- •CONTENTS
- •INTRODUCTION
- •PREHISTORY
- •EARLY HUMANS
- •NEOLITHIC PERIOD
- •CLIMATE AND ENVIRONMENT
- •FOOD PRODUCTION
- •MAJOR CULTURES AND SITES
- •INCIPIENT NEOLITHIC
- •THE FIRST HISTORICAL DYNASTY: THE SHANG
- •THE SHANG DYNASTY
- •THE HISTORY OF THE ZHOU (1046–256 BC)
- •THE ZHOU FEUDAL SYSTEM
- •SOCIAL, POLITICAL, AND CULTURAL CHANGES
- •THE DECLINE OF FEUDALISM
- •THE RISE OF MONARCHY
- •ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
- •CULTURAL CHANGE
- •THE QIN EMPIRE (221–207 BC)
- •THE QIN STATE
- •STRUGGLE FOR POWER
- •THE EMPIRE
- •DYNASTIC AUTHORITY AND THE SUCCESSION OF EMPERORS
- •XI (WESTERN) HAN
- •DONG (EASTERN) HAN
- •THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE HAN EMPIRE
- •THE ARMED FORCES
- •THE PRACTICE OF GOVERNMENT
- •RELATIONS WITH OTHER PEOPLES
- •CULTURAL DEVELOPMENTS
- •THE DIVISION OF CHINA
- •DAOISM
- •BUDDHISM
- •THE SUI DYNASTY
- •INTEGRATION OF THE SOUTH
- •EARLY TANG (618–626)
- •ADMINISTRATION OF THE STATE
- •FISCAL AND LEGAL SYSTEM
- •THE PERIOD OF TANG POWER (626–755)
- •RISE OF THE EMPRESS WUHOU
- •PROSPERITY AND PROGRESS
- •MILITARY REORGANIZATION
- •LATE TANG (755–907)
- •PROVINCIAL SEPARATISM
- •CULTURAL DEVELOPMENTS
- •THE INFLUENCE OF BUDDHISM
- •TRENDS IN THE ARTS
- •SOCIAL CHANGE
- •DECLINE OF THE ARISTOCRACY
- •POPULATION MOVEMENTS
- •GROWTH OF THE ECONOMY
- •THE WUDAI (FIVE DYNASTIES)
- •THE SHIGUO (TEN KINGDOMS)
- •BARBARIAN DYNASTIES
- •THE TANGUT
- •THE KHITAN
- •THE JUCHEN
- •BEI (NORTHERN) SONG (960–1127)
- •UNIFICATION
- •CONSOLIDATION
- •REFORMS
- •DECLINE AND FALL
- •SURVIVAL AND CONSOLIDATION
- •RELATIONS WITH THE JUCHEN
- •THE COURT’S RELATIONS WITH THE BUREAUCRACY
- •THE CHIEF COUNCILLORS
- •THE BUREAUCRATIC STYLE
- •THE CLERICAL STAFF
- •SONG CULTURE
- •INVASION OF THE JIN STATE
- •INVASION OF THE SONG STATE
- •CHINA UNDER THE MONGOLS
- •YUAN CHINA AND THE WEST
- •THE END OF MONGOL RULE
- •POLITICAL HISTORY
- •THE DYNASTY’S FOUNDER
- •THE DYNASTIC SUCCESSION
- •LOCAL GOVERNMENT
- •CENTRAL GOVERNMENT
- •LATER INNOVATIONS
- •FOREIGN RELATIONS
- •ECONOMIC POLICY AND DEVELOPMENTS
- •POPULATION
- •AGRICULTURE
- •TAXATION
- •COINAGE
- •CULTURE
- •PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION
- •FINE ARTS
- •LITERATURE AND SCHOLARSHIP
- •THE RISE OF THE MANCHU
- •THE QING EMPIRE
- •POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS
- •FOREIGN RELATIONS
- •ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
- •QING SOCIETY
- •SOCIAL ORGANIZATION
- •STATE AND SOCIETY
- •TRENDS IN THE EARLY QING
- •POPULAR UPRISING
- •THE TAIPING REBELLION
- •THE NIAN REBELLION
- •MUSLIM REBELLIONS
- •EFFECTS OF THE REBELLIONS
- •INDUSTRIALIZATION FOR “SELF-STRENGTHENING”
- •CHANGES IN OUTLYING AREAS
- •EAST TURKISTAN
- •TIBET AND NEPAL
- •MYANMAR (BURMA)
- •VIETNAM
- •JAPAN AND THE RYUKYU ISLANDS
- •REFORM AND UPHEAVAL
- •THE BOXER REBELLION
- •REFORMIST AND REVOLUTIONIST MOVEMENTS AT THE END OF THE DYNASTY
- •EARLY POWER STRUGGLES
- •CHINA IN WORLD WAR I
- •INTELLECTUAL MOVEMENTS
- •THE INTERWAR YEARS (1920–37)
- •REACTIONS TO WARLORDS AND FOREIGNERS
- •THE EARLY SINO-JAPANESE WAR
- •PHASE ONE
- •U.S. AID TO CHINA
- •NATIONALIST DETERIORATION
- •COMMUNIST GROWTH
- •EFFORTS TO PREVENT CIVIL WAR
- •CIVIL WAR (1945–49)
- •A RACE FOR TERRITORY
- •THE TIDE BEGINS TO SHIFT
- •COMMUNIST VICTORY
- •RECONSTRUCTION AND CONSOLIDATION, 1949–52
- •THE TRANSITION TO SOCIALISM, 1953–57
- •RURAL COLLECTIVIZATION
- •URBAN SOCIALIST CHANGES
- •POLITICAL DEVELOPMENTS
- •FOREIGN POLICY
- •NEW DIRECTIONS IN NATIONAL POLICY, 1958–61
- •READJUSTMENT AND REACTION, 1961–65
- •THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION, 1966–76
- •ATTACKS ON CULTURAL FIGURES
- •ATTACKS ON PARTY MEMBERS
- •SEIZURE OF POWER
- •SOCIAL CHANGES
- •STRUGGLE FOR THE PREMIERSHIP
- •CHINA AFTER THE DEATH OF MAO
- •DOMESTIC DEVELOPMENTS
- •INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
- •RELATIONS WITH TAIWAN
- •CONCLUSION
- •GLOSSARY
- •FOR FURTHER READING
- •INDEX
ChaPTER 15
China Since 1965
ThE CuLTuRaL REvOLuTION, 1966–76
As the clash over issues in the autumn of 1965 became polarized, the army initially provided the battleground. The issues concerned differences over policy directions and their implications for the organization of power and the qualifications of senior officials to lead. Much of the struggle went on behind the scenes; in public it took the form of personal vilification and ritualized exposés of divergent worldviews or, inevitably, “two lines” of policy. Lin Biao, in calling for the creative study and application of Mao’s thought in November and at a meeting of military commissars the following January, consistently placed the army’s mission in the context of the national ideological and power struggle. In these critical months, the base of operations for Mao and Lin was the large eastern Chinese city of Shanghai, and newspapers published in that city, especially the Liberation Army Daily, carried the public attacks on the targets selected.
Attacks on Cultural Figures
The first target was the historian Wu Han, who doubled as the deputy mayor of Beijing. In a play Wu wrote, he supposedly had used allegorical devices to lampoon Mao and laud the deposed former minister of defense, Peng Dehuai. The denunciation of Wu and his play in November 1965
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A Chinese communist poster commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Paris Commune in 1871. RDA/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
constituted the opening volley in an assault on cultural figures and their thoughts.
As the Cultural Revolution gained momentum, Mao turned for support to the youth as well as the army. In seeking to create a new system of education that would eliminate differences between town and country, workers and peasants, and mental and manual labour, Mao struck a responsive chord with the youth; it was their response that later provided
him with his best shock troops. As a principal purpose, the Cultural Revolution was launched to revitalize revolutionary values for the successor generation of Chinese young people.
The attack against authors, scholars, and propagandists during the spring of 1966 emphasized the cultural dimension of the Cultural Revolution. Increasingly it was hinted that behind the visible targets lay a sinister “black gang” in the fields of education and propaganda and high up
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in party circles. Removal of Peng Zhen and Lu Dingyi and subsequently of Zhou Yang, then tsar of the arts and literature, indicated that this was to be a thoroughgoing purge. Clearly, a second purpose of the Cultural Revolution would be the elimination of leading cadres whom Mao held responsible for past ideological sins and alleged errors in judgment.
Attacks on Party Members
Gradual transference of the revolution to top echelons of the party was managed by a group centred on Mao Zedong, Lin Biao, Jiang Qing, Kang Sheng, and Chen Boda. In May 1966 Mao secretly assigned major responsibilities to the army in cultural and educational affairs. Another purpose of the Cultural Revolution, as then conceived, would be a “revolution in the superstructure”: a transformation from a bureaucratically run machine to a more popularly based system led personally by Mao and a simplified administration under his control.
Following the May instructions, the educational system received priority. “Big-character posters,” or large wall newspapers (dazibao), spread from the principal campuses in Beijing throughout the land. University officials and professors were singled out for criticism, while their students, encouraged by the central authorities, held mass meetings and began to organize. In June the government dropped examinations for university admissions and called for a reform of entrance procedures and a
delay in reopening the campuses. Party officials and their wives circulated among the campuses to gain favour and to obstruct their opponents. Intrigue and political maneuvering dominated, although political lines were not at first sharply drawn or even well understood. The centres of this activity were Beijing’s schools and the inner councils of the Central Committee; the students were the activists in a game they did not fully comprehend.
This phase of the Cultural Revolution ended in August 1966 with the convening of a plenary session of the Central Committee. Mao issued his own bigcharacter poster as a call to “Bombard the headquarters” (“Paoda silingbu”), a call to denounce and remove senior officials, and a 16-point Central Committee decision was issued in which the broad outlines for the Cultural Revolution were laid down and supporters were rallied to the revolutionary banner. The immediate aim was to seize power from “bourgeois” authorities. The locus of the struggle would be their urban strongholds. Now more than ever, Mao’s thought became the “compass for action.”
Evidently fearing that China would develop along the lines of the Soviet revolution and concerned about his own place in history, Mao threw China’s cities into turmoil in a gigantic effort to reverse the historic processes then under way. He ultimately failed in his quest, but his efforts generated problems with which his successors would have to struggle for decades. Mao adopted four goals for his
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Red guards
The Red Guards constituted a number of paramilitary units of radical university and high-school students formed during the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Responding in 1966 to Mao Zedong’s call to revitalize the revolutionary spirit of the Chinese Communist Party, they went so far as to attempt to purge the country of its pre-communist culture. With a membership in the millions, they attacked and persecuted local party leaders, schoolteachers, and other intellectuals. By early 1967 they had overthrown party authorities in many localities. Internal strife ensued as different units argued over which among them best represented Maoism. In 1968 their disruption of industrial production and urban life led the government to redirect them to the countryside, where the movement gradually subsided.
Young members of the Red Guard marching in the streets of Bejing. Central Press/Hulton Archive/Getty Images