Impact of the Cultural Revolution

Question 1

Impact on the CCP: What happened to Liu Shaoqi during the Cultural Revolution?

Answer 1

Purged, He and his wife were beaten, humiliated and tortured. Stripped of his posts and imprisoned; denied medical care and died in a prison cell in 1969.

Question 2

Impact on the CCP: What happened to Deng Xiaoping during the Cultural Revolution?

Answer 2

Purged in 1969, sent to a tractor factory in Jiangxi to live as an ordinary worker.

Question 3

Impact on the CCP: What % of party cadres were purged?

Answer 3

Around 66.6% (2/3)
70% of provincial and regional officials were purged.
Over 60% of higher officials lost their jobs
At a local level, 20% of the party bureaucracy were labelled as ‘revisionists’ or as ‘persons in authority taking the capitalist road’

Question 4

Impact on the CCP: What were Seventh Cadre Schools? How many were sent there?

Answer 4

3 million cadres were sent to May 7th cadre schools where they were forced to undertake hard physical labour and intense ideological study

Question 5

Impact on the CCP: How many Politburo members survived?

Answer 5

9 members out of 23 of the politburo survived

Question 6

Impact on the CCP: What was the long term impact of the Cultural Revolution on the CCP?

Answer 6

The new party members were less well educated, less experienced and more likely to be slavish adherents of Mao.

Question 7

Impact on cities: How did life change for ordinary citizens in urban areas during the Cultural
Revolution? Give some examples.

Answer 7

People in workplaces bow to Mao three times a day.
Pedestrians who were accused of wearing the “wrong” clothes or hairstyles were victims.
Those who were suspected of a Bourgeois background were targeted by Red Guards (Nien Cheng accused of hiding valuables which was a “counter revolutionary” crime - She was then imprisoned in solitary confinement).

Question 8

Impact on Cities: What % of private homes were entered and searched by the Red Guards in
the autumn of 1966?

Answer 8

33.3% (⅓)

Question 9

Impacts on Cities: What effect did the Cultural Revolution have on industrial output?

Answer 9

Industrial production fell: Total output fell by 13% during 1967 due to disruption of work

• There was a further fall in 1968
• By 1969, industrial output recovered to the levels achieved in 1966
• By 1971 the Chinese economy had been able to resume steady growth

Question 10

Impact on Rural Areas: Which parts of the countryside were affected by the Cultural Revolution?
Which were not?

Answer 10

• In rural areas close to the cities, peasants were more likely to get involved in “revolutionary action”
• Nearly ⅔ of all places where “rural disorder” was reported between July 1966 - December 1968 were within 50km (30 miles) of large cities. The countryside around Beijing , Shanghai and Guangzhou witness the most revolutionary activity.
• Countryside was untouched by violence and disruption during the CR.
• Especially in remote areas: Little Red Guard activity and peasants were not drawn into the power struggle

Question 11

Impact on Rural Areas: What effect did the Cultural Revolution have on agricultural output?

Answer 11

• Agricultural output declined in the early stages of the CR. Grain production fell in 1966 and 1967 and even more in 1968.
• Poor weather was a major factor in 1968.
• By 1969, grain production had regained the level in 1966 and continued to rise in the later years.
• As with industry, the impact of the Cultural Revolution on agriculture was short-lived and limited

Question 12

Impact on Rural Areas: How did healthcare in rural areas improve during the Cultural Revolution?

Answer 12

• After 1966 the emphasis of health was shifted to the countryside.
• In 1968, a rural cooperative medical scheme was introduced at the commune level. ‘Barefoot doctors’, (including Jung Chang) who were essentially paramedics with less training, were introduced to provide basic health care. ‘Rustification’

Question 13

Impact on Culture: What happened to libraries and museums during the Cultural Revolution?
Books? Theatres and cinemas?

Answer 13

• Theatres and cinemas were only allowed to put on ‘revolutionary’ plays and films.
• Sale of traditional and foreign literature was banned and a counter-revolutionary crime.
• Libraries and museums were closed and their valuable collections of books and artefacts damaged or dispersed by the Red Guards. Books were piled high in town squares and set on fire in symbolic acts of destruction of ‘old’ culture.

Question 14

Impact on Culture: What role did Jiang Qing play in reshaping Chinese culture?

Answer 14

• Jiang Qing specifically ordered Red Guards from Beijing to travel to Shandong and desecrate the museum dedicated to Confucius, who symbolised traditional Chinese culture. ‘Confucius and Co.’ became, during the Cultural Revolution, a convenient label for everything that belonged to the past in Chinese culture and therefore a legitimate target for attack.
• Those who had known her personally in those years, or who had evidence about her former life, were selected as targets for persecution.

Question 15

Impact on Culture: How did artists, writers and intellectuals respond to the Cultural Revolution?

Answer 15

• Forced to serve propaganda purposes
• Some fled and others were killed.
• cowed my terror and fear of denunciation, writers, -painters and musicians either towed the party line or stopped producing

Question 16

Impact on Culture: How did this impact ordinary citizens?

Answer 16

Had to conform to Jang Qing’s standards of culture and didn’t have much entertainment

Question 17

Impact on Education and young people: How were teachers impacted during the Cultural Revolution?

Answer 17

Teachers were first victims - primarily responsible for instilling ideas and knowledge.
18 June 1966, many teachers of Beijing University were dragged out of their classes, beatened, blackened faces and dunce’s caps. This spread to other institutions and other cities.

Question 18

Impact on Education and young people: Which institutions were closed?

Answer 18

• Summer 1966, all universities closed for two years.

- Between Autumn 1966 and Spring 1967, Middle schools were closed.

Question 19

Impact on Education and young people: What was the Rustication campaign?

Answer 19

Beginning in the 1950s, youth from urban areas were organised to move to rural countryside to work and be educated by the local peasants.

Question 20

Impact on Education and young people: What was the short term impact of the interruption in education on young
People?

Answer 20

Had nothing else to do except join the Red Guards

Question 21

Impact on Education and young people: What was the long term impact of the Cultural Revolution on education?

Answer 21

• Unable to graduate: young people’s careers were blighted, leading many to become cynical, disillusioned and lacking in ambition.
• After being in the countryside, the revolutionary idealism was dented.
• Few young people could continue the official propaganda vision of a communist utopia after being confronted with rural poverty, backwardness, lack of proper education and healthcare.

Question 22

Impact on Foreigners: Give some examples of the things that the Red Guards did to Embassies in
China.

Answer 22

• Red Guards attacked three embassies in Beijing. Also attacked embassies in Indonesia, Burma and India.
• British Embassy set on fire
• The Dutch charge d’ affaires imprisoned in the embassy by mob for 6 months.
• Dutch women and children denied exit visas to leave China.
• A mob with loudspeakers blaring out Maoist slogans laid siege to the French, Soviet and Yugoslavian Embassies, trapping diplomats inside.
• Crowds trapped ambassadors in their cars for hours. One occasion, Soviet staff who had left the embassy to buy tickets for their families to leave China were trapped in their cars by a mob for sixteen hours.
• French trade counsellor was confronted outside his embassy and made to stand in the freezing cold while being denounced for seven hours. Police watched and did nothing to assist him.

Question 23

Impact on Foreigners: Give an example of the treatment of foreigners living in China.

Answer 23

Staff at the British embassy beaten
Shops, restaurants and hotels put signs declaring that Soviet citizens would no longer be served.
American Sidney Rittenberg: avowed communist who took part in struggle meetings and spread propaganda criticising Liu Shaoqi on Chinese radio but this didn’t make him safe. In 1968, sent for ‘re-education’ at a May Seventh Cadre School only released in 1977.
Anthony Grey was put into solitary confinement for 26 months. Red Guards broke into his house and killed his cat.
Michelangelo Antonioni, Italian film director was invited to China by the government to make a documentary about the new China but when the film was released it was criticised for focusing on traditional life and old buildings and banned. Posters denouncing him were hung in factories and villages. The ban on the film in China was only lifted in 2004.