The 1966 Cultural Revolution in China by the Red Guards was intended to build a new China. But what was the Cultural Revolution and why did the country’s schools have to be closed? A closer look at the Cultural Revolution in China and the Red Guards.
Mass campaign in 1966 in China
The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution of China was a mass campaign in 1966 in the country, calling on the Red Guards (the country’s youth) to build a new China. It was at the initiative of Mao who at that time was losing support for his approach within the Communist Party. Mao tried to cause chaos in the country in this way, with the intention of strengthening his own position.
Schools had to close their doors during the cultural revolution
Schools were asked to close their doors and allow young people to join the Red Guards. This was a citizen movement consisting mainly of young people who had to make the existing China disappear and create a new variant in its place.
Mao’s Little Red Book
The young people who were called Red Guards were all for the Great Helmsman as Mao was called. Mao’s Little Red Book was leading and was used almost like a Bible. This red book was also distributed throughout the country. Anyone who thinks that the Little Red Book is a kind of manual for realizing that new China is wrong: Mao’s book mainly contains very dry quotations from party texts.
Red Guards murdered and plundered
However, China’s cultural revolution got completely out of hand. The Red Guards murdered teachers and parents under the guise that they were counter-revolutionaries who needed to be tried, and they looted and destroyed churches and stormed schools. Much of China’s cultural treasures were destroyed during this period. During the same cultural revolution, many teachers, intellectuals, doctors and professors, but also farmers and workers who did not want to conform to the rules of the Guards, were locked up in concentration camps or labor camps, which were referred to by Mao as re-education camps or framework schools. Many were also murdered. Because all this seemed to be leading to a civil war, the People’s Liberation Army intervened at a certain point.
The arrest of the gang of four put an end to the Cultural Revolution
With the arrest of the Gang of Four, the most important leaders of the Cultural Revolution (Mao was not one of these four, by the way) in 1976, the cultural revolution really ended. Officially this was already in 1969 when the cultural revolution was ended at a party conference. The gang of four consisted of: Mao’s wife Jiang Qing and Zhang Chunqiao, Wang Hongwen and Yao Wenyuan. It is believed that the Gang of Four was planning a coup and wanted help from the Shanghai People’s Militia.
Population oppression in China
Yet this end of the cultural revolution did not mean that the population was better off. Citizens were incredibly oppressed until 1976, despite the fact that Mao was no longer party leader of the Communist Party and his successor Lin Biao began a period of reconstruction and reorganization. However, the top of the party still did not agree with each other and when Lin Biao was also mysteriously found dead, this appeared to have an effect. Terror and anarchy were the order of the day until the death of Mao in 1976.