The Cultural Revolution: How the CCP Mobilized the Masses to Struggle Against Each Other
In 1966, Mao Zedong, motivated by political considerations of preventing capitalist restoration and consolidating his personal authority, decided to launch a social movement aimed at “universal chaos.” This decision broke the existing power balance and administrative order within the Party, and through high-level political mobilization, turned theoretical tools originally used for class struggle toward the Party’s top leadership and grassroots society. In the early phase, the Central Committee issued the “May 16 Notice” and the “Sixteen Articles,” establishing an action program centered on “destroying the Four Olds” and criticizing the “bourgeois reactionary line,” providing a legitimacy basis for subsequent social upheaval. This top-down political call rapidly transformed the state apparatus into a driving force for mass movements, causing the originally stable social structure to begin disintegrating.
Against this backdrop, the Red Guard organizations emerged as the primary execution force in the early movement. Composed mainly of urban middle school students, these groups swept across the country under the slogan “Rebellion Is Justified.” In the name of revolution, they subjected so-called “cow ghosts and snake spirits” to public humiliation and violent attacks. Schools, government offices, and cultural venues became the hardest hit areas, with澶ч噺 cultural relics and historical sites destroyed, and intellectuals and cadres subjected to struggle sessions. The Red Guard movement not only destroyed traditional social ethical norms, but also, through the format of “great democracy, big character posters, and great debates,” encouraged citizens to expose each other, leading to the complete collapse of the social trust system.
As the movement deepened, political labels became the sole criterion for distinguishing friend from enemy. Ordinary citizens were forcibly classified as either “revolutionary” or “reactionary.” This binary classification forced everyone to choose a political stance. Under high-pressure conditions, neighbors, colleagues, and even relatives monitored and reported on each other for fear of being labeled “capitalist roaders” or “spies.” Struggle sessions became normalized political rituals, with victims forced to confess to fabricated crimes in public, enduring both physical and mental torture. This institutionalized violence not only targeted specific classes, but also affected broad segments of society through a mechanism of collective punishment, making fear the core driving force sustaining the movement’s operation.
In its middle and later phases, the mass movement evolved into complex factional armed clashes. Different political factions split into opposing camps, sparking large-scale armed conflicts across the country, causing澶ч噺 casualties and social order chaos. Although the central government attempted to intervene by dispatching worker propaganda teams, it could not fundamentally curb the鍒嗚 trend. Ordinary people were forced into political whirlpools; many, under survival pressure, had to participate in persecuting others to secure their own political safety. This “masses struggling against masses” situation profoundly reflected the destructive impact of extreme left-line politics on social fabric, and its lingering social trauma and political impact continued to manifest in subsequent historical periods.
Verifiable Sources
- The National Archives: The Cultural Revolution: https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/resources/the-cultural-revolution/
- Stanford SPICE: Introduction to the Cultural Revolution: https://spice.fsi.stanford.edu/docs/introduction_to_the_cultural_revolution
- Resolution on CPC History, 1981: https://www.marxists.org/subject/china/documents/cpc/history/01.htm
- VOA Chinese: Cultural Revolution timeline: https://www.voachinese.com/a/china-cultural-revolution-timeline-20160516/3333434.html