Mao and the Cultural Revolution: Tania Branigan (1966)
Tania Branigan - author of Red Memory
In this episode the Guardian journalist Tania Branigan takes us back to the opening phases of the ‘Cultural Revolution’, Mao Zedong’s attempt to purge Chinese society of its impurities. Over the course of a few fraught months in the summer of 1966, the transformational movement that would last for a decade, began.
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In Britain 1966 is remembered as a glittering time. It was the year of the World Cup, of Pet Sounds, Revolver and Andy Warhol. But as Western culture flowered, far away in China something very different was happening.
All these years on, today’s guest, Tania Branigan points out, the Cultural Revolution remains a difficult event to properly comprehend. It can be interpreted either as an ideological crusade to fortify Chinese society, or as a strategy by Mao Zedong to wrest back control of the political system.
But it is difficult to arrive at any clear conclusions. In truth, as today’s guest Tania Branigan explains, the Cultural Revolution comprised many stages. It was filled with contradictions and its range was vast, touching people from all parts of society, from top to bottom, east to west.
And yet at the heart of much of the action lay the figure of Mao. By the mid-1960s he was regarded as an aging figure. Despite his glorious revolutionary past, it was not certain just what his future would be. But during the spring and summer of 1966 it became increasingly clear that Mao’s ambitions were not at an end.
Mao was one of the twentieth century’s most formidable politicians. Out of his life and forceful personality had grown a distinct political credo: Maoism. This, Branigan writes, ‘celebrated action over thought; passion over logic, belief over reality.’
All of these elements are present in this episode of Travels Through Time. Branigan takes us back to the spring of 1966 and the earliest stirrings of the Cultural Revolution at a meeting of the Politburo standing committee in Hangzhou. At the same time a seemingly trivial row about a play, Hai Rui Dismissed From Office, is seized upon by Mao as a political opportunity.
A far more public event was to follow shortly afterwards. On 16 July, in a carefully crafted media event, the seventy-two-year-old Mao swam in the Yangtze near Wuhan. An enthusiastic swimmer, Mao had long prided himself on his physical prowess – something that symbolised the vigour of the Chinese nation. While Mao had made several such public displays before, this one had particular significance. As Branigan explains, ‘that despite his age he is back in charge and ready for action’.
In these two preliminary events the stage was set for the events of what would later become known as ‘Red August’. This was a month where the Red Guards – passionate and very often violent groups of young people – rose up in protest against those who were deemed enemies of the revolution.
In the middle of this month, this time in Tiananmen Square, Mao appears once again. On this famous and hugely symbolic occasion, a representative of the Red Guards called Song Binbin ties a red armband around the old hero’s arm. In a country where politics was theatre, this was a signal that the event we now call the Cultural Revolution had begun.
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Tania Branigan is the author of Red Memory: Living, Remembering and Forgetting China’s Cultural Revolution, which has recently been released by Faber.
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Show Notes
Scene One: April 16-24. Politburo standing committee (ie China’s top political body) meets in Hangzhou.
Scene Two: 16 July. Chairman Mao swims the Yangtze near Wuhan.
Scene Three: 18 August. Song Binbin pins the red armband on Mao in Tiananmen Square.
Memento: The first big character poster, painted in Beijing, that set off the Cultural Revolution.
People/Social
Presenter: Peter Moore
Guest: Tania Branigan
Production: Maria Nolan
Podcast partner: Ace Cultural Tours
Theme music: ‘Love Token’ from the album ‘This Is Us’ By Slava and Leonard Grigoryan
Follow us on Twitter: @tttpodcast_
See where 1966 BC fits on our Timeline
About Tania Branigan
Tania Branigan is the Guardian foreign leader writer; she spent seven years as the Guardian's China correspondent. Her writing has also appeared in the Washington Post and the Australian. Red Memory is her first book.
Featured images
Placard of Mao. 1 September 1966
The little Red Book. Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong - first French edition - 1966
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