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Mao Cult
Rhetoric and Ritual in China’s Cultural Revolution
Mao Zedong’s political and cultural legacy remains potent even in
today’s China. Many books have explored his posthumous legacy, but
none has scrutinized the cult of Mao and the massive worship that was
fostered around him at the height of his powers during the Cultural
Revolution. This riveting book is the first to do so. By analyzing previously secret archival documents, obscure objects, and political pamphlets, Daniel Leese traces the tumultuous history of the cult within the
Communist Party and at the grassroots level. The party leadership’s
original intention was to develop a prominent brand symbol that
would compete with the Nationalists’ elevation of Chiang Kai-shek.
They did not, however, anticipate that Mao would use this symbolic
power to mobilize Chinese youth to rebel against the party bureaucracy
itself. The result was anarchy, and when the army was called in, it relied
on mandatory rituals of worship, such as daily reading of the Little Red
Book or performances of the “loyalty dance” to restore order. Such
fascinating detail sheds light not only on the personality cult of Mao,
but also on hero worship in other traditions.
Daniel Leese is Assistant Professor at the Institute of Chinese Studies at
Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich. He is the editor of Brill’s
Encyclopedia of China (2009).
Mao Cult
Rhetoric and Ritual in China’s Cultural
Revolution
DANIEL LEESE
Ludwig-Maximilians-University
cambridge university press
Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town,
Singapore, São Paulo, Delhi, Tokyo, Mexico City
Cambridge University Press
32 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10013-2473, USA
www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521193672
© Daniel Leese 2011
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without the written
permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 2011
Printed in the United States of America
A catalog record for this publication is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Leese, Daniel.
Mao cult : rhetoric and ritual in China’s Cultural Revolution / Daniel Leese.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-521-19367-2 (hardback)
1. China – History – Cultural Revolution, 1966–1976 – Sources.
2. China – Politics and government – 1949–1976 – Sources.
3. China – History – 20th century – Sources. I. Title.
DS778.7L44 2011
2010054238
951.050 6–dc22
ISBN
978-0-521-19367-2 Hardback
Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or
accuracy of URLs for external or third-party Internet Web sites referred to
in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such
Web sites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.
For Lia Cara, Amelie, and Justus
This land so rich in beauty
Has made countless heroes bow in homage
But alas! Qin Shihuang and Han Wudi
Were lacking in literary grace,
And Tang Taizong and Song Taizu
Had little poetry in their souls;
And Genghis Khan,
Proud Son of Heaven for a day,
Knew only shooting eagles, bow outstretched.
All are past and gone!
For truly great men
Look to this age alone.
“Snow,” Mao Zedong
Contents
List of Illustrations, Figures, Maps, and Table
page viii
Preface
Chronology of Major Events
ix
xiii
List of Abbreviations
xvii
Introduction
part i.
1
coming to terms with the “cult of the
individual”
25
1 The Secret Speech and Its Impact
2 The Dual Nature of Commodities
27
47
3 Redefining the Cult
67
part ii. charismatic mobilization
4 Lively Study and Application
87
89
5 The Little Red Book
108
6 Spectacles of Worship
128
part iii. cult and compliance
7 Ambiguous Symbols
149
151
8 The Language of Loyalty
9 Rituals and Commodities
174
195
10 Curbing the Cult
226
Conclusion
253
Bibliography
265
Glossary
Index
285
291
vii
Illustrations, Figures, Maps, and Table
Illustrations
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
Mao woodcut, Liberation Weekly, 1937
Zhu De woodcut, Liberation Weekly, 1937
“Everyday life” pictures of Mao, 1958
Model Soldier Wang Guoxiang, 1968
“Asking for Instructions in the Morning,” 1968
“Chairman Mao Quotation Gymnastics,” Shanghai Sports
Battleline, 1967
Performing the Loyalty Dance, 1968
Creating Mao icons, 1968
Three Loyalties campaign in Harbin, 1968
Arrival of the mango replicas in Harbin, 1968
page 9
10
163
191
199
203
206
212
214
222
Figures
1 Translations of the “cult of the individual” in the People’s
Daily, 1949–72
2 References to Mao Zedong Thought in the People’s Daily,
1946–81
3 Appearances of the phrase “Loyal to Chairman Mao” in the
People’s Daily, 1960–80
84
130
186
Maps
1 Administrative divisions of China
2 “Sacred Places” of the Chinese Revolution
3 Guizhou province and the site of the Dafang Incident
xviii
140
167
Table
1 Number of students traveling to and from Shanghai, 1966
viii
143
Preface
In 1921, the Chinese Republic was shaken by a seemingly obscure scandal,
the so-called Eight-Thousand Hemp Sacks Incident (baqian madai shijian).
The Historical Museum, an institution entrusted with archival duties
after the fall of the Qing dynasty, had upon instruction of the Ministry of
Education sold some 75,000 kilograms of archival materials to a wastepaper trader. The revenue of four thousand silver dollars was to help
ameliorate the ministry’s dire financial situation and simultaneously
relieve the staff of the burden of classifying and arranging the huge amount
of material. The documents had in 1909 already been singled out for
destruction, but upon intervention of an upright official, Luo Zhenyu,
had been retained and stored in thousands of hemp sacks. In 1921, it
was again Luo Zhenyu who discovered parts of these materials on markets
in Beijing and decided to buy and preserve the documents. The scandal
drew wider circles and nationalist sentiments ran high when Luo a few
years later had to sell part of the stacks to other collectors, including a
former Japanese official in China. The famous writer Lu Xun, who in the
early Republican era had worked in the Ministry of Education and was
well informed about the extent of private appropriation of archival documents through the ministry’s staff, remarked sarcastically that “archaeological endeavors” among the stacks had become a favorite pastime among
officials.1 The stacks that had finally been sold as wastepaper, in Lu’s
opinion, therefore had found an adequate destiny.
Today, scholars trying to write a social or cultural history of the 1950s
and 1960s sometimes cannot help but feel reminded of the hemp sacks
1
See Lu Xun, “Tan suowei ‘Danei dang’an’” [Discussing the So-Called “Palace Archives”],
in Yusi 4.7 (28 January 1928), 5. For a detailed discussion of archival politics and practice in
Republican China, see Vivian Wagner, Erinnerungsverwaltung in China. Staatsarchive und
Politik in der Volksrepublik [Administrating Memory in China: State Archives and Politics
in the People’s Republic], Cologne: Böhlau, 2006, Part I.
ix
x
Preface
incident when searching for sources. Although the possibility of archival
access has greatly improved during the past decade, the documents
allowed for public perusal have usually, but not always, been carefully
sorted and arranged to suit the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) official
interpretation of events. Local archives or danwei offices, however, faced
financial pressures that resulted in the vending of stacks of documents to
wastepaper traders or collectors. Thus over the years, flea markets and
secondhand bookshops have occasionally become a welcome treasure
trove of local-level documents that allow for a partial reconstruction of
everyday life and administration otherwise nonexistent in official archival
memory.
During an occasional visit to the flea markets while studying in China,
I bought a stack of obscure documents related to the veneration of a certain
Comrade Men He, who, I later learned, was one of the Cultural
Revolution’s foremost model heroes in 1968. Because I was unclear
about what to make of the documents, which mainly consisted of congratulatory statements and “lively applications” of Mao Zedong Thought,
they gathered dust on my bookshelves for several years. When searching
for a suitable topic for a doctoral dissertation, I reconsidered the stacks
again, and after an exchange of ideas with the doyen of Chinese “garbology” (lajixue), Swedish historian Michael Schoenhals, I decided to pursue
the topic of the Maoist personality cult further. As no predefined body of
texts existed or, to put it differently, not even the type of sources from
which to draw evidence on the cult could be clarified in the first place, the
initial research consisted of literally digging through stacks of old documents, mimeographed pamphlets, and obscure objects from flea markets,
private collections, and finally archives.
Many people have contributed to this work by sharing their ideas,
comments, and criticism, though not of all them can be mentioned here.
I explicitly thank my former dissertation committee members Johannes
Paulmann, Nicola Spakowski, and Jürgen Osterhammel for making the
endeavor possible; their work continues to be a major source of inspiration. I would further like to thank the people at the Universities Service
Centre in Hong Kong, which hosted me for several months, and Roderick
MacFarquhar and the participants of the Sixth Annual Conference on
International History at Harvard in 2006. Barbara Mittler, Jan Plamper,
Rudolf Wagner, and Vivian Wagner offered very helpful comments during
different stages of the project. The History Department and International
Relations Department at Beijing University, especially professors Niu
Dayong and Yin Hongbiao, provided me with valuable support, without
Preface
xi
which archival access would not have been possible. The same holds true
for Tang Shaojie at Qinghua University. Thanks also to Li Zhensheng and
Contact Press Images, who allowed me to reproduce some of Li’s most
fascinating images from his Red Color News Soldier. Furthermore, I would
like to thank the staff at the National Library of China in Beijing, the Hebei
Provincial Archives, the Bavarian State Library, and all other institutions
and individuals who helped to accommodate my obscure research interests.
My colleagues at the University of Munich, especially Hans van Ess,
enabled me to finish the dissertation and turn it into a book while taking on
the duties as an assistant professor. Oliver Heitmann, Ingna Marquard,
Bernhard Gissibl, Anna-Maria Pedron, Sophie Gerlach, Laura Petican,
Philippa Söldenwagner, Sonja Kienzler, and Sebastian and Gabi
Stamminger provided excellent companionship in Bremen and made the
stay at International University Bremen worthwhile. In the archives,
Jeremy Brown turned out to be a like-minded ziliaomi. Michael
Schoenhals incessantly encouraged the ongoing work through generously
sharing his unparalleled knowledge of the period. I further owe a great deal
to Marigold Acland, Joy Mizan, and Andy Saff at Cambridge University
Press, who guided me with great enthusiasm, efficiency, and professionalism through the production of this book. It has become much better due to
their efforts. All remaining errors fall within my own responsibility.
Financial support was granted continuously by the German National
Academic Foundation (Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes) and
International University Bremen. The largest debt, however, I owe to my
family, which supported me throughout the whole process of research and
writing. This book is dedicated to them.
Munich, 20 February 2011
Chronology of Major Events
1893
1921
1927
1935
1936
1937–42
1942–3
1943
1945
1949
Mao Zedong is born in Shaoshan, Hunan province
CCP is officially founded in Shanghai; Mao is among the
founding members
United Front between CCP and Nationalists is
terminated; Mao withdraws with followers to Jinggang
Mountains, later to Jiangxi province, to organize rural
soviets
Mao is elevated to Central Secretariat membership at the
Zunyi Conference
Long March ends in northern Shaanxi; Yan’an becomes
the new communist capital; Mao is interviewed by Edgar
Snow, resulting in Red Star over China (1937)
Mao strengthens his position as political leader and
foremost theoretician within the CCP, aided by
ghostwriters, including Chen Boda; the first visual
instances of the leader cult appear in party newspapers
Rectification campaign firmly establishes Mao-centered
narrative as standard party history; Mao Zedong
Thought becomes the guiding ideology; Mao Zedong is
elevated to Chairman of Central Secretariat
Chiang Kai-shek’s book China’s Destiny is published;
the Mao cult is elevated to counter Nationalist claims for
legitimacy to rule China
Seventh Party Congress formally elects Mao Zedong as
Central Committee chairman
Communists claim victory and the Nationalists
withdraw to Taiwan
xiii
xiv
1953
1956
1957
1958
1958–61
1959
1960–1
1964
1966
1967
1968
1969
Chronology of Major Events
Stalin dies
Khrushchev criticizes Stalin’s cult of personality at the
Twentieth CPSU Congress; Mao calls for the Hundred
Flowers campaign; there is a short-term liberalization of
the directed public sphere; criticism of leader cults is
voiced
Hundred Flowers campaign is terminated and critics of
CCP politics are persecuted as Rightists
Mao distinguishes between two types of cults at the
Chengdu Conference; the correct cult is to serve in the
destruction of superstition in the Soviet development
model
Great Leap Forward, an attempt of utopian social
engineering, leads to the largest famine in world history,
with tens of millions starving to death
Lin Biao is elevated to minister of defense after the
Lushan Plenum
Group study of Mao writings and emotional bonding
through various rituals are employed in the PLA to
counter the disruptive influence of the Great Leap
First internal version of the Little Red Book is compiled
within the PLA; a national campaign is forged to “Learn
from the PLA”
Cultural Revolution unfolds; eight mass receptions take
place at Tiananmen Square and other venues; the “four
olds” (old ideas, old culture, old customs, and old habits)
face destruction and the great “exchange of experiences/
link-up” (chuanlian) begins
May: First Mao statue is unveiled at Qinghua University
September: Mao’s Great Strategic Plan is published to hand
over leadership to revolutionary committees
November: Report of unit 8341 from the Beijing General
Knitting Mill spreads the example of ritual Mao worship
Ritual Mao worship reaches high tide; Three Loyalties
campaign takes place
April: Ninth Party Congress is held in Beijing; the victory
of the Cultural Revolution is officially declared; Lin
Chronology of Major Events
1970
1971
1974
1976
1981
xv
Biao’s position as heir apparent is written into the party
statutes
June: CCP Circular banishes ritual expressions of the Mao
cult
Second Lushan Plenum entails criticism of the “genius”
cult
Lin Biao Incident occurs; Lin Biao and family die in plane
crash in Mongolia
“Criticize Lin Biao and Confucius” campaign takes
place; public criticism of cult rituals is expressed through
Li-Yi-Zhe posters
Mao Zedong dies
Resolution on party history casts verdict on Mao’s
culpability for the Cultural Revolution while retaining
his historical merits
Abbreviations
CCP
CCRG
CPSU
CRDB
DXG
HPA
NRGM
PLA
PRC
RGM
YLF
ZGXG
Chinese Communist Party
Central Cultural Revolution Group
Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Chinese Cultural Revolution Database
Dang de xuanchuan gongzuo wenjian xuanbian (Selection
of Documents on Party Propaganda Work)
Hebei Provincial Archives
New Red Guard Materials (Song Yongyi, ed., 40 vols.)
People’s Liberation Army
People’s Republic of China
Red Guard Materials (Zhou Yuan, ed., 20 vols.)
Yi Lin futongshuai wei guanghui bangyang wuxian
zhongyu weida lingxiu Mao zhuxi (With
Vice-Commander Lin as Glorious Example
Boundlessly Loyal toward the Great Leader
Chairman Mao)
Zhonggong gongchandang xuanchuan gongzuo wenxian
xuanbian (Selection of Documents on CCP
Propaganda Work)
xvii
m a p 1 . Administrative divisions of China
Introduction
At the turn of the twentieth century, the Confucian reformer Kang Youwei
set out to describe an ideal future world order in his Book of Great
Equality. Kang envisioned a society in which emotional bonds had been
reduced to a minimum. The creation of a global state was to be realized by
overcoming the boundaries of nation, class, or gender, even the distinction
between man and animal. Marriage was to be replaced by short-term
contracts and care for infants and elderly persons was to fall under the
duty of specific state institutions. The assignment of work should follow a
standard pattern according to age, covering all types of labor within a
lifetime. In the age of great equality, there would be no personal property
or family structures. The differences between the races would have vanished over time through constant crossbreeding, the white and yellow race
having proven their superiority. By eliminating all racial, social, and
national segregation, Kang hoped to circumvent the dangers of emotion
and irrational behavior, which so far had prevented the rule of peace and
harmony in the world.
Among the few things Kang Youwei feared to have a disruptive impact
on the state of perfect harmony were both continuing competitiveness
among citizens and overt laziness given the privileges of the ideal society.
Yet what he feared most was the rise of “exclusive worship” (du zun), the
building of a cult around a religious or secular leader. This kind of worship
would threaten the very foundations of the global state by arousing the
passions that the new order had tried to overcome. The worship of powerful leaders bore the danger of throwing the world back into the previous
turmoil and was to be prevented at all costs:
[I]f some leaders are idolized, inequalities will gradually return, they will
gradually develop into autocratic institutions and slowly lead to strife and
murder, until the world relapses into the state of disorder. For that reason,
everyone who leads large masses of people and is excessively idolized9by
1
2
Introduction
them must be vigorously opposed, however enlightened or holy he might
be, irrespective of his office or profession, and even if it is the leader of a
party. For if someone wishes to become emperor, king, prince, or leader in
such a time, he sins against the principle of equality and becomes guilty of
the most serious breach of morals. For these worst of all crimes, the public
council should incarcerate him.1
Roughly six decades after Kang Youwei wrote his tractate on the ideal
world order, the People’s Republic of China was to be found amid the
struggles of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. In the name of
cherishing CCP Chairman Mao Zedong, countless factions carried out
warfare against each other, sometimes with stones and clubs, sometimes
with heavy artillery stolen from army units. Ritual modes of worshipping
the “great helmsman” of the Chinese Revolution had come to dominate
everyday life. These included the “daily reading” (tiantian du) of the Little
Red Book (termed the “Mao Bible” in the West); confessions of possible
thought crimes in front of Mao’s portrait; and even physical performances
such as the “loyalty dance” (zhongzi wu). Without doubt, Kang Youwei’s
worst fears had come true and China had relapsed into a passionate state
of utter disorder and idol worship.
Explanations of the Cultural Revolutionary Mao cult, in China and the
West alike, usually refer back to two conversations of Mao Zedong with
journalist Edgar Snow that took place shortly before and after the Cultural
Revolution’s most violent phases. Snow had first visited the communist
areas in northern Shaanxi in 1936 and conducted a series of interviews
with Mao Zedong that, through their publication in Snow’s world famous
Red Star over China, exerted a tremendous impact on Mao’s image in
China and the West.2 Snow presented a highly favorable picture of Mao:
“[W]hile everyone knows and respects him, there is – as yet, at least – no
ritual of hero-worship built up around him. I never met a Chinese Red who
drivelled ‘our-great-leader’ phrases.”3
Upon his return to China thirty years later in 1965, Snow witnessed
a completely changed situation. He explicitly commented on Mao’s
1
2
3
Quoted from Wolfgang Bauer, China and the Search for Happiness: Recurring Themes in
Four Thousand Years of Chinese Cultural History, translated by Michael Shaw, New York:
Seabury Press, 1976, 323.
See Ding Xiaoping, “Fulu: ‘Mao Zedong yinxiang’ jiuban tushu kaozheng suoyin”
[Appendix: Verified Index to Old Editions of the “Accounts of Mao Zedong”], in Ding
Xiaoping and Fang Jiankang (eds.), Mao Zedong yinxiang [Accounts of Mao Zedong],
Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe, 2003, 299.
Edgar Snow, Red Star over China, London: Victor Gollancz, 1937, 83.
Introduction
3
“immoderate glorification” after having been witness to the staging of the
revolutionary epic The East Is Red (Dongfang hong) in Beijing:
Giant portraits of him now hung in the streets, busts were in every
chamber, his books and photographs were everywhere on display to the
exclusion of others. In the four-hour revolutionary pageant of dance and
song, The East Is Red, Mao was the only hero. As a climax of that
performance . . . I saw a portrait copied from a photograph taken by
myself in 1936, blown up to about thirty feet high.4
While attending the Labor Day parade, Snow discussed the subject of the
cult again with his Chinese hosts, vice-ministers of foreign affairs Gong
Peng and Qiao Guanhua. Their explanations highlighted the popular
origins of and demand for the cult. Three thousand years of emperor
worship could not be wiped out in an instant because peasant mentalities
still lingered behind: “It takes time to make people understand that
Chairman Mao is not an emperor or a god but a man who wants the
peasants to stand up like men.”5 Snow’s hosts told him about special
guards who had been employed in the early 1950s to prevent peasants
from prostrating themselves before Mao’s image at Tiananmen Square,
where it had been on display twice a year, on National Day and Labor
Day. The level of worship permitted by the authorities should thus be
considered negligible given what it might have looked like, if it had not
been restrained.
In 1970, Edgar Snow returned one last time to China just as the most
chaotic period of the Cultural Revolution had passed. In their discussions,
Mao explicitly commented on the publication of Snow’s impressions
during the prior visit that had included the portrayal of his burgeoning
cult:
[You] say, I am [fostering] a personality cult. Well, you Americans really
are [cultivating] a personality cult! Your capital is called Washington.
The district in which Washington is located is called Columbia. . . .
Disgusting! . . . There will always be people worshipping! If there is no
one to worship you, Snow, are you happy then? . . . There will always be
some worship of the individual, you have it as well.6
4
5
6
Edgar Snow, The Long Revolution, New York: Random House, 1972, 68f.
Ibid., 69.
Mao Zedong, “Huijian Sinuo de tanhua jiyao” [Summary of Mao’s Conversations with
Snow], 18 December 1970, in Song Yongyi (ed.), Chinese Cultural Revolution Database
(CD-ROM), Hong Kong: Chinese University Press/Universities Service Centre, 2006.
Introduction
4
Mao in retrospect justified the need for a personality cult at the outset of
the Cultural Revolution by claiming that he had been unable to control the
party machinery:
At that time I said I did not care about personality cults, yet there even was
a necessity for a bit of personality cult. The situation now is not the same
anymore; the worship has become excessive, resulting in much formalism. Like those “four greats,” “Great Teacher, Great Leader, Great
Supreme [sic] Commander, Great Helmsman” [English in original],
annoying! One day these will all be deleted, only keeping the “teacher.”7
Mao divided the motifs of the cult supporters into three categories: true
believers, opportunists, and fake supporters. He admitted that during the
period of anarchy between 1967 and 1968, the distinctions had become hard
to discern. While a CCP decision of March 1949 was still being followed,
forbidding the naming of cities, streets, and places after political leaders, the
Red Guards had invented new forms of worship such as signboards, portraits, and statues, which, according to Mao’s description, resisted state
control: “This has developed during the past few years, as soon as the Red
Guards stirred up trouble and attacked. It was impossible not to conform to
it! Otherwise they would say you are against Mao, ‘anti-Mao’!”8 In his
account of the conversation, Snow concluded his observations by underlining
the crucial importance of the cult and its manipulation for understanding the
Cultural Revolution: “In one sense the whole struggle was over control of the
cult and by whom and above all ‘for whom’ the cult was to be utilized.”9
modern personality cults
The worship of religious or secular leaders in China has not been limited to
the twentieth century. The emperor had been worshipped as the Son of
Heaven, but besides rituals and ceremonies conducted at the imperial
court, the ordinary populace came into little contact with the cult. The
emperor did not have temples erected in his name or cities named after him.
His legitimacy as a ruler was deeply intertwined with the concept of the
Mandate of Heaven, the worship of ancestors, and ritual offerings to
various deities that restricted the glorification of the emperor himself.
Besides certain taboo words and prostration rules, the cult was confined
to a small circle of people in the emperor’s immediate surroundings. Yet
leader cults in traditional China had not been confined to the court. Within
7
8
9
Ibid.
Ibid.
Snow, Long Revolution, 66.
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