The historiography of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution is as fascinating and controversial as the ten years of turbulence itself.  While there are numerous theories as to what ignited the Cultural Revolution, this essay will not add any more confusion to the fray.  Rather, it will analyze the wide range of literature that has been put forth by scholars and participants of the chaos.  More importantly, the “evolution” of the literature will be examined, and in doing so, I will attempt to outline some of the changes that has developed over the years.   

              There have been several theories on what exactly ignited the revolution.  Robert Jay Lifton’s Revolutionary Immortality and Edward Rice’s Mao’s Way pin Mao Zedong as the primary culprit of the chaos.  While Lifton offers a psychoanalytical approach, arguing that Mao wanted to make the revolution as a part of his “legacy,” Rice contends that Mao was power-hungry politician who “unleashed” Jiang Qing and mobilized China’s naïve youths to a path of self-destruction.  Lowell Dittmer’s Liu Shao-chi’s and the Chinese Cultural Revolution similarly views Mao as the principal architect of the revolution.  Disputing suggestions that the revolution was caused by the power struggle between Mao and Liu (and Deng Xiaoping), Dittmer argues that Mao’s reason for the turmoil was due to years of pent-up grievances he had suffered from critics since the Hundred Flowers Campaigns.   Hong Yung Lee’s The Politics of the Chinese Cultural Revolution likewise claims that of the seven “political actors,” that were involved, Mao stood out as the principal figure, for he was responsible for setting the entire process in motion.[1] 

In contrast to the views that high politics drove the revolution, Stanley Rosen’s Red Guard Factionalism and the Cultural Revolution focuses on grassroots politics, arguing that years of frustration suffered by Chinese youths inexorably exploded in 1966.  In particular, Rosen relates the factionalism that occurred during the chaos,[2] to years of rivalry and antagonism between youths of different class backgrounds prior to 1966. 

The problem with such theories is their narrow focus.  While Rosen is adamant that grassroots politics is to blame, Lifton, Rice, Dittmer, and Lee are fixated on Maoist politics and power struggles within the CCP, while virtually neglecting the Red Guards.  Perhaps with the benefit of several years of retrospection, Lynn White’s Policies of Chaos (1989) insists that there was no single explanation or single perpetrator that caused the revolution.  Linking both high and low politics and the interactions of all the different actors, White points out that “time and space” was an important factor, for frustrations experienced by both students and politicians accumulated simultaneously.  Consequently, the more territory the revolution had reached, the greater the violence became.

            Personal memoirs are another significant field of Cultural Revolution literature.  Yet, a closer examination into the chronology of the publications reveals a disparity in the participants’ points of views.  While Jack Chen’s Inside the Cultural Revolution avoids the destructive aspects of the disorder, and instead concentrates on the organizational aspects of the government bureaucracy, Liang Heng, Gao Yuan, Jung Chang, and Yang Rae accede in their biographies that the revolution was a regretful tragedy that not only wasted their youth, but also turned them into pessimists of Chinese politics.[3]  Part of the reason isds that Chen was already 51 years old and an ardent Maoist follower working at the CCP-run Beijing Review when the revolution broke out; more importantly, he never became a target of the Red Guards.[4]  In contrast, former Red Guards who personally suffered the violence have quite a negative remembrance of the revolution, and perhaps that is the reason why their literature is coloured with such biased and resentful opinions. 

            Not surprisingly, the significance of the Red Guards in the revolution is reflected in the vast amount of literature devoted to them.  Susan Shirk’s Competitive Comrades, Jonathan Unger’s Education Under Mao, and Stanley Rosen’s Red Guard Factionalism all explore the factors that led to the outbreak of the youth violence.  While Shirk examines the contradictions in the Communist educational evaluation system that resulted in great competition among youths and which subsequently led to intense rivalries during the revolution,[5] Unger and Rosen analyzes the class composition of these youths and similarly concur that students from good class backgrounds were often favoured in grading practices and university admissions.[6]  

David Raddock’s Political Behaviour of Adolescents in China and Mark Lupher’s “Revolutionary Little Red Devils” both examine the psychology of the Red Guards.  Raddock disputes the argument that peer rivalries had caused the violence in the revolution; rather, he contends that family played a more significant role, particularly the father-child relationship.[7]  On the other hand, Lupher views the revolutionary spirit of the Red Guards as a continuation of the May 4th Movement, for much of the plights of the youths prior to 1966 resembled those of the forebears in 1919.[8]      

Gordon White’s “Politics of the Hsia-Hsiang Youth” and Thomas Bernstein’s Up to the Mountains and Down to the Villages reveal that the hsia-hsiang rustication program was one of the primary reasons that caused such fierce competition in middle schools prior to 1966.  To counter over-urbanization, the central government instituted the program in 1960 to reallocate urban youths the countryside.  Even though the regime disguised its intentions by assuring youths that relocations were temporary and part of cultivating their socialist values, most youths realized that the assignments were often permanent.  White reveals that urban youths not only resented being a peasant, they ultimately feared its life of hardship, poverty, low status, and discrimination.  Bernstein’s study contends that the central government’s most ambitious goal of “resocializing” youths with propaganda campaigns failed, for many attempted to dodge their rural assignments.[9]      

            Geographical case studies are another significant area of Cultural Revolution (especially Red Guard) historiography.  While preliminary case studies did report on the initial Red Guard movement in Beijing,[10] a majority of research is limited to generalizations of national politics or relying on research from Guangdong.  In fact, Rosen, Unger, Shirk, Raddock, and Taylor’s studies are all based on interviews of former Guangzhou Red Guards émigrés in Hong Kong.  Since scholars did not have access to materials and participants due to the China’s isolation from the outside world, it is understandable that information about China was limited.  But as Wang Shaogang argues, such research cannot be truly representative of China.[11]   

            However, recent research has resolved this issue somewhat, for scholars have begun to examine the Cultural Revolution at the subnational level.[12]  Such studies reveal that the chaos in the PRC was not a homogenous process.   While Keith Forster’s Rebellion and Factionalism in a Chinese Province reveals that unrest in Zhejiang was caused by a power struggle between provincial authorities and the central government, W. Woody’s Cultural Revolution in Inner Mongolia points out that the disorder in Mongolia was caused by ethnic frictions between the Han and Mongal populations.  Another regional case study is Wang Shaogang’s Failure of Charisma, which examines the Cultural Revolution in Wuhan.  Similar to Forster and Woody’s studies, Wang’s study does not limit itself to the Red Guard movement.  In analyzing the micropolitics of the province-wide struggle, Wang reveals that the revolution had continued long after the conclusion of the Red Guard phase in 1969.  According to Wang, the factionalism that ravaged the Red Guards also influenced the work colleges, factories, hospitals, government agencies, as well as research institutions and did not end until the death of Mao in 1976.

            Although there is a great deal of research done on the Cultural Revolution, much of the literature focuses only its political aspects; “culture” is often overlooked.  Nevertheless, Roger Croizier’s China’s Cultural Legacy and Communism and Harriet and Stephanie Donald’s Picturing Power are devoted exclusively on the cultural aspects of the revolution.  But even though both studies are about culture, their methods of analysis are quite different.  Published in 1970, the articles in Croizier’s edition are quite critical about the Communist influences on Chinese culture.  In particular, the majority of authors concur lamentably about the destruction of traditional Chinese cuisine, operas, architecture, movies, religion, and music.  In contrast to the negativity expressed in Croizier’s volume, Harriet Evan and Stephanie Donald’s Picturing Powers has a less partial approach in examining the cultural remnants of the revolution.  In analyzing the “Big Word Posters” Dazibao, the authors argue that art was not designed purely for propaganda purposes; rather, they also divulge a great deal about the political, social, and economic realities of Maoist China.  Published fairly recently in 1999, the authors of the volume analyze art from a postmodernist angle, an approach quite different from Croizier’s.[13]  Hence, in deciphering the literature of the Cultural Revolution, it is fascinating to note the shifts in intellectual methodologies. 

            Perhaps even more intriguing are the “revisionist” studies about the Cultural Revolution.  Dongping Han’s The Unknown Cultural Revolution, William Joseph, Christine Wong, and David Zweig’s New Perspectives and Lee Feigon’s Mao: A Reinterpretation are emblematic of such shifts in opinions.  In contrast to earlier studies that disparage the results of the chaos, these authors dispute such claims and instead points out that many positives did transpire from the revolution.  Han asserts that most published accounts are written from the perspective of urban elites.  In examining the Cultural Revolution from a rural standpoint, Han argues that far from disaster, the revolution actually democratized village political culture and raised literacy rates throughout rural China.  As New Perspectives points out, the rural economy actually improved, partly due fact that the Red Guards were not permitted to spread the revolution to the countryside.[14]  Indeed, Feigon praises the Cultural Revolution as a huge success.  Not only did Chinese culture flourish, he boldly contends that the revolution ended bureaucratic corruption as well as gender inequality.[15]  Such diverging views inevitably reflect the controversy that continues to surround the ten years of turbulence.

            Hence, the historiography of the Cultural Revolution is as enthralling and contentious to academic scholars as the revolution itself.  In discussing the variety of research published since 1968, this essay has only sampled a small portion of material that exists.  There is huge vacuum of questions left untouched and waiting to be researched.  First, there still needs to be a comparative study on the revolution, for current subnational studies only focus on one province or city.  Second, much needs to be done on China’s “peripheral” regions: for example, to what extent was Xinjiang, Tibet, or Heilongjiang affected by the chaos that enveloped the central government?  Finally, survivors who escaped relatively unscathed have written much of the Red Guard biographies; however, there remain countless stories yet to be heard from the “silent majority” of victims either pressured into silence or are still in detention (in the rural hinterland or prisons).   Such queries are perhaps issues that future researchers can ponder more carefully.   

 


[1] The seven “political actors” being: 1) Mao; 2) Jiang Qing and the Cultural Revolution Small Group; 3) the CCP; 4) the PLA; 5) PRC government bureaucracy; 6) Rebel Red Guards; and 7) Conservative Red Guards.  Hong Yung Lee.  Politics of the Cultural Revolution.  Berkeley: University of California Press: 1978, pp.3-5.

[2] In particular, Rosen examines the “Red Guard Phase” which took place during the first three years of the violence between May 1966 and August 1969.

[3] Liang Heng Son of the Revolution, Gao Yuan Born Red, Jung Chang Wild Swans, and Yang Rae Spider Eaters.

[4] In fact, Chen reveals that he “willingly” participated in the revolution.  As well, he dubiously explains that he refuses to disclose “secrets” of the revolution, for it was a “violation of the discipline of the movement.”  Jack Chen.  Inside the Cultural Revolution.  New York: MacMillan Publishing: 1975, p.xxv 

[5] Unger examines the class composition of youths, and reveals that the chaos that ensued during the revolution was in fact a reflection of the rivalries that had developed during the 1960s between elementary and middle school youths

[6] “Good class” origins usually comprised of children of the cadres and workers, while “bad class” comprised of children from bourgeois and entrepreneurial families from pre-PRC China.

[7] According to Raddock, the more authoritarian the father, the less violent the son would be in the revolutionary struggles; in contrast, the more liberal-minded the father, the more likely the child would rebel against authorities.

[8] According to Lupher, the youths in both time periods faced similar paternalistic and authoritarian societal, governmental, and cultural constraints.  For example, Lupher points out the Confucian likeness of the Communist education system to the late imperial-early Republican system.  Youths in both periods faced intense competition in schools, as educational success was often the only means to move up the social ladder.   

[9] The state’s intention was to instill in the sent-down youths a sense of revolutionary pride; yet, it did not work, as urban youths intensely resented being a peasant.  In fact, many dodged  and successfully escaped from their rural assignments.  Thomas Bernstein.  Up to the Mountains Down to the Villages.  New Haven: Yale University Press: 1977, pp.5-9.

[10] William Hinton’s Hundred Day War examines the Cultural Revolution at Qinghua University, while Victor Nee studies the revolution at Peking University.

[11] Wang Shaogang.  Failure of Charisma.  New York: Oxford University Press: 1995, pp.2-3. 

[12] Keith Forster.  Rebellion and Factionalism in a Chinese Province.  New York: M.E. Sharpe: 1990, pp.1-2.

[13] Picturing Power takes a “postmodernist” approach, for it employs a great deal of Foucauldian theory, especially its emphasis of postmodern concepts such as breaking down “grandnarratives.”

In making this comparison, I believe that the postmodernism is a trend that is particularly popular trend in recent scholarship in the humanities and social sciences.  Picturing Power appears to be a representation of such an intellectual trend.

[14] Joseph, Christine Wong, and David Zweig.  “Introduction.”  eds., Joseph, Christine Wong, and David Zweig.  New Perspectives.  Cambridge: Harvard University Press: 1991, pp.3-5.

[15] Feigon argues that the revolution produced a new and stimulating synthesis of Eastern and Western art, while fusing traditional and modern aspects of Chinese culture into a unique and distinct form of Chinese sophistication.  Lee Feignon.  Mao: A Reinterpretation.  Chicago: Ivan R. Dee: 2002,  pp.146-150.