The key historical position of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution

Defeat the regime changes from inside and outside

The Cultural Revolution defeated the regime change operation by the West. This has two parts: 1) China avoided the collapse with the USSR like the other Eastern European countries; 2) China avoided color revolutions in the 40 years of Open and Reform.

On 20 May 2020, the White House published a report, United States Strategic Approach to the People’s Republic of China. The report said, “Since the United States and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) established diplomatic relations in 1979, United States policy toward the PRC was largely premised on a hope that deepening engagement would spur fundamental economic and political opening in the PRC and lead to its emergence as a constructive and responsible global stakeholder, with a more open society. More than 40 years later, it has become evident that this approach underestimated the will of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to constrain the scope of economic and political reform in China”. What this statement really said is that the US failed to change China according to its will. The regime change failed. The color revolution failed.

The US has not been stupid in the last 40 years. Its strategic engagement approach to China had been supported by many think tanks and theorists, backed by historical evidence. Western history proved that after economic development, the capitalists would be rich and had the political appeal to establish the capitalist political system. For how long has the West been reached democracy? Democracy today is identified with universal suffrage. It takes the West almost 5 hundred years to reach it. Universal suffrage was implemented in many developed countries only after WWII. The US had universal suffrage after the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. It takes the US 200 years to reach democracy. China is not a developed country yet and has had independence for only 72 years. But the US loses its patience. Why not wait for China to become a developed country and see if the theory by think tanks and political science scholars is correct or not? The US loses patience because it has invested a lot in the regime change. It is estimated that the US invested in China’s regime change more than other color revolutions combined. All other color revolutions have succeeded but failed in China.

It is not the theory of engagement approach wrong. Taiwan and South Korea are examples the dictatorships turning to democracy after their economies advanced. It is because Western scholars never took the Great Cultural Revolution into account. It is the Great Cultural Revolution that defeated the US’ engagement strategy of the last 40 years.

When Khrushchev criticized Stalin in 1956, Mao determined that Khrushchev was wrong. Mao thought the USSR would change to a capitalist country, and the collapse of the USSR in 1991 proved that Mao made the right judgment. From 1963 to 1964, the Communist Party of China (CPC) published 9 commentaries criticizing the USSR, saying the USSR is revisionist. Mao decided to launch the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (GPCR) in 1966 mainly to prevent China from repeating the mistake of the USSR. One of the most used slogans in the GPCR is the Combat and Prevent Revisionism (反修防修）, meaning resisting the path of the USSR. And Mao was successful in having China avoid the collapse with the USSR in 1991 and in preventing the regime change by the US’ engagement strategy in the last 40 years.

John Foster Dulles had formulated the engagement strategy as the peaceful evolution in 1953. Since then, the US has been using Voice of America for propaganda in China. So the peaceful evolution has had a history near 70 years, and the engagement strategy is only part of it after China adopted the market economy. The US, for the peaceful evolution or engagement strategy, has infiltrated China in arts, culture, academics, etc., supporting many “democratic movement” NGOs in Hong Kong and the Mainland. The engagement strategy of regime change is comprehensive. By 2008, the majority of Chinese in China hated CPC and adored the US, many still adored the US unit Trump’s shameless lies about China that angered many Chinese. The teaching of the history of a hundred years of humiliation and Marxism and Leninism used to be dull in universities, but then it suddenly had vivid illustration by Trump. What the students have been taught is real in history and in reality. The infiltration by the US has been comprehensive, but not as comprehensive as the GPCR. GPCR was a color revolution not incited by outside power but launched by Mao. In many aspects, GPCR is no different from other color revolutions. The grassroots masses overthrew the government. All departments of government stop working. Officers of the government are all going to the countryside to receive education from the peasants. The judicial system was paralyzed. Society is in anarchy, and Red Guards organized local revolution committees to replace the government. The span of time is longer, and the scale of the movement is larger than all the color revolutions combined, including the collapse of the USSR and the Arab Spring. If Russians hate the collapse of the USSR or Arabs hate the Arab Spring, one can imagine how the Chinese hate the GPCR. In an anarchy and lawless society, basic human rights were not protected, and many people were wronged and suffered. GPCR is a disaster for sure, just as the collapse of the USSR is a disaster, and the Arab Spring is a disaster that created so many refugees. Mao, however, accomplished his goal: preventing the Red China he established from changing color. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” What Dickens said applies to the GPCR.

Transformation of the Economy

The modern history of China is a history of the transition from an agricultural society to an industrial society. After the Opium Wars from 1861 to 1895, China had a Westernization Movement aimed to learn technology from the West so as to industrialize China. Yet the Battle of Yalu River failed the Westernization Movement. Chinese elites realized that technology alone was not enough for industrialization. China has to change its culture in an agricultural society. So there was the New Culture Movement in the 1910s and 1920s. The slogan for the movement was Democracy and Science. It says that learning technology from the West is not sufficient; China should also learn from the West the modern culture. The New Culture Movement tried hard to eradicate the agricultural culture in China. Yet China is the most successful agricultural civilization in human history. The five thousand years of agricultural culture had been deeply rooted in society. The New Culture Movement could change the thoughts of the elites, who were only 1% of the population. The goal of the New Culture Movement was never finished until the Great Cultural Revolution. There was a massive movement during the GPCR to eliminate the Four Old: old thoughts, old culture, old traditions, and old habits. In the later stage of the GPCR, there was also a movement of Criticize Lin And Criticize Confucius, just as the New Culture Movement had the slogan of Knockdown Confucian Store. Cadres and intellectual youths were sent to the remotest, poorest countryside, living and working with the poor grassroots peasants together, uprooting the agricultural culture totally. GPCR was also a movement against all authorities, the authority of the cadres, and authorities in engineering, culture, and academics. Rebel was the theme. Together with Eliminating Four Old, the rebels against authority liberated the thoughts of the Chinese people. They could restructure their culture after the complete shuffle of culture by the GPCR.

Among all countries that transformed from planned economies to market economies, China is the most successful one. Thanks to GPCR, the migrant workers have become the main production army embracing modern industry without the burden of the old agricultural culture. The whole population changed from an agricultural man into an industrial man. Chinese elites knew China had to change its culture after 1895, and Mao finished the job in its GPCR.

What’s more, GPCR is a communist revolution that puts the working class in the most prestigious position in society. Workers were the leadership class in GPCR. Workers had the highest authority in factories and schools. GPCR gave the working class equal social esteem and human dignity. This has a deep influence on the mindset of China’s society. Today, China’s economy is the most competitive in the world economy because China has a socialist production relationship. Workers are not a resource for the profit of capital. Workers and management teams are all equal but have different positions in the division of labor in the production process. Workers have pride in their working positions. Especially in state-owned enterprises, workers and management are teams in production. That’s why China can build a large network of high-speed trains in a decade. This is a huge production power released by advanced production relationships. China is not only the most successful transforming economy but also the most advanced economic base due to the production relationship, thanks to the GPCR. The Chinese economy will grow faster than the West, regardless of engagement or decoupling of the US strategy. Socialism is more advanced than capitalism. GPCR made the socialist production relationship possible in a market economy.

Animal Farm

Animal Farm is a novel by George Orwell mocking socialist Russia that still had social stratification, no better than capitalist Russia overthrown by the October Revolution. It was a propaganda tool in the Cold War, attacking the Eastern Bloc. The novel reveals the truth that for the last five thousand years, the ruling class has had the social privilege of holding a noble position in society, while the majority of the masses have been ruled in a humble position.

What Animal Farm implies is that the social structure of ruling and ruled is an intrinsic nature of human society and is the fate of human society. No revolution can change that. The collapse of the USSR confirmed the prediction of Animal Farm.

In 1941， before the Pacific War, during the Anti-Japanese-Invasion-War, Mao launched the Yan’an Rectification Movement. In that movement, Mao asked cadres and intellectuals to read the pamphlet Commemorating the 300th Anniversary of the Fall of the Ming Dynasty (甲申三百年祭）by Guo Moruo. The pamphlet told the story of the historical version of Animal Farm. The peasants rebelled and overthrew the Ming Dynasty. Yet after the rebel army occupied Beijing, the generals of the army wanted to be noble again. The victors want the privileges to rule the masses. The Communist Party of China studied the pamphlet, the Chinese version of Animal Farm, before the CPC took power in 1949, and 4 years before George Orwell published his Animal Farm in 1945. Mao was determined that the CPC would not repeat the history of Animal Farm. If Animal Farm depicts the fate of human society, it depicts the society of humans in itself. Mao, on the other hand, warned members of the CPC not to repeat the history of Animal Farm in 1941. Mao has made the Chinese people for themselves. Chinese people do not yield to fate. They change their fate.

Yet changing the fate that has existed for five thousand years is not easy. Mao saw the social stratification solidified into the ruling and ruled classes in the USSR and sensed the same trend in China after 1949 as well. For such a huge transcendence from People in Itself to People for Itself, in order to break the curse of Animal Farm, a revolution is needed. So Mao launched the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. One famous slogan in GPCR is The Nobles Are Stupid, but the Working People are Smart （高贵者最愚蠢，卑贱者最聪明）. Schools taught the ancient story of Caogui on War (曹刿论战）. In that ancient story, Caogui said that those who are fed on meat are nobody (肉食者鄙).

Government corruption is the corruption of power. Corruption of power is the fate depicted by Animal Farm. After the fall of the Gang of Four, China denounced the GPCR as a disaster. GPCR was a disaster for many people, especially elites: cadres and intellectuals. When China denounced the GPCR, it forgot the intention of Mao. Mao wanted Chinese people to master their own fate. Mao wanted the Chinese to be the people for themselves. Denouncing GPCR is like throwing out the baby with the bathwater. As a result, the corruption in China developed more and more seriously for three generations of leadership, despite that every leadership swore to combat corruption. The prophecy of Animal Farm had almost come true in China until Xi came to power, the leader of the GPCR generation. Xi and his comrades succeeded in resisting corruption, defying the fate of Animal Farm.

Standing Up

Red China has three eras: the Mao Era, the Deng Era, and the Xi Era. The Mao Era is for standing up; the Deng Era is for getting rich. Xi’s Era is for getting strong.

During the Mao Era, China was in a quasi-war era. Immediately after the establishment of Red China, China faced US aggression under the Domino Theory. The US sent the Seventh Fleet to the Taiwan Strait, helping Chiang Kai-shek to recover the mainland. The Korean War and Vietnam War were aimed at Red China and forced China to commit huge military and material resources in these two wars. There was the Sino-India War in 1962, in which both the US and USSR supported India. China was under the threat of nuclear war from both the US and the USSR. U2 spy aircraft invaded China’s airspace routinely. There was also the Zhenbao Island incident in 1969, in which the Chinese army clashed with the USSR army, making China the only country that had hot wars with both superpowers directly. Like all wartime economies, rationing is the norm for distributing resources and wealth. The goal of the quasi-warfare economy is not to maximize growth but to minimize the potential damages. So there was the Third-Tier-Economy (三线建设） in the remote mountain areas during the GPCR, so that Chinese technology could survive a nuclear strike. Youth intellectuals were sent to the countryside. Cadres and professors were all in the July Fifth Schools in the countryside so that the elites of Chinese society could survive a nuclear strike. By distributing human and technical resources to the countryside, the GPCR eliminated illiteracy and improved the health level of the whole population. The GPCR positioned China well for quasi-warfare. By doing so, the Chinese have to live a hard life. Wartime life is always hard. Although the GPCR was a time of chaos, China was very stable as a society and as a country facing external threats. The quasi-war-time position worked. Nixon visited Mao in 1971, and China got recognized in the UN. Mao launched the GPCR to have China fully stand up. The GPCR resisted threats from both superpowers and set the solid foundation of a peaceful environment for the Reform and Open-up after the GPCR.

Historical Turning Points

The GPCR played key roles in two historical turning points: ending private ownership and the human from In Itself to For Itself.

Private ownership is not an intrinsic character of human society. Homo Sapiens has been existing for hundreds of millions of years. Private ownership exists only for the last five thousand years, a negligible span of time compared with the long history of Homo Sapiens. Marx concluded that capitalism will be replaced by communism, so to end the private ownership of production means. This is the theory of the proletarian revolution and the worldwide communist movement. The transition happened, as used to know, by the October Revolution. October Revolution should have been the beginning of transition from private ownership to public ownership in human history. It was so promising that socialist countries expanded from Russia after the October Revolution to Eastern Camp after WWII. After the collapse of USSR and the Eastern Europe in 1991, the effort for the transition failed. China, thanks to the GPCR, avoided the collapse in 1991 and resisted the color revolution after 1991, becoming the backbone to sustain the world communist movement. China changed the paradigm of the communist movement, from armed revolution to economic development. As Marx predict, communism is inevitable when the production power becomes efficient enough. Now China is the engine in the world economy. When the US hegemony abused its monopoly power in military and finance, the US is sucking surplus value from the global economy to such an extent that it prevents the world economy from growing further, as indicated by skyrocketing government debt and household debt of the US and its allies. If the world economy is still growing, it is due to the economy of China basically. The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution is based on Marxist theory: superstructure has the inert tendency to prevent the new economic base from emerging. The collapse of the USSR is evidence proving Marx was right about the relationship between the economic base and the superstructure. The GPCR address exactly this issue, culture the superstructure that prevents the economic base from advancing into a new paradigm. The GPCR is therefore a communist revolution that overthrown the private ownership culture: the rich and powerful get privilege and esteem while labor has no dignity and esteem. The GPCR emphasized that all men are equal except having different positions in the division of labor. Be you a president, a CEO, or any other elite of the society, you have dignity and esteem the same as the labor at the bottom of the society. Because of this key role the GPCR played, it is the turning point for human society from private ownership to public ownership.

The second turning point is from human in itself to human for itself. In terms of Marxist theory, to diminish the alienation of humans in capitalism, specifically. From a broader perspective, Homo sapiens has fought to conquer nature for hundreds of millions of years, and the conquest of nature has finished because our technology can accomplish almost everything we want from nature. We have entered the Anthropocene Era, in which human society has become the key and dominant factor on the Earth, so that human determines evolution and the ecosystem. Mankind has to turn its task from conquering nature to conquering mankind itself.

The GPCR is the first time in human history that the ruling elite initiates an internal revolution inside the ruling elite. Mao aimed the revolution within the party. Although the revolution spilled over the whole society, the initiative is an internal revolution of the party. Mao intended the revolution as the Cultural Revolution, changing the idea and mindset only. This is the first time man has conquered itself as a political movement on a large scale. Eight hundred million Chinese made self-criticism to awaken awareness of the proletarian class and to establish a communist norm for the society.

Technology has advanced to such a level today that the world economy can support everyone with a decent life. Yet hungry and wars persist. War persists not because we are living in a scarce society, but because men have to fight to live a decent life. Man has already conquered nature to have enough living materials. Man has to conquer himself to enjoy the abundant materials produced by advanced production power.

Man has had adequate technologies to deal with climate change and ecosystem crises. All man needs is to conquer themselves to have the political will to cooperate for fulfilling these tasks. We are at the turning point where humans have to conquer themselves to avoid self-destruction.

During the GPCR, labor is the ruling class. Those who thought they were above labor and entitled to more privileges than labor are sent to the countryside, working and living with peasants. This is the first time the ruling class asks those been ruled to have the same living standard as the ruling class. This changed the idea and mindset of the five thousand years of the private ownership society.

Homo sapiens departs from the animal in that it labors and works to change the world. Since Homo Sapiens invented tools for production, the evolution or progress of human society is cultural evolution, not depending on gene mutation and natural selection. But the cultural evolution has been the culture in itself. The GPCR is the cultural evolution of the culture for itself.

In conclusion, GPCR played a key role in the two great turning points of human progress.

Compared with the French Revolution

To evaluate the GPCR, the best way is to compare it with a similar revolution. The French Revolution has some similarities to the GPCR: it is a democratic revolution that evolved into mob rule. The GPCR is a democratic revolution that began with the Four Bigs (四大）： The Loud Voice, Complete Deregulation, The Big debates, and The Big Character Posters. It is absolute freedom of speech. The anarchy and mob rule that evolved in GPCR violated the human rights of many persons, just like the Reign of Terror violated the human rights of many persons. It is estimated that the Reign of Terror of the French Revolution executed 16,600 persons to death while the GPCR prosecuted 34,000 persons to death. Remember that the French population in 1789 was only 28 million, while the population of China in 1966 was 800 million. In a percentage sense, the French Revolution killed 14 times as many people as the GPCR.

What is the progress of the two revolutions? The French Revolution established the foundation of the capitalist liberal democracy: universal suffrage, the vanity of modern capitalism. As we know, the liberal democracy has elections of money talk: the success of an election campaign is highly correlated with the fundraising of the campaign. The slogans of the French Revolution: liberty, equality, and fraternity, are all restricted by the sanctification of property rights. France continued to colonize North Africa and Indochina. The French abolished slavery in Haiti but forced the slaves to redeem their freedom with heavy debts. In practice, France is an imperialist country that tramples liberty, equality, and fraternity in developing countries. Bombing Libya in 2011 is a recent example. The French Revolution created a historical hero, Napoleon, who restored the monarchy and became an emperor. In contrast, the GPCR promoted communist awareness, resulting today the elimination of poverty in China, and promoted the vision of a Shared Future for Mankind in international politics. The GPCR established a more thorough and complete Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity that these noble values are above property rights. The communist moral judgment is superior to the capitalist moral judgment.

What were the impacts of the two revolutions? The people who died in both revolutions were mostly the social elites. The GPCR is a more progressive revolution than the French Revolution in that the French Revolution was replaced by one private ownership society with another: capitalism replaced feudalism specifically, while the GPCR played the key roles in the two historical turning points as mentioned above. If we scale the cost of the two revolutions by the death toll, the cost of the French Revolution was 14 times higher than the GPCR. China resisted the threat of two superpowers and safeguarded its peace in the GPCR, while France was defeated in the French Revolutionary Wars. France had been a hegemon for a thousand years in Europe, but fell into a second-grade country after the French Revolution and never recovered. France lost its leadership position in every aspect: literature, philosophy, science, and technology. China, on the other hand, rose rapidly after the GPCR from the bottom of the world to the second-largest economy in the world and is taking the leadership positions the US has been holding for a long time in many areas.

Notorious GPCR

Qin Shi Huang united China in 221 BC. He established the first united central government and the civil bureaucracy system, which lasted for two thousand years and is still functioning. He normalized the Chinese characters that have been used ever since. He standardized the measures in China that had made China always the top-tier country in the world most of the time. Yet Qin Shi Huang has been condemned for two thousand years. When Mao talked about Qin Shi Huang, he said he would be condemned the same, yet he would like to shoulder the great responsibility regardless. Mao had been prepared to be condemned for the GPCR. And sure, both capitalist developed countries together with China condemned the GPCR today. Mao said two years before the end of his life that he had done only two things: The 1949 revolution and the Great Proletarian Revolution. The GPCR has saved the Human Being, yet he is condemned for the GPCR. Mao sacrificed himself and some Chinese people for the progress of the whole of mankind.