The Cultural Revolution was catalyzed by fundamental disagreements within the central government regarding the very nature of socialist revolution. The seriousness of this central drama can be seen in the fact that the President of the Peoples Republic, Liu Shaoqi, was imprisoned, beaten, and denounced as a traitor, finally dying from abuse.
The Cultural Revolution began within the elite universities and high schools near centers of governmental authority in Beijing and Shanghai. The Red Guards movement arose spontaneously among students and staff of Beijing and Tsinghua Universities in response to the Chairmans call for a re-expression of the socialist revolution. The tactics and goals of Red Guards were initially embraced by the CPC, which provided free transportation to a series of mass rallies in Beijing, where the Chairman himself reviewed the students. Whether someone was admitted into a Red Guards unit depended on ones attitude and family background. But everyone could wear the military fashion, attend rallies, and thus join in the revolutionary spirit.
The most radical of the Red Guards were upwardly mobile, status conscious university and high school students near centers of political power. The Chairman had called for young people to challenge older cadres who, in his opinion, had become soft and may have betrayed the revolution. The Red Guards responded to that call. Many of these students saw their participation as an opportunity for rapid career advancement, with the apparent approval of the highest authorities in the land.
Red Guards attacked first and most brutally anyone against whom they may have held a grudge: teachers who had not given them top grades, for example. Red Guards almost always attacked in groups by detaining, humiliating, and beating or otherwise torturing their victims. Few of these Red Guards stood out as undisputed leaders. This was conditional on properly interpreting and anticipating the Chairmans thoughts, which were nearly always open to interpretation. Once it all had ended, very few of these criminals wanted to be known as former Red Guards, particularly if they had participated in the commission of murder and other serious crimes that were punishable by death.
During the Cultural Revolution, statues, sculptures, books and works of art that represented anything religious, foreign, or old were defaced and destroyed throughout China by gangs of Red Guards. Even the Confucius family graveyard was ransacked. Anyone who created, owned, protected, or openly appreciated anything deemed unacceptable was likely to be detained, questioned, punched, slapped, yelled at, humiliated and often much more. It seems not to have occurred to anyone that Marx and Lenin also represented old, foreign ideas.
Women were prominent among the leaders of the movement (e.g., Nie Yuanzi and Jiang Qing). Women were prominent in its philosophical and artistic expression (see for example Red Detachment of Women), and many young women joined their male peers in participating in mass rallies and struggle sessions.
Suddenly, to a greater extent than had ever occurred at this scale, everyone was being judged in relation to where one fell along the Red /Black divide, which was usually determined more or less unambiguously at birth. It did not depend on race, however; but rather on ones relative poverty, and whether someone in your extended family may have supported the wrong people in the Civil War. Please keep in mind, however, that this does not represent typical historical Chinese social behavior. When the Cultural Revolution ended, China went back to venerating ancestors, honoring the old, respecting the educated, and admiring financial and familial success.
Civil and military authority throughout the nation was disrupted or destroyed in a relatively short period of time. It took another eight years after the imposition of martial law for the full restoration of legitimate authority to occur and for the official rehabilitation of the movements victims to begin taking place.
It has been said that the Left eats its own. That is what happened to the Red Guards. Different factions disagreed about the proper interpretation of the Chairmans thoughts, and they battled one another like gangs, with increasingly deadly results. Weapons had been commandeered from the PLA, and gunfire could be heard in the streets: something very unusual in a nation without civilian gun ownership. CPC support for the Red Guards ended. The PLA left their barracks and asserted control of the streets. Red Guards abandoned their weapons and melted away.
Younger high school students in smaller cities and towns throughout most of the nation knew nothing about the violence that was taking place at the heart of the Cultural Revolution. They were inspired by its idealism and by the optimistic future it portrayed. Many of these younger people made their way to Beijings summer rallies. The youngsters were not as radicalized as the ambitious, upwardly mobile Red Guards who had taken over Tsinghua and Beijing Universities. For the most part, they were just innocent kids participating in history. It was primarily these younger students who would participate in the Down to the Countryside Movement, often spending years working alongside local peasants, far from the trouble in the cities.
1) 1. At about minute 3 into the first video The Cultural Revolution (1966), an actor says: As artists, we were engineers of human souls. [We] had a serious responsibility to reeducate people. Do you think that artists in China at the time had such responsibilities? How about now? How about here? Do you think public servants, scientists, business people, educators, etc. should be expected to engage in political education or social engineering? Should they do so in China? Should they do so here? Should they align with current orthodoxy? Should they be allowed or encouraged to differ from current orthodoxy? Should they participate in such activities even if they would rather not? Are there any drawbacks?
If you think this requires a complicated response, tell me precisely how. Please use examples from the Cultural Revolution to make your point. Show that you have read and understood todays topic.
Watch: The Cultural Revolution (1966) [Daniel Guiney]
2) The participants in the video Down to the Countryside: a fifty year reunion all remember their experiences in the countryside as positive and memorable, resulting in many lifelong friendships, and even one marriage. Chinese society continues to be influenced a great deal by Confucian philosophy. What are your impressions? Do you think that a similar program requiring young people to work for a period of time outdoors (if they can) could work here? For example, what would be the reaction if California called on high school kids to work clearing brush in fire-prone areas?
Watch: Down to the Countryside: a fifty year reunion
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