China: Cultural Revolution

Before World War II, the tenuous balance of power in China was divided between the nationalist Kuomintang, led by Chiang Kai Shek, and the Chinese Communist Party. These two groups joined forces during the war to battle the Japanese, but after the end of the war the Communist Red Army, led by Mao Zedong, drove the Kuomintang out of mainland China and into Taiwan, where they remain to this day. The Communist Party officially took control of China in 1949, with Mao Zedong holding a majority of the power within the party.

In 1958, in an attempt to distance Chinese Communism from the Soviet variety, Mao instituted what he referred to as the Great Leap Forward. This was an initiative aimed at doubling food production through the use of mass collectivization (the movement of urbanites to communal farms in the country) and increasing the production of steel through the building of new factories and refineries.

The Leap was very poorly planned and even more poorly executed. The peasants charged with working the steel refineries were often untrained, stole materials, and used less than satisfactory methods. The party’s policy was to pay refinery groups according to the amount of steel they produced, and therefore steel production did see an increase, but most of the steel that was created was worthless. Further, many of the collective farms failed, and important farming implements were often sent to the steel refineries to be melted down. After a series of natural disasters, which were exacerbated by Mao’s policy of exporting grain (to keep up the image of Chinese Communism), China fell into economic ruin and a severe food shortage. Over the following years an estimated 20-30 million Chinese would die of starvation.

After the disastrous failure of the Great Leap Forward, Mao admitted to some mistakes, closed many of the communes, and resigned his post as Chairman of the PRC (while retaining his role as Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, which still held the country’s true political power). Some of his power at this time was relinquished to Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping, who rescinded many of the Great Leap policies and closed a majority of the remaining collective farms. Mao and Liu Shaoqi butted heads over the following three years, though, after Liu began to publically criticize Mao and his failed policies. As a response, Mao created the Socialist Education Movement in 1963, which was an indoctrination movement aimed at China’s young students. It would ensure lasting support for Mao in the years to come.

In May of 1966 the Politburo (a small group of high-ranking Communist Party members who oversee the Chinese Communist Party) issued a statement which marked the unofficial beginning of what would be known as the Cultural Revolution. This statement attacked intellectuals, “imperialists,” and anyone who openly or otherwise criticized Mao Zedong’s ideas. It was around this time that the first group of Red Guards was formed. The Guards were large groups of Party supporters, often students and other young people, who provided a destructive and often violent physical backbone for the Communist Party. Its factions were generally based around universities, and were often spontaneous and anarchic in nature. By July of 1966, when the purges began, the Red Guard movement had grown exponentially.

The very next month, in August, the Chinese Communist Party passed a decision in which they gave a name to the previously unnamed revolution, calling it the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. This effectively lent legitimacy to the Red Guard movement, which was by this time nationwide, and called for the suppression of the customs of the past and the ushering in of a new era of Chinese Communism. Many were imprisoned or purged, and religious ceremonies were persecuted. On August 16th, Mao Zedong appeared on top of the Tiananmen Square Gate to the cheering of millions of gathered Red Guard members.

From 1966-1968 the power of the Red Guards, supported by Mao, continued to grow. Violence erupted in Beijing and elsewhere, as Mao ordered the police forces not to interfere with any Red Guard business, and as the Guards began to denounce certain hesitant military officials and to loot weapons and ammunition from military barracks. Fighting soon broke out between separate Red Guard factions with slightly dissimilar messages, and in many places the Red Guard completely replaced the People’s Liberation Army. It wasn’t until 1968, after Mao had gained complete political power, that he facilitated their dismantling. He issued the “Down to the Countryside” movement in December, which forced many urban Red Guard members to move out into the surrounding countryside, thereby dispersing their power and the potential of their destructive force, which he feared would cause irreversible damage to the foundations of the Communist Party itself.

This marked roughly the end of the armed and violent revolution, but historically it wasn’t until the death of Mao himself that the Cultural Revolution ended. When he died, on September 9th, 1976, Mao left the relatively unexpected Hua Guofeng in charge as the Chairman of the Communist Party. Hua subsequently arrested the Gang of Four, which was a group of propagandists headed by Mao’s wife, and who were very damaging to many party officials—including Deng Xiaoping. The death of Mao also marked the political rehabilitation of party members and intellectuals who had been jailed or stripped of power during the Revolution. Deng himself was able to come back to government under Hua, as were many other politicians with similar ideals.

Death toll estimates during the Cultural Revolution range from 500,000 to 3 million, but an accurate number is near impossible to ascertain due to the PRC’s reluctance to allow research on the subject within China. Countless cultural artifacts, artworks, and historical sites were destroyed by Red Guard members, who viewed them as a part of the old way of thinking. Additionally, the mass relocation, deportation, killing, and emigration of intellectuals during the Revolution was a serious blow to the country’s educational system, which took years to recover.

Today the Cultural Revolution is viewed by both the People’s Republic of China and the Chinese Communist Party as a major mistake, the fault of which lies mostly with Mao. However, it is viewed as an unbalance of power due to anarchistic policies, and so the Chinese government has used it as an excuse to increase its power of the republic.