The Cultural Revolution

In the spring of 1966, the future was looking bleak for the People’s Republic of China—and for its leader, Communist Party Chairman Mao Zedong.

Just 17 years earlier, Mao had led his followers to victory in a long and bloody civil war, then had proudly established China as a Communist nation. (China was the first major Asian country to choose Communist rule.) Mao’s actions made him a hugely popular national hero.

But his attempts to reform the nation’s economy to reflect his Communist ideals failed miserably. The Great Leap Forward, a plan he launched in 1958, had eliminated private ownership of land and banned family farming. Instead, all farmwork was done by people the government organized into living and working units called communes. All decisions about what crops to grow, and when and how much, were decided by government officials often far removed from the actual farms.

It was a disaster. Instead of producing a bounty of crops to feed the nation, the Great Leap Forward contributed to a series of terrible famines. From 1959 to 1962, an estimated 45 million Chinese citizens died. Starvation left millions of others with long-lasting damage to their physical and mental health.

With the economy in ruins and countless individuals suffering, Mao knew that some people—and not just his rivals—were beginning to question his authority. And in questioning him, Mao believed, they were questioning Communism itself—the principles on which the nation had been founded.

Determined to turn things around, in May 1966 Mao announced a new plan, known as the Cultural Revolution—and he called the country’s youth to help carry it out.

Over the following months, the Communist Party organized the nation’s students into units known as the Red Guards. Mao shut down schools and held huge rallies at which he called on students and loyal followers to help him wipe the nation clean of its old ways. The goal was to demote landowners, educated professionals, and anyone else who might question Mao’s teachings. Only uneducated peasants and “true” followers of Mao’s teachings were considered acceptable.

Mao then turned Red Guard teens loose to spread his message. Dressed in green, military-style uniforms with red armbands (red being the symbolic color of Communism), the young people took to the streets of China’s cities.

But instead of simply challenging and criticizing anyone considered disloyal, the Red Guards went on the attack. Violence erupted. They beat and terrorized intellectuals and certain authority figures—even their own teachers and parents.

By the summer of 1967, the Red Guards had turned on each other. Rival gangs, each convinced that they were the truest Communists, clashed in the streets. The violence and terror further destroyed China’s already fragile economy and made any kind of social order impossible.

In 1968, Mao finally moved to end the chaos. He sent in the army to seize factories and offices controlled by the Red Guards and other rebels. The military rounded up Red Guards by the thousands, sending them from large cities to live and work alongside peasants in remote rural areas.

The Red Guard youth weren’t the only ones sent off for “reeducation.” So were the children of the elite classes who’d been under attack.

The Cultural Revolution didn’t end completely until 1976, when Mao died. Over the decade that it lasted, tens of millions of people suffered persecution, and no one’s life was ever the same.

Xi Zhao was born in 1949, the same year that China became a Communist republic. She was 17 when Mao launched the Cultural Revolution. Zhao didn’t just witness the turmoil it unleashed. She and her family also experienced its tragic impact and painful aftermath firsthand.

In the following interview by her granddaughter, sixth-grader Michelle Liu, Zhao shares the story of how she survived one of the deadliest decades in China’s history—and how it shaped her life.

ML: You were considered “Intellectual Youth.” What happened to you?
XZ: According to the Chairman’s mandate, “The Intellectual Youth must go to the country, and will be educated from living in rural poverty.” In order to implement that, all middle and high school students were sent to the countryside.

On November 25, 1968, heavy snow was falling. At the Geological Palace Square in my hometown of Changchun, wagon trucks were lined up and filled with students. Then the fleet slowly drove away to the faraway countryside. Parents were running, waving goodbye, and crying behind the trucks.

I was sent to a remote village. People there lived in adobe houses with muddy roads and without electricity. At night, we wrote letters to our parents under oil lamps. Food was scarce. We ate only potatoes and cabbage without any meat.

ML: What happened to China after Mao Zedong’s death?
XZ: Chairman Mao died on September 9, 1976. The Cultural Revolution was finally over. After 10 years of catastrophe, China started new economic reforms to improve people’s living standards. After 1976, the Red Guards completely disappeared.

ML: How did the Cultural Revolution change your life?
XZ: My dream of becoming a doctor was ruined. As an Intellectual Youth, I witnessed the harsh lives of the poorest peasants. I saw the darkest side of humanity. I warn myself to never lose my conscience and always be kind to others.

ML: Do you think the Cultural Revolution broke class barriers and achieved cultural equality?
XZ: Chairman Mao’s intention for it may have been good—to create an equal world. In reality, however, China was in chaos for 10 years, suffering the most severe setback since the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949. The “cultural revolution” was a total failure.

Editor’s Note: The Cultural Revolution tore Zhao’s family apart. Her two brothers were sent to work in factories. A younger sister was left to care for their mother, who had cancer. Zhao wasn’t able to return to her hometown until 1981, when she was 32—married and with a child (Michelle’s mother).

Zhao managed to get a college education and build a better life. But even today, 44 years after the Cultural Revolution ended, she and millions of other survivors still bear the scars of that dark time in their nation’s history.