Mao was dissatisfied with the trend toward re-stratification caused by the bureaucratization of the Chinese Communist Party. In reaction he launched the Wuchan Jieji Wenhua Da Geming, the Great Proletariat Cultural Revolution, in the Spring of 1966. Unlike the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution was not primarily concerned with reforming China's economic system. Rather it was Mao's attempt to resolve the contradictions between the egalitarian view of Marxism, and the elitist tendencies of Leninist organizational principles.

In the early 1960s, Mao was on the political sidelines and in semi seclusion. By 1962, however, he began an offensive to purify the party, having grown increasingly uneasy about what he believed were the creeping “capitalist” and antisocialist tendencies in the country.

To arrest the so-called capitalist trend, Mao launched the Socialist Education Movement (1962-65), in which the primary emphasis was on restoring ideological purity; rein fusing revolutionary fervour into the party and government bureaucracies, and intensifying class struggle. There were internal disagreements, however, not on the aim of the movement but on the methods of carrying it out.

Opposition came mainly from the moderates represented by Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping, who were unsympathetic to Mao’s policies. The Socialist Education Movement was soon paired with another Mao campaign, the theme of which was “to learn from the People’s Liberation Army.” Minister of National Defense Lin Biao’s rise to the center of power was increasingly conspicuous. It was accompanied by his call on the PLA and the CCP to accentuate Maoist thought as the guiding principle for the Socialist Education Movement and for all revolutionary undertakings in China.

It had the dual purpose of providing mass education less expensively than previously and of re-educating intellectuals and scholars to accept the need for their own participation in manual labor. The drafting of intellectuals for manual labor was part of the party’s rectification campaign, publicized through the mass media as an effort to remove “bourgeois” influences from professional workers--particularly, their tendency to have greater regard for their own specialized fields than for the goals of the party. Official propaganda accused them of being more concerned with having “expertise” than being “red”.

By mid-1965 Mao had gradually but systematically regained control of the party with the support of Lin Biao, Jiang Qing (Mao’s fourth wife), and Chen Boda, a leading theoretician. In the next months, under the guise of upholding ideological purity, Mao and his supporters purged or attacked a wide variety of public figures, including State Chairman Liu Shaoqi and other party and state leaders. By mid-1966 Mao’s campaign had erupted into what came to be known as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, the first mass action to have emerged against the CCP apparatus itself.

Mao felt that he could no longer depend on the formal party organization, convinced that it had been permeated with the “capitalist” and bourgeois obstructionists. Maoists turned to middle-school students for political demonstrations on their behalf. These students, joined also by some university students, came to be known as the Red Guards. Millions of Red Guards were encouraged by the Cultural Revolution group to become a “shock force” and to “bombard” with criticism both the regular party headquarters in Beijing and those at the regional and provincial levels.

Red Guard activities were promoted as a reflection of Mao’s policy of rekindling revolutionary enthusiasm and destroying “outdated,” “counterrevolutionary” symbols and values. Mao’s ideas, popularized in the Quotations from Chairman Mao, became the standard by which all revolutionary efforts were to be judged. The result of the unfettered criticism of established organs of control by China’s exuberant youth was massive civil disorder, punctuated also by clashes among rival Red Guard gangs and between the gangs and local security authorities.

The party organization was shattered from top to bottom. (The Central Committee’s Secretariat ceased functioning in late 1966.) The resources of the public security organs were severely strained. Faced with imminent anarchy, the PLA - the only organization whose ranks for the most part had not been radicalized by Red Guard - style activities - emerged as the principal guarantor of law and order and the de facto political authority.

In late 1966, campus activities and street violence included attacks on the ‘Four Olds’. These were: ideas, culture, customs and habits. In 1967, Red Guards organized large-scale disruption of industries, contributing to lowered labor productivity - industrial output decreased by 14.7% from 1966.

In January of the next year, members of government leadership and the party were expelled from Shanghai. Struggles broke out between rival mass organizations, as each claimed to be the true Maoist group. Disorder was emerging as different factions of the Red Guard and other radical movements fought each other for control of areas. In some cases these battles involving the Red Guards involved as many as fifty thousand people and were full-scale military operations.

Mao ultimately orders Lin Biao to use the Army to bring order to the Red Guards movement. The attempt to unify the factions of the Red Guards fails. Mao replaces the pre-Cultural Revolution party officials with radicals who support the Cultural Revolution, and send the Red Guards to the countryside for re-education by the peasants.

Youths were sent to villages so that their skills might contribute to rural development, and that they might learn from the peasants. The real reason for this policy was the labor surplus in the cities; it was difficult to find employment for the graduates. Dispersion of students also helped diffuse feuding between student groups. By 1975, there were 12,000,000 rusticated youths.

The Cultural Revolution wound down from its peak in 1968, at the same time as the PLA was gaining control of the process of political normalization. The activist phase of the Cultural Revolution was brought to an end in April 1969. This end was formally signaled at the CCP’s Ninth National Party Congress, which convened under the dominance of the Maoist group. Mao was confirmed as the supreme leader. Lin Biao was promoted to the post of CCP vice chairman and was named as Mao’s successor. Others who had risen to power by means of Cultural Revolution machinations were rewarded with positions on the Political Bureau; a significant number of military commanders were appointed to the Central Committee. The party congress also marked the rising influence of two opposing forces, Mao’s wife, Jiang Qing, and Premier Zhou Enlai. 

Tag: The Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) - Part I