China`s Human Rights Violations
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It is time you get your logic and facts right.
If you have not read the Little Red Book, it is time you did.
In the cultural revolution, all education was in shambles and teachers beaten.
Then exams were banned.
What are you talking about?
Learn more of your country before hectoring!
Heard about 'Thought Reform through Labour'?
no smoking
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I think you have misunderstood on Mao here. He was not against educated and intellectuals, he just distrusted the old educated borned from rich families before liberation. He thought these people were the supporters of KMT while peasants were the natural supporter of CCP. That is why he carried on the plan to require young students to get re-education in rural families. He wanted to replace those "old" experts with these re-educated young intellectuals.
The word of Dang in the above was not aimed at the recognition of the educated. When this word was first quoted on the paper, there was a big dispute among china's elite regarding the direction of reform. Many conservatives had the doubt that reform would lead to the coming back of capitalism. So, Dang stood out and told people: it is time to forget the ideology and focus on lifting the people's living standard. This word indicated that CCP has secretly started to give up the communism.
no smoking
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Actually, Red book was the creation of four gangs and Lin. They were trying to use the reputation of Mao to fight against their enemies: such as Liu, Deng, etc. Especially four gangs, they cannot match these enemies on reputation and talent, so they play the intrigue. By putting Mao on the god position and painting themselves as the closest supporters of mao, they made the public belived that whoever oppose them was actually against Mao.
Destroying the education system was also their idea while Mao only wanted to reform the system to make it more "peasant-friendly". Why did the four gangs want to destroy this system? Simply because those graduated from this system would not support them. The majority of their followers were of un-educated background. If the gov couldn't get fresh blood from education system, it would be much easier for them to put their supporters into the key vocations in the gov.
no smoking
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Well, the funny thing is that most you mentioned and opposed is the exactly what the western did in 19 and 20 century. In order to westnise, we have to learn the whole course, right?
no smoking
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Well, you don't need me to remind you of the pollution in the west during last 60-70s, right?
What we are doing now is exactly what you did in the past: polluting while industrilzing. The only difference is: we are doing it on larger scale and faster pace.
I agree that there is the possibility of destroying the country or even whole world. But, is there anything archieved without taking risk?
What we are doing now is exactly what you did in the past: polluting while industrilzing. The only difference is: we are doing it on larger scale and faster pace.
I agree that there is the possibility of destroying the country or even whole world. But, is there anything archieved without taking risk?
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How foolish can you be?
Tell me when was the Gang of Four taken to task?
Please tell me!
Armand2REP
Last time I checked China moved the most number of poor people to midle-class in the world, the people's living are getting better and better, please check data related with life span, education, electronical appliances consumption, car selling, best high speed train and much much more. I wonder how long it will take for developed countries to launch a war to stop China before they can't address their internal unrest about less and less resources to be allotcated to them.
Last time I checked China moved the most number of poor people to midle-class in the world, the people's living are getting better and better, please check data related with life span, education, electronical appliances consumption, car selling, best high speed train and much much more. I wonder how long it will take for developed countries to launch a war to stop China before they can't address their internal unrest about less and less resources to be allotcated to them.
no smoking
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1966！I have to give your chinese version source.
µ³Ê·ÎÄÔ·
Öйú½ÌÓýÖƶÈͨʷµÚ8¾í-Àî¹ú¾û Íõ±þÕÕ-¶Á°É
And please don't ask me to explain the chinese style politics.
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The Chinese letters are not showing on my computer.
Who was ruling in 1966.
I am aware of Chinese style politics, more so during Mao's time.
Under Deng, China is much freer than before! Yet, the grip of the CCP continues to be quite strong, though not ruthless like that of Mao's time.
Mao was basically a peasant, though he came from a rich peasant background. He was always worried about the educated and the intellectuals since he took them as a threat!
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What do you consider middle class? In my country, 95% of China would be considered poverty level.
Does having to wear a face mask to go outside mean better living?
Is it to last with so many young people addicted to smoking? In part of Hubei, it is illegal if you don't smoke.
Chinese workers urged to puff up economy by smoking - The Irish Times - Tue, May 05, 2009
Illiteracy is on the rise...
Illiteracy Jumps in China, Despite 50-Year Campaign to Eradicate It - washingtonpost.com
Grade inflation is out of control...
http://chinaholisticenglish.com/articles/grades.pdf
CCP is raising a generation of dunderheads.
Does eating from a microwave make life better? China is seeing alarming rises in obesity.
Chinese obesity on the rise | hc2d.co.uk | Healthcare News | obesity | china
And you have the highest accident rate in the world. 20% of people who die in a car are going to die in China. You only have 30 million cars so that says alot.
You don't make high speed trains, you only make the rails.
You talk about having such a good quality of life, but your pollution is skyrocketing, smoking and cancer runs rampent, obesity and chronic illness out of control, auto accidents that even make Russia look safe and one of the worst education systems in the world. The future of China looks bleak indeed.
France couldn't care less about your resource drive since we already run on nuclear power and our cars are going electric.
nimo_cn
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Armand2REP,
despite all the sarcasm and ridicule in your post, i thank you for reminding us again and again China is still a poor country compared with developed countries, say France. Your country's economy success in the past 200 years gives you the high ground to mock at our poverty at will. As much as i want to rebut your post regarding China's underdevelopment, i simply can't because most of your post is true. For now, China is in no position near France with regards to livelihood of average people, education system, and technologies, etc. I personally love the sentence "In my country, 95% of China would be considered poverty level". Although it hurts me somehow, it is true.
You just succefully convinced me that the largest humiliation for China now, is not China being ruled by CCP, is China being poor. Poor country can never win respect from others.
If you think you can ruin our confidence by humiliating and degrading us, then you are wrong. But carry on with your performance, make good use of the limited opportunities left to laugh at us before China becomes rich.
despite all the sarcasm and ridicule in your post, i thank you for reminding us again and again China is still a poor country compared with developed countries, say France. Your country's economy success in the past 200 years gives you the high ground to mock at our poverty at will. As much as i want to rebut your post regarding China's underdevelopment, i simply can't because most of your post is true. For now, China is in no position near France with regards to livelihood of average people, education system, and technologies, etc. I personally love the sentence "In my country, 95% of China would be considered poverty level". Although it hurts me somehow, it is true.
You just succefully convinced me that the largest humiliation for China now, is not China being ruled by CCP, is China being poor. Poor country can never win respect from others.
If you think you can ruin our confidence by humiliating and degrading us, then you are wrong. But carry on with your performance, make good use of the limited opportunities left to laugh at us before China becomes rich.
all these can't change the fact that Chinese people are living a better life and still getting better, this is a well known fact, please don't let hatred to make your IQ lower
no smoking
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If you are realy aware of chinese style politics, you won't ask who was rulling in 1966. You should have asked who was responsible for the detailed daily work.
In 1966, it was first time Jiang had influence in the final decision. She assisted Chen Boda in appintment of cultural revolustion leading group in CCP. This year was also accetped as the beginning of Cultural revolustion.
Generaly, people believe that there was a coorpration relationship between Mao and Gangs of four. Mao used them to defeat his power competitors while Gangs of four used Mao's reputation to win public's support. How did they do it. As Jiang was Mao's wife, she grabed the explaination right of Mao's instruction when Mao's health did not allow him to do the daily work. Meanwhile, if they were facing any powerful enemy, they would make Mao believe that it was also his enemy.
No, he only took a part of the educated and the intellectuals as a threat, those with old society background. At the time, he believed that the three mountains still existed in people's minds and already poisoned the chinese culture. That is why he call it cultural revolustion -- building a new culture. These old educated were the representitives of old culture, so he wanted to expell them from education system and sent their students to get re-education in rural areas.
He was not just a peasant, he was a mix of tradtional and modern people. He knew what is the future for china. The problem was he wanted to archieve it by a traditional way, just as many other emperors did.
sayareakd
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In China human rights of people does not matter, for them what matters is life style and prosperity of people, just like the same apply to animals, you kept them in air conditions farm house and good food. Rest their government can play with the lives of people all for the larger interest of their mother land.
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Thanks for not wasting my time by denying it. I think you miss the real point. The point isn't, China is poor and mocked by the West. The point is, China's development is headed in the wrong direction. Instead of increasing the quality of life, China is destroying it by producing a bunch of crap, whether it be poor educations, poor death prone cars, poisened food, toys, promoting tobacco products, poor quality pharmacuticals, pumping crap into the water and air, constant IP theft. China has the drive to provide so many things the West has that they haven't figured out there are stringet quality measures that must be met. China is fully capable of doing it if they aren't so hellbent on the fastfood mentality of wanting everything now. It is this wrecklessness that is hurting the future of China. Where can Chinese development go when the countryside is laid waste, substandard educations abound, innovation destroyed, chronic illness and cancer rampent? The key to becoming a developed nation isn't material possessions, it is social investment. The people are the greatest resource yet they are treated like a disposable commodity.
nimo_cn
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Deny what, deny China is a poor country? We keep emphasizing China is a developing coutry, don't you hear that?
Oh, really? I may not speak english as well as you do, but i can understand your post. And i know when a frensh is degrading every accomplishment you achieve and digging your country's dark side and dictating to you what you should do, that means this person bears no good will to you.
I think that should be dertermined by Chinese, not by you, a French barely knows China and bears immense hatred to us.
Even if we were heading in the wrong direction, i think you should be happy, tell me would you like to see a properous China or a weak China?
You should ask Chinese if their life is improved or not, rather than being fantasizing here.
I don't deny some Chinese products fail to meet the quality measures. But if you assert all Chinese product are defective based on these individual cases, that is an act of stereotyping.
If what you said about Chinese products is right, then why people buy them? I dont think China has the ability to force other countries do so, like what werterners did in the past, when China refused to buy their opium, they initiated a war so sell it.
As for pollution, it is inevitable in the process of industrilization. But you are right China fails to pursue economy success in a clearer and more sustainable way, you can condemn us on that. I am not going to aregue with you about that some sacrifices have to be made when it comes to development.
In fact i agree with you if China slow down its development speed, things will be better. But we can't, i dont think you can understand why we are so anxious to develop ourselves. This is because of the lesson from history, which is if we are weak, then we will be bullied, be invaded, be robbed, be killed, be exterminated. And if that happens, the consequences will be 1000000 more severe than all the consequences you mentioned above.
Thanks for your advice, i suggest you learn about the people-oriented notion raised by President Hu.
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The difference between Indian and Chinese power structure can understood if one looks as the Chinese model of power from the time the Communists took charge.
On removing the KMT, the CCP brought an end to the hyperinflation that was raging through China and launched land reforms. 30% of the land was with the landlords while others with the peasants. The CCP planned to remove gradually the class of landlords since such class could destabilise the power of the Communists, the landlords being a rich and influential class. It maybe noted that the Communists wanted to do this gradually since their experience in areas held by the Communists before the Revolution was not quite satisfactory since the peasants sought retribution from the landlords and it became bloody wherein it is believed a million perished.
Like any Communist govts, they believed that industrialisation was the path to progress. However, wealth had to be created. Hence, China being an agrarian, it fell oin the farmers to provide the wealth and so farmers had to sell their crop at govt fixed low rates and were taxed 30% of their income.
China’s new irrigation and flood projects helped to average a 15% growth per year. This wealth helped China launch its first 5 year plan in 1953.
The Communist Party wanted order for China and a restoration of the economy. China had been disrupted by more than ten years of war, first against the Japanese and then civil war, and in the years 1950-53 China was involved in the Korean war. But from 1950 to 1952 farm production in China averaged a growth of fifteen percent per year -- an advance helped by new irrigation and flood projects.
China population in the countryside was four-times larger than was the Soviet Union's in the late 1920s, but China's agricultural production was only about twenty percent what the Soviet Union's had been at this time -- less agricultural wealth that could be transformed into investments in industry. But with this wealth, the Communists, in 1953, launched their first five-year plan for industry.
With the end of the Korean War where troops were demobbed and the famine of 1953 and 1954, the rural masses migrated to the cities and the unemployment was high, it was leading to a dangerous situation that could challenge the Communist regime. There was also a disparity amongst the rich and the poor farmers causing the CCP to re-examine the issue of free enterprise and how much should be allowed while still building the ideal socialist State.
To offset the disparity amongst landholding of the farmers, the Communist Party launched their collectivised farming programme and it was embraced by the peasantry and 90% joined the programme by 1956. There were community kitchen and none could cook at home, though each family was allowed a small plot to cultivate and sell the produce. Thus free enterprise remained but truncated while Socialism grew and the Communist Party was one step nearer the Socialist State.
The birth rate was high and migration to town continued. China required finances and it economy was agriculture based. While the manufacturing sector grew by 4% during 1956 – 1957, more finances were required. Hence, China lowered taxes to 25% for farmers so that they had some incentives.
Being from a peasant family, even though of the richer variety, Mao had little love for intellectuals and always stated that all should learn from the masses. One of his famous saying was that the peasant maybe rough with cowshit shodden feet, but they were cleaner than intellectuals. He wanted no elite in China or even in the Party.
The dissent was growing within the China and the Party. To discover the anti Mao elements, Mao launched the “Let a Hundred Flower Bloom”. Having discovered dissent, he launched a pogrom under the guise of a class struggle against what he termed as Rightists, Right Opportunists and Toilet Rightist.
Then Mao to get rid of the elite of all variety as also to ensure economic success greater than other third world countries, Mao mobilised the masses spontaneity with the programme – The Great Leap Forward, which was advertised as a technological revolution – as a proletarianisation of the economy before mechanisation. Agriculture was to have priority and instead of heavy industry, the emphasis would be on light industry. The mass was to be mobilised at the local levels.
Collective farming gave way to Peoples’ Communes, which had from 10,000 to 20,000 personnel and were twice the size of the collective farms, during the Great Leap. Community kitchen were organised and the masses handed over their tools and animals to the Commune.
Women were mobilised to work and not do ‘wifely’ duties. The people were organised into work brigades!
Apart from farming, during the period 1958 -1959, roads, factories, damns, dykes, irrigation channels and lakes were built. Land was reclaimed and terraces were carved in the mountains for farming with manual labour. But the drive to ‘produce steel’ by mobilising farmers at the expense of food production and encouraging deforestation proved disastrous. They had to work long hours and none could grow food on their own plot or the commune. Production quotas and statistics were fudged. The masses ate what was available from the Communes. They ate into the food reserves. With lower production, the situation was worsening. By 1959, quite a few were starving.
1960 saw drought in the North and floods in the South. Agriculture plummeted. Mao realised the fudging of agricultural statistics now. 20 million died of malnutrition. Fertility rate fell by 60 % between 1957 and 1961 as people were weak and starving.
Mao blamed the weather conditions and USSR as they had withdrawn their advisers. The backyard steel production had also failed where their kitchen utensils were consigned to the fire to make steel.
Marshal Pen, the defence minister, Mao’s old confidante from the Long March and friend, but a person who did not have Mao’s revulsion of the elite, reported to the CCP as to the real conditions resulting in his dismissal and house arrest! He replaced him with Lin Bioa, who was a Mao loyalist and the man behind Mao’s ‘Little Red Book’ and a total sycophant.
The situation was so bad that Mao gave way to a little window. Mao allowed expertise, beyond ideology to survive, though controlled. In the countryside, trained Party apparatchiks were sent to control Communes and bring it under the Communist party, backed by the PLA.
But attempts were made to re-establish mess halls and to abolish private plots. And here too Mao's masses abandoned him: the peasants resisted. Government authorities did not want to press the issue., so mess halls remained abandoned. The Party gave in to peasant sentiment and restored as much as twelve percent of tillable land to private ownership and production -- which coincided with the Party wishing to encourage individual responsibility and initiative rather than group conformity.
Party pragmatists encouraged the re-establishment of open markets in the countryside. Peasants were encouraged to trade locally. And for the sake of industrialisation in the cities farming families were encouraged to buy goods made in urban factories rather than to engage in communal industries.
With a good harvest in 1962 and a return to incentives over official altruism came a rise in industrial production and productivity, and in 1964, the Party leader second to Mao, Zhou Enlai, wishing to encourage and reassure everybody, announced that the recovery from economic disaster was complete.
On removing the KMT, the CCP brought an end to the hyperinflation that was raging through China and launched land reforms. 30% of the land was with the landlords while others with the peasants. The CCP planned to remove gradually the class of landlords since such class could destabilise the power of the Communists, the landlords being a rich and influential class. It maybe noted that the Communists wanted to do this gradually since their experience in areas held by the Communists before the Revolution was not quite satisfactory since the peasants sought retribution from the landlords and it became bloody wherein it is believed a million perished.
Like any Communist govts, they believed that industrialisation was the path to progress. However, wealth had to be created. Hence, China being an agrarian, it fell oin the farmers to provide the wealth and so farmers had to sell their crop at govt fixed low rates and were taxed 30% of their income.
China’s new irrigation and flood projects helped to average a 15% growth per year. This wealth helped China launch its first 5 year plan in 1953.
The Communist Party wanted order for China and a restoration of the economy. China had been disrupted by more than ten years of war, first against the Japanese and then civil war, and in the years 1950-53 China was involved in the Korean war. But from 1950 to 1952 farm production in China averaged a growth of fifteen percent per year -- an advance helped by new irrigation and flood projects.
China population in the countryside was four-times larger than was the Soviet Union's in the late 1920s, but China's agricultural production was only about twenty percent what the Soviet Union's had been at this time -- less agricultural wealth that could be transformed into investments in industry. But with this wealth, the Communists, in 1953, launched their first five-year plan for industry.
With the end of the Korean War where troops were demobbed and the famine of 1953 and 1954, the rural masses migrated to the cities and the unemployment was high, it was leading to a dangerous situation that could challenge the Communist regime. There was also a disparity amongst the rich and the poor farmers causing the CCP to re-examine the issue of free enterprise and how much should be allowed while still building the ideal socialist State.
To offset the disparity amongst landholding of the farmers, the Communist Party launched their collectivised farming programme and it was embraced by the peasantry and 90% joined the programme by 1956. There were community kitchen and none could cook at home, though each family was allowed a small plot to cultivate and sell the produce. Thus free enterprise remained but truncated while Socialism grew and the Communist Party was one step nearer the Socialist State.
The birth rate was high and migration to town continued. China required finances and it economy was agriculture based. While the manufacturing sector grew by 4% during 1956 – 1957, more finances were required. Hence, China lowered taxes to 25% for farmers so that they had some incentives.
Being from a peasant family, even though of the richer variety, Mao had little love for intellectuals and always stated that all should learn from the masses. One of his famous saying was that the peasant maybe rough with cowshit shodden feet, but they were cleaner than intellectuals. He wanted no elite in China or even in the Party.
The dissent was growing within the China and the Party. To discover the anti Mao elements, Mao launched the “Let a Hundred Flower Bloom”. Having discovered dissent, he launched a pogrom under the guise of a class struggle against what he termed as Rightists, Right Opportunists and Toilet Rightist.
Then Mao to get rid of the elite of all variety as also to ensure economic success greater than other third world countries, Mao mobilised the masses spontaneity with the programme – The Great Leap Forward, which was advertised as a technological revolution – as a proletarianisation of the economy before mechanisation. Agriculture was to have priority and instead of heavy industry, the emphasis would be on light industry. The mass was to be mobilised at the local levels.
Collective farming gave way to Peoples’ Communes, which had from 10,000 to 20,000 personnel and were twice the size of the collective farms, during the Great Leap. Community kitchen were organised and the masses handed over their tools and animals to the Commune.
Women were mobilised to work and not do ‘wifely’ duties. The people were organised into work brigades!
Apart from farming, during the period 1958 -1959, roads, factories, damns, dykes, irrigation channels and lakes were built. Land was reclaimed and terraces were carved in the mountains for farming with manual labour. But the drive to ‘produce steel’ by mobilising farmers at the expense of food production and encouraging deforestation proved disastrous. They had to work long hours and none could grow food on their own plot or the commune. Production quotas and statistics were fudged. The masses ate what was available from the Communes. They ate into the food reserves. With lower production, the situation was worsening. By 1959, quite a few were starving.
1960 saw drought in the North and floods in the South. Agriculture plummeted. Mao realised the fudging of agricultural statistics now. 20 million died of malnutrition. Fertility rate fell by 60 % between 1957 and 1961 as people were weak and starving.
Mao blamed the weather conditions and USSR as they had withdrawn their advisers. The backyard steel production had also failed where their kitchen utensils were consigned to the fire to make steel.
Marshal Pen, the defence minister, Mao’s old confidante from the Long March and friend, but a person who did not have Mao’s revulsion of the elite, reported to the CCP as to the real conditions resulting in his dismissal and house arrest! He replaced him with Lin Bioa, who was a Mao loyalist and the man behind Mao’s ‘Little Red Book’ and a total sycophant.
The situation was so bad that Mao gave way to a little window. Mao allowed expertise, beyond ideology to survive, though controlled. In the countryside, trained Party apparatchiks were sent to control Communes and bring it under the Communist party, backed by the PLA.
But attempts were made to re-establish mess halls and to abolish private plots. And here too Mao's masses abandoned him: the peasants resisted. Government authorities did not want to press the issue., so mess halls remained abandoned. The Party gave in to peasant sentiment and restored as much as twelve percent of tillable land to private ownership and production -- which coincided with the Party wishing to encourage individual responsibility and initiative rather than group conformity.
Party pragmatists encouraged the re-establishment of open markets in the countryside. Peasants were encouraged to trade locally. And for the sake of industrialisation in the cities farming families were encouraged to buy goods made in urban factories rather than to engage in communal industries.
With a good harvest in 1962 and a return to incentives over official altruism came a rise in industrial production and productivity, and in 1964, the Party leader second to Mao, Zhou Enlai, wishing to encourage and reassure everybody, announced that the recovery from economic disaster was complete.
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continued.
Then, in 1965, Mao, at the age of 72, came out of seclusion. He complained about the retreat, about the rise of a new class of bureaucrats, a new exploiting class. China, he believed, was going the way of the Soviet Union and becoming a bureaucratic state. The Party, according to Mao, had been taken over by "capitalist roaders" -- by people with a bourgeois mentality. Mao, like Trotsky, was advocating "permanent revolution" -- although he did not label it as such. Reinvigorating his leadership, Mao was about to create what was to be known as the Cultural Revolution.
Mao Zedong's wife, Jiang Qing, a former actress, belonged to a group of artsy Maoists who wished for socialist purity in literature and the performing arts. In February 1966, the minister of defense, Lin Biao, still siding with Mao, invited Jiang Qing to establish cultural policy for the People's Liberation Army. Jiang Qing and her group were encouraged. They charged that China's garden of culture was infested with "anti-socialist poisonous weeds." Jiang Qing called for a revolution against bourgeois culture -- a cultural revolution.
Mao spoke out about a spiritual regeneration taking precedence over economic development -- a communist attitudinal spirituality. And he spoke of weeding from authority those who had chosen to lead China down "the capitalist road." Old comrades directly beneath Mao -- Liu Shaoqi, Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiaoping - chose to accommodate Mao rather than collide with him head-on. And Liu Shaoqi, who had been a leading pragmatist, tried to curry favor with Mao by orchestrating an "anti-revisionist" campaign.
Still believing in the wisdom of the masses, Mao moved again for their support. He was especially interested in young people. Young people, he said, were the most willing to learn and were "the least conservative in their thinking." Mao's wife, Jiang Qing, agreed with Mao's move, and she allied her group with student unrest in Beijing. The disturbed students were filled with idealism. China's students were more in tune with Mao's idealism than they were with the pragmatism practiced by Mao's Party rivals. Jiang Qing's cultural revolutionaries distributed armbands to the students and declared that they were a new vanguard -- Red Guards. And Mao, still a venerated figure, encouraged the student radicals, announcing that they should "learn revolution by making revolution."
Youth tend to be more passionate than older folks -- whose enthusiasms are tempered by experience if not disappointment -- and Mao's Red Guards were passionate. In Beijing their ranks swelled with disaffected youths from the provinces, attracted by the rhetoric, by their reverence for Mao as the father of China's revolution and by the excitement. During the autumn of 1966, Mao was reviewing gigantic parades at Tiananmen Square, his Red Guards chanting and waving the little red book of "Quotations from Chairman Mao" that Lin Biao had put together for the Red Army.
Among other things, the students were moved by animosity towards the Soviet Union. They were with Mao in his attempt to prevent China from developing into a bureaucratic state, as had the Soviet Union. And, backed by their government, they also demonstrated displeasure with U.S. actions in Vietnam. Unlike protesting students in the United States at the time, China's Red Guards enjoyed the support of China's military, Lin Biao encouraging the students and describing Mao as "the greatest genius of the present era" and as "the great helmsman." And Lin Biao spoke of Mao as having created a Marxism-Leninism that was "remolding the souls of the people."
Through 1966, secondary schools and colleges closed in China. Students -- many from the age of nine through eighteen -- followed Maoist directives to destroy things of the past that they believed should be no part of the new China: old customs, old habits, old culture and old thinking -- the "four olds." In a state of euphoria and with support from the government and army, the students went about China's cities and villages, wrecking old buildings, old temples and old art objects. In their wake, monasteries and places of worship were converted into warehouses, and leading Buddhist monks were sent off to do manual labor. To make a new and wonderful China, the Red Guards attacked as insufficiently revolutionary their parents, teachers, school administrators and everyone they could find as targets, including "intellectuals" and "capitalist roaders" within the Communist Party.
In cities through China, Mao's movement was joined by a variety of people trying to prove they were as loyal to Mao as were the Red Guards. Politicians joined the movement in an effort to win against their political rivals. A mass hysteria had developed. Mobs of Red Guards grabbed prominent individuals whom they deemed insufficiently revolutionary, put dunce caps on their heads or hung placards around their necks, and paraded them through the streets. Officials were dragged from their offices. Their files were examined and often destroyed, and the officials were often replaced by youths with no managerial experience.
As had happened in the Soviet Union, the revolution in China was devouring its own. The purges in the Party went higher and higher, until Deng Xiaoping and Liu Shaoqi, were removed from their offices, and they and their families were humiliated. Filled with righteousness, the power of their numbers, and support from Mao, the campaigns for revolutionary change became violent. People seen as evil were beaten to death. Thousands of people died, including many who had committed suicide.
By September 1967, the chaos was too much even for Mao, Lin Biao and Jiang Qing. Civil war seemed to be in the making. Jiang Qing spoke out against what she called "ultra-leftist tendencies." With intolerance riding high and variation in opinion being inevitable, violent battles erupted between Red Guard factions. Mao ordered the People's Liberation Army to quell the Red Guard factionalism. Lin Biao and the People's Liberation Army called on the Red Guards to stop fighting each other and instead to study the works of Mao. The chaos and deaths continued, with the People's Liberation Army itself splitting into hostile camps. Mao was aware that some order was necessary, and he commanded that the Red Guards disperse, Mao describing the Red Guards as having failed in their mission.
By the summer of 1968, with the help of the army, the Red Guards were subdued. In large numbers, groups of young Red Guards were sent to labor in the countryside, confused in their being cast down from the height of glory and political importance. Mao's romance with the masses was all but over. For order, Mao was now counting on the People's Liberation Army, and he had the army form revolutionary committees in all provinces.
Mao wished to rebuild the Party, and the Ninth Party Congress was held in April 1969. There, a new Party constitution was adopted. With sixty percent of the former Party membership having been purged during the Cultural Revolution, room existed for new people within the Party, and two-thirds of those attending the congress were in military uniform -- reflecting the power of Lin Biao. New Party members were to be limited to those of proper class origin -- in other words, people with humble origins. Lin Biao was named Mao's successor. And at the Party Congress, Lin Biao denounced his old comrade from pre-revolutionary days, and his former rival, Liu Shaoqi. Liu, he said, was a "traitor and a scab." Liu Shaoqi had been put in prison during the cultural revolution, and he was to die in prison later that same year.
Then, in 1965, Mao, at the age of 72, came out of seclusion. He complained about the retreat, about the rise of a new class of bureaucrats, a new exploiting class. China, he believed, was going the way of the Soviet Union and becoming a bureaucratic state. The Party, according to Mao, had been taken over by "capitalist roaders" -- by people with a bourgeois mentality. Mao, like Trotsky, was advocating "permanent revolution" -- although he did not label it as such. Reinvigorating his leadership, Mao was about to create what was to be known as the Cultural Revolution.
Mao Zedong's wife, Jiang Qing, a former actress, belonged to a group of artsy Maoists who wished for socialist purity in literature and the performing arts. In February 1966, the minister of defense, Lin Biao, still siding with Mao, invited Jiang Qing to establish cultural policy for the People's Liberation Army. Jiang Qing and her group were encouraged. They charged that China's garden of culture was infested with "anti-socialist poisonous weeds." Jiang Qing called for a revolution against bourgeois culture -- a cultural revolution.
Mao spoke out about a spiritual regeneration taking precedence over economic development -- a communist attitudinal spirituality. And he spoke of weeding from authority those who had chosen to lead China down "the capitalist road." Old comrades directly beneath Mao -- Liu Shaoqi, Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiaoping - chose to accommodate Mao rather than collide with him head-on. And Liu Shaoqi, who had been a leading pragmatist, tried to curry favor with Mao by orchestrating an "anti-revisionist" campaign.
Still believing in the wisdom of the masses, Mao moved again for their support. He was especially interested in young people. Young people, he said, were the most willing to learn and were "the least conservative in their thinking." Mao's wife, Jiang Qing, agreed with Mao's move, and she allied her group with student unrest in Beijing. The disturbed students were filled with idealism. China's students were more in tune with Mao's idealism than they were with the pragmatism practiced by Mao's Party rivals. Jiang Qing's cultural revolutionaries distributed armbands to the students and declared that they were a new vanguard -- Red Guards. And Mao, still a venerated figure, encouraged the student radicals, announcing that they should "learn revolution by making revolution."
Youth tend to be more passionate than older folks -- whose enthusiasms are tempered by experience if not disappointment -- and Mao's Red Guards were passionate. In Beijing their ranks swelled with disaffected youths from the provinces, attracted by the rhetoric, by their reverence for Mao as the father of China's revolution and by the excitement. During the autumn of 1966, Mao was reviewing gigantic parades at Tiananmen Square, his Red Guards chanting and waving the little red book of "Quotations from Chairman Mao" that Lin Biao had put together for the Red Army.
Among other things, the students were moved by animosity towards the Soviet Union. They were with Mao in his attempt to prevent China from developing into a bureaucratic state, as had the Soviet Union. And, backed by their government, they also demonstrated displeasure with U.S. actions in Vietnam. Unlike protesting students in the United States at the time, China's Red Guards enjoyed the support of China's military, Lin Biao encouraging the students and describing Mao as "the greatest genius of the present era" and as "the great helmsman." And Lin Biao spoke of Mao as having created a Marxism-Leninism that was "remolding the souls of the people."
Through 1966, secondary schools and colleges closed in China. Students -- many from the age of nine through eighteen -- followed Maoist directives to destroy things of the past that they believed should be no part of the new China: old customs, old habits, old culture and old thinking -- the "four olds." In a state of euphoria and with support from the government and army, the students went about China's cities and villages, wrecking old buildings, old temples and old art objects. In their wake, monasteries and places of worship were converted into warehouses, and leading Buddhist monks were sent off to do manual labor. To make a new and wonderful China, the Red Guards attacked as insufficiently revolutionary their parents, teachers, school administrators and everyone they could find as targets, including "intellectuals" and "capitalist roaders" within the Communist Party.
In cities through China, Mao's movement was joined by a variety of people trying to prove they were as loyal to Mao as were the Red Guards. Politicians joined the movement in an effort to win against their political rivals. A mass hysteria had developed. Mobs of Red Guards grabbed prominent individuals whom they deemed insufficiently revolutionary, put dunce caps on their heads or hung placards around their necks, and paraded them through the streets. Officials were dragged from their offices. Their files were examined and often destroyed, and the officials were often replaced by youths with no managerial experience.
As had happened in the Soviet Union, the revolution in China was devouring its own. The purges in the Party went higher and higher, until Deng Xiaoping and Liu Shaoqi, were removed from their offices, and they and their families were humiliated. Filled with righteousness, the power of their numbers, and support from Mao, the campaigns for revolutionary change became violent. People seen as evil were beaten to death. Thousands of people died, including many who had committed suicide.
By September 1967, the chaos was too much even for Mao, Lin Biao and Jiang Qing. Civil war seemed to be in the making. Jiang Qing spoke out against what she called "ultra-leftist tendencies." With intolerance riding high and variation in opinion being inevitable, violent battles erupted between Red Guard factions. Mao ordered the People's Liberation Army to quell the Red Guard factionalism. Lin Biao and the People's Liberation Army called on the Red Guards to stop fighting each other and instead to study the works of Mao. The chaos and deaths continued, with the People's Liberation Army itself splitting into hostile camps. Mao was aware that some order was necessary, and he commanded that the Red Guards disperse, Mao describing the Red Guards as having failed in their mission.
By the summer of 1968, with the help of the army, the Red Guards were subdued. In large numbers, groups of young Red Guards were sent to labor in the countryside, confused in their being cast down from the height of glory and political importance. Mao's romance with the masses was all but over. For order, Mao was now counting on the People's Liberation Army, and he had the army form revolutionary committees in all provinces.
Mao wished to rebuild the Party, and the Ninth Party Congress was held in April 1969. There, a new Party constitution was adopted. With sixty percent of the former Party membership having been purged during the Cultural Revolution, room existed for new people within the Party, and two-thirds of those attending the congress were in military uniform -- reflecting the power of Lin Biao. New Party members were to be limited to those of proper class origin -- in other words, people with humble origins. Lin Biao was named Mao's successor. And at the Party Congress, Lin Biao denounced his old comrade from pre-revolutionary days, and his former rival, Liu Shaoqi. Liu, he said, was a "traitor and a scab." Liu Shaoqi had been put in prison during the cultural revolution, and he was to die in prison later that same year.
