Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Cultural Revolution

Starting point is 00:00:00 In 1966, the People's Republic of China entered what would become one of the most tumultuous periods in its history. In a spam of revolutionary upheaval primarily led by students, almost everyone in the country, including high-ranking communist officials, was a potential target for public humiliation, denunciation, torture, and hard labor. The result was an entire generation of Chinese whose educations and careers were lost, and who vowed never to let political extremism run amok again. Learn more about the cultural revolution, what caused it, and what its purpose was on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Did you ever hear about the selfie that solved a murder or the jury that used a Ouija board to speak to a victim? If that made you

Starting point is 00:00:55 pause, you need to listen to Morning Cup of Murder. I'm Karina B. Minas Durfer, and every single day on Morning Cup of Murder, I tell one chilling true crime story tied to that exact day in history. With over 2,500 episodes to binge, you'll never run out of dark stories to start your morning with. Go listen to Morning Cup of Murder wherever you get your podcasts. And remember, stay safe. The Cultural Revolution was one of the defining periods in the history of communist China. It was a decade-long political and social upheaval from 1966 to 1976, with the most extreme periods taking place from 1966 to 1968. It led to mass persecution, chaos, and the destruction of cultural and educational institutions throughout the country.

Starting point is 00:01:44 To understand why it happened, we need to understand China in the early 1960s, and in particular, Mao Zedong. The great lead forward, which took place from 1958 to 1962, which I covered in a previous episode, caused a famine that killed tens of millions of people. As a result, Mao found his authority within the party significantly diminished. More pragmatic leaders like Liu Xiauchi and Deng Xiaof Ping had taken control of day-to-day governments and were implementing market-orientated reforms to revive the economy.

Starting point is 00:02:17 Events that had taken place in the Soviet Union also alarmed Mao. Nikita Khrushchev's 1956 secret speech denouncing Stalin after his death and the broader campaign of de-Stalinization that followed felt to Mao like an ideological retreat dressed up as a reform. He saw the new Soviet line of peaceful coexistence with the West, the rehabilitation of purged party members and the elevation of expert rule as a slide towards bourgeoisie habits inside of a socialist system. In the Chinese Communist Party language of the early 1960s, this became revisionism, a label that would later justify purging Chinese officials who favored stability,

Starting point is 00:02:57 planning by specialists, and material incentives. Furthermore, the Hungarian uprising in the autumn of 1956 looked to Mao like the political price of loosening ideological control. Mao drew the lesson that once a party relaxes its grip, counter-revolution can surface, and that leaders who apologized for past excesses risk opening the door to internal political challenges. It was in this environment that the cultural revolution began with what seemed like a very innocuous thing. It was a criticism of a historical play that kicked everything off. The play titled High Rui Dismiss from Office was released in 1961. The play had been written by Wu Han, a respected historian and deputy mayor of Beijing, who was also known for his

Starting point is 00:03:43 scholarship on the Ming Dynasty official, Hai Rui, who was the subject of the play. In the story, Hai Rui courageously criticizes the emperor for corruption and injustice, is dismissed from office, but later vindicated as a symbol of moral integrity and loyalty to the people. The play was first staged in 1961 and was popular with audiences. At the time, Mao himself had praised the historical drama as a way to discuss politics indirectly. However, as Mao grew increasingly suspicious of his colleague's direction after the failure of the Great Leap Forward, he began to see the play as a veiled criticism of his own rule. Mao's allies, particularly his wife, Zhang Qing, also known as Madam Mao, and the radical

Starting point is 00:04:27 theorist Yao Wen Yuan, saw an opportunity to strike at what they called bourgeoisie elements inside the party by framing the play as evidence of counter-revolutionary thinking. Although initially most top party leaders viewed it as a local or academic controversy, Mao used it to expose what he considered an ideological drift amongst high-ranking party officials. With that seemingly minor opening, Mao then encouraged students in the spring and summer of 1966 to create posters denouncing teachers and other party officials. By encouraging students, Mao was doing an end run around the entire Communist Party apparatus, where many of his opponents may have had positions of power.

Starting point is 00:05:10 Despite all of the communist rhetoric, this was ultimately about Mao staying in power and eliminating any opposition. The party then issued the 16 points in August of 1966, which was a guiding document that endorsed mass criticism of capitalist rotors. The term capitalist rotor comes from a direct translation of a Chinese word, which means someone that is on the capitalist rhodes. Road. He called upon students to form Red Guard organizations and rebel against authority figures who were supposedly taking the capitalist road. The response was overwhelming. Millions of young people,

Starting point is 00:05:50 many in their teens, formed Red Guard units across the country. They saw themselves as defenders of Mao's Revolutionary Vision and wielded his little red book of quotations as both scripture and weapon. The Red Guards unleashed a campaign to destroy the four olds, old ideas, old culture, old customs, and old habits. They ransacked homes, destroyed temples and cultural artifacts, burned books, and attacked anyone associated with traditional culture, or suspected of harboring bourgeoisie sympathies. Teachers, intellectuals, former landlords, and party officials became targets of humiliation and violence. Victims were subjected to struggle sessions, which were public denunciations where there were, forced to confess their supposed crimes while being beaten, humiliated, and psychologically tortured. By 1967, the movement had descended into widespread chaos. Red Guard factions, each claiming to be

Starting point is 00:06:43 the truest followers of Mao, began fighting amongst themselves. Workers formed their own revolutionary organizations, and the violence escalated dramatically. In many cities, armed battles broke out between rival groups. The economy ground towards collapse as production halted and transportation networks were disrupted. China's educational system essentially ceased to function. Universities closed and secondary schools became battlegrounds for ideological warfare rather than places of learning. An entire generation, often called the lost generation, had their education interrupted or terminated entirely. Millions of urban youth were eventually sent to the countryside for re-education by peasants, a policy that would affect their life trajectories permanently.

Starting point is 00:07:30 The persecution was systematic and brutal. Liu Xia Qi, once China's president and Mao's designated successor, was denounced, imprisoned, and died in custody in 1969 under horrific conditions. Deng Xiaoping was purged and sent to go work in a factory. Countless other party officials, intellectuals, artists, and ordinary citizens were imprisoned, sent to labor camps, or driven to suicide. The death toll remains disputed, with estimates ranging from hundreds of thousands to several million, not counting those who died from the broader social and economic disruption.

Starting point is 00:08:06 Cultural destruction reached staggering proportions. Ancient temples were raised, historical artifacts smashed, classical literature burned, and traditional practices banned. The assault on China's cultural heritage was unprecedented in its scope and intensity. Traditional Chinese medicine practitioners, Buddhist monks, Confucian scholars, and anyone associated with pre-revolution culture faced persecution. By 1968, the chaos had become so severe that even Mao recognized the need to restore some order. He called in the People's Liberation Army to stabilize the situation and began sending red guards to the countryside en masse. The most violent phase subsided, but the cultural revolution continued, albeit in an altered form. The period from 1969 to 1976 saw continued political campaigns, including the

Starting point is 00:08:55 Criticize Lin Biao criticized Confucius movement, but with somewhat less chaos. than in the initial years. The tale of Lin Biao is one of the most interesting to come out of the cultural revolution. Lin Biao was a top military leader who rose to prominence during the cultural revolution. As a Mao supporter, he kept getting promoted. Eventually, he was appointed as the successor to Mao, which was a position that neither he nor anyone else wanted. Being number two to Mao instantly put a target on your back. Once put in this position, he did

Starting point is 00:09:30 nothing. Absolutely nothing. He expressed no opinions and said nothing other than supporting and extolling anything that Mao said. This was his survival mechanism. And it didn't do him any good because Mao eventually turned on him primarily due to him not getting along with Mao's wife. He was accused of plotting a coup and was killed in a plane crash in Mongolia in 1971. And he is definitely worthy of his own future episode. The gang of four, led by Mao's wife, consolidated power and continued to promote radical policies. However, behind the scenes, Jalin Lai and later the rehabilitated Deng Xiaoping, worked to moderate the extremism and restore some functionality to the government and the economy.

Starting point is 00:10:15 The Cultural Revolution officially ended with Mao's death in September of 1976. Within weeks, the gang of four were arrested, and the party began the long process of repudiating the movement's excesses, while carefully preserving Mao's overall legacy, so they could remain in power. The cultural revolution's impact on China was profound. Economically, the country had lost a full decade of development. While China never experienced a complete collapse, the disruption to education, research, and industrial production set the nation back significantly compared to its East Asian neighbors. The social fabric had been torn apart in ways that would take generations to heal. The movement had encouraged children to announce their parents,

Starting point is 00:11:00 students to attack their teachers, and neighbors to betray each other. Trust, the foundation of any social cohesion, had been systematically destroyed. Families were fractured with some members being branded as revolutionaries and others as class enemies. The psychological trauma was immense and largely never addressed. It also has to be remembered that this was on top of the tens of millions of people that died in the great leap forward just a few years before the start of the cultural revolution. The subject of the cultural revolution in contemporary China remains sensitive. While officially condemned, open discussion of its details is usually limited.

Starting point is 00:11:39 Victims have never received systematic compensation or a formal apology. There has been no truth and reconciliation process comparable to those in other countries that experience similar traumas. The legacy can still be seen in China's current political culture. The Communist Party's emphasis on stability and its suspicion of grassroots organizing partly reflects the chaos from the Cultural Revolution. The party's tight control over education and culture similarly stems from fear of ideological movements spiraling out of control.

Starting point is 00:12:10 At the same time, the nationalism and emphasis on Chinese civilization that characterizes contemporary China, represents a partial restoration of the traditional culture the cultural revolution sought to destroy. The final thing I'll note is that in an unintentional roundabout way, the Cultural Revolution played a role in China's subsequent explosion in economic growth in the 80s and 90s. The Cultural Revolution didn't just stagnate the Chinese economy. In many ways, it actually made China worse off than it had been before the revolution, especially compared to its neighbors.

Starting point is 00:12:45 Deng Xiaoping, who had been twice purged during the Cultural Revolution, embodied China's pragmatic turn. When he regained power in 1977 and 1978, he and other veteran officials concluded that Mao's insistence on political purity over competence had held China back for decades. They used the Cultural Revolution's failures as a powerful argument for abandoning constant class struggle and reintroducing merit-based governance. The Buluwon-Fand-Zhong period after Mao's death, which means bringing order out of chaos, restored the civil service, reopened schools and universities, reinstated

Starting point is 00:13:21 entrance exams and rehabilitated millions of intellectuals and officials who had been persecuted. This revival of expertise and education supplied the human capital China needed for modernization. At the same time, the trauma of the Cultural Revolution pushed the Communist Party to prioritize economic performance over ideology as its new source of legitimacy. Having seen how ideological campaigns could destroy the nation, Deng and his allies reframed Chinese communism in practical terms by noting, quote, it doesn't matter whether a cat is black or white as long as it catches mice. Finally, and oddly enough, many of the Communist Party officials who might have objected to the reforms of Deng Xiaoping had been purged and were no longer around to stop the changes.

Starting point is 00:14:09 The Cultural Revolution can be considered the last in a long string of events in Chinese history, beginning in the 1800s during the century of humiliation, which hobbled and weakened China. Once they had gotten through the terror and chaos of the cultural revolution, the country was finally ready for its subsequent transformation. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Austin Otkin and Cameron Kiefer. My big thanks go to everyone who supports the show over on Patreon. Your support helps make this podcast possible.

Starting point is 00:14:44 And I also want to remind everyone about the community groups on Facebook and Discord. That's where everything happens that's outside the podcast. And links to those are available in the show notes. As always, if you leave a review on any major podcast app or in the above community groups, you two can have it read in the show.

Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Cultural Revolution

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