Name: Class:

China's Cultural Revolution

By Mike Kubic
2016

In this informational text, former Newsweek correspondent Mike Kubic explains the history of Chairman
Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution in 1950s-60s communist China. Mao was a
charismatic leader whose ideologies were attractive to many people, but his policies did not have the
consequences he promised. As you read this text, take notes on the author’s use of language, and what it
reveals about his point of view toward Mao’s policies.

1
[1] In 1958, Communist China – the full name is “The
People’s Republic of China” – was barely nine
years old when its founder, Mao Zedong, decided
to rapidly change it from an ancient agricultural
society to a modern industrial state.

If the project was outsized and over-ambitious, so

was its author: Mao, in addition to being a
2
revolutionary, a warrior, and an ideologue, was
3
an unabashed advocate of violence and one of
the most powerful and prolific dictators of the
20th Century. In his book, Red Star Over China,
Edgar Snow, who knew Mao well, described his
achievements as “perhaps unique...in China’s
3,000 years of written history.”

Mao’s attempt to order a quick transformation of

a country of 1.4 billion was also unique, but it
turned out to be a catastrophic failure. By 1976,
when he died, his modernization campaign
resulted in the annihilation of an estimated 30
million to 45 million of his countrymen.

Mao’s first step was to launch a so-called “Great

Leap Forward,” a 1958 program that called for a "Little red book" is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.
drastic state seizure of China’s farms and
boosting of industrial production. The venture, which happened to coincide with three years of
4
drought, was brutally executed by Communist Party cadres with complete disregard for its enormous
human and economic costs.

1. Communism is a social, political, and economic system in which everyone in a country has collective ownership of
“the means of production” like resources, labor, and land, so that instead of a society divided into a few wealthy
upper class factory owners and a lot of poor working class people, communism creates a classless society.
Communism is usually opposed to capitalism, a system in which “the means of production” are privately owned.
2. Idealogue (noun): a visionary or theorist
3. Unabashed (adjective): unashamed
4. "Cadres" refers to the core people in an organization

1
[5] The result of “Great Leap Forward” was a 25 percent decrease in China’s grain production. When the
Communist enforcers confiscated the meager harvests to feed the party elites and workers in the
cities, there ensued a mass starvation that wiped out entire populations of thousands of villages. In
5
1961, the program was abandoned after ruining China’s precarious economy and without
accomplishing any of its objectives.

According to Chinese official archives, the total death toll of the “Great Leap Forward” was 15 million,
but Western experts have put the carnage up to three times as high. One of them, Dutch historian
6
Frank Dikötter, wrote that “coercion, terror, and systematic violence were the foundation of the Great
Leap Forward” and it “motivated one of the most deadly mass killings of human history.”

To restore his prestige as a reformer, Mao launched in 1966 another, even more ambitious program
for changing China. He accused his alleged party enemies of sabotaging his drive to modernize the
country, and called on the Chinese youth to carry out a cultural revolution by defeating “diehard
7
bourgeois elements” and enforcing the ideological purity of his regime.

The Red Guards and the Little Book of Mao’s Thoughts

Mao’s call to “rebel against the system” fell on the receptive ears of a generation of Chinese that, as a
8
result of aggressive propaganda, worshipped him as a leader of superhuman wisdom, abilities and
powers. Within days after he spoke, a group of middle school students in Beijing took the name of
9
“Chairman Mao’s Red Guards” and started a movement that was rapidly embraced by millions of
youngsters who followed Mao’s bidding with a fanatic obedience and energy. Dressed in old military
fatigues and wearing red armbands, the zealots poured out of their homes and classrooms and set out
to purge China of “revisionists” and anyone else they deemed to be “backward” or insufficiently
10
enthusiastic about their leader. Their ideological guidebook was a slender collection of Mao’s maxims
that captured the violent spirit of his rule. Titled “The Little Book of Mao’s Thoughts,” it became the
second most widely printed work after the Bible, and included Mao’s most prominent teachings. For
example:

• “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun;”

• “Communism is not love. Communism is a hammer which we use to crush the enemy;”
• “Politics is war without bloodshed, while war is politics with bloodshed;”
• “War can only be abolished through war, and in order to get rid of the gun it is necessary to
take up the gun,” and
11 12
• “The atom bomb is a paper tiger which the United States reactionaries use to scare people.
It looks terrible, but in fact it isn’t.”

5. Precarious (adjective): uncertain; dangerously likely to fall apart or collapse

6. Coercion (noun): governing by force
7. "Bourgeois" describes the upper and middle classes of capitalist society, and principles that are materialist and
capitalist.
8. Propaganda (noun): a form of biased communication, aimed at promoting or demoting certain views, perceptions or
agendas
9. “Red” is the color symbolically used to represent communism.
10. Maxim (noun): a short, expressive statement expressing a general truth or rule of conduct
11. The atom (or atomic) bomb is a type of nuclear weapon used in war that can create huge amounts of destruction,
wiping out land for miles and miles and killing or harming thousands of people.
12. Reactionary (noun): a person who opposes political or social liberalization or reform

2
 13
Armed with this list of unquestioned verities, tens of millions of these crusaders roamed the cities
14
and countryside, persecuting the intelligentsia and denouncing what had remained of China’s ancient
culture. University teachers, prominent scientists, artists and other members of the hated “elites” were
marched out of their offices and homes to be executed or sent to do forced labor on the collective
farms.

15
[10] Millions of others were subjected to a wide range of abuses including public humiliation, arbitrary
imprisonment, torture, sustained harassment, and seizure of property. A large segment of the urban
population was forcibly displaced, most notably by their transfer to rural regions during a phase of the
“Cultural Revolution” called “the Down to the Countryside Movement.” Historical relics and artifacts
were destroyed, and cultural and religious sites were ransacked.

Praised by Mao, who mingled with about one million of the “Red Guards” when they came to meet him
16
in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, the youngsters became increasingly belligerent and blind to China’s
realities. At the height of their rampage, they even looted the barracks and seized the weapons of a
Chinese army unit they regarded as “unreliable.”

An estimated 11 million strong, the “Red Guards” eventually proclaimed as their goal, “First, [to] make
China red from inside out, and then [to] help the working people of other countries make the world
red...And then, the whole universe.”

Aftermath
Obsessively secretive, no Chinese regime has allowed a full disclosure of the enormous human and
material damage done by the “Great Leap Forward” and the “Cultural Revolution.” Mao officially ended
the latter in 1969, but the “Red Guards” really ran out of steam only after Mao’s death in 1976.

17 18
Regarding a retribution for the crimes of the era, official annal s mention that thousands of the
former “Red Guards” were sent out for “reeducation by the peasants” – an inadequate but in a way
fitting punishment for what had been done to millions of alleged “bourgeois revisionists.”

[15] In his book China’s Fate, Edward A. Gargan, a journalist and expert on China, summed up the results of
the Red Guard’s decade-long rampage like this:

“At the end of the Cultural Revolution, China was, simply put, a police state in which the
Chinese people had no individual rights, no control over their lives, over what they could
read, where they worked, where their children went to school. Worse, the state sought to
control the very substance of what people thought.”

19
The grapes of wrath planted by Mao’s blunders ripened in the spring of 1989, when a new generation
of Chinese youth launched a massive movement demanding democracy – only to be defeated in a
blood bath on June 4, known as “the massacre on the Tiananmen Square.”

13. Verity (noun): a true principle or belief; a truth

14. "Intelligentsia" refers to the scholars, academics, and educated people in a society.
15. Arbitrary (adjective): based on random choice or personal whim rather than a set of rules like reason or the law
16. Belligerent (adjective): warlike and aggressive
17. Retribution (noun): payback, punishment, or compensation
18. Annals (noun): a record of events of a particular year

3
 © 2016. China's Cultural Revolution by CommonLit is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

19. “Grapes of wrath” is a common phrase, first referenced in the Biblical Book of Revelation (14:19), that often refers to
an unjust or oppressive situation, action, or policy that may inflame desire for revenge.

4
 Text-Dependent Questions
Directions: For the following questions, choose the best answer or respond in complete sentences.

1. PART A: Which TWO of the following best identify the central ideas of this text? [RI.2]
A. Mao was an evil dictator because he planned to kill 45 million Chinese people.
B. Mao was an ambitious leader who wanted to help China, but his philosophy was
ignored when young people took over.
C. Mao’s policies hurt China’s economy, stripped individual freedoms, and cost
millions of lives.
D. Dictatorship can be good when it leads to the redistribution of wealth and leads
to greater social equality.
E. In order to move forward, one must destroy the old, including old culture, old
beliefs, and old government.
F. When people follow the status quo or a charismatic leader, dangerous
consequences and violence can arise.

2. PART B: Which TWO phrases from the text best support the answers to Part A? [RI.1]
A. “If the project was outsized and over-ambitious, so was its author: Mao”
(Paragraph 2)
B. “Mao’s first wrong step was to launch a so-called ‘Great Leap Forward,’ a 1958
program that called for a drastic collectivization of China’s farms and boosting of
industrial production.” (Paragraph 4)
C. “To restore his prestige as a reformer, Mao launched in 1966 another, even
more ambitious program for changing China.” (Paragraph 7)
D. “Mao’s call to ‘rebel against the system’ fell on the receptive ears of a generation
of Chinese that, as a result of aggressive propaganda, worshipped him… [T]he
zealots poured out of their homes and classrooms and set out to purge China of
‘revisionists’” (Paragraph 8)
E. “‘Communism is not love. Communism is a hammer which we use to crush the
enemy’” (Paragraph 8)
F. “‘At the end of the Cultural Revolution, China was, simply put, a police state in
which the Chinese people had no individual rights, no control over their lives,
over what they could read, where they worked, where their children went to
school.’” (Paragraph 15)

3. PART A: What does the word “zealot” most closely mean as it is used in paragraph 8? [RI.4]
A. Someone gullible or easily persuaded
B. Minors; young people
C. Leaders; courageous and driven individuals
D. Fanatical followers of a cause

5
4. PART B: Which phrase from paragraph 8 best supports the answer to Part A? [RI.1]
A. “Mao’s call to ‘rebel against the system’ fell on the receptive ears of a generation
of Chinese”
B. “a group of middle school students in Beijing took the name of ‘Chairman Mao’s
Red Guards’ and started a movement that was rapidly embraced by millions of
youngsters”
C. “followed Mao’s bidding with a fanatic obedience and energy”
D. “set out to purge China of ‘revisionists’ and anyone else they deemed to be
‘backward’”

5. What does Kubic’s use of language reveal about the author’s point of view toward [RI.6]
Mao? Cite evidence from the text in your response.

6
 Discussion Questions
Directions: Brainstorm your answers to the following questions in the space provided. Be prepared to
share your original ideas in a class discussion.

1. The establishment of Chairman Mao’s Red Guards is often looked to as an example of the
vulnerability of young people to propaganda, manipulation, and ideological myopia. Have
you seen or experienced any instances of this – teenagers latching on to a cause or belief
without questioning it – in recent years? Have you learned of other instances of this in
history? Why do you think this happens?

2. In the context of this text, why do people follow the crowd? Why do you think the students
in the Red Guard formed their army? What might other consequences of following the
crowd be?

3. Mao advocated for war as the means of progress, first in China, then for workers
worldwide. In your opinion, is war usually the most effective means for creating change?
What are other ways people create change in society? Which ways are the most effective,
and under what circumstances?