I'm asking this in reaction to this comment which essentially asserted that the perceived rudeness of Chinese tourists abroad was largely a result of Mao's cultural revolution stripping away traditional Chinese values in a way that has left China's new affluent elite without the system of etiquette required to handle its new wealth.
The comment makes some pretty bold claims, and I was wondering how well some of them are supported by historical evidence.
Particularly:
Did the cultural revolution really "erase" Chinese culture in a fundamental and lasting way, particularly for citizens outside the cultural elite?
To what extent can the effects of the cultural revolution be perceived in contomporary Chinese behaviour and attitudes.
The comment you link makes a lot of claims that I've never previously encountered, such as Mao standardizing all salary, and some claims that are outright false (pretty much all of the poster's second point). It seems the comment in question greatly confuses the Great Leap Forward (particularly the famine from 1959-1962) and the Cultural Revolution.
As for your questions, part of the cultural revolution was a sustained campaign against 'traditional Chinese culture' (specifically the Four Olds - Old Customs, Old Culture, Old Habits, Old Ideas). That said, I don't think many serious historians would dare to claim that the Cultural Revolution erased Chinese culture. Was there widespread vandalism against cultural icons and books? By most accounts, especially of the Cultural Revolution in the cities, certainly... but to claim that this is enough to 'erase' Chinese culture seems ludicrous.
It's important to recognize that the Cultural Revolution was not universal across China, and many parts of China took very different lessons from it. For many parts of China, especially rural areas, the Cultural Revolution was less a time of conflict and class war, and more a time of growth and prosperity, as adjustments to the commune system implemented in during the Great Leap Forward changed them into reasonably productive societies. (If you want to read more about an alternative narrative to the Cultural Revolution, I'd suggest Dongping Han's The Unknown Cultural Revolution)
Because of this, it is difficult to say that the Cultural Revolution had a singular effect on contemporary Chinese behavior. It meant different things for different people, though I think most Chinese interpret the Cultural Revolution based on how they understand their current government. One popular perception is that the Cultural Revolution was ten years of darkness - with some interpreting that as ten years without progress, and others understanding it as a time of terror and violence. Others, however, are nostalgic for the pre-reform era, and are less critical of the Cultural Revolution.
The destruction was fundamental... though not by any means total… but the vessel destroyed was ancient and fundamentally incompatible with the rigors of the 20th century.
First we must understand, what are we talking about when we say “Chinese culture?” Basic, but necessary. At its core, it stems of a rigid class structure based on absolute monarchy, and founded on the basis of a morality and sense of social order that was some 2500 years old.
The absolute and only basis of governmental authority from 3k+ BCE all the way up to 1911 and the republican uprising in the form of the Xinhai Revolution, was completely a solely based on the divine monarchy of the 天子, the Son of Heaven, and his claim to a literal Mandate of Heaven legitimizing his rule. So, just understand that the early 20th century and the overthrow of the imperial system in favor of a Republic was such a fundamental alteration of the entire social oder than already, you’re talking about almost throwing out everything you ever knew… from political systems, to dress, to haircuts.
The Guomindang (aka the Nationalist Party, often rendered as the KMT) would be the political body that would rapidly seize control of the reins of government following the abdication of the final Qing Emperor, Puyi, in 1912 (though he be kept on as a puppet monarch of Manchukuo in the 1920’s by the Japanese Empire… anyways…). Its leader – the real George Washington of China, in a modern sense – was Sun Zhongshan (often rendered in English lang. translations by the name he typically used with foreigners, Sun Yat-sen). Both Jiang Jieshi (Chiang Kai-shek) and Mao Zedong (Mao Tse-tung) were both essentially Sun’s disciples in a political sense, and both traced their political lineages back to him, and both the KMT and the CPC refer to him lovingly as the 国父, the GuoFu, or “Father of the Nation.”
And yet – marked unlike George Washington – Sun Zhongshan never would hold the top job, acting merely as “provisional president” before the likes of Jiang Jieshi could step in with his quasi-dictatorial, warlord-ish hold over the Guomindang and Republican China. (note: as /u/altrsaber has implored me to note - this was neither as quick nor as glib as I make it sound here... it was a more than 15 year process, but I'm working against a character limit... moving on...)
[ok, cthulhu, blah blah blah, leadup, leadup… get to the point already]
Sorry! Trying to breeze through some background before really launching in here… okay, so long-story-short, the KMT royally screws the pooch in 1949, and in spite of holding the vast majority of China, specifically that south of the Yangtze River, they manage to just… I dunno, I can’t even… and instead get pushed entirely out of mainland Asia and retreating en masse to Taiwan Island, some 2 million+ people, military and civilian refugees alike, fleeing the Maoist Red Menace.
On October 1st, 1949, the Chairman of the Chinese Communist Part, Mao Zedong, proclaims the formation of the People’s Republic of China the precipices of the Gate of Heavenly Peace of the Imperial Forbidden City (might be more familiar as Tiananmen)… where his portrait still hangs to this day.
As per his soviet-communist teachings, Mao first and primary objective as the singular authority of his newly-founded nation was a complete uprooting the conventional land-ownership system that had been in place for – this will probably get old in the telling – literally thousands of years. Landlords and tenants, totally out. If you were a landlord, you have the means to flee the country, but otherwise essentially you were well and truly screwed. As per the Soviet model, land and property was forcibly “redistributed” in a system heavily favoring the poor and/or landless peasantry. Essentially claims of property ownership were dead, to be replaced by a system of “to each according to his need”… of course, as determined by the “dictatorship of the proletariat.”
In this initial push, many of the physical reminders of the ancient and, in the communist view at least, tyrannical imperial structures were destroyed. Buildings that had stood for centuries, artifacts that had been preserved for millennia, city walls that had staved off armies across time… were now all felled and ground to dust, since they were a reminder of, as Mao put it, the “feudal” past. Many of the “learned” individuals – imperial and republican alike – are branded as anti-revolutionary, anti-proletarian, or “capitalist-roadsters” and either liquidated by the police, executed via mob justice (though that wouldn’t happen in bulk until later on), or sent to rural farms to undergo “peasant re-education”… which often meant simply being worked/starved to death.
The Great Leap Forward, 1958-61
Mao Zedong’s ideological purism envisioned the total collectivization of agriculture, and to thereby rapidly transform the remainder of the Chinese opulace and landscape into industrial and urban economies. This so-call Great Leap Forward… would instead produce one of the worst human-caused famines in history … to call it catastrophic is an understatement.
The previous year, Mao had institution what became known as the hundred Flowers Campaign, based on a slogan of his own device stating, “let a hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred schools of thought contend [with one another].” Its stated goals had been to encourage innovation and competition among those who might see problems with the PRC’s regime and wish to improve it. Mao himself officially opened the “Hundred Flowers Era” with a speech entitled “On the Correct Handling of the Contradictions Among the People,” in which he stated, “Our society cannot back down, it could only progress... criticism of the bureaucracy is pushing the government towards the better.” He went on to encourage those with “constructive” criticisms to come forth, so long as what they had to say was not “between the enemy and ourselves” (i.e. destructive and hateful).
It was, however, in the end a trap. It almost certainly wasn’t intended to be, but events on the groundin the USSR – specifically the denunciation of Stalin by Khruschev, and the Hungarian Revolution – convinced Mao by that same July that acting “conciliatory” toward reform, or “rightist” elements was not the way to stay on Ol Papa Joseph’s good side…. And so as his hundred flowers dutiful sprang up, but crushed them one after the other… a suppression of Chinese cultural expression that wouldn’t be lifted until the 1980’s under Deng Xiaoping and culminating with the infamous Tiananmen Square Protests of 1989.
The Cultural Revolution, 1968-78
Let us -er'hem - Leap ahead, though, (HurHurHur) to the next major signpost in the reign of Chairman Mao: the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. Most of the physical reminders of the imperial past had been destroyed, expatriated, or at least re-cast in a pro-revolutionary light (such as the Walls of Nanjing as an anti-Japanese propaganda piece). Still, in spite of the social “purification” that had been ongoing since 1949, the decade between 1966 and 1976 would mark the real “slate-wiper” for the vaunted 5000 years of culture and civilization.
Mao had become as paranoid as any absolute leader it wont to become, and in May of 1966, the Politburo was called in essentially an emergency meeting to effective rubber-stamp Mao’s new political agenda. This was, it should be noted, immediately following one of Mao’s increasingly common polical purges, and so it’s not surprising that the language of the official documents reflected that climate, in particular the May 16th Notification which read: “Those representatives of the bourgeoisie who have sneaked into the Party, the government, the army, and various spheres of culture are a bunch of counter-revolutionary revisionists. Once conditions are ripe, they will seize political power and turn the dictatorship of the proletariat into a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. Some of them we have already seen through; others we have not. Some are still trusted by us and are being trained as our successors, persons like Khruschev for example, who are still nestling beside us.” Enemies lay in wait withing the structures of the Communist Party itself who purportedly “waved the red flag in order to oppose it.” The only way to root those ideological traitors out would be through a sweeping a perpetual cultural revolution guided by the “telescope and microscope of Mao Zedong thought.”
The focus through which sum total of Chinese Culture would henceforth be viewed– what was acceptable, was was unacceptable, what was legal, what was criminal – would swiftly be reshaped to that notion: that it all had to stem from or link back to Mao’s Little Red Book. Culture replaced with ideological purism. Yet Mao went further – rather than relying on the old political bulwarks to further this new phase of “perpetual revolution,” a prospect his old guard were less and less inclined to aggressively back, he turned instead to the hearts and minds of those most malleable of citizens: the youth. One again branding teachers and professors as “anti-revolutionary capitalist roadsters,” this new phase of Cultural Revolution implored the student masses of China to actively denounce their teachers, the elders, and even their parents… classes were almost immediately cancelled in Beijing, which was expanded to a nationwide cancellation of all school classes beginning June 13, 1966. Mao directs so-called “Work Teams” (工作组) to fill in on behalf of the laid-off educators, but in reality to get their charges to swear total fealty to the tenants of Mao Zedong Thought. From this push the Red Guard grew, aimed at total “new thought” and a destruction of any and everything that was “old thought.”
/r/AskHistorians had a few threads about the cultural revolution and how it can be seen. They might be relevant till an answer to the question is posted.
From Mao's point of view, was the Cultural Revolution a success, a failure or something in between?
Why was the Chinese Communist Party relatively merciful towards the former Qing royal family?
Why did so many people commit suicide during the Cultural Revolution in China?
Informative thread about sources: Help: Discerning sources about Mao's Cultural Revolution
I dont know if this will answer your question, but I will give it a shot by giving a broader overview of very modern Chinese educational history.
Pre-democratic China, which ended in 1912 with the forced abdication of the Manchu Emperor Henry Pu Yi, there existed a rigorous, country wide system of imperial academies and publicly funded provincial schools. The former were designed to funnel the best and brightest into the central government while the latter provided a classical education at no cost (and a stipend) to individually chosen students. But there were few students at these latter ones and at all of these institutions, there was a distinct lack of scientific or mathematical education until about the 1860's when the Qing chose to have the educational systems do an about face on the subject matter and instead focused heavily on Chemistry, Math, and European Languages as well as other technical subjects.
After the abdication, Chinese education remained largely technical and still only for a very pre-selected few. It is important to keep in mind that the population of China was still incredibly agrarian and uneducated. Nevertheless, the focus on technical education actually caused full scale riots in some places as well as countless social student movements (in particular the New Culture Movement of 1919) which actually reversed the trend. Nevertheless, several universities were founded and held in high regard nationally by the outbreak of the civil war.
Nevertheless China was still a largely uneducated country by the end of 1949 when the civil war ended with the Nationalists being pushed into the sea and into Taiwan and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and Mao taking full control. When they had taken over, the CCP largely reversed the reforms of the social movements and reestablished a technical education regime. At no point in the regime of Mao, however, was any actual universal education regime implemented. In fact, it was not until 1985 that the CCP passed a law obligating that all children enter school for nine years (essentially through their 15th year).
Stepping back into Mao, it is very important to note that the Great Leap as well as the Socialist education movement largely targeted University elites and teachers in order to teach them how to understand rural peasantry and purge their sense of traditional and Western culture and ideas. Not happy with the result, Mao ordered the closure of ALL schools and universities in 1966 during the Cultural Revolution and it was not until 1972 that all education was again allowed. In the meantime, Intellectuals were sent to labor camps where there were many deaths. Some historical record is lacking due to this and it was not until the early 1980's that things like literacy testing resumed. While all schools were initially closed, the Cultural Revolution did pivot towards basic universal education and thus many old and new public schools opened to give a briefer, more concise basic education to all children. Nevertheless, the more highly educated city residents proved to be a problem for Mao and he began to once again send the more educated citizens into the countryside permanently. It is important to note that Traditional Chinese (aka Confucian) AND Western ideals were wholly rejected by the CCP, not just Western ideas.
So to answer the question, yes, Cultural Elites were included in this educational and cultural purges. It is important to note that outside of the cultural elite, there did not exist much in the way of national Chinese culture due to the difficulty in communication, geography, ethnic and racial division, and language barriers, so to attack the cultural elite was the best way to wear down the influence of the West and traditional values and forms, though I should note that these barriers are why Mao ultimately failed to purge his Four Old's.
I wont speculate on how modern culture has been affected though because the educational system in China today is radically different from that of its predecessors, largely in part to the more balanced choices made by Mao's successors in particular under Deng Xiaoping, Mao's immediate successor.
Sources: Politics and Education in Nationalist China: The Case of the University Council, 1927-1928
China Under Mao: A Revolution Derailed
Rise of the Red Engineers: The Cultural Revolution and the Origins of China's New Class, by Joel Andreas
Rhetoric of the Chinese Cultural Revolution: The Impact on Chinese Thought, Culture, and Communication by Xing Lu.
OP, there is a Lot more I could write and cite for your first question, but the above are a place to start if you want more.
To what extent can the effects of the cultural revolution be perceived in contomporary Chinese behaviour and attitudes.
If you use "Chinese" in it's broadest definition - what in modern Mandarin would be 華人, or "the Chinese people" (without reference to a particular geo-political boundary), then one interesting way of thinking about modern-day Chinese (中國) societal norms is to find a historically/culturally Chinese (華人) locale that did not undergo the Cultural Revolution, and see if the norms of that society are similar or divergent than those of China. The obvious candidate for such a comparison would be Taiwan. It's dominant ethnic group is comprised of Han Chinese (漢人) and it is historically/culturally Chinese (again, using the term "Chinese" very broadly).
It's overly simplistic to draw a 1:1 comparison between China and Taiwan in the context of the Cultural Revolution. That is, the fact that Taiwan did not undergo the Cultural Revolution would not necessarily explain Taiwan's differing modern-day societal norms (assuming they exist). That said, I think Taiwan's modern cultural development (from the late 19th century onwards) might offer some insight - however small - into the larger questions posed by the OP.
It's actually fairly curious how paradoxical the Cultural Revolution became as the movement idealized the will of the people and departure from moderate politics. Yet simultaneously the Cultural Revolution very much depended on the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party and a sort of "revolutionary spirit" that harkens back to 1949, a reliance on tradition. Though Mao did indeed attack the "Four Olds" it's very difficult to say if the CR necessarily dismantled Chinese traditions because of the nature of the revolution that required tradition for coherency.
On one hand as mentioned before most definitely there was defacing of the "old" on the other hand, much of the rural populace still retained their personal beliefs and for the most part familial institutions and traditions nevertheless remained. To make matters even more confusing, much of the CR rhetoric involved invoking a tradition of revolutionary activity. With this in mind, what one would consider "traditional" is highly dependent on specific classifications, of which "Confucian" alone would not suffice.
The other problem is the demarcation of what constitutes as traditional and not. From the May 4th Movement, to the Communist Revolution to the Cultural Revolution, however critical scholars and revolutionaries may have been, there was legitimacy drawn from acceptance of traditional "Confucian" virtues. Which is to say that the cultural movements didn't necessarily seek to eliminate Confucian virtues as much as reconcile them with the world around said values. Though there was a large body of work calling for the dismantling of "Confucian Traditions," ironically much of that work was done by Confucian educated scholars who retained a worldview informed by Confucian virtues. Even more confusing was the rallying across multiple times to eradicate traditional and capitalist institutions yet make concessions due to the change in policies and leaders through the 40s and 80s. For many scholars (which changed constantly due to ideological changes) "traditions" in the strict sense needed to targeted for criticism but not dismantled as the basis for legitimacy simultaneously required a repudiation and yet reconciliation within the ideological framework of the CCP.
Which leads me to #2.
It's very difficult to say whether or not the Cultural Revolution really has an impact on the behavior of current Chinese tourists. If anything the closest one could get to a potenial, if spurious guess is that the stereotypes of culturally insensitive tourists may be derived from analogs of American stereotypes and the burgeoning international travel amongst Chinese citizens during and after Deng Xiaoping's economic reforms post Cultural Revolution.
But even that is at best a guess as explaining behavior is rather difficult especially when applied to such a large population. So question 2 is a question that I am not convinced could, be answered as the stereotype doesn't apply, and that there's an implicit assumption that "traditional Chinese" (a term that has a bevy of interpretations) in this case equates to an agreeable and perhaps "docile" temperament whereas "non-traditional" implies the opposite.
Both implications themselves being rather problematic.
Meta question, is a question like this something that can be answered effectively without breaking the 20 year rule? Obviously the GLF and CR happened 40+ years ago but the long term cultural-social aftereffects would be stepping into recent territory would it not? I'd think a question like this is more for /r/AskAnthropology
As a follow-up in relation to the OP's second question:
- To what extent can the effects of the cultural revolution be perceived in contomporary Chinese behaviour and attitudes.
Are there meaningful/noticable differences between the culture of Taiwan and mainland China that can be attributed to the fact that Taiwan avoided Mao's cultural revolution?
(I know the post the OP referred to is from the perspective of a person from Hong Kong, but I'm more curious about Taiwan since it seems like the state most likely to preserve these nebulous "traditional Chinese values", since it was neither a western colony nor influenced by Mao)
Hello everyone!
With the great attention this question has received, it seems it also has attracted a number of low-quality answer, racist remarks, and joke responses.
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To a relatively large extent, Mao's Cultural Revolution succeeded in wiping out a large part of Chinese culture.
Let us examine the goals of the CR: to wipe out the 4 olds, which were Culture, Habits, Customs and Ideas. Mao was particularly adamant about the Culture, Habits and Customs part- we can see this evidence in how he calls for the Red Guards to act as an open secret police- report your neighbor, wife and son, so to speak.
As such, the Cultural Revolution, at that time, was a great success towards Mao's stated goal- and also that of his (arguable) true goal- to regain control of the CCP. Remember, Mao's errors in the Great Leap Forward resulted in a huge famine and devastation, which made him take a back seat and gave Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping their big break to glory (they'd later be persecuted too).
Ultimately, I'm sorry to say that I can't answer your 2nd question, and can only give you speculation based on anecdotal evidence, along with some factual basis; I'll give the details for such after I have answered your first question:
The CR succeeded in restoring Mao to power. It, at that time, succeeded in erasing a large part of Chinese culture, especially with the burning of books, temples, monks and the humiliation and forced rehabilitation of counter-revolutionaries. However, it is not a total culture purge, for the people were not so much (the people being the Red Guards) being for the idea as much as they were for Mao. This is why Deng Xiaoping wouldn't have as difficult a time in his reformations, and why today there are still cultural values of the Chinese that we know of, that they know of, and that they practice.
As for the number 2 part, the CR is a heavily controversial subject in China, and outside of China, it is mostly viewed in a negative light. Jung Chung is not an unbiased source, but she does shed quite a bit light on this issue, that can be distilled to 'Chinese people lost some cultural identity, but not all (recall how the Tiananmen Square issue rose up- POETRY about freedom).
Sources: Primarily a number of textbooks, such as China and the Modern World, Cold War. Mostly written by David Lynch.