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In Shanghai,

tens of

thousands of

homes were

attacked,

and many of

their terrified

residents were

beaten to death

or committed

suicide

Red peril

A civil servant

deemed to be a

‘political

pickpocket’ is

paraded through

the streets of

Beijing by Red

Guards in 1967.

Many such

‘capitalist roaders’

were denounced

and humiliated

to overtake Britain’s and match that of the

US. The result was disaster: an estimated

30 million people died from starvation.

THE COLOUR OF CATS

By 1965 Mao had been forced to step back

from hands-on leadership as more

pragmatic colleagues tried to reconstruct

the economy, though he remained powerful

in his position as Communist party

chairman. Men such as state president Liu

Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping, who managed

day-to-day affairs, were also veterans of

the movement, and no less ruthlessly

committed to its goals.

Deng famously articulated his approach

in July 1962 by quoting a pithy proverb

from his home province, Sichuan: “It does

not matter if a cat is yellow or black, as long

as it catches mice.” During the civil war of

1946–49 the communists’ Red Army had

not always fought a conventional struggle,

he continued, but had adapted its strategy

to the specific conditions in which it found

itself. That flexibility had led to its ultimate

victory. In restoring the economy after the

ravages of the Great Leap, the party

needed to be equally pragmatic.

The cat would change colour in the

re-telling, and became white and black as

the phrase was repeated. But for Mao this

thinking seemed to exemplify the approach

of a new bureaucracy that was losing

another, much more important tint:

revolutionary red. Under the leadership of

Liu, Deng and others like them at all levels in

the party and state, the Chinese Communist

party appeared to be in

danger of losing its

ideological purity and its

political ambitions, instead

prioritising economic

growth.

Was capitalism being

restored? Was the

revolution being

compromised by a new

elite that had captured the

party and government and

sidelined him? These

questions plagued Mao,

who had also been

shocked in 1956 when

Soviet leader Nikita

Khrushchev had

denounced and damned

his own predecessor,

Stalin. Was Liu Shaoqi the

Khrushchev of China –

and was Mao heading for

the same fate as his erstwhile Soviet
counterpart?
So the chairman sprang a trap – and
everybody in China was caught up in it.
He brought into play the young and the
disaffected, and mobilised them to back
his bid to restore the primacy of his own
vision. In 1966, with strong support from
the ambitious army chief, Lin Biao, Mao
began a sustained assault on his own
party and the state with a programme
formally described as a ‘Great Proletarian
Cultural Revolution’.
The spark that lit the touchpaper of the
Cultural Revolution was a play – or, more
specifically, a critique of a play. Hai Rui
Dismissed from Office was a historical
drama in which the eponymous chief
adviser to a Ming-dynasty emperor was
dismissed for publicly criticising the ruler.
The problem was that the play came to be
seen as an allegory for modern events.
A written critique was published claiming
that the play was a thinly disguised attack
on Mao. The emperor clearly represented
Mao, it was alleged, while Hai Rui was one
of China’s veteran leaders, former army
commander Peng Dehuai. Peng had
challenged Mao in 1959 over the disastrous
results of the Great Leap Forward, and as a
result had been disgraced.
Mao’s opponents were charged with
attempting to suppress the critique – which
the chairman had sponsored, and secretly
helped prepare – and then with having
commissioned the original play as part of a
bid to undermine him and the revolution.
They were alleged to be
‘revisionists’, as
Khrushchev was also
routinely labelled.
The first victim of the
movement was Peng
Zhen, the powerful mayor
of Beijing and Politburo
member, who was
toppled in May 1966
alongside other senior
figures in the city. But,
Mao and his supporters
wondered, how far had
this rot spread? The
revolution was under
attack from within, they
believed – from
somewhere inside the
leadership. How else had
someone as senior as
Peng Zhen been allowed
TOPFOTO to act, if not without the