China divided on legacy of Cultural Revolution, 50 years after it began

BEIJING — The 50th anniversary this year of the start of China’s tumultuous Cultural Revolution is turning into a political tug of war, with progressives opposed to the current political tightening squaring off with neo-Maoist intellectuals over its legacy.

The Cultural Revolution formally kicked off in May 1966 when Mao Zedong attacked rivals in the Communist Party leadership and endorsed a wave of student criticism against teachers. The anarchic and bloody decade that followed discredited Mao in the eyes of many Chinese and paved the way for Deng Xiaoping’s market reforms after Mao’s death.

An editorial in the Global Times, the party-controlled tabloid, on Tuesday warned against “small groups” creating “a totally chaotic misunderstanding of the Cultural Revolution” on the upcoming anniversary, criticising both those seeking to restore the legacy of the period and those who might be overly critical.

“After the party has long ago given an official conclusion ... discussions strictly should not depart from the party’s decided politics or thinking,” it said.

The party’s official verdict on the period is that it was a “leftist deviation” primarily caused by Mao but manipulated by counter-revolutionaries.

The anniversary coincides with increasing alarm among progressive intellectuals and media over the methods deployed in President Xi Jinping’s consolidation of power. Forced television confessions, increased controls over the Chinese media, suspected abductions of critics overseas and disappearances at home have led to comparisons with Cultural Revolution tactics.

The alarm has increased as security forces respond harshly to an anonymous letter posted online last month that called for Mr Xi’s resignation. In the past week, two former Chinese reporters now living overseas have said their relatives have been detained in China.

Earlier in the month, commentators drew comparisons with the Cultural Revolution when online leftists vociferously attacked Mr Ren Zhiqiang, a property mogul with liberal political views, after he criticised Mr Xi for proclaiming party control over the country’s media. Those attacks receded after the anti-corruption watchdog issued an essay entitled “A thousand yes-men cannot equal one honest adviser”, which was interpreted in China as support for Mr Ren.

For many Chinese, the chaos of the Cultural Revolution represents the worst point in nearly seven decades of party rule, even though its death toll was far exceeded by the famines of the Great Leap Forward in the late 1950s. The Cultural Revolution was criticised more openly, especially in the early 1980s, and the involvement of students and urban youth means it has had a far greater presence in literature, film and history books.

Nonetheless, few scholars or books were allowed to explore the political infighting behind the social chaos, says Mr Bao Pu, whose Hong Kong-based publishing house specialises in autobiographies and other historic accounts that often differ from the party’s official history of its own rule. “After the Cultural Revolution there was a need to repudiate it so there was a period of criticism, but since then no real debate on it has been permitted.”

During the Cultural Revolution schools were closed, student factions battled each other as well as perceived class enemies, and the industrial economy ground to a halt as workers became consumed in a mass political mobilisation. Families and neighbours turned against each other and large swaths of China’s cultural heritage were destroyed.

But for some, the period represents a time of ideological purity, economic equality and unity in loyalty to the party. The Global Times took on that group’s attempts to equate today’s anti-corruption campaign with the “weeding out” of perceived capitalists within the party after 1966.

Professor Zhang Hongliang, a leftist scholar at Renmin University, described the editorial as “obscene”. “Randomly choose someone on the street or an official or an intellectual and ask them, you will see that the majority are starting to rethink the Cultural Revolution,” he said. “No one says it was devoid of merit.”

Prof Zhang believes current “rethinking” is part of a search for a solution to China’s endemic corruption. “Regardless of how you view Mao’s era, upright officials were numerous; corrupt officials were few. But today China has more corrupt officials than the rest of the world put together.” FINANCIAL TIMES