Mao's Cultural Revolution and the East Asian Ideal vs. Reality

Introduction: Ancient Ideals and Modern Realities in East Asia

In recent history, the laws, ideals, and models of government and culture in East Asia have produced a reality that is quite different from what those systems promised. As Dong Zhongshu notes, the ancient Han dynasty erected an empire that lasted 2,000 years based on a Confucian "vision of an omnipotent but disciplined sovereign, who sought to align the population with the norms of Heaven and Earth" (De Bary 157). In China, this basic paradigm — of a god-like ruler informed by a counsel of scholars learned in the ways of the ancients — held true for centuries and even into the modern era, when industrialization changed the nature of society the world over, including in East Asia.

With the introduction of new creeds, East Asian rulers found new opportunities to erect social structures based on their own personal assessments of the human condition. This was certainly true for Chairman Mao, whose Cultural Revolution promised an ideal but delivered a far more harrowing reality. It was also true for the rulers of Japan, Indochina, and Korea — nations that suffered at the hands of Western imperialists, whose dangled goods proved just beyond reach, or else deadly when obtained. This paper examines the effect of the revolutionary "ideal" in realistic terms across the nations of East Asia during the century that redefined the way these nations viewed themselves.

Japan's Imperial Ambitions and Western Influence

World War I affected Japan's social order by pushing it into the hands of Western imperialists. Japan's culture, which had resisted Western intrusion for the centuries preceding the modern era, began to resemble Western nations in terms of ideology — specifically, expansion and democratic voice. The Twenty-One Demands regarding territories outside Japan's borders, such as Manchuria and Shandong, illustrated the nature of the revolution that had come to East Asia: natural resources were vital and land-grabs were necessary in power-based systems of government (Lu 383). Buddhism and Christianity in Japan were no longer spiritual systems capable of guiding even Eastern nations already under the powerful sway of materialist ideology, whether socialist or capitalist.

Japan, like China, Korea, Vietnam, and Indochina, would have to assert its independence within a global Western empire — or, as some of them attempted, act as Western puppets. The ideal that Japan sought to achieve was one of self-autonomy, as expressed in the Twenty-One Demands. The reality, however, was that after the Second World War, Japan would be controlled by the West and shaped by its ideology (Stone, Kuznick).

Mao's Cultural Revolution: Promise and Destruction

China would follow a similar path, though its espoused ideology differed in language and structure. Mao was a materialist who viewed himself as god-like, much as the ancient rulers had — with one critical exception: he tolerated no criticism, heeded no wise counsel, and destroyed all connections between China and its past. C.P. Fitzgerald noted that it was the "purpose of the Cultural Revolution as a whole to eliminate the principal features of the old society, and in particular all that [had] the taint of foreign origin" (124). If Japan and other East Asian nations were going to fall under Western — that is, American — influence, Mao was determined to keep China out of it. His solution, however, was to adopt the worst elements of Western autocracy: he alone would be the sole source of all that is good and all that is wise.

Mao set about transforming China from a country rooted in antiquity to a country founded upon one man's will. In 1964, he announced that he had "plans" for China's next generation — its youth. His ambition rested on the idea that controlling the nation of tomorrow required controlling the minds of the young. This was, in fact, no different from the program of leading Western nations, which had already fallen into the trap of totalitarianism, even if they managed to disguise it under the banner of "democracy" (Stone, Kuznick). Mao stated that "the present method of education ruins talent and ruins youth. I do not approve of reading so many books. The method of examination is a method of dealing with the enemy. It is most harmful and should be stopped" (Johnson 552).

Mao set about stripping from China everything that smelled of foreign influence — anything that threatened his control. He persecuted the Christian churches, which had become part of Asian culture over the years. "Three out of four main creeds" of foreign origin were to be eliminated from the cultural horizon (Fitzgerald 124). But he also persecuted those religious and philosophical institutions native to Asia that taught ideals distinct from his own. Mao went after "Moslem institutions and Buddhist sanctuaries" as well (Fitzgerald 124).

Mao's Great Leap Forward meant that "Confucian ethics, Buddhism, and the ancient polytheism known as Taoism" all had to be replaced by his new brutalism. He upheld ignorance as truth and turned the youth into marauding bands of vicious enforcers. The old customs and ideals of Asia, its ancient institutions, became suspect in his eyes. Mao's passion was for the new and the revolutionary; he had a penchant for theater, yet he decried — like a Puritan — the loss of morality, with no apparent awareness that his own amorality was spreading through the country like a virus. His Cultural Revolution was assumed to be "deeply political in character," but it was not: it was anti-spiritual and anti-historical. He promoted a Great Ideal, as the name Great Leap Forward suggested — but the reality was a tremendous leap backward toward primitivism. The China of antiquity had come face-to-face with the China of the new world order, inherently materialistic and essentially atheistic — and the China of antiquity had lost (Woodstock 130).

Conclusion: The Cost of Abandoning the Old World

The new ideals, the new models, and the new laws which various leaders attempted to establish in East Asia varied in terms of proximity to the "democratic" or "Marxist" ideal — but the base of each was the same: a denial of the culture which these nations had long cherished. A corruption of forms, of method, of belief, and of action each precipitated a new direction away from the old and toward the "new," whether that new was rooted in American or European ideology. It did not matter. Whether in Japan, China, Korea, Vietnam, Indochina, or the Philippines, the ideals were hollow, the models weak, and the laws paralytic.