Cultural Revolution

The Cultural Revolution is one of the darkest period in recent Chinese history. Spanning a period of 10 years from 1966 to 1976, aside from the political, economic and social violence and chaos, it was a time of twisted and extreme manipulation of mass communications which turned an entire country upside down and putting its people in great turmoil and sufferings. It was time where black was white and right was wrong; where children turned against their parents and students attacked their teachers; where the intellectuals and educated were sent for corrective hard labour to work in the hills and rice fields.

The Cultural Revolution was launched by Chairman Mao Zedong in 1966 as an attempt to regain political power by mobilising and enpowering China's youths to continue the path of revolution, to rid China of the "Four Olds" being old customs, old culture, old habits and old ideas, and at the same time promoting the "Four Great Freedoms" namely the right to speak out freely, to air one's views fully, to write big-character posters and to hold great debates. While the original notions behind these "Four Olds" and "Four Great Freedoms" was applaudable and noble, Mao allowed China's angry youths and teenagers to misinterpret and twist the idealogies to the extreme.

It started with one incident where a group of young students ganged up in the name and pretext of Mao's Cultural Revolution against their teacher for reprimanding them and eventually killing that teacher by hitting her to death with wooden rods. And when Mao approved in silence to that incident, the flames of youth revolution soon spread across the entire nation like wild fire becoming an unstoppable force. Such was the power of the masses. The youths organised themselves as Red Guards swearing loyalty to Mao, grouping together in huge masses and travelled the country carrying out Mao's ideals to rid the "Old Fours"; this was executed to such an extreme that everything that was "old" was destroyed - including tombs, temples, statutes, antiques, cultural relics and treasures - resulting in irreparable damage and loss. 5,000 years of Chinese heritage and treasure was nearly annihilated and destroyed in a few short years by brainwashed dellusioned mobs. Luckily for China, the youths had great respect for the then Premier Zhou Enlai who stopped them from destroying many priceless antiques and historical relics, thus preserving a piece of Chinese culture and history. Also in great irony was the "Four Great Freedoms" stated above, while it supposedly promoted freedom of speech, at the same time a cloud of great fear loomed over the entire nation for anyone saying or acting in any manner that was "counter-revolutionary" would be immediately branded a "counter-revolutionary" and then trialed and possibly killed on the spot by angry masses. The problem was the definition of "counter-revolutionary" - it was open to any kind of interpretation at the whims and fancies of the young Red Guards, resulting in countless tragedies where innocents were killed under this label. At its peak, children were encouraged to turn in their parents as being "counter-revolutionaries" and wifes point fingers at their husbands for acting "counter-revolutionary"; the act could be as simple as possessing an antique piece of jade, or secretly praying to a god, or even for singing any song that is not a "revolution song". And the punishment was often being stoned or bitten to death by the masses. The children and wife who turned their parents and husbands in would then be praised and held in high esteem as a patriotic revolutionary.

The following 2 video footages depicts clearly the chaos and madness that was the Cultural Revolution:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p63xt5AlahY&NR=1 (Footage of destruction by red guards)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EincWbFAyM (Red Guard Anthem Revolutionary Song)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLtoZTLMR3k (Communications: Mao enpowering Red Guards changing name of young girl from "Bing Bing" to "Yao Wu")

The power of mass communications. At an age in China where the internet was not yet in existance, where even the telephone was a rare luxury, how did the fire spread so fast the it consumed an entire nation of over a billion people? The target masses were young teenagers and youths who were very impressionable and easily influenced and manipulated, and the strength soon grew to include a majority of uneducated blue collar workers, labourers and farmers to the exclusion of the intellectuals and highly educated. Aside from propaganda radio which was not accessible in many remoter areas of China then, the main means of communications in fanning the fires of the Cultural Revolution was word of mouth and the "little red book" which was a small book containing the revolutionary thoughts and teachings of Mao. This red book acted as the bible to the revolution fanatics then. Such was the strength and alarming power of mass communications. And it was not a mere fade but instead a painful and sorrowful decade that has left permanent scars in Chinese history and culture, that even today, some 30 years after the end of the Cultural Revolution, China has still not yet fully recovered from the destruction and damage done during the Cultural Revolution.