Cultural Revolution

Cultural Revolution, Chinese political upheaval of the 1960s and 1970s, the greatest mass movement in the history of the People’s Republic of China. Mao Zedong launched the Great People’s Cultural Revolution in 1966. Its target was the “Four Olds”: old customs, old habits, old culture, and old ways of thinking.

After the failure of the Great Leap Forward, Mao had been forced to watch resentfully as Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping had taken charge of politics and restored the economy. As he saw it, they had become corrupted by power and even more infected with Soviet-style revisionism. He believed that the chief obstacle to socialism was the waning spirit of revolution in China, especially among Communist party cadres. He pinned his faith on the younger generations and wished to give them a taste for genuine revolutionary struggle.

Mao also wanted, however, to recover his place as leader. He was egged on by his third wife, Jiang Qing, who had been kept out of politics by Mao’s colleagues ever since their marriage in Yanan. She, too, longed for revenge.

The movement began in Shanghai and then spread to Beijing. The first casualty was Luo Ruiqing, Chief of Staff of the People’s Liberation Army and the victim of scheming by Lin Biao, Minister of Defence. This ensured that the PLA would remain loyal to Mao.

Initially Liu Shaoqi attempted to contain the threat by establishing his own Cultural Revolution group. However, Jiang Qing kept up the pressure. In August 1966 Mao published his article “Bombard the Headquarters”, endorsing the revolutionary posters and slogans of students. In the same month he presided over the first mass demonstration of Red Guards in Tiananmen Square in Beijing. Nonplussed by his vindictiveness, veteran cadres were unable to withstand repudiation by Mao, for they and the regime still depended upon him for legitimacy.

In October 1966 the “little red book” of the thoughts of Chairman Mao appeared. Teaching in schools and colleges came to an end as Red Guards attacked authority figures, teachers, and sometimes parents. In a society which venerated age and learning, now youth, physical labour, and the practical knowledge of the peasant were exalted. Party and government bodies were disorientated and paralysed by self-criticism. The CCP organization disintegrated. “Revolutionary Committees” sprang up to run local affairs. Red Guards conducted random searches of houses for incriminating evidence. Wild denunciations provoked confessions, which in turn incriminated others. Public humiliation followed. Thousands committed suicide. Intellectuals were put to the most demeaning physical labour in the countryside and told to adapt their knowledge to serving the peasants. Millions of Red Guards began to commandeer trains to travel free round the country, spreading “revolutionary experiences”.

In January 1967 the movement flared up in other urban areas. Shanghai established a short-lived “commune” in February, against Mao’s advice. Various social groups who had previously been marginalized took advantage of the situation to make a comeback and gain their revenge upon the incumbent elite. Contract workers, who had been denied the state welfare benefits available for permanent state employees, now demanded equal treatment and attacked the cadres who had devised the system. Some suffered grotesque tortures. The children of former enemies of the regime who had suffered permanent discrimination now got their own back on the children of cadres by attacking them as “capitalist-roaders”.

The Cultural Revolution went out of control. Opponents of Mao attempted to seize the initiative by forming their own Red Guards. Clashes took place in the streets. The PLA was urged to support the radicals, but military commanders often found it impossible to distinguish between the various sides, as all vied to be truly “Maoist”. Sometimes they intervened against the radicals. In July a serious case of insubordination by the commander of PLA forces in the city of Wuhan was only settled by the personal intervention of Zhou Enlai.

The year 1968 saw even greater chaos. In the spring thousands died in fighting in southern China in the provinces of Guangdong and Guangxi. Various groups manufactured their own weapons, stole them, including artillery, from the PLA, or simply improvised. In some areas cannibalism of “class enemies” reportedly took place. Yet despite these casualties, and although Liu Shaoqi was persecuted to death, the regime did not engage in a systematic policy of mass executions as Joseph Stalin had done in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). Senior cadres were forced to attend so-called May Seventh cadre schools to mend their attitudes but they could earn rehabilitation. Even Deng Xiaoping made a comeback in 1973.

Rural areas were largely exempt from the worst of the struggles. Culture, on the other hand, was badly affected. Many ancient treasures were destroyed. Traditional operas were banned. Only four “revolutionary operas” approved by Jiang Qing could be performed. No worthwhile new art was created.

Minorities suffered particular discrimination. Although not primarily directed against them, the attempts to wipe out the “Four Olds” led to direct assaults upon their culture and their identity, usually by Han Chinese Red Guards. Most historical national treasures were damaged or destroyed. Religious practices and customs were vilified.

By 1969 Mao had become disenchanted with the chaos. Though not giving them explicit directions, he had urged on the Red Guards, but now even he recognized that things had gone too far. He complained that the Red Guards had let him down. In March 1969 fighting broke out on the border with the Soviet Union to the north. With no apparent slackening of the Vietnam War to the south, the PRC was threatened by conflict on two fronts with the two superpowers. Maoists urged revolutionaries in other countries to follow their example, but few did. China could not afford chaos at home and isolation abroad.

In April 1969 the CCP held its Ninth Congress. It marked the revival of the party, but under army domination it entrenched Lin Biao as Mao’s chosen successor. Then both the army and the party began to reimpose order. Millions of Red Guards were induced to resettle in distant and inhospitable parts for the sake of “deepening the revolution”. They found it impossible to return, at least until the 1980s.

Although the fire went out of the Cultural Revolution in 1969, it was not officially declared to have ended until after Mao’s death and the arrest of the Gang of Four (Jiang Qing, Zhang Chunqiao, Yao Wenyuan, and Wang Hongwen) in 1976. It was a pivotal event in the history of the PRC. The senior cadres who had suffered under it survived in the conviction that nothing like it should ever be allowed again. By discrediting Maoism and any Maoist model of socialism, it encouraged leaders such as Deng Xiaoping to look for alternatives. This made it an important precondition for the economic reforms of the late 1970s, and for the political coalition which set them in motion.

Since 1978 it has also inspired a torrent of works of literature and film, evoking experiences which could not be accurately represented at the time, and re-establishing a sense of community after an era when everyone hid their real feelings and attitudes, even from members of the same family.