Volume 7, No. 10, October 2025
Editor: Rashed Rahman
Although a Cultural Revolution (CR) group was formed in 1965, and although at that time Mao saw the general outlines of what he aimed at and even defined the immediate target as the removal of the top Party persons in authority taking the capitalist road, the movement did not get into full swing until the first ‘Group in Charge of the Cultural Revolution’ (previously mentioned), which sent work teams into many universities, institutes, schools and other centres of education and culture, directing these teams along a line of repressing revolutionary criticisms and actions, was exposed and ousted, and a new leading Group was formed. This was a matter of top-level inner-Party struggle.
Thus, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, as it now became known, although officially launched in April, really got underway by August 1966, with the issuing of a special 16-point programme. This was adopted by an expanded meeting (known as a plenum) of the Central Committee, which clarified the aims and the methods for achieving them.The programme declared the aim of the movement to be (Point 14): “To revolutionise people’s ideology and as a consequence to achieve greater, faster, better and more economical results in all fields of work. If the masses are fully aroused and proper arrangements are made, it is possible to carry on both the cultural revolution and production without one hampering the other, while guaranteeing high quality in all our work. The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution is a powerful motive force for the development of the social productive forces in our country. Any idea of counterposing the great cultural revolution against the development of production is incorrect.”[9]
The programme called on persons in charge of Party organisations to boldly arouse the masses using big-character posters and ‘great debates’ for this purpose. In the course of this, the masses should be encouraged to criticise mistakes and to assist those who recognised mistakes they had made to correct them. If people persisted in taking the capitalist road they were to be removed from leading posts. This method would assist the masses to educate themselves by taking part in the revolutionary movement and also to learn to distinguish between right and wrong and correct and incorrect ways of doing things.The programme clearly opposed the use of force to compel submission to majority views because “sometimes truth is with the minority”.[10] It urged persuasion through reasoning, not by force, when there is debate. It directed that “The cultural and educational units and leading organs of the Party and government in the large and medium cities are the points of concentration of the present proletarian cultural revolution.”[11]
This programme was used as a guide through most of the subsequent period. However, it must be recognised that certain aspects of the CR got out of hand or were not adhered to as the CR developed, particularly avoidance of violence. Originally, the CR was expected to last for about a year. However, its most intense phase lasted from 1966 to 1969. The Red Guard movement, begun in the universities in June 1966, rapidly swelled to immense proportions after Mao openly declared his support for it. It developed after a big-character poster put up by a lecturer at Peking University, Nieh Yuan-tzu, was widely published and broadcast on the radio on Mao’s orders.
Turmoil and the Red Guards
This was a movement no one had anticipated. Universities and middle schools were closed while teachers and students actively took part in promoting the CR. While a certain degree of order reigned at the beginning, different factions soon developed within the Red Guards, even though all were declaring support for Mao. Indeed, they tended to hold centre-stage for much of the CR. It is not possible here to chronicle the ebbs and flows of the Cultural Revolution as the whole sequence of events and forces at work were too complex; one can only deal with general tendencies and some of their consequences.
In a speech to a Central Work Conference on October 25, 1966, Mao is reported as saying: “The Great Cultural Revolution wreaked havoc after I approved Nieh Yuan-tzu’s big-character poster in Peking University and wrote a letter to Tsinghua University Middle School, as well as writing a big-character poster of my own entitled ‘Bombard the Headquarters’ [directed at Liu Shao-chi]. It all happened within a very short period, less than five months in June, July, August, September and October. No wonder the comrades did not understand too much. The time was so short and the events so violent. I myself had not foreseen that as soon as the Peking University poster was broadcast, the whole country would be thrown into turmoil. Even before the letter to the Red Guards had gone out, Red Guards had mobilised throughout the country, and in one rush they swept you off your feet. Since it was I who caused the havoc, it is understandable if you have some bitter words for me. Last time we met I lacked confidence and I said that our decisions would not necessarily be carried out.”[12]
Mao went on to point out that now that the central leadership had exchanged experiences things had gone a bit more smoothly and the ideas were better understood, adding: “It has only been five months. Perhaps the movement may last another five months, or even longer. Our democratic revolution went on for 28 years, from 1921 to 1949. At first nobody knew how to conduct the revolution or how to carry on the struggle; only later did we acquire some experience. Our path gradually emerged in the course of practice. Did we not carry on for 28 years, summarising our experience as we went along? Have we not been carrying on the socialist revolution for 17 years, whereas the Cultural Revolution has been going on for only five months? Hence we cannot ask comrades to understand so well now…My confidence in this meeting has increased…I think things can change and things can improve. Of course, we shouldn’t expect too much. We can’t be certain that the mass of central, provincial, regional and county cadres should all be so enlightened. There will always be some who fail to understand, and there will be a minority on the opposite side. But I think it will be possible to make the majority understand.”[13]
Evidently, late in 1965 when work teams were being sent out by the Central Committee to universities and institutes, what Mao had in mind was a revolution from above which would stir up mass criticism of Party and state cadres who were reactionary or revisionist, or who were not doing their job. His determination to revamp and proletarianise the ideological and political superstructure was intensified when the group in charge of the CR, appointed by the Central Committee, acted in the opposite way, putting the lid on criticism and denouncing many of the critics as reactionaries. Mao’s aim of course, was to keep China red and prevent the restoration of capitalism as had happened in Russia. With the mass eruption of Red Guards, however, the movement was difficult to keep under control, especially as the weight of evidence shows that Mao no longer had a majority on the Central Committee. From the beginning Mao kept stating that 95 percent of the Party cadres were good, and enjoining the Red Guards and all CR activists to unite, and not to use force against each other. It must be said however, that despite Mao’s immense prestige, his words often fell on deaf ears.
Red Guard detachments that had begun to relive the revolutionary experiences of the earlier generation by going on journeys along the route of the famous ‘Long March’ from South to Northwest China traversed from 1934-1936, gave way to a movement of all-out criticism and denunciation of almost all Party and state cadres, and often transgressed Mao’s guidelines about using force. Regrettably, a great deal of harassment of good cadres took place. Some of it was no doubt due to over-enthusiasm for unearthing and combatting revisionists and counter-revolutionaries. Of course, in any revolution, and the CR was one, excesses are bound to take place.
Student Leadership – A Problem
The problem really arises over the degree to which the CR was student-led, not only university, but very largely middle school (i.e. secondary school) student-led. In the earlier stages the August programme called for the students not to spread revolution in factories or rural areas ‘at present’. Workers and commune members were to carry on the revolution at their place of work. The programme also stated that “In the armed forces, the Cultural Revolution and the Socialist Education movement should be carried out in accordance with the instructions of the Military Commission of the Central Committee and the General Political Department of the People’s Liberation Army.”[14] That is, it was not to be a target of a Red Guard clean-up. The programme was stated to have been drawn up under Mao’s direct supervision.
As matters developed, there were increasing signs of petty-bourgeois radicalism among the students. This was not surprising. A substantial proportion were from petty-bourgeois backgrounds, and in any case students lacked the firm class basis of the workers, their discipline, their concern for collective property and their unwillingness to use unnecessary violence. As well, behind the scenes, an ultra-left tendency was urging on Red Guards to ‘drag out’ capitalist roaders in the army. Unknown to Mao and his supporters, this tendency urging the students to violence and factional fighting was headed by Army chief Lin Piao, later unmasked as a traitor. Mao had anticipated that the Party upheaval would at first be limited to the cadres at middle and upper levels, and that mass criticism of the top levels would come from below. However, helped on by Lin Piao’s speeches at Red Guard rallies demanding that they criticise the Party and government at all levels, and drag out the capitalist roaders, a wholesale attack developed on all Party cadres down to the lowest levels. Violent clashes, instead of dying away, were increasing by the end of 1966 and early in 1967.
‘The January Storm’
By then Mao had extended the CR to the industrial and agricultural sectors. A major struggle took place among workers in China’s biggest industrial city, Shanghai. Revolutionary committees were formed among rank and file factory workers to seize power from revisionist bureaucrats and managers. The Shanghai Municipal Party Committee, a stronghold of Liu Shao-chi’s organisation, resisted, defending the revisionist line. The seizure of power by revolutionary Shanghai workers became known as ‘The January Storm’. It brought to the forefront of the CR three active ideological political leaders, Chang Chun-chiao, Yao Wen-yuan (who exposed Wu Han) and Wang Hung-wen, who received the fullest backing from Mao. Mao’s wife, Chiang Ching, was already leading the struggle for combating the dominance of feudal and bourgeois ideas and propaganda in the theatre arts and culture. After Mao’s death, these four, who were among the new leadership of the Party and state that had emerged from the CR, were arrested in a coup d’etat by new bourgeois elements in the Party and state leadership, headed by the new Party Chairman, Hua Kuo-feng. They were denounced by Hua and his new ally, the reinstated Deng Xiaoping as ‘The Gang of Four’.
What had happened in between?
Tripartite Power Develops
All over the country the workers and peasants had followed the example of Shanghai. Gradually, alliances were formed between the revolutionary committees, the revolutionary Party cadres actively leading the struggle for the Maoist line, and the cadres of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). This tripartite grouping was later to form the basis of the people’s state power, whose principal body was the National People’s Congress.
All along Mao’s aim had not been to destroy the Party, but to break the authority of the leading revisionist clique as a result of encouraging mass criticism from below, at the same time teaching the masses revolutionary politics through their own experience. Matters did not go according to plan, however, for all along, Lin Piao and his lieutenant Chen Po-ta, were organising behind the scenes for the destruction of the Party as an organisation in order to carry out a military seizure of power for Lin himself.
As to the PLA, its principal role throughout was as an educational force. At no time was it used as a weapon against Mao’s opponents. Because of its role in the long armed struggle to liberate China, it had immense prestige among the masses. Thanks to Mao’s long-time emphasis upon the army being a force to carry out political tasks determined by the class struggle, it was the most political army in the world, and the most democratic, having abolished ranks. Besides this, it had a big role in most spheres of the economy: building and construction, transportation, ship-building, hydro-electric building schemes and so on. It also worked in agriculture, in the communes, alongside the peasants. Thus, it was a true people’s army. Because of the high level of political consciousness in the PLA, the Red Guards accepted – certainly in the early stages – their advice and tuition. However, as a result of Lin Piao’s splitting activities and the growth of anarchistic tendencies among the students, splits and struggles developed among the Red Guards and between sections of Red Guards and the PLA. While the Shanghai victory had brought the working class forward, correctly, as the leading force, it was by no means united.
Instructions were now issued for primary schools and lower classes of middle schools to open again. However, many were reluctant to go back. So were the teachers. “It’s dangerous to be a teacher,” they said, recalling ill-treatment, and stayed at home.[15] Despite repeated calls by Mao to rehabilitate the majority of Party cadres as the true diehards were only a handful, many were still subjected to harassment and ill-treatment through 1967 and 1968. Divisions still existed among workers, commune members and students. In this situation after briefings by Mao personally to 30,000 top activists, PLA personnel formed Mao Tse-tung Thought propaganda teams (unarmed), and once again descended upon each factory, each commune to stop the strife, to help form the alliances that in turn would give birth to the revolutionary committees.
The workers united swiftly, far more swiftly than the university students. They formed ‘grand alliances’…and industry picked up remarkably. Agricultural communes were also tidied up…But while doing this major work, the PLA, like the Red Guards before it, was already being relegated to a secondary role. It was to monitor new constructs, but voluntarily to efface itself after these were in place. On this point Mao was adamant. Despite the militarisation which took place and the overwhelming PLA presence from 1968 to 1971, by 1973 the army was brought back under Party control. Civilian order was re-established. This demilitarisation vindicated ideological leadership. “The Party commands the gun, and never the gun the Party.”[16]
Notes
[9] Snow, E: The Long Revolution (Huchinson, London). Quoted from an appendix: “The Sixteen-point Programme of the Cultural Revolution” adopted at the 11th Plenum of the Central Committee, CPC., p.248.
[10] Ibid., p.243.
[11] Ibid., p.247.
[12] Schram, S: Mao Tse-tung Unrehearsed (Penguin Books, England, p.271).
[13] Schram, S: op.cit., pp.271-273.
[14] Snow, E: op.cit., p.248.
[15] Han Suyin: Wind in the Tower (Jonathan Cape, 1976, p.306). This book is the second part of the author’s biography of Mao Tse-tung (the first was The Morning Deluge) for which she was given access to many records not hitherto made available outside of the leadership. Also, she had many conversations with people at all levels concerning the CR. Later she backslid to supporting Deng & Co., but her Mao biography is anti-revisionist.
[16] Han Suyin: Wind in the Tower, pp.320-321.
(To be continued)