Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress

The Cultural Revolution was a political and social movement launched by Mao Zedong (1893-1976), Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and founder of the People’s Republic of China, in 1966. The movement lasted a decade until Mao’s death in 1976 and was characterized by violent class warfare across China and a legacy of political and social turmoil. The decade of the Cultural Revolution is often referred to in China as “the decade of chaos/ havoc.”

Mao instigated the Cultural Revolution by asserting that counter-revolutionary elements had infiltrated Chinese society and party leadership, calling on his followers to weed out enemies of the state. The most dramatic response came from young people in urban centers, many of whom banded together into Red Guard militias looking to enforce martial law and vigilante justice in Mao’s name. With the explicit support of the CCP, these Red Guards targeted groups and individuals for persecution, torture, and murder, destroying many sites of historical or cultural value. An estimated 1-2 million people died as a direct result of the massacres, and in violent battles between rival factions of the Red Guard. Many urban centers descended into chaos; educational institutions were closed, industrial production plummeted, and the national economy floundered.

During this time, Mao and his supporters purged the upper echelons of the CCP of dissidents, moderate factions, and Mao’s political rivals. Although still the head of government, Mao had been increasingly sidelined in the aftermath of the Great Leap Forward (1958-1962) and its resulting famine. The Cultural Revolution propelled Mao back into a position of dominance, with his cult of personality elevated to new heights.

After several years of ever-growing infighting within the Red Guard groups, the government intervened by enforcing a “Back to the Countryside” initiative, which sent millions of young people from the cities out to work in the countryside. This mass displacement of youth effectively disbanded many factions of the Red Guard and neutralized the remainder. Censorship remained strictly enforced throughout the decade, with harsh sentences passed for even minor or suspected breaches of law or orthodoxy.

The Cultural Revolution ended with Mao’s death in 1976, but the long-term impact of this era still lingers. Mao purportedly instigated the Cultural Revolution to renew the spirit of the Chinese Revolution in the younger generation and to safeguard Chinese Communism. In reality, the Cultural Revolution damaged the economy, society, and international reputation of China. The violence left many Chinese people dead, displaced, or traumatized. Dai wrote The Little Chinese Seamstress based on his own experiences with re-education during the Cultural Revolution.