On the 55th anniversary of the “5.16” notice of the Communist Party of China announcing the launch of the Cultural Revolution, red-themed phenomena including red films and red books, red songs and dances, red schools and red uniforms, and red temples, as well as activities to commemorate the Cultural Revolution, have emerged everywhere, gaining widespread attention and raising concerns about whether the Cultural Revolution is making a comeback. It also aroused the concern of “whether the Cultural Revolution is coming back”.
If the top is good, the bottom will support it
Data from the site of the Great Congress of the Communist Party of China show that before 2017, it received between 500,000 and 550,000 visitors a year; that number rose to 1.42 million in 2018 and 1.46 million in 2019, Xinhua said.
Baidu cites information from China’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism as saying that the number of red tourism trips in China exceeds 100 million in 2020 and has “maintained steady growth” in recent years.
Wu Zorai, an independent scholar and political commentator, told VOA that some people in the Communist Party system may be aware of Xi’s tendencies and are therefore behaving and doing what they want.
Wu Jolai noted, “Xi himself has an affection for the Cultural Revolution, in a sense; he sympathizes with, understands, and even appreciates it in his heart, and his family, after all, did not suffer the deep and catastrophic persecution that other families, like Liu’s for example, did. In a sense, both Mao and the Cultural Revolution movement were lenient with Xi’s family. Moreover, there are people who say that the Cultural Revolution was wrong in a thousand ways, and that it was right to go to the mountains and cultivate a Xi Jinping.”
According to Wu, as for the “reversal” of the Cultural Revolution, the “Brief History of the Chinese Communist Party” has initiated a theoretical step, “and there is a faction of the people who are fooling around, for example, by holding a symposium for Jiang Qing during May 16 to discuss ‘the status of Comrade Li Jin in the history of the Party ‘ for a theoretical determination, to be re-judged, and so on.”
A photo shows pink and red flowers in front of a gray slate tombstone inscribed with the words “Tomb of my late mother Li Yunhe.” In a tweet, history scholar Zhang Lifan said, “Jiang Qing’s grave is very beautiful.”
In another old photo from the Qingming Festival in 2018, a basket of mainly white chrysanthemums is placed in front of a tombstone, and two red elegies with white lettering dangle from the top of the basket, one on the right reading “To the eternal memory of Jiang Qing’s mother,” and the one on the left reading “Henan Shangqiu Mao Zedong Thought Group The left side is inscribed “Mao Zedong Thought Group, Shangqiu, Henan Province.
Song Yongyi, an expert on the Cultural Revolution and a retired professor at California State University, Los Angeles, told Voice of America that Chinese scholars abroad often quote Marx’s statement that the ideas of any society are always the ideas of the ruling class, “which cannot be used to describe any society, but is 100 percent true for totalitarian societies. “
Song Yongyi pointed out that during the Deng, Jiang and Hu eras, the ideology displayed by the leaders, as well as the ideology controlled by the official media, was critical of the Cultural Revolution; while Xi Jinping’s style was the exact opposite.
A netizen named Luo Yuanzhi said, “Xi Jinping and the entire contemporary leadership collective belong to the Red Guards and Zhiqing generation. They all grew up during the period when Mao Zedong Thought was prevalent …… In general, they believe in power and power schemes at heart …… Maoist class struggle is the only mode of political operation they are familiar with and believe in.”
However, independent scholar Wu Jolai also pointed out that on May 16 this year, some people were ready to hold a public symposium, which was called off by their superiors. This is also a signal that “we see that there are different forces playing the game. But it is not clear to anyone which forces are supporting and in what way they are operating.”
Praising the Cultural Revolution is nothing more than Ye Gong Gong
Song Yongyi, an expert on the Cultural Revolution, told VOA that Xi Jinping’s version of “A Brief History of the Chinese Communist Party” already categorizes the Cultural Revolution as the first 28 years and says it “provided valuable experience, theoretical preparation, and material foundation for the current rule of the Communist Party,” referring to the founding of the People’s Republic of China to the end of the Cultural Revolution as “This is too bold, right? After all, Deng Xiaoping’s 1981 ‘resolution’ concluded that the Cultural Revolution was completely rejected. “
History scholar Zhang Lifan commented on Twitter, “The 1981 Resolution of the 6th Plenary Session of the 11th CPC Central Committee on Certain Historical Issues Since the Founding of the People’s Republic completely negated the Cultural Revolution; did it also become, like the Sino-British Joint Declaration, ‘a ‘historical document’ that ‘does not have any realistic significance’? ‘historical document’?”
Wu Jo, an independent scholar, said that it is not difficult to whitewash the Cultural Revolution verbally and in writing, but it is another landscape to really ask those people to taste the taste of the Cultural Revolution themselves, “In fact, a group of vested classes within the system, or the corrupt and privileged classes, if they happen to have another Cultural Revolution, maybe they are the ones who will be liquidated, because they may have many houses and deposits, of course, in abroad. So, this administrative system now is not going to cooperate with Xi in the Cultural Revolution.”
Song Yongyi, an expert on the Cultural Revolution, said that even if they went to the middle of Mao’s left and told them to really implement the Cultural Revolution, they would all oppose it, “Some netizens made a very good suggestion. For those who are willing to return to the Cultural Revolution, build them a place, let them go inside and divide into two factions, fight each other, kill each other, people eat people …… no Internet, no outside information, provide daily rebel newspapers, you see how long they can persist. Moreover, meals are served with a ticket, up to 28 pounds per person per month. At the highest standard in Shanghai at the time, 1 and a half pounds of meat per person per month, it was over. You had to stand in line to buy everything, see how long those Mao leftists could tolerate it. I don’t think they could last three months. So the question of whether there should be a return to the Cultural Revolution, such as it is, is very clear to all Chinese people.”
In his tweet, Zhang Lifan pointed out that Bayi Film Studio’s new film “Mao Zedong in Caixi,” which opened in theaters on May 8, had collected only 17,000 yuan at the box office as of May 11, “and it’s not an exaggeration to say that just this box office revenue may not even pay the main actors’ salaries.”
Zhang Lifan also said that the current 81 factory involved in the production of the film, in addition to “Mao Zedong in Caixi”, there is a “Yao Gang 1949”, “the film brings together Lu Qi, Gu Wei and other outstanding special actors, currently in theaters for 48 days, the box office is only a pathetic 280,000, no doubt the cost is not recovered.”
Deng left room for Mao, communist politics is “flipping the cake”
Song Yongyi, an expert on the Cultural Revolution, once told the New York Times, “To say whether the ‘Cultural Revolution’ is really over, you only have to look at the statue of Chairman Mao on Tiananmen Square to see if it has been taken down.”
Song Yongyi told the Voice of America that although Deng Xiaoping completely rejected the Cultural Revolution in 1981, he did not do a serious cleanup of the Cultural Revolution and did not systematically criticize Mao, which left a legacy for today, “Deng’s resolution was simple: to protect Mao Zedong and the entire ideological system of the Communist Party. This left a back door for the current restoration.”
Song Yongyi said that Xi Jinping’s greatest emulation of Mao is the reversal of the case – in order to achieve his own goals, he can change the past definitions like “flipping a burrito”, “In addition, there are only two people in the CCP who like to revise history and turn the party history into the personal history of the leaders, one is Mao and the other one is Mao and the other is Xi. Moreover, Xi, like the old Mao who exported the revolution at that time, is already looking at the world and wants to become the leader of the world revolution.”
Independent scholar Wu Jo-lai says that although Xi turned the definitive view of the Cultural Revolution on its head, “the climate is different in terms of administration. One of the important things that Mao was able to do back then was to kick out the party committee and make a revolution, to abandon the party committee system and reorganize a set of teams by workers, peasants, soldiers and young people, the ‘county revolutionary committees’ that we still see until after the end of the Cultural Revolution, the ‘commune revolutionary committees ‘, neither of which was a party committee. Mao re-established this system of revolutionary committees, with power in his hands and in the hands of Jiang Qing and Zhou Enlai. And rebuilding the Communist Party’s set of administrative systems is not an easy thing to do, and it cannot be done now. On the contrary, Xi precisely needs to use the party’s name to sit on top.”
Song Yongyi also believes that with Mao’s prestige back then, it didn’t matter if he destroyed the entire party organization from top to bottom, “Xi Jinping couldn’t close the show if he did that, and he might have gotten himself down. I think that he reverses the case for the Cultural Revolution, which is still either explicit or implicit. If he really wants to go his own way and jump out and do things backwards, it’s time for him to fall, after all, the taboo of the Cultural Revolution cannot be touched.”
According to Wu Jolai, on the social front, over the years, China’s middle and proletariat have become an important force in society. In the 1960s of the Cultural Revolution, after agriculture began to normalize, a large young population entered society, housing could not keep up, and job opportunities could not keep up. These young people became the proletariat, who had no social responsibility but had the energy to go around and engage in cascades, struggles and sabotage,” Does this force exist now? According to my observation, although the ants and working class of young people are now living a very sad life, the police system and the party and government system will not allow this part of the population to come out and engage in collusion, struggle and sabotage. It is difficult to incite the bottom force needed for the Cultural Revolution. At most, it will incite some people to be anti-American, to stage a demonstration, to stage a limited activity against foreign enterprises, and not dare to start the fire.”
Song Yongyi pointed out that on the occasion of the current 55th year of the Cultural Revolution, “the leftists are selling out, but the CCP’s political campaigns are all about campaigning for the masses. You think Xi Jinping is now connected to your heart, when the rebels also felt connected to Chairman Mao’s heart. It didn’t take long for the old Mao to change his tune. In 68, he started to rectify the rebels, the so-called purging of the class ranks, saying that the Cultural Revolution was a continuation of the civil war between the Communist Party and the State Party, changing the previous narrative of rectifying the party’s power faction that took the capitalist road. Politics for the leaders, especially for the leaders of the Communist Party, is ‘flipping the cake’, for the regime anyone can be pulled out to sacrifice the flag.”
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