Failure of Chinas Cultural Revolution - Essay Example

 Failure of China’s Cultural Revolution INTRODUCTION No generation in the People's Republic suffered more misfortunes than the Red Guards generation. In childhood they experienced the great famine of 1959-1961; in adolescence they endured the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) which closed schools and sent them to the countryside; in their twenties they were told to defer marrying and to have one child only when they did marry; in their thirties they were denied opportunities of career promotion because they lacked the college diplomas recently required; in their forties many of them were suddenly laid off by their employers (Dutton, 2004). The generation before them endured Mao's political campaigns in the 1950s and 60s, but they at least benefited from some the Maoist socialism, enjoying secure jobs and free health care. The generation after them has grown up with Deng Xiaoping's reform, having all the opportunities that this reform has created. The Red Guards generation benefited from neither Maoist socialism nor Dengist reform. Mao's revolution abandoned them, sweeping them out of urban centers; Deng's reform left them on the sidelines when China moved to embrace the market. PURPOSE OF THE PAPER In this paper I shall discuss that the failure of China’s Cultural Revolution reveals Mao’s unrealistic economic plans, his overemphasis on the quantitative industrial production and class struggle. DISCUSSION In Mao's era the Red Guards generation were the poorest of all poor Chinese, living at the lowest income level. This poverty impeded their exploiting the opportunities of Deng's reforms. The increasing costs of economic reform often started with them, further diminishing their capacity for competing in the market. Mao's revolution made them poor, forcing them to live a terrible life without economic liberty or any chance of improvement. It was even more painful when Deng's reform left them poor while Deng's regime glorified the rich (Tsou, 1996). Ever since they had been forced into society, they had been living on an income that only kept body and soul together. For those in the cities, working life began with an apprenticeship in factories, at 18 Yuan a month. When Deng's reform began, they had climbed to the second lowest grade of China's eight-grade salary system for workers, having a monthly salary of less than 40 Yuan. In the 1970s and early 1980s this salary allowed them some small savings, but it often took them 1 or 2 years before they could buy a Shanghai-produced watch or bicycle, each priced at around 150 Yuan. Of those who went to the countryside, a minority was assigned to the military-imitated 'farming corps'. (Dutton, 2004)They first lived on a monthly subsidy of about 15 Yuan and later, when they had to pay for their own food, on a stipend system with '285 dimes' a month, as one sent-down youth mocked it. The majority had been forced into the villages and lived on a 'points system' (gongfenzhi) of people's communes. If a sent-down youth became a ten-points laborer (the highest rank), his (or her) 1 day work in most areas was valued at 30-50 cents on the village's account. If he worked over 330 days, at the end of the year he might get 40-60 Yuan after the deduction of the costs of the grain and other agricultural products he had received during the year. In a few areas ten-points a day was worth over 1 Yuan, but in many areas ten-points a day was worth 20, 10 or only 7 cents. Even worse, the sent-down youths were often not regarded as ten-points laborers. (Yang, 1997) Those in the cities were among the poorest because they were at the bottom of the urban salary ladder that was framed on seniority. Those in the 'farming corps' were among the poorest, because they were treated as the lowest ranked 'farming soldiers' (bingtuan zhanshi), while others in their 'corps' were either 'farming officers' or 'farming workers', living on a slightly higher salary. (Gittings, 2005)Those in the villages were amongst the poorest because they, unlike the peasants, did not have children or old parents to balance the consumption of the often inadequate amount of food, although the remittances from their urban parents often made their life better than the peasants'. When Deng's reform began to affect cities in 1984-85, urban individuals experienced new commercial opportunities but limited economic privatization. However, it was difficult for the members of the Red Guards generation to take advantage of these changes. They had been too poor for too long, and a revival of extravagant wedding celebrations from the late 1970s, as Honig and Hershatter point out, had financially exhausted many of them (Dutton, 2004). They did not have the capital necessary to start a small private business, nor could they borrow capital from the Chinese banking industry which had no procedure to loan to private individuals. Moreover, this generation's economic position suffered disproportionately because of the increasing economic costs of reform. By 1982 most had got a job in state enterprises or at enterprises under various collective ownerships. By the mid-1980s most of them had got married and received a salary raise, having 50-60 Yuan a month, still a low income level. With a heavier family burden, they had to bear the economic costs of reform that rose higher every year. Deng's decentralization gradually forced all enterprises and institutions on their own, and in order to survive they had to produce extra resources by collecting fees. (Tsou, 1996) Like everyone else, the Red Guards generation paid new fees, but what they had to pay uniquely was expensive tuition for their kids. In the mid-1980s, the preschools and elementary schools began to collect 'supporting fees' (zanzhufei) that could run several times higher than the parents' monthly income, depending on a school's quality and reputation. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, when their kids were at the middle level of education, the middle and high schools also collected various fees. By 1996, when their kids began to enter universities, the State Commission of Education formally decided that all students had to pay tuition of around 3000 Yuan a year. They paid all tuition fees, and seemed to be the one generation paying a disproportionate cost of the education reform (Yang, 1997) To be sure, in the 1990s the post-Cultural Revolution generation has begun to pay school fees for their children, but they already have a better income and expect the fees. Another fee that the Red Guards generation paid was for housing. In the mid-1980s, when they began to move out of their parents' apartments or the singles' dormitories of their enterprises, China's housing reform had just started. By the mid-1990s a three-fold payment approach to privatizing housing was settled; the state, enterprise or institution, and individual would each share a part of the cost (Dutton, 2004). For their parents' generation, who lived in the apartments or houses that socialism had offered them, the individual part of the payment would be deducted from their monthly salary or retirement benefit on an installment plan, but the monthly dues were so small that they would probably not have paid their share by the time of death. The Red Guards generation, now eligible for better housing based on seniority, usually had to pay a 15,000-30,000 Yuan down-payment for a dwelling, and have the remainder deducted from their monthly salary. This down-payment was often too heavy for them to bear, but they could not afford to give up a long-waited opportunity because their seniority might not count in the next round of housing distribution. (Barnouin, 1993) From the late 1980s, when the housing privatization reform gradually deepened, the members of the Red Guards generation often had to borrow heavily from relatives and friends for their housing, thus weakening further their economic position. To make their situation even worse, China began to have price inflation and overheated consumerism. Ever since Deng's reform started, people had complained about the rise in prices. Between 1985 and 1988, when the inflation rate was at 18.5% annually, the salary of the Red Guards generation increased little. Between 1992 and 1995 their monthly salary had increased to between 300 and 1000 Yuan, a range corresponding to differences in the cost of living between cities, but a general 35% annual inflation rate in 35 major cities made their salary raises mean very little. In the meantime, influenced by Western lifestyles or simply by neighbors, a heated consumerism drove many to spend more than they earned. While in the late 1980s a color TV, a refrigerator, or a set of furniture often cost a family 1 or 2 years savings, in the 1990s a stereo sound system, a personal computer, or a complete home interior decoration called for an even heavier outlay (Chong, 2002). Of course, the Red Guards generation could choose not to purchase these commodities, but unfortunately these goods had become the index of life quality, the fashion of the times, and necessities for the one child. In addition, they had to hire a private tutor to assist the child's education or buy a piano to develop the child's musical talent. They had lost too much and knew the pains too deep, so they did not want their children to be denied. To be sure, their living standards, like that of most Chinese, had increased during the near two decades of reform, but inflation and consumerism have eroded their relative economic position. Insecure and poorly educated, they were now challenged by rural people and the young. During the Cultural Revolution, the rural youths could not complain of unfairness since the urban kids had been sent down to become peasants, seemingly forever. But, in 1979, when the 'Great Escape' of the sent-down youths swept across the countryside, many rural youths publicly denounced the Communist rural-urban division and demanded to have equal urban employment opportunities (Dutton, 2004). When the Government refused to listen, they entered cities on their own initiative and formed that vast pool of 'floating peasants' (mingong) of the 1980s and 1990s. After they floated to the city, they willingly took any jobs they could get, from construction to street cleaning, however low-quality, low-pay, or even degrading. By the early 1990s some 80 million 'floating peasants' closed the backdoor for the Red Guards generation, because the latter had few jobs to fall back on if deprived of their current employment. On the other hand the younger generation were taking the high-quality, high-paying jobs, from bank clerks to computer programmers in private enterprises, joint ventures and state institutions, because they had two assets all employers wanted: youth and education. Their rise blocked the Red Guards generation from moving up from their current status. Sandwiched between the 'floating peasants' and the younger generation, the Red Guards generation often lost out in the job market. They disliked the work that the floating peasants were doing, and often could not have the jobs that the younger generation performed. Once they lost their jobs, they had no place to go (Yang, 1997). They might also have a conceptualization problem about the market economy, making their own adaptation to the economic transition difficult. In childhood they learned the classical Confucian contempt for merchants, and in the mid-1950s they saw how communist society despised and punished merchants. Prior to the Cultural Revolution their schools taught them idealism and egalitarianism rather than profit-making; as a result, none of them had wished to become merchants or businessmen, and many of them admired peasants and workers. Although in the mid-1990s they probably no longer had contempt for merchants, in the 1980s many did hate profit-seeking, and seeing the newly rich private entrepreneurs as indecent, they ignored or refused commercial opportunities (Tsou, 1996). The socialist economy was the only system they knew. Even if they hated it, they still knew its advantages of job security, free medical care and good retirement benefits. These sentiments increased their willingness to endorse socialism when the transition to a market economy caused them uncertainties. For the returned sent-down youths, it was difficult to risk job security for new market opportunities, of which they were ignorant. After many years of hardship in the countryside, they needed time to heal their trauma and readjust to city life. As long as socialism paid them a living wage, there was no imperative to give up a secure life for the market economy. However, they probably never imagined their socialist economy faced a threat to its very existence. From the 1980s China's rural industry, private enterprises and foreign joint ventures developed and increased their share of the nation's economy. The state and collective enterprises were the major losers in the economic transition because of their low efficiency, overcrowded work force, and shortage of capital (Dutton, 2004). To survive and pay salaries to their workers, the only thing they could do was borrow from banks, which, under socialist obligations, had to lend. Yet, when these loans threatened to destroy the state banking industry, the Government had to force the enterprises to survive by their own devices or even go bankrupt. From the mid-1980s many enterprises began to ask their female workers to take a prolonged maternity leave, usually 1-3 years, on 50-70% of their regular salary. Many factories adopted new names, to which they attached workers under 35 or 40 years old, and bankrupted the old names, throwing older workers out of work and forcing the state to make loans for their living. Many enterprises simply asked their workers over 35 years of age to take earlier retirement on a benefit of 60-70% of their salary. When such measures were implemented, the members of the Red Guards generation were among the first to leave their jobs because many of them were over 35 years old. Moreover, after China decided to embrace completely the market economy in 1992, the lay-off was formally established as a standard measure to get rid of the workers no longer needed. Of all the people subjected to lay-off, the members of the Red Guards generation were most vulnerable, due to their relatively older ages and lower education (Gittings, 2005). In 1996 China's official lay-off figure was 7.5 million. Shanghai, China's largest industrial city, contributed more to this total than any other city. In Shanghai 56.8% of those laid off were between 35 and 45 years old, indicating that the Red Guards generation took the heaviest hit. These lay-offs reveal that the past distresses of the Red Guards generation profoundly shaped their present misfortunes. The case of Chen Jie best illustrates the point. In 1969, after being at her Shanghai middle school for only a year, Chen Jie was sent down to a remote area in Yunnan province. In 1979 she returned and became a worker at a rubber plant. She worked diligently, joined the Party, and never imagined that someday her factory would no longer want her. In 1993, when she was 40 years old, her plant laid her off. She applied for many decent jobs, but was always rejected because she had no specialty or was considered too old. She spent all her savings to establish herself as a hawker, but her business collapsed. Her life became so desperate that she could bear it only for the sake of her son, who was at a school, and her ill, old parents, for whom she felt a deep responsibility (Gittings, 2005). Later, Chen Jie took a job as a nanny, and from there she finally became the director of a neighborhood committee and an officially praised example who has succeeded after being laid off. There were many who never had a chance to become a director of a neighborhood committee, urban China's lowest ranking official. Zhang Guiying, a woman in Beijing of the same age and having the same kind of education as Chen Jie, has only reached the nanny level after 9 years of being sent down to a remote part of Heilongjiang province, 14 years of working at a chemical fiber factory, and 3 years of lay-off. Zhao Yongwang is a good example of what men could do after being laid off. After 10 years of being sent down and 14 years as a truck driver, Zhao was laid off. He then became a security guard for a year, a grocery hawker for 6 months, a fruit hawker for a year, a seafood hawker for 2 years, and finally ended up as a shoe repairer. What all this demonstrates is that for many of the Red Guards generation, the inadequate education they received and the hardships they endured created lasting difficulties (Dutton, 2004). CONCLUSION The misfortunes of the Red Guards generation owe much to their pre-Cultural Revolution education. Under the Maoist regime, they were educated to value patriotism, heroism, altruism and idealism, and to sacrifice themselves for socialism. Mao for his Cultural Revolution manipulated their intellectual predispositions. However, when they violently dislocated the society, they shattered the system that could have permitted them to live the life they expected. As a consequence, they were poorly prepared for the future ahead. WORKS CITED Barnouin, Barbara.  Ten years of turbulence:  the Chinese cultural revolution.  Publication of the Graduate Institute of International Studies, Geneva. London; New York: Kegan Paul International; New York: Distributed by Routledge, Chapman & Hall Inc., 1993. Chong, Woei Lien: China's great proletarian Cultural Revolution:  master narratives and post-Mao counternarratives. World Social Change. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2002. Dutton, Michael.  Policing Chinese Politics:  A History.  Durham: Duke University Press, 2004. Gittings, John.  The Changing Face of China:  From Mao to Market.  Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. Yang, Xiguang.  Captive Spirits:  Prisoners of the Cultural Revolution.  New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. Tsou, Tang The Cultural Revolution and Post-Mao Reforms: A Historical Perspective- History - 1996 - 351 pages Read More