Learning From Mao's 'Nightmare' Youth Revolution In China

The Red Guards attacked intellectuals, destroyed cultural artefacts and persecuted“counter-revolutionaries” who held“bourgeois” values such as individualism and cultural elitism.

The Red Guards, workers and other rebel groups were prolific producers of dazibao, or“big-character posters.” These posters were often written to denounce teachers, officials or anyone seen as opposing Mao Zedong's revolutionary ideals.

Another social phenomenon was chuanlian: the widespread travel of Red Guards across China to exchange revolutionary ideas and spread Maoist propaganda. Endorsed by Mao himself, millions of young people used free train passes and government support to visit Red Guard groups in other major cities.

Chuanlian led to widespread disorder, the disruption of transport systems and the escalation of violent confrontations between rival Red Guard factions.

The years 1967–69 witnessed the most violent and chaotic phase of the Cultural Revolution. The movement spread from universities and the cultural realm to factories, rural areas and the public service sector in local governments.

Jaivin takes readers to Shanghai, Wuhan, Inner Mongolia – and then back to the campus of Tsinghua University in Beijing. We learn that public humiliation, beatings, torture and forced confessions were common.

Many people were imprisoned without trial, or were even driven to suicide. Violent clashes also occurred between rival Red Guard factions and later between civilians and the military, leading to the deaths of hundreds of thousands, possibly millions of people.

The following period, 1970–76, saw a number of transformative events, including the deaths of Premier Zhou Enlai in January 1976 and then Mao in September.

In 1971, Lin Biao suddenly exited the Chinese leadership. A close ally of Mao during the early years, Lin later rose to become his designated successor. In 1971, however, Mao grew suspicious of Lin's ambition. Lin fell from power under mysterious circumstances, after allegedly plotting a coup. He died in a plane crash in Mongolia while reportedly fleeing China, and the Chinese government later denounced him as a traitor.

Another turning point involved a curious encounter between some Chinese and American ping-pong players in 1971. This encounter led to the well-known ping-pong diplomacy that eventuated in the normalization of US–China relations, as marked by President Richard Nixon's visit to China in 1972.

In 1976, the Tangshan Earthquake , considered one of the worst natural disasters in recorded history, killed half of that city.

Like a scriptwriter for an epic historical film with an innate sense of the dramatic, Jaivin conjures up these historical moments.

The Cultural Revolution officially ended with the 1976 arrest of the“Gang of Four .” This is a group of four political figures – one of them Jiang Qing, Mao's wife – who were closely aligned with Mao and played a key role in promoting his ultra-leftist radical politics. It has cast a long shadow.

In the final pages of the book, Jaivin offers her summary of the Cultural Revolution this way:

And her assessment of Mao, the instigator of the Cultural Revolution, is equally concise:

One benchmark for the success of a short book on a“devilishly complex” topic is whether readers are left wanting to know more. Measured against this benchmark, Jaivin has certainly succeeded. For this reader, the book provokes many questions.

What was the psychology behind the mass hysteria of the Red Guards, and what led them to commit acts of violence that call to mind what Hannah Arendt dubbed“the banality of evil”? What lessons can we learn about the dangers of personality cults and the worship of authoritarian dictators – which, in the case of Mao and numerous others throughout history, has enabled a single strong man (most often it is a man) to consolidate authority, suppress opposition and legitimise his dominance for many years?

Another benchmark for the success of a book dealing with collective traumas with lasting impacts is whether readers can still enjoy reading the book, without being overwhelmed by its seriousness.

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Jaivin by no means makes light of the massive scale of violence, death and human suffering inflicted by the Cultural Revolution. But she approaches her topic as an epic tale featuring Mao as the central figure, with a big cast of characters including party leaders, the Gang of Four, the Red Guards and rebels and prominent victims.

The human drama of the power struggles and power plays involving these characters is gripping and disturbing in equal measure. Jaivin has a gift for keeping her readers engaged.

The book will appeal to a number of different readerships. For those in the Chinese diaspora who experienced the Cultural Revolution firsthand, it is a chance to relive the nightmare, but in the comfort of knowing it is now firmly in the past – as long we remain alert to the risk of history repeating itself.

For non-Chinese readers, Jaivin's narrative flair and sense of drama give new life to what is almost certainly the sorriest period in recent Chinese history.

Wanning Sun is a professor of media and cultural studies, University of Technology Sydney .

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article .

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