transformation in China. Such effort is doomed to failure.

Indeed, instead of rejecting the new political label, dissidents and marginalized social groups have started to use the term to label themselves. The photo below shows some Fujian demonstrators who have dressed themselves like the “black fives” during the Cultural Revolution to protest against judicial injustice. The photo spread quickly in Sina Weibo and was deleted.

Twitter user @xinceng34 [zh] reposted it:

Fujian demonstrators label themselves as “black fives” to protest against judicial injustice. Photo via Twitter user xinceng34

Receive great stories from around the world directly in your inbox.

Sign up to receive the best of Global Voices
Email Frequency



No thanks, show me the site
{"cc_re__cc_re__cc_by_3_0": ["core-strength/print/' title='Print version' rel='nofollow'><span class='icon icon-print'></span></a><a href='https://globalvoices.org/2012/08/13/chinas-new-black-five-categories-social-threat-or-core-strength/print/' title='Print version' rel='nofollow' class='gv-print-icon-label share-icon-label'>Print version</a></span></span>&nbsp;</span>\n</div><!--.post-footer-sharing-->\t\t\t\t<div class=\"postfooter postmeta-container\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"postmeta postfooter-credits\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<div class='license'>\n<a rel='license' href='https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/' title='Creative Commons Attribution 3.0'>\n<img class='license-badge' src='https://s3.amazonaws.com/static.globalvoices/img/tmpl/cc-by-icons-300.png' alt='Creative Commons License' /></a>\n</div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"credit\"><div class=\"author contributor\">\n<div class=\"avatar-container\">\n <a href=\"https://globalvoices.org/author/oiwan/\"><a href='https://globalvoices.org/author/oiwan/' class='url user-link' title='View all posts by Oiwan Lam'><img src='https://globalvoices.org/wp-content/uploads/local-avatars/254.jpg' alt='' class='avatar ph", "s.com/static.globalvoices/img/tmpl/funders-light/osi.png' alt='Open Society Institute - Building vibrant and tolerant democracies.' />\n</a>\n</li>\n</ul>\t\t\t\t\t<span class=\"more-link\"><a href='https://globalvoices.org/special-thanks/' title='Learn more' >Show all &raquo;</a> \n</span>\n\t\t\t\t</div>\n\t\t\t</div><!--.widget-container-->\t\n\t\t</div><!--footer-widget-container-->\n\t</div><!-- #footer-->\n\t\t<div class=\"footer-license-container\">\n\t\t\t<div class=\"footer-license\">\n\t\t\t\t<p>\n\t\t\t\t\tThis site is licensed as <a href='https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/' title='Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 (Creative Commons)'>Creative Commons Attribution 3.0</a>. Please read our <a href='http://globalvoicesonline.org/about/global-voices-attribution-policy/'>attribution policy</a> to learn about freely redistributing our work\t\t\t\t\t<span class=\"footer-license-badge\"><a rel='license' href='https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/' title='Creative Commons Attribution 3.0'>\n<img class='license-badge' src='https://s3.amazonaws.com/static.globalvoices/img/tmpl/cc-by-icons-300.png' alt='Creative Commons License' />&nbsp;<", "ainer-->\n\t</div><!-- #footer-->\n\t\t<div class=\"footer-license-container\">\n\t\t\t<div class=\"footer-license\">\n\t\t\t\t<p>\n\t\t\t\t\tThis site is licensed as <a href='https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/' title='Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 (Creative Commons)'>Creative Commons Attribution 3.0</a>. Please read our <a href='http://globalvoicesonline.org/about/global-voices-attribution-policy/'>attribution policy</a> to learn about freely redistributing our work\t\t\t\t\t<span class=\"footer-license-badge\"><a rel='license' href='https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/' title='Creative Commons Attribution 3.0'>\n<img class='license-badge' src='https://s3.amazonaws.com/static.globalvoices/img/tmpl/cc-by-icons-300.png' alt='Creative Commons License' />&nbsp;<span class='license-slogan'>Some Rights Reserved</span></a>\n</span>\t\t\t\t</p>\n\t\t\t</div>\n\t\t</div><!--.footer-license-container--></div><!--.foot-container-->\n</div><!--.page-container-->\n<div id=\"bottom\"></div>\n<!--\n<rdf:RDF xmlns=\"http://web.resource.org/cc/\"\n    xmlns:dc=\"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/\"\n    xmlns:rdf=\"http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rd"]}