CHINA: The Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution or simply the Cultural Revolution was

a violent mass movement in China that started in 1966 and officially ended with Mao Zedongs death in 1976. It resulted in social, political, and economic upheaval; widespread persecution; and the destruction of antiques, historical sites, and culture. It was launched by Mao Zedong, the chairman of the Communist Party1, on May 16, 1966. He alleged that liberal bourgeois ( upper class/educated ) elements were permeating the party and society at large and that they wanted to restore capitalism. Mao insisted, in accordance with his theory of permanent revolution, that these elements should be removed through revolutionary violent class struggle by mobilizing China's youth who, responding to his appeal, then formed Red Guard groups around the whole country. The Cultural Revolution The Cultural Revolution, as suggested by the title, was a movement to transform the Chinese culture by, according to Mao Tse-tung (Zedong), uprooting it from feudal and bourgeois backgrounds of pre-Communist China and turning it completely into a socialist state. Communist Youth Movement: The Red Guards In the first phase of the Cultural Revolution, the urban youth were mobilized against the intelligentsia and better-off or educated sections of the working class. To this end, Mao appealed to the loyalty of the youth to the Revolution, and taught the youth to regard all manifestations of culture as bourgeois and counter-revolutionary. Lessons were stopped, all entertainment and social life other than politics denounced, and politics reduced to mindless repetition of Maos Thoughts and the witch-hunting of anyone unwilling or unable to reduce themselves to the same idiotic level. From the beginning of CR, the Chinese youth were an important force Mao relied on to combat his opponents in the Communist Party. The Red Guards, as these high school students were called, wore red armbands to distinguish themselves from other high school students. They were guards of Mao against his (black) capitalist-roader opponents. Almost overnight, high school kids found themselves empowered by the number one leader of the country. They now were able to knock on people's door and interrogate them in their private homes or in public places, their red guard armband being the only thing needed to provide them with authority. The Red Guards' acceptance of their call in the CR was the result of years of moral indoctrination of heroism and selfless sacrifice for the Communist cause. Individualism and independent thinking were long criticized as "bourgeois," thus any one with doubts about the CR would often feel ashamed of themselves, and at least not talk about their thoughts in public. The Red Guards' participation in the CR, however, soon went awry. For one thing, most of them were young, and students. They soon fell into factional struggles against one another. And they were really not suited to govern the institutions they occupied. They were creating embarrassment to Mao. Mao was ready to retire and disperse them by 1967, and to use them to realize another of his goals.

Persecution Millions of people in China were violently persecuted during the Cultural Revolution. Those identified as spies, "running dogs", "revisionists", or coming from a suspect class such as landlords or rich peasants were subject to measures such as beating, imprisonment, rape, torture, sustained and systematic harassment and abuse, seizure of property and erasure of social identity. At least hundreds of thousands of people were murdered, starved or worked to death. Millions more were forcibly displaced. Young people from the cities were forcibly moved to the countryside, where they were forced to abandon all forms of standard education in place of the propaganda teachings of the Communist Party of China Cultural Conformity Re-education of Youth Mao's vision to fully integrate the Chinese educated and uneducated, the city and the country found its way in the reeducation of urban educated youth. Starting from 1967, the graduating classes of junior and senior high school were required to go and work in the countryside, with no date of return. By pushing intellectuals out of the cities, he sought to curb social unrest and potential rebellion against him. Women in Chinas Cultural Revolution The Cultural Revolution aimed at a complete cultural transformation of China, including on the issue of gender. Yet it was not the first time the Communist regime tried to erase the symbolic differences between gender. A poem written by Mao Tse-tung glorifying women in military uniform was set to music and became one of the popular songs in the 1960s and 1970s. It went roughly as: Spirited and attractive, with a five feet rifle/arriving at the training ground with the first rays of morning sunshine/how magnificently ambitious Chinese women are/they prefer military uniforms to feminine clothes. During the Cultural Revolution, violence also became women's identity, especially because they wanted to escape from a conventional perception of them as passive and gentle, which were all labeled as "bourgeois" by Mao during the Cultural Revolution. It was not uncommon for girls to interrogate and beat up the "bad elements". Women invariably dressed as men, or as male army combatants because it was "considered very glorious." And often, the belt on their uniform became their instrument to beat up their suspects. Rejecting a bourgeois lifestyle and engaging in aggressive, violent attacks both mandated that girls dress like boys, cut their hair like boys, and borrow their fathers (not their mothers') leather belts. During the Cultural Revolution, political correctness consisted largely in women wearing the same dark colors as men, keeping their hair short, and using no make-up. That men were not required to use these things shows that it was women's symbolic difference that had been specifically targeted and suppressed on top of all other forms of political repression.

Excerpted from http://www.iun.edu/~hisdcl/g387/cr.htm