This essay will analyze the inherent flaws of the Chinese Communist educational system in the People’s Republic of China prior to the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (GPCR) in 1966. Because of the system’s discriminating selection process in addition to an already limited university admissions quota, cooperation often turned to competition and “careerism” – the very “capitalist” blemish the regime originally sought to exterminate when it came into power. Yet, further analysis of these flaws stems to the fact that the CCP’s theories on education often contradicted how it actually administrated its curriculum. Such an aggressive atmosphere culminated in a strong support base for the revolution in 1966. While many of the “good-class” urban high school students wanted to hold onto their advantaged positions, many of the “middle-class” and “bad-class”[1] students instead wanted to reverse the system. Consequently, an even more competitive environment emerged, one in which the factionalism created by academic, political, and class antagonisms prior to 1966 eventually translated onto the battlefields of the revolution in two distinct phases. This essay will focus on urban high school students from 1960 to 1966, and will attempt to analyze their roles as Red Guards during the early phase of the GPCR between 1966 and 1968.
The reasons for the students’ participation in the GPCR traces back to years of accumulated frustration, particularly for youths in the period after 1960. Because of the CCP’s rigid social structure, which limited opportunities for social mobility, most people sought ways to improve their lives within the system’s constraints. The prohibition against the accumulation of private wealth, particularly through income producing property forced most people seek turn high-wage positions as their chief path to material well-being.[2] Yet the attainment of a high income depended on one’s level of education, particularly in the scientific and technical fields; such jobs not only earned the highest wages, but also the steadiest tenures. Because education was consequential to one’s success, it inevitably produced frictions among students who competed to get into universities.
Political
Uncertainty
Under the centralized control of the CCP, the educational system often reflected the nation’s political landscape. Hence, to understand the tensions that were involved in the schools, it is also necessary to comprehend the changes that the political system experienced up to 1966. The regime essentially oscillated between two phases: the “bureaucratic phase” and the “campaign phase.” Periods of economic relaxations (1954-57 and 1961-1962) occurred in the bureaucratic phase, during which the regime’s main goal was to stimulate commerce and resuscitate a flailing economy.[3] In need of skilled workers and technicians, the CCP expanded school enrolments and urban job opportunities in order to facilitate these needs. To recruit the most talented individuals, other factors, namely political activism or class background, were relegated to secondary importance in favour of educational accomplishment.[4]
In contrast, the campaign phase occurred in periods when the CCP’s salient goals were to change political attitudes and to mobilize the masses. Such phases occurred during the Great Leap Forward campaign (1958-1960) as well as the Socialist Education Campaign (1963-64), when collectivization of agriculture as well as the socialist transformation of industry required mass political mobilization.[5] During these intervals, political performance and class background preceded academic performance in terms of importance.
Yet only a selected few from the top urban high schools, referred to as the key-point zhongdian schools, could realistically compete for university. In copying the Soviet style economic planning, the CCP leadership had created a hierarchical system that placed a heavy emphasis on producing experts, but marginalized the rest of the student populace.[6] After 1960, the new CCP vanguard, led by Deng Xiaoping and Liu Shaoqi, wanted to especially limit the growth of the urban industrial sector, while concurrently modernizing agriculture. Learning from the past mistakes of the First Five Year Plan and the Great Leap Forward, the CCP moulded a new educational system that stressed “quality over quantity,” which meant that universities were to produce well-trained experts, but only a limited number of them.
The policy from 1960 to 1966 was to restrict the growth of post-primary education by transferring the surplus of urban students to the rural area for agricultural work. Although the CCP cloaked its rustication program under the idealistic terms of “tempering” its youths to serve the nation better, the actual intent was to limit urban population growth and to prevent urban unemployment by absorbing manpower into the rural economy; at the same time, it would send educated people to help modernize the countryside.[7] While up to 1964 young people had been told they would be going to the countryside for only four years and would retain their urban residence cards, “volunteers,” or xia-xiang after this period were candidly told they would be going for life.[8] As a result, students wanted to go to universities not only for upward social mobility, but also to avoid being peasants for the rest of their lives. By the early 1960s, even “dead end” urban jobs in handicrafts or the service trades were more acceptable than becoming a xia-xiang youth, for at least they allowed an individual to stay in the city while he or she searched for better opportunities in the future. But in the countryside, the xia-xiang not only found it difficult to find jobs appropriate to their educational level, they were often discriminated against by the local youths, or the hui-xiang. If a xia-xiang got into a dispute with a peasant, the entire village would likely rally around to support the peasant.[9]
Dwindling Opportunities
The limited quotas that universities were allowed to admit each year likewise made competition stressful. Whereas there was plentiful spacing in high schools and universities after in the mid-1950s, high schools became increasingly crowded and swelled in numbers in the years leading up to the Cultural Revolution. There were two reasons why this occurred. First, because of rapid expansion of the urban elementary and high schools during the 1950s (as part of the Great Leap Forward development), universities were already satiated with students by 1960. Second, because of Mao Zedong’s indifference to birth control campaigns, the PRC’s teenager population was progressively increasing with each succeeding year. Yet the proliferation of the student population was not proportional to increases in university admissions. Whereas during the First Five Year Plan (1953 to 1957), when the CCP’s higher education program had called for more university entrants than were senior high school graduates available, the chances of high school youths going to universities dwindled dramatically by the late 1950s, for there was no further need for skilled workers other than for those retiring.[10] To make matters worse, universities tilted their admissions to students of “good-class” origins in accordance to the CCP’s re-emphasis of class background and political activism after 1963.
Growth of Education, 1949–1965
1949 1958 1965
Number of Primary Schools 347,000 777,000 682,000
Enrolment (millions) 24.4 86.4 116.2
Number of Secondary Schools 5,200 28,900 n/a
Enrolment (millions) 1.3 8.5 14.4
Number Universities/Colleges 205 791 434
Enrolment (millions) 0.12 0.66 0.67
Figure 1[11]
The figures above are quite telling about the dilemmas that youths were faced leading up to the Culture Revolution. Even though enrolments for primary schools rapidly increased from 1949 to 1965 due to the population boom in teenagers, enrolment spaces declined in secondary and in higher education between 1958 and 1965. This reveals that there was tremendous competition for youths not only to enter university, but as well as making it into high school. Hence, high school students were a privileged minority, for in 1965, only one out of five students in the PRC were enrolled in secondary schools.[12] However, as mentioned earlier, admission into high school did not guarantee a secure job. Even graduating from key-point schools did not assure university admittance. In 1965, only 45.56 percent of graduates from high schools went onto higher education, but this proportion accounted for only 1.4 percent of the total age cohort in the PRC.[13] It was almost impossible for graduates from other urban and rural high schools to compete for college admission or good city jobs with the key-point graduates. This favouritism consequently resulted in a severe backlash during the GPCR as they were condemned as “little treasure pagodas” which fostered “aristocratism” rather than “revolutionaries.”[14]
It is not an overstatement to argue that the CCP’s educational system prior to 1966 was a tense as the civil service examination system in imperial China. Because universities mainly assessed academic performance in a nation-wide examination, and less emphasis on course grades (because they varied across each province), the pressure to succeed in a single testing was reminiscent to a civil service exam. Moreover, because the CCP favoured class background, the children of party cadres had an inevitable advantage over all other applicants. Again, this is comparable to the civil examinations’ partiality towards children of the upper classes, whom had greater opportunities than the certain children.[15] Many students prior to the Cultural Revolution even asserted that the examination system in 1966 was no different than that of the “feudal past.”[16] The education system consequently produced the same atmosphere of academic “risk-taking” as in the Confucian system. Almost all students from every class looked to university as the main route to success, despite their awareness that their probability of success were as minute as their ancestors.[17] As opportunities for advancement diminished in the 1960s, the younger siblings of students of who were sent to the countryside as “volunteers” were aware that they only two choices of action: they could lower their sights and resolve to be peasants, or step up their own competitive efforts to succeed. [18] Most chose the latter route.
University and its Selection Criteria
The selection criteria of universities were a particularly fractious component of the university recruitment system, and as a result, they had adverse effects on the high school educational curriculum. If universities used academic performance as the sole criterion in admissions, then perhaps competition would not have become as fierce, for using academic performance for evaluation had no ambiguities. Grades were an unbiased measure of an individual’s aptitude, for it was impossible to “fake” knowledge.[19] Rather, it was the other two determinants, political behaviour and class background that created the most friction, for they were arbitrary and subjective measures.
Hence, the function of high schools as both recruiters for universities and as socializing agents that were supposed to indoctrinate students with socialist ideals was not only incompatible, it also caused confusion and tension among students.[20] In particular, the CCP wanted to mould its students into collectivists rather than individualists, for it considered collectivism a proletarian ideal, while individualism a capitalist blemish. Although it strove to motivate students to participate in cooperative political and intellectual activities, beneath the surface of compliance hid an informal society that did not conform to the Communist vision.[21]
Cooperation did occur, but mainly in labour and athletic activities, for those endeavours were rarely individual activities; rather, they required classes (or even the entire school) to compete as group. Activities such as winning a game or performing a song and dance required the cooperation of a team. More significantly, such activities were never graded in academic records; as a result, an individual’s performance was inconsequential in improving his or her future.[22]
Academic
Performance
However, academic performance was a different matter. Although the CCP stressed mutual aid, its curriculum and evaluation of coursework was organized individually, with no collective goal. If intellectual ability had been assessed only on the basis of the national entrance examination, then academic competition would have been diffused; but since course grades were also considered (but to a lesser extent), academic competition was “direct, constant, and zero-sum.”[23] Consequently, students usually studied only with peers of approximately equal ability in order to prevent others from gaining any advantages; in the case of those students with the highest grades, they often studied alone.
The problem of cheating was one of the major paradoxes of the educational system. Although teachers dedicated lectures on the moral superiority of cooperation, they did little to facilitate it. Students were encouraged and praised for lending a hand to a classmate in labour, but punished for sharing answers when working on academic assignments. But tensions appeared primarily in the public key-point schools, where cheating cases would damage students’ academic records; in contrast, collaboration and cheating were frequent in private high schools, for these students were generally excluded from competing for university admission.[24]
Political
Performance
Most students also chose to improve their resumes through political performance (biaoxian), for it was one of the three criteria used for university evaluations. It was an attractive alternative since it was an avenue in which most could, hypothetically, compete on an equal footing. The CCP especially encouraged its students to be politically active. As its official slogan advocated, “If one cannot choose one’s class origin, one can at least choose one’s future road.” [25]
However, biaoxian proved to be problematic in evaluation. Whereas class origin and academic achievement were straightforward and measurable, political performance was subjective. While it was difficult for the assessor to weigh the sincerity of a student’s performance, it was doubly difficult for the student to know when his or her “performance” was being assessed. As a result, political performance eventually intensified into “activism” (jiji xing), where almost all actions had a political connotation.[26] Even an act of help from one student to another had competitive meanings. From the perspective of recipients, mutual help often appeared as a hostile act that made them look bad. Receiving help often meant humiliation, particularly if the recipient could not reciprocate the deed.[27]
Consequently, group cohesiveness and friendship were difficult to develop under such chaotic conditions. The attempts of some students to build a good political reputation inevitably damaged the reputations of others. In particular, activists had to criticize others and renounce politically unreliable friends. Even the most minor details came into suspicion and scrutiny, especially in the 1960s. For example, where washing a fellow student’s clothes was once considered a sign of friendliness, was subsequently redefined by recipients as a self-interested, hostile act to further one’s political record.[28]
Entrance into the Youth Communist League (YCL) allowed students the greatest chance of entering university as well as respect by fellow peers, for membership into the YCL was closely linked to the CCP. Yet the YCL also caused hostilities among youths, for it encouraged an atmosphere of division and rivalry. Although the League advocated members to merge themselves with the all groups in order to socialize their members politically, in practice it kept members and non-members separated. Since only a small number gained entrance into the YCL, its members were singled out for positions of authority, which they often exerted over other students. They had the influence to not only grant and deny one’s entry into the YCL, they also helped the teachers prepare reports of all students to accompany their university applications.[29] Not surprisingly, League members often rejected applicants into the YCL from non-proletarian or good-class backgrounds.[30] But while non-activists feared being criticized by YCL members for their indifferent attitudes, YCL members likewise suffered similar attitudes, for relations with suspicious individuals could jeopardize their political standing.[31]
Some students used political
performance to their advantage, denigrating competition into outright
opportunism. Aspiring activists often
monopolized the opportunities for helpfulness so aggressively that their
classmates were prevented from demonstrating their own altruism.[32] “Feigned activism” was common, particularly
during the Lei Feng Self-Sacrifice Campaigns from 1964 to1965, for activists
rushed around washing everyone’s clothes, and giving away their shoes and other
possessions. Some even discriminated
against whose clothes they would wash; hence, such activists usually washed
clothes belonging only to YCL members in order to improve their political standing. There were even some that would burst out
with quotations from Chairman Mao during the night to claim that they had been
talking in their sleep. Moreover,
because students were aware that their entries could be randomly inspected by
the League, diary writing turned into an exhibition of opportunism as
candidates saturated their notebooks with pages of self-critism and devotion to
Chairman Mao and the Party (in the Lei Feng diary style); pages were often
propped open on their beds for passers-by to see.[33]
Class Background
Yet class origin was perhaps the most ambiguous criterion of the three; as a result, it produced animosities that would continue through into the GPCR. Not only did the concept of class line contradict with cooperation, it also diminished the legitimacy of political and academic performance, for individuals from the good-class were given special treatment.[34] On the one hand, the CCP stressed that as a socialist, one had to “put other people ahead of yourself,” while on the other it accentuated perpetual class struggle against bad-class elements, which were often vague and open to differing interpretations.[35] When these two theories clashed with each other, class struggle inexorably preceded altruism. Yet only activist students from good-class backgrounds were considered “sincere.” When individuals with bad-class backgrounds tried to rid themselves of their labels by becoming activists, most failed to win acceptance by the good-class students, and were even attacked as opportunists.
As Susan Shirk argues, the “Confucian lexicon” of subservience and order remained a strong social conviction in Chinese culture despite the CCP’s propaganda campaigns against traditional thought. Thus, most youths generally tolerated the hierarchical categorization.[36] Arrogance was so acute that some children of the party cadres refused to study altogether, for they were confident of getting into university on their parents’ credentials alone. Even if they did not choose university, most would be guaranteed a position in the People’s Liberation Army.
In reality, cadre children who resented academic competition were often of poorer academic quality. Because their red-class background, they entered key-point schools much easier than the rest; however, once they competed academically against their peers, even the above-average academic cadre student had to struggle to keep abreast with the other key-point students, who were recruited from the very best primary schools.[37] Hence, cadre-children often refused to accept academic performance, and instead argued that “political performance” was the authentic indicator of evaluation. And if the cadre-children failed to outmanoeuvre their colleagues in activism, they would fall back on their “red birth.” Many wore clothing handed down from their fathers to accentuate their class distinction.[38] But while the cadre-children looked down on their middle-class colleagues for their inferior backgrounds, the middle-class youths likewise did the same, as they looked down on the cadre-students’ second-rate academic records.
However, class was an indefinite concept that changed connotations whenever the CCP saw fit to increase its skilled workforce. Admissions into the YCL, hence, revealed how the CCP used “class” to its advantage. During the bureaucratic phases, when the country needed more skilled workers, the YCL took in many students of mediocre or even poor backgrounds because they had exceptional academic scores. The importance of academic performance not only preceded class background, it even counted as “political activism.” However, after 1963, in support of the CCP’s re-emphasis on class line, the YCL primarily recruited students of good-class backgrounds, so much so that the criterion of family background became interchangeable with political activism.[39]
Changing Patterns of Communist Youth League Enrolments (1962-1965)
1962-63 1963-64 1964-65
Party cadre 30% 32% 38%
Working-class 24% 26% 38%
Middle-class 37% 34% 21%
Bad-class 9% 8% 3%
Figure 2[40]
As the figures above reveal, the CYL increasingly favoured the good-class students of cadre and working-class backgrounds after 1963. Such an increase came at the expense of the middle-class and bad-class youths, which brewed widespread resentment.
As a result, by 1965, realizing that such abnormal trends caused dissatisfaction among the middle-class students, the CCP once more reversed its decree, and placed emphasis back to political and academic performance. In promoting its new line, it even complemented its existing “Lei Feng” model of a good-class peasant with the “Wang Jie” model, which featured a middle-class individual who repented his bourgeois ways and died a martyr. The party wanted to broaden its mass mobilization campaign to include political participation from the middle-class youths to coincide with the Lei Feng experiment.
Yet such shifts and counter-shifts in policy only exacerbated the already fractious atmosphere, for the good-class students resisted every time the political pendulum swung against their favour. The cadre-students, in particular, would break from this system during the Cultural Revolution, for they formed their own clique, the Red Guards, and turned against the YCL.
As a result, cleavages existed in the YCL prior to the GPCR. Cadre-children often formed their own friendship groups, while shunning members outside their own circle, for they believed that their own “natural redness” was superior to the other peasant-worker students, whom were mere “passive beneficiaries of the new order.”[41] At the same time, the cadre-children faced similar belittlement from the peasant and working class children, who felt that they possessed genuine “class feelings” and thus were more “red.”[42] Such resentments between these two groups were an ominous trend, for the same class cleavages would be translated into Red Guard factionalism during the GPCR, for many worker-youths deserted their cadre peers to ally with the contending Rebel Red Guards.
At the same time, bad-class and middle-class students were cornered into an awkward quandary. They faced alienation if they refused to “draw a line” against their parents, and renounce their bourgeois behaviour, as the CCP continually encouraged; yet they also lost respect if they did strongly condemn their parents, since they broke the code of filial loyalty by which most Chinese still abided.[43] Those who refused to play along in the petty activism, and instead concentrated on academics were further persecuted by their peers and stirred even greater resentment for their driving up the academic standards; sadly, they would be attacked during the first phase of the revolution for being “backward elements” that strove to become “white experts, not reds.”[44]
Because the CCP policies shifted so many times, students from all three classes held their own beliefs of the educational system; yet all were valid during one time or another prior to 1966. The good-class youths believed that class origins and political performance were the most crucial elements of the curricula, and thus adhered to the party policy between 1963-64. The middle-class students argued according to the Party line during 1964-65, in which it emphasized all three criteria and thus be both “red and expert.” As for the bad-class children, they believed that what counted for the revolution was economic progress; therefore, academic qualifications and producing the best skilled workforce was what mattered most. Because each class believed they were correct, they went into the Cultural Revolution not only to seek revenge against past injustices, they also wanted to amend the system so that they could serve the nation according to their viewpoints.[45]
Teachers
Teachers and school administrators also faced similar contradictions, but caught in a vulnerable position, they often added further strain to the students’ plights. Expected to be role models of self-collectivism, teachers also had great career incentives to stress academic success of their students, for promotions and raises depended on the success of their pupils’ academic records. When confronted with such a dilemma, most teachers and administrators opted for personal advancement rather than political jingoism. In fact, school administrators even competed to achieve a high rate of successful applicants to higher institutions.[46]
Moreover, some teachers already had a professional bias towards the intellectual rather than the political side of schooling. They often favoured those who were studious and obedient.[47] Because of a shortage of expert teachings, most pre-1949 teachers remained after the Communist takeover; consequently, those teachers were prejudiced against the peasant students for their unhygienic clothing and manners. A “counter-culture” formed between bourgeois teachers and those students who came from bourgeois families; hence, both groups adopted an indifferent attitude towards the regime.[48]
Therefore, factionalism not only occurred in the student population, it also materialized among teachers. The older generation of teachers opposed the younger, ideologically “red” teachers who favoured activists from proletarian families; likewise, the activist teachers detested the elders’ elitist attitudes. Both camps favoured students who were either “stars” of class background or academic achievement in order to enhance their teaching records. Yet the frequent replacement of teachers amplified the uncertainty and confusion, for a student might be a favoured pupil one day, yet fall out of favour the next.[49] As a result, this caused a backlash during the Cultural Revolution against the teachers, for students of both backgrounds sought retribution against them for their favouritism.
Cultural
Revolution
However, it is a mistake to believe that the Cultural Revolution was an unstructured burst of energy by a mass of restless students. Instead we must also account for the government’s role as well, particularly that of Mao Zedong’s, and how he tapped into the psyche of the discontented student population. Mao’s true concern was to destroy opponents within the established party, government, and military bureaucracies.[50] By the end of the Socialist Education Campaign in 1966, he realized his technique of mass mobilization had already lost its effectiveness. People had planned their lives to include the campaigns and temporary reversals they might bring. For Mao, the Cultural Revolution was an attempt to forge a new organizational weapon to replace the outworn style campaign; instead of a top-down hierarchical structure, it would be a grassroots movement with himself at the helm.[51] Hence, from the outset of the GPCR, every effort was made to emphasize the “spontaneous” nature of the Red Guard movement so as to showcase the insurgency as the “will of the masses.”[52]
His clique made every attempt at concealing evidence that the Red Guards were only serving their particular needs. Subsequently, because information regarding the structure and organization of the Red Guard movement was meagre, it has often led to an array of interpretations according to different commentators.[53] Although it is widely acknowledged that Mao Zedong used the Red Guards for his own political purposes, it is less known, but equally revealing, that the Red Guards in turn used Maoism as a weapon in carrying out their own rivalries.[54]
Yet to understand why the Red Guards joined in the violence so avidly, it is necessary to analyze the different motives behind the participant’s decision. The revolution gave students an opportunity to break out of their chains of political play-acting.[55] In particular, the revolution offered urban youths destined to be transferred to the countryside an opportunity to resolve, or at least “postpone” their inevitable outcomes. With universities constituting mostly YCL members, it was clear that the majority of youths outside this exclusive circle faced a bleak future.
More specifically, for the good-class students, the revolution was an opportunity to perpetuate their status in the existing system. They wanted to maintain their positions as leaders of the Youth movement, for after 1964, when the CCP line de-emphasized class origins, they were forced to share the reigns with middle-class youths.[56] Conversely, for the bad and middle-class students, the Cultural Revolution offered a chance to correct the imbalances that they had suffered from.
The movement was not a homogenous battlefield where the two sides ventilated their grievances. Instead, it was divided into two main segments, in which one side would overrun the other at one certain time. Even Zhou Enlai predicted in 1957 that such a youthful rebellion would occur if the nation’s educational system continued with its “bureaucratic ways.”[57] A decade later, Mao would tap into these grievances.
The good-class students, particularly children of the CCP cadres, were the first to attack the Beijing University administration. Hence, they initiated the first phase of the insurgency known as the “red terror,” which lasted from September to December 1966. Since their parents were of higher status than the school administrators and teachers, these students had little respect (and fear) of them; consequently, they became the first targets to be struggled against. Not surprisingly, class status was used as a pretext to justify their use of violence while attacking their opponents. Not only did they use their red-birth origins as clout to criticize their lesser-born peers, the insurgents also denounced the university authorities for emphasizing academic work over class and political behaviour while protecting the bad-class students.
Mao supported the campaign’s class-line and class-hatred overtones. In order to turn the heightened play upon “class” directly to their own interests, high-level cadre children in early June planned a petition to have the university entrance exams abolished, and replaced by admissions formula predominantly weighted on class background. Mao agreed and signed the petition, and within a week the proposal became official national policy. With classes dismissed and examinations suspended in August 1966, political activism and being “red” became elevated in importance. The bad and middle-class students did little to resist the cadre-children’s monopolization of power, for they knew they were in no position to refuse it. Rather, they focused on playing along in the class struggles lest they be struggled against as reactionaries, and quietly receded into the background, while waiting for the opportunity to come when they would take over the campaign.[58]
In the GPCR’s earliest phase, work teams of party cadres took complete control of most of the high schools, while pushing school administrators aside. Intent on directing the movement along Mao’s decree of “class lines,” they sought out students of good-class origins as their top aides. Such chaos rippled throughout the student populace, where high school Red Guards mushroomed throughout the urban high schools. Yet in impelling the bad and middle-class youths to participate in the “Destroy the Four Olds Campaign” which attacked traditional ideology, culture, habits and customs, the Red Guards were in reality elevating their class “purity,” while denigrating the esteem of the middle and good-class youths, who were forced to attack much of their own beliefs and vandalizing commodities similar to the ones their families owned at home. [59] Coupled with this traumatizing experience, they were especially resentful at being barred from travelling to Beijing to participate in the uprising.
In early August, students at several of Beijing’s key-point high schools formed their own groups, exclusively for children of “pure” origins, called the Red Guards. These students repudiated the YCL, where power had to be shared with youths from “non-red” backgrounds. With endorsement from the CCP, the Red Guards legitimized their cause on the “Bloodline Theory,” or xuetong lun. The theory eventually affected the high schools as well, for high school students from good-class origins took over the schools from the work teams. CCP members embraced the chaos enthusiastically, for it directed attention away from the bureaucracy (Mao’s intended target) and instead “downwards” towards class struggle.[60] Most of all, they knew that the Red Guards, comprised of cadre-children, would not turn against their own parents.[61] Hence, the official slogan became: “When the father’s a hero, the son’s a good fellow/ When the father’s a reactionary, the son’s a bastard.”[62]
Class divisions ironically appeared among the original Red Guards, for a hierarchical structure emerged; such a configuration would weaken their movement. Based on the purity of their redness, the high-level cadre children stood at the top of the Red Guard’s arrangement, while children of factory party members stood second, followed by worker-background youths, and with the peasant-background children at the bottom of the spectrum. To further accentuate the supremacy of their bloodlines, the cadre Red Guards subsequently composed a third couplet: “If the father’s ordinary, the son is a fence straddler.”[63]
In doing so, these cadre-children were essentially subjugating their worker-peasant colleagues. The couplet intentionally highlighted the fact that worker-peasant youths were a theoretically inferior rank compared to CCP cadres. High cadre youths even wore armbands of velvet or silk to further distinguish themselves from the “lesser-born” Red Guards.[64] Obsession with purity was so extreme that the Red Guard cadre youths conducted background checks on other students’ grandfathers, in campaigns called “investigating into three generations,” before they were convinced the student in question was of true worker-class origin.[65] Such discrimination, however, only resulted in the weakening of the original Red Guard movement as it deepened factionalism; in fact, the cadre Red Guards found themselves scrambling to regain the loyalty of the worker-peasant class youths later into the movement.
When Mao issued his “16 Points” on August 8, 1966, and encouraged all students to defy all school authorities, for they “must not be afraid of disorder,”[66] middle-class youths pounced on the opportunity to transfer the attacks on the work team supervisors, whom most felt were accomplices of the cadre-students. Although their attempt to shift the focus of the campaign away from class-line failed, it became a prelude of what was to come in subsequent months, when the power of the movement would shift away from the good-class to the middle-class students.[67]
The
Second Phase
Ironically by the autumn of 1966, Mao discounted the Bloodline Theory, and changed his the focus his attack to political rather than class struggle. To his alarm, Mao realized that the cadre Red Guards had erected a bureaucratic caste-like system that favoured themselves. But Mao’s main objective from the beginning was to eliminate bureaucracy, not the bourgeois class; he only used class as his pretext to mobilize the students.[68] He realized that although the good-class background Red Guards could be mobilized to attack lower-ranking teachers and Party secretaries, they could not be counted on to attack the CCP, for they were children of the very cadres he intended to overthrow.[69] Jiang Qing, the wife of Mao Zedong, led the charge as she reversed her previous slogan and instead changed it to: “When parents are revolutionaries, the sons should be their successors; when parents are reactionaries, their children should rebel.”[70] This allowed middle and bad-class students the opportunity to shed their class background and permitted them to seek vengeance against their oppressors, namely the Red Guards.
This abrupt shift of the political pendulum initiated the second phase of the Cultural Revolution. Unlike the unsuccessful attempt by some middle-class youths during July 1966, this second wave of insurgency by the “Rebel Red Guards” occurred with little resistance from the discredited cadre students. Ironically, the cadre Red Guards hastened their defeat when they lifted the ban and allowed students from all classes to travel to Beijing. They mistakenly believed that their “generosity” would lead to massive student reinforcements from the other urban schools.
Instead, the middle-class students, which formed the “Rebel Red Guards,” demanded the children of cadres to relinquish their positions of leadership in the Red Guard movement. Conveniently, the Rebels directed their attacks against the parents of the revolutionary-cadre youths, the bureaucracy Mao sanctioned to be eliminated. Elevating their cause to a higher “moral” quality than the previous cadre student movement, the Rebel Red Guards were the true “proletarian” activists.[71] Consequently, the Rebels even established their own headquarters in Beijing to counteract against the existing Red Guards in October 1966. With their power base depleted and no longer supported by Mao, the original Red Guards gradually disbanded in December 1966.
Factional Alignments According To Class Origins in
Guangzhou (1967) Good-class
Middle and Bad-class
Original Red Guards 81% 19%
Rebel Red Guards 26% 74%
Figure 1[72]
As the above figures for Red Guards in Guangzhou indicate, factionalism was not created purely on class lines according to the “good-class” and “bad-class” labelling; rather, crossover of loyalties occurred due earlier antagonisms caused by the Red Guards’ discrimination of the worker-peasant youths. Many of the children of working- class and peasants resented the monopolization of power by the cadre students, while being positioned at the very bottom of the pure-blood hierarchy.
The worker-peasant class ironically became an important commodity in the Red Guard struggle, for they were sought after from both the rebel Red Guards and the original Red Guards. Not surprisingly, both sides used class as the major rallying points. The cadre Red Guards used the “red-class” origins theory while the Rebel Red Guards employed the image of the proletarian “labourer class” as their major platforms to attract the worker-peasant youths.[73]
But it was the bad-class youths who suffered the greatest dilemmas throughout the strife leading up and including the Cultural Revolution. Not only were these students always the first to be targeted and abused, they were simultaneously told to denounce their background. Hence, while many avoided participating in the violence, many others revelled at the opportunity to vent years of pent-up anger. But much of their actions were for psychological rather than political or economic reasons.[74] In being oppressed their whole lives, these youths leapt at the chance to peel off their class status, which they resented immensely. Due to peer pressure, which was the most receptive at adolescence, these students felt demoralized as they were excluded from almost all social cliques. The GPCR opened a leeway for an uninhibited show of patriotism and activism for perhaps the first time in their lives; but most of all, they wanted to change the social class structure under which they suffered greatly. In many ways, active participation in the insurgency meant more for the bad-class than for the red-class youths.[75]
The violence created by the Red Guards subsided in February 1967, for Mao gave the People’s Liberation Army a major role in the political reconstruction of the CCP. The cadres Red Guards resurfaced in the political arena, while the Rebels receded into the background once again. They eventually acknowledged they had lost control of the struggle, for they christened Mao’s reversal the “February Adverse Current.”
Since the PLA comprised of good-class background individuals, they naturally became allies of the good-class students, and protected them from further attacks.[76] The middle-class resented this re-emergence of the class line that had initially excluded from full participation in the movement. Enraged, they found themselves relegated to second-class status once more. Their only hope for power rested with Mao’s backing, but since much of his political goals had already been achieved by 1968, he had no more use for the Radicals and thus refused to support them.[77] Although Radical-led insurgencies continued in 1968, Mao intervened each time and quashed the violence. “Workers” rather than “students” were officially designated as the main force of the Cultural Revolution. All Red Guards were instead criticized for having committed “errors” during the GPCR and hence, were ordered to return to school.
The months of violence proved to be a “lost cause” for most of the Red Guards from both factions. Not only did factionalism re-emerge in high schools, the rustication program also intensified. The majority of former Red Guards from all class backgrounds were sent to the countryside to make room for the next generation of high school students, for there was simply not enough space or resources to retain them. In Guangzhou alone, almost 75 percent of the city’s former high school students were assigned to the countryside in the winter of 1968-69, twice the number that had been transferred during the ten years before the GPCR.[78] Yet to fully understand the rustication program, it is necessary to probe further into the kinds of youths involved in the massive rural transfers.
Postings of Former Red Guards,
1968-1969
Entered PLA Not sent to Countryside Sent Countryside
Cadre 26% 42% 58%
Worker 12% 31% 69%
Intelligentsia- 0% 5% 95%
Middle class
Non-intelligentisa
Middle-class 0% 4% 96%
Overseas 0% 3% 97%
Bad-class 0% 1% 99%
Figure 3[79]
Hence, as the figures above reveal, even rustication had a strong class bias. Even though a great number of cadre and worker youths were sent to the countryside, quite a few managed to escape due to their class background in comparisons to the other classes. Such disparities and discriminations seem to beg the question of whether the PRC was as socialist as it claimed it to be. On the one hand, it promoted the selfless “socialist man” of a democratic society, but on the other, it sponsored blatant favouritism and partiality that seems to indicate otherwise.
Conclusion:
In focusing on youths from key-point urban high schools and universities from 1960 to 1966, this essay has examined the inherent flaws of the Chinese Communist educational that helped cultivate factionalism that played such a crucial role during Cultural Revolution. Because of the system’s inequitable selection procedure coupled with a very narrow university admissions allocation, cooperation was not only unfeasible, it instead denigrated into blatant competition. In particular, the selections criteria based on class origin, political activism and academic performance often blurred because of the CCP’s inconsistent policies. Hence, when Mao Zedong looked for an opportunity to restructure the CCP, the hostilities among the students offered the ideal political match to spark the outbreak of the Great Proletarian Revolution. Yet, in the end, the students seemed to be pawns of the insurgency. Not only did their factionalism go unsolved, most were sent to the countryside as the rustication program resumed. Unfortunately, for the next ten years, these former Red Guards would continue to be haunted by the consequences of their deeds.
[1]Jonathan Unger. Education Under Mao. (Columbia University Press: New York, 1982), p.13-15. “Good-class” origins were defined as revolutionary cadres, revolutionary martyrs, working-class, as well as poor peasants. “Middle-class” were classified as people of pre-Liberation peddlers and store merchants, and middle-peasants. Bad-class origins were individuals from rich peasants, Pre-Liberation landlord families, “capitalists,” and counter-revolutionaries against the CCP regime.
[2] Michael Oksenberg. “The Institutionalization of the Chinese
Communist Revolution:
The
Ladder of Success on the Eve of the Cultural Revolution.” China Quarterly. Number 36: (October/December, 1968), 71.
[3] Ibid., p.70. (Particularly
after the disastrous economic results caused after the Great Leap Forward
experiment.)
[4] Ibid., 70-71.
[5] Michael Oksenberg. “The Institutionalization of the Chinese
Communist Revolution:
The
Ladder of Success on the Eve of the Cultural Revolution.” China Quarterly. Number 36: (October/December, 1968),. p.70.
[6] Taylor, Robert. China’s Intellectual Dilemma. (University of British Columbia Press:
Vancouver, 1981).,p.18.
[7] Susan Shirk Susan. Competitive Comrades: Career Incentives and Student Strategies. (University of California Press: Berkeley, 1982).,p.29.
[8] Chan, Anita, Stanley Rosen,
and Jonathan Unger. “Students and Class
Warfare: The Social Roots of the Red
Guard Conflict in Guangzhou (Canton).” China
Quarterly. Number 83. (September, 1980).,p.400.
[9] Gordon White. “The Politices of Hsia-hsiang Youth.” China Quarterly. (July/August, 1974).,p.503-507.
[10] Susan Shirk. Competitive Comrades: Career Incentives and Student Strategies. (University of California Press: Berkeley,
1982).,p. 36.
[11] Ibid.,p. 25.
[12] Susan Shirk. Shirk, Susan
L. Competitive Comrades: Career Incentives and Student Strategies.
(University
of California Press: Berkeley, 1982).,p.25-27.
[13] Ibid.,p. 27-29.
[14] Ibid.,p. 32-35.
[15] Valerie Hansen,
Valerie. The Open Empire: A History
of China to 1600. (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2000.).,p.295.
(In
particular, children of the wealthy in the imperial era had the luxury of
paying for tutors and bribing examiners under the “shadow privilege.” In the PRC, instead of wealth, it was state
sanctions which gave good-class students and the children of the cadre an
upper-hand in the admissions process).
[16] John Israel. “The Red Guards
in Historical Perspective: Continuity
and Change in the Chinese Youth Movement.”
China Quarterly. Number
30 (April/June, 1967).,p.8.
[17] Susan Shirk. Competitive Comrades: Career Incentives and Student Strategies. (University of California Press: Berkeley,
1982).,p. 45.
[18] Ibid., 38.
[19] Ibid., 175.
[20] Susan Shirk Shirk, Susan
L. Competitive Comrades: Career Incentives and Student Strategies.
(University
of California Press: Berkeley, 1982).,p.,11.
[21] Ibid.,p. 154.
[22] Ibid.,p.160.
[23] Susan Shirk. Competitive Comrades: Career Incentives and Student Strategies. (University of California Press: Berkeley,
1982)., 161.
[24] Ibid., p.164.
[25]
Stanley Rosen. Red Guard Factionalism and the Cultural
Revolution in Guangzhou. (Canton).
Boulder: Westview Press, 1982.,
p. 68.
[26] Ibid., 68-69.
[27] Shirk, Susan L. Competitive Comrades: Career Incentives and Student Strategies.
(University
of California Press: Berkeley, 1982).,p.167.
[28] Ibid.,, 167.
[29] Chan, Anita, Stanley Rosen,
and Jonathan Unger. “Students and Class
Warfare: The Social Roots of the Red
Guard Conflict in Guangzhou (Canton).” China
Quarterly. Number 83. (September, 1980)., pp. 400.
[30] Susan Shirk. Competitive Comrades: Career Incentives and Student Strategies. (University of California Press: Berkeley,
1982).,p. 81.
[31] Ibid.,p.120.
[32] Ibid.,p.168.
[33] Chan, Anita, Stanley Rosen,
and Jonathan Unger. “Students and Class
Warfare: The Social Roots of the Red
Guard Conflict in Guangzhou (Canton).” China
Quarterly. Number 83. (September, 1980).,p. 410.
[34] Susan Shirk. Competitive Comrades: Career Incentives and Student Strategies. (University of California Press: Berkeley,
1982)., p.176.
[35] Ibid.,p.168.
[36] Susan Shirk, Susan L. Competitive Comrades: Career Incentives and Student Strategies. (University of California Press: Berkeley, 1982).,p.116.
[37] Chan, Anita, Stanley Rosen,
and Jonathan Unger. “Students and Class
Warfare: The Social Roots of the Red
Guard Conflict in Guangzhou (Canton).” China
Quarterly. Number 83. (September, 1980), pp., 410-413.
[38] Ibid., p.413.
[39] Stanley Rosen. Red Guard Factionalism and the Cultural
Revolution in Guangzhou (Canton).
(Boulder: Westview Press,
1982).,p.71.
[40] Chan, Anita, Stanley Rosen, and Jonathan Unger. “Students and Class Warfare: The Social Roots of the Red Guard Conflict in Guangzhou (Canton).” China Quarterly. Number 83. (September, 1980),,p. 417.
[41] Chan, 414.
[42] Jonathan Unger. Education Under Mao. (Columbia University Press: New York,
1982).,p.102.
[43] Jonathan Unger. Education Under Mao. (Columbia University Press: New York,
1982).,p.103.
[44] Ibid., p.415.
[45] Chan, Anita, Stanley Rosen,
and Jonathan Unger. “Students and Class
Warfare: The Social Roots of the Red
Guard Conflict in Guangzhou (Canton).” China
Quarterly. Number 83. (September, 1980).p.,415-417.
[46] Gordon White. “The Politices of Hsia-hsiang Youth.” China Quarterly. (July/August, 1974)., p.496.
[47] Susan Shirk. Competitive Comrades: Career Incentives and Student Strategies. (University of California Press: Berkeley,
1982)., p.170-172.
[48] Ibid.,p. 53.
[49] Susan Shirk. Competitive Comrades: Career Incentives and Student Strategies. (University of California Press: Berkeley, 1982)., p.173-176.
[50] Juliana Pennington Heaslet.
“The Red Guards: Instruments of
Destruction in the Cultural Revolution.”
Asian Survey. Number
12. (December, 1972).,p.1032.
[51] Michael Oksenberg. “The Institutionalization of the Chinese
Communist Revolution:
The
Ladder of Success on the Eve of the Cultural Revolution.” China Quarterly. Number 36: (October/December, 1968)., p.90.
[52] Heaslet., 1033.
[53] Ibid.,, 1033-1035.
[54] Julia Kwong. Cultural Revolution in China’s Schools: May 1966 – April 1969. (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1988).,p.87.
[55]
Chan, Anita, Stanley
Rosen, and Jonathan Unger. “Students
and Class Warfare: The Social Roots of
the Red Guard Conflict in Guangzhou (Canton).”
China Quarterly. Number
83. (September, 1980), pp 412.
[56] Jonathon Unger. Education Under Mao. (Columbia University Press: New York,
1982).,p.111.
[57] John Israel. “The Red Guards in Historical Perspective: Continuity and Change in the Chinese Youth Movement.” China Quarterly. Number 30 (April/June, 1967), p.5.
[58] Jonathon Unger. Education Under Mao. (Columbia University Press: New York,
1982).,p.114.
[59]
Chan, Anita, Stanley
Rosen, and Jonathan Unger. “Students
and Class Warfare: The Social Roots of
the Red Guard Conflict in Guangzhou (Canton).”
China Quarterly. Number
83. (September, 1980)., p. 430.
[60] Jonathon Unger. Education
Under Mao. Columbia University
Press: New York, 1982.,p. 122.
[61] Chan.,p. 430.
[62] Stanley Rosen. Red Guard Factionalism and the Cultural Revolution in Guangzhou (Canton) (Boulder: Westview Press, 1982).,p.111.
[63] Chan, Anita, Stanley Rosen,
and Jonathan Unger. “Students and Class
Warfare: The Social Roots of the Red
Guard Conflict in Guangzhou (Canton).” China
Quarterly. Number 83. (September, 1980), pp, 427.
[64] John Unger. Education Under Mao. (Columbia University Press: New York, 1982).,p. 120.
[65] Chan.,p. 428.
[66] Jonathon Unger. Education Under Mao. (Columbia University Press: New York, 1982).,p.116.
[67] Jonathon
Unger. Education Under Mao. (Columbia University Press:
New York, 1982)., 117-118.
[68] Ibid., 123.
[69]Suzanne Pepper. “Education.” The Cambridge History of China. Ed. Denis Twitchett and John K.
Fairbank.
Vol.
15. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991).,p.
548-550.
[70] Hong Yung Lee. “The Radical
Students in Kwangtung During the Cultural Revolution.” China Quarterley.
Number 60. (November/December, 1975).,p. 660.
[71] Jonathon Unger. Education Under Mao. (Columbia University Press: New York, 1982)., 125.
[72] Ibid.,p.126. Although figures are for Guangzhou only, such figures were typical trends of Red Guard factionalism throughout urban China.
[73] Chan, Anita, Stanley Rosen,
and Jonathan Unger. “Students and Class
Warfare: The Social Roots of the Red
Guard Conflict in Guangzhou (Canton).” China
Quarterly. Number 83. (September, 1980),p. 433.
[74] David Raddock. Political Behaviour of Adolescents in China: The Cultural Revolution in Kwangchow. (Tuscon: University of Arizona Press, 1977).,p.102-110.
[75] Raddock, David M. Political Behaviour of Adolescents in
China: The Cultural Revolution in
Kwangchow. (Tuscon: University of Arizona Press, 1977).,p.
170-174.
[76] Pepper, Suzanne. “Education.” The Cambridge History of China. Ed. Denis Twitchett and John K. Fairbank.
Vol. 15.
(New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1991).,p. 550-553.
[77] Ibid., 553-555.
[78] Stanley Rosen. Red Guard Factionalism and the Cultural
Revolution in Guangzhou (Canton).
(Boulder: Westview Press,
1982).,p. 247.