Battle for China's Past : Mao and the Cultural Revolution

THE BATTLE FOR CHINA’ S PAST
Great Leap Forward, with the support of Liu Shaoqi and Deng
Xiaoping, the ideology and practice of developing key schools for the
children of the elite in the name of training experts for economic
construction became even more dominant. In all major urban centres
the sons and daughters (princelings) of high-ranking party officials
and army officers attended special schools where a few academic high
achievers were also enrolled. While the princelings thought they were
the natural inheritors of the country and therefore entitled to the privilege,
the academic high achievers from the non-politically correct
classes felt alienated and resentful. In fact it was in those schools that
the precursor of the Cultural Revolution took place: the line was drawn
between students of the ‘red’ family background (the princelings) and
those from ‘black’ family background (families of ‘enemy’ classes). As
a result of the Cultural Revolution policies key schools were abolished
and there were experiments with a fairer system and a more practical
curriculum. However, as soon as Deng Xiaoping came back to power
in the late 1970s the system of key schools was re-established.
Mao’s famous criticism on 26 June 1965 of the Ministry of Health is
cited to remind readers of the current dismal situation of healthcare in
China. In that criticism Mao pointed out that most Chinese lived in
rural China but the country’s healthcare system was designed to cater
for the urban population that comprised only 15 per cent of the total.
Mao caustically suggested that the Ministry of Health should be
renamed as the Ministry for the Urban Lords. To reverse the situation
some medical personnel from the urban centres were either encouraged
or forced to move to rural areas, while an affordable but effective
‘barefoot doctor’ system was established. When Deng Xiaoping came
back to power in the later 1970s, the policy was again reversed.
Reminding the reader that television programmes nowadays are
mostly about emperors, ghosts, sex or the rich and the famous, Mao’s
criticism of the direction of literature and arts in 1963 is cited, in which
Mao said the many arts and literature departments were ruled by the
dead. Along the lines laid down in his talk on the literature and arts at
the Yan’an Forum in 1942, Mao wanted literature and arts to change
direction so that the work and life of the workers and farmers who
were the producers of food and daily necessities and bearers of a lived
culture became their main subjects.
Another comment by Mao is particularly relevant to the issue of
land seizure and the dismantling of people’s homes for development
since the 1990s. On 15 November 1956, commenting on the local
protest against removing residents for an airport construction in
Henan, Mao told the then General Secretary of the CCP Deng
Xiaoping, who ran day-to-day affairs, that ‘even a bird needs a nest.
How can you force people to move without consultation and without
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