Quotes

  • Land reform in a population of over 300 million people is a vicious war. It is more arduous, more complex, more troublesome than crossing the Yangzi because our troops are 260 million peasant soldiers. This is a war for land reform, this is the most hideous class war between peasants and landlords. It is a battle to the death.”

Mao Zedong

  • “The objectives of land reform were to improve the lot of the poor and to make them feel they had a stake in the country and a loyalty to the new government… But the objectives of land reform also included information and control. The CCP, by means of the cadres, obtained an insight into conditions in every part of China – and useful lists of enemies of the people. By implicating the local population in the ‘judicial’ process and the killings, control through fear was quickly established.”
    William S. Morton, historian

  • A particularly important aspect of the campaign had to do with inciting and organising the masses for action. In "mobilizing" mass emotions and action against the bourgeoisie, the communists sought to achieve not only their immediate purpose of turning the “wrath of the people” against the “treacherous merchants” and politically suspect bourgeoisie, but also their long-range programme of “educating” the masses by involving them in the “bitter class struggle” 


(Chen, The 3 Anti and 5 Anti movement in Communist China).

  • Read fragment from Zhou Enlai’s speech:

    • The government needs criticism from its people… Without this criticism the government will not be able to function as the People’s Democratic Dictatorship. Thus the basis of a healthy government is lost.… We must learn from old mistakes, take all forms of healthy criticism, and do what we can to answer these criticisms. 

  • “Representatives of the bourgeoisie who have sneaked into the party, the government, the army and various cultural spheres … once the timing is ripe, will seize the power and turn the proletarian dictatorship to a bourgeois dictatorship.” ── notice by the Central Committee on May 16, 1966

  • “We had no people [in the 1950s], and had to accept all the teachers from the Kuomintang. Teachers at colleges, high schools and elementary schools, newspaper owners, play actors, novel writers, painters, movie makers ... These people have sneaked into our party. Now the Cultural Revolution makes sense to you.” ── Mao Zedong during a talk with Ho Chi Minh in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, on June 10, 1966

  • “[We] must trust the people, rely on the people and respect the innovation of the people. [We] must not be scared. Don’t be scared of chaos.” ── a Central Committee directive, August 8, 1966

  • “Great chaos achieves great order.” – Mao, in a letter to wife

  • “Bombard the headquarters” – Mao Zedong (headquaters = nomeklatura)

  • “Whether or not to acknowledge violent revolution as a universal law of proletarian revolution ... has always been the watershed between proletarian revolutionists and traitors among the proletariat.” ── Proletarian Revolution and Khrushchev’s Revisionism, published in People’s Daily, March 31, 1964

  • “Father and Mother are dear
    Chairman Mao are Dearer”
    - Song about Mao’s cult of personality

  • Proletarian literature and art are part of the whole proletarian revolutionary cause; they are, as Lenin said, cogs and wheels in the whole revolutionary machine.
    - Mao about art

Former red guards and rebels recollect (discuss)
Yuan Yuhua

  • Former Henan rebel leader, now retired worker

  • “I miss the Cultural Revolution … We had to fight against oppression. We wanted democracy. And we devoted ourselves to our fight for democracy … I will never regret it.”

  • Cao Dengju

  • Former Red Guard in Chongqing

  • “We felt the oppression was over once the Cultural Revolution started … I felt relieved ... It felt like we were liberated. In fact, we fell into a bigger trap of [Mao’s], and became his pawns.”

  • Li Zhengquan

  • Former Red Guard in Chongqing

  • “Everyone says they were the victims ... Barely anyone reflected on what wrongs they committed. This is what upsets me most … If we Chinese don’t reflect on the fact that we were evil-doers as well, it is still possible that the Cultural Revolution may recur.”

“It’s very necessary that the educated youths go to villages and be re-educated by the poor and lower-middle peasants. [We] need to convince cadres and others in the cities to send their children who have graduated from junior, senior high school and college to the rural countryside.” ── Mao Zedong, December 1968

A propaganda poster from 1952. The text reads: “To do a good job in epidemic prevention and hygiene work is concrete patriotic behavior in the battle to smash American imperialist germ warfare!”

Since Lin had been Chief of the PLA, the Minister of Defence and Mao's nominated successor, his disgrace created doubts. A village elder remarked: When Liu Shaoqi was dragged down we'd been very supportive. Mao Zedong was the red sun and what not. But the Lin Biao affair made us see that the leaders up there could say today that something is round; tomorrow, that it's flat. We lost faith in the system.'