S21: Cultural Revolution

• August 1958: the Chinese Communist military launched a massive shelling against the Taiwan-held islands of Quemoy (Jinmen) and Matsu (Mazu)
• Eisenhower ordered the reinforcement of the U.S. Navy Seventh Fleet in the area
• Both sides continued to bombard each other intermittently until 1979

• Revolt in Lhasa, Tibet, against Chinese rule.
• Suppressed by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) of China.
• 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, fled Lhasa, and established the Tibetan Government-in-Exile in Dharamshala, India.
• Large-scale exile of Tibetans and ongoing struggle for Tibetan sovereignty and autonomy from India.

• Mao Zedong and Nikita Khrushchev clashed over leadership within the communist bloc.
• Differences in interpreting Marxism-Leninism, particularly regarding Stalinism and peaceful coexistence with the West.
• Territorial disputes (Xinjiang) and historical grievances (regarding Soviet support for the CCP before 1949) added to the tension.
• The USSR fully withdrew economic and technical aid to China in 1961.

• From policy debate to “line struggle”: Peng et al. branded as “anti-party” group and purged
• End of democratic centralism: loyal dissent no longer possible
• Political patronage as key: Lin Biao as new minister of defense
• New age of radicalism: attack on “rightists” undermined ability to rein in excesses of GLF

• China can leapfrog normal stages of development through extraordinary effort of the masses
• Applying will to accomplish “impossible” tasks: Egalitarianisnism, experimentation, ideological fervor, mass mobilization, and subjectivism.

• What is the “Cultural Revolution”?
• Why and how did Mao bring down the party-state bureaucracy?
• How did ordinary Chinese experience the revolution?

• “Ten years of chaos”
• “Millions of death”
• “Red guards”
• Mao as mastermind

• Why did Mao attack the party-state that he built?
• Why did the party-state collapse so quickly? Why was order so hard to restore?
• Why was the Cultural Revolution such a global phenomenon?
• Why do people feel nostalgic about such a calamitous event?
• Why is the Cultural Revolution still relevant in China today?

Urban

• Return of scientific planning
• Reduction of population, 10 million returned to the countryside
• Work units strengthened: lifetime employment with benefits, loss of right to change workplace

Rural

• Restoration of private plots and right to small-scale house-hold production
• Restoration of work points and rural markets

“In earlier years, you did quite a few good things, but … all officials in and out of the capital know that your mind is not right, that you are too arbitrary, too perverse. You think you alone are right, you refuse to accept criticism and your mistakes are many.”

Excerpt from Hai Rui Dismissed from Office

Liu Shaoqi:

• Material incentives to workers, coordinated development, clear hierarchies of authority
• Realistic planning by technically skilled experts
• Mass campaigns cannot be used to accomplish economic goals
• Economic level returned to 1957 levels of output by 1966

Mao Zedong:

• Rehabilitation would steer the country away from revolution
• Campaign against Soviet revisionism under Nikita Khrushchev
• Increasing reliance on the PLA to achieve political goals

• Minister of Defense in 1959, succeeding Peng Dehuai.
• Organized the compilation and distribution of the “Little Red Book” (Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong)
• Contributed to the elevation of Mao Zedong to a near-deified status.
• Officially designated as Mao’s successor in 1969.

• Launched in 1963, this campaign promoted Lei Feng as a model soldier.
• The PLA as a paragon of revolutionary spirit, discipline, and political consciousness.
• Chinese population encouraged to emulate Lei’s virtues of selflessness, hard work, and loyalty to Mao and the Communist Party.

• Alienated from Chinese politics
• Change of successor: Distrust of Liu Shaoqi and his commitment to revolution
• Concern with new capitalist class within party bureaucracy, and growing urban-rural inequalities
• Expose China’s youth to a revolutionary experience and raise a generation of revolutionary successors

• What are Mao’s goals for launching the Cultural Revolution?
• Why didn’t Mao stop the campaign after the leadership?
• Who were the people? Who were their friends and enemies?

• Soviet Union, China’s model, evolving from socialism into a form of “state socialism”
• Main danger to socialism not from overthrown or external enemies, but from “new bourgeois elements” inside the party
• “Continuing revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat”, against “capitalist roaders”

• Who is Rae Yang? What is her life story before the Cultural Revolution?
• How did she feel about the Cultural Revolution in the beginning?
• What happened to her teachers and neighbors?
• How did Rae feel about Chairman Mao? What was her reaction when she saw him for the first time?

Political: nomenklatura system

• Young pioneers, Youth League, Party memberships
• State system as vessel for Communist ideologies, but it was a path to membership and material benefits
• The most important mechanism for class differentiation in Mao’s China

Academic: Pyramid of increasingly selective schools

• Closed system: all schools run by party committees
• University graduates given mandatory job assignments by school authorities
• Assignments based on specialization, grades, political background and performance

Political performance – most important

• Ideological commitment
• Collectivist ethics: willingness to “serve the people”
• Compliance with authority

Family background

• Class origin: based on status of family head between 1946 and 1949, inherited patrilineally
• Political background: History of counter-revolutionary or criminal offenses

Laboring classes

• Revolutionary cadre, soldier, martyr
• Worker
• Poor or lower-level peasant

Other

• Upper-middle peasant
• Small proprietor
• White-color employee
• Independent professional

Exploiting classes

• Capitalist
• Rich peasant
• Landlord

• Affirmative action, Chinese style
• Preferential recruitment of working, peasant, and revolutionary classes
• Way to counter influence of old elites – disenfranchised, but still culturally advantaged

• Describe Rae Yang’s trip to Guangzhou.
• What happened during the meeting with Zhao Ziyang, the first secretary of the CCP Guangdong Committee?
• Who is a “perpetrator”?
• How credible do you find Rae as a narrator?

• Red Guards attacked old educated elites in name of workers and peasants
• Red Guards made up of revolutionary cadres’ children

Political and cultural capital as key axis of contention

• Old educated elites: Dispossessed but still culturally advantaged
• New political elites: From peasant revolutionaries to technocratic officials
• Old educated elite and new political elites both attacked

“Bloodline theory”

• Political elites as hereditary political aristocracy
• Couplet denigrating students from “bad” family origins
• “The son of a hero is a real man; the son of a reactionary is a bastard”

• Red Guard activism structured by existing party organization
• Extensive hierarchy linking party organization to network of political loyalists
• System of loyalty and activism
• Elite sponsorship from Mao and the Central Cultural Revolution Group

• Replaced Politburo in Feb 1967 in wake of top leadership purges
• Led by Kang Sheng, Jiang Qing, and allies from Shanghai propaganda dept
• Marginal political figures dependent on Mao’s political patronage
• Leadership role in Beijing insurgency: meetings with student leaders, intelligence networks, etc.

• Students: 657K, too small, too divided
• Workers: 52 million in state and collective enterprises
• First organization: Shanghai Workers’ Revolutionary Rebel General Headquarters
• Led by Wang Hongwen: 32-year-old factory security officer
• 1966-12: Mao gave green light to mobilization
• Workers’ insurgency spread, sidelining student movement

• Escalation of economic demands: Higher wages, welfare, and urban household registration status, etc.
• Factory and gov officials held hostage and struggled
• New fault lines: Radicals (against local leadership) vs. Moderates (loyal to party apparatus)
• In Shanghai: Workers’ General Headquarters vs. Scarlet Guards

• 1967-01-19: Shanghai People’s Commune
• High tide of power seizure across the country, followed by suppression of mass movement
• New structure: revolutionary committee made up of ‘Triple alliances’ – rebel organizations, the army and CCP cadres

• 1967-04: Military ordered to pull back from suppression of rebels
• Is the army intensifying and prolonging conflicts?
• Is military suppression necessary to consolidate local victory?
• Is the army forcing solution on regional conflicts and pre-mature end of revolution?

Two factions:

• Million Heroes, skilled workers, supported by local PLA under Wuhan Military Region
• Wuhan Workers’ General Headquarters, workers and students from Red Guard organizations

Shifting allegiances:

• CCRG initially endorsed Workers’ General Headquarters as “true” revolutionary group
• Mao’s support: July 1967 visit to Wuhan, calling for reinstatement of rebel organizations and self-criticism of Wuhan military leaders.
• Military resistance: Disgruntled Million Heroes rebels staged kidnap of CCRG member Wang Li during Mao’s visit. Mao fled the city.

• 1967-08: Mao reversed course again. Attack against military ended.
• The military as the only way to enforce order; Shanghai model – power seizure – dead
• Universities closed, students and government staff sent down for manual labor
• New political terror on Red Guards and rebel groups: “Struggle, criticize, transform”

Leadership purge

• Politburo, standing committee, and depts lost power and ceased to function
• Central Cultural Revolution Group (CCRG), established by Mao loyalists, to attack party-state
• Authority based on Mao’s political patronage

Destruction of Leninist party-state

• Central Committee downsized, gutted, paralyzed
• Replaced by Central Cultural Revolution Group (CCRG)
• Replaced by committees merging civilian, military cadres with rebel representatives

Mass insurgency

• Red Guards
• Worker Movement