THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION

THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION 1966-1976

A mass campaign that transformed government and society in the People’s Republic of China

The Cultural Revolution aimed to restore socialism by cleansing the state, the party and society of bourgeois and reactionary elements.

PRELUDE TO THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION: THE POWER STRUGGLE

Mao’s Loss of Power • Mao Zedong’s loss of power after the disaster of the Great Leap Forward. Mao surrendered the national presidency to Liu Shaoqi (April 1959), though he remained chairman of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). • Still greatly respected, Mao continued to exert considerable influence over the party and government policy, though he was not the dominant figure of the 1950s.

Reforms • Control of economic policy was picked up by Liu Shaoqi, Deng Xiaoping, Chen Yun and others. • From 1960 on, this group wound aspects of the Great Leap Forward, bringing an end to the Great Famine and overseeing China’s economic recovery. • They implemented their reforms cautiously, avoiding direct criticisms of Mao, who still retained enormous public support.

Reforms Cont. • Deng Xiaoping and Liu Shaoqi, were growing increasingly popular within the party. • Mao convinced himself that Liu and Deng were using their position to mount a challenge. • Mao had some grounds for his suspicions; in the early 1960s, in the provinces of Gansu and Qinghai, supporters of Liu and Deng took over the local government and began to reverse the collectivisation programme.

He considered these reforms an abandonment of socialist economic principles and a betrayal of his revolutionary vision. The party, the government and the revolution had been hijacked, Mao claimed, by “those who have taken the capitalist road”.

Mao’s decision to regain control • Mao decided that it was a mistake to withdraw himself from the forefront of the political scene. • His absence allowed factions to form. • It was to regain his dominance that Mao turned to Lin Biao (Lin Piao).

Lin Biao • A dedicated Maoist, Lin was a field-marshal of the PLA and had been defence minister since 1959. His reverence for Mao and his leadership of the PLA made him an invaluable ally. • Lin Biao was instrumental in creating “The Cult of Mao”

The Cult of Mao: The Little Red Book • It was Lin Biao who in the early 1960s collaborated with Chen Boda (Chen Po-ta) in compiling the ‘Little Red Book’. Formally entitled Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong, the book was a collection of the thoughts and sayings of Mao since the 1920s. • Encased in red plastic covers, its 33 chapters ranged over a wide range of subjects and highlighted such topics as ‘The Communist Party’, ‘Classes and Class Struggle’ and ‘Culture and Art’. • The work was prefaced by the exhortation: ‘Study Chairman Mao’s writings, follow his teachings and act according to his instructions’.

Little Red Book Cont. • Lin Biao made the Little Red Book, the secular bible of China, “the source of all truth” • A copy was distributed to every soldier and became the basic text used in the study sessions which Lin made a compulsory and daily part of military training • In this way the PLA, the institution with the highest prestige and proudest revolutionary tradition in Communist China, was politicised as a force totally committed to the support of Mao.

The Little Red Book and the General Population • In all, 750 million copies of the Little Red Book were distributed across China. It became the prescribed source for every subject on the curriculum in the schools and universities. • In shops and factories, workers began their day and filled their breaks with communal readings from it. • Throughout China it became a social necessity to have a copy of Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong with one at all times; it was the required text, used to define all issues and settle all arguments. • When Yang Tang, China’s table-tennis champion, was asked by foreign journalists what made him such an excellent player his reply was ‘the progressive thinking of Chairman Mao as expressed in the Little Red Book’.

The Diary of Lei Feng (1963) • It was claimed that this book was the daily journal of a humble PLA lorry driver whose every thought and action were inspired by his devotion to Mao. • The manner in which Lei died, accidentally crushed under the wheels of a truck while faithfully going about his assigned duties, was held up as a symbol of martyrdom for the revolutionary cause. • Every Chinese person, no matter how humble or humdrum his role in life, should try to reach Lei’s level of dedication. • That the story was a total fabrication, made up by the government’s propaganda department. • Lei Feng embodied the loyalty to Mao expected from the average citizen and was thus glorified.

HISTORIOGRAPHY: DANIEL LEESE “Many brigade head-quarters established ‘loyalty chambers’ or ‘loyalty halls’, which were clearly modelled on ancestral temples. The halls were decorated with pictures of the ‘red sun’ Mao Zedong and large-scale quotation boards. Fresh flowers would be placed before Mao’s image and his works were put on display on ‘precious red book shrines’… ‘Instruction shrines’ were established on the village square or in front of … local buildings. [They] resembled traditional memorial sites or archways. They were inscribed with Mao quotations and engraved with sunflowers and loyalty symbols.” Daniel Leese, historian

Cult of Mao: Art • Mao also loomed large in socialist art and visual propaganda, both of which surged during the Cultural Revolution. These activities were closely monitored and strongly influenced by Jiang Qing. • Art emphasised and celebrated China’s socialist achievements. Artists were told to honour the ‘Three Prominences’: prominence to positive characters, prominence to heroes and prominence to the most important leaders. • Much of the art and propaganda of the Cultural Revolution has Mao as a central figure. • Mao is variously depicted as the Great Teacher, the Great Commander, the Great Leader or the Great Helmsman. A 32-metre tall statue of Mao Zedong in Changsha, Hunan, built between 2007 and 2009 – evidence that the Mao personality cult endures today

The Wu Han affaire • The central importance of literary and cultural works in the mounting power struggle was especially evident in the furore that developed over a play, ‘The Dismissal of Hai Rui from Office’, written by Wu Han. • This work, performed between 1961 and 1965, and told the story of Hai Rui, a court official, who was demoted and punished after bravely defying the orders of a cruel emperor. • Since Wu Han belonged to a group of writers thought to be critical of Mao Zedong, it was possible to interpret his play as an intended reference to Mao’s previous dismissal of Peng Dehuai for opposing the Great Leap Forward and stating the truth at Lushan about the famine.

The Wu Han affaire Cont. • It thus provided Lin Biao with a pretext for moving against the anti-Maoist elements in the Communist Party. Beginning in 1965, a series of attacks was made on Wu, charging him with blackening Mao’s good name and undermining Marxism–Leninism. • In late 1965 Yao Wenyuan, a future member of the Gang of Four (will be explained later), penned a lengthy essay condemning the play as political slander. “Hai Rui Dismissed is not a fragrant flower but a poisonous weed,” Yao said. “If we do not clean it up, it will be harmful to the affairs of the people”. • Wu Han committed suicide 4 years later in 1969.

Mao had long been concerned about art and literature and the dangers they posed to his regime. “Writing novels is popular these days, isn’t it”, he mused in 1962. “The use of novels for anti-party activity is a great invention. Anyone wanting to overthrow a political regime must create public opinion and do some preparatory ideological work.” By the start of 1965, Mao was urging a ‘cultural revolution’.

Group of Five • In January the Politburo, responding to Mao’s demands, set up a ‘Five Man Group’ to review anti-socialist attitudes in fields like history, philosophy, literature, law and dramatics. • The Five Man Group, led by Peng Zhen, interpreted Mao’s concerns as an academic debate, not a serious political issue. Peng saw no need for state intervention in fields like literature or the arts, nor did he believe culture should be forced to follow party lines. • The group’s inaction infuriated Mao, who was insistent that anti-socialist cultural expressions be identified and criticised.

Mao’s Action • By the second half of 1965, Mao had decided to take action himself. Yao Wenyuan’s essay attacking “Hai Rui Dismissed” (the play)provided a logical starting point. • In November, Mao ordered state newspapers to publish Yao’s essay in its entirety. • Peng Zhen, believing this risked turning an academic debate into a political confrontation, attempted to block the publication of Yao’s essay but was overruled by Zhou Enlai. Mao’s supporters began to produce a wave of similar essays and articles, each critical of anti-socialist ideas in cultural pieces. • (The group of Five tried to block these)

The Shang Hai Forum A group of leftist radicals, who believed in the harshest measures being taken against those who opposed Mao. • Jiang Qing was the dominant figure in the ‘Shanghai Forum’, a set of Maoists who represented the most hardline element in the CCP. The forum itself was dominated by a group of particularly uncompromising individuals, known as the Gang of Four.

Jiang Qing • Jiang was a film actress in Shanghai until the late 1930s when she abandoned her husband to join the Communists in Yanan. That’s where she met Mao. Later he left his wife for her and the got married. • Initially Mao restricted Jiang’s involvement in politics, but from 1959 onwards, finding her aggressive public style a very useful weapon against his opponents, he encouraged her to play a much bigger part in public affairs. • Jiang was deeply involved in the infighting that preceded the Cultural Revolution. • During that revolution she played a key role as Mao’s terrifying cultural enforcer.

Gang of Four • They were the extreme wing of an extreme movement. The three men in the group, who were feared for their ruthlessness, had risen to prominence in the Shanghai section of the CCP and had become members of the Politburo. • Made up of Jiang Qing and her three male associates: Zhang Chunquiao (1917–2001), Yao Wenyuan 1931–2005) and Wang Honwen (1932–92)

The Shang Hai Forum Cont. • Jiang urged that steps be immediately taken to remove Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping from their positions in the CCP. She further demanded that Chinese culture should be cleansed of those writers and artists whose attitude betrayed their lack of commitment to Mao’s revolution. • The severity of her approach so pleased Lin Biao that he asked her to take charge of the PLA’s cultural policy. • The Shanghai Forum identified the counter-revolutionaries who must be struggled against and destroyed.

Conclusion of the Forum: • The forum’s answer was for the PLA, ‘the mainstay and hope of the Chinese people’, to lead China in rooting out ‘anti-socialist weeds’ and eradicating all traces of artistic corruption that delayed the achievement of a truly proletarian culture. • Lin Biao spoke of an ‘imminent and inevitable’ struggle against class enemies. Lin’s statement proved to be the beginning of a purge of the party. In April 1966, Peng Zhen and the leading members of the Group of Five were denounced for ‘taking the capitalist road’, as was the playwright Wu Han.

Central Cultural Revolution Group: • Politburo disbanded the group of Five and assembled the CCRG. • A striking example of this Maoist control had been the setting up in May 1966 of the Central Cultural Revolution Group (CCRG). • This body, which was dominated by the Gang of Four, was the instrument through which Mao would run the Cultural Revolution. Such was the influence of the CCRG that by the early summer of 1966, Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping found themselves being outmanoeuvred and undermined. • Acting on information the CCRG had given him, Mao himself in May 1966 issued a ‘notification’ to the CCP in which he defined the enemy within.

May 16th circular, issued by the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1966 • While feigning compliance, the outline actually opposes and stubbornly resists the great Cultural Revolution initiated and led personally by Comrade Mao Zedong, as well as [Mao’s] instructions • The outline report by the so-called ‘Group of Five’ is actually an outline report by Peng Zhen alone... Proceeding from a bourgeois world outlook… the outline completely reverses the relation between the enemy and ourselves, putting the one into the position of the other. Our country is now in an upsurge of the great proletarian Cultural Revolution • Party committees at all levels must immediately stop carrying out the Outline Report. • Those representatives of the bourgeoisie who have sneaked into the party, the government, the army, and various cultural circles are a bunch of counter-revolutionary revisionists. • Once conditions are ripe, they will seize political power and turn the dictatorship of the proletariat into a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.

HISTORIOGRAPHY: LUCIAN PYE Writing in the mid-1980s Lucian Pye, an American historian, questioned why so many historians have presented ‘shallow’ causes of the Cultural Revolution – usually that it was caused mostly if not entirely by Mao. Pye asked whether the political and social upheaval of 1966 had deeper causal roots in China’s history, such as its long tradition of peasant rebellions.

“There is no master script [for the Cultural Revolution]… no blueprint, no scenario, no game plan. All there is are random, scattered remarks – some spontaneous, others carefully hedged; some just possibly meant to be taken at face value, others almost certainly intended to obscure rather than elucidate… We have no firm answers.” Michael Schoenhals, historian

THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION