The first victim of the movement was Peng Zhen, the powerful mayor of Beijing and Politburo member, who was toppled in May 1966 alongside other senior figures in the city. It was the sharp end of China’s Cultural Revolution. In response, in August 1967 Red Guards burned down the British mission in Beijing, manhandling the diplomats who were then prevented from leaving the country for a year. [101], Concessions given to minorities were abolished during the Cultural Revolution as part of the Red Guards' attack on the "Four Olds". [113] Many of the Cultural Revolution's goals in minority areas were simply too unreasonable to be implemented. It diluted blame on Mao himself by asserting that the movement was "manipulated by the counterrevolutionary groups of Lin Biao and Jiang Qing," who caused its worst excesses. Deng Xiaoping was sent away for a period of re-education three times and was eventually sent to work in an engine factory in Jiangxi province. Jiang Qing and her allies pinned Deng Xiaoping as the incident's 'mastermind', and issued reports on official media to that effect. Red Guards was a mass student-led paramilitary social movement mobilized and guided by Chairman Mao Zedong in 1966 through 1967, during the first phase of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, which he had instituted. [162] In Taiwan, Chiang Kai-shek initiated the Chinese Cultural Renaissance to counter what he regarded as the destruction of traditional Chinese values by the Communists on the mainland. Relations between the two communist powers deteriorated considerably in 1969, which resulted in the visit of American President Richard Nixon (1972) to China. “Ma’s foreign policy is unrealistic,” she said. New York: Cambria Press. While the Lushan Conference served as a death knell for Peng, Mao's most vocal critic, it led to a shift of power to moderates led by Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping, who took effective control of the economy following 1959. [135], Documents released in 1980 regarding the prosecution of the Gang of Four show more than 2,600 people in the field of arts and literature were revealed to have been persecuted by the Ministry of Culture and units under it alone. There seems to be a problem, please try again. [14]:2–3, Academic interest has also focused on the movement's relationship with Mao's personality. In the play, an honest civil servant, Hai Rui, is dismissed by a corrupt emperor. [103][104] The destruction of nearly all of its over 6,000 monasteries, which began before the Cultural Revolution, were often conducted with the complicity of local ethnic Tibetan Red Guards. Zhou, who was demoted in rank, voiced his unequivocal support for Lin at the Congress. Foreign, ‘reactionary’ and ‘feudal’ music, art and literature were suppressed. [138][139], After the communist takeover in China, much of the popular music from Shanghai was condemned as Yellow Music and banned, and during the Cultural Revolution, composers of such popular music such as Li Jinhui were persecuted. [163], In the world at large, Mao Zedong emerged as a symbol of the anti-establishment, grassroots populism, and self-determination. (This is distinguished from the White Terror carried … [20]:61–4 One of many quotations in the Little Red Book that the Red Guards would later follow as a guide, provided by Mao, was: The world is yours, as well as ours, but in the last analysis, it is yours. [128] In Huang's view, rhetoric played a central role in rallying both the Party leadership and people at large during the Cultural Revolution. There followed several months of "mango fever," as the fruit became a focus of a "boundless loyalty" campaign for Chairman Mao. "[154] After the Cultural Revolution, Deng affirmed that Maoist ideology was responsible for the revolutionary success of the Communist Party, but abandoned it in practice to favour "Socialism with Chinese characteristics", a very different model of state-directed market economics. Men such as state president Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping, who managed day-to-day affairs, were also veterans of the movement, and no less ruthlessly committed to its goals. In 1978, Deng Xiaoping became the new paramount leader of China and started the "Boluan Fanzheng" program which gradually dismantled the Maoist policies associated with the Cultural Revolution, and brought the country back to order. [17]:27–35, In May 1966, an "expanded session" of the Politburo was called in Beijing. A Soviet team investigating the incident was not able to determine the cause of the crash but hypothesized that the pilot was flying low to evade radar and misjudged the plane's altitude. [citation needed], In Mainland China, the official view of the party now serves as the dominant framework for Chinese historiography of the period; alternative views (see below) are discouraged. Mao chic permeated further into popular culture, with Mao badges, Mao caps and Mao suits worn as style statements, not simply political ones. Those enemies were seen everywhere – including in the homes of the ‘bourgeois’ such as Nien Cheng in Shanghai. [26] In Shanghai, there were 704 suicides and 534 deaths related to the Cultural Revolution in September. At a grass-roots level, informal initiatives document victims’ stories, but the topic remains so politically sensitive that there seems little chance of any loosening of political control. When Red Guards arrived at the door of Nien Cheng’s house in Shanghai on the night of 30 August 1966, it wasn’t an unexpected inter-ruption. It was Mao who, in 1958, had steered the party into a pell-mell race to the future, a rapid process of agricultural collectivisation and a nationwide programme – the Great Leap Forward – to increase industrial production to overtake Britain’s and match that of the US. The steel produced was of low quality and mostly useless. Mao wrote that despite having undergone a Communist revolution, a "bourgeois" elite was still thriving in "positions of authority" in the government and Communist Party. [114], The effects of the Cultural Revolution directly or indirectly touched essentially all of China's population. During the Red August of Beijing, on August 18, 1966, over a million Red Guards from all over the country gathered in and around Tiananmen Square in Beijing for a personal audience with the Chairman. "[125]:46–7, One of the student leaders of the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, Shen Tong, author of Almost a Revolution, has a positive view of some aspects of the Cultural Revolution. Thank you for subscribing to HistoryExtra, you now have unlimited access. [17]:317, The prospect of war elevated the PLA to greater prominence in domestic politics, increasing the stature of Lin Biao at the expense of Mao. Attempts to suppress the mourners led to a violent riot. [17]:4–7, Mao believed that Khrushchev did not adhere to Marxism–Leninism, but was instead a revisionist, altering his policies from basic Marxist–Leninist concepts, something Mao feared would allow capitalists to regain control of the country. Leaving the country in grinding poverty would do no favours to the positive legacy of the Cultural Revolution, which Mao worked hard to protect. However, Zhou was weakened by cancer, and in 1974, the Jiang Qing faction seized these and other paintings and mounted exhibitions in Beijing, Shanghai and other cities denouncing the artworks as "Black Paintings". On December 18, 1978, the pivotal Third Plenum of the 11th Central Committee was held. However, Jiang Qing and Yao Wenyuan continued their denunciation of Wu Han and Peng Zhen. [17]:106 The government bore the expenses of Red Guards travelling around the country exchanging "revolutionary experiences". [125]:14 Workers were supposed to "grasp revolution and promote productions", while peasants were supposed to raise more pigs because "more pigs means more manure, and more manure means more grain." Schools and universities were closed with the college entrance exams cancelled. During the Cultural Revolution, much economic activity was halted, with "revolution", regardless of interpretation, being the primary objective of the country. Several days later a rally was held at the Great Hall of the People to announce the decision and set the new tone of the movement to university and high school teachers and students. [144] Numerous valuable old books, paintings, and other cultural relics were also burnt to ashes.[145]:98. President Richard Nixon is receptive. [125]:21 Nevertheless, the most prominent symbol of academic research in archaeology, the journal Kaogu, did not publish during the Cultural Revolution. Central, Hong Kong: Text Form Asia books Ltd. While the years of schooling were reduced and education standard fell, the proportion of Chinese children who had completed primary education increased from less than half before the Cultural Revolution to almost all after the Cultural Revolution, and those who completed junior middle school rose from 15% to over two-third. 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