A distinguished Chinese economic historian,
Xue Mugiao, director of China’s Economic
Research Centre, in the 1980s condemned the
Cultural Revolution as initiated by a leader
labouring under a misapprehension and capi-
talised on by counter-revolutionary cliques; it led
to domestic turmoil and brought catastrophe to
the party, the state and the whole people. Such
criticism of Mao became possible only in the
reformist 1980s. At the time party members
attempted to defend themselves while sycophan-
tically declaring their loyalty and obedience to the
chairman. Liu was not so lucky.
The convulsion of the Cultural Revolution
wrecked millions of lives. From 1966 to 1968 the
struggles assumed the proportions of a civil war,
with fierce fighting and brigandage in many parts
of the country. Mao had aroused the people to
denounce each other. In the process he raised
his teaching to an unprecedented personality cult.
The revolution began with the dissident students
and disgruntled teachers, who organised them-
selves spontaneously into ‘Red Guards’ to carry
out Mao’s will. The Cultural Revolution was
unique among student revolts of the late 1960s
in that it was encouraged from the very top
against the more privileged elders. The students
proceeded physically to assault the ‘monsters and
demons and all counter-revolutionary revisionists
of the Khrushchev type’ and to ransack their
homes; they vowed that they would carry Mao’s
socialist revolution through to its end. Their
instruments were terror and humiliation. On
18 August 1966, Mao appeared on the gallery of
the Tiananmen Gate of Heavenly Peace, to be
adulated by huge crowds of Red Guards, who
packed the square before him all day. Eventually
he descended into the square itself to be among
them; more than a million Red Guards had come
from outside Beijing to join those in the capital
already. They were ordered to ‘spread disorder’,
to attack the party bureaucrats, to root out
Chinese tradition and bourgeois revisionism –
indeed to eliminate all the elements that had
infiltrated the party and were taking the false
capitalist road.
The student Red Guards fanned out through-
out the country to radicalise the masses in the
cities; the vast countryside of China remained less
affected. In factories they enlisted workers. It was
a movement that became anarchic and violent;
teachers, professionals, anyone in authority could
become the target of their attacks, sons and
daughters denounced parents or failed to protect
them. The Red Guards were rendering China’s
urban centres virtually ungovernable, as local
party structures were paralysed by their onslaught.
Much destruction was inflicted on Mao’s orders,
but the Red Guards were incapable of putting a
new orderly structure in place of those that had
ceased to function.
After a few months Mao had to call a tempor-
ary halt. The People’s Liberation Army was the
one force able to restrain Red Guard rampages,
and had already intervened in places. But it was
not a proper instrument for furthering revolution;
it was more suitable for repressing disorder of
whatever ideological nuance. By the spring of
1967 the army had become a dominant force in
the country and was gradually restoring order,
fighting the radicals, replacing the party, moving
into factories and controlling the extremists. It
was not the outcome of the revolution Mao had
planned. Cities were destroyed, and hundreds of
thousands of lives were lost.
Mao now unleashed the second phase of the
revolution, attempting to curb the army. Red
Guards went back on the rampage. Throughout
China different factions were locked in con-
frontation. Mao could influence events but even
he could not control their outcome. Among
the most strident voices encouraging the Red
Guards to persevere was that of Mao’s wife, Jiang
Quing. Violence reached new heights in August
- The revolutionary committees, which had
replaced the local party machines, now battled
against more extremist youths. Trains carrying
weapons destined for Vietnam were looted.
Peasants in rival factions, army units, Red Guard
groups all fought each other. In Wuhan military
groups refused to obey directives from Beijing.
The army itself became divided. In Beijing, Liu
Shaoqui, nominal head of state, still remained as
a symbol of party opposition to Mao, although
he had been made to ‘confess his crimes’. But the
control Mao and his supporters could exercise
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