The effects of the Cultural Revolution on

education and other aspects

Communism is a quite extreme political structure which the government tries its best to
gather power to itself and use the power gain profit over working class.​1 ​The capitalist class
builds their authority over the working class and exploits of whatever they can do. But once this
balance of power oppression is off, the government official feels threatened and will take some
radical acts to protect their authority. The Cultural Revolution is a protection act taken by Mao
for his Party.

The Cultural Revolution started in 1966 by Mao.​2 ​But before defining and elaborating on
“the Cultural Revolution”, one of the essential events, the Great Leap Forward, which happened
before the revolution, was a possible trigger of this revolution. The Great Leap Forward is a
movement led by Mao as well. Since China became independent from the Soviet Union and was
founded in 1949, it desperately needed domestic economic development. In order to achieve that
goal and not get crushed by other countries which were focusing their eyes on China and waiting
for them to fail, Mao encouraged young teenagers and working adults to start their factory which
its main purpose was to melt and refine metals to get better materials for industry.​3 ​But it was in a
time when people knew nothing about refining metals. So a lot of the job opportunities were
wasted and resulted in the decline of the economy. However, some of the local government
officials didn’t want to take the responsibility and lost their jobs because of it. They lied on the
annual report to the government and pretended the prosperity of the economy.​4 ​This resulted in
further declination of national economic development. Mao wanted to do something to cover the
mess and the mistake he made. He then started this bloody revolution. The Cultural Revolution
lasted for 10 years. The most violent part was the first two years. No one had an accurate number
on the casualties. “No one knows how many people died as a result of the Cultural Revolution.
J.K Fairbank puts the number at about 400,000; Ann Thurston cites estimates of over a million;
… and Jean-Luc Domenach thinks that it could be anywhere between one and three million.​5​”
Many well-educated people were killed and so-called punished because Mao encouraged them
to. Mao himself felt threatened by those people and were afraid of being overthrown by them.
“Launched by Mao Zedong, … the movement was intended to destroy his political foes and
restore the vigorous spirit of the communist revolution of 1949.​6​” Instead, this compromised the
education system of the whole country and affected individual’s education in the following
years.

After the revolution, Mao realized his mistake to the nation. So he wanted to flourish the
economy to decrease the effect of the Cultural Revolution and make up for his mistakes. The
policy he advocated is the Down to Countryside Movement. This policy started a long time ago,
even before the revolution started. This time, Mao forced people who were not as well educated
as others and couldn’t have enough income to support themselves to go to the countryside to
make a living and learn a skill by the way.​7 ​But this still could not make up for the fact that those
people were uneducated. Since during the revolution, an examination system called the
college-entrance qualification exam was aborted. This exam was the only way for people to go to
college. Therefore, the higher education system was still in a loop. This revolution and its
make-up act couldn’t reduce the long-term effect on individuals. The event interrupted the
growth of the personal education system and delayed the development of national education.
This national educational defect not only results in economic defects but also a long-term effect
on individuals.

First of all, the Cultural Revolution directly affected the quality and the opportunities of
individuals. It was a huge setback for people’s education. There is a figure saying that people
should “energetically criticize the Chinese Khrushchev’s politics, Ideology, and Theories.​8​”A big
slogan in Mandarin was written in the bottom. It was obvious for people to see and could quickly
get a sense of the Mao’s ideology. A monotone picture was at the top of the poster. A lot of male
and female Red Guard figures were drawn in it. This propaganda poster perfectly reflected the
hatred directed by Mao towards those educated people. By “criticizing”, it meant to torture those
people whom they suspected to have different inclinations of thoughts than Mao. Mostly college
professors and some local government officials were suspended from their job and isolated.
Some of them were put in a theatre and tortured for other uneducated people to see, to enjoy, like
a show.​9 ​And sometimes, those actions were too violent that the people who were tortured died
immediately. Very cruel methods were taken because they were accused of something they
didn’t have. Because of this, no one wanted to go to school or was afraid of being tortured by
going to school. The whole education system was a mess. Since the examination program was
aborted, no one was able to go to college in that period of time. The quality of education of
current in-school students was compromised. They believed in Mao and his theory of Marxism.
“Some students hit teachers just because the teacher pointed out their mistakes… Because people
believed that knowledge was anti-society. People who knew a lot were criminals.​10​” Students
were no longer getting actual education but from Mao. They were not able to distinguish what
was good for them or what was right for them. “It was a shame for not learning anything.” And
for those people who were still in middle school and elementary school, they were led by Mao
and dropped out of school to criticize people. They didn’t get to learn anything in and from that
time period. But one thing people did learn from that time period after all those years was people
are not perfect. Being a perfectionist is not helpful for developing.​11 ​Because all of those people
that were criticized were not perfect. They had different beliefs, but this didn’t affect the fact that
they were more experienced and more suitable for certain jobs. Being critical was not a good
way to develop.

For the evidence in this section, there are two primary sources used. One is the
propaganda poster about promoting Marxism and energetically criticize the thoughts other than
Mao’s thoughts. The poster was directly used to spread the ideology of Marxism and Mao’s
theory. This is a good primary to show the political environment at that time. It is a good
reflection of what the government forces people to believe in which is the resentment towards
education. The other one is the interview conducted by Sam Yang. The subject is her
grandfather, who experienced from the foundation of China, the Cultural Revolution to the
Down to Countryside Movement personally. He is a reliable source to show what was really
happening and the effect of government. In addition, since he is a supporter of Mao, he is a
reflection of the revolution and how the revolution affected people.

Second of all, the Cultural Revolution brought economic defects to society. Before the
revolution, the Great Leap Forward was a catastrophe to the Chinese economy already. It was a
movement started by Mao. His original purpose was to bring the Chinese economy into a whole
different level by encouraging his citizen to open up factories.​12 ​At that time, China didn’t have
the technology to produce any complicated material for industrial use. It was dependent on the
Soviet Union so much that once China was separated from it, it took a great step back. So after
the Great Leap Forward, the Chinese economy was in a bad phase. Then the Cultural Revolution
happened. Mao initialed this revolution and made people believe that knowledge was bad,
getting educated was a bad thing. Therefore, after the twisted and bloody 2 years of criticizing,
nearly a generation of people didn’t get well educated and almost 4 classes of college students
missed the chance of studying abroad, like countries in Europe.​13 ​That was a lot of people who
didn’t properly educated because of this event. And before this time period started, people
admired college students and groups which were highly educated. Intelligent people were
promoted in society. So after the revolution, people with no degree had no chances of finding a
job, which means no income for their family, which means families with no money were
suffering poverty. Without money to buy anything, the cash flow of trading market at that time
was stuck. Farmers couldn’t sell their agricultural products to people because they were poor.
People couldn’t get food to eat because of their poverty. This was an endless loop. Additionally,
the grain farmers grew weren’t be enough for people to eat.​14 ​Although a lot of people died on
the way of development of the Cultural Revolution, there were still a lot of people waiting to be
fed. And “About 90 percent of the caloric content and 80 percent of the protein intake in the
Chinese diet comes from grains.​15​” That was a huge amount of demand for grain and other staple
food. According to the industrial agricultural level at that time, there was no way to make it
possible to feed that amount of people at one time. So, the educational defects caused by the
Cultural Revolution resulted in the economic defects in the society.

The evidence above is a mostly secondary source. The one written by Xizhe Peng was a
reliable source because it was written 10 years after the whole revolution ended. 10 years was
neither a long time which could make the event unreliable nor a short time which he could not
jump out of the shadow of the revolution and could think about this event in a bigger picture.
Plus, there are a lot of graphs and statistics in the journal article. Those stats shown in it makes it
more reliable. The other source is from the endnotes in the journal. It can be considered as a
primary source because it is referred to by the secondary source and it is published 8 years before
the journal. This means that this source had a more accurate data than the journal. The author of
this source could have a more reliable source for his data. So it is a reliable source.

Third of all, the educational defects caused by the Cultural Revolution have long-term
effects on individuals even after the revolution. After Mao finally dealt with the mess of the
revolution, he wanted to make up for the poor decision he made. Before the revolution even
appeared, the government had set up a policy which encouraged young people to go down to the
countryside to experience the work as a farmer. The original purpose was to let the young people
realize the hard work and toughen themselves before stepping into real society. But this policy
was strongly promoted by the government after the revolution. The purpose had changed. It was
now used to distribute the pressure on the government to feed those uneducated people who
couldn’t make a living on their own.​16 ​The strategy was to scatter uneducated people around the
nation and let the local countryside government deal with the problem. In this way, the federal
government didn’t have to deal with that many people with no jobs, waiting for the welfare and
to be fed. It was easy for the federal government to do that, but it added tons of pressure on local
countryside officials. They were not rich even before all of those happened. They lacked budgets
and couldn’t afford labor. With this amount of new uneducated people coming into their town,
the pressure was exponentially increased. It was not for the people who were forced to go into
these towns as well. They didn’t necessarily learn anything from being in the countryside. They
were wasting their time and life down in the broken village. For example, Hongying Liang, Sam
Yang’s grandmother, was one of those people who had to go down to the countryside to get
educated.​17 ​Since the town she went to was so poor and wrecked, she decided to come out of the
town and started her own business. The business was not successful. She got defeated and this
really depressed her. She didn’t go to college, so she couldn’t go find a job either. After my
grandmother met my grandfather, her life got better and she got out of the plight. If she never got
lucky, she was going to stuck in that village forever. Macroscopically speaking, the Down to
Countryside Movement partly reduced the economic defects on society, but individually
speaking, the effects caused by the Cultural Revolution were irremovable and significant. Those
individuals were uneducated. All they could do was waiting for fate to make their life better. Or
they were just going to rotten in that ruined place and die.

The evidence in this section is basically the interviews. This is mainly the follow-up
interview conducted by Sam Yang. The story of Sam Yang’s grandmother is reliable because it
was told by Sam Yang’s grandfather.

To draw a conclusion, the Cultural Revolution is a huge setback for the Chinese
educational system. Because of its temporary termination of the college-entrance examination,
people didn’t have the chance to go to college to get further education. This massive educational
disadvantage on young people caused the chain reaction of the economic setback in China. Due
to the poverty in every department, especially in the education department, a lot of chances of
studying abroad got profoundly delayed. Some of them got to go to graduate school in their 40s.
It was unfortunate for either individual or families. The long-term effect was making people
idolize Mao and Marxism. People’s thoughts were narrowed and controlled. But in the long run,
this mistake taught people that being a perfectionist was not a solution to everything. It would
ruin what the society had and was not good for development. Just like Sam Yang’s grandfather
said in the interview: “The end of being pure is a vacuum. Can people live in a vacuum? Can a
society live under vacuum?​18​” Digging out the reason why Mao chose to start all of those things
just to make the society better was being a perfectionist. He loved China himself and wanted it to
be perfect. So he tried everything to make up his mistakes, but unfortunately, made them worse.
This is a lesson we should learn in our society nowadays. We should make up mistakes made by
ourselves. But it is also fine to live with the fact that the world and the people are not perfect.
 Endnotes
1. "Communism," Wikipedia, last modified December 13, 2018, accessed December 18,
2018, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communism.

2. "Cultural Revolution," Wikipedia, last modified December 16, 2018, accessed December
19, 2018, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution.

3. Guowei Yang, interview by the author, Hamden; Shanghai, Connecticut; China,

4. Yang, interview by the author.

5. Ji Fengyuan, "Language and Violence during the Chinese Cultural Revolution,"

6. Patricia Powell and Joseph Wong, "Propaganda Posters from the Chinese Cultural
Revolution," ​The Historian​ 59, no. 4 (1997): 777, http://www.jstor.org/stable/24451816.

7. G. Kucha and J. Llewellyn, "DOWN TO THE COUNTRYSIDE," Alpha History, last

8. Powell and Wong, "Propaganda Posters," 778.

9. Yang, interview by the author.

10. Yang, interview by the author.

11. Yang, interview by the author.

12. "Great Leap Forward," Wikipedia, last modified December 14, 2018, accessed December
19, 2018, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward.

13. Xizhe Peng, "Demographic Consequences of the Great Leap Forward in China's
Provinces," Population and Development Review 13, no. 4 (December 1987): 641,
https://www.jstor.org/stable/1973026?Search=yes&resultItemClick=true&searchText=th
e&searchText=great&searchText=leap&searchText=forward&searchText=economy&sea
rchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3Dthe%2Bgreat%2Bleap%2Bforward
%2Beconomy&refreqid=search%3A8a9deb18af06139e0c2329e262b2cc30&seq=1#meta
data_info_tab_contents.

14. Peng, "Demographic Consequences," 650.

15. Vaclav Smil, China's Food: Availability, Requirements, Composition, Prospects., Food
Policy 6 2 (May, 1981), 67-77.
16. Guowei Yang, interview by the author, Shanghai, China.

17. Yang, interview by the author.

18. Yang, interview by the author.