THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION

‘Don’t Stop Me Mao’

At the closing of the Second World War, it’s often nice to think that the world changed for the better. The Nazi’s had been destroyed by the Allies, peace had returned to Europe and life could finally begin anew. After all, it would only be a few decades before the social revolution of the swinging sixties! This was the era of Elvis, The Beatles and not forgetting the most abominable fashion in the history of the world. Yet for some, the hard times weren’t over yet – not by a long shot.

On the other side of the planet, China had been absolutely devastated by the ravages of war and suffered approximately 20 million casualties. To put that into perspective, that’s over double the estimated losses of Germany, Italy, the US and the UK combined. To add salt to the very much open wound, there was also precious little time for the Chinese people to even get their breath back, plunged into another bitter war - this time between the Nationalists and the Communists for what was left of the country. At its conclusion, the in-fighting saw Communist leader Mao Zedong victorious, a man whose ideological reign failed to take the concept of reality into account. His sweeping reforms of the early sixties were erratic to say the least and caused many to think ‘holy cow, what on earth was he thinking?’ Attempting to recover from this loss of face (the deaths of millions will do that), Mao instigated the Cultural Revolution, designed to put him back in charge and convince the masses that he wasn’t deliberately trying to kill them. The programme was also borne out of fear that capitalism would weasel its way back into the party, among those who preferred expertise to ideology (madness). Utilising his ‘cult of personality’ to remarkable effect, Mao had essentially enrolled China’s youth population into units known as the Red Guard, who were expected to rally in defence of communism and the spirit of revolution. However, given that these groups weren’t exactly unified, their faction fighting only served to rip China apart. In an attempt to reign in the anarchy, Mao’s planned successor Lin Biao declared martial law and committed the troops against the overzealous Red Guard. Yet Mao didn’t take kindly to this flagrant posturing and began to have second thoughts about his would-be replacement. Following this further split amongst the party, Lin probably saw the writing on the wall and made a swift break for freedom, only to die en route to the relative safety of the Soviet Union. By this time, citizens were becoming alarmed at the consequences of this internal strife and the spirit of revolution was quickly being extinguished. It finally ended with Mao’s death in 1976, when the moderates of the leadership came to the fore.

Given the events described above, it’ll come as no great surprise that the Cultural Revolution was a pretty horrendous failure. In his efforts to reassert control and lead China through sheer force of ideology, Mao had effectively pushed the economy off a cliff and invited massive civil discord throughout the country, leading to the deaths of 1.5 million people. Those left to pick up the pieces could not disguise this fact and the communist party were forced to acknowledge what a terrible setback it had been. Through many later reforms, China would be slowly reacquainted with elements of capitalism and re-emerge as a market based economy. From this course correction China has swelled into one of the world’s biggest economic powerhouses.