There were at least two motivations for Mao's launching of the Cultural Revolution--one ideological and the other personal. With regard to the ideological motivation, Mao was concerned that after nearly twenty years in power, the Chinese Communist Party was succumbing to "bureaucraticism," and losing its ideological purity. He even feared the country was heading toward capitalism--which would have meant a rejection of all the Party had fought for. As for the personal motivation, it seems that Mao was resentful of the fact that he had been forced into semi-retirement by other Party leaders as a result of the failure of the "Great Leap Forward"--Mao's disastrous effort to raise China to developed country status by means of sheer willpower. The ill-conceived agricultural and industrial policies of the "Great Leap Forward" not only had failed to achieve their goals, but had also led to major economic disruptions and to one of the worst famines in human history. Mao was forced to stand aside and allow more pragmatic figures, like President Liu Shaoqi and Premier Zhou Enlai, to take the reins of power. Mao was not happy about this, and apparently began to plot the downfall of his rivals.
After Mao's death, the Cultural Revolution was blamed on his wife Jiang Qing and three other leading figures in the Communist Party, the so-called Gang of Four. Mao himself was not blamed, for if he had been, the authority of the Communist Party itself could have been fatally undermined. Today, the Cultural Revolution remains something of a taboo subject in China. And yet, in a sense, the shadow of the Cultural Revolution still lingers. Ironically, Mao's fears about the bureaucratization of the Communist Party and a move toward capitalism have largely come true. Moreover, China's current president, Xi Jinping, seems to be adopting some of Mao's tactics during the Cultural Revolution--specifically, amassing political power into his own hands and creating a cult of personality around himself. In Xi's case, this is to fight a new enemy--massive corruption within the government and Party--which threatens to undermine the Communists' grip on power. The problem is that Xi's efforts to accrue formidable powers for himself and to make himself into a figure of public adulation are unlikely to achieve his goal of ending corruption and instead have led to higher levels of political repression than have existed in China for many years. It seems that mankind truly never learns from history.
Moreover, the cult of personality around Mao that came to its zenith during the Cultural Revolution illustrates quite starkly what happens when mere human beings are deemed to have a god-like status. During the Cultural Revolution, the Little Red Book of quotations from Mao achieved the status of scripture; it was even seen by some as having nearly magical powers. Songs were written to glorify Mao. One such song--Dongfang Hong ("The East Is Read")--compared Mao to the sun, seemingly a metaphor for divinity. In addition, Mao's portrait was ubiquitous--many people even "reported" their doings to Mao's image on a daily basis, as if it were an idol or an icon. In light of this, it is perhaps not surprising that Mao's death in 1976 provoked a sort of spiritual crisis for many Chinese. Given this sort of situation, it is not surprising that the Psalmist warns us:
Do not put your trust in princes,
In human beings, who cannot save.
When the spirit departs, they return to the ground,
On that very day their plans come to nothing. (Psalm 146:3-4, NIV)
Instead, he tells us, "blessed are those help is the God of Jacob/Whose hope is in the LORD their God" (Psalm 146:5). Would that not only the Chinese people, but all of mankind, could finally learn this lesson!
Image of Mao Zedong from commons.wikimedia.org