There were four main goals of the Cultural Revolution: to have a successor that was faithful to his thinking, to rectify the Chinese Communist Party, to create a revolutionary experience for China’s youth, and to change China’s policies to make them less exclusive. (). To lead his revolution he used the naive and defiant youth. They were the Red Guards, the group that were instructed by Mao to destroy the traditional values of China and openly criticize party officials.
Starting innocently enough the Red Guards created dazibao, “big character posters” that were used to express opinions and slogans. One of the first acts of the red guards was making dazibao criticizing the Three Family Village (group of authors that obliquely condemned Maoist ideals). There were slogans all around Gao’s school condemning the authors, one that Gao remembers was “The Three Family Village offended seven hundred million people, setting off a spiritual bomb greater than the A-bomb.” (Gao, p. 35).
Soon the Red Guards started to attack new enemies, their teachers. They called them bourgeois revisionist and capitalist-roaders, they created dazibao posted around the school about them. The students ridiculed their teachers for all sorts of things, whether something as a frivolous as a bad grade or for supporting the old ideals of Chiang Kai-Shek. Some teachers could not handle the embarrassment and resorted to suicide. Later on the Red Guards had Struggle Sessions where they would interrogate their teachers until they admitted their “crimes.” From there they were put on stage in front of a student audience, usually tied up in the “Jet Position,” where they were put on their knees and their arms were tied behind their back and beaten until they fell to the floor. After they practiced on their teachers they began to do the same with town officials, they were told to “sweep away all ox ghosts and snake spirits.” (Gao, P. 50). The Red Guards paraded the “corrupt” officials on marches throughout towns.
The Red Guards soon had a new task that Mao had given to them; it was to destroy the four olds: the old ideas, culture, customs, and habits. They started to destroy stores, rename streets, destroy ancient monuments, etc. Their goal was to do away with all remnants of pre-revolutionary life.
The Red Guards believed so fiercely in Mao’s ideology that it eventually led to their destruction. Arguments between different social classes tore the once tight group of friends apart. The Cultural Revolution brought out the worst in them. They loved the power they had, but it was all a facade, the only person who truly had all the power was Mao Zedong. With his cult of personality surrounding him he could make the Red Guards do whatever he wanted, and he did. So the Red Guards were not simply perpetrators of the Cultural Revolution but also victims. They lost their education and were brainwashed to be Mao’s loyal servants. Gao is certainly regretful of his past and so he dedicates his book to his son “with hope that his generation will be wiser than mine.” (Gao, Dedication)
When everything was finished, Mao had succeeded. He had rid the country of his opponents and regained control of China. The cost was a generation of Chinese youth who had murdered, raped, and humiliated their fellow countrymen for an impossible dream.
Work Cited
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McWilliams, Wayne C., Harry Piotrowski. The World Since 1945: A History of International Relations. 5th Ed. London: Lynne Rienner Publishers Inc., 2001.
- “The Cultural Revolution.” Fortune City. 23 November 2003. <http://members.fortunecity.com/stalinmao/China/Cultural/Cultural.html>.
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Yuan, Gao. Born Red: A Chronicle of the Cultural Revolution. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987.
Ben Noren
11/23/03
HIST 151
Gao Yuan Paper
