Cultural Revolution

1966-69: The Violent Phase


The ground had been prepared: it now remained only for a suitable incident to launch the Revolution. In May 1966, Nie Yuanzi, a philosophy instructor at Beijing University, wrote a Revolutionary Big Character Poster that accused the President of the University of suppressing student political activities (these large handwritten screeds, pasted one over another on every public wall, would be the major medium of propaganda and debate during the Cultural Revolution). Mao ordered the text of the poster to be published in People's Daily, China's main newspaper. This inspired students across the country to begin questioning their teachers and local Party leaders on their political orthodoxy and accusing them of Rightist activity. Liu Shaoqi tried to defuse the situation by sending 10,000 Party cadres who were loyal to him or his associates to 400 different schools to divert the students' energies in debate and contain their extremism.

In July, Chairman Mao became personally involved. He wrote his own Big Character Poster declaring his support for the students, entitled 'Bombard the Headquarters' and containing the famous slogan: 'to rebel is justified'. He also authorized the formation of hundreds of 'Red Guard' organizations. These young political fanatics, most of them teenage children from the countryside, were products of the Socialist Education Movement and would lead the almost continuous purges of all levels of the Party and government in all areas of China. With the logistical support of the PLA, a series of huge Red Guard rallies was held in Beijing from August to November of 1966. Most rallies had over a million attendees, and the largest one had almost two and a half million participants.

In a few weeks, all of Mao's major opponents in the Party had been denounced and driven from public life, and government offices throughout China were occupied by gangs of Red Guards declaring themselves to be 'Chairman Mao's little soldiers'. Government bureaucrats and politicians at all levels were called in for 'revolutionary self-criticism and struggle sessions'. These sessions could take any form from a midnight debate in the culprit's house with a few Red Guards to a humiliating public show-trial attended by thousands. The fate of those called out for 'struggle sessions' varied considerably. Some were let off with a caution after making a suitably abject apology for their ideological misdeeds, while others were sent into internal exile or imprisoned. Liu Shaoqi and Peng Dehuai (who had been dragged out of retirement) were sentenced to solitary confinement and later died of maltreatment in prison. Liu's wife Wang Guangmei, Chen Yi, and Peng Zhen were imprisoned. Deng Xiaoping was exiled to a tractor factory in Manchuria. Others were simply beaten to death or committed suicide. The Chinese government itself admits that over 35,000 people were killed in incidents of mob violence from 1966 to 1968, but some Western analysts have placed the number at more than 400,000. Meanwhile, hundreds of ad hoc groups formed by workers and peasants inspired by Mao's rhetoric formed to oppose 'Rightists' and 'Party members taking the capitalist road'. In a general sense, most of these groups were reacting against a system of entrenched privilege that had begun to flourish in the very Party that had promised them a genuine classless Socialist society.

Within a few months, the zeal and dogmatism of the Red Guards caused the movement to break apart into hundreds of factions. These factions would combine with and against the worker/peasant groups in a constantly-shifting kaleidoscope for the next two years. For every dogma there is a heresy, an 'enemy within', and it soon came to light that some worker/peasant groups and Red Guard factions had in fact been created by lower-level Party and government figures to defend themselves from the radicals. For example, in at least one instance, a minister engineered a fake 'power seizure' in his own ministry with a decoy radical group composed of people loyal to himself. The hunt for these hidden enemies, who 'waved the Red Banner to beat down the Red Banner', along with the increasingly complex faction fights, contributed to the general atmosphere of chaos and violence that prevailed in China by the end of 1966. In many cities, local PLA commanders had had to take over the running of transportation, food collection and distribution networks, and the policing of the cities due to so many functionaries being yanked out of office.

Some incidents resulted in massive political upheaval, as in the 'Shanghai Commune' in January 1967 when the entire Party leadership of the city was forced to resign by a coalition of radical workers' groups with over one million members. In other cases rhetorical clashes became actual battles. One of the most serious incidents of this type occurred in Wuhan in central China in July 1967. The local PLA commander had intervened in support of a worker's group that was fighting with the Red Guards. Jiang Qing, Mao's wife, sent representatives from her clique, the 'Cultural Revolution Small Group', to order the commander to support the Red Guards instead. The division occupying Wuhan mutinied and loyal troops had to be sent from Beijing to restore order. The next summer in Guangxi in the south, PLA tanks and artillery were used in support of both sides in a battle with Red Guards on one side and a mixed worker-militia force on the other.

It became obvious to Mao that he could not let incidents like this continue without plunging China into civil war, and he began to soften his support for the more radical groups. To reduce the chaos, Mao directed 'Three-in-One Committees', composed of local Party Committee members and radicals but dominated by PLA officers, to take power locally. He ordered the Red Guards to disband in the summer of 1968 and sent 'Worker Mao Zedong Thought Propaganda Teams', usually composed of military people, into high schools and university campuses to restore order and crack down on radicals. While most of the Red Guards went back obediently to school, hundreds of thousands from the more radical factions were sent to work in the countryside for 'socialist re-education'. In the following three years, almost seven million young people would be 'sent down' in this way.

By mid-1969, 'Three-in-One Committees' were in control in every province and the worst of the violence and disorder had passed. At the Ninth Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in April 1969, the delegates declared the Cultural Revolution officially over. The Congress adopted a new Constitution that formally expelled Liu Shaoqi from the Party and named Lin Biao as 'Chairman Mao Zedong's close comrade-in-arms and successor'.