S14: Farewell to Revolution?
Nationalism and Revolution in Modern China
May 15, 2025
Key questions
- How to succeed Mao?
- How to evaluate Mao and his rule?
- How to reform the CCP?
Sent-down Memories: Gendered and Generational
- Sent-down generation: not just former red guards, though firmly associated with the group
- How to evaluate the experience against the history of the Cultural Revolution?
- Life after the sent-down campaign: How did that shape our understanding?
- Personal experience: Higher status, fonder memories?
- Generational memory: Personal experience vs. Historical evaluation
Red Radicals, Red Conservatives
- Red Guards attacked old educated elites in name of workers and peasants
- Red Guards made up of revolutionary cadres’ children
Proletariat power
- Students: 657K, too small, too divided
- Workers: 52 million in state and collective enterprises
- First organization: Shanghai Workers’ Revolutionary Rebel General Headquarters
- Led by Wang Hongwen: 32-year-old factory security officer
- 1966-12: Mao gave green light to mobilization
- Workers’ insurgency spread, sidelining student movement
Power seizure
- 1967-01-19: Shanghai People’s Commune
- High tide of power seizure across the country
- New revolutionary committee: ‘Triple alliances’ of the rebel organizations, the army and CCP cadres
Military intervention
- Military control drew armed forces into factional conflicts
- Result: Conflicts intensified and prolonged, further delaying the formation of revolutionary committees
- 1967-04: Military ordered to pull back from suppression of rebels
How to think about factionalism
- How do we understand political activism of ordinary citizens during the Mao Zedong era?
- What unified / separated various groups – student Red Guards, rebel factory workers, sent-down youth, etc.? Consider class identity, ideological orientation, political networks, etc.
Power of the gun (and fearing it)
- 1967-04: Military ordered to pull back from suppression of rebels
- 1967-08: Creation of new revolutionary committees
- Military Maoists in charge: first secretaries in 22 of 29 provinces
- 1969-04: New party constitution confirming Lin Biao as successor
From successor to traitor
- 1971-09: Lin Biao’s plane crashed over Mongolia
- Lin Biao discredited as ultra-leftist who distorted Mao’s intentions and drove it to excess
- Mao cult, purges, disbanding of civilian administration all part of an “ultraleft” cover for military coup
- Military leadership arrested; purge of PLA from politics and public life
- Return to civilian administration, led by Zhou Enlai; Deng Xiaoping rehabilitated
Political Disillusionment
- How could Mao’s chosen successor have fled China after an abortive coup?
- How could China realign with the United States, after thirty years of denouncing it as the primary enemy?
- Could the party still be trusted? What should people believe?
Beginning of an end
- Mao’s physical decline: Heart attack in 1972; in poor health and seclusion till end of life
- Zhou Enlai: Cancer diagnosis in 1972
Enemy of my enemy is my friend
- Mao Zedong:
- The Soviet Union as “main contradiction”; America as secondary threat
- Richard Nixon:
- Progressive withdrawal of US forces in Vietnam
- China not as a rogue actor, but in need of being “brought in from the cold” in twilight struggle against Soviet Union
“The week that changed the world”
Chronology:
- 1971-04: “Ping Pong diplomacy”
- 1971-07: Kissinger’s secret trip to China
- 1971-09: Death of Lin Biao
- 1972-02: Nixon’s visit to China
“The week that changed the world”: Significance
- Transformation of China from Communist threat to quasi-ally
- Security triangle: China as swing player between two superpowers
- China safe from both US and Soviet attacks
Sticking Point: Taiwan
Map of Taiwan Strait
Taiwan under KMT rule: White Terror
- 1947-02: February 28 incident: anti-government uprising suppressed, with 18,000 and 28,000 people dead
- 1949-05: Martial law declared.
- 1987-07: Taiwan lifts martial law.
Accidental State
- 1950-01: Harry Truman affirming the return of Taiwan to China’s Communist government.
- June 1950: China enters Korean War. U.S. sends troops to Taiwan.
- 1954: Mutual Defense Treaty in response to the “first Taiwan Strait crisis” after fights over offshore islands of Kinmen and Matsu.
Accidental State, continued
- 1958-08: Eisenhower sends U.S. forces, including a large naval contingent, to the Taiwan Strait.
- US Strategy during the Cold War: ROC as the legitimate government of all China, a “democratic” alternative to “Communist China”, and an example of American commitment to Asia
Shanghai Communiqué
- 1972-02-27: US-China Joint Communiqué – four months after the PRC gained admission to the UN
- China and the US pledged to work for “normalization” of relations and “people-to-people contacts” and trade opportunities
Taiwan Miracle
- “Great Leap Outward” into capitalist economy
- Industrial policy, strong economic bureaucracy, protected and subsidized state-owned enterprises
- 1978: Scientific and Technical Advisory Group (STAG): sponsorship of computer industry and semi-conductor technology
- Largely private, Taiwanese-owned, export-oriented economy
1976: A year of political earthquakes
- 1976-01-08: Zhou Enlai’s death, triggering mass protests at Tiananmen Sqr
- 1976-07-28: Tangshan Earthquake, resulting in 242,000 deaths
- 1976-09-09: Mao Zedong’s death
- 1976-10-06: Arrest of Gang of Four
Cultural Revolution by the numbers
- 27.2 million victims, including 1.73 million deaths
- Most victims not the result of mass insurgency, but political and military authority
- 17 million sent-down youth
- Party-state bureaucracy weakened and divided
- Crisis of legitimacy: 3 million+ citizens awaiting rehabilitation
Mao era in retrospect
- A system of both tremendous strength and startling instability
- Spasmodic: lurching from one politically induced crisis to another
- Individual responsibility vs. collective guilt
- Utopian ideal vs. violent reality
Chen Yun on Mao Zedong
Had Mao died in 1956, his achievements would have been immortal. Had he died in 1966, he would still have been a great man but flawed. But he died in 1976. Alas, what can one say?
“Newborn socialist things”: Chinese Culture during the Culture Revolution
- Harbingers of a progressive future
- Antithesis of the Four Olds (Old Ideas, Old Culture, Old Customs, and Old Habits)
- Examples: “Model operas”, “Barefoot doctors”, “Sent-down youth” campaign, including the Cultural Revolution itself
Barefoot doctors
- Chinese medicine revived from stigmatization as “feudal” or “unscientific”
- Three folk resources: folk remedy, folk medicinal herbs, and folk drugs
- Foundation of rural public health system
- Combining Western and Chinese medicine
Mass Science: Yuan Longping
- Pioneering scientist who developed the world’s first hybrid rice varieties in the 1970s and contributed to the Green Revolution
- Increased rice yields significantly, helping to alleviate hunger and improve food security.
- Advocated for the importance of sustainable farming practices alongside high-yield crops.
Mass Science: Tu Youyou
- Discovered artemisinin, derived from the sweet wormwood plant, in the early 1970s.
- Developed dihydroartemisinin, a more potent derivative of artemisinin, significantly improving malaria treatment.
- Received the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2015; the first Chinese woman to receive a Nobel Prize in science.
- Continued her research and advocacy for traditional medicine and its integration with modern science.
Mass Science as Model
- Not tension between “pro-science” and “anti-science” factions
- “Combining indigenous methods with foreign methods”
- Emphasis on “home-grown policies”: local inventions and experimentations
- Instead of relying on trained experts, mobilization of peasants, rural cadres, women, youth
“Seek truth from facts”
- 1978-12: Third Plenum of 11th Central Committee
- Rise of Deng Xiaoping and reform-minded leadership; Hua Guofeng effectively stripped of powers
- Launch of reform and opening up
- Change from Maoist class struggle to economic development
Discuss: How to reform Chinese socialism
Debating political reform
- Consensus on the Cultural Revolution: Never again.
- But what to reform? How to reform? How much reform was enough?
- From “great democracy” – mass rallies, marches, criticism – back to democratic centralism
Transitional justice without political transition?
- Resolution on party history
- Trial of Gang of Four
- Cadre rehabilitation
- “Scar literature”: victim memoirs and new
Institutionalizing power
- Meritocracy over factionalism
- Party of technocrats: Smaller, younger, and more professional membership
- Administrative competence, rather than personal loyalty, as main criteria for promotion
- Norm-bound succession politics
- Mandatory retirement age
- Law of avoidance: avoiding provincial governorship in hometown
- Term limited to two five-years
- Collective leadership and institutional differentiation
- Separation of responsibilities and spheres of authority
Legacies of reform
- Political reform driven by strong and open-minded leaders
- Institutional innovation vs. Fundamental reform
- Inner-party democracy as top-down strategy to address party legitimacy and popular discontent
Back to one-man rule?
Xi Jinping at 20th CCP National Party Congress