Russian Count Nikolay Yevdokimov, who organized the extermination campaigns of "Tsitsekun", designated Russian military operations targeting Circassian natives by the term ochishchenie ("cleansing").
In history, religion and political science, a purge is a position removal or execution
of people who are considered undesirable by those in power from a
government, another, their team leaders, or society as a whole. A group
undertaking such an effort is labeled as purging itself.
Purges can be either nonviolent or violent, with the former
often resolved by the simple removal of those who have been purged from
office, and the latter often resolved by the imprisonment, exile, or murder of those who have been purged. Governments who enact purges but want to obscure that they are doing
so, may often justify their actions as dealing with security threats or
corruption.
Characteristics
The Shanghai massacre of 1927 in China and the Night of the Long Knives
of 1934 in Nazi Germany, in which the leader of a political party turns
against a particular section or group within the party and kills its
members, are commonly called "purges". Mass expulsions of populations on
the grounds of racism and xenophobia, such as the deportation of the Crimean Tatars in the Soviet Union, are not. Though sudden and violent purges are notable, most purges do not
involve immediate execution or imprisonment, for example the periodic
massive purges of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia on grounds of apathy or dereliction, or the purge of Jews and political dissenters from the German Civil Service in 1933–1934.
Purges are particularly likely when the power of competing
elites is temporarily low, such as when a new dictator has taken office, or when a leader has just survived a coup. New dictators often target the military for a purge.
Purges were frequent in the Soviet Union. In the Soviet Union, military and internal security elites were more likely to be detained than civilian elites.
The term "purge" is often associated with Stalinism. While leading the USSR, Joseph Stalin carried out repeated purges which resulted in tens of thousands of people sentenced to Gulag labor camps and the outright executions of rival communists, military officers, ethnic minorities, wreckers, and citizens accused of plotting against communism. Stalin together with Nikolai Yezhov initiated the most notorious of the CPSU purges, the Great Purge, during the mid to late 1930s.
In total, the number of political victims of Stalin's purges is estimated to be tens of millions.
The Red Purge was an anticommunist movement in occupied Japan from the late 1940s to the early 1950s. Carried out by the Japanese government and private corporations with the aid and encouragement of the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers
(SCAP), the Red Purge resulted in tens of thousands of alleged members,
supporters, or sympathizers of left-wing groups, especially those said
to be affiliated with the Japanese Communist Party, removed from their jobs in government, the private sector, universities, and schools. The Red Purge emerged from rising Cold War tensions and the Red Scare after World War II, and was a significant element within a broader "Reverse Course" in Occupation policies. The Red Purge reached a peak following the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950, when communist China supported North Korea. It began to ease after General Douglas MacArthur was replaced as commander of the Occupation by General Matthew Ridgway in 1951, and came to a conclusion with the end of the Occupation in 1952.
In the period 1938–1975, the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), an investigative committee of the United States House of Representatives,
carried out a campaign of purging alleged "communist sympathizers" from
positions in public life. While non-violent, HUAC's campaign destroyed
the careers of many individuals, particularly in the entertainment
industry, where HUAC attempted to purge left-wing voices entirely from
the industry through the Hollywood blacklist.
While not part of HUAC, U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy
was a major driver of efforts to purge real and perceived communist
sympathizers through the 1940s and 1950s, which ended in his
condemnation and censure in 1954.
The Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution of the Iranian government purged universities.
In August 2023, the government reportedly had a program to
hire 15,000 replacements for people in universities and to place
clerics in schools. It also removed Tehran University of Art’s major curricula for sculpting, music and cinematography/filmmaking. The government added Islamic studies even more so. Many academics were terminated/fired. On 14 December 2023 the Ministry of Education announced that it would hire 7000 clerics instead of teachers.
In 2025 that, after the Iran–Israel conflict, Iranian
authorities arrested hundreds of people on security and espionage
charges and increased executions, particularly in Kurdish regions. In 2026, Iran increased executions of dissidents and people accused of espionage.
De-Ba'athification was undertaken by the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) and subsequent Iraqi governments to remove the Ba'ath Party's influence in the new Iraqi political system after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. It was first outlined in CPA Order 1 which entered into force on 16 May 2003. The order declared that all public sector
employees affiliated with the Ba'ath Party were to be removed from
their positions and to be banned from any future employment in the
public sector.
It is estimated that, before 2007, 50,000 civil government employees, as well as employees of other organizations listed in Annex A of Order No. 2, were removed from their positions as a result of de-Ba'athification. Another estimate places the number, also before 2007, at "100,000 civil
servants, doctors, and teachers", who were forcibly removed from the
public sector due to low-level affiliation.
Members of the Kim family have each periodically purged their political rivals or perceived threats since consolidating their control over North Korea,
beginning in the 1950s. The most senior Kim purged those who opposed
his son's succession to the supreme leadership of North Korea. Kim Il Sung's most prominent purge occurred during the "August Incident" in 1956, when the pro-Soviet and pro-Chinese Yanan factions of the Workers' Party of Korea
(WPK) attempted to depose Kim. Most of those involved in the plot were
executed while some others fled to the USSR and China. While some purges
were carried out under Kim Jong Il, they were not as common as they were under his father/son. Kim Jong Un
purged several high-ranking officials and generals installed by his
father Kim Jong Il in the former's first years in power, including, most
prominently, his uncle Jang Song-thaek.
The 2017–2019 Saudi Arabian purge was the mass arrest of a
number of prominent Saudi Arabian princes, government ministers, and
business people in Saudi Arabia on 4 November 2017. It took place weeks after the creation of an anti-corruption committee led by Crown PrinceMohammed bin Salman.
The purge helped centralize political powers in the hands of bin Salman and undermine the pre-existing structure of consensus-based governance among Saudi elites. The arrests resulted in the final sidelining of the faction of King Abdullah, and Mohammed bin Salman's complete consolidation of control of all three branches of the security forces. It also cemented bin Salman's supremacy over business elites in Saudi
Arabia and resulted in a mass seizure of assets by the bin Salman
regime.
Common targets
Goldring and Matthews show that dictators are more likely
to purge first-generation elites, the very people who helped the
dictator to seize power, since they are more powerful and connected.
They also show that they tend to imprison purged first-generation elites
rather than execute, exile or simply remove them.
In 1978, Deng Xiaoping became the paramount leader, replacing Mao's successor Hua Guofeng. Deng and his allies introduced the Boluan Fanzheng program and initiated the reform and opening up, which, together with the New Enlightenment movement,
dismantled the ideology of the Cultural Revolution. In 1981, the
Communist Party publicly acknowledged failures of the Cultural
Revolution, declaring it "responsible for the most severe setback and
the heaviest losses suffered by the people, the country, and the party
since the founding of the People's Republic." Memories and perspectives
of the Cultural Revolution are varied and complex in contemporary China.
It is often referred to as the "ten years of chaos" (十年动乱; shí nián dòngluàn) or "ten years of havoc" (十年浩劫; shí nián hàojié).
Etymology
The terminology of "cultural revolution" appeared in
communist party discourses and newspapers prior to the founding of the
People's Republic of China. During this period, the term was used
interchangeably with "cultural construction" and referred to the
elimination of illiteracy in order to widen public participation in
civic matters. This usage of "cultural revolution" continued through the
1950s and into the 1960s, and often involved drawing parallels to the May Fourth Movement or the Soviet cultural revolution of 1928–1931.
On 1 October 1949, Mao Zedong declared the People's Republic of China, symbolically bringing the decades-long Chinese Civil War to a close. Remaining Republican forces fled to Taiwan
and continued to resist the People's Republic in various ways. Many
soldiers of the Chinese Republicans were left in mainland China, and Mao
Zedong launched the Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries
to eliminate these soldiers left behind, as well as elements of Chinese
society viewed as potentially dangerous to Mao's new government.
On 11 January 1962, an enlarged Central Committee work
conference of the CCP was held in Beijing. With over 7,000 participants,
it became known as the Seven Thousand Cadres Conference. Liu Shaoqi, Mao Zedong, and others made self-criticisms
at the conference. Mao said in the conference that, "Any mistakes that
the Centre has made ought to be my direct responsibility, and I also
have an indirect share in the blame because I am the Chairman of the
Central Committee. I don't want other people to shirk their
responsibility. There are some other comrades who also bear
responsibility, but the person primarily responsible should be me." He
continued: "If our country does not establish a socialist economy, what
kind of situation shall we be in? We shall become a country like
Yugoslavia, which has actually become a bourgeois country." However,
"during the whole socialist stage there still exist classes and class
struggle, and this class struggle is a protracted, complex, sometimes
even violent affair."
After the meeting, Liu informed the others that "The errors
of the Great Leap Forward were serious, and this is the first time
we've summarized the experience. Every year from now on we need to look
back and summarize it again." Regarding the cannibalism during the Great
Leap Forward, he also remarked, "This will be memorialized as a decree
in which the emperor admits his crimes against the people." After the
Seven Thousand Cadres Conference, Mao Zedong took a backseat in economic
matters.
However, at the Xilou Conference, Liu Shaoqi still believed that the
Seven Thousand Cadres Conference had not sufficiently reflected on the
Great Leap Forward.
In the first half of 1962, China saw the emergence of a system where individual households were responsible for agricultural output. However, Mao Zedong believed this practice contradicted communism and was something he could not tolerate. In July 1962, Mao Zedong expressed dissatisfaction with Liu Shaoqi,
stating: "The Three Red Banners have been refuted, land is being divided
up, and you did nothing? What will happen after I die?" Liu Shaoqi also
argued that "History will record the role you and I played in the
starvation of so many people, and the cannibalism will also be
memorialized!"
Impact of international tensions and anti-revisionism
In the early 1950s, the PRC and the Soviet Union
(USSR) were the world's two largest communist states. Although
initially they were mutually supportive, disagreements arose after Nikita Khrushchev took power in the USSR. In 1956, Khrushchev denounced his predecessor Josef Stalin and his policies, and began implementing economic reforms. Mao and many other CCP members opposed these changes, believing that they would damage the worldwide communist movement.
Mao believed that Khrushchev was a revisionist, altering Marxist–Leninist
concepts, which Mao claimed would give capitalists control of the USSR.
Relations soured. The USSR refused to support China's case for joining
the United Nations and reneged on its pledge to supply China with a nuclear weapon.
Mao denounced revisionism in April 1960. Without pointing at the USSR, Mao criticized its Balkan ally, the League of Communists of Yugoslavia. In turn, the USSR criticized China's Balkan ally, the Party of Labour of Albania. In 1963, CCP began to denounce the USSR, publishing nine polemics.
Other Soviet actions increased concerns about potential fifth columnists.
As a result of the tensions following the Sino-Soviet split, Soviet
leaders authorized radio broadcasts into China stating that the Soviet
Union would assist "genuine communists" who overthrew Mao and his
"erroneous course". Chinese leadership also feared the increasing military conflict between the United States and North Vietnam, concerned that China's support would lead the United States to seek out potential Chinese assets.
Mao contended that capitalist tendencies had begun to grow in China.
He viewed the Cultural Revolution as perpetual revolution aimed at
opposing "representatives of the bourgeoisie and counterrevolutionary
revisionists" who had "sneaked into the party, the government, the army,
and cultural circles."
The meaning and nature of revolution was a frequent theme in the speeches of central leadership during the Cultural Revolution.
They contended that the Cultural Revolution was an unprecedented event
that had to be carried out by the people rather than directed from above
and that the best test was revolutionary practice.Tao Zhu stated:
You
can't say you are the true revolutionaries and they are fake. This is
mass organizing. Their organizations may also be revolutionary. You may
have a revolutionary competition. Good ones will grow, bad ones will
collapse ... True or fake revolutionaries will be distinguished in
revolutionary practice.
Socialist Education Movement and Hai Rui Dismissed from Office
In 1963, Mao launched the Socialist Education Movement. Mao set the scene by "cleansing"
powerful Beijing officials of questionable loyalty. His approach was
executed via newspaper articles, internal meetings, and by his network
of political allies.
In late 1959, historian and deputy mayor of Beijing Wu Han published a historical drama entitled Hai Rui Dismissed from Office. In the play, an honest civil servant, Hai Rui, is dismissed by a corrupt emperor. While Mao initially praised the play, in February 1965, he secretly commissioned Jiang Qing and Yao Wenyuan
to publish an article criticizing it. Yao described the play as an
allegory attacking Mao; flagging Mao as the emperor, and Peng Dehuai,
who had previously questioned Mao during the Lushan Conference, as the honest civil servant.
Yao's article put Beijing mayor Peng Zhen on the defensive. Peng, Wu Han's direct superior, was the head of the Five Man Group,
a committee commissioned by Mao to study the potential for a cultural
revolution. Peng Zhen, aware that he would be implicated if Wu indeed
wrote an "anti-Mao" play, wished to contain Yao's influence. Yao's
article was initially published only in select local newspapers. Peng
forbade its publication in the nationally distributed People's Daily and other major newspapers under his control, and not pay heed to Yao's petty politics. While the "literary battle" against Peng raged, Mao fired Yang Shangkun—director of the party's General Office, an organ that controlled internal communications—making unsubstantiated charges. He installed loyalist Wang Dongxing, head of Mao's security detail. Yang's dismissal likely emboldened Mao's allies to move against their factional rivals.
On 12 February 1966, the "Five Man Group" issued a report known as the February Outline. The Outline as sanctioned by the party center defined Hai Rui as a constructive academic discussion and aimed to distance Peng Zhen formally from any political implications. However, Jiang Qing and Yao Wenyuan continued their denunciations. Meanwhile, Mao sacked Propaganda Department director Lu Dingyi, a Peng ally.
Lu's removal gave Maoists unrestricted access to the
press. Mao delivered his final blow to Peng at a high-profile Politburo
meeting through loyalists Kang Sheng and Chen Boda. They accused Peng of opposing Mao, labeled the February Outline
"evidence of Peng Zhen's revisionism", and grouped him with three other
disgraced officials as part of the "Peng-Luo-Lu-Yang Anti-Party
Clique".
On 16 May, the Politburo formalized the decisions by releasing an
official document condemning Peng and his "anti-party allies" in the
strongest terms, disbanding his "Five Man Group", and replacing it with
the Maoist Cultural Revolution Group (CRG).
1966: Outbreak
The Cultural Revolution can be divided into two main periods:
spring 1966 to summer 1968 (when most of the key events took place)
a tailing period that lasted until fall 1976
The early phase was characterized by mass movement and
political pluralization. Virtually anyone could create a political
organization, even without party approval. Known as Red Guards, these
organizations originally arose in schools and universities and later in
factories and other institutions. After 1968, most of these
organizations ceased to exist, although their legacies were a topic of
controversy later.
In May 1966, an expanded session of the Politburo was called in Beijing. The conference was laden with Maoist political rhetoric on class struggle and filled with meticulously prepared 'indictments' of recently ousted leaders such as Peng Zhen and Luo Ruiqing. One of these documents, distributed on 16 May, was prepared with Mao's personal supervision and was particularly damning:
Those representatives of the
bourgeoisie who have sneaked into the Party, the government, the army,
and various spheres of culture 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. Some of them we have already
seen through; others we have not. Some are still trusted by us and are
being trained as our successors, persons like Khrushchev for example,
who are still nestling beside us.
Later known as the "16 May Notification", this document summarized Mao's ideological justification for CR. Initially kept secret, distributed only among high-ranking party members, it was later declassified and published in People's Daily on 17 May 1967.
Effectively it implied that enemies of the Communist cause could be
found within the Party: class enemies who "wave the red flag to oppose
the red flag." The only way to identify these people was through "the
telescope and microscope of Mao Zedong Thought." While the party leadership was relatively united in approving Mao's
agenda, many Politburo members were not enthusiastic, or simply confused
about the direction.The charges against party leaders such as Peng disturbed China's intellectual community and the eight non-Communist parties.
Mass rallies (May–June)
"Sweep Away All Cow Demons and Snake Spirits", an editorial published on the front page of People's Daily on 1 June 1966, calling for the proletariat to "completely eradicate" the "Four Olds [...] that have poisoned the people of China for thousands of years, fostered by the exploiting classes".
After the purge of Peng Zhen, the Beijing Party Committee
effectively ceased to function, paving the way for disorder in the
capital. On 25 May, under the guidance of Cao Yi'ou[zh]—wife of Mao loyalist Kang Sheng—Nie Yuanzi, a philosophy lecturer at Peking University, authored a big-character poster
along with other leftists and posted it to a public bulletin. Nie
attacked the university's party administration and its leader Lu Ping.
Nie insinuated that the university leadership, much like Peng, were
trying to contain revolutionary fervor in a "sinister" attempt to oppose
the party and advance revisionism.
Mao promptly endorsed Nie's poster as "the first Marxist
big-character poster in China". Approved by Mao, the poster rippled
across educational institutions. Students began to revolt against their
school's party establishments. Classes were cancelled in Beijing primary
and secondary schools, followed by a decision on 13 June to expand the
class suspension nationwide. By early June, throngs of young
demonstrators lined the capital's major thoroughfares holding giant
portraits of Mao, beating drums, and shouting slogans.
When the dismissal of Peng and the municipal party
leadership became public in early June, confusion was widespread. The
public and foreign missions were kept in the dark on the reason for
Peng's ousting. Top Party leadership was caught off guard by the sudden
protest wave and struggled with how to respond. After seeking Mao's
guidance in Hangzhou, Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping decided to send in 'work teams'—effectively 'ideological guidance' squads of cadres—to the city's schools and People's Daily to restore some semblance of order and re-establish party control.
The work teams had a poor understanding of student
sentiment. Unlike the political movement of the 1950s that squarely
targeted intellectuals, the new movement was focused on established
party cadres, many of whom were part of the work teams. As a result, the
work teams came under increasing suspicion as thwarting revolutionary
fervor.
Party leadership subsequently became divided over whether or not work
teams should continue. Liu Shaoqi insisted on continuing work-team
involvement and suppressing the movement's most radical elements,
fearing that the movement would spin out of control.
Bombard the Headquarters (July)
Mao–Liu conflict
In 1966, Mao broke with Liu Shaoqi (bottom), then serving as President, over the work-teams issue. Mao's polemic Bombard the Headquarters was widely recognized as targeting Liu, the purported "bourgeois" party headquarters
In July, Mao, in Wuhan, crossed the Yangtze River, showing
his vigor. He then returned from Wuhan to Beijing and criticized party
leadership for its handling of the work-teams issue. Mao accused the
work teams of undermining the student movement, calling for their full
withdrawal on 24 July. Several days later a rally was held at the Great Hall of the People
to announce the decision and reveal the tone of the movement to
teachers and students. At the rally, Party leaders encouraged the masses
to 'not be afraid' and take charge of the movement, free of Party
interference.
The work-teams issue marked a decisive defeat for Liu; it also signaled
that disagreement over how to handle the CR's unfolding events would
irreversibly split Mao from the party leadership. On 1 August, the
Eleventh Plenum of the 8th Central Committee
was convened to advance Mao's radical agenda. At the plenum, Mao showed
disdain for Liu, repeatedly interrupting him as he delivered his
opening day speech.
On 28 July, Red Guard
representatives wrote to Mao, calling for rebellion and upheaval to
safeguard the revolution. Mao then responded to the letters by writing
his own big-character poster entitled Bombard the Headquarters,
rallying people to target the "command centre (i.e., Headquarters) of
counterrevolution." Mao wrote that despite having undergone a communist
revolution, a "bourgeois" elite was still thriving in "positions of
authority" in the government and Party.
This statement has been interpreted as a direct indictment
of the party establishment under Liu and Deng—the purported "bourgeois
headquarters" of China. The personnel changes at the Plenum reflected a
radical re-design of the party hierarchy. Liu and Deng kept their seats
on the Politburo Standing Committee, but were sidelined from day-to-day
party affairs. Lin Biao was elevated to become the CCP's number-two;
Liu's rank went from second to eighth and was no longer Mao's heir
apparent.
Along with the top leadership losing power the entire national Party bureaucracy was purged. The extensive Organization Department,
in charge of party personnel, virtually ceased to exist. The top
officials in the Propaganda Department were sacked, with many of its
functions folded into the CRG.
Mao and Lin Biao surrounded by rallying Red Guards in Beijing, December 1966
Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung led the Red Guards to commit to their objective as China's future. By December 1967, 350 million copies had been printed.
During the Red August of Beijing, on 8 August 1966, the party's General Committee
passed its "Decision Concerning the Great Proletarian Cultural
Revolution," later to be known as the "Sixteen Points". This decision
defined the Cultural Revolution as "a great revolution that touches
people to their very souls and constitutes a new stage in the
development of the socialist revolution in our country:"
Although the bourgeoisie has been overthrown, it is still trying to use
the old ideas, culture, customs and habits of the exploiting classes to
corrupt the masses, capture their minds and endeavour to stage a
comeback. The proletariat must do the exact opposite: it must meet
head-on every challenge of the bourgeoisie...
to change the mental outlook of the whole of society. At present, our
objective is to struggle against and overthrow those persons in
authority who are taking the capitalist road, to criticize and repudiate
the reactionary bourgeois academic "authorities" and the ideology of
the bourgeoisie and all other exploiting classes and to transform
education, literature and art and all other parts of the superstructure
not in correspondence with the socialist economic base, so as to
facilitate the consolidation and development of the socialist system.
The implications of the Sixteen Points were far-reaching.
It elevated what was previously a student movement to a nationwide mass
campaign that would galvanize workers, farmers, soldiers and lower-level
party functionaries to rise, challenge authority, and re-shape the superstructure of society.
On 18 August in Beijing, over a million Red Guards from across the country gathered in and around Tiananmen Square for an audience with the chairman.
Mao mingled with Red Guards and encouraged them, donning a Red Guard
armband. Lin also took centre stage, denouncing perceived enemies in
society that were impeding the "progress of the revolution". Subsequently, violence escalated in Beijing and quickly spread. The 18 August rally was filmed and shown to approximately 100 million people in its first month of release.
On 22 August, a central directive was issued to prevent
police intervention in Red Guard activities, and those in the police
force who defied this notice were labeled counter-revolutionaries.
Central officials lifted restraints on violent behavior. Xie Fuzhi, the national police chief, often pardoned Red Guards for their "crimes".
The campaign included incidents of torture, murder, and
public humiliation. Many people who were indicted as
counter-revolutionaries died by suicide. During Red August, 1,772 people
were murdered in Beijing; many of the victims were teachers who were
attacked or killed by their own students. In September, Shanghai experienced 704 suicides and 534 deaths; in
Wuhan, 62 suicides and 32 murders occurred during the same period. Peng Dehuai was brought to Beijing to be publicly ridiculed.
The remains of the Wanli Emperor
at the Ming tombs. Red Guards dragged the remains of the Wanli Emperor
and Empresses to the front of the tomb, where they were posthumously
"denounced" and burned
Between August and November 1966, eight mass rallies were held, drawing in 12million people, most of whom were Red Guards. To aid Red Guards in traveling, the Great Exchange of Revolutionary Experience program, which lasted from September 1966 to early 1967, gave them free food and lodging throughout the country.
At the rallies, Lin Biao called for the destruction of the Four Olds; namely, old customs, culture, habits, and ideas. Some changes associated with the Four Olds campaign were mainly benign,
such as assigning new names to city streets, places, and even people;
millions of babies were born with "revolutionary" names.
Other aspects were more destructive, particularly in the
realms of culture and religion. Historical sites throughout the country
were destroyed. The damage was particularly pronounced in the capital,
Beijing. Red Guards laid siege to the Temple of Confucius in Qufu, and other historically significant tombs and artifacts.
Libraries of historical and foreign texts were destroyed;
books were burned. Temples, churches, mosques, monasteries, and
cemeteries were closed and sometimes converted to other uses, or looted
and destroyed. Marxist propaganda depicted Buddhism
as superstition, and religion was looked upon as a means of hostile
foreign infiltration, as well as an instrument of the ruling class. Clergy were arrested and sent to camps; many Tibetan Buddhists were forced to participate in the destruction of their monasteries at gunpoint.
This statue of the Yongle Emperor was originally carved in stone, and was destroyed in the Cultural Revolution. A metal replica is in its place.
The remains of the 8th century Buddhist monk Huineng were attacked during the Cultural Revolution.
A frieze damaged during the Cultural Revolution, originally from a garden house of a rich imperial official in Suzhou.
In September 1966, central Party authorities under Zhou Enlai issued the Instructions on Grasping Revolution, Promoting Production, which directed that "one must grasp revolution on one hand and promote production on the other hand.
Central Work Conference (October)
In October 1966, Mao convened a Central Work Conference,
mostly to enlist party leaders who had not yet adopted the latest
ideology. Liu and Deng were prosecuted and begrudgingly offered
self-criticism.
After the conference, Liu, once a powerful moderate pundit, was placed
under house arrest, then sent to a detention camp, where he was denied
medical treatment and died in 1969. Deng was sent away for a period of
re-education three times and was eventually sent to work in an engine
factory in Jiangxi. Rebellion by party cadres accelerated after the conference.
End of the year
On 5 October, the Central Military Commission
and the PLA's Department of General Political Tasks directed military
academies to dismiss their classes to allow cadets to become more
involved in the Cultural Revolution. In doing so, they were acting on Lin Biao's 23 August 1966 for "three month turmoil" in the PLA.
In Macau, rioting broke out during the 12-3 incident. The event was prompted by the colonial government's delays in approving a new wing for a CCP elementary school in Taipa.
The school board illegally began construction, but the colonial
government sent police to stop the workers. Several people were injured
in the resulting melee.
On 3 December 1966, two days of rioting occurred in which hundreds were
injured and six to eight were killed, leading to a total clampdown by
the Portuguese government. The event set in motion Portugal's de facto abdication of control over
Macau, putting Macau on the path to eventual absorption by China.
By the beginning of 1967, a wide variety of grassroots
political organizations had formed. Beyond Red Guard and student rebel
groups, these included poor peasant associations, workers' pickets, and
Mao Zedong Thought study societies, among others. Communist Party
leaders encouraged these groups to "join up", and these groups joined
various coalitions and held various cross-group congresses and
assemblies.
Mass organizations coalesced into two factions, the
radicals who backed Mao's purge of the Communist party, and the
conservatives who backed the moderate party establishment. The "support
the left" policy was established in January 1967. Mao's policy was to support the rebels; it required the PLA to support
"the broad masses of the revolutionary leftists in their struggle to
seize power."
In March 1967, the policy was adapted into the "Three
Supports and Two Militaries" initiative, in which PLA troops were sent
to schools and work units to stabilize political tumult and end
factional warfare.
The three "Supports" were to "support the left", "support the
interior", "support industry". The "two Militaries" referred to
"military management" and "military training".
The policy of supporting the left failed to define "leftists" when
almost all mass organizations claimed to be "leftist" or
"revolutionary". PLA commanders had developed close working relations with the party
establishment, leading many military units to repress radicals.
Spurred by the events in Beijing, power seizure groups formed across China and expanded into factories and the countryside. In Shanghai, a factory worker named Wang Hongwen
organized a far-reaching revolutionary coalition, one that displaced
existing Red Guard groups. In January 1967, with support from CRG
heavyweights Zhang Chunqiao and Yao Wenyuan, the group of firebrand
activists overthrew the Shanghai municipal government under Chen Pixian in what became known as the January Storm, and formed in its place the Shanghai People's Commune. Mao expressed his approval.
Shanghai's was the first provincial level government overthrown. Provincial governments and many parts of the state and party
bureaucracy were affected, with power seizures taking place. In the next
three weeks, 24 more province-level governments were overthrown. "Revolutionary committees" were established, in place of local governments and branches of the Communist Party. In Beijing, three separate revolutionary groups declared power seizures
on the same day. In Heilongjiang, local party secretary Pan Fusheng seized power from the party organization under his own leadership. Some leaders even wrote to the CRG asking to be overthrown.
In Beijing, Jiang Qing and Zhang Chunqiao targeted Vice-Premier Tao Zhu. The power-seizure movement appeared in the military as well. In February, prominent generals Ye Jianying and Chen Yi, as well as Vice-Premier Tan Zhenlin,
vocally asserted their opposition to the extreme aspects of the
movement, with some party elders insinuating that the CRG's real motives
were to remove the revolutionary old guard. Mao, initially ambivalent,
took to the Politburo floor on 18 February to denounce the opposition
directly, endorsing the radicals' activities. This resistance was
branded the February Countercurrent—effectively silencing critics within the party.
Although in early 1967 popular insurgencies were limited
outside the biggest cities, local governments began collapsing across
China. Revolutionaries dismantled ruling government and party organizations.
Because power seizures lacked centralized leadership, it was no longer
clear who believed in Mao's revolutionary vision and who was exploiting
the chaos for their gain. The formation of rival revolutionary groups
and manifestations of long-established local feuds led to violent struggles between factions.
Tension grew between mass organizations and the military.
In response, Lin Biao issued a directive for the army to aid the
radicals. At the same time, the army took control of some provinces and
locales that were deemed incapable of handling the power transition.
In Wuhan, as in many other cities, two revolutionary organizations
emerged, one supporting and one attacking the conservative
establishment. Chen Zaidao,
the general in charge of the area, forcibly repressed the
anti-establishment demonstrators. Mao flew to Wuhan with an entourage of
central officials in an attempt to secure military loyalty in the area.
On 20 July 1967, local agitators in response kidnapped Mao's emissary Wang Li, in what became known as the Wuhan Incident.
Chen was sent to Beijing and tried by Jiang Qing and the rest of the
CRG. Chen's resistance was the last major open display of opposition
within the PLA.
The Gang of Four's Zhang Chunqiao
admitted that the most crucial factor in the Cultural Revolution was
not the Red Guards, the CRG or the "rebel worker" organisations, but the
PLA. When the PLA local garrison supported Mao's radicals, they were able to
take over local government successfully, but if they were
uncooperative, the takeovers were unsuccessful. Violent clashes occurred in virtually all major cities. In 1967 and 1968, rebel groups supported by the PLA established Revolutionary Committees that replaced government and Party organizations at the local and provincial levels.
In response to the Wuhan Incident, Mao and Jiang began
establishing a "workers' armed self-defense force", a "revolutionary
armed force of mass character" to counter what he saw as rightism in
"75% of the PLA officer corps". Meanwhile, a massive movement to "smash gong-jian-fa", to smash the Police, Procuratorate and Court, was carried out in China. The few remaining going-jian-fa organizations were later placed under military control.
In Chongqing, factional violence was particularly pronounced. Violence there was exacerbated because the city had a concentration of munitions factories. Violence in Chongqing occurred primarily between two different rebel factions during the period May 1967 to October 1968.
Among the major instances of combat was the 25 July Incident in 1967,
during which members of one rebel faction attacked four hundred members
of other factions using knives, pistols, rifles, submachine guns, and
machine guns, killing ten.
Unconventional weapons, including weapon of mass destruction, were seized, but not directly used. Citizens wrote letters to the Zhongnanhai residence of government leaders, warning of attacks on facilities that stored pathogenic bacteria, poisonous plant samples, radioactive substances, poison gas, toxicants, and other dangerous substances. In Changchun, rebels working in geological institutes developed and tested a dirty bomb, a crude radiological weapon, testing two "radioactive self-defense bombs" and two "radioactive self-defense mines".
Violence in 1967 disrupted economic activity and touring Red Guards overburdened China's transportation system. By year end, national industrial output had decreased by 14% from the previous year. Military control was imposed over the Daqing Oil Field in March 1967 and over the Anshan Iron and Steel Plant in August.
Nationwide, a total of 18.8million
firearms, 14,828 artillery pieces, 2,719,545 grenades ended up in
civilian hands. They were used in violent struggles, which mostly took
place from 1967 to 1968. In Chongqing, Xiamen, and Changchun, tanks, armored vehicles and even warships were deployed in combat.
During the Cultural Revolution, Mao emphasized the need to improve medical care in rural China. The Rural Cooperative Medical System (RCMS) developed in the late 1960s. Each large production brigade established a medical cooperative station staffed by barefoot doctors. The cooperative stations provided primary health care. Barefoot doctors brought healthcare to rural areas where urban-trained doctors would not settle. They promoted basic hygiene, preventive healthcare, and family planning and treated common illnesses. Immunizations were provided free of charge. Public healthcare was highly effective in curbing infectious diseases in rural China. For treatment of major diseases, rural people traveled to state-owned hospitals.
In May 1968, Mao launched a massive political purge. Many
people were sent to the countryside to work in reeducation camps.
Generally, the campaign targeted rebels from the CR's earlier, more
populist, phase.
On 27 July, the Red Guards' power over the PLA was officially ended,
and the establishment sent in units to besiege areas that remained
untouched by the Guards. A year later, the Red Guard factions were
dismantled entirely; Mao predicted that the chaos might begin running
its own agenda and be tempted to turn against revolutionary ideology.
Their purpose had been largely fulfilled; Mao and his radical colleagues
had largely overturned established power.
Liu was expelled from the CCP at the 12th Plenum of the 8th Central Committee in September, and labelled the "headquarters of the bourgeoisie".
Mao meets with Red Guard leaders (July)
As the Red Guard movement had waned over the preceding
year, violence by the remaining Red Guards increased on some Beijing
campuses. Violence was particularly pronounced at Tsinghua University,
where a few thousand hardliners of two factions continued to fight. At
Mao's initiative, on 27 July 1968, tens of thousands of workers entered
the Tsinghua campus shouting slogans in opposition to the violence. Red
Guards attacked the workers, who remained peaceful. Ultimately, the
workers disarmed the students and occupied the campus.
On 28 July, Mao and the Central Group met with the five
most important remaining Beijing Red Guard leaders to address the
movement's excessive violence and political exhaustion. It was the only time during the Cultural Revolution that Mao met and
addressed the student leaders directly. In response to a Red Guard
leader's telegram sent prior to the meeting, which claimed that some
"Black Hand" had maneuvered the workers against the Red Guards, Mao told
the student leaders, "The Black Hand is nobody else but me! ... I asked
[the workers] how to solve the armed fighting in the universities, and
told them to go there to have a look."
During the meeting, Mao and the Central Group for the
Cultural Revolution stated, "[W]e want cultural struggle, we do not want
armed struggle" and "The masses do not want civil war."
You
have been involved in the Cultural Revolution for two years:
struggle-criticism-transformation. Now, first, you're not struggling;
second, you're not criticizing; and third, you're not transforming. Or
rather, you are struggling, but it's an armed struggle. The people are
not happy, the workers are not happy, city residents are not happy, most
people in schools are not happy, most of the students even in your
schools are not happy. Even within the faction that supports you, there
are unhappy people. Is this the way to unify the world?
Mao's cult of personality and "mango fever" (August)
A propaganda oil painting of Mao during the Cultural Revolution (1967)
In the spring of 1968, a massive campaign aimed at
enhancing Mao's reputation began. On 4 August, Mao was presented with
mangoes by the Pakistani foreign minister Syed Sharifuddin Pirzada, in an apparent diplomatic gesture. Mao had his aide send the box of mangoes to his propaganda team at Tsinghua University on 5 August, who were stationed there to quiet strife among Red Guard factions.
Several months of "mango fever" followed as the fruit
became a focus of a "boundless loyalty" campaign for Mao. More replica
mangoes were created, and the replicas were sent on tour around Beijing
and elsewhere. Many revolutionary committees visited the mangoes in
Beijing from outlying provinces. Approximately half a million people
greeted the replicas when they arrived in Chengdu. Badges and wall posters featuring the mangoes and Mao were produced in the millions.
The fruit was shared among all institutions that had been a
part of the propaganda team, and large processions were organized in
support of the "precious gift", as the mangoes were known.
It has been claimed that Mao used the mangoes to express
support for the workers who would go to whatever lengths necessary to
end the factional fighting among students, and a "prime example of Mao's
strategy of symbolic support." Through early 1969, participants of Mao Zedong Thought study classes in
Beijing returned with mass-produced mango facsimiles, gaining media
attention in the provinces.
In December 1968, Mao began the Down to the Countryside
Movement. During this movement, which lasted for the following decade,
young bourgeoisie living in cities were ordered to go to the countryside
to experience working life. The term "young intellectuals" was used to
refer to recent college graduates. In the late 1970s, these students
returned to their home cities. Many students who were previously Red
Guard supported the movement and Mao's vision. This movement was thus in
part a means of moving Red Guards from the cities to the countryside,
where they would cause less social disruption. It also served to spread
revolutionary ideology geographically.
1969–1971: Lin Biao
The 9th National Congress
was held in April 1969. It served as a means to "revitalize" the party
with fresh thinking—as well as new cadres, after much of the old guard
had been destroyed in the struggles of the preceding years. The party framework established two decades earlier broke down almost
entirely: rather than through an election by party members, delegates
for this Congress were effectively selected by Revolutionary Committees.
Representation of the military increased by a large margin from the
previous Congress, reflected in the election of more PLA members to the
new Central Committee—over 28%. Many officers now elevated to senior
positions were loyal to PLA Marshal Lin Biao, which would open a new
rift between the military and civilian leadership.
We do not only feel boundless joy because we have as our great leader
the greatest Marxist–Leninist of our era, Chairman Mao, but also great
joy because we have Vice Chairman Lin as Chairman Mao's universally
recognized successor.
—Premier Zhou Enlai at the 9th Party Congress
Reflecting this, Lin was officially elevated to become the
Party's preeminent figure outside of Mao, with his name written into
the party constitution as his "closest comrade-in-arms" and "universally recognized successor".
At the time, no other Communist parties or governments anywhere in the
world had adopted the practice of enshrining a successor to the current
leader into their constitutions. Lin delivered the keynote address at
the Congress: a document drafted by hardliner leftists Yao Wenyuan and
Zhang Chunqiao under Mao's guidance.
The report was heavily critical of Liu Shaoqi and other "counter-revolutionaries" and drew extensively from quotations in the Little Red Book.
The Congress solidified the central role of Maoism within the party,
re-introducing Maoism as the official guiding ideology in the party
constitution. The Congress elected a new Politburo with Mao, Lin, Chen,
Zhou Enlai and Kang as the members of the new Politburo Standing
Committee.
Lin, Chen, and Kang were all beneficiaries of the Cultural
Revolution. Zhou, who was demoted in rank, voiced his unequivocal
support for Lin at the Congress.
Mao restored the function of some formal party institutions, such as
the operations of the Politburo, which ceased functioning between 1966
and 1968 because the CCRG held de facto control.
In early 1970, the nationwide "One Strike-Three Anti Campaign"
was launched by Mao and the Communist Party Central, aiming to
consolidate the new organs of power by targeting counterrevolutionary
thoughts and actions. A large number of "minor criminals" were executed or forced to commit suicide between 1970 and 1972. According to government statistics released after the Cultural
Revolution, during the campaign 1.87 million people were persecuted as
traitors, spies, and counterrevolutionaries, and over 284,800 were
arrested or killed from February to November 1970 alone.
PLA encroachment
Mao (left) and Lin (right) in 1967, riding in the back of a vehicle during an International Workers' Day parade
Mao's efforts at re-organizing party and state
institutions generated mixed results. The situation in some of the
provinces remained volatile, even as the political situation in Beijing
stabilized. Factional struggles, many violent, continued at a local
level despite the declaration that the 9th National Congress marked a
temporary victory for the CR.
Furthermore, despite Mao's efforts to put on a show of unity at the
Congress, the factional divide between Lin's PLA camp and the Jiang-led
radical camp was intensifying. Indeed, a personal dislike of Jiang drew
many civilian leaders, including Chen, closer to Lin.
Between 1966 and 1968, China was isolated internationally,
having declared its enmity towards both the USSR and the US. The
friction with the USSR intensified after border clashes on the Ussuri River in March 1969 as Chinese leaders prepared for all-out war.
In June 1969, the PLA's enforcement of political discipline and
suppression of the factions that had emerged during the Cultural
Revolution became intertwined with the central Party's efforts to
accelerate Third Front.
Those who did not return to work would be viewed as engaging in
'schismatic activity' which risked undermining preparations to defend
China from potential invasion.
In October 1969, the Party attempted to focus more on war preparedness and less on suppressing factions. That month, senior leaders were evacuated from Beijing. Amid the tension, Lin issued the "Order Number One", which appeared to be an executive order to prepare for war to the PLA's eleven military regions
on October 18 without going through Mao. This drew the ire of the
chairman, who saw it as evidence that his declared successor was
usurping his authority.
The prospect of war elevated the PLA to greater prominence in domestic politics, increasing Lin's stature at Mao's expense.
Some evidence suggests that Mao was pushed to seek closer relations
with the US as a means to avoid PLA dominance that would result from a
military confrontation with the Soviet Union. During his later meeting with Richard Nixon in 1972, Mao hinted that Lin had opposed better relations with the U.S.
PRC Chairman (President) Liu Shaoqi on his deathbed in 1969
After Lin was confirmed as Mao's successor, his supporters focused on the restoration of the position of State Chairman, which had been abolished by Mao after Liu's purge. They hoped that by
allowing Lin to ease into a constitutionally sanctioned role, whether
Chairman or vice-chairman, Lin's succession would be institutionalized.
The consensus within the Politburo
was that Mao should assume the office with Lin as vice-chairman; but
perhaps wary of Lin's ambitions or for other unknown reasons, Mao voiced
his explicit opposition.
Factional rivalries intensified at the Second Plenum of
the Ninth Congress in Lushan held in late August 1970. Chen, now aligned
with the PLA faction loyal to Lin, galvanized support for the
restoration of the office of President of China, despite Mao's wishes.
Moreover, Chen launched an assault on Zhang, a staunch Maoist who
embodied the chaos of the Cultural Revolution, over the evaluation of
Mao's legacy.
The attacks on Zhang found favour with many Plenum
attendees and may have been construed by Mao as an indirect attack on
the CR. Mao confronted Chen openly, denouncing him as a "false Marxist",
and removed him from the Politburo Standing Committee. In addition to
the purge of Chen, Mao asked Lin's principal generals to write
self-criticisms on their political positions as a warning to Lin. Mao
also inducted several of his supporters to the Central Military
Commission and placed loyalists in leadership roles of the Beijing Military Region.
By 1971, the diverging interests of the civilian and
military leaders were apparent. Mao was troubled by the PLA's newfound
prominence, and the purge of Chen marked the beginning of a gradual
scaling-down of the PLA's political involvement.
According to official sources, sensing the reduction of Lin's power
base and his declining health, Lin's supporters plotted to use the
military power still at their disposal to oust Mao in a coup.
Lin's son Lin Liguo, along with other high-ranking military conspirators, formed a coup apparatus in Shanghai and dubbed the plan to oust Mao Outline for Project 571–in
the original Mandarin, the phrase sounds similar to the term for
'military uprising'. It is disputed whether Lin Biao was directly
involved in this process. While official sources maintain that Lin did
plan and execute the coup attempt, scholars such as Jin Qiu portray Lin
as passive, cajoled by elements among his family and supporters. Qiu
contests that Lin Biao was ever personally involved in drafting the Outline, with evidence suggesting that Lin Liguo was directly responsible for the draft.
Graffiti of Lin Biao's foreword to the Little Red Book, with his name (lower right) later scratched out
According to the official CCP narrative, on 13 September, Lin Biao, his wife Ye Qun,
Lin Liguo, and members of his staff attempted to flee to the USSR
ostensibly to seek political asylum. En route, Lin's plane crashed in
Mongolia, killing all on board. The plane apparently ran out of fuel. A
Soviet investigative team was not able to determine the cause of the
crash but hypothesized that the pilot was flying low to evade radar and
misjudged the plane's altitude.
The account was questioned by those who raised doubts over
Lin's choice of the USSR as a destination, the plane's route, the
identity of the passengers, and whether or not a coup was actually
taking place.
On 13 September, the Politburo met in an emergency session
to discuss Lin. His death was confirmed in Beijing only on 30
September, which led to the cancellation of the National Day
celebration events the following day. The Central Committee did not
release news of Lin's death to the public until two months later. Many
Lin supporters sought refuge in Hong Kong. Those who remained on the
mainland were purged.
The event caught the party leadership off guard: the
concept that Lin could betray Mao de-legitimized a vast body of Cultural
Revolution political rhetoric and by extension, Mao's absolute
authority. For several months following the incident, the party
information apparatus struggled to find a "correct way" to frame the
incident for public consumption, but as the details came to light, the
majority of the Chinese public felt disillusioned and realised they had
been manipulated for political purposes.
Mao became depressed and reclusive after the Lin incident.
Sensing a sudden loss of direction, Mao reached out to old comrades
whom he had denounced in the past. Meanwhile, in September 1972, Mao
transferred a 38-year-old cadre from Shanghai, Wang Hongwen, to Beijing
and made him Party vice-chairman. Wang, a former factory worker from a
peasant background, was seemingly getting groomed for succession.
Jiang's position strengthened after Lin's flight. She held
tremendous influence with the radical camp. With Mao's health on the
decline, Jiang's political ambitions began to emerge. She allied herself
with Wang and propaganda specialists Zhang Chunqiao and Yao Wenyuan,
forming a political clique later pejoratively dubbed as the Gang of Four.
Jiang Qing (left) receiving Red Guards in Beijing with Zhou Enlai (center) and Kang Sheng, with each holding a copy of the Little Red Book
By 1973, round after round of political struggles had left
many lower-level institutions, including local government, factories,
and railways, short of competent staff to carry out basic functions.China's economy had fallen into disarray, which led to the
rehabilitation of purged lower-level officials. The party's core became
heavily dominated by Cultural Revolution beneficiaries and radicals,
whose focus remained ideological purity over economic productivity. The
economy remained mostly Zhou's domain, one of the few remaining
moderates. Zhou attempted to restore the economy, but was resented by
the Gang of Four, who identified him as their primary political
succession threat.
In late 1973, to weaken Zhou's political position and to distance themselves from Lin's apparent betrayal, the Criticize Lin, Criticize Confucius campaign began under Jiang's leadership. Its stated goals were to purge China of New Confucianist thinking and denounce Lin's actions as traitorous and regressive.
Deng Xiaoping's rehabilitation (1975)
Deng Xiaoping returned to the political scene, assuming
the post of Vice-Premier in March 1973, in the first of a series of
Mao-approved promotions. After Zhou withdrew from active politics in
January 1975, Deng was effectively put in charge of the government,
party, and military, then adding the additional titles of PLA General Chief of Staff, Vice Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, and vice-chairman of the Central Military Commission.
Mao wanted to use Deng as a counterweight to the military
faction in government to suppress former Lin loyalists. In addition, Mao
had also lost confidence in the Gang of Four and saw Deng as the
alternative. Leaving the country in grinding poverty would damage the
positive legacy of the CR, which Mao worked hard to protect. Deng's
return set the scene for a protracted factional struggle between the
radical Gang of Four and moderates led by Zhou and Deng.
At the time, Jiang and associates held effective control of mass media and the party's propaganda network,
while Zhou and Deng held control of most government organs. On some
decisions, Mao sought to mitigate the Gang's influence, but on others,
he acquiesced to their demands. The Gang of Four's political and media
control did not prevent Deng from enacting his economic policies. Deng
emphatically opposed Party factionalism, and his policies aimed to
promote unity to restore economic productivity. Much like the post-Great
Leap restructuring led by Liu Shaoqi, Deng streamlined the railway system, steel production, etc. By late 1975, however, Mao saw that Deng's economic restructuring might negate the CR's legacy and launched the Counterattack the Right-Deviationist Reversal-of-Verdicts Trend,
a campaign to oppose "rehabilitating the case for the rightists",
alluding to Deng as the country's foremost "rightist". Mao directed Deng
to write self-criticisms in November 1975, a move lauded by the Gang of
Four.
Death of Zhou Enlai
On 8 January 1976, Zhou Enlai died of bladder cancer. On
15 January, Deng delivered Zhou's eulogy in a funeral attended by all of
China's most senior leaders with the notable absence of Mao, who had
grown increasingly critical of Zhou. After Zhou's death, Mao selected the relatively unknown Hua Guofeng instead of a member of the Gang of Four or Deng to become Premier.
The Gang of Four grew apprehensive that spontaneous,
large-scale popular support for Zhou could turn the political tide
against them. They acted through the media to impose restrictions on
public displays of mourning for Zhou. Years of resentment over the CR,
the public persecution of Deng—seen as Zhou's ally—and the prohibition
against public mourning led to a rise in popular discontent against Mao
and the Gang of Four. Official attempts to enforce the mourning
restrictions included removing public memorials and tearing down posters
commemorating Zhou's achievements. On 25 March 1976, Shanghai's Wen Hui Bao published an article calling Zhou "the capitalist roader
inside the Party [who] wanted to help the unrepentant capitalist roader
[Deng] regain his power." These propaganda efforts at smearing Zhou's
image, however, only strengthened public attachment to Zhou's memory.
On 4 April 1976, on the eve of China's annual Qingming Festival, a traditional day of mourning, thousands of people gathered around the Monument to the People's Heroes
in Tiananmen Square to commemorate Zhou. They honored Zhou by laying
wreaths, banners, poems, placards, and flowers at the foot of the
Monument.
The most apparent purpose of this memorial was to eulogize Zhou, but
the Gang of Four were also attacked for their actions against the
Premier. A small number of slogans left at Tiananmen even attacked Mao
and his Cultural Revolution.
Up to two million people may have visited Tiananmen Square
on 4 April. All levels of society, from the most impoverished peasants
to high-ranking PLA officers and the children of high-ranking cadres,
were represented in the activities. Those who participated were
motivated by a mixture of anger over Zhou's treatment, revolt against
the Cultural Revolution and apprehension for China's future. The event
did not appear to have coordinated leadership.
The Central Committee, under the leadership of Jiang Qing,
labelled the event 'counter-revolutionary' and cleared the square of
memorial items shortly after midnight on April 6. Attempts to suppress
the mourners led to a riot. Police cars were set on fire, and a crowd of
over 100,000 people forced its way into several government buildings
surrounding the square. Many of those arrested were later sentenced to
prison. Similar incidents occurred in other major cities. Jiang and her
allies attacked Deng as the incident's 'mastermind', and issued reports
on official media to that effect. Deng was formally stripped of all
positions inside and outside the Party on 7 April. This marked Deng's
second purge.
Death of Mao Zedong and the Gang of Four's downfall
On 9 September 1976, Mao Zedong died. To Mao's supporters,
his death symbolized the loss of China's revolutionary foundation. His
death was announced on 9 September. The nation descended into grief and mourning, with people weeping in
the streets and public institutions closing for over a week. Hua Guofeng
chaired the Funeral Committee and delivered the memorial speech.
Shortly before dying, Mao had allegedly written the message "With you in charge, I'm at ease,"
to Hua. Hua used this message to substantiate his position as
successor. Hua had been widely considered to be lacking in political
skill and ambitions, and seemingly posed no serious threat to the Gang
of Four in the race for succession. However, the Gang's radical ideas
also clashed with influential elders and many Party reformers. With army
backing and the support of Marshal Ye Jianying, Director of Central
Office Wang Dongxing, Vice Premier Li Xiannian and party elder Chen Yun, on 6 October, the Central Security Bureau's Special Unit 8341 had all members of the Gang of Four arrested in a bloodless coup.
After Mao's death, people characterized as
'beating-smashing-looting elements', who were seen as having disturbed
the social order during the CR, were purged or punished.
"Beating-smashing-looting elements" had typically been aligned with
rebel factions.
Aftermath
Transitional period
Hua Guofeng succeeded Mao as chairman of the CCP after Mao's death.
Although Hua denounced the Gang of Four in 1976, he
continued to invoke Mao's name to justify Mao-era policies. Hua
spearheaded what became known as the Two Whatevers. Like Deng, Hua wanted to reverse the CR's damage; but unlike Deng, who
wanted new economic models for China, Hua intended to move the Chinese
economic and political system towards Soviet-style planning.
On 10 October, Deng wrote a letter to Hua asking to be
transferred back to state and party affairs; party elders also called
for Deng's return. With increasing pressure from all sides, Premier Hua
named Deng Vice-Premier in July 1977, and later promoted him to various
other positions, effectively elevating Deng to be China's second-most
powerful figure. In August, the 11th National Congress was held in Beijing, officially naming (in ranking order) Hua Guofeng, Ye Jianying, Deng Xiaoping, Li Xiannian and Wang Dongxing as new members of the Politburo Standing Committee.
Deng Xiaoping first proposed what he called Boluan Fanzheng in September 1977 in order to correct the mistakes of the Cultural Revolution. In May 1978, Deng seized the opportunity to elevate his protégé Hu Yaobang to power. Hu published an article in the Guangming Daily,
making clever use of Mao's quotations, while lauding Deng's ideas.
Following this article, Hua began to shift his tone in support of Deng.
On 1 July, Deng publicized Mao's self-criticism report of 1962 regarding
the failure of the Great Leap Forward. As his power base expanded, in
September Deng began openly attacking Hua Guofeng's "Two Whatevers". The "1978 Truth Criterion Discussion", launched by Deng and Hu and their allies, also triggered a decade-long New Enlightenment movement in mainland China, promoting democracy, humanism and universal values, while opposing the ideology of Cultural Revolution.
On 18 December 1978, Third Plenum of the 11th Central Committee was held. Deng called for "a liberation of thoughts" and urged the party to "seek truth from facts" and abandon ideological dogma. The Plenum officially marked the beginning of the reform and opening up.
Hua Guofeng engaged in self-criticism and called his "Two Whatevers" a
mistake. At the Plenum, the Party reversed its verdict on the Tiananmen
Incident. Former Chinese president Liu Shaoqi was given a belated state
funeral. Peng Dehuai, who was persecuted to death during the Cultural Revolution was rehabilitated in 1978.
At the Fifth Plenum held in 1980, Peng Zhen, He Long and other leaders who had been purged during the Cultural Revolution were rehabilitated. Hu Yaobang became head of the party secretariat as its secretary-general. In September, Hua Guofeng resigned, and Zhao Ziyang, another Deng ally, was named premier.
Hua remained on the Central Military Commission, but formal power was
transferred to a new generation of pragmatic reformers, who reversed
Cultural Revolution policies to a large extent. Within a few years, Deng
and Hu helped rehabilitate over 3million "unjust, false, erroneous" cases. In particular, the trial of the Gang of Four took place in Beijing from
1980 to 1981, and the court stated that 729,511 people had been
persecuted by the Gang, of whom 34,800 were said to have died.
In 1981, the Chinese Communist Party passed a resolution
and declared that the Cultural Revolution was "responsible for the most
severe setback and the heaviest losses suffered by the Party, the
country, and the people since the founding of the People's Republic."
Fatality estimates vary across different sources, usually ranging from hundreds of thousands to millions. In addition to various regimes of secrecy and obfuscation concerning
the Revolution, both top-down as perpetuated by authorities, as well as
laterally among the Chinese public in the decades since, the
discrepancies are due in large part to the totalistic nature of the
Revolution itself: it is a significant challenge for historians to
discern whether and in what ways discrete events that took place during
the Cultural Revolution should be ascribed to it.
Most deaths occurred after the mass movements ended, when organized campaigns attempted to consolidate order in workplaces and communities. As Andrew G. Walder summarizes, "The cure for factional warfare was far worse than the disease." Serious man-made disasters such as the 1975 Banqiao Dam failure, also caused many deaths.
Literature reviews of the overall death toll due to the Cultural Revolution usually include the following:
Examines the period between 1966 and 1971. Walder reviewed the reported deaths in 2,213 annals from every county
and interpreted the annals' vague language in the most conservative
manner. For instance, "some died" and "a couple died" were interpreted
as zero death, while "death in the scale of tens/hundreds/thousands"
were interpreted as "ten/a hundred/a thousand died". The reported deaths
underestimate the actual deaths, especially because some annals
actively covered up deaths. Annal editors were supervised by the CCP Propaganda Department.In 2003, Walder and Yang Su coauthored a paper along this approach, but with fewer county annals available at the time.
The 1.728 million were counted as "unnatural deaths", among which 9.4% (162,000) were CCP party members and 252,000 were intellectuals. The figures were extracted from 建国以来历次政治运动事实; 'Facts on the Successive Political Movements since the Founding of the PRC', a book by the party's History Research Center, which states that "according to CCP internal investigations in 1978 and 1984...
21.44 million were investigated, 125 million got implicated in these
investigations; [...] 4.2 million were detained (by Red Guards and other
non-police), 1.3 million were arrested by police, 1.728 million of
unnatural deaths; [...] 135,000 were executed for crimes of
counter-revolution; [...] during violent struggles 237,000 were killed and 7.03 million became disabled". While these internal investigations were never mentioned or published
in any other official documents, the scholarly consensus found these
figures very reasonable.
Rummel included his estimate of Laogai camp deaths in this figure. He estimated that 5% of the 10 million people in the Laogai camps died
each year of the 12-year period, and that this amounts to roughly 6
million.
Several sources have quoted a statement made by MarshalYe Jianying, of "683,000 deaths in the cities, 2.5 million deaths in the countryside, plus 123,700 deaths due to violent struggles and 115,500 deaths due to struggle sessions and imprisonment, in addition to 557,000 people missing." In a 2012 interview with Hong Kong's Open Magazine, an unnamed bureaucrat in Beijing claimed that Ye made the statement in a 1982 CCP meeting, while he was the party's Vice Chairman. Several sources have also quoted that Marshal Ye estimated the death
toll to be 20 million during a CCP working conference in December 1978. Academic Jie Li writes that scholarship has discredited Ye's 20 million estimate.
This figure was obtained by an AFP correspondent in Beijing, citing an unnamed but "usually reliable" source. In 1986, Maurice Meisner
referred to this number as a "widely accepted nationwide figure", but
also said "The toll may well have been higher. It is unlikely that it
was less." Jonathan Leightner asserted that the number is "perhaps one of the best estimates".
Massacres
Quotations of Mao Zedong on a street wall of Wuxuan County, one of the centers of the Guangxi Massacre
These massacres were mainly led and organized by local
revolutionary committees, Communist Party branches, militia, and the
military. Most victims were members of the Five Black Categories
as well as their children, or members of "rebel groups". Chinese
scholars have estimated that at least 300,000 people died in these
massacres. Collective killings in Guangxi and Guangdong
were among the most serious. In Guangxi, the official annals of at
least 43 counties have records of massacres, with 15 of them reporting a
death toll of over 1,000, while in Guangdong at least 28 county annals
record massacres, with 6 of them reporting a death toll of over 1,000.
Official sources in 1980 revealed that, during the Red
August, at least 1,772 people were killed by Red Guards, including
teachers and principals of many schools, meanwhile 33,695 homes were
ransacked and 85,196 families were forced to flee. The Daxing Massacre
in rural Beijing caused the deaths of 325 people from 27 August to 1
September 1966; those killed ranged from 80 years old to a 38-day old
baby, with 22 families being completely wiped out.
In Dao County, Hunan, a total of 7,696 people were killed from 13 August to 17 October 1967, in addition to 1,397 forced to commit suicide, and 2,146 becoming permanently disabled.
In the Guangxi Massacre, the official record shows an estimated death toll from 100,000 to 150,000 as well as cannibalism primarily between 1967 and 1968 in Guangxi, where one of the worst violent struggles of the Revolution took place, before Zhou sent the PLA to intervene.
In 1975, the PLA led a massacre in Yunnan around the town of Shadian, targeting Hui people, resulting in the deaths of more than 1,600 civilians, including 300 children, and the destruction of 4,400 homes.
The Cultural Revolution Cemetery in Chongqing, where 400–500 people killed in factional clashes are buried, out of a total of at least 1,700 deaths.
Violent struggles were factional
conflicts (mostly among Red Guards and "rebel groups") that began in
Shanghai and then spread to other areas in 1967. They brought the
country to a state of civil war.Weapons used included some 18.77million guns, 2.72million grenades, 14,828 cannons, millions of other ammunition and even armored cars and tanks. Notable violent struggles include the battles in Chongqing, in Sichuan, and in Xuzhou. Researchers claimed that the nationwide death toll in violent struggles ranged from 300,000 to 500,000.
The recorded rate of violence rose in 1967, reaching a peak that summer before dropping suddenly. During 1967, casualties were relatively low as the weapons used were primarily clubs, spears, and rocks until late July.
Although firearms and heavier weapons began to spread during summer,
most were neither trained nor committed fighters and therefore
casualties remained relatively low.
The peak of collective violence in summer 1967 dropped sharply after
August, when Mao became concerned about rebel attacks on local army
units and thereafter made clear that his prior calls to "drag out" army
commanders was a mistake and he would instead support besieged army
commands.
The greatest number of casualties occurred during the
process of restoring order in 1968, although the overall number of
violent conflicts was lower. Walder stated that while "rising casualties
from a smaller number of insurgent conflicts surely reflected the
increasing scale and organizational coherence of rebel factions, and
their growing access to military weaponry[,]" another important factor
was that "[t]he longer that local factional warfare continued without
the prospect of an equitable political settlement, the greater the
stakes for the participants and the more intense the collective violence
as factions fought to avoid the consequence of losing."
In addition to violent struggles, millions of Chinese were
violently persecuted, especially via struggle sessions. Those
identified as spies, "running dogs",
"revisionists", or coming from a suspect class (including those related
to former landlords or rich peasants) were subject to beating,
imprisonment, rape, torture, sustained and systematic harassment and
abuse, seizure of property, denial of medical attention, and erasure of
social identity. Some people were not able to stand the torture and committed suicide.
Researchers claimed that at least 100,000 to 200,000 people committed
suicide during the early CR.
At the same time, many "unjust, false, and mistaken" cases
appeared due to political purges. In addition to those who died in
massacres, a large number of people died or became permanently disabled
due to lynching
or other forms of persecution. From 1968 to 1969, the Cleansing the
Class Ranks purge caused the deaths of at least 500,000 people. Purges of similar nature such as the One Strike-Three Anti Campaign and the campaign towards the May Sixteenth elements were launched in the 1970s.For example, a political purge in Yunnan province, the Zhao Jianmin spy case, resulted in 17,000 deaths and wrongfully persecuted a total of 1.38 million people.
While official state media required photographers to
capture revolutionary fervor, some photojournalists secretly documented
the movement's 'dark side' at great personal risk. Li Zhensheng, a photographer for the Heilongjiang Daily,
amassed nearly 100,000 negatives—including images of struggle sessions
and executions—which he hid under the parquet floorboards of his home in
Harbin for decades. These images, many of which were not developed
until years later, now serve as a rare visual testament to the daily
realities of the era outside of Beijing.
The Cultural Revolution wrought havoc on minority cultures and ethnicities. Languages and customs of ethnic minorities in China were labeled as part of the Four Olds, texts in ethnic languages were burned, and bilingual education was suppressed. In Inner Mongolia,
some 790,000 people were persecuted during the Inner Mongolia incident.
Of these, 22,900 were beaten to death, and 120,000 were maimed, during a witch hunt to find members of the alleged separatist New Inner Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party. In Xinjiang, copies of the Qur'an and other books of the Uyghur people were apparently burned. Muslim imams reportedly were paraded around with paint splashed on their bodies. Yunnan Province, the palace of the Dai people's king was torched, and a massacre of Muslim Hui people at the hands of the PLA in Yunnan, known as the Shadian incident, reportedly claimed over 1,600 lives in 1975. After the Cultural Revolution, the government gave reparations for the
Shadian Incident, including the erection of a Martyr's Memorial in
Shadian.
In the ethnic Korean areas of northeast China, clashes took place. In Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture,
where freight trains trundled from China into North Korea, corpses of
Koreans killed in the pitched battles of the Cultural Revolution were
draped with revolutionary graffiti. The Governor, Zhu Dehai, an ethnic Korean, was branded as a traitor and a North Korean spy and was later purged.
Concessions to minorities were abolished during the Cultural Revolution as part of the Red Guards' attack on the "Four Olds". People's communes, previously only established in parts of Tibet, were established throughout Tibet Autonomous Region in 1966, removing Tibet's exemption from China's land reform, and reimposed in
other minority areas. The effect on Tibet was particularly severe as it
came following the repression after the 1959 Tibetan uprising. The destruction of nearly all of its over 6,000 monasteries, which
began before the Cultural Revolution, were often conducted with the
complicity of local ethnic Tibetan Red Guards. Only eight were intact by the end of the 1970s.
Many monks and nuns were killed, and the general population was subjected to physical and psychological torture. An estimated 600,000 monks and nuns lived in Tibet in 1950, but by 1979, most were dead, imprisoned or had disappeared.
The Tibetan government in exile claimed that many Tibetans died from
famines in 1961–1964 and 1968–1973 as a result of forced
collectivization,however, the number of Tibetan deaths or whether famines, in fact, took place in these periods is disputed. Despite persecution, some local leaders and minority ethnic practices survived in remote regions.
It was felt that pushing minority groups too hard would compromise China's border
defenses. This was especially important as minorities make up a large
percentage of the population that live in border regions. In the late
1960s, China experienced a period of strained relations with some of its
neighbors, notably with the Soviet Union and India.
Pan Suiming,
Emily Honig, and others documented that rape and sexual abuse of
sent-down women were common during the Cultural Revolution's height. Tania Branigan documented that women raped tended to be from educated
urban backgrounds while their rapists were poor peasants or local
officials.
Cultural impact and influence
Red Guards riot
A
1968 map of Beijing showing streets and landmarks renamed during the
Cultural Revolution. Andingmen Inner Street became "Great Leap Forward
Road", Taijichang Street became the "Road for Eternal Revolution",
Dongjiaominxiang was renamed "Anti-Imperialist Road", Beihai Park was
renamed "Worker-Peasant-Soldier Park" and Jingshan Park became "Red
Guard Park". Most of the Cultural Revolution-era name changes were later
reversed.
The revolution aimed to destroy the Four Olds and
establish the corresponding Four News, which ranged from changing of
names and cutting of hair to ransacking homes, vandalizing cultural
treasures, and desecrating temples.
The revolution aimed to eliminate cow demons and snake spirits
- the class enemies who promoted bourgeois ideas, as well as those from
an exploitative family background or who belonged to one of the Five
Black Categories. Large numbers of people perceived to be "monsters and
demons" regardless of guilt or innocence were publicly denounced,
humiliated, and beaten. In their revolutionary fervor, students,
especially the Red Guards, denounced their teachers, and children
denounced their parents. Many died from ill-treatment or committed suicide. In 1968, youths were mobilized to go to the countryside in the Down to the Countryside Movement
so they may learn from the peasantry, and the departure of millions
from the cities helped end the most violent phase of the Cultural
Revolution.
Academics and intellectuals
Yao Tongbin, one of China's foremost missile scientists, was beaten to death by a mob in Beijing during the Cultural Revolution (1968). This caused Zhou Enlai to order special protection for key technical experts.
Academics and intellectuals were regarded as the "Stinking Old Ninth" and were widely persecuted. Many were sent to rural labor camps such as the May Seventh Cadre School.
The prosecution of the Gang of Four revealed that 142,000 cadres and
teachers in the education circles were persecuted. Academics,
scientists, and educators who died included Xiong Qinglai, Jian Bozan, Wu Han, Rao Yutai, Wu Dingliang, Yao Tongbin and Zhao Jiuzhang. As of 1968, among the 171 senior members who worked at the headquarters of Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, 131 were persecuted. Among the members of the academy, 229 died. As of September 1971, more than 4,000 staff members of China's nuclear center in Qinghai had been persecuted, while more than 310 were disabled, over 40 committed suicide, and 5 were executed.
Despite the hardships, some significant achievements came
in science and technology: scientists tested the first missile, created
China's first hydrogen bomb and launched China's first satellite in the "Two Bombs, One Satellite" program.
Many health personnel were deployed to the countryside as barefoot doctors.
Some farmers were given informal medical training, and health-care
centers were established in rural communities. This process led to a
marked improvement in health and life expectancy.
Education system
Schools and universities were closed at the beginning of
the Cultural Revolution. During this time university, senior middle, and
junior middle school students took part in Red Guard activities from 1966–1968.
Elementary and middle schools gradually reopened after 1968.
Universities were closed until 1970, and most remained closed until
1972. Post-secondary education was disrupted the most and suffered the
greatest losses in quantity, changes in quality, and time passed before
institutions reopened. Elementary schools were the least impacted; a
small number of schools continued to hold classes without serious
interruption, while some others only lost a semester.
Most middle schools only resumed classes after the end of the Red Guard
movement in 1968. Secondary school classes of 1966, 1967, and 1968 were
unable to graduate on time later and became known as the "Old Three
Cohort (老三届)".
Middle schools faced logistical problems after being
reopened in 1968. Schools now had two extra cohorts of students to
manage; those whose education was disrupted or delayed from 1966-1968,
as well as a shortage of teachers since many had been purged. During this time, older cohorts were required to take part in the previously optional Down to the Countryside Movement.These
sent-down youth would refer to themselves as the “lost generation” as a
result of being deprived of higher education and urban employment
opportunities. The official ideological motivation behind the program was to allow
youth to experience the revolutionary origins of the party, and to
contribute to China’s rural development. However, the program has also
been perceived as a practical response to the civil unrest in urban
centers generated by the youth in the Red Guard movement who were
neither employed nor in school. In the post-Mao period, many of those forcibly moved attacked the policy as a violation of their human rights. system reform
The education system was to be thoroughly transformed as introduced in CCP’s “16-Point Decision” on 9 August 1966.
Article 10 described how “an important task of cultural revolution was
to transform the education system and the older ways of teaching” and
that “bourgeois intellectuals must no longer dominate” the education
system. University and senior middle school examination methods would be reworked so they no longer resembled the bourgeois format.
The new method of selection would be based on work unit recommendations
and political backgrounds. Additionally, all formats for schooling,
testing, and promotion would be revised along with the content of
education. The national unified curriculum was abolished which left each
institution to rebuild its own curriculum based on the radical
principles of shorter classes, less classroom learning, more practice
plus labor and politics education.
Authorities applied experiments in education reform to rural schools first, and to urban schools second.
However, formulas designed for the countryside faced problems when
applied in cities, such as the introduction of peasant managed schools.
The equivalent in the urban context could only be schools run by
factories and street organizations which had no potential for universal
urban development. As a result of the difference between urban and rural communities,
urban schools had to adapt more specifically to the different conditions
of city life.
Rural education
The education reform mandated that village-level
production brigades administered elementary schools, and communes
administered middle schools.
Additionally, authorities instructed schools to be run as close to
students’ homes as possible. Along with administering elementary
schools, the reform made production brigades run their own complete
elementary schools as well. Furthermore, it ordered each commune to have
its own middle school with enrollment based on recommendation and
ability, with priority given to worker-peasant youth. Strategies for
raising pass rates by holding back and failing low-scoring students was
forbidden. The reform also abolished school related fees. If family
obligations interfered with a student’s attendance, the policy now
permitted bringing younger siblings to class and leaving animals to
graze at the school gate.
Since rural students regularly labored with their parents, the labor
part of the curriculum was not required and resulted in agricultural
middle schools disappearing as a separate work-study alternative.
Urban education
The education reform abolished special schools, including
those for cadres’ children, army children, and those attached to
universities where intellectuals’ children were prioritized
Instead, all became ordinary state-run schools. The reform expected
students to attend their nearest neighborhood schools. All urban schools
followed a shortened curriculum combining similar proportions of labor,
practice, and classroom learning for all students regardless of social
or academic standings.
University education
The education reform abolished unified national university
entrance exams, and one or two years of work replaced graduation from
senior middle school as a new prerequisite for university.Instead, students were selected from groups of candidates recommended
by their work units. In October 1970, student recruitment resumed in a
few select universities. To be accepted, a candidate only needed recommendations from “the
people,” leadership approval from their production or work units, and
approval of the college admissions office. The criteria were largely
founded on reliability and personal connections. Later, these new
university students were regarded as the worker-soldier-peasant
students.
When most universities reopened in 1972, recruitment
examinations had been abolished. New major criteria for university
admission became class background and party loyalty instead of academic
achievements. The only eligible applicants included workers, peasants,
and soldiers with two or more years of working experience who had
knowledge equivalent to junior middle school graduates or higher. The experience of university education changed as result of the lowered
average preparation of enrolled students and the lack of qualified
lectures and instructors, many of whom had been sent to the countryside
for reeducation.
Industrial universities were established in factories to
supply technical and engineering programs for industrial workers,
inspired by Mao's July 1968 remarks advocating vocational education.Factories around the country therefore established their own
educational programs for technicians and engineers, and by 1976, there
were 15,000 such 21 July Universities.Gao Mobo observes that in many underprivileged areas, political campaigns brought improvements in education and public health.
School experiences
Students from capitalist households often received poor
treatment from peers and instructors in schools during the Cultural
Revolution. Writing about her experiences as a student from such a
household, Xinran
discussed how instructors forbade her from taking part in song or dance
activities with other girls in her class because of her family’s
status. Additionally, Xinran was not allowed to sit or stand in the front row
during lessons despite her poor eyesight and short height; schools
preserved the front rows for the children of peasants, workers, and
soldiers as they were the “next generation of the revolution." After-school, teachers made “polluted” children attend political study
classes and forbade them from participating in activities with other
children their age.
In the initial stage of the Down to the Countryside Movement,
most of the youth who took part volunteered. Later on, the government
forced them to move. Between 1968 and 1979, 17 million urban youth left
for the countryside. Living in the rural areas deprived them of higher
education. This generation is sometimes referred to as the "lost generation". Formal literacy measurements did not resume until the 1980s. Some counties in Zhanjiang
had literacy rates as low as 59% 20 years after the revolution. This
was amplified by the elimination of qualified teachers—many districts
were forced to rely on students to teach.
Primary and middle schools gradually reopened during the
Cultural Revolution. Schooling years were reduced and education
standards fell, but the proportion of Chinese children who completed
primary education increased from less than half to almost all, and the
fraction who completed junior middle school rose from 15% to over
two-thirds. Educational opportunities for rural children expanded, while
education of the urban elite were restricted by anti-elitist policies. Radical policies provided many in rural communities with middle school education for the first time. Rural infrastructure developed during this period, facilitated by the political changes that empowered ordinary rural people.
Slogans and rhetoric
A depiction of a Red Guard holding up the Selected Works of Mao Zedong, with "revolution is no crime, to rebel is justified" written on a flag next to him, 1967
Huang claimed that the Cultural Revolution had massive
effects on Chinese society because of the extensive use of political
slogans. He claimed that slogans played a central role in rallying Party
leadership and citizens. For example, the slogan "to rebel is justified"
(造反有理; zàofǎn yǒulǐ) affected many views.
The remnants of a banner containing slogans from the Cultural Revolution in Anhui, 2006
Huang asserted that slogans were ubiquitous in people's
lives, printed onto everyday items such as bus tickets, cigarette
packets, and mirror tables.Workers were supposed to "grasp revolution and promote production".
Political slogans had three sources: Mao, Party media such as People's Daily, and the Red Guards. Mao often offered vague, yet powerful directives that divided the Red Guards. These directives could be interpreted to suit personal interests, in turn aiding factions' goals in claiming loyalty to Mao.
Dittmer and Chen claim that the Chinese language
had historically been defined by subtlety, delicacy, moderation, and
honesty, as well as the cultivation of a "refined and elegant literary
style". This changed during the CR. These slogans were an effective method of
"thought reform", mobilizing millions in a concerted attack upon the
subjective world, "while at the same time reforming their objective
world."
Dittmer and Chen argued that the emphasis on politics made
language into effective propaganda, but "also transformed it into a
jargon of stereotypes—pompous, repetitive, and boring".
To distance itself from the era, Deng's government cut back on
political slogans. During a eulogy for Deng's death, CCP general
secretary Jiang Zemin called the Cultural Revolution a "grave mistake".
Arts and literature
In 1966, Jiang Qing advanced the Theory of the Dictatorship of the Black Line.
Those perceived to be bourgeois, anti-socialist or anti-Mao (black
line) should be cast aside, and called for the creation of new
literature and arts.
Disseminators of the "old culture" would be eradicated. The majority of
writers and artists were seen as "black line figures" and "reactionary
literati", and were persecuted, and subjected to "criticism and
denunciation" where they could be humiliated and ravaged, and be
imprisoned or sent to hard labour. For instance, Mei Zhi and her husband were sent to a tea farm in Lushan County, Sichuan. She did not resume writing until the 1980s.
In 1970, the CCP came to view the Ministry of Culture as so disruptive that it decided to dissolve the Ministry and establish a Culture Group within the State Council in an effort to rein in cultural politics. No congresses of the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles were held during the Cultural Revolution.
The principles for cultural production laid out by Mao in the 1942 Talks at the Yan'an Forum on Art and Literature became dogmatized. The literary situation eased after 1972, as more were allowed to write,
and many provincial literary periodicals resumed publication, but the
majority of writers still could not work.
Documents released in 1980 regarding the prosecution of the Gang of
Four show that more than 2,600 people in the field of arts and
literature were persecuted by the Ministry of Culture. Many died: the names of 200 writers and artists who were persecuted to
death were commemorated in 1979. These include writers such as Lao She, Fu Lei, Deng Tuo, Baren, Li Guangtian, Yang Shuo and Zhao Shuli.
Depictions of iron girls
became a frequent subject of art during the Cultural Revolution, often
shown in spaces and activities traditionally associated with male
authority as part of an effort to develop the new socialist woman.
Jiang took control of the stage and introduced revolutionary operas
under her direct supervision. Traditional operas were banned as they
were considered feudalistic and bourgeois, but revolutionary opera,
which modified Peking opera in both content and form, was promoted. Six operas and two ballets were produced in the first three years, most notably the opera The Legend of the Red Lantern. These operas were the only approved opera form. Other opera troupes were required to adopt or change their repertoire. Loyalty dances became common and were performed throughout the country by both professional cultural workers and ordinary people.
The model operas were broadcast on the radio, made into films, blared
from public loudspeakers, taught to students in schools and workers in
factories, and became ubiquitous as a form of popular entertainment and
were the only theatrical entertainment for millions. Most model dramas featured women as their leads and promoted Chinese state feminism. Their narratives begin with them oppressed by misogyny, class position, and imperialism before liberating themselves through the discovery of internal strength and the CCP.
"Quotation songs", in which Mao's quotations were set to
music, were particularly popular during the early years of the Cultural
Revolution. Composer Li Jiefu first published quotation songs in People's Daily in September 1966 and they were promoted thereafter as a means for studying Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong. Records of quotation songs were played over loudspeakers, their primary means of distribution, as the use of transistor radios lagged until 1976.Rusticated youths with an interest in broadcast technology frequently operated rural radio stations after 1968. At the 9th National Congress of the Communist Party, Jiang Qing
condemned quotation songs, which she had come to view as comparable to
yellow music.
Visual arts
Posters from the Cultural Revolution period
Aesthetic principles emphasized during the Cultural
Revolution included the "tall, big, complete," "red, bright, shining,"
and "the three prominences".
According to the principle of the "three prominences," the good are
more prominent than the bad, the very good are more prominent than the
good, and the one outstanding figure is more prominent than the very
good. Other stylistic principles of the Cultural Revolution included "tall, large, and full".
Among the most significant visual works of the Cultural Revolution was Liu Chunhua's 1967 oil painting, Chairman Mao Goes to Anyuan. Another influential painting was Pan Jiajun's 1972 I Am a Petrel, which depicts a young woman soldier repairing a telegraph cables during a storm.Praised as a new classic of depicting a revolutionary heroine, it
inspired the creation of similar works and was itself widely distributed
as a poster.
A Red Guard art movement developed, reaching its peak in 1967.
Red Guards from fine arts academies organized large art exhibitions,
often in cooperation with rebel groups in work units or the army, which
included many amateur art works.The most significant Red Guard art exhibition was Long Live the Triumph of Chairman Mao's Revolutionary Line
which opened 1 October 1967 in Beijing and featured more than 1,600 art
works in a variety of media produced by artists and amateurs from
around the country. Following the exhibition, traveling teams toured art works from the exhibition through rural China and into remote areas.
The Red Guard art movement favored forms of art deemed public or
anti-elitist, such as black and white woodcuts (or brush and marker
illustrations in the style of a woodcut), satirical cartoons, paper cut
outs, and forms of folk art.
Among the most popular motifs in Red Guard art was the image of a
worker, peasant, and soldier conducting criticism or Red Guards doing
so.
Red Guard groups in fine arts academies also published journals,
pamphlets, and manifestos through which they criticized the old art
institutions.
Traditional themes were sidelined and artists such as Feng Zikai, Shi Lu, and Pan Tianshou were persecuted.
Many of the artists were assigned to manual labour, and artists were
expected to depict subjects that glorified the Cultural Revolution
related to their labour.
In 1971, in part to alleviate their suffering, several leading artists
were recalled from manual labour or freed from captivity under a Zhou
initiative to decorate hotels and railway stations defaced by Red Guard
slogans. Zhou said that the artworks were meant for foreigners,
therefore were "outer" art and not under the obligations and
restrictions placed on "inner" art meant for Chinese citizens. He
claimed that landscape paintings should not be considered one of the
"Four Olds". However, Zhou was weakened by cancer, and in 1974, the
Jiang faction seized these and other paintings and mounted exhibitions
in Beijing, Shanghai and other cities denouncing the artworks as Black Paintings.
Propaganda in posters was used as a mass communication
device and often served as the people's leading source of information.
They were produced in large numbers and widely disseminated to propagate
ideological positions. The two main posters genres were the big-character poster or dazibao and commercial propaganda poster.
The dazibao presented
slogans, poems, commentary and graphics often posted on walls in public
spaces, factories and communes. Mao wrote his own dazibao at Beijing University on 5 August 1966, calling on the people to "Bombard the Headquarters".
Xuanchuanhua,
or propaganda paintings, were artworks produced by the government and
sold cheaply in stores to be displayed in homes or workplaces. The
artists for these posters might be amateurs or uncredited professionals,
and the posters were largely in a Socialist Realist visual style with specific conventions—for example, images of Mao were to be depicted as "red, smooth, and luminescent".
After decreasing in prominence throughout the 1980s,
Cultural Revolution posters became prominent in public life again in the
1990s in connection with red tourism, as collectibles, in commercial advertising, and in contemporary art. In contemporary China, they continue to be reproduced in large amounts and sold commercially. Historic posters have been the subject of exhibitions and auctions, including in the United States and Europe.
Before the Cultural Revolution, relatively few cultural
productions reflected the lives of peasants and workers; during it, the
struggles of workers, peasants, and revolutionary soldiers became
frequent artistic subjects, often created by peasants and workers
themselves. Among the most prominent examples of this style included the peasant paintings of Huxian. In the early 1970s, worker, peasant, and soldier-created art was promoted as the paradigm of socialist art. The spread of peasant paintings in rural China, for example, became one of the newborn things celebrated in a socialist society.
Literature
Literature adapted the aesthetic themes from the model works, such as the "three prominences".Applied in the literary context, the principle of the three prominences
was that texts should demonstrate the struggle between revolutionary
and reactionary forces in a stark and dichotomous manner.Other literary trends during the period included the integration of modern style and local traditions (such as clappertalk) and poetry-style dramatic dialogues.
During the Cultural Revolution, the long-form novel was an emphasized form of literature.Among the major genres were novels about the experiences of sent-down youth. These included novels written by sent-down youths themselves, such as Zhang Kangkang's 1975 novel Dividing Line and Zhang Changgong's 1973 novel Youth.
Literary works by amateurs, such as factory workers, spread during the Cultural Revolution. Among the amateur writers who became prominent during the Cultural Revolution was Duan Ruixia for the 1973 short story, Not Just One of the Audience.
Writing about the romantic relationships of revolutionary martyrs became one of the taboo topics during the Cultural Revolution.
A large amount of poetry
was published during the Cultural Revolution; it proliferated in
non-traditional literary avenues like newspapers, performances, and Red
Guard pamphlets.
Film
The Four Hundred Films to be Criticized booklet was distributed, and film directors and actors/actresses were criticized with some tortured and imprisoned. These included many of Jiang Qing's rivals and former friends. Those who died in the period included Cai Chusheng, Zheng Junli, Shangguan Yunzhu, Wang Ying, and Xu Lai. No feature films were produced in mainland China for seven years apart
from a few approved "Model dramas" and highly ideological films. A notable example is Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy. China rejected Hollywood films and most foreign films.Albanian films and North Korean films developed mass audiences in China. In 1972, Chinese officials invited Michelangelo Antonioni to China to film the achievements of the Cultural Revolution. Antonioni made the documentary Chung Kuo, Cina. When it was released in 1974, CCP leadership in China interpreted the film as reactionary and anti-Chinese. Viewing art through the principles of the Yan'an Talks,
particularly the concept that there is no such thing as
art-for-art's-sake, party leadership construed Antonioni's aesthetic
choices as politically motivated and banned the film.
Mobile film units brought Chinese cinema
to the countryside and were crucial to the standardization and
popularization of culture during this period, particularly including
revolutionary model operas.During the Cultural Revolution's early years, mobile film teams
traveled to rural areas with news reels of Mao meeting with Red Guards
and Tiananmen Square parades, which became known as "red treasure
films".
The release of the filmed versions of the revolutionary model operas
resulted in a re-organization and expansion of China's film exhibition
network.
From 1965 to 1976, the number of film projection units in China
quadrupled, total film audiences nearly tripled, and the national film
attendance rate doubled.
The Cultural Revolution Group drastically reduced ticket prices which,
in its view, would allow film to better serve the needs of workers and
of socialism.
Historical sites
Buddhist statues defaced during the Cultural Revolution
China's historical sites, artifacts and archives suffered
devastating damage, as they were thought to be at the root of "old ways
of thinking". Artifacts were seized, museums and private homes
ransacked, and any item found that was thought to represent bourgeois or
feudal
ideas was destroyed. Few records relate how much was destroyed—Western
observers suggest that much of China's thousands of years of history was
in effect destroyed, or, later, smuggled abroad for sale. Chinese
historians compare the suppression to Qin Shi Huang's great Confucian purge. Religious persecution intensified during this period, as religion was viewed in opposition to Marxist–Leninist and Maoist thinking.
The destruction of historical relics was never formally
sanctioned by the Party, whose official policy was instead to protect
such items. On 14 May 1967, the Central Committee issued Several suggestions for the protection of cultural relics and books during the Cultural Revolution.
Despite this, enormous damage was inflicted on China's cultural
heritage. For example, a survey in 1972 in Beijing of 18 cultural
heritage sites, including the Temple of Heaven and Ming Tombs,
showed extensive damage. Of the 80 cultural heritage sites in Beijing
under municipal protection, 30 were destroyed, and of the 6,843 cultural
sites under protection by Beijing government decision in 1958, 4,922
were damaged or destroyed. Numerous valuable old books, paintings, and other cultural relics were burnt.
Later archaeological excavation and preservation after the destructive period were protected, and several significant discoveries, such as the Terracotta Army and the Mawangdui, occurred after the peak of the Revolution. Nevertheless, the most prominent medium of academic research in archaeology, the journal Kaogu, did not publish. After the most violent phase, the attack on traditional culture continued in 1973 with the Anti-Lin Biao, Anti-Confucius Campaign as part of the struggle against moderate Party elements.
During the early period of the Cultural Revolution, freedom of the press in China was at its peak. While the number of newspapers declined in this period, the number of
independent publications by mass political organizations grew. According to China's National Bureau of Statistics, the number of newspapers dropped from 343 in 1965, to 49 in 1966, and then to a 20th-century low of 43 in 1967. At the same time, the number of publications by mass organizations such as Red Guards grew to an estimated number as high as 10,000.
Independent political groups could publish broadsheets
and handbills, as well as leaders' speeches and meeting transcripts
which would normally have been considered highly classified. From 1966 to 1969, at least 5,000 new broadsheets by independent political groups were published. Several Red Guard organizations also operated independent printing presses to publish newspapers, articles, speeches, and big-character posters. For example, the largest student organization in Shanghai, the Red
Revolutionaries, established a newspaper that had a print run of 800,000
copies by the end of 1966.
The functions of China's embassies abroad were disrupted
during the early part of the Cultural Revolution. In a 22 March 1969
meeting on the Sino-Soviet border clashes, Mao stated that in foreign relations, China was "now isolated" and "we need to relax a little". Later that year, China began to restore its embassies to normal functioning.
However, the Sino-Soviet conflict
culminated in 1969, and according to declassified documents from both
China and the United States, the Soviet Union planned to launch a large-scale nuclear strike on China after the Zhenbao Island incident in 1969. The planned targets include Beijing, Changchun, Anshan and China's missile-launch centers of Jiuquan, Xichang and Lop Nur. This crisis almost led to a major nuclear war, seven years after the Cuban missile crisis. Eventually, the Soviets called off the attack due to the intervention from the United States.
China exported communist revolutions as well as communist ideologies to multiple countries in Southeast Asia, supporting parties in Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar and the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. It is estimated that at least 90% of the Khmer Rouge's foreign aid came
from China. In 1975 alone at least US$1 billion in interest-free
economic and military aid and US$20million came from China. China's economic malaise impacted China's ability to assist North Vietnam in its war against South Vietnam by the 1970s, which cooled relations between the once allied nations.
After the Cultural Revolution, a massive social and cultural movement known as the New Enlightenment took place in mainland China since the late 1970s. The movement lasted throughout the 1980s, and opposed the ideology of Cultural Revolution and feudalism. The New Enlightenment movement ended due to the Tiananmen Square protests and massacre in June 1989. After Deng Xiaoping's southern tour in early 1992, however, intellectuals in mainland China became divided and formed two major schools of thought, the Liberalism and the New Left, which held different views on the Cultural Revolution. Meanwhile Maoist scholars hold another view.
To this day, public discussion of the Cultural Revolution
is still limited within mainland China. The Chinese government continues
to prohibit news organizations from mentioning details, and online
discussions and books about the topic are subject to official scrutiny.
Textbooks abide by the "official view" of the events. Many government
documents from the 1960s onward remain classified. Despite inroads by prominent sinologists, independent scholarly research is discouraged.
Mao Zedong's legacy remains in some dispute. During the
anniversary of his birth, many people viewed Mao as a godlike figure and
referred to him as "the people's great savior". Contemporary
discussions in the CCP-owned tabloid Global Times
continue to glorify Mao. Rather than focus on consequences, state media
newspapers claim that revolutions typically have a brutal side and are
unable to be viewed from the "humanitarian perspective". Critics of Mao Zedong look at the actions that occurred under his
leadership from the point of view that "he was better at conquering
power than at ruling the country and developing a socialist economy".
Mao went to extreme measures on his path to power, costing millions of
lives then and during his rule.
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