Settling Accounts with the Cultural Revolution at Beijing University 1977–78

1980 ◽  
Vol 82 ◽  
pp. 308-333 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robin Munro
Keyword(s):  
University Students ◽  
Educational Policy ◽  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
New Approach ◽  
The Status ◽  
Student Enrolment ◽  
The Masses ◽  
The Cultural Revolution

The purpose of this report is to focus upon two events of some significance that took place at Beijing University (Beida) between late November 1977 and 1978. The first of these was a spontaneous, grassroots polemic concerning an innovation of the Cultural Revolution period. At issue was the radically new approach to the problem of rearing new generations of proletarian intellectuals, namely, the “worker-peasant-soldiers7” student enrolment policy, whereby university students were selected through recommendation by the masses instead of on the basis of examination results. This polemic constituted an uninvited interlude in the carrying out at Beida of the nationwide “third campaign” in the criticism of the “gang of four,” and focused upon the problem of how, in the light of recent changes in educational policy, the status of worker-peasant-soldier students was to be evaluated.

The Radical Students in Kwangtung during the Cultural Revolution

1975 ◽  
Vol 64 ◽  
pp. 645-683 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hong Yung Lee
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Political System ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Distinctive Character ◽  
The Status ◽  
Future Direction ◽  
The Masses ◽  
Self Examination ◽  
The Cultural Revolution

The Cultural Revolution was a large-scale self-examination by the Chinese of their political system, involving all the ruling groups as well as the whole population. Not only specific policy issues but also social. economic and political institutions and their value premises were subjected to this examination. Hoping to reverse the trend towards social restratification based on Party bureaucratism, Mao sought to build a mass consensus on the future direction of the revolution. However, in the process of “freely mobilizing the masses,” some social groups found that their interests called for a radical restructuring of the Chinese political system, while those of others lay in the status quo. As the Cultural Revolution (CR) unfolded, the masses and the elite further divided among themselves over the various issues: elite groupings took conservative or radical positions, and formed coalitions with corresponding sections of the masses. Consequently, the division between the radicals and the conservatives cut through both the elite and the masses and set in motion forces that gave the Cultural Revolution its distinctive character.

Chinese Art of the Cultural Revolution

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
William H. Ma
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Mao Zedong ◽  
Chinese Art ◽  
Political Propaganda ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Cultural Sites ◽  
The Masses ◽  
Visual Materials ◽  
The Cultural Revolution

The art of the Cultural Revolution in China, created during the ten-year period from 1967 to 1977, includes a large variety of visual materials in different media. Generally characterized by unambiguous and heroic images that appealed to the masses, these artworks became powerful tools of political propaganda. Most scholars attribute the beginning of the Cultural Revolution to the 1965 play HaiRui Dismissed from Office. Written by Wu Han, a local Communist official, the play was a thinly veiled critique of Mao Zedong. Though semi-retired in the early 1960s, Mao was determined to hold on to power by launching a new revolution to reawaken young Chinese people and root out the counterrevolutionary and anti-proletarian elements in society. Under Mao’s directive, people, places, and things representing the Four Olds (Old Customs, Old Culture, Old Habits, and Old Ideas) were targeted and violently attacked by young people wearing red armbands and carrying the Little Red Book, a collection of quotes by Mao. Party officials, teachers, professors, authors, and artists had their homes raided and were publically dragged out by the Red Guards for public humiliation. In addition, historical and cultural sites were desecrated and vandalized. While the real violence only lasted the first few years, it set the tone of militarism and revolutionary fervor for the next decade, which permeated through all the arts.

Psychiatric Concepts and Treatment in China

1976 ◽  
Vol 66 ◽  
pp. 315-323 ◽  
Author(s):  
Seymour S. Kety
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Medical Journal ◽  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
American Psychiatric Association ◽  
Chinese Journal ◽  
The West ◽  
Primary Literature ◽  
The Status ◽  
Exchange Visit ◽  
The Cultural Revolution

There is practically no knowledge in the west regarding the status of psychiatry in the People's Republic since the time of the Cultural Revolution. The three publications on Chinese psychiatry that I was able to find, all of which are based largely upon the primary literature, terminate abruptly at the Cultural Revolution. At that time the Chinese Journal of Neurology and Psychiatrystopped publication and has not been reinstituted. The only medical journal which has begun publication, the China Medical Journal, carries occasional papers in neurology but thus far there have been none in psychiatry. A group of American psychiatrists who had been hoping to participate in an exchange visit to China under the auspices of the National Institute of Mental Health and the American Psychiatric Association had not succeeded in making the necessary contacts, and were in fact unable to give me the names of any Chinese psychiatrists in responsible positions.

scholarly journals Bending the Arc of Chinese History: The Cultural Revolution's Paradoxical Legacy

2016 ◽  
Vol 227 ◽  
pp. 613-631
Author(s):  
Andrew G. Walder
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Central Government ◽  
The United States ◽  
Chinese History ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Status ◽  
Political Foundations ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Cultural Revolution

AbstractContrary to its initiators’ intentions, the Cultural Revolution laid political foundations for a transition to a market-oriented economy whilst also creating circumstances that helped to ensure the cohesion and survival of China's Soviet-style party-state. The Cultural Revolution left the Chinese Communist Party and civilian state structures weak and in flux, and drastically weakened entrenched bureaucratic interests that might have blocked market reform. The weakening of central government structures created a decentralized planned economy, the regional and local leaders of which were receptive to initial market-oriented opportunities. The economic and technological backwardness fostered by the Cultural Revolution left little support for maintaining the status quo. Mao put Deng Xiaoping in charge of rebuilding the Party and economy briefly in the mid-1970s before purging him a second time, inadvertently making him the standard-bearer for post-Mao rebuilding and recovery. Mutual animosities with the Soviet Union provoked by Maoist polemics led to a surprising strategic turn to the United States and other Western countries in the early 1970s. The resulting economic and political ties subsequently advanced the agenda of reform and opening. China's first post-Mao decade was therefore one of rebuilding and renewal under a pre-eminent leader who was able to overcome opposition to a new course. The impact of this legacy becomes especially clear when contrasted with the Soviet Union in the 1980s, where political circumstances were starkly different, and where Gorbachev's attempts to implement similar changes in the face of entrenched bureaucratic opposition led to the collapse and dismemberment of the Soviet state.

The Cultural Revolution, Soviet Mentality, and the Order of Discourse

2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 221-250
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Initial Position ◽  
Material Force ◽  
Active Involvement ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Creative Force ◽  
Object Of Study ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Masses ◽  
The Cultural Revolution

One of the main topics of theoretical discussions following 1968 was raised by Michel Foucault, who argued for the formative role of discourse - that discourse has regulating effects that extend not only to the structure of utterances, but also to speakers themselves. The shift in viewpoint that Foucault accomplished has provided a way to see discourse not only as a medium of power, but as power itself, a power that generates the subjectivity of those who use or gain access to use of a given discourse. Recognizing this power in discourse enabled Foucault to overturn the traditional conception of the individual as the ontological source of speech (“the creative force determining the initial position of writing”) and to redefine it as a function of the utterance itself that guarantees grammatical unity and the conceptual and stylistic cohesion of speech. This analytical perspective is applicable to the historical materials on the debates about the paths and methods of the Soviet cultural revolution that the victorious proletariat should employ in order to shore up the social victory of October 1917. The problems confronting Soviet theoreticians and agents of the cultural revolution had much in common with those that would be conceptualized later on in discussions from the 1970s and 1980s. The form of assimilation of this normative order and the mechanisms of ideological Interpellation, which imply the active involvement of Soviet citizens in production of discourses, are the central topics in this examination as they provide insight into how an idea becomes a material force and how it captures the masses. The immediate object of study is the worker and village correspondent (rabkor and selkor) movement of the 1920s as well as its understanding by theorists of the Left Front of the Arts

Thought Reform and Cultural Revolution: An Analysis of the Symbolism of Chinese Polemics

1977 ◽  
Vol 71 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-85 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lowell Dittmer
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Educational Achievement ◽  
Cultural Transformation ◽  
Social Categories ◽  
Major Purpose ◽  
Thought Reform ◽  
The Masses ◽  
Chinese Political Culture ◽  
The Cultural Revolution

Although the major purpose of the Cultural Revolution was to transform Chinese political culture, the way in which this transformation took place has remained unclear. This paper attempts to understand cultural transformation as a process of interaction within a semiological system, consisting of a network of communicators and a lexicon of political symbols. The pragmatic aspect of this process is the outcome of an interplay among the intentions of the elites, the masses, and the target of criticism: political circumstances during the Cultural Revolution were more benign to the cathartic and hortatory intentions of the masses and elites than to the expiatory needs of the target. The syntactic aspect of the system concerns the relationship among symbols: These were found to form a dichotomous structure divided by a taboo barrier, which elicited strong but ambivalent desires to achieve a revolutionary breakthrough. The semantic aspect of the symbolism refers to problematic dimensions of experience in Chinese political culture–the psychological repression imposed by a system of rigid social censorship, the political discrimination practiced against certain social categories, the persistence of differences in income or educational achievement in a socialist system–and suggests that these “contradictions” may be resolved by bold frontal assault.The symbolism of Cultural Revolution polemics has now become part of Chinese political culture. Its impact seems to have been to inhibit social differentiation (particularly hierarchical), to encourage greater mass participation, and to foster more frequent and irreconcilable conflict among elites.

The State Council and the Cultural Revolution

1968 ◽  
Vol 35 ◽  
pp. 78-95 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donald W. Klein
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Quantitative Assessment ◽  
Focal Point ◽  
The State ◽  
Entire Body ◽  
State Council ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Cultural Revolution

This article attempts to explore the status of the leading personnel in the State Council since the advent of the Cultural Revolution. The State Council, of course, contains some of Peking's most famous personalities—such as Chou En-lai and Lin Piao—but my purpose here is to ignore for the most part the famed leaders and, rather, to dwell on a quantitative assessment of the entire body of 366 persons who were (in 1966) ministers and vice-ministers and chairmen of China's 49 ministries and commissions. One might also describe this as a study of the focal point of “experts” in China, even though it is clear that the State Council does not have a monopoly on China's “expert” talents.

Big Democracy

2019 ◽  
pp. 99-127
Author(s):  
Joel Andreas
Keyword(s):  
Political Participation ◽  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Party Organization ◽  
Party Leadership ◽  
Rebel Groups ◽  
The Masses ◽  
Local Party ◽  
The Cultural Revolution

Chapter 5 recounts the initial upheavals of the Cultural Revolution, when Mao called on workers to form “rebel” organizations to challenge the authority of the party leadership in their factories. Mao called this unbridled political participation “Big Democracy,” which he contrasted to more civil and institutionalized forms. By fomenting a movement independent of the party organization and loyal to no one but himself, Mao was able to introduce greater autonomy into mass supervision, with lasting consequences for cadre behavior. Local party cadres were criticized for abusing their power, seeking privileges, suppressing criticism from below, isolating themselves from the masses, and governing in a bureaucratic fashion. Virtually all were thrown out of office, and rebel groups were invited to help decide who among them were fit to be rehabilitated. After the party organization was paralyzed, however, factories polarized into rebel and conservative camps and the country descended into increasingly violent factional contention.

Huxian’s Foolish Old Men Create New Scenes: Huxian Peasant Paintings from the Cultural Revolution and their Ideological Discourses

1969 ◽  
pp. 44-67
Author(s):  
Dean Ashton
Keyword(s):  
Communist Party ◽  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Chinese Communist Party ◽  
Rural China ◽  
Discursive Formation ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
The Masses ◽  
Professional Artists ◽  
Old Men ◽  
The Cultural Revolution

Huxian Peasant Paintings are a product of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Ostensibly painted by peasant amateur artists, they depict idealized peasants in rural China. The paintings were reproduced in large numbers and distributed as posters for the masses. Further evidence has shown that the amateur artists were in fact given detailed training by professional artists under the guidance of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). This paper seeks to analyze the images as important political texts from the Cultural Revolution because of the influence of the CCP. Using discourse analysis, this paper argues that these posters are an important discursive formation that allowed the CCP to transmit ideology to a largely illiterate or semiliterate rural population.

The Cultural Revolution and the Chinese Political System

1969 ◽  
Vol 38 ◽  
pp. 63-91 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tang Tsou
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Political System ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Political Organization ◽  
Differential Distribution ◽  
Clear Cut ◽  
History Of ◽  
Distribution Of Power ◽  
The Masses ◽  
The Cultural Revolution

One of the most extraordinary and puzzling events of the twentieth century is surely the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China. This most profound crisis in the history of the Peking regime provides us with the best available opportunity to study the Chinese political system. For it is during a crisis that the nature, the strength, and the vulnerabilities of a political system fully reveal themselves. Further-more, we can attempt not only to note the unique features of this extraordinary event, and of Chinese politics itself, but also to see whether the seemingly unique Chinese experience does not reveal some universal dilemma of the human condition and fundamental problems of the socio-political order in a magnified and easily recognizable form. It is my belief that the Chinese political system prior to the Cultural Revolution is one of the purest forms found in human experience of a type of association in which there is a clear-cut separation between the elite and the masses. If one follows Ralf Dahrendorf in asserting that in every social organization there is a differential distribution of power and authority, a division involving domination and subjection, the Chinese political system can be taken as one of the polar examples of all social organizations, showing clearly their possibilities and limitations, their problems and dilemmas. From this perspective, the Maoist vision as it has revealed itself in its extreme form during the early phases of the Cultural Revolution can be considered a critique of this type of political organization.

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