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China The Cultural Revolution, 1966-76
The Cultural Revolution, 1966-76
China Table of Contents
In the early 1960s, Mao was on the political sidelines and in
semiseclusion. 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. As a hardened veteran revolutionary who had
overcome the severest adversities, Mao continued to believe that
the material incentives that had been restored to the peasants and
others were corrupting the masses and were counterrevolutionary.
To arrest the so-called capitalist trend, Mao launched the Socialist
Education Movement, in which the primary emphasis was on
restoring ideological purity, reinfusing revolutionary fervor 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.
In connection with the Socialist Education Movement, a thorough
reform of the school system, which had been planned earlier to
coincide with the Great Leap Forward, went into effect. The
reform was intended as a work-study program--a new xiaf ang
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movement--in which schooling was slated to accommodate the
work schedule of communes and factories. 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".
The Militant Phase, 1966-68
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 late
1965 a leading member of Mao's "Shanghai Mafia," Yao
Wenyuan, wrote a thinly veiled attack on the deputy mayor of
Beijing, Wu Han. In the next six 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 mid1966 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.
Considerable intraparty opposition to the Cultural Revolution was
evident. On the one side was the Mao-Lin Biao group, supported
by the PLA; on the other side was a faction led by Liu Shaoqi and
Deng Xiaoping, which had its strength in the regular party
machine. Premier Zhou Enlai, while remaining personally loyal to
Mao, tried to mediate or to reconcile the two factions.
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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. He turned to Lin Biao
and the PLA to counteract the influence of those who were
allegedly "`left' in form but `right' in essence." The PLA was
widely extolled as a "great school" for the training of a new
generation of revolutionary fighters and leaders. Maoists also
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 f rom Chairman Mao,
became the standard by which all revolutionary efforts were to be
judged. The "four big rights"--speaking out freely, airing views
fully, holding great debates, and writing big-character posters -became an important factor in encouraging Mao's youthful
followers to criticize his intraparty rivals. The "four big rights"
became such a major feature during the period that they were later
institutionalized in the state constitution of 1975. 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
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principal guarantor of law and order and the de facto political
authority. And although the PLA was under Mao's rallying call to
"support the left," PLA regional military commanders ordered their
forces to restrain the leftist radicals, thus restoring order
throughout much of China. The PLA also was responsible for the
appearance in early 1967 of the revolutionary committees, a new
form of local control that replaced local party committees and
administrative bodies. The revolutionary committees were staffed
with Cultural Revolution activists, trusted cadres, and military
commanders, the latter frequently holding the greatest power.
The radical tide receded somewhat beginning in late 1967, but it
was not until after mid-1968 that Mao came to realize the
uselessness of further revolutionary violence. Liu Shaoqi, Deng
Xiaoping, and their fellow "revisionists" and "capitalist roaders"
had been purged from public life by early 1967, and the Maoist
group had since been in full command of the political scene.
Viewed in larger perspective, the need for domestic calm and
stability was occasioned perhaps even more by pressures
emanating from outside China. The Chinese were alarmed in
1966-68 by steady Soviet military buildups along their common
border. The Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 heightened
Chinese apprehensions. In March 1969 Chinese and Soviet troops
clashed on Zhenbao Island (known to the Soviets as Damanskiy
Island) in the disputed Wusuli Jiang (Ussuri River) border area.
The tension on the border had a sobering effect on the fractious
Chinese political scene and provided the regime with a new and
unifying rallying call.
The Ninth National Party Congress to the Demise
of Lin Biao, 1969-71
The activist phase of the Cultural Revolution--considered to be
the first in a series of cultural revolutions--was brought to an end
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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 to appointed the Central Committee. The party
congress also marked the rising influence of two opposing forces,
Mao's wife, Jiang Qing, and Premier Zhou Enlai.
The general emphasis after 1969 was on reconstruction through
rebuilding of the party, economic stabilization, and greater
sensitivity to foreign affairs. Pragmatism gained momentum as a
central theme of the years following the Ninth National Party
Congress, but this tendency was paralleled by efforts of the
radical group to reassert itself. The radical group--Kang Sheng,
Xie Fuzhi, Jiang Qing, Zhang Chunqiao, Yao Wenyuan, and Wang
Hongwen--no longer had Mao's unqualified support. By 1970 Mao
viewed his role more as that of the supreme elder statesman than
of an activist in the policy-making process. This was probably the
result as much of his declining health as of his view that a
stabilizing influence should be brought to bear on a divided nation.
As Mao saw it, China needed both pragmatism and revolutionary
enthusiasm, each acting as a check on the other. Factional
infighting would continue unabated through the mid-1970s,
although an uneasy coexistence was maintained while Mao was
alive.
The rebuilding of the CCP got under way in 1969. The process
was difficult, however, given the pervasiveness of factional
tensions and the discord carried over from the Cultural Revolution
years. Differences persisted among the military, the party, and
left-dominated mass organizations over a wide range of policy
issues, to say nothing of the radical-moderate rivalry. It was not
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until December 1970 that a party committee could be
reestablished at the provincial level. In political reconstruction two
developments were noteworthy. As the only institution of power
for the most part left unscathed by the Cultural Revolution, the
PLA was particularly important in the politics of transition and
reconstruction. The PLA was, however, not a homogeneous body.
In 1970-71 Zhou Enlai was able to forge a centrist-rightist alliance
with a group of PLA regional military commanders who had taken
exception to certain of Lin Biao's policies. This coalition paved
the way for a more moderate party and government leadership in
the late 1970s and 1980s.
The PLA was divided largely on policy issues. On one side of the
infighting was the Lin Biao faction, which continued to exhort the
need for "politics in command" and for an unremitting struggle
against both the Soviet Union and the United States. On the other
side was a majority of the regional military commanders, who had
become concerned about the effect Lin Biao's political ambitions
would have on military modernization and economic development.
These commanders' views generally were in tune with the
positions taken by Zhou Enlai and his moderate associates.
Specifically, the moderate groups within the civilian bureaucracy
and the armed forces spoke for more material incentives for the
peasantry, efficient economic planning, and a thorough
reassessment of the Cultural Revolution. They also advocated
improved relations with the West in general and the United States
in particular--if for no other reason than to counter the perceived
expansionist aims of the Soviet Union. Generally, the radicals'
objection notwithstanding, the Chinese political tide shifted
steadily toward the right of center. Among the notable
achievements of the early 1970s was China's decision to seek
rapprochement with the United States, as dramatized by President
Richard M. Nixon's visit in February 1972. In September 1972
diplomatic relations were established with Japan.
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Without question, the turning point in the decade of the Cultural
Revolution was Lin Biao's abortive coup attempt and his
subsequent death in a plane crash as he fled China in September
1971. The immediate consequence was a steady erosion of the
fundamentalist influence of the left-wing radicals. Lin Biao's
closest supporters were purged systematically. Efforts to
depoliticize and promote professionalism were intensified within
the PLA. These were also accompanied by the rehabilitation of
those persons who had been persecuted or fallen into disgrace in
1966-68.
End of the Era of Mao Zedong, 1972-76
Among the most prominent of those rehabilitated was Deng
Xiaoping, who was reinstated as a vice premier in April 1973,
ostensibly under the aegis of Premier Zhou Enlai but certainly with
the concurrence of Mao Zedong. Together, Zhou Enlai and Deng
Xiaoping came to exert strong influence. Their moderate line
favoring modernization of all sectors of the economy was formally
confirmed at the Tenth National Party Congress in August 1973, at
which time Deng Xiaoping was made a member of the party's
Central Committee (but not yet of the Political Bureau).
The radical camp fought back by building an armed urban militia,
but its mass base of support was limited to Shanghai and parts of
northeastern China--hardly sufficient to arrest what it denounced
as "revisionist" and "capitalist" tendencies. In January 1975 Zhou
Enlai, speaking before the Fourth National People's Congress,
outlined a program of what has come to be known as the Four
Modernizations for the four sectors of agriculture, industry,
national defense, and science and technology. This program would
be reaffirmed at the Eleventh National Party Congress, which
convened in August 1977. Also in January 1975, Deng Xiaoping's
position was solidified by his election as a vice chairman of the
CCP and as a member of the Political Bureau and its Standing
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Committee. Deng also was installed as China's first civilian chief
of PLA General Staff Department.
The year 1976 saw the deaths of the three most senior officials in
the CCP and the state apparatus: Zhou Enlai in January, Zhu De
(then chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's
Congress and de jure head of state) in July, and Mao Zedong in
September. In April of the same year, masses of demonstrators in
Tiananmen Square in Beijing memorialized Zhou Enlai and
criticized Mao's closest associates, Zhou's opponents. In June the
government announced that Mao would no longer receive foreign
visitors. In July an earthquake devastated the city of Tangshan in
Hebei Province. These events, added to the deaths of the three
Communist leaders, contributed to a popular sense that the
"mandate of heaven" had been withdrawn from the ruling party. At
best the nation was in a state of serious political uncertainty.
Deng Xiaoping, the logical successor as premier, received a
temporary setback after Zhou's death, when radicals launched a
major counterassault against him. In April 1976 Deng was once
more removed from all his public posts, and a relative political
unknown, Hua Guofeng, a Political Bureau member, vice premier,
and minister of public security, was named acting premier and
party first vice chairman.
Even though Mao Zedong's role in political life had been sporadic
and shallow in his later years, it was crucial. Despite Mao's
alleged lack of mental acuity, his influence in the months before
his death remained such that his orders to dismiss Deng and
appoint Hua Guofeng were accepted immediately by the Political
Bureau. The political system had polarized in the years before
Mao's death into increasingly bitter and irreconcilable factions.
While Mao was alive--and playing these factions off against each
other--the contending forces were held in check. His death
resolved only some of the problems inherent in the succession
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struggle.
The radical clique most closely associated with Mao and the
Cultural Revolution became vulnerable after Mao died, as Deng
had been after Zhou Enlai's demise. In October, less than a month
after Mao's death, Jiang Qing and her three principal associates-denounced as the Gang of Four--were arrested with the assistance
of two senior Political Bureau members, Minister of National
Defense Ye Jianying (1897-1986) and Wang Dongxing,
commander of the CCP's elite bodyguard. Within days it was
formally announced that Hua Guofeng had assumed the positions
of party chairman, chairman of the party's Central Military
Commission, and premier.
Search
Cu sto m S e a rch
Source: U.S. Library of Congress
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