Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Peking University and the popularization of big-character posters
(large posters written with bold Chinese characters) as a means of air-
ing opinions and attacking ideological opponents.
In June 1966 the anarchy in China began. Many young students left
their studies and joined the exciting new movement to protect Chair-
man Mao and his Thought from revisionists, the standard bogeyman
label for anyone who dared voice disagreement with Mao. Revisionists
were members of the over-thirty generation; how could young people
ever dare resist the smiling Chairman Mao who was telling them that
it was acceptable to rebel against the older generations? In August
Mao publicly and approvingly designated his new young supporters
the “Red Guards” and heartily approved of their slogan “to rebel is
justified.” And rebel they did, in the name of a personality cult centered
on the thought, and the person, of ChairmanMao. Mao took his famous
swim in the Yangtze River in July 1966 to announce to China and the
world that he had the renewed political and physical prowess necessary
to direct the turmoil he was about to unleash in China. (In reality, the
swim as a feat of physical fitness was quite unremarkable; Mao simply
let the current carry him along as he floated on his back, supported by
the buoyancy of his considerable stomach.)
Mao's sycophants and flatterers in the PLAwere proud of the role
they had played in starting the movement. Happy to be included in
Mao's vision of cultural revolution and ideological purification in
China, the PLA's Liberation Army Daily published the following piece
in its August 1, 1966 edition:
Chairman Mao wants us to run our army as a great school. Working
mainly as a fighting force, it concurrently studies, engages in agricul-
ture, runs factories, and does mass work; it carries on and further devel-
ops the fine traditions of our Party and our army, and trains and
tempers millions of successors to the proletarian revolutionary cause,
so that our people's army of several million can play a still greater role
in the cause of socialist revolution and socialist construction. It is a great
school for the study, implementation, dissemination, and safeguarding
of Mao Zedong's Thought.
(Schurmann and Schell 1967, 623)
In this same piece the Liberation Army Daily ingratiated itself with Mao
by lashing out at his critics at Lushan:
The
big struggle took place at the same time as our Party's struggle
against the Right opportunist anti-Party clique in 1959. Taking advantage
of the important posts they had usurped in the army, the principal mem-
bers of the anti-Party clique—who were exposed at the Party's Lushan
...
