China in the 1970s - From Cultural Revolution to Emerging World Economy

colleague Deng Xiaoping, as well as their followers in the party. 1 Because they were numerous, he came up with a diabolical plan of turning the Chinese against each other in an unprecedented mass campaign of denunciation. Mao appealed to lower officials o criticize and denounce their superiors for betraying the revolution, students tocriticize their teachers and professors, workers their supervisors, neighbors their neighbors and young people their elders. One billion people were turned upside down, looking for “counterrevolutionary” tendencies in each other. This he deceptively termed the “Cultural Revolution”. For the “culture” part, Mao involved his wife Jiang Qing. Mao accepted his wife’s former career as an actress in Shanghai as a as sufficient base for overseeing China’s intellectual and artistic life. Many of her former colleagues were victimized in the so-called denunciation meetings. They were publicly exposed to the wrath of a mob who verbally and physically abused them as “class enemies” or “capitalist roaders”. Schools and universities were closed completely from 1966 to 1968, books were burned, nearly everything was forbidden to read except communist classics and Mao’s Little Red Book, which everybody had to possess and hold up in mass meetings.

Liu Shaoqi, the 2 nd Chairman of the PRC was labeled a traitor and the biggest “capitalist roader” in the Party. In July 1966 he was displaced by Mao’s ally Lin Biao. Liu and his wife Wang were arrested and tormented. Liu became ill with pneumonia and was refused treatment. On the order of Mme Mao he was kept alive so that the Ninth Party Congress in 1969 had a “living target”. There he was denounced and humiliated, afterwards he was allowed to die in agony. His last wish to see the sunlight was denied. An enormously ugly wave of settling old scores, vengeance, and satisfying jealousy and envy swept to the country. Mao mobilized China’s youth to form “Red Guards” to smash the old and form the new, which led to violence, senseless brutality and destruction of cultural heritage.

Jung Chang who wrote about her parents’ ordeal during this period in her book “Wild Swans,” recognized at this time of her own adolescence that the Chinese people were divided in two: the ones who let themselves be drawn into cruelty and meanness and became willing executors of Mao’s will, and the ones who stayed humane even under the worst circumstances. This humanity was sometimes no more than a little smile or warmhearted look and the recognition of the humanity in the victim. A little more help

Chang Jung. Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991, Page 275.

led very often to one’s own persecution. Jung Chang’s mother, a director in the educational sector, was so popular that it was hard in the beginning to find someone to denounce her. But with pressure from above she finally had to endure the public humiliations and ended up in prison and finally in a labor camp where she got very ill. Her father, a high Party official from the early days on, a painstakingly honest and idealistic communist, at first believed that there was an error and Chairman Mao would soon stop the campaign. He even wrote a letter to Mao directly, a desperate attempt, which worsened the charges against him. In innumerable denunciation meetings he became atrociously mistreated, paraded around town with posters around his neck. Behind his torment was a woman, another party official who made her way up through intrigue and brutality. Jung’s father once turned down her advances in his youth when his wife was in the hospital giving birth. This woman, Madame Ting, used the Cultural Revolution to avenge herself for this rejection more than a decade earlier. Many times family members brought the father into the hospital, which in most cases still treated the ousted victims. After years of abuse he became mentally ill and turned his anger against his own wife. The children brought him into a mental hospital where he was treated for several months and restored to health. And then he was denounced again. He ended up as “capitalist roader” in a rural labor camp. Released in 1972 as a broken man, he died two years later.

We see in this story a certain schizophrenic approach to the treatment of the denounced party officials. Even during the time of their denunciation they still received their salaries and were treated in hospitals. It may be that Zhou Enlai was trying to prevent a complete collapse of Chinese society by Mao’s madness without openly opposing. Opposition would have meant his own destruction. Everything what was still functioning may have been due to some reason left in the administration directed by Zhou and his supporters. Jung Chang writes about Zhou: “Zhou had represented a comparative sane and liberal government that believed in making the country work. In the dark years of the Cultural Revolution, Zhou was our meager hope.” 2 In September 1971 Lin Biao, second to Mao, died in a plane crash over Mongolia. The circumstances of his death are still unclear. His disappearance was declared a failed coup to oust Mao. Lin, a former brilliant military strategist, stays a controversial figure in Chinese history. He was a devout Mao supporter and instrumental in several purges

Jung Chang, Wild Swans, Page 400.

against high officials, incuding an alliance with Madame Mao’s wrath during the Cultural Revolution. But apparently at the end Lin lost Mao’s favor. After his death Madame Mao launched the campaign “Criticize Lin. Criticize Confucius”, a new wave of denunciation attempts. This campaign was above all directed against the last stronghold of reason in the Party, Zhou Enlai.

The Death of the Two Communist Leaders Mao and Zhou Enlai in 1976

“The Last Perfect Revolutionary” Zhou Enlai 3

There is no doubt that Zhou Enlai has earned in the eyes of history much higher regard than Mao himself. Born in 1898 into a highly educated family in Huai’an, Jiangsu, he was raised as a privileged youth with access to superior schools. He studied in Japan and Europe. Early on the suffering of his war-torn and exploited country awakened his political awareness and he excelled as a student organizer. To struggle against the warlords and against imperialism, and save China from extinction, became the objective of his early adult life. In the Twenties he spent years of study and organization work in France, Belgium, Britain and Germany. He opposed corruption and the exploitation of Chinese students as cheap labor in these countries. He studied Marxism and formed his mind in the communist ideology, well knowing that he broke with his own class and

When he returned in 1924, he was a seasoned party organizer and took on the position of party secretary in Guangdong province. He received military training and led the crucial East Expedition against the warlords. The Kuomintang under General Chiang Kai-Shek cooperated with the Communists in the struggle against the warlords and later against the Japanese invasion. But they also fought each other brutally. Zhou developed enormous diplomatic and pragmatic skill to pursue China’s liberation and unification. He survived Chiang Kai-Shek’s communist purges and tried to cooperate whenever it was possible. “Chinese should not fight Chinese but a common enemy: the invader” was his directive. His pragmatic personality was also capable of dealing with the charismatic, but ruthlessly power oriented Mao in their common fight against the

Term from his biography: Wengian Gao, Zhou Enlai: The Last Perfect Revolutionary, The facts from life and death of Zhou Enlai mostly from Wikipedia

After half a century of war in China, the communists established the People’s Republic of China in 1949. Right from the start through his death in January 1976, Zhou held the position of first Premier of the PRC. He was instrumental in building and administering the huge country and at the same time holding against Mao’s excesses.

The cosmopolitan Zhou Enlai also operated as China’s foreign minister from 1949 to 1958 and proved also in this area a diplomatic and moderate approach. Zhou still complied with too many of Mao’s whims, but he believed that his own survival guaranteed some reason and stability for the country. Mao was aware that he could not hold the country together without Zhou’s competence and administrative efficiency. The Cultural Revolution, however, was a big blow to Zhou and again he was entangled into a struggle of life and death to survive. The group around Mao’s wife targeted Zhou as a hindrance for their vision of continuous revolution. The campaign “Against Lin and Confucius” was directed against Zhou Enlai who was considered the image of the noble administrator in the tradition of Confucius. Still, there was nobody to replace the efficient Zhou who prevented China from falling into chaos and famine.

It has to be said, however, that in times of turmoil like in China in the 20 th century no leading figure is without blood on his hands. Zhou was not only complicit in Mao’s purges; he helped organize them. In 1934, at the start of the Long March, it was Zhou who decided who should be weeded out and left to the mercies of the enemy. In 1955 he gave the order to blow up a plane to flush out the Kuomintang agents on board. Zhou did not intervene when his adopted daughter was dragged off by Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution. She died of her beatings in prison. 4 As mentioned above, Zhou saw China’s survival dependant upon his own survival to prevent an even worse spiraling into violence and chaos.

In 1975 Zhou pushed for the “Four Modernizations” to undo some of the damages caused by unreason and destruction during the Cultural Revolution. He was farsighted enough to groom in time a capable and likeminded successor in Deng Xiaoping who himself had to survive the party purges, but finally succeeded in taking over power in 1978 and continuing Zhou’s pragmatic path for China.

Also in his private life, Zhou showed much more decency and nobility than Mao himself. His wife for life was Deng Yingchao whom he met when she was just 15 years

MacMillan, Margaret. Nixon and Mao. The Week That Changed the World. New York: Random House, 2007, Page 42.

old. The couple remained childless, but adopted a number of orphaned children of “revolutionary martyrs”. One of them was the future premier Li Deng.

Zhou was immensely popular in China. He was considered as the last Mandarin bureaucrat in the Confucian tradition and a moderate force in the madness of the Cultural Revolution. When Zhou learnt in 1971 that he had cancer, he was above all worried about the future of his country and the time after Mao. Up to the end he pursued a path that made it possible for a successor to lead this huge nation into the 21 st century. He died on January 9 in 1976, eight months before Mao.

The Tiananmen Incident in April 1976

The massive public outpouring of grief after Zhou Enlai’s death turned to anger against the Gang of Four and led to the Tiananmen Incident in April 1976. Deng Xiaoping delivered the official eulogy for Zhou’s funeral. Masses of people flocked to Beijing to mourn the revered premier. The display of grief and mourning became so intense that Mao’s wife and her group as well as the ailing Mao himself tried to shorten the mourning celebrations. Deng was once more removed from Beijing, the Cultural Revolution enforced. Despite the government’s tyrannical strictures, the Chinese continued to bring white wreaths and chrysanthemums – white is the Chinese color of mourning – to the foot of the Monument of the People’s Heroes as a sign of protest against the abbreviation of the mourning period. On April 5, the official day of mourning in China, the events escalated. More and more wreaths and flowers filled the square. In addition people brought handwritten poems criticizing the group around Mao’s wife in an indirect way. The poems talked about the Empress Wu Zetian, the 7 th century empress who established an unfortunate reign after her husband died. This was clearly directed against Jiang Chang, Mao’s wife. She reacted accordingly. The mourners were labeled as “capitalist-roaders”, security forces removed all wreaths, flowers and poems. Many were arrested, mistreated, and sent to labor camps. Deng was accused of planning this event. He was dismissed as vice-premier and put under house

The significance of this incident on Tiananmen Square was that it showed that the Chinese people were at the end of their tether after ten years of Cultural Revolution. After a few more months the tide did turn in China, after Mao’s death.

The “Helmsman” Leaves the Ship: Death of a Dictator

Jung Chang, the author of “Wild Swans” attended class at the university of Chengdu on the afternoon of September 9 th , 1976. A loudspeaker announced that they all had to assemble in the courtyard to listen to an important broadcast at three o’clock. There the party secretary took up a position in front of the assembly. She looked at the students sadly and choked out the words: “Our great Leader Chairman Mao, His Venerable Reverence has….” Suddenly, Jung Chang realized that Mao was dead. 5 The news filled her with such a euphoria that she was numb. When she recognized that an orgy of weeping was going on around her, she came up with a suitable performance, buried her head on the shoulder of the woman in front of her and heaved appropriately. 6 The feelings of the Chinese were mixed on this September day. Relief was mixed with anxiety of what comes next. Certainly there was also grief, but after ten years of the Cultural Revolution, most Chinese were exhausted and disillusioned. Weeping and mourning was for many just another programmed act in their controlled lives. Jung Chang, now 24 years old, did a lot of thinking in the days after Mao’s death. She remembered how sincerely she admired and followed the godlike figure in Beijing throughout her childhood and adolescence and how slowly a process of reprogramming took hold of her mind throughout the years of the torment of her parents and innumerable others during the Cultural Revolution:

“I knew he was considered a philosopher, and I tried to think what his “philosophy” really was. It seems to me that its central principle was the need (…) for perpetual conflict. The core of his thinking seemed to be that human struggles were the motivating force of history, and that in order to make history “class enemies” had to be continuously created en masse. I wondered whether there were any other philosophers whose theories had lead to the suffering and death of so many. I thought of the terror and misery the Chinese population had been subjected. For what?” 7 The mood in the country was against continuing Mao’s policies. The country was ready for a change, but first another struggle had to be fought, the struggle for Mao’s

History’s final verdict on Mao may not yet been cast, but there is no doubt that Mao was a strong fighter and military leader capable of uniting and leading a vast empire. To the

Jung Chang, Wild Swans, Page 495.