Exactly 50 years ago today, on May 16, 1966, the Chinese Communist Party, under the influence of Chairman Mao Zedong, released what came to be known as the May 16 Notification:
“Those representatives of the bourgeoisie who have sneaked into the Party, the government, the army, and various spheres of culture are a bunch of counter-revolutionary revisionists. Once conditions are ripe, they will seize political power and turn the dictatorship of the proletariat into a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.”
This statement is seen by historians as the words that justified and ushered in the subsequent ten-year period of terror, death and anarchy in China known as a the Cultural Revolution.
Mao Zedong and the communist swept into power in China after WWII. In the 1950’s, his Great Leap Forward program, seeking to organize farmers into communes, was a total disaster leading to a famine and the death of about 45 million people between 1958-61. This led to Mao loosing power in the party.
Away from the limelight, he plotted how to regain power and bring his pure brand of communism or Maoism to the fore. His plan was to use young people to force societal change. Even though the opening salvoes of the Cultural Revolution were fired with the May 16 Notification, the violence really started in August of 1966.
He empowered teenagers and students, who came to be known as the Red Guard to go after “the Four Olds” – Ideas, Customs, Culture and Habits. Armed with a book of Mao quotes called “the Little Red Book” and lots of zeal, what followed till Mao died in 1976 was hordes of young people attacking anyone who they deemed as being bourgeoisie. They went after university professors, then party officials and then “class enemies”. Some even turned on their own parents. There were mass killings. Sometimes gangs of Red Guards battled each other. They destroyed historical sites and cultural relics. Even cats, seen as pets of the bourgeoisie, were not spared. It looked like they sought to remove the spirit of Confucius from the collective psyche of the Chinese society.
Mao let the Red Guards run amok until the atrocities got too much. In 1968, he sent the army after them, further escalating a terrible situation. Millions were killed. Some were rounded up and sent to work in the fields in the country (the sent-down youth).
The cultural revolution ended in 1976 when Mao died. In an effort not to discredit Mao, scapegoats were sought for the debacle. They turned out to be the Gang of Four – Mao’s wife and three other men. They underwent sham trials and were imprisoned.
The ten years of terror achieved the opposite effect that Mao sought – the Chinese became disillusioned with communism. When Deng Xiaoping, who had been purged twice by the Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution came into power 7 years later, his push towards reforms that pushed China towards capitalism were widely embraced.
Myriad lessons can be learnt from this period in history – the negatives of communism, the results of dictatorship, the risks of brainwashing the youth and so on.
For me, it brings to fore the importance of the Four Olds – ideas, customs, culture and habits. These four factors underpin any society. Without them, a society has no character and cohesiveness. Sure, one or more of these can be a drag on development. This is seen especially in a lot of developing countries where cultural practices and centuries-old habits seem to hinder modern development sometimes. However, a drastic societal uprooting of any of these leaves a vacuum that is often not easily filled and can lead to anarchy. Maybe instead of aiming for a dramatic removal, one should target modification. Maybe one should tailor policies to include some of these ideas, customs, culture and habits.