How China Remembers 1966

Nethuki K. Geeganage is a first year History student whose research interests focus on political memory and modern Chinese history.

Introduction

The period between the 1960s and 1980s is often remembered by the global surge in youth mobilisation against traditional values. In China, however, youth radicalism developed a far more pervasive character. [1] Between 1966 and 1976, the Cultural Revolution vilified tradition as an enemy of revolutionary purity and used China’s youth to achieve this. By 1966, Mao Zedong’s anxieties over China’s ideological direction had intensified. Alarmed by what he perceived as the Soviet Union’s tendency towards revisionism, Mao directed a period of rapid societal reform sought to purge Chinese society of the “four olds”: old culture, customs, habits and ideas. [2] There was a sense that the past shouldn’t just be left behind or reinterpreted, but erased completely.

This article argues that 1966 has since come to function as a negative foundational memory for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Considering the impacts of the decade on China’s current leadership - particularly Xi Jinping - the extent to which China’s domestic governance and foreign policy today are structured around preventing a return to the climate that facilitated such violent radicalism will be examined.

The launch of the Cultural Revolution

This rejection of Chinese traditional values and all of its “bourgeois elements” translated uncontrollably into violence. “Class enemies" - landlords, rich peasants, intellectuals and former officials - were framed as living embodiments of the “four olds” and therefore legitimate targets. [2] Rural areas like southern Guangxi, for instance, saw the barbaric cannibalism of class enemies (up to 76 out of a total of 524 executed) as a means of demonstrating intense “class feeling” in the early summer of 1968. [3]

Under the justification of the “bloodline theory”, guilt extended beyond individuals to their families, implicating children in the alleged crimes of their parents. [4] The need to demonstrate one’s own political purity by exposing any perceived familial ‘impurities’ to the state was therefore so great, that it was not uncommon for children as young as eight to turn spies, or “struggle” against their own parents in public mass denunciation meetings. [5]

Crucially, this decade of violence was entirely calculated - extreme violence was endorsed by the highest positions in the political hierarchy. In July 1966, Mao’s wife Jiang Qing publicly praised violence against class enemies during a speech at Peking University, presenting a glorification of violent renewal that suggested violent change was a positive thing in its own right - an assault against traditional Confucian values of harmony and filial piety. [6] Yet, as Mao would soon declare, ‘to rebel is justified’. It is therefore unsurprising that less than one month following this speech, Bian Zhongyun, vice principal of the Girls’ Middle School, was beaten to death by her own students, becoming the first victim of what would amount to as many as one million at the hands of the Red Guard youth movement. [5] Students ritually humiliated teachers, academicians were paraded through streets in ‘tiger cages’ and the soaring suicide rates that followed were used in CCP propaganda to demonstrate the unsuitability of ‘bourgeois’ intellectualism in a genuine socialist country. [7] This complete reversal of hierarchical norms saw the establishment of Revolutionary Committees, composed of students, peasants, soldiers and party functionaries, at each college or university by 1968. To be an intellectual in any sense was, in itself, an accusation.

Xi Jinping as a ‘state enemy’

Among those most vulnerable to the logic of the Cultural Revolution were veteran revolutionaries themselves. The ‘bloodline theory’ cast suspicion on the majority of old first-generation CCP members, many of whom - like Mao - had been an urban, educated youth from a relatively privileged background. Among those targeted was Xi Zhongxun, father to Xi Jinping. Xi Zhongyun’s persecution - the confiscation of his property by Red Guards, his public humiliation at mass criticism sessions and eight years of solitary confinement - only came to an end in 1975. [8] Having been targeted under the ‘bloodline theory’, the then thirteen-year-old Xi Jinping witnessed first-hand how quickly ideological fervour could collapse into complete chaos under the tide of mob mentality. For Xi, the memory of 1966 was consequently a symbol of anti-politics and the arbitrariness of revolutionary authority.

Remembering the Cultural Revolution in Contemporary Chinese diplomacy:

China’s domestic turmoil during the Cultural Revolution was reflected in its self-induced international isolation - hostility towards ‘bourgeois’ influence extended beyond the country’s borders, laying the foundation for mutual distrust in multilateral cooperation. In 1967, Red Guards broke into and seized the Foreign Ministry building in Beijing, burned down the British and Indonesian embassies and violently assaulted diplomats. [9] Relations with the USSR deteriorated further, culminating in armed conflict along their shared border on the Ussuri river in March 1969, and engagement with the developing world became increasingly ideologically motivated. [10] Deng Xiaoping’s post-1978 foreign policy thereby signalled a direct repudiation of China’s entry into international isolation during the Cultural Revolution. Instead of continuing the PRC’s exportation of communism to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) member states, for instance, Deng pursued a policy of ‘good neighbourliness’ towards the organisation and China’s neighbours in Southeast Asia. [11] Relations with ASEAN were normalised by 1975 and Peking was no longer criticising its ties with Washington as a surrender to imperialism. [12]

Coming into power in 2012, Xi Jinping’s foreign policy priorities have reflected the same fear of disorder that shaped his early adult life. It follows, therefore, that Xi’s focus has similarly revolved around the continuation of ‘stabilising mechanisms’ that would prevent a return to domestic disorder and international isolation. Nowhere is this more evident than in China’s recent emphasis on cultural diplomacy. The China Cultural Centre (CCC) project, for instance, promotes a ‘pacific culture’ that draws on ancient Chinese manifestations of the country as one that is defined above all by peace. The Ming Dynasty navigator, Zheng He, whose peaceful missions abroad brought tea and technology rather than fear of conquest, acts as a figurehead for this project. [13] Further reinforcing an emphasis on Chinese cultural diplomacy, the number of Confucius Institutes (CIs) in the US has increased dramatically, with establishments in approximately 100 educational institutions by April 2019 [14].

Whereas the year 1966 marked China’s ultimate rejection of its own history, Chinese contemporary diplomacy illustrates an attempt to instrumentalise that past to project traditional values of continuity and harmony. ‘The Chinese dream’ envisions a return to the glory of ancient Chinese civilization, encompassing the CCP’s attempt to overcome the ‘century of national humiliation’ that undermined China’s international standing. In the Pacific, this is achieved through ‘strategic partnerships’ with the Pacific Island Countries (PICs). Xi became the first Chinese president to visit Fiji in November 2014, announcing the decision to elevate China’s presently cooperative relationship with the PICs to a strategic partnership. [11] This has aided China’s growing diplomatic efforts considerably, resulting in its 8 diplomatic partners in the region reaffirming their support for the ‘One China’ policy. It is this participation in IGOs without normative surrender that the CCP believes will prevent a repetition of 1966’s domestic anarchy and international isolation. [11]

It is the turbulent factionalism of the Cultural Revolution that prevents China from employing a system of multiple parties holding office in rotation. On the eve of the CCP’s 90th birthday, the state-run Xinhua news agency explicitly claimed that adopting a western-style parliamentary democracy would risk a repetition of the internal disorder the country saw in 1966 [15]. The official state memory of 1966 does not associate political pluralism with legitimacy, but with fragmentation. Mao’s weakening of party and state institutions had created a power vacuum in which rival revolutionary factions competed for ideological supremacy. Political authority became decentralised and unstable, allowing extreme violence, public humiliation and denunciations at so-called ‘Speak Bitterness’ meetings to escalate unchecked. For Xi Jinping, therefore, whose adolescence was marked by his father’s denunciation as a ‘counter-revolutionary’ and subsequent exile, this decade demonstrated how quickly factionalism could collapse into social anarchy.

Conclusion

The year 1966 is often diminished to an example of the excesses of Maoist radicalism. Yet, for Xi Jinping and his generation, the Cultural Revolution is a living memory. It represents the years in which to reject a country’s traditional Confucian values of stability evidenced political cleanliness, when factionalism governed a decade and when China’s domestic collapse led to its own international isolation. The primary goal for Xi since his entry to the CCP has been to convince China’s neighbours that the turmoil of 1966 is now incapable of repeating itself. As a result, contemporary Chinese diplomacy, with its emphasis on narrative control and stability, reflects this fear. Though the Cultural Revolution has since been confronted and written into China’s national memory, the lessons it imparted continue to shape the structure and caution of Xi’s domestic and foreign policy. To understand China’s behaviour abroad, therefore, it is essential to understand how - and why - it remembers 1966.

Works Cited

[1] Braungart, R. (2023) ‘7 Youth Movements in the 1980s: a Global Perspective’, Youth Movements and Generational Politics, 19th-21st Centuries, pp. 145-168

[2] Bridgham, P. (1967) ‘Mao's "Cultural Revolution": Origin and Development’, The China Quarterly, No. 29, pp. 1-35

[3] Sutton, D. (1995) ‘Consuming Counterrevolution: The Ritual and Culture of Cannibalism in Wuxuan, Guangxi, China, May to July 1968’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 37, No. 1, pp. 136-172

[4] Andreas, J. (2002) ‘Battling over Political and Cultural Power during the Chinese Cultural Revolution’, Theory and Society, Vol. 31. No. 4, pp. 463-519

[5] Naftali, O. (2014) ‘Chinese Childhood in Conflict: Children, Gender, and Violence in China of the ‘Cultural Revolution’ Period (1966-1976)’, Oriens Extremus, Vol. 53, pp. 85-110

[6] Pan, Y. (2009) ‘From Red Guards to Thinking Individuals: China’s Youth in the Cultural Revolution’, Asia in World History: The Twentieth Century, Vol. 14, No. 3

[7] Tsou, T. (1969) ‘The Cultural Revolution and the Chinese Political System’, The China Quarterly, No. 38, pp. 63-91

[8] Chan, A. (2022) ‘Xi Jinping: Political Career, Governance, and Leadership, 1953-2018’, Chapter Two: Childhood and Youth: Privilege and Trauma, 1953–1979, pp. 17-42

[9] Walder, A. (2002) ‘Beijing Red Guard Factionalism: Social Interpretations Reconsidered’, The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 61, No. 2, pp. 437-471

[10] Robinson, T. (1972) ‘The Sino-Soviet Border Dispute: Background, Development, and the March 1969 Clashes’, The American Political Science Review, pp. 1175-1202

[11] Zhang, D. (2017) ‘China’s Diplomacy in the Pacific: Interests, Means and Implications’, Security Challenges, Vol, 13, No. 2, pp. 32-35

[12] Hoon, K. (1979) ‘Recent Developments in China-ASEAN Relations’, Southeast Asian Affairs, pp. 61-71

[13] Wang, Y. (2008) ‘Public Diplomacy and the Rise of Chinese Soft Power’, Public Diplomacy in a Changing World, Vol. 616, pp. 257-273

[14] Lunn, T. (2019), ‘Confucius Institutes in the United States: Selected Issues’, Congressional Research Service, pp. 1

[15] King, G. (2013) ‘How Censorship in China Allows Government Criticism but Silences Collective Expression’, American Political Science Review, pp. 1-2