Cultural Revolution

This article is about the Chinese Cultural Revolution. the people since the founding of the People's Republic.
For Iran, see Iranian Cultural Revolution. For Libya, see * [1]
Cultural Revolution (Libya).
The Cultural Revolution, formally the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, was a social-political
movement that took place in the People's Republic of
China from 1966 until 1976. Set into motion by Mao Zedong, then Chairman of the Communist Party of China,
its stated goal was to preserve 'true' Communist ideology in the country by purging remnants of capitalist and
traditional elements from Chinese society, and to reimpose Maoist thought as the dominant ideology within
the Party. The Revolution marked the return of Mao Zedong to a position of power after the Great Leap Forward.
The movement paralyzed China politically and signicantly aected the country economically and socially.

1 Background

Millions of people were persecuted in the violent struggles that ensued across the country, and suered a wide
range of abuses including public humiliation, arbitrary
imprisonment, torture, sustained harassment, and seizure
of property. A large segment of the population was
forcibly displaced, most notably the transfer of urban
youth to rural regions during the Down to the Countryside
Movement. Historical relics and artifacts were destroyed.
Cultural and religious sites were ransacked.

lectives, bad weather, and exports of food necessary to secure hard currency resulted in the Great Chinese Famine.
Food was in desperate shortage, and production fell dramatically. The famine caused the deaths of millions of
people, particularly in poorer inland regions.* [5]

1.1 Great Leap Forward

Main article: Great Leap Forward

In 1958, after China's rst Five-Year Plan, Mao called for

grassroots socialismin order to accelerate his plans for
turning China into a modern industrialized state. In this
spirit, Mao launched the Great Leap Forward, established
People's Communes in the countryside, and began the
mass mobilization of the people into collectives. Many
The Revolution was launched in May 1966, after Mao al- communities were assigned production of a single comleged that bourgeois elements had inltrated the govern- moditysteel. Mao vowed to increase agricultural pro*
ment and society at large, aiming to restore capitalism. duction to twice 1957 levels. [2]
He insisted that these "revisionists" be removed through The Great Leap was an economic failure. Uneducated
violent class struggle. China's youth responded to Mao's farmers attempted to produce steel on a massive scale,
appeal by forming Red Guard groups around the country. partially relying on backyard furnaces to achieve the proThe movement spread into the military, urban workers, duction targets set by local cadres. The steel produced
and the Communist Party leadership itself. It resulted in was low quality and largely useless. The Great Leap rewidespread factional struggles in all walks of life. In the duced harvest sizes and led to a decline in the production
top leadership, it led to a mass purge of senior ocials, of most goods except substandard pig iron and steel. Furmost notably Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping. During the thermore, local authorities frequently exaggerated prosame period Mao's personality cult grew to immense pro- duction numbers, hiding and intensifying the problem for
portions.
several years.* [3]* [4] In the meantime, chaos in the col-

The Great Leap's failure reduced Mao's prestige within

the Party. Forced to take major responsibility, in 1959,
Mao resigned as the State Chairman, China's head of
state, and was succeeded by Liu Shaoqi. In July, senior
Party leaders convened at the scenic Mount Lu to discuss policy. At the conference, Marshal Peng Dehuai,
the Minister of Defence, criticized Great-Leap policies
in a private letter to Mao, writing that it was plagued by
mismanagement and cautioning against elevating political dogma over the laws of economics.* [3] Despite the
moderate tone of Peng's letter, Mao took it as a personal
attack against his leadership.* [6] Following the Conference, Mao had Peng removed from his posts, and accused him of being a right-opportunist. Peng was

Mao ocially declared the Cultural Revolution to have

ended in 1969, but its active phase lasted until the death
of the military leader Lin Biao in 1971. After Mao's
death and the arrest of the Gang of Four in 1976, reformers led by Deng Xiaoping gradually began to dismantle
the Maoist policies associated with the Cultural Revolution. In 1981, the Party declared that the Cultural Revolution was responsible for the most severe setback and
the heaviest losses suered by the Party, the country, and

BACKGROUND

replaced by Lin Biao, another revolutionary army general

who became a more staunch Mao supporter later in his
career. While the Lushan Conference served as a death
knell for Peng, Mao's most vocal critic, it led to a shift of
power to moderates led by Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping, who took eective control of the economy following
1959.* [3]

Phoney Communism and Historical Lessons for the World,

in which Mao charged that Khrushchev was not only
a revisionist but also increased the danger of capitalist
restoration.* [10] Khrushchev's downfall from an internal
coup d'tat in 1964 also contributed to Mao's fears of
his own political vulnerability, particularly because of his
declining prestige amongst his colleagues following the
*
By the early 1960s, many of the Great Leap's economic Great Leap Forward. [10]
policies were reversed by initiatives spearheaded by Liu,
Deng, and Zhou Enlai. This moderate group of pragmatists were unenthusiastic about Mao's utopian visions. 1.3 Precursor
Owing to his loss of esteem within the party, Mao developed a decadent and eccentric lifestyle. * [7] By 1962,
while Zhou, Liu and Deng managed aairs of state and
the economy, Mao had eectively withdrawn from economic decision-making, and focused much of his time
on further contemplating his contributions to Marxist
Leninist social theory, including the idea ofcontinuous
revolution.* [8] This theory's ultimate aim was to set the
stage for Mao to restore his brand of Communism and his
personal prestige within the Party.

1.2

Sino-Soviet Split and anti-revisionism

Main article: Sino-Soviet Split

In the early 1950s, the People's Republic of China and the
Soviet Union were the two largest Communist states in the
world. While they had initially been mutually supportive,
disagreements arose following the ascendancy of Nikita
Khrushchev to power in the Soviet Union after the death
of Joseph Stalin. In 1956, Khrushchev denounced Stalin
and his policies and subsequently set about implementing
post-Stalinist economic reforms. Mao and many members of the Chinese Communist Party were opposed to
these changes, believing that it would have negative repercussions for the worldwide Marxist movement, among
whom Stalin was still viewed as a hero.* [9] Mao believed
that Khrushchev was not adhering to MarxismLeninism,
but was instead a revisionist, altering his policies from
basic MarxistLeninist concepts, something Mao feared
would allow capitalists to eventually regain control of
the country. Relations between the two governments
subsequently soured, with the Soviets refusing to support China's case for joining the United Nations and going back on their pledge to supply China with a nuclear
weapon.* [9]
Mao went on to publicly denounce revisionism in April
1960. Without pointing ngers at the Soviet Union, Mao
criticized their ideological ally, the League of Communists of Yugoslavia, while the Soviets returned the favour
by proxy via criticizing the Party of Labour of Albania,
a Chinese ally.* [10] In 1963, the Chinese Communist
Party began to openly denounce the Soviet Union, publishing a series of nine polemics against its perceived revisionism, with one of them being titled On Khrushchev's

The purge of General Luo Ruiqing solidied the Army's loyalty

to Mao

Mao set the scene for the Cultural Revolution bycleansingpowerful ocials of questionable loyalty who were
based in Beijing. His approach was less than transparent,
achieving this purge through newspaper articles, internal
meetings, and skillfully employing his network of political allies.
In late 1959, historian and Beijing Deputy Mayor Wu
Han published a historical drama entitled Hai Rui Dismissed from Oce. In the play, an honest civil servant,
Hai Rui, is dismissed by a corrupt emperor. While Mao
initially praised the play, in February 1965 he secretly
commissioned his wife Jiang Qing and Shanghai propagandist Yao Wenyuan to publish an article criticizing
it.* [11] Yao boldly alleged that Hai Rui was really an allegory attacking Mao; that is, Mao was the corrupt emperor
and Peng Dehuai was the honest civil servant.* [12]

3
Yao's article put Beijing Mayor Peng Zhen* [13] on the
defensive. Peng, a powerful ocial and Wu Han's direct superior, was the head of the "Five Man Group", a
committee commissioned by Mao to study the potential
for a cultural revolution. Peng Zhen, aware that he would
be implicated if Wu indeed wrote an anti-Maoplay,
wished to contain Yao's inuence. Yao's article was initially only published in select local newspapers. Peng forbade its publication in the nationally-distributed People's
Daily and other major newspapers under his control, instructing them to write exclusively aboutacademic discussion, and not pay heed to Yao's petty politics.* [14]

2 Early Stage: Mass Movement

2.1 The May 16 Notication

In May 1966, an expanded sessionof the Politburo

was called in Beijing. The conference, rather than being a joint discussion on policy (as per the usual norms
of party operations), was essentially a campaign to mobilize the Politburo into endorsing Mao's political agenda.
The conference was heavily laden with Maoist political
rhetoric on class struggle, and lled with meticulouslyprepared 'indictments' on the recently ousted leaders such
While theliterary battleagainst Peng raged, Mao red as Peng Zhen and Luo Ruiqing. One of these documents,
Yang Shangkun director of the Party's General Oce, released on May 16, was prepared with Mao's personal
an organ that controlled internal communications on a supervision, and was particularly damning:* [20]
series of unsubstantiated charges, installing in his stead
staunch loyalist Wang Dongxing, head of Mao's security
Those representatives of the bourgeoisie
detail.* [15] Yang's dismissal likely emboldened Mao's alwho have sneaked into the Party, the governlies to move against their factional rivals.* [15] In Decemment, the army, and various spheres of culture
ber, Defence Minister and Mao loyalist Lin Biao accused
are a bunch of counter-revolutionary revisionGeneral Luo Ruiqing, the chief of sta of the People's
ists. Once conditions are ripe, they will seize
Liberation Army (PLA), of being anti-Mao, alleging that
political power and turn the dictatorship of
Luo put too much emphasis on military training rather
the proletariat into a dictatorship of the bourthan Maoistpolitical discussion. Despite initial skepgeoisie. Some of them we have already seen
ticism in the Politburo of Luo's guilt, Mao pushed for
through; others we have not. Some are still
an 'investigation', after which Luo was denounced, distrusted by us and are being trained as our sucmissed, and forced to deliver a self-criticism. Stress from
cessors, persons like Khruschev for example,
the events led Luo to attempt suicide.* [16] Luo's removal
who are still nestling beside us.* [21]
secured the military command's loyalty to Mao.* [17]

1.3.1

February Outline

Having ousted Luo and Yang, Mao returned his attention to Peng Zhen. On February 12, 1966, the "Five Man
Group" issued a report known as the February Outline
(). The Outline, sanctioned by the Party centre, dened Hai Rui as constructive academic discussion,
and aimed to formally distance Peng Zhen from any political implications. However, Jiang Qing and Yao Wenyuan
continued their denunciation of Wu Han and Peng Zhen.
Meanwhile, Mao also sacked Propaganda Department director Lu Dingyi, a Peng Zhen ally. Lu's removal gave
Maoists unrestricted access to the press. Mao would deliver his nal blow to Peng Zhen at a high-prole Politburo meeting through loyalists Kang Sheng and Chen
Boda. They accused Peng Zhen of opposing Mao, labeled the February Outlineevidence of Peng Zhen's revisionism, and grouped him with three other disgraced
ocials as part of the Peng-Luo-Lu-Yang Anti-Party
Clique.* [18] On May 16, the Politburo formalized the
decisions by releasing an ocial document condemning
Peng Zhen and his anti-party alliesin the strongest
terms, disbanding hisFive Man Group, and replacing it
with the Maoist Cultural Revolution Group (CRG).* [19]

This text, which became known as the May 16 Notication,summarized Mao's ideological justication for
the Cultural Revolution.* [22] Eectively it implied that
there are enemies of the Communist cause within the
Party itself: class enemies whowave the red ag to oppose the red ag.* [23] The only way to identify these
people was through the telescope and microscope of
Mao Zedong Thought.* [23] While the party leadership
was relatively united in approving the general direction
of Mao's agenda, many Politburo members were not especially enthusiastic, or simply confused about the direction of the movement.* [24] The charges against esteemed party leaders like Peng Zhen rang alarm bells in
China's intellectual community and among the eight nonCommunist parties.* [25]

2.2 Early mass rallies

After the purge of Peng Zhen, the Beijing Party Committee had eectively ceased to function, paving the way for
disorder in the capital. On May 25, under the guidance
of Cao Yi'ou wife of Maoist henchman Kang Sheng
Nie Yuanzi, a philosophy lecturer at Peking University, authored a big-character poster (dazibao) along with
other leftists and posted it to a public bulletin. Nie attacked the university's party administration and its leader
Lu Ping.* [26] Nie insinuated that the university leadership, much like Peng Zhen, were trying to contain revolu-

2 EARLY STAGE: MASS MOVEMENT

tionary fervour in asinisterattempt to oppose the party

and advance revisionism.* [26] Mao promptly endorsed
Nie's dazibao as the rst Marxist big-character poster
in China.Nie's call-to-arms, now sealed with Mao's personal stamp of approval, had a lasting ripple eect across
all educational institutions in China. Students everywhere
began to revolt against their respective schools' party establishment. Classes were promptly cancelled in Beijing
primary and secondary schools, followed by a decision on
June 13 to expand the class suspension nationwide.* [27]
By early June, throngs of young demonstrators lined the
capital's major thoroughfares holding giant portraits of
Mao, beating drums, and shouting slogans against his perceived enemies.* [27]
When the dismissal of Peng Zhen and the municipal party
leadership became public in early June, widespread confusion ensued. The public and foreign missions were kept
in the dark on the reason for Peng Zhen's ousting.* [28]
Even the top Party leadership was caught o guard by the
sudden anti-establishment wave of protest, and struggled
with what to do next.* [28] After seeking Mao's guidance
in Hangzhou, Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping decided to
send inwork teams() eectively 'ideologicalguidance' squads of cadres to the city's schools and
People's Daily to restore some semblance of order and
re-establish party control.* [28] However, the work teams
were hastily dispatched and had a poor understanding of
student sentiment. Unlike the political movement of the
1950s that squarely targeted intellectuals, the new movement was focused on established party cadres, many of
whom were part of the work teams. As a result the
work teams came under increasing suspicion for being
yet another group aimed at thwarting revolutionary fervour.* [29] The party leadership subsequently became divided over whether or not work teams should remain in
place. Liu Shaoqi insisted on continuing work-team involvement and suppressing the movement's most radical
elements, fearing that the movement would spin out of
control.* [30]

2.3

Bombard the Headquarters

On July 16, the 72-year-old Chairman Mao took to the

Yangtze River in Wuhan, with the press in tow, in what
became an iconicswim across the Yangtzeto demonstrate his battle-readiness. He subsequently returned to
Beijing on a mission to criticize the party leadership for
its handling of the work-teams issue. Mao accused the
work teams of undermining the student movement, calling for their full withdrawal on July 24. Several days later
a rally was held at the Great Hall of the People to announce the decision and set the new tone of the movement to university and high school teachers and students.
At the rally, Party leaders told the masses assembled to
'not be afraid' and bravely take charge of the movement
themselves, free of Party interference.* [31]

Shaoqi politically; it also signaled that disagreement over

how to handle the unfolding events of the Cultural Revolution would break Mao from the established party leadership irreversibly. On August 1, the Eleventh Plenum
of the Eighth Central Committee was hastily convened
to advance Mao's now decidedly radical agenda. At the
plenum, Mao showed outright disdain for Liu, repeatedly interrupting Liu as he delivered his opening day
speech.* [32] For several days, Mao repeatedly insinuated
that the Party's leadership had contravened his revolutionary vision. Mao's line of thinking received a lukewarm
reception from the conference attendees. Sensing that
the largely obstructive party elite was unwilling to fully
embrace his revolutionary ideology, Mao went on the offensive.
On July 28, Red Guard representatives wrote to Mao,
calling for rebellion and upheaval to safeguard the revolution. Mao then responded to the letters by writing
his own big-character poster entitled Bombard the Headquarters, rallying people to target the command centre
(i.e., Headquarters) of counterrevolution. Mao wrote
that despite having undergone a Communist revolution, a
bourgeoiselite was still thriving inpositions of authorityin the government and Communist Party. Although
no names were mentioned, this provocative statement by
Mao has been interpreted as a direct indictment of the
party establishment under Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping - the purported bourgeois headquartersof China.
The personnel changes at the Plenum reected a radical
re-design of the party's hierarchy to suit this new ideological landscape. Liu and Deng kept their seats on the
Politburo Standing Committee but were in fact sidelined
from day-to-day party aairs. Lin Biao was elevated to
become the Party's number-two gure; Liu Shaoqi's rank
went from second to eighth, and was no longer Mao's heir
apparent.* [2]
Coinciding with the top leadership being thrown out of
positions of power was the thorough undoing of the entire
national bureaucracy of the Communist Party. The extensive Organization Department, in charge of party personnel, essentially ceased to exist. The Cultural Revolution
Group (CRG), Mao's ideological 'Praetorian Guard', was
catapulted to prominence to propagate his ideology and
rally popular support. The top ocials in the Propaganda
Department were sacked, with many of its functions folding into the CRG.* [33]

2.4 Red Guards and the Destruction of the

Four Olds

On August 8, 1966, the party's Central Committee passed

its Decision Concerning the Great Proletarian Cultural
Revolution, later to be known as the Sixteen Points
.* [34] This decision dened the Cultural Revolution as
a great revolution that touches people to their very souls
The work-teams issue marked a decisive defeat for Liu and constitutes a deeper and more extensive stage in the

2.4

Red Guards and the Destruction of the Four Olds

Public humiliation by Red Guards in 1966

Propaganda poster reads:Destroy the old world; Forge the new
world.A Red Guard crushes the crucix, Buddha, and classical
Chinese texts with his hammer; 1967.

development of the socialist revolution in our country.":

The implications of the Sixteen Points were far-reaching.
It elevated what was previously a student movement to a
nationwide mass campaign that would galvanize workers,
farmers, soldiers and lower-level party functionaries to
rise up, challenge authority, and re-shape thesuperstructureof society. On August 18, 1966, over a million Red
Guards from all over the country gathered in and around
Tiananmen Square in Beijing for a personal audience
with the Chairman.* [35] Lin Biao took centre stage at the
August 18 rally, vociferously denouncing all manner of
perceived enemies in Chinese society that was impeding
the progress of the revolution.* [36] Mao personally
mingled with Red Guards and threw his weight behind
their cause, donning a Red Guard armband himself.* [36]
Between August and November 1966, eight mass rallies
were held in which over 12 million people from all over
the country, most of whom were Red Guards, participated.* [35] The government bore the expenses of Red
Guards travelling around the country exchanging revolutionary experiences.* [37]

rely on the authorities to tell them what to do. As a result,

the movement quickly spun out of control.
Some changes associated with the Four Oldscampaign were largely benign, such as assigning new names
to city streets, places, and even people; millions of babies
were born with revolutionary"-sounding names during
this period. Others aspects of the Red Guard onslaught
were far more destructive, particularly in the realms of
culture and religion. Historical sites in every part of
the country were ransacked and destroyed. The damage was particularly pronounced in the capital, Beijing,
a city rich in history and full of cultural relics, where
thousands of designated sites of historical interest were
destroyed. Red Guards also laid siege to the Temple of
Confucius in Qufu, Shandong province.* [38] During this
episode of vandalism, Red Guards from Beijing Normal
University desecrated and badly damaged the burial place
of Confucius himself and numerous other historically signicant tombs and artifacts.* [39] Libraries full of historical and foreign texts were destroyed; books were burned.
Temples, churches, mosques, monasteries, and cemeteries were closed down and sometimes converted to other
uses, looted, and destroyed.* [40] Marxist propaganda depicted Buddhism as superstition, and religion was looked
upon as a means of hostile foreign inltration, as well as
an instrument of the 'ruling class'.* [41] Clergy were arrested and sent to camps; many Tibetan Buddhists were
forced to participate in the destruction of their monasteries at gunpoint.* [41]

At the Red Guard rallies, Lin Biao also called for the
destruction of the Four Olds; namely, old customs,
culture, habits, and ideas.* [36] Lin's speeches, heavy on
rhetoric but light on details, did not specify what needed
to bedestroyedas part of this campaign. Mao believed
that in creating great disorder, the masses should or- For two years, until July 1968 and in some places for
ganically steer the direction of the movement rather than much longer the Red Guards expanded their areas of

6
authority, and accelerated their eorts at socialist 'reconstruction'. They began by passing out leaets explaining their actions to develop and strengthen socialism, and
posting the names of suspectedcounter-revolutionaries
on bulletin boards. They assembled in large groups,
heldgreat debates,and wrote educational plays. They
held public meetings to criticize and solicit self-criticisms
from suspected counter-revolutionaries.

2 EARLY STAGE: MASS MOVEMENT

and they acted accordingly.* [47] In the course of about
two weeks, the violence left some one hundred teachers,
school ocials, and educated cadres dead in Beijing's
western district alone. The number injured was too
large to be calculated.* [46]
The most gruesome aspects of the campaign included numerous incidents of torture, murder, and public humiliation. Many people who were targets of 'struggle' could no
longer bear the stress and committed suicide. In August
and September 1966, there were 1,772 people murdered
in Beijing alone. In Shanghai there were 704 suicides and
534 deaths related to the Cultural Revolution in September. In Wuhan there were 62 suicides and 32 murders
during the same period.* [48] Peng Dehuai was brought
to Beijing to be publicly ridiculed.

In October, Mao convened a Central Work Conference, essentially to convince those in the party leadership who still have not fallen in line the correctness
of the Cultural Revolution. Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping were branded as part of a bourgeois reactionary
line(zichanjieji fandong luxian) and begrudgingly gave
self-criticisms.* [49] After the conference, Liu, once the
most powerful man in China after Mao, was placed under house arrest in Beijing, then sent to a detention camp,
Red Guards on the cover of an elementary school textbook from where he rotted away, was denied medicine, and died in
Guangxi
1969. Deng Xiaoping was sent away for a period of 'reeducation' three times, and was eventually sent to work in
This was one of many quotations in the Little Red Book a Jiangxi engine factory.
(Mao's Quotations) that the Red Guards would later follow as a guide, provided by Mao. 350 million copies of
the book had been printed by December 1967.* [42] It 2.5 1967
was the mechanism that led the Red Guards to commit
to their objective as the future for China. These quotes
directly from Mao led to other actions by the Red Guards
in the views of other Maoist leaders.* [43] Although the
16 Points and other pronouncements of the central Maoist
leaders forbadearmed struggle (, wudou)" in favor
ofverbal struggle(, wendou), these struggle sessions often led to physical violence. Initially verbal struggles among activist groups became even more violent, especially when activists began to seize weapons from the
Army in 1967. The central Maoist leaders limited their
intervention in activist violence to verbal criticism, sometimes even appearing to encourage physical struggle,
and only after the PLA began to intervene in 1969 did
authorities begin to suppress the mass movement.
On August 22, 1966, a central directive was issued to stop
police intervention in Red Guard activities.* [44] Those
in the police force who deed this notice were labeled
counter-revolutionaries.Mao's praise for rebellion was
eectively an endorsement for the actions of the Red
Guards, which grew increasingly violent.* [45] Public security in China deteriorated rapidly as a result of central
ocials lifting restraints on violent behavior.* [46] Xie
Fuzhi, the national police chief, said it wasno big deal
if Red Guards were beatingbad peopleto death.* [47]

1967 mass rally in Shenyang against Communist Party ocials

of the Northeast Bureau: Yu Ping (left), head of the Organization
Department, and Gu Zhuoxin, Secretary of the Secretariat. Yu
Ping was accused of being a "capitalist roader" and Gu, a traitor
to revolution. Both men survived the Cultural Revolution.

On January 3, 1967, Lin Biao and Jiang Qing employed

local media and grassroots organizations to generate the
so-called "January Storm", during which the Shanghai
municipal government was essentially overthrown.* [50]
This paved the way for Wang Hongwen to take charge of
The police relayed Xie's remarks to the Red Guards the city as leader of the so-called Shanghai People's Com-

2.6

1968

mune, later renamed the Municipal Revolutionary Committee. In Beijing, Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping were
once again the targets of criticism; others attacked Vice
Premier Tao Zhu, signalling that even central government
ocials were now 'fair game' for attacks.

in the midst of the commotion, Mao himself ew to

Wuhan with a large entourage of central ocials in an
attempt to secure military loyalty in the area. In response, local agitators kidnapped Mao's emissary Wang
Li in what became known as the Wuhan Incident. SubOn January 8, Mao praised these actions through the sequently, Gen. Chen Zaidao was dragged to Beijing and
party-run People's Daily, urging all local government denounced by Jiang Qing and the rest of the Cultural Revleaders to rise in self-criticism, or the criticism of others olution Group.
suspected ofcounterrevolutionary activity. Many lo- In this same year, Chinese New Year celebrations
cal governments followed Shanghai's example, with red were banned in China, it was only reinstated 13 years
guards or other revolutionary groups seizing power later.* [51]
from the established party and government organs.
In February, Jiang Qing and Lin Biao, with support from
Mao, insisted that class struggle be extended to the military. Many prominent generals of the People's Liberation
Army who were instrumental in the Communist victory
in the Chinese civil war voiced their concern and opposition to the Cultural Revolution. Foreign Minister Chen
Yi and Vice-Premier Tan Zhenlin vocally denounced the
turn of events in Shanghai, stating that the movement was
going to destroy the party. This group of party leaders
were subsequently denounced as the "February Countercurrent". Many of these critics were accused of trying
to sabotage the revolution, and fell into political disgrace
thereafter.

2.6 1968

In the spring of 1968, a massive campaign began, aimed

at promoting the already-adored Mao to god-like status. On July 27, 1968, the Red Guards' power over the
army was ocially ended and the central government sent
in units to protect many areas that remained targets for
the Red Guards. A year later, the Red Guard factions
were dismantled entirely; Mao feared that the chaos they
causedand could still causemight begin running its
own agenda and be turned against what was left of the
party organization. Their purpose had been largely fullled; Mao and his radical colleagues had largely consolAt the same time, some Red Guard organizations rose in idated their political power.
protest against other Red Guard organizations who ran
dissimilar revolutionary messages, further complicating In early October, Mao began a campaign to purge disloyal
the situation and exacerbating the chaos. In April, at ocials. Many were sent to the countryside to work in
Mao's behest, Jiang Qing attempted to rein in Red Guard labor camps. Liu wasforever expelledfrom the Comgroups by issuing an order to stop all unhealthy activ- munist Party at the 12th Plenum of the Eighth Central
ity.On April 6, 1967, Liu Shaoqi was openly and widely Committee in September 1968, and labelled the headdenounced by a Zhongnanhai faction whose members in- quarters of the bourgeoisie, seemingly alluding to Mao's
cluded Jiang Qing and Kang Sheng, and ultimately, Mao Bombard the Headquarters dazibao written two years earlier.
himself.
The situation was quickly spinning out of control; there
existed no checks and balances on local revolutionary activities. As the government and party organizations fell
apart all over the country, it was no longer clear who was
truly loyal to Mao's revolutionary vision and who was opportunistically riding the waves of chaos for their own
gain. By July, factional violence had become commonplace across the country. On July 22, Jiang Qing directed
the Red Guards to replace the People's Liberation Army
if necessary, as the loyalty of local Army units to therevolutionary causewas no longer assured. After the initial praise by Jiang Qing, the Red Guards began to steal
and loot from barracks and other army buildings. This
activity, which could not be stopped by army generals,
continued through to the autumn of 1968.

In December 1968, Mao began the "Down to the Countryside Movement". During this movement, which lasted
for the next decade, young intellectuals living in cities
were ordered to go to the countryside. The term intellectualswas actually used in the broadest sense to refer to recently graduated middle school students. In the
late 1970s, these young intellectualswere nally allowed to return to their home cities. This movement was
in part a means of moving Red Guards from the cities to
the countryside, where they would cause less social disruption.* [52]

In the central city of Wuhan, like in many other cities, two

major revolutionary organizations emerged, one supporting the establishment and the other opposed to it. The
groups violently fought over the control of the city. Chen
Zaidao, the army general in charge of the area, helped
suppress the anti-establishment demonstrators. However,

3.1 Transition of power

3 Lin Biao phase

The Ninth Party Congress was held in April 1969, and

served as a means to 'revitalize' the party with fresh thinking and new cadres after much of the old guard had
been destroyed in the struggles of preceding years.* [53]

The institutional framework of the Party established two

decades earlier had broken down almost entirely: delegates for this Congress were eectively selected by Revolutionary Committees rather than through election by
party members.* [54] Representation of the military increased by a large margin from the previous Congress
(28% of the delegates were PLA members), and the election of more PLA members to the new Central Committee reected this increase.* [55] Many military ocers elevated to senior positions were loyal to PLA Marshal and
Executive Vice Premier of China Lin Biao, opening a new
factional divide between the military and civilian leadership.* [56]

LIN BIAO PHASE

the Jiang Qing-led radical camp was intensifying. Indeed,

a personal dislike of Jiang Qing drew many civilian leaders, including prominent theoretician Chen Boda, closer
to Lin Biao.* [63]

We do not only feel boundless joy because we have as

our great leader the greatest Marxist-Leninist of our era,
Chairman Mao, but also great joy because we have Vice
Chairman Lin as Chairman Mao's universally recognized
successor.
Premier Zhou Enlai at the Ninth Party Congress* [57]
Lin Biao was ocially elevated to become the Party's
number-two gure, with his name written into the
Communist Party's Constitution as Mao's closest
comrade-in-armsand universally recognized successor.* [58] Lin delivered the keynote address at the
Congress: a document drafted by hardliner leftists
Yao Wenyuan and Zhang Chunqiao under Mao's guidance.* [59] The report was heavily critical of Liu Shaoqi
and other counter-revolutionaries, and drew extensively from quotations in the Little Red Book. The
Congress solidied the central role of Maoism within the
party psyche, re-introducing Mao Zedong Thought as an
ocial guiding ideology of the party in the party constitution. Lastly, the Congress elected a new Politburo
with Mao Zedong, Lin Biao, Chen Boda, Zhou Enlai,
and Kang Sheng as the members of the new Politburo
Standing Committee. Lin, Chen, and Kang were all beneciaries of the Cultural Revolution. Zhou, who was demoted in rank, voiced his unequivocal support for Lin
at the Congress.* [60] Mao also restored the function of
some formal party institutions, such as the operations of
the party's Politburo, which ceased functioning between
1966-8 because the Central Cultural Revolution Group
held de facto control of the country.* [61]

3.2

PLA gains pre-eminent role

Mao's eorts at re-organizing party and state institutions

generated mixed results. Many far-ung provinces remained volatile as the political situation in Beijing stabilized. Factional struggles, many of which were violent, continued at the local level despite the declaration
that the Ninth Congress marked a temporary victory
for the Cultural Revolution.* [62] Furthermore, despite
Mao's eorts to put on a show of unity at the Congress,
the factional divide between Lin Biao's PLA camp and

Marshal Lin Biao was constitutionally conrmed as Mao's successor in 1969

Between 1966 and 1968, China was isolated internationally, having declared its enmity towards both the Soviet
Union and the United States. The friction with the Soviet
Union intensied after border clashes on the Ussuri River
in March 1969 as the Chinese leadership prepared for
all-out war.* [64] In October, senior leaders were evacuated from Beijing.* [64] Amidst the tension, Lin Biao
issued what appeared to be an executive order to prepare
for war to the PLA's eleven Military Regions on October
18 without passing through Mao. This drew the ire of
the Chairman, who saw it as evidence that his authority
was prematurely usurped by his declared successor.* [64]
The prospect of war elevated the PLA to greater prominence in domestic politics, increasing the stature of Lin
Biao at the expense of Mao.* [65] There is some evidence
to suggest that Mao was pushed to seek closer relations
with the United States as a means to avoid PLA dominance in domestic aairs that would result from a military confrontation with the Soviet Union.* [65] During his
meeting with U.S. President Richard Nixon in 1972, Mao
hinted that Lin had opposed seeking better relations with
the U.S.* [66]
After being conrmed as Mao's successor, Lin's supporters focused on the restoration of the position of State
Chairman,* [67] which had been abolished by Mao after the purge of Liu Shaoqi. They hoped that by allowing Lin to ease into a constitutionally sanctioned role,

3.3

Flight of Lin Biao

whether Chairman or Vice-Chairman, Lin's succession

would be institutionalized. The consensus within the
Politburo was that Mao should assume the oce with
Lin becoming Vice-Chairman; but for unknown reasons,
Mao had voiced his explicit opposition to the recreation
of the position and his assuming it.* [68]
Factional rivalries intensied at the Second Plenum of the
Ninth Congress in Lushan held in late August 1970. Chen
Boda, now aligned with the PLA faction loyal to Lin, galvanized support for the restoration of the oce of State
Chairman, despite Mao's wishes to the contrary.* [69]
Moreover, Chen launched an assault on Zhang Chunqiao,
a staunch Maoist who embodied the chaos of the Cultural
Revolution, over the evaluation of Mao's legacy.* [70] The
attacks on Zhang found favour with many attendees at the
Plenum, and may have been construed by Mao as an indirect attack on the Cultural Revolution itself. Mao confronted Chen openly, denouncing him as a false Marxist,* [71] and removed him from the Politburo Standing Committee. In addition to the purge of Chen, Mao
asked Lin's principal generals to write self-criticisms on
their political positions as a warning to Lin. Mao also inducted several of his supporters to the Central Military
Commission, and placed his loyalists in leadership roles
of the Beijing Military Region.* [71]

9
tus in Shanghai, and dubbed the plan to oust Mao by force
Outline for Project 571, which sounds similar to Military Uprisingin Mandarin. It is disputed whether Lin
Biao was involved in this process. While ocial sources
maintain that Lin planned and executed the alleged coup
attempt, scholars such as Jin Qiu portray Lin as a passive character manipulated by members of his family and
his supporters.* [73] Qiu contests that Lin Biao was never
personally involved in drafting the Outline and evidence
suggests that Lin Liguo drafted the coup.* [73]
The Outline allegedly consisted mainly of plans for aerial
bombardments through use of the Air Force. It initially
targeted Zhang Chunqiao and Yao Wenyuan, but would
later involve Mao himself. Were the plan to succeed, Lin
would arrest his political rivals and assume power. Assassination attempts were alleged to have been made against
Mao in Shanghai, from September 8 to September 10,
1971. Perceived risks to Mao's safety were allegedly relayed to the Chairman. One internal report alleged that
Lin had planned to bomb a bridge that Mao was to cross
to reach Beijing; Mao reportedly avoided this bridge after
receiving intelligence reports.
In the ocial narrative, on September 13, 1971, Lin
Biao, his wife Ye Qun, Lin Liguo, and members of his
sta attempted to ee to the Soviet Union ostensibly to
seek asylum. En route, Lin's plane crashed in Mongolia,
killing all on board. The plane apparently ran out of fuel
en route to the Soviet Union. A Soviet team investigating the incident was not able to determine the cause of
the crash, but hypothesized that the pilot was ying low
to evade radar and misjudged the plane's altitude.
The ocial account has been put to question by foreign
scholars, who have raised doubts over Lin's choice of the
Soviet Union as a destination, the plane's route, the identity of the passengers, and whether or not a coup was actually taking place.* [73]* [74]

Grati with Lin Biao's foreword to Mao's Little Red Book, Lin's
name (lower right) was later scratched out, presumably after his
death

3.3

Flight of Lin Biao

Main article: Lin Biao incident

By 1971, diverging interests between the civilian and military wings of the leadership were apparent. Mao was
troubled by the PLA's newfound prominence, and the
purge of Chen Boda marked the beginning of a gradual
scaling-down of the PLA's political involvement.* [72]
According to ocial sources, sensing the reduction of
Lin's power base and his declining health, Lin's supporters plotted to use the military power still at their disposal
to oust Mao in a coup. Lin's son, Lin Liguo, and other
high-ranking military conspirators formed a coup appara-

On September 13, the Politburo met in an emergency session to discuss Lin Biao. Only on September 30 was Lin's
death conrmed in Beijing, which led to the cancellation
of the National Day celebration events the following day.
The Central Committee kept information under wraps,
and news of Lin's death was not released to the public
until two months following the incident.* [73] Many of
Lin's supporters sought refuge in Hong Kong; those who
remained on the mainland were purged. The event caught
the party leadership o guard: the concept that Lin could
betray Mao de-legitimized a vast body of Cultural Revolution political rhetoric, as Lin was already enshrined
into the Party Constitution as Mao's closest comradein-armsandsuccessor. For several months following
the incident, the party information apparatus struggled to
nd a correct wayto frame the incident for public
consumption.* [73]

10

Gang of Fourand their downfall

Main article: Gang of Four

4.1

Antagonism towards Zhou and Deng

Mao became depressed and reclusive after the Lin Biao

incident. With Lin gone, Mao had no ready answers
for who would succeed him. Sensing a sudden loss of
direction, Mao attempted reaching out to old comrades
whom he had denounced in the past. Meanwhile, in
September 1972, Mao transferred a thirty-eight-year-old
cadre from Shanghai, Wang Hongwen, to Beijing and
made him Vice-Chairman of the Party.* [75] Wang, a
former factory worker from a peasant background,* [75]
was seemingly being groomed for succession.* [76] Jiang
Qing's position also strengthened after Lin's ight. She
held tremendous inuence with the radical camp. With
Mao's health on the decline, it was clear that Jiang Qing
had political ambitions of her own. She allied herself with
Wang Hongwen and propaganda specialists Zhang Chunqiao and Yao Wenyuan, forming a political clique later
pejoratively dubbed as the "Gang of Four".

fectively put in charge of the government, party, and military, earning the additional titles of PLA General Chief
of Sta, Vice-Chairman of the Communist Party, and
Vice-Chairman of the Central Military Commission in
a short time span.* [80] The speed of Deng's rehabilitation took the radical camp, who saw themselves as Mao's
'rightful' political and ideological heirs, by surprise. Mao
wanted to use Deng as a counterweight to the military
faction in government to suppress any remaining inuence of those formerly loyal to Lin Biao. In addition,
Mao had become disenchanted with the Gang of Four's
inability to manage the economy and saw Deng as a competent and eective leader. Leaving the country in grinding poverty would do no favours to the positive legacy of
the Cultural Revolution, which Mao worked hard to protect. Deng's return set the scene for a protracted factional
struggle between the radical Gang of Four and moderates
led by Zhou and Deng.
At the time, Jiang Qing and associates held eective control of mass media and the party's propaganda network,
while Zhou and Deng held control of most government
organs. On some decisions, Mao sought to mitigate the
Gang's inuence, but on others, he acquiesced to their
demands. The Gang of Four's heavy hand in political
and media control however, did not prevent Deng from
reinstating his economic policies. Deng emphatically opposed Party factionalism, and his policies aimed to promote unity as the rst step to restoring economic productivity. Much like the post-Great Leap restructuring led by
Liu Shaoqi, Deng streamlined the railway system, steel
production, and other key areas of the economy. By late
1975 however, Mao saw that Deng's economic restructuring might negate the legacy of the Cultural Revolution,
and launched a campaign to oppose rehabilitating the
case for the rightists, alluding to Deng as the country's
foremost rightist. Mao directed Deng to write selfcriticisms in November 1975, a move lauded by the Gang
of Four.* [81]

By 1973, round after round of political struggles had

left many lower-level institutions, including local government, factories, and railways, short of competent sta
needed to carry out basic functions.* [77] The country's
economy had fallen into disarray, which necessitated the
rehabilitation of purged lower level ocials. However,
the party's core became heavily dominated by Cultural
Revolution beneciaries and leftist radicals, whose focus remained upholding ideological purity over economic
productivity. The economy remained largely the domain
of Zhou Enlai, one of the few moderates 'left standing'.
Zhou attempted to restore a viable economy, but was resented by the Gang of Four, who identied him as their
4.2
main political threat in post-Mao era succession.
In late 1973, to weaken Zhou's political position and
to distance themselves from Lin's apparent betrayal, the
"Criticize Lin, Criticize Confucius" campaign began under Jiang Qing's leadership.* [78] Its stated goals were to
purge China of new Confucianist thinking and denounce
Lin Biao's actions as traitorous and regressive.* [79] Reminiscent of the rst years of the Cultural Revolution, the
battle was carried out through historical allegory, and
although Zhou Enlai's name was never mentioned during this campaign, the Premier's historical namesake, the
Duke of Zhou, was a frequent target.
With a fragile economy and Zhou falling ill to cancer,
Deng Xiaoping returned to the political scene, taking up
the post of Vice-Premier in March 1973, in the rst of a
series of promotions approved by Mao. After Zhou withdrew from active politics in January 1975, Deng was ef-

GANG OF FOURAND THEIR DOWNFALL

Death of Zhou Enlai

On January 8, 1976, Zhou Enlai died of bladder cancer.

On January 15 Deng Xiaoping delivered Zhou's ocial
eulogy in a funeral attended by all of China's most senior
leaders with the notable absence of Mao himself, who had
grown increasingly critical of Zhou.* [82]* [83] Curiously,
after Zhou's death, Mao selected neither a member of the
Gang of Four nor Deng Xiaoping to become Premier, instead choosing the relatively unknown Hua Guofeng.
The Gang of Four grew apprehensive that spontaneous,
large-scale popular support for Zhou could turn the political tide against them. They acted through the media
to impose a set of restrictions on overt public displays of
mourning for Zhou. Years of resentment over the Cultural Revolution, the public persecution of Deng Xiaoping (seen as Zhou's ally), and the prohibition against public mourning led to a rise in popular discontent against

4.4

Death of Mao and Arrest of the Gang of Four

11

4.4 Death of Mao and Arrest of the Gang

of Four
Ocial attempts to enforce the mourning restrictions
Mao and the Gang of Four.* [84]

included removing public memorials and tearing down

posters commemorating Zhou's achievements. On March
25, 1976, Shanghai's Wen Hui Bao published an article
calling Zhouthe capitalist roader inside the Party [who]
wanted to help the unrepentant capitalist roader [Deng]
regain his power. These propaganda eorts at smearing
Zhou's image, however, only strengthened public attachment to Zhou's memory.* [85]

On September 9, 1976, Mao Zedong died. To Mao's supporters, his death symbolized the loss of the revolutionary
foundation of Communist China. When his death was announced on the afternoon of September 9, in a press release entitledA Notice from the Central Committee, the
NPC, State Council, and the CMC to the whole Party, the
whole Army and to the people of all nationalities throughout the country,* [89] the nation descended into grief
and mourning, with people weeping in the streets and
public institutions closing for over a week. Hua Guofeng
chaired the Funeral Committee.

Shortly before dying, Mao had allegedly written the message With you in charge, I'm at ease, to Hua. Hua
used this message to substantiate his position as succes4.3 Tiananmen Incident
sor. Hua had been widely considered to be lacking in
political skill and ambitions, and seemingly posed no serious threat to the Gang of Four in the race for succession.
Main article: Tiananmen Incident
However, the Gang's radical ideas also clashed with inuential elders and a large segment of party reformers. With
On April 4, 1976, on the eve of China's annual Qingming army backing and the support of Marshal Ye Jianying, on
Festival, a traditional day of mourning, thousands of peo- October 10, the Special Unit 8341 had all members of
ple gathered around the Monument to the People's Heroes the Gang of Four arrested in a bloodless coup.
in Tiananmen Square to commemorate Zhou Enlai. The
people of Beijing honored Zhou by laying wreaths, banners, poems, placards, and owers at the foot of the Monument.* [86] The most obvious purpose of this memorial 5 Aftermath
was to eulogize Zhou, but the Gang of Four were also
attacked for their actions against the Premier. A small Although Hua Guofeng publicly denounced the Gang of
number of slogans left at Tiananmen even attacked Mao Four in 1976, he continued to invoke Mao's name to justify Mao-era policies. Hua spearheaded what became
himself, and his Cultural Revolution.* [87]
*
Up to two million people may have visited Tiananmen known as the Two Whatevers, [90] namely, Whatever
Square on April 4.* [87] All levels of society, from the policy originated from Chairman Mao, we must continue
poorest peasants to high-ranking PLA ocers and the to support,and Whatever directions were given to us
from Chairman Mao, we must continue to follow.Like
children of high-ranking cadres, were represented in the
activities. Those who participated were motivated by Deng, Hua wanted to reverse the damage of the Cultural
Revolution; but unlike Deng, who wanted to propose new
a mixture of anger over the treatment of Zhou, revolt
against the Cultural Revolution and apprehension for economic models for China, Hua intended to move the
Chinese economic and political system towards SovietChina's future. The event did not appear to have coordinated leadership but rather seemed to be a reection of style planning of the early 1950s.
public sentiment.* [88]

It became increasingly clear to Hua that, without Deng

Xiaoping, it was dicult to continue daily aairs of state.
On October 10, Deng Xiaoping personally wrote a letter to Hua asking to be transferred back to state and
party aairs; party elders also called for Deng's return.
With increasing pressure from all sides, Hua named Deng
Vice-Premier in July 1977, and later promoted him to
various other positions, eectively catapulting Deng to
China's second-most powerful gure. In August, the
Party's Eleventh Congress was held in Beijing, ocially
naming (in ranking order) Hua Guofeng, Ye Jianying,
Deng Xiaoping, Li Xiannian, and Wang Dongxing as new
members of the Politburo Standing Committee.* [91]

The Central Committee, under the leadership of Jiang

Qing, labelled the event 'counter-revolutionary', and
cleared the square of memorial items shortly after midnight on April 6. Attempts to suppress the mourners led
to a violent riot. Police cars were set on re and a crowd
of over 100,000 people forced its way into several government buildings surrounding the square.* [86] Many of
those arrested were later sentenced to prison work camps.
Similar incidents occurred in other major cities. Jiang
Qing and her allies pinned Deng Xiaoping as the incident's 'mastermind', and issued reports on ocial media
to that eect. Deng was formally stripped of all positions
inside and outside the Partyon April 7. This marked In May 1978, Deng seized the opportunity to elevate his
protg Hu Yaobang to power. Hu published an article in
Deng's second purge in ten years.* [86]

12

the Guangming Daily, making clever use of Mao's quotations while lauding Deng's ideas. Following this article,
Hua began to shift his tone in support of Deng. On July
1, Deng publicized Mao's self-criticism report of 1962
regarding the failure of the Great Leap Forward. With
an expanding power base, in September 1978, Deng began openly attacking Hua Guofeng's Two Whatevers
.* [90]
On December 18, 1978, the pivotal Third Plenum of
the 11th Central Committee was held. At the congress
Deng called for a liberation of thoughtsand urged
the party to "seek truth from facts" and abandon ideological dogma. The Plenum ocially marked the beginning
of the economic reform era. Hua Guofeng engaged in
self-criticism and called his Two Whateversa mistake. Wang Dongxing, a trusted ally of Mao, was also
criticized. At the Plenum, the Party reversed its verdict
on the Tiananmen Incident. Disgraced former leader Liu
Shaoqi was allowed a belated state funeral.* [92]
At the Fifth Plenum held in 1980, Peng Zhen, He
Long and other leaders who had been purged during
the Cultural Revolution were politically rehabilitated.
Hu Yaobang became head of the party as its GeneralSecretary. In September, Hua Guofeng resigned, and
Zhao Ziyang, another Deng ally, was named Premier.
Deng remained the Chairman of the Central Military
Commission, but formal power was transferred to a new
generation of pragmatic reformers, who reversed Cultural Revolution policies almost in their entirety.

Policy and eect

The eects of the Cultural Revolution directly or indirectly touched essentially all of China's population. During the Cultural Revolution, much economic activity was
halted, with revolution, regardless of interpretation,
being the primary objective of the country. Mao Zedong Thought became the central operative guide to all
things in China. The authority of the Red Guards surpassed that of the army, local police authorities, and the
law in general. Chinese traditional arts and ideas were
ignored and publicly attacked, with praise for Mao being
practiced in their place. People were encouraged to criticize cultural institutions and to question their parents and
teachers, which had been strictly forbidden in traditional
Chinese culture.
The start of the Cultural Revolution brought huge numbers of Red Guards to Beijing, with all expenses paid
by the government, and the railway system was in turmoil. The revolution aimed to destroy the "Four Olds"
(old customs, old culture, old habits, and old ideas) and
establish the corresponding Four News, and this can
ranged from changing of names and cutting of hair, to the
ransacking of homes, vandalizing cultural treasures, and
desecrating temples.* [93] In a few years, countless an-

POLICY AND EFFECT

cient buildings, artifacts, antiques, books, and paintings

were destroyed by Red Guards. The status of traditional
Chinese culture and institutions within China was also
severely damaged as a result of the Cultural Revolution,
and the practice of many traditional customs weakened.
The revolution also aimed to sweep away all the monsters and demons, that is, all the class enemy who promoted bourgeois idea within the party, the government,
the army, among the intellectuals, as well as those from
an exploitative family background or belonged to one of
the Five Black Categories. Large number of people perceived to be monsters and demons(, literally cow ghosts snake spirits) regardless of guilt
or innocence were publicly denounced, humiliated, and
beaten. In their revolutionary fervor, students denounced
their teachers, and children denounced their parents.* [94]
Many died through their ill-treatment or committed suicide. In 1968, youths were mobilized to go to the countryside in the Down to the Countryside Movement so they
may learn from the peasants, and the departure of millions from the cities has the eect of bringing to an end
the most violent phase of the Cultural Revolution.* [95]
The eect of the Cultural Revolution had been disastrous
for millions of people in China, there were however also
positive outcomes for some sections of the population,
such as those in the rural areas. For example, the upheavals of the Cultural Revolution and the hostility to
the intellectual elite is widely accepted to have damaged
the quality of education in China, especially at the upper
end of education system. However, the radical policies
also provided many in the rural communities with middle school education for the rst time, which is thought
to have facilitated the rural economic development in the
70s and 80s.* [96] Similarly, a large number of health personnel were deployed to the countryside as barefoot doctors during the Cultural Revolution. Some farmers were
given informal medical training, and health-care centers
were established in rural communities. This process led
to a marked improvement in the health and the life expectancy of the general population.* [97]
After the most violent phase of the 1960s ended, the attack on traditional culture continued in 1973 with the
Anti-Lin Biao, Anti-Confucius Campaign as part of the
struggle against the moderate elements in the party. The
Cultural Revolution brought to the forefront numerous internal power struggles within the Communist party, many
of which had little to do with the larger battles between
Party leaders, but resulted instead from local factionalism
and petty rivalries that were usually unrelated to therevolutionitself. Because of the chaotic political environment, local governments lacked organization and stability, if they existed at all. Members of dierent factions
often fought on the streets, and political assassinations,
particularly in predominantly rural provinces, were common. The masses spontaneously involved themselves in
factions, and took part in open warfare against other factions. The ideology that drove these factions was vague

6.2

Slogans and rhetoric

13

and sometimes non-existent, with the struggle for local ied among regions, and formal measurements of literacy
authority being the only motivation for mass involvement. did not resume until the 1980s.* [104] Some counties in
Zhanjiang had illiteracy rates as high as 41% some 20
years after the revolution. The leaders of China at the
time denied any illiteracy problems from the start. This
6.1 Education
eect was amplied by the elimination of qualied teachThe Cultural Revolution brought China's education sys- ersmany districts were forced to rely on selected stutem to a virtual halt for some time. In the early months dents to educate the next generation.* [104]
of the Cultural Revolution, schools and universities were In 1968, the Communist Party instituted the Down to the
closed. Primary and middle schools later gradually re- Countryside Movement, in which Educated Youths
opened, but all colleges and universities were closed (zhishi qingnian or simply zhiqing) in urban areas were
until 1970, and most universities did not reopen until sent to live and work in agrarian areas to be re-educated
1972.* [98] The university entrance exams were cancelled by the peasantry and to better understand the role of manafter 1966, to be replaced later by a system whereby stu- ual agrarian labor in Chinese society. In the initial stages,
dents were recommended by factories, villages and mil- most of the youth who took part volunteered, although
itary units, and entrance exams were not restored until later on the government resorted to forcing many of them
1977 under Deng Xiaoping. According to the documents to move. Between 1968 and 1979, 17 millions of China's
for the prosecution of the Gang of Four, 142,000 cadres urban youths left for the countryside, and being in the
and teachers in the education circles were persecuted, rural areas also deprived them the opportunity of higher
and noted academics, scientists, and educators who died education.* [95] In the post-Mao period, many of those
included Xiong Qinglai, Jian Bozan, Rao Yutai, Wu forcibly moved attacked the policy as a violation of their
Dingliang and Zhao Jiuzhang.* [99] Many intellectuals human rights.* [105]
were sent to rural labor camps, and many of those who
survived left China shortly after the revolution ended.
Many survivors and observers suggest that almost anyone 6.2 Slogans and rhetoric
with skills over that of the average person was made the
target of political strugglein some way. The entire
generation of tormented and inadequately educated individuals is often referred to in the West as well as in China
as the 'lost generation'.* [100]* [101]* [102]

Members of the Down to the Countryside Movement in Shenyang,

1968.

During the Cultural Revolution, basic education was emphasized and rapidly expanded. While the years of
schooling were reduced and education standard fell, the
proportion of Chinese children who had completed primary education increased from less than half before the
Cultural Revolution to almost all after the Cultural Revolution, and those who completed junior middle school
rose from 15% to over two-third. The educational opportunities for rural children expanded considerably, while
those of the children of the urban elite became restricted
by the anti-elitist policies.* [103] However the impact
of the Cultural Revolution on popular education var-

Remnants of a banner containing slogans from the Cultural Revolution in Anhui.

According to Shaorong Huang, the fact that the Cultural

Revolution had such massive eects on Chinese society
is the result of extensive use of political slogans.* [106]
In Huang's view, rhetoric played a central role in rallying
both the Party leadership and people at large during the

14

POLICY AND EFFECT

Cultural Revolution. For example, the slogan to rebel

is justied(, zofn yul) became a unitary
theme.* [106]
Huang asserts that political slogans were ubiquitous in every aspect of people's lives, being printed onto ordinary
items such as bus tickets, cigarette packets, and mirror
tables.* [107] Workers were supposed to grasp revolution and promote productions, while peasants were supposed to raise more pigs becausemore pigs means more
manure, and more manure means more grain. Even a
casual remark by Mao, Sweet potato tastes good; I like
itbecame a slogan everywhere in the countryside.* [106]
Political slogans of the time had three sources: Mao, ofcial Party media such as People's Daily, and the Red
Guards.* [106] Mao often oered vague, yet powerful
directives that led to the factionalization of the Red
Guards.* [108] These directives could be interpreted to
suit personal interests, in turn aiding factions' goals in being most loyal to Mao Zedong. Red Guard slogans were
of the most violent nature, such as Strike the enemy
down on the oor and step on him with a foot, Long
live the red terror!" and Those who are against Chairman Mao will have their dog skulls smashed into pieces
.* [106]

The ballet The Red Detachment of Women, one of the Model

Dramas promoted during the Cultural Revolution.

Xinfang.* [112]* [113] During the Cultural Revolution,

Jiang Qing took control of the stage and introduced the
revolutionary model operas under her direct supervision.
Traditional operas were banned as they were considered feudalistic and bourgeoise, but revolutionary opera,
which is based on Peking opera but modied in both content and form, was promoted.* [114] Starting in 1967,
eight Model Dramas (6 operas and 2 ballets) were produced in the rst three years, and the most notable of the
operas was The Legend of the Red Lantern. These operas were the only approved opera form and other opera
troupes were required to adopt or change their repertoire.* [115] The model operas were also broadcast on the
radio, made into lms, blared from public loudspeakers,
taught to students in schools and workers in factories,
and became ubiquitous as a form of popular entertainment and the only theatrical entertainment for millions in
China.* [116]* [117]

Sinologists Lowell Dittmer and Chen Ruoxi point out that

the Chinese language had historically been dened by
subtlety, delicacy, moderation, and honesty, as well as
the cultivation of a rened and elegant literary style
.* [109] This changed during the Cultural Revolution.
Since Mao wanted an army of bellicose people in his crusade, rhetoric at the time was reduced to militant and violent vocabulary.* [106] These slogans were a powerful and
eective method of thought reform, mobilizing millions of people in a concerted attack upon the subjective
world,while at the same time reforming their objective In 1966, Jiang Qing put forward the Theory of the Dictatorship of the Black Line in Literature and Arts where
world.* [106]* [110]
those perceived to be bourgeoise, anti-socialist or antiDittmer and Chen argue that the emphasis on politics
Mao black lineshould be cast aside, and called for
made language a very eective form of propaganda,
the creation of a new literature and arts.* [118] Writers,
but also transformed it into a jargon of stereotypes
artists and intellectuals who were the recipients and dispompous, repetitive, and boring.* [110] To distance itseminators of theold culturewould be comprehensively
self from the era, Deng Xiaoping's government cut back
eradicated. The majority of writers and artists were seen
heavily on the use of political slogans. The practice of
as black line guresand reactionary literati, and
sloganeering saw a mild resurgence in the late 1990s untherefore persecuted, many were subjected to criticism
der Jiang Zemin.
and denunciationwhere they may be publicly humiliated
and ravaged, and they may also be imprisoned or sent to
be reformed through hard labour.* [119] In the documents
6.3 Arts and literature
for the prosecution of the Gang of Four released in 1980,
Before the Cultural Revolution, in the year 1958-1966, more than 2,600 people in the eld of arts and literature
by the Ministry
theatre became part of the struggles in the political arena were revealed to have been persecuted
*
of
Culture
and
units
under
it
alone.
[99]
Many died as
as plays were used as to criticize or support particua
result
of
their
ordeal
and
humiliation
the names of
lar members of the party leadership. The attack by
200
well-known
writers
and
artists
who
were
persecuted
Yao Wenyuan on Wu Han's opera Hai Rui Dismissed
to
death
during
the
Cultural
Revolution
were
commemofrom Oce is often considered the opening shot of CulTuo,
tural Revolution,* [111] and led to the persecution and rated in 1979, writers such as Lao She, Fu Lei, Deng
*
Baren,
Li
Guangtian,
Yang
Shuo,
and
Zhao
Shuli.
[119]
death of its writer Wu Han, as well as others involved
in theatre, such as Tian Han, Sun Weishi, and Zhou During the Cultural Revolution, only a few writers who

6.4

Historical relics

gained permission or requalication under the new system, such as Hao Ran and some writers of worker or
farmer background, may have their work published or
reprinted. The permissible subject matter of proletarian
and socialist literature would be strictly dened, and all
the literary periodicals in the country ceased publication
by 1968. The situation eased after 1972, more writers
were allowed to write and many provincial literary periodicals resumed publication, but the majority of writers
still could not work.* [119]* [120]
The eect is similar in the lm industry. A booklet titled Four Hundred Films to be Criticizedwas distributed, and lm directors and actors/actresses were criticized with some tortured and imprisoned.* [116] These
included many of Jiang Qing's rivals and former friends
in the lm industry, and those who died in the period included Cai Chusheng, Zheng Junli, Shangguan Yunzhu,
Wang Ying, and Xu Lai.* [121] No feature lms were
produced in mainland China for seven years apart from
the few approved "Model dramas" and highly ideological lms,* [122] a notable example of the handful of lms
made and permitted to be shown in this period is Taking
Tiger Mountain by Strategy.* [123]* [124]

15
for these posters may be amateurs or uncredited professionals, and the posters were largely in a Socialist Realist
visual style with certain conventions - for example, images of Mao should be depicted as red, smooth, and
luminescent.* [127]* [129]
Traditional themes in art were sidelined the Cultural Revolution, and artists such as Feng Zikai, Shi Lu, and Pan
Tianshou were persecuted.* [130] Many of the artists have
been assigned to manual labour, and artists were expected
to depict subjects that gloried the Cultural Revolution
related to their labour.* [131] In 1971, in part to alleviate
their suering, a number of leading artists were recalled
from manual labour or free from captivity under the initiative of Zhou Enlai to decorate hotels and railway stations defaced by Red Guards slogans. Zhou said that the
artworks were for meant for foreigners, therefore were
outerart not be under the obligations and restrictions
placed on innerart meant for Chinese citizens. To
him, landscape paintings should also not be considered
one of the Four Olds. However, Zhou was weakened by cancer and in 1974, the Jiang Qing faction seized
these and other paintings and mounted exhibitions in Beijing, Shanghai and other cities denouncing the artworks
as Black Paintings.* [132]

After the communist takeover in China, much of the

popular music from Shanghai was condemned as Yellow
Music and banned, and during the Cultural Revolution, 6.4
composers of such popular music such as Li Jinhui were
persecuted.* [125] Revolution-themed songs instead were
promoted, and songs such as "Ode to the Motherland",
"Sailing the Seas Depends on the Helmsman", "The
East Is Red" and "Without the Communist Party, There
Would Be No New China" were either written or became extremely popular during this period.The East Is
Red, especially, became popular; it de facto supplanted
"The March of the Volunteers" as the national anthem of
China, though the latter was restored to its previous place
after the Cultural Revolution ended.
Some of the most enduring images of Cultural Revolution come from the poster art. Propaganda art in posters
was used as a campaigning tool and mass communication
device, and often served as the main source of information for the people. They were produced in large number and widely disseminated, and were used by the government and Red Guards to educate the public the ideological value as dened by the party state.* [126] There
were many types of posters, the two main genres being
the dazibao (, big character poster) andcommercialpropapanda poster (, xuanchuanhua).* [127]
The dazibao may be slogans, poems, commentary and
graphics often freely created and posted on walls in public spaces, factories and communes. They were vital to
Mao's struggle in the Cultural Revolution, and Mao himself wrote his own dazibao at Beijing University on August 5, 1966, calling on the people to "Bombard the Headquarters".* [128] Thecommercialpropaganda posters
were artworks produced by the government and sold
cheaply in store to be displayed in homes. These artists

Historical relics

The faces of the Buddhas were destroyed during the Cultural

Revolution.

China's historical sites, artifacts and archives suered

devastating damage as they were thought to be at the
root of old ways of thinking. Many artifacts were
seized from private homes and museums and often destroyed on the spot. There are no records of exactly
how much was destroyed. Western observers suggest that
much of China's thousands of years of history was in effect destroyed or, later, smuggled abroad for sale, during the short ten years of the Cultural Revolution. Chinese historians compare the cultural suppression during
the Cultural Revolution to Qin Shihuang's great Confucian purge. Religious persecution intensied during this
period, because religion was seen as being opposed to

16

POLICY AND EFFECT

MarxistLeninist and Maoist thinking.* [133]

the cities were forcibly moved to the countryside, where

Although being undertaken by some of the Revolution's they were forced to abandon all forms of standard educateachings of the Commuenthusiastic followers, the destruction of historical relics tion in place of the propaganda
*
[90]
nist
Party
of
China.
was never formally sanctioned by the Communist Party,
whose ocial policy was instead to protect such items. Some people were not able to stand the torture and, losIndeed, on May 14, 1967, the CCP central committee is- ing hope for the future, committed suicide. One of the
sued a document entitled Several suggestions for the pro- most famous cases of attempted suicide due to political
tection of cultural relics and books during the Cultural Rev- persecution involved Deng Xiaoping's son, Deng Pufang,
olution.* [134] Nevertheless, enormous damage was in- who jumped (or was thrown) from a four-story building
icted on China's cultural heritage. For example, a survey after being interrogatedby Red Guards. Instead of
in 1972 in Beijing of 18 key spots of cultural heritage in- dying, he became paraplegic. In the trial of the so-called
cluding the Temple of Heaven and Ming Tombs showed Gang of Four, a Chinese court stated that 729,511 people
extensive damage. Of the 80 cultural heritage sites in had been persecuted, of which 34,800 were said to have
Beijing under municipal protection, 30 were destroyed, died.* [138]
and of the 6,843 cultural sites under protection by Bei- According to Mao: The Unknown Story, an estimated
jing government decision in 1958, 4,922 were damaged 100,000 people died in one of the worst factional strugor destroyed.* [135] Numerous valuable old books, paint- gles in Guangxi in JanuaryApril 1968, before Preings, and other cultural relics were also destroyed.* [136] mier Zhou sent the PLA to intervene.* [139]* [140] In
1993, erotic ction author* [141] Zheng Yi wrote the
controversial book Scarlet Memorial: Tales Of Cannibalism In Modern China, alleging systematic killing
and cannibalization of individuals in the name of political revolution and 'class struggle'" among the Zhuang
people in Wuxuan County, Guangxi, during that period.* [139]* [142] The book was roundly criticized in
China for its reliance on unpublished interviews and for
its negative portrayal of a Chinese ethnic minority,* [141]
although senior party historians have corroborated some
6.5 Struggle sessions, purges, and deaths allegations of cannibalism.* [143] Sinologist Gang Yue
has questioned howsystematicthe cannibalism could
Main article: Struggle session
have been, given the inherent factionalism of the Cultural
Millions of people in China were violently persecuted Revolution.* [140] MacFarquhar and Schoenhals also dispute that it was communism that compelled the Zhuang
in this area towards cannibalism, noting that similar incidents occurred under pressure from the Kuomintang secret police in the republican period.* [143]
Later Archaeological excavation and preservation after
the destructive period in the 1960s however were protected, and several major discoveries, such as that of the
Terracotta Army and the Mawangdui tombs occurred after the peak of the Revolution.* [134] The most prominent
symbol of academic research in archaeology, the journal
Kaogu, however did not publish during the Cultural Revolution.* [137]

Mao-era propaganda for struggle sessions

during the Cultural Revolution. Those identied as spies,

running dogs,revisionists, or coming from a suspect
class (including those related to former landlords or rich
peasants) were subject to beating, imprisonment, rape,
torture, sustained and systematic harassment and abuse,
seizure of property, denial of medical attention, and erasure of social identity. At least hundreds of thousands of
people were murdered, starved, or worked to death. Millions more were forcibly displaced. Young people from

Estimates of the death toll, including both civilians

and Red Guards, vary greatly according to dierent
sources.* [144] These ranged upwards to several millions,
but an estimate of around 400,000 deaths is a widely accepted minimum gure.* [145] The true gure of those
who were persecuted or died during the Cultural Revolution however may never be known, since many deaths
went unreported or were actively covered up by the police
or local authorities. The state of Chinese demographics
record at the time was very poor, and the PRC has been
hesitant to allow formal research into the period.* [146]
In Mao's Last Revolution (2006), Roderick MacFarquhar
and Michael Schoenhals assert that in rural China alone
some 36 million people were persecuted, of whom between 750,000 and 1.5 million were killed, with roughly
the same number permanently injured.* [147] In Mao:
The Unknown Story, Jung Chang and Jon Halliday claim
that as many as 3 million people died in the violence of
the Cultural Revolution.* [148]

17

6.6

Ethnic minorities

Tibetan Panchen Lama during the struggle session

The Cultural Revolution wreaked much havoc on minority cultures in China. In Tibet, over 6,000 monasteries were destroyed, often with the complicity of local
ethnic Tibetan Red Guards. In Inner Mongolia, some
790,000 people were persecuted. Of these, 22,900 were
beaten to death and 120,000 were maimed,* [149] during a ruthless witchhunt to nd members of the alleged
separatist New Inner Mongolian People's Revolutionary
Party. In Xinjiang, copies of the Qu'ran and other books
of the Uyghur people were apparently burned. Muslim imams were reportedly paraded around with paint
splashed on their bodies. In the ethnic Korean areas of
northeast China, language schools were destroyed. In
Yunnan Province, the palace of the Dai people's king
was torched, and a massacre of Muslim Hui people at
the hands of the People's Liberation Army in Yunnan,
known as the Shadian incident, reportedly claimed over
1,600 lives in 1975.* [150]

and India.* [153] Many of the Cultural Revolution's goals

in minority areas were simply too unreasonable to be implemented. The return to pluralism, and therefore the
end of the worst of the eects of the Cultural Revolution to ethnic minorities in China, coincides closely with
Lin Biao's removal from power.* [154]
After the Cultural Revolution was over, the government
issued an apology for the Shadian Incident and the government has also compensated them economically with
payments. The government erected a Martyr's Memorial in Shadian to honor the victims, and also partially
nanced the building of the Great Mosque in Shadian,
which is the biggest Mosque in China.* [155] When comparing persecution, Chinese Muslims say that the Soviet
Union was worse in regards to its treatment of Islam than
China during theten black yearsof the Cultural Revolution.* [156]

7 Legacy

Concessions given to minorities were abolished as part

of the Red Guards' attack on the "Four Olds". People's
communes were established in the Tibetan Autonomous
Region, removing Tibet's exemption from China's period
of land reform, and reimposed in other minority areas.
Tibet in particular suered severe persecution, nearly all
the monasteries were destroyed, many monks and nuns
were killed, and the general population were subjected
to physical and psychological torture.* [151] There were
an estimated 600,000 monks and nuns in Tibet in 1950,
and by 1979, most of them were dead, disappeared or imprisoned.* [152] Despite ocial persecution, some local
leaders and minority ethnic practices survived in remote
The central section of this wall shows the faint remnant marks of
regions.
a propaganda slogan that was added during the Cultural Revolu-

The overall failure of the Red Guards' and radical assim- tion, but has since been removed. The slogan reads Boundless
ilationists' goals was largely due to two factors. It was felt faith in Chairman Mao.
that pushing minority groups too hard would compromise
China's border defences. This was especially important
as minorities make up a large percentage of the population that live along China's borders. In the late 1960s
China experienced a period of strained relations with a 7.1 China
number of its neighbours, notably with the Soviet Union

18

LEGACY

of illegally removing him from oce by using Cultural Revolution-styletactics, includingreversing black
and white, exaggerating personal oenses, taking quotes
Main article: Ideology of the Communist Party of China out of context, issuing slander and lies... innundating the
newspapers with critical articles making me out to be an
and casual disregard for my personal freedoms.
To make sense of the mass chaos caused by Mao's enemy,
*
[161]
leadership in the Cultural Revolution while preserving
the Party's authority and legitimacy, Mao's successors
needed to lend the event aproperhistorical judgment.
On June 27, 1981, the Central Committee adopted the 7.1.2 Alternative opinions
"Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of Our
Party Since the Founding of the People's Republic of Although the Chinese Communist Party ocially conChina,an ocial assessment of major historical events demns the Cultural Revolution, there are many Chinese
since 1949. The Resolution frankly noted Mao's leader- people who hold more positive views of it, particularly
ship role in the movement, stating thatchief responsibil- amongst the working class, who beneted most from its
ity for the grave 'Left' error of the 'Cultural Revolution,' policies.* [162] Since Deng's ascendancy to power, the
an error comprehensive in magnitude and protracted in government has arrested and imprisoned gures who have
duration, does indeed lie with Comrade Mao Zedong. taken a strongly pro-Cultural Revolution stance. For inBut it diluted blame on Mao himself by asserting that the stance, in 1985, a young shoe-factory worker put up a
movement was manipulated by the counterrevolution- poster on a factory wall in Xianyang, Shaanxi, which deary groups of Lin Biao and Jiang Qing,who caused its clared that The Cultural Revolution was Goodand
worst excesses. The Resolution armed that the Cultural led to achievements such asthe building of the Nanjing
Revolution brought serious disaster and turmoil to the Yangtze River Bridge, the creation of hybrid rice crops
Communist Party and the Chinese people.* [157]
and the rise of people's consciousness.The factory
The ocial view aimed to separate Mao's actions dur- worker was eventually sentenced to ten years in prison,
ing the Cultural Revolution from his heroicrevolu- *where he died soon after without any apparent cause.
tionary activities during the Chinese Civil War and the [163]
7.1.1

Communist Party opinions

Second Sino-Japanese War. It also separates Mao's personal mistakes from the correctness of the theory that
he created, which remains an ocial guiding ideology
in the Party. Deng Xiaoping famously summed this up
with the phraseMao was 70% good, 30% bad.* [158]
In rhetoric, Deng armed that Maoist ideology was responsible for the revolutionary success of the Communist
Party, but abandoned it in practice to favour "Socialism
with Chinese characteristics", a very dierent model of
state-directed market economics.

One of the student leaders of the Tiananmen Square

protests of 1989, Shen Tong, author of Almost a Revolution, has a positive view of some aspects of the Cultural
Revolution. According to Shen, the trigger for the famous
Tiananmen hunger-strikes of 1989 was a big-character
poster (dazibao), a form of public political discussion that
gained prominence during the Cultural Revolution. Shen
remarked that the congregation of students from across
the country to Beijing on trains and the hospitality they
received from residents was reminiscent of the experi*
In Mainland China, the ocial Party view now serves as ences of Red Guards in the Cultural Revolution. [2]
the dominant framework for Chinese historiography of Since the advent of the Internet, people inside and outthe time period; alternative views (see below) are discour- side China have argued online that the Cultural Revoaged. Following the Cultural Revolution, a new genre of lution had many benecial qualities for China that have
literature known as "Scar literature" (Shanghen Wenxue) been denied by both the post-Mao Chinese Communist
emerged, being encouraged by the post-Mao government. Party and the Western media. Some hold that the RevoluLargely written by educated youths such as Liu Xinhua, tion 'cleansed' China from superstitions, religious dogma,
Zhang Xianliang, and Liu Xinwu, scar literature depicted and outdated traditions in a 'modernist transformation'
the Revolution from a negative viewpoint, using their own that later made Deng's economic reforms possible. These
perspectives and experiences as a basis.* [159]
sentiments increased following the U.S. bombing of the
After the suppression of the Tiananmen Square Protests Chinese embassy in Belgrade in 1999, when a segment of
of 1989, both liberals and conservatives within the Party the population began to* associate anti-Maoist viewpoints
accused each other of excesses that they claimed were with the United States. [164]
reminiscent of the Cultural Revolution. Li Peng, who
promoted the use of military force, cited that the student movement had taken inspiration from the grassroots
populism of the Cultural Revolution, and that if it is left
unchecked, would eventually lead to a similar degree of
mass chaos.* [160] Zhao Ziyang, who was sympathetic
to the protestors, later accused his political opponents

Contemporary Maoists have also become more organized

in the internet era. One Maoist website has collected
thousands of signatures demanding punishment for those
who publicly criticize Mao. Along with the call for legal action, this movement demands the establishment of
agencies similar to Cultural Revolution-era neighborhood committees, in which citizenswould report

7.3

Academic debate

19

anti-Maoists to local public security bureaus. The recent

movement in defense of Mao was sparked by an online
column written by Mao Yushi (no relation), an economist,
who provocatively wrote that Mao Zedong was not a
god. The move to have Mao's image publicly protected
is correlated with the recent political career of Bo Xilai,
whose term as party chief in Chongqing has been characterized by the use of Maoist propaganda not popular in
China since the end of the Cultural Revolution.* [165]

Zedong emerged as a symbol of the anti-establishment,

grassroots populism, and self-determination. His revolutionary philosophies found adherents in the Shining Path
of Peru, the Naxalite insurgency in India, various political movements in Nepal, the U.S.-based Black Panther
Party,* [170] and the 1960s counterculture movement in
general. In 2007 Hong Kong Chief Executive Donald
Tsang remarked that the Cultural Revolution represented
the 'dangers of democracy', remarking People can go
to the extreme like what we saw during the Cultural Revolution [...], when people take everything into their own
7.1.3 Contemporary China
hands, then you cannot govern the place.* [171] The remarks caused controversy in Hong Kong and were later
Public discussion of the Cultural Revolution is still lim- retracted with an accompanying apology.* [171]
ited in China. The Chinese government continues to prohibit news organizations from mentioning details of the
Cultural Revolution, and online discussions and books 7.3 Academic debate
about the topic are subject to ocial scrutiny. Textbooks
on the subject continue to abide by theocial view(see Various schools of thought have emerged surrounding
above) of the events. Many government documents from several key questions surrounding the Cultural Revoluthe 1960s on remain classied, and are not open to formal tion, seeking to explain why events unfolded the way they
inspection by private academics.* [166] At the National did, why it began in the rst place, and what it was.
Museum of China in Beijing, the Cultural Revolution is The movement's complexities contain many contradicbarely mentioned in its historical exhibits.* [167] Despite tions: led by an all-powerful omnipresent leader, it was
inroads made by numerous prominent sinologists, inde- mainly driven to fruition by a series of grassroots-led
pendent scholarly research of the Cultural Revolution is popular uprisings against the Communist establishment.
discouraged by the Chinese government.* [166] There is While Mao's leadership was pivotal at the beginning of
concern that as witnesses age and die, the opportunity the movement, Jin Qiu contends that as events progressed
*
to research the event thoroughly within China may be it deviated signicantly from Mao's utopian vision. [172]
In this sense, the Cultural Revolution was actually a much
lost.* [168]
more decentralized and varied movement that gradually
That the government still displays such heightened sensi- lost cohesion, spawning a large number of 'local revolutivities around the Cultural Revolution is an indicator that tions' which diered in their nature and goals.* [172]
it still considers itself, at least in part, an inheritor of its
legacy. The government is apprehensive that academic Academic interest has also focused on the movement's reprobing and popular discussions will lead to ideological lationship with Mao's personality. Mao had always enviconict and increase social instability. It may threaten the sioned himself as a wartime guerrilla leader, which made
foundations of Communist rule. The focus of the Chinese him wary of the bureaucratic details of peacetime govgovernment on maintaining political and social stability ernance. With the Cultural Revolution Mao was simhas been a top priority since the Tiananmen crackdown ply returning to form,once again taking on the role
on reformers on June 4, 1989, and the current govern- of a guerrilla leader ghting against an institutionalized
ment has no interest in re-evaluating any issue that might party bureaucracy. MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, writlead to a split in the Chinese leadership, or which might ing in Mao's Last Revolution, paint the movement as neither a bona de war over ideological purity nor a mere
polarize the Party on ideological grounds.* [166]
power struggle to remove Mao's political rivals.* [173]
While Mao's personal motivations were certainly pivotal
to the Cultural Revolution, they reasoned that a mul7.2 Outside mainland China
titude of other complex factors contributed to the way
In Hong Kong a pro-Communist anti-colonial strike in- events unfolded. These include China's relationship with
spired by the Cultural Revolution was launched in 1967. the global Communist movement, geopolitical concerns,
Its excesses damaged the credibility of these activists for the ideological rift between China and the Soviet Union,
ouster, and the failures of the Great Leap
more than a generation in the eyes of Hong Kong res- Khrushchev's
*
[173]
The movement was, at least in part, a
Forward.
*
idents. [169] In Taiwan, Chiang Kai-shek initiated the
legacy
project
to
cement Mao's place in history, aimed
Chinese Cultural Renaissance to counter what he reto
boost
his
prestige
while he was alive and preserve the
garded as destruction of traditional Chinese values by the
invulnerability
of
his
ideas after his death.* [174]
Communists on the mainland. In Albania, Communist
leader and Chinese ally Enver Hoxha began a Cultural The mass hysteria surrounding the Cultural Revolution
and Social Revolutionorganized along the same lines was also unprecedented. Historian Phillip Short contends
as the Cultural Revolution. In the world at large, Mao that the Cultural Revolution contained elements that were

20

9 NOTES

akin to a form of religious worship.* [175] Mao's godlike status during the period yielded him ultimate denitional power over Communist doctrine, yet the esoteric
and often contradictory nature of his writings led to endless wars over its interpretation, with both conservatives
and liberals drawing on Mao's teachings to achieve their
divergent goals. Many factional struggles were not unlike
religious wars, with all sides claiming allegiance to the
most authenticform of Maoism.
Virtually all English-language books paint a highly negative picture of the movement. Historian Anne F.
Thurston wrote that itled to loss of culture, and of spiritual values; loss of hope and ideals; loss of time, truth and
of life...* [176] Barnouin and Yu summarized the Cultural Revolution asa political movement that produced
unprecedented social divisions, mass mobilization, hysteria, upheavals, arbitrary cruelty, torture, killings, and
even civil war..., calling Mao one of the most tyrannical despots of the twentieth century.* [177] In Mao:
The Unknown Story, Chang and Halliday attributed all
the destruction of the Cultural Revolution to Mao personally, with more sympathetic portrayals of his allies and
opponents.* [178] A small number of scholars have challenged the mainstream portrayals of the Cultural Revolution and attempted to understand it in a more positive
light. Mobo Gao, writing in The Battle for China's Past:
Mao and the Cultural Revolution,* [179] asserts that the
movement beneted millions of Chinese citizens, particularly agricultural and industrial workers,* [180] and sees
it as egalitarian and genuinely populist, citing continued
Maoist nostalgia in China today as remnants of its positive legacy.* [181]

9 Notes
[1]Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of Our
Party Since the Founding of the People's Republic of
China,adopted by the Sixth Plenary Session of the
Eleventh Central Committee of the Communist Party of
China on June 27, 1981 Resolution on CPC History (194981). (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1981). p. 32.
[2] Tang Tsou. [1986] (1986). The Cultural Revolution and
Post-Mao Reforms: A Historical Perspective. University of
Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-81514-5
[3] Worden, Robert (1987). A Country Study:China". Library of Congress.
[4] Jin, Qiu (1999). The Culture of Power: Lin Biao and the
Cultural Revolution. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. pp. 2530.
[5] Historical Atlas of the 20th century.
[6] Jin Qiu, p. 55
[7] Spence
[8] Jin Qiu, Ch. 2
[9] MacFarquhar and Schoenhals 2006. pp. 0407.
[10] MacFarquhar and Schoenhals 2006. p. 07.
[11] MacFarquhar and Schoenhals. pp. 15-18.
[12] MacFarquhar and Schoenhals. pp. 16.
[13] No relation to Peng Dehuai
[14] MacFarquhar and Schoenhals. pp. 1419.

See also
Morning Sun (), a documentary
exploring the events and eects of the Cultural Revolution
Red Scarf Girl, a memoir of experiences during the
Cultural Revolution

[15] MacFarquhar and Schoenhals 2006. Chapter 1.

[16] MacFarquhar and Schoenhals 2006. pp. 2027.
[17] MacFarquhar and Schoenhals. p. 24.
[18] MacFarquhar and Schoenhals 2006 Chapter 1.
[19] MacFarquhar and Schoenhals. pp. 2735.
[20] MacFarquhar and Schoenhals 2006. pp. 3940.

Born Red: A Chronicle of the Cultural Revolution, an

autobiography that includes experiences during the
Cultural Revolution

[21] Quoted in MacFarquhar and Schoenhals 2006. p. 47.

A Year In Upper Felicity, book chronicling a year in a

rural Chinese village during the Cultural Revolution

[23] MacFarquhar and Schoenhals 2006. p. 46.

Cultural and Ideological Revolution in Albania, inspired by the Cultural Revolution

[22] Li Xuefeng quoted in MacFarquhar and Schoenhals 2006.

p. 40.

[24] Wang, Nianyi (1989). 1949-1989

[Great age of turmoil, a history of China 1949-89].
Henan Renmin Chubanshe. p. 13.
[25] MacFarquhar and Schoenhals 2006. p. 41.

Great Leap Forward

[26] MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, p. 5658

July Theses, a mini-Cultural Revolution in Romania [27] MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, p. 5961
Category : Group processes

[28] MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, p. 6264

21

[29] MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, p. 71

[53] MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, p. 285.

[30] MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, p. 75

[54] MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, p. 288.

[31] MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, p. 84

[55] MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, p. 292.

[32] MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, p. 94

[56] MacFarquhar and Schoenhals. Chapter 17.

[33] MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, p. 96

[57] As quoted in MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, p. 291.

[34] Decision Concerning the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, adopted on August 8, 1966, by the CC of the CCP
(ocial English version)

[58] MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, p. 291.; At the time, no

other Communist parties or governments anywhere in the
world had adopted the practice of enshrining a successor
to the current leader into their constitutions; This practice
was unique to China.

[35] MacFarquhar, Roderick and Schoenhals, Michael. Mao's

Last Revolution. Harvard University Press, 2006. p. 1067
[36] Wang, Nianyi. Period of Great Turmoil: China between
1949-1989, p. 66

[59] MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, p. 289.

[60] MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, p. 290.
[61] MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, p. 296.

[37] MacFarquhar, Roderick and Schoenhals, Michael. Mao's

Last Revolution. Harvard University Press, 2006. p. 110
[38] MacFarquhar, Roderick and Schoenhals, Michael. Mao's
Last Revolution. Harvard University Press, 2006. p. 119
[39] Asiaweek, Volume 10.
[40] murdoch edu
[41] Yu, Dan Smyer. Delayed contention with the Chinese
Marxist scapegoat complex: re-membering Tibetan Buddhism in the PRC.The Tibet Journal 32.1 (2007)

[62] MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, p. 316.

[63] Qiu, p. 115
[64] MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, p. 317.
[65] MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, p. 321.
[66] MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, p. 322.
[67] This position, eectively China's head of state, has been
called Presidentsince 1982

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[68] MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, p. 327.

[43] MacFarquhar, Roderick and Schoenhals, Michael. Mao's

Last Revolution. Harvard University Press, 2006. p. 107

[71] MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, p. 332.

[69] MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, p. 331.

[70] MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, p. 328.

[72] MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, p. 353.

[44] MacFarquhar, Roderick and Schoenhals, Michael. Mao's
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[78] MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, p. 366.

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[52] Donald N. Sull, Yong Wang (2005). Made In China: What

Western Managers Can Learn from Trailblazing Chinese
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[82] Teiwes and Sun 217218

[83] Spence 610
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[85] Teiwes and Sun 214

22

[86] Spence, 612

[87] Teiwes and Sun 218

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Li Peng, the 'Butcher of Tiananmen,' was 'Ready

to Die' to Stop the Student Turmoil. AsiaNews.it.
2003. Retrieved August 21, 2011.

REFERENCES

ALLS,
LISABETH;
CHRIF-CHEBBI,
LELA; HALFON, CONSTANCE-HLNE
(2003). Translated from the French by Anne
Evans. Chinese Islam: Unity and Fragmentation (PDF). Archives de Sciences Sociales
des Religions (Keston Institute) 31 (1): 735.
doi:10.1080/0963749032000045837.
ISSN
0963-7494. Retrieved 9 June 2014.
Barnouin, Barbara and Yu Changgen. Zhou Enlai:
A Political Life. Hong Kong: Chinese University
of Hong Kong, 2006. ISBN 962-996-280-2. Retrieved on March 12, 2011.
Chan, A; Children of Mao: Personality Development
and Political Activism in the Red Guard Generation;
University of Washington Press (1985)
Chen, Jack (1975). Inside the Cultural Revolution.
Scribner. ISBN 0-02-524630-5.
Clark, Paul (2008). The Chinese Cultural Revolution: A History. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-87515-8.
Ewing, Kent. (2011, June 4). Mao's Army on the
Attack. Asia Times Online. Asia Times Online
(Holdings). Retrieved at <http://www.atimes.com/
atimes/China/MF04Ad01.html> on June 16, 2011.
Fong Tak-ho. (2006, May 19). Cultural
Revolution? What Revolution?" Asia Times Online.
Asia Times Online (Holdings).
Retrieved at <http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/
HE19Ad01.html> on June 15, 2011.
Gao, Mobo (2008). The Battle for China's Past:
Mao and the Cultural Revolution. London: Pluto
Press.
ISBN 978-0-7453-2780-8.
Retrieved
at <http://www.strongwindpress.com/pdfs/EBook/
The_Battle_for_Chinas_Past.pdf> on September 2,
2012
Lee, Hong Yong (1978). The Politics of the Chinese
Cultural Revolution. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-03297-7.
Richard King, ed. (2010). Art in Turmoil: The
Chinese Cultural Revolution, 1966-76. University of
British Columbia Press. ISBN 978-0774815437.
MacFarquhar, Roderick and Schoenhals, Michael
(2006). Mao's Last Revolution. Harvard University
Press. ISBN 978-0-674-02332-1.
Solomon, Richard H. (1971). Mao's Revolution and
the Chinese Political Culture. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Spence, Jonathan D. (1999). The Search for Modern China, New York: W.W. Norton and Company.
ISBN 0-393-97351-4.

11.3

Commentaries

25

Thurston, Anne F. (1988). Enemies of the People:

The Ordeal of Intellectuals in China's Great Cultural
Revolution. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Leese, Daniel (2011). Mao Cult: Rhetoric and Ritual

in the Cultural Revolution. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.

Teiwes, Frederick C. & Sun, Warren. (2004).The

First Tiananmen Incident Revisited: Elite Politics
and Crisis Management at the End of the Maoist
Era. Pacic Aairs. Vol. 77, No. 2, Summer. 211235. Retrieved from <http://www.jstor.
org/stable/40022499> on March 11, 2011.

Zheng Yi. Scarlet Memorial: Tales Of Cannibalism

In Modern China. Westview Press, 1998. ISBN 08133-2616-8

Zhao Ziyang. Prisoner of the State: The Secret Journal of Premier Zhao Ziyang. Trans & Ed. Bao Pu,
Renee Chiang, and Adi Ignatius. New York: Simon
and Schuster. 2009. ISBN 1-4391-4938-0

11
11.1

Further reading
General

Michael Schoenhals, ed., China's Cultural Revolution, 19661969: Not a Dinner Party (Armonk,
N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 1996. An East Gate Reader).
xix, 400p. ISBN 1-56324-736-4.
Richard Curt Kraus. The Cultural Revolution: A
Very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press, Very Short Introductions Series, 2012.
xiv, 138p. ISBN 9780199740550.
MacFarquhar, Roderick and Schoenhals, Michael.
Mao's Last Revolution. Harvard University Press,
2006. ISBN 0-674-02332-3

Yang, Guobin. 2000. China's Red Guard Generation: The Ritual Process of Identity Transformation,
19661999. PhD diss., New York University.
Fox Buttereld, China: Alive in the Bitter Sea, (1982,
revised 2000), ISBN 0-553-34219-3, an oral history of some Chinese people's experience during the
Cultural Revolution.
Chang, Jung and Halliday, Jon. Mao: The Unknown
Story. Jonathan Cape, London, 2005. ISBN 0-22407126-2
Xing Lu (2004). Rhetoric of the Chinese Cultural
Revolution: The Impact on Chinese Thought, Culture,
and Communication. University of South Carolina
Press. ISBN 978-1570035432.
Ross Terrill,The White-Boned Demon: A Biography
of Madame Mao Zedong Stanford University Press,
1984 ISBN 0-8047-2922-0; rpr. New York: Simon
& Schuster, 1992 ISBN 0-671-74484-4.
Wu, Yiching (2014). The Cultural Revolution at the
Margins: Chinese Socialism in Crisis. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press.

Jiaqi Yan, Gao Gao (1996). Turbulent Decade: A

History of the Cultural Revolution (1st ed.). Univer- 11.3 Commentaries
sity of Hawai'i Press. ISBN 978-0824816957.
Simon Leys (penname of Pierre Ryckmans) Broken Images: Essays on Chinese Culture and Politics
Morning Sun, Bibliography,Morningsun.org
(1979). ISBN 0-8052-8069-3
Books and articles of General Readings and Selected Personal Narratives on the Cultural Revolu Simon Leys. Chinese Shadows (1978). ISBN 0-670tion.
21918-5; ISBN 0-14-004787-5.

11.2

Specic topics

Richard King, ed. (2010). Art in Turmoil: The

Chinese Cultural Revolution, 1966-76. University of
British Columbia Press. ISBN 978-0774815437.
Andreas, Joel (2009). Rise of the Red Engineers:
The Cultural Revolution and the Origins of China's
New Class. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Chan, Anita. 1985. Children of Mao: Personality Development and Political Activism in the Red
Guard Generation. Seattle: University of Washington Press.

Simon Leys. The Burning Forest: Essays on Chinese

Culture and Politics (1986). ISBN 0-03-005063-4;
ISBN 0-586-08630-7; ISBN 0-8050-0350-9; ISBN
0-8050-0242-1.
Simon Leys. The Chairman's New Clothes: Mao
and the Cultural Revolution (1977; revised 1981).
ISBN 0-85031-208-6; ISBN 0-8052-8080-4; ISBN
0-312-12791-X; ISBN 0-85031-209-4; ISBN 085031-435-6 (revised ed.).
Liu, Guokai. 1987. A Brief Analysis of the Cultural
Revolution. edited by Anita Chan. Armonk, N.Y.:
M. E. Sharpe.

26

11.4

12

Fictional treatments

Sijie Dai, translated by Ina Rilke, Balzac and the

Little Chinese Seamstress (New York: Knopf: Distributed by Random House, 2001). 197p. ISBN 0375-41309-X
Xingjian Gao, translated by Mabel Lee, One Man's
Bible: A Novel (New York: HarperCollins, 2002).
450p.
Hua Gu, A Small Town Called Hibiscus (Beijing,
China: Chinese Literature: distributed by China
Publications Centre, 1st, 1983. Panda Books).
Translated by Gladys Yang. 260p. Reprinted: San
Francisco: China Books.
Hua Yu, To Live: A Novel (New York: Anchor
Books, 2003). Translated by Michael Berry. 250p.
Ying Chang Compestine, Revolution Is Not a Dinner
Party : A Novel. (New York: Holt, 2007). ISBN
0805082077. Young adult novel.

EXTERNAL LINKS

Anchee Min, Red Azalea (New York: Pantheon

Books, 1994). ISBN 1-4000-9698-7.
Rae Yang, Spider Eaters : A Memoir (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997).
Weili Ye, Xiaodong Ma, Growing up in the People's
Republic: Conversations between Two Daughters of
China's Revolution (New York: Palgrave Macmillan,
2005).
Lijia Zhang, Socialism Is Great": A Worker's
Memoir of the New China (New York: Atlas & Co,
Distributed by Norton, 2007).
Emily Wu, Feather in the Storm (Pantheon, 2006).
ISBN 978-0-375-42428-1.
Xinran Xue, The Good Women of China: Hidden
Voices (Chatto & Windus, 2002). Translated by
Esther Tyldesley. ISBN 0-7011-7345-9
Ting-Xing Ye, Leaf In A Bitter Wind (England,
Bantam Books, 2000)
Zhang Xianliang, Grass Soup, ISBN 0-7493-9774-8

11.5

Memoirs by Chinese participants

Liu Ping, My Chinese Dream - From Red Guard to

CEO (San Francisco, June 2012). 556 pages ISBN
9780835100403
Nien Cheng, Life and Death in Shanghai (Grove,
May 1987). 547 pages ISBN 0-394-55548-1
Jung Chang, Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991). 524 p.
LCCN 91-20696

12 External links
Encyclopdia Britannica. The Cultural Revolution
History of The Cultural Revolution
Chinese propaganda posters gallery (Cultural Revolution, Mao, and others)
Hua Guofeng's speech to the 11th Party Congress,
1977

Heng Liang Judith Shapiro, Son of the Revolution

(New York: Knopf : Distributed by Random House,
1983).

Morning Sun A Film and Website about Cultural

Revolution and the photographs of the subject available from the lm's site.

Yuan Gao, with Judith Polumbaum, Born Red: A

Chronicle of the Cultural Revolution (Stanford, CA:
Stanford University Press, 1987).

Memorial for Victims of the Chinese Cultural Revolution

Jiang Yang Chu translated and annotated by Djang

Chu, Six Chapters of Life in a Cadre School: Memoirs from China's Cultural Revolution [Translation of
Ganxiao Liu Ji] (Boulder: Westview Press, 1986).
Bo Ma, Blood Red Sunset: A Memoir of the Chinese Cultural Revolution (New York: Viking, 1995).
Translated by Howard Goldblatt.
Guanlong Cao, The Attic: Memoir of a Chinese
Landlord's Son (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1996).
Ji-li Jiang, Red Scarf Girl: A Memoir of the Cultural
Revolution (New York: HarperCollins, 1997).

William Hinton on the Cultural Revolution by

Dave Pugh
Student Attacks Against Teachers: The Revolution
of 1966 by Youqin Wang
A Tale of Red Guards and Cannibals by Nicholas D.
Kristof. The New York Times, January 6, 1993.

27

13
13.1

Text and image sources, contributors, and licenses

Text

Cultural Revolution Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution?oldid=665479314 Contributors: Mav, Slrubenstein,

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Clubmovie, Mizutofu, Spongefrog, MarquisCostello, FrescoBot, Tobby72, Artanis64, Monkeyboy17, Yellowjackets111, Escaeva, Trust
Is All You Need, Cs32en, Faspua, Louperibot, HamburgerRadio, HRoestBot, Gloryify, Loyalist Cannons, SpaceFlight89, Reesorville,
Arthurborges, Fumitol, Fkauder, Ambience2000, 155ws, Trappist the monk, Hardtondaname, Zanhe, HelenOnline, Vrenator, Mitarani,
ZhBot, Ezardim, AndrewvdBK, Ch1n0boy, Innotata, PleaseStand, FelixtheMagnicent, DARTH SIDIOUS 2, Difu Wu, Jfmantis, Generalharnsolo, The Utahraptor, Alph Bot, Skamecrazy123, EmausBot, And we drown, John of Reading, Orphan Wiki, WikitanvirBot, Distal24,

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13.2

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File:China.svg Source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4a/China.svg License: CC BY 3.0 Contributors: Own work

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File:Cultural_Revolution_poster.jpg Source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c6/Cultural_Revolution_poster.jpg License:
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IISH Stefan R. Landsberger Collection on Stefan Landsberger's Chinese Propaganda Poster Pages (website now closed) (see also this poster
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Legislative Assembly of the Macau Special Administrative Region
File:Panchen_Lama_during_the_struggle_(thamzing)_session_1964.jpg Source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/
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13.3

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jpg License: CC BY-SA 2.0 Contributors: Flickr: Trip to Ningxia and Gansu Original artist: Pat B
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