This is not about Mass Movement, the geological phenomenon:
Masses, the body of people, is the real power to enable the history’s moving forward, according Chairman Mao’s famous saying. A series Masses Movements in China were hot subjects in public to debate and to point fingers. They appeared to be very convoluted and in complex by the view of today’s people. But they were also very logical and straight-forward in the one master’s mind.
After the economic crash following the Giant Leap Movement (a masses movement to elevate the nation’s agriculture and industrial power), the Chairman seemed to be taken blame and resigned his role from Chairman of State. A group of his fellow leaders with less fundamental communist agenda (let’s say they were modest leaders) took over, who were more fascinated in a leaders’ appearance of power and glamor in the world’s common standard. It was then the Planned Economy formally took off (in contrast to the masses movement of Giant Leap), though some later claimed that it was crash landed badly, too. By early 1960’s, even the modest leaders were seeking for a way out from economical crisis using an excuse of another necessary massive political movement. What they started was Socialism Education Movement which further consecutively became the Four to Clean (nobody remembered what were the four bad things to clean in general populations now). The Socialism Education and Four to Clean, targeted to lower-rank cadres who miss conducted and being used by the coming-back capitalism.
But it was Chairman Mao who was the master to mobilize the masses to execute systematical agendas to achieve communist’s total ruling: (1) Land Reform Movement that spread out in late 1940’s along with expansion of the communist’s territory, gained manpower and resources to fuel the Civil War, achieving Communist’s Liberation of China from the Nationalist. (2) Three to Against and Five to Against Movements (again we don’t quite remember about these 3 and 5 bad things in general population now) in early 1950s, established the economic order which became centred with state ownership enterprises (SOE). (3) Anti-Rightists Movement in 1957, concluded consolidation of single-partisan power; stopped the check-and-balance mechanism with other political parties (especially Chinese Democratic Leagues, as the strongest political faction who validated and supported the communist against the Nationalist through the Civil War and hanse formed united government of the New China). As well till Anti-Rightists Movement, it totally destroyed the democratic individualists, the tendency that old and young generations of intellectual longed in, and foreign powers dreamed to ally with. Then stopped the Socialist Education Program, (4) Chairman Mao’s Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution was designated to void China’s peaceful transformation into capitalism, and to prevent a potential Westernization, in two fronts: culture and power.
The modest leaders who hosted authorities would be ultimately victimized by the Culture Revolution. But at beginning they used Chairman Mao’s idea of the movement. It might have been a miss-understanding at the beginning, or some said it was a conspired distraction, the Revolution started following the same course mainly prosecuting people at the bottom of society. The Red Guard Movement was made up of the Five Red Categories of people: descends from Workers, Peasants, Solders, Students, and Governing Leaders, and led by descends from party authorities in high places (the latter was by definition known-as High-rank Officers’ Descents). While the enemies were who they had already at the bottom, the Five Black Categories of people were: landlords, farmers, counter-revolutionaries, villains, Rightists. What the Red Guards raged was a one-side over-power war against the other side already had been in the bottom of society any way. A typical saying of 95% of masse s vs. 5% counteracts that gave people excuse to do anything against minority. Some later claimed after the first wave of masses movement, it took up to millions casualties nationwide, all on the enemy side.
While few young rebellions who were descends from the Five Black Categories and people on lower social demography. They claimed that if it was a revolution, it were authorities in high places should have been overthrown. The formed resistance, also organized as Red Guard factions. The claim was: naturally who had been politically repressed through Past 17 Years (1949 Communist took over the power till 1966 starting the Cultural Revolution) should have been the one now under the purge – then they accused Red Guard factions led by descends from high-rank officers who self-acting “military police” an Fascist authority upon the movement, while they were called royalists. Some rebellions were prosecuted immediately as the “bastards from Five Black Categories who fought back”, but some already formed Red Gard factions, were hard to repress. This planted seeds for later irruption of nationwide Red Gard Faction Wars in 1968. In 1966, any resistances were prosecuted by Working Groups who were sent by the modest leaders who still control governments. Working Groups’ functions were keeping the orderly masses movement, not turn against authorities themselves.
After first ten months into the Culture Revolution, Chairman Mao saw his nation, outraged. He launched his My Own First Large-character Paper with a smoking title of “Shell the Command Centers!” He stated that his disappointment: …but through first ten months it was powerless and young rebellions who got repressed.” Again he made it clear that the Culture Revolution was aiming “party’s top power group, who set course toward China’s becoming a capitalist country”. It might be according Chairman Mao that the Party was repeating its earlier masses movements to destroy those enmities who had been already distorted (“hunting the dead tigers”). The landlords and farmers were destroyed by Land Reform Movement starting in the middle of Civil War; the capitalists and proprietors were destroyed by Three to Against and Five to Against Movements in early 1950’s, and the intellectuals or democratic individualists were destroyed by Anti-Rightists Movement in 1957. Those were no longer primal enemies or threats to the people. It were the modest leaders at the power of Communist Party themselves, by definition the Revisionists (ones who has revised Marx and Lenin’s principles) who abused their power in an attempt “to change the nation’s color”.
Chairman Mao further formed the Central Leaders Group of Cultural Revolution to surpass the top of State authority. Against the earlier sent Working Groups, the new party line encouraged the Red Guard factions who liberated Red Guards from repression by the Working Groups, pursue a public critics upon the Chairman of State (equivalent to president) and his First Lady. So who started Social Education Movement and led Working Group to handle Cultural Revolution were not under a massive attach. The Red Guard launched hanger strike and sit-in strikes surrounding the centra government facility. They eventually succeeded to achieve a kidnap of the First Lady to Tsinghua University and humiliated her in a televized public gathering). Their weeks-long blockage surrounding the Midsouth Sea (the Qing Dynasty royal garden where hosted the State Department in Beijing) pursued the central committee to decide purging the Chairman of State. He was immediately deported from the capital, and in few months he got sick and dead in his exile in a remote place under a different name. Soon the Five Black Categories were added up to Nine, with additions: capitalists, proprietors, in-party in-power factions of capitalists, and intellectuals.
More and more Red Guard factions started fighting each others due to disputes for which ones were enemies and to purge. Some later claim the Red Guard Armed Clashes took up to a million casualties nationwide, which involved military fire arms, and on some occasion local military divisions participated. Many modest leaders, old revolutionaries, central committee members, marshals and generals, ministers, scientists and educators, writers and artists, and so on, whoever were in prestigious upper classes of the society, were downed together. They were all humiliated along with the Five Black Categories who had been humiliated by themselves before. As the slogan said, “being put down to earth, then stepped upon, beneath thousands and ten-thousands feet”. They were humiliated, tortured and killed in public, or arrested, some forced suicide,or executed without trial.
Many survivors of the social turmoil, including former Red Guards, aimlessly fought and wasted a whole generation of their careers. Many years ago to-date a so called Hatred Youth generation were getting older, they have been continuing their furiously expression of angers against Chairman Mao and the party, although the current administration’s leaders is made up of this generation. But no body represented this Cultural Revolution Generation of people, any way. Fingers were pointed only on social network and self-media -they should be thankful for today’s new technology, or the poor loser generation would have no forum at all.
After the Culture Revolution, the most achieved leader Deng spent 10 years combined to execute two new movements: Restore and Correction, and the Reform and Open. The Party “corrected” almost all the life-time marked Rightists; it allowed a Few People the First Become Wealthy, and set to achieve all people “modest wealthy”; it mastered the single-party ruling of the nation, maintained. In 1989 Deng backed the decision allowing military coming to the capital to crack down an attempt to transit a Western democratically system. As interpreted by his successor, the event was an epiphany to the party about its actual position. The concept of party’s empower and ruling the nation since brought into the agenda. At end of Deng’s life, he might have thought that he had already achieved to conclude the Reform and Open. But who knows Deng’s legacy movement lasted another some twenty plus years, still going. Today, under the third-generation leadership after him, the line said: our major task is to deepen the execution of Reform and Open, in 2018 words spread that it was intended for another 40 years.
The imperialists, federalists and bureaucratic capitalists used to be by-text-book-definition the three mountains stayed on top of people, which were removed by the communist, who led the masses, in 1949. The older generation knew what they wanted, and understood how to allied with other people with right promises. While after taking over the nation’s power, it is the third mountain, the bureaucratic capitalists are hard to remove, instead kept mounting up through years. At a point of no-return toward a naked capitalist system and society, it was the later generations’ burden to reset the theory.
While the odds are, many old communist followers who were victimized by Chairman Mao’s movements, still cried out the dying of values and moral standard of old communist’s. They reacted like the later leaders of the revolution betrayed followers of the revolution. The idealism or sentimentalism were not quite communist ones according its philosophical origin. That trapped the people in these views of convolution and complex.
According Western dictionaries, communist and capitalist form a pair of antonym; and Democratic Dictatorship is oxymoron. The people here are not saying what is right or wrong. It is indeed challenge, may be easier to an individual’s mind if in the past when everybody was a proletarian. In recent years, when Americans are celebrating It’s A Wonderful Life (the 1946 movie), “only you play fair” is a conditional comment which seems to be common to both East and West sides.