Can someone please tell me more about China's cultural Revolution?

From Encarta:

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.


Contributed By:
Peter Ferdinand

Microsoft ® Encarta ® Encyclopedia 2003. © 1993-2002 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

I wonder if this part of history for cultural revolution is much studied or discussed in PRC nowadays.

I met many mainland chinese professors and most of them criticized Mao for resulting in such turmoil in chinese society at that time.

I have heard that a popular line for guides and such is to say that Mao was 70% right and 30% wrong, which is a bit surreal.

I am glad the General has met scholars who lament that horrible period. And of course, the friends and the descendants of the people who suffered have their clear opinion too.

But what of today's disaffected young people - the same uneducated young people who were suddenly given the power to smash everything down in 1967? I wonder how they feel when they hear about that period. Enviously nostalgic?

I work with quite a few uneducated and aimless young people. If, all of a sudden, they were given the authorization to come to my house, burn my books, ridicule me and so on without any risk of impunity, I fear to think what would happen.

Back in 1968, I remember, growing up in Paris, a buzz of excitement for what was happening in China. Oh irony! The same buzz of excitement as that around the Soviet Union in 1937 I suppose. And those Parisians in Mao jackets were definitely not idiots. But they could only think in terms of "cultural revolution lite", and the good it would do in France, like a purge, a jolt to the system...

I guess the Cultural revolution was Mao's attempt at being Qin Shi Huang, erradicating the proud culture of a Noble people just so he could be legendary, which to an extent, he was anyway.

Not only do we have the destruction of Chinese Religion and Culture, we have the end of all freedom of thought in china, the great works of Lao Tzu and Confucius scattered to the wind, to be replaced by Maoism and Maoism alone, which would lead to the fanatical and over-zealous red guards. Kudos to Deng for stopping the whole thing in it's tracks.

I would disagree with Encarta's view that the fire went out of the CR in 1969. Certainly, things moved off in a new direction, but it was still very much alive. 1969 saw movements for the developments of people's governing committees in the localities, involving a triple system, of army, party and people. The years after 1969 saw the intriguing rise to superiority of the PLA in many of these 3-way committees, which was endangering Mao's view that 'the party commands the gun and the gun should never be allowed to command the party'. This can be used to explain why Lin Biao met his demise in 1971, though whether that was an assassination or pure bad luck is of course debatable. The fire was very much till in the CR. The years following 1971 saw intense political maneovering and struggle between the Gang of Four and the moderates in the CCP- this had a ripple-down effect on many parts of China- for example, the Shanghai Municipal Party [the stronghold of the Gang of Four] was involved in clashes with more moderate groupings. Throughout these years it was also still the case that Red Guard factions e.t.c were still fighting eachother, and conflicts arose between students and workers, who had formed their own Proletariat groupings. The Cr had started to follow a new cause after 1969, but it was still fiery.

I think how to evaluate the culture revolution is a very hard job now.

The dark side of CR was discribed so much,but what about others?
1)I have seen someone said that Mao launched CR is to destroy the fixed official class
to avoid the over 2000 years lasting official corruption problem in China.
As Mao saw that the first social coutry,USSR,falled to official corruption quickly, he stduied
to solve this problem
CR was a great test of Mao.
Mao would rather be a philosopher more than a ruller of the county...
(But as you known, a philosopher in China always means a kind of tool of the ruller...)
2)Even the disaster in CR also awakened the chinese people, NO ONE IS ABSOLUTELLY CORRECT(even the greatest
leader Mao himself).It made chinese people to use his own brain to think, not just believe in
the great man or the emporers.
I think it's a positive result of CR.
3)Mao destroyed the traditonal culture ideals during CR, and people took him as a new ideal and god.
But after Deng came into power, Mao'S ideal was destroyed,too.
So,you could see that nowadays chinese people have lost their ideals and turned to money only...
That's not a good statues.I believe that chinese people will recall or recreate their new ideals in some day.
4) As someone have said, without CR, Deng could not boost the chinese ecnomy later from 1980's.
I think it's correct.
5)I am an engineer, but I think the cultural or social changes are very complex.
You could not predict/judge the result of the change in history after a short time.
Perhaps we could re-evaluate CR 50 or 100 years later.

Very true. The years of the CR and the event itself are still shrouded in mystery, making objective analysis far from easy. Maybe in 2108 we'd be able to draw more informed conclusions about the event...

The book "Ten Years of Madness" put together by Feng Jicai has as its last chapter a collection of quotes from modern Chinese teenagers when asked about the Cultural Revolution. Almost all of them had no idea what really went on, and most treated the stories they had heard about the atrocities of the era the same way we would treat the tall tales about how our parents had to walk to school uphill both ways.

And a handful said quite frankly that "struggling" their teachers sounded like a good time, and that perhaps China needed another Cultural Revolution.

Really quite ominous.

This for me sums up many of the attitudes of ordinary students at the time of the Cultural Revolution. Remember, these were young people used to fititng into a society where they still had to respect authority figures [e.g teachers], and the CR represented an oppurtunity for them to break and maybe even invert these social relationships. Many were caught up in a wave of enthusiasm where a newly acquired feeling of power prevailed over common sense. The oppurtunity to 'struggle' their teachers was something many previously could only have dreamed of, and this was just too tempting a situation to pass over. I was reading Macfarquhar'd book on the Cultural Revolution recently, and he quotes an acocunt by Yu Guangyuan, who was due to be struggled in on a Beijing campus. He was refused entrance to his own denunciation session on the grounds of not having a ticket for it, and the source gives me the impression that he had to spend a time trying to convince the Red Guard sentry 'on the door' who clearly felt the thrill of power that the rally could not proceed without Yu.