The Cultural Revolution

by Audrey Erickson In 1971, journalist Tillman Durdin wrote an article for the New York Times outlining the lasting effects of the Cultural Revolution on China; in it, he cites an increased art market, shifts in typical family structure, less individual expression, and, as he put bluntly, “people seem less polite.” While these impacts were major shifts in China at the time, the ripple effect that the Cultural Revolution had on China and its international relations continued for decades later.

During his last decade in power (1966–76), Chinese Communist Party Chairman Mao Zedong began the Cultural Revolution, known in its full name as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. Fearing the direction China was headed in, the revolution aimed to renew the spirit of the Chinese Revolution of 1948, which reunified the Chinese people after two decades of conflict and established communism as the nation’s political structure. Mao’s position within the government had been weakened after the failure of the Great Leap Forward, a campaign aimed at restructuring China’s agricultural base that resulted in famine, millions of deaths, and economic crisis, and he sought ways to reassert his power and status. He feared the party was shifting its values towards capitalism and heading in the same revisionist direction as the Soviet Union, so he gathered a circle of radicals to support his new campaign: the Cultural Revolution.

At odds with the direction of the current Communist Party’s goals and searching to regain political capital, Mao and his close circle of radicals focused the new campaign on China’s youth, urging them to eliminate “impure” elements of the party—such as contact with capitalist nations or anticommunist leanings—and bringing back the spirit of the party from the civil war 20 years prior that began the People’s Republic of China and Mao’s reign as party chairman. He shut down all the nation’s schools, and students were instead charged with calling into question current political leaders who lacked “revolutionary spirit” and supported bourgeois values in any way.

norman garCy yaP (aea) and Jim sHankman (aea) in the great leap, at tHe Hangar tHeatre and Portland stage, 2022. PHoto By raCHel PHilliPson.

The World of The GreaTleap

The youth of China took the campaign seriously, mobilizing and forming the Red

Guards, a paramilitary group who policed, publically humiliated, and physically attacked their fellow citizens— particularly intellectuals and the eldery—who didn’t live by Maoist theory, Mao’s doctrine “composed of the ideology and methodology for revolution” that condemned imperialist sentiment. Even within Mao’s supporters, there was infighting amongst groups, with different factions claiming the most accurate interpretations of Mao’s teachings. However, consistent amongst all those who supported

Mao’s edicts was the belief that, to achieve

Mao’s vision of glory, the Chinese people had to eliminate the Four Olds: old customs, old culture, old habits, and old ideas. As seen in fascist ideology throughout history, the people were encouraged to tear down the country’s past to make way for what they were assured would be a bright future. The nation, Mao led the people to believe, could not move forward with pure communist values while tangible or cultural reminders of the old order remained.

illustration of tHe red guard. During the early years of the Cultural Revolution (1966–69), many of China’s major political leaders were beaten, imprisoned, or killed; while Mao remained untouchable, party members who posed political threat, most notably President Liu Shaoqi, were removed from power. With infighting amongst factions of the Red Guard and a considerably deflated system of governmental order, China’s large cities soon reached states of near-anarchy. In September of 1967, Mao was forced to give orders to defense minister Lin Biao to send military troops into the cities to restore order and restrain the mobilized citizen groups. The civil unrest was mitigated by sending some factions of the Red Guard to more rural areas, thus preventing conflict in the cities from escalating. Even with peace temporarily restored, China continued to be an unstable nation as it saw another massive economic dip.

In 1969, Mao named Lin his successor. Though Mao had no immediate plans of ceding power, it was the encouragement Lin needed to begin making grabs at power. Claiming that the Soviet military threatened security at the borders, he instituted martial law, a political move that made Mao feel threatened. With distrust sown between Lin and Mao, the latter turned to Premier Zhou Enlai to dismantle Lin’s power. Together, Mao and Zhou restructured the

distribution of power in the higher levels of Chinese government to neutralize Lin. In 1971, Lin died in a plane crash in Mongolia, apparently attempting to escape the Soviet Union. One by one, high-ranking members of Lin’s military command were removed, securing Mao’s power once more. The seemingly strategic time of Lin’s passing was a major turning point in the perception of the Cultural Revolution, with citizens becoming disillusioned with the goals of the movement; what had seemed to have started as an attempt to restore the nation’s values now resembled political theater and power struggles.

As public support of the movement dwindled, Mao and Zhou soon found themselves unable to lead it. In 1972, Mao suffered a stroke; later that year, Zhou, who had spent the previous couple of years reviving China’s education system and making further attempts to stabilize the nation, learned he had cancer. With few options and a loose hold on power, the two turned their support over to Deng Xiaoping, a political figure who had been purged by the Red Guard with Mao’s support in the early years of the revolution. This decision was highly contested among Mao’s previous radical supporters, including his wife, Jiang Qing. Jiang and her supporters continued to oppose the direction of Mao, Zhou, and Deng, once more creating political tensions as the two sides campaigned for power. Jiang ultimately got her way, with Deng being ousted once more, and Jiang and her radicals assuming power upon Zhou’s death in early 1976. Her victory was short-lived: when Mao passed a mere few months later in September of 1976, Jiang and her supporters were pushed out of government by a force consisting of military, police, and citizens. In 1977, Deng would take power once more, effectively ending the Cultural Revolution and leading China for 20 more years. Restoring China after the years of political and civil unrest, mass violence, and economic disruption was a slow process.

The World of The GreaTleap With 1.5 million people killed and millions more beaten, imprisoned, or humiliated, many had lost faith in the government. The government struggled to regain that trust in light of economic stress and fractured international relations with countries that could have provided aid. The following years sought to stabilize the country, as Deng led with consensus, compromise, and persuasion to implement major reforms in virtually all aspects of China’s political, economic, and social life. Even as strides were made (including China’s historic one-child policy and decentralized economic systems), the impact of the Cultural Revolution was too extreme to leave behind completely; the decade-long period of political upheaval would shape international relations into the 21st century.

Jiang qing and mao Zedong.