The Brief,Tumultuous History of “Big Democracy” in China’s Factories

Targeted Groups

We divided the groups targeted for mass supervision into three broad categories: “cadres,” “old elites,” and “others.” The “cadres” category includes Communist political leaders, administrators, and managers, as well as village leaders and rank-and-file party members (the latter two groups did not have formal cadre status but were closely affiliated with the regime). The “old elites” category includes capitalists, landlords, rich peasants, old regime officials, incumbent managers, as well as intellectuals (including teachers and technical and professional staff), who were generally distrusted by the new regime because of their old elite origins. It also includes individuals who were not necessarily elites, but were judged to be untrustworthy or hostile, including “bad elements” (criminals), “counterrevolutionaries,” and “rightists.” The “others” category includes individuals of more ordinary status, such as workers, peasants, soldiers, and small entrepreneurs, as well as members of Cultural Revolution–era mass organizations. Overall, the great majority of the articles—72%—targeted groups in the cadres category, while 19% focused on old elites, and 7% were directed against members of other groups (see Figure 4).

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Figure 4.

People’s Daily mass supervision articles, 1949–1968: Targeted groups (overall distribution).

The groups targeted, however, shifted considerably over time, as is evident in Figure 5. During the first decade of Communist rule, a large proportion of the articles about mass supervision targeted old elites. This proportion reached a high point in 1955, as the CCP was moving to nationalize private enterprises; that year 48% of the articles focused on old elites (compared with only 36% that focused on Communist cadres), with many articles reporting on workers denouncing malfeasance by capitalists and incumbent managers. Then during the Hundred Flowers movement and the Party Rectification campaign, from May 1956 through early June 1957, the focus shifted sharply to Communist cadres, who became the target of 85% of the articles. Old elites again became an important target after the Anti-Rightist movement began on June 8 and they continued to be in the crosshairs through the Great Leap Forward years, from 1958 through early 1960. Starting in 1960, however, the discourse of mass supervision was reserved almost exclusively for Communist cadres. This continued to be the case through the Cultural Revolution years; in 1967, at the height of the Cultural Revolution, 90% of articles about mass supervision targeted cadres.

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Figure 5.

People’s Daily mass supervision articles, 1949–1968: Targeted groups (annual distribution).

Targeted Behaviors

Articles about mass supervision encouraged criticism of a wide range of behaviors including corruption, waste and inefficiency, producing unsafe products, fostering unsafe working conditions, privilege-seeking, selfishness, favoritism, profiteering and tax evasion (by private entrepreneurs), as well as political transgressions, ranging in gravity from counterrevolutionary activities and rightism to carrying out policies that placed more emphasis on expertise than on politics. As is evident in Figure 6, however, the behaviors most often targeted for criticism were those associated with bureaucratism 官僚主义. During the entire period from 1949 through 1968, among the People’s Daily articles about mass supervision that targeted a specific behavior, 26% focused on those associated with bureaucratism, making it by far the most prevalent target.

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Figure 6.

People’s Daily mass supervision articles, 1949–1968: Targeted behaviors (overall distribution).

In the CCP’s lexicon, the most important meaning of bureaucratism is separation of cadres from the masses. The party demanded that its cadres “live, eat, and work” 同住同吃同劳动 with the workers and peasants; they were not only required to lead them, but also to listen to their criticisms and suggestions, attend to their concerns, and involve them in local governance. “Isolation from the masses” 脱离群众, “commandism” 命令主义, stifling of criticism from below, arrogance, and failing to adhere to a “democratic work style” 民主作风 were denounced as bureaucratic behavior, which party leaders feared would alienate the masses and threaten the party’s ability to govern.

Figure 7 shows that the problem of bureaucratism among party cadres was always an important theme in the pages of the People’s Daily throughout the first two decades of Communist power. Nevertheless, the frequency of articles about mass supervision that focused on bureaucratism varied greatly over time, reaching clear highpoints in 1957 and again during the Cultural Revolution years.

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Figure 7.

People’s Daily mass supervision articles, 1949–1968: Targeted behaviors (annual distribution).

The broad trends revealed by this content analysis alert us to features that the 1957 Party Rectification campaign and the early years of the Cultural Revolution had in common. They stand out as moments of particularly intense promotion in the official press of mass supervision, and the focus during both periods was on the bureaucratic behavior of Communist cadres. Although this content could be found throughout the years surveyed, during these periods it reached peaks that were unparalleled. What made these periods completely unique, however, was the appearance of the extraordinary slogans about big democracy and daming dafang.

Despite these similarities, however, the two movements were quite different. In the following sections we will examine each episode, looking more closely at the publications produced during the two periods and analyzing how each movement unfolded at the ground level in factories, based principally on interviews with participants.

Daming Dafang

In the 1957 Party Rectification campaign, launched in April of that year, citizens were invited to raise criticisms of party leaders in order to rectify three types of problems—bureaucratism, sectarianism, and subjectivism (CCP Central Committee, 1957). Bureaucratism had been a recurring target of previous party rectification campaigns: a 1950 Rectification campaign was directed against “bureaucratism and commandism,” the Three Antis movement in 1951–1952 targeted “corruption, waste, and bureaucratism,” and the New Three Antis campaign in 1953 sought to curb “bureaucratism, commandism, and violations of discipline and law.” Communist leaders considered mass supervision to be the essential antidote for bureaucratism. The CCP was a highly disciplined party with strict top-down controls, but party leaders recognized that if these controls were not combined with monitoring from below they would be ineffective in curbing behaviors associated with bureaucratism. ¹⁴ In fact, top-down controls could even be counterproductive because they exacerbated cadres’ tendency to turn their gaze up, rather than down. For this reason, in order to prevent cadres from becoming aloof from the masses, CCP leaders considered “supervision from below” to be indispensable.

In the past, however, such mass supervision campaigns had normally taken place under conditions carefully controlled by the party organization. This time, to the consternation of other party leaders, Mao encouraged people to speak out on their own. “The meaning of the Central Committee,” Mao instructed his comrades, “is that you can’t control everything, you have to let go, just let go and let everyone express their opinions, let people speak out, criticize and debate” (Liu and Fang, 1998: 561). As the Party Rectification campaign was gearing up in late April, People’s Daily published an article by Marxist historian Jian Bozan that introduced the refrain that became the byword of the campaign: daming dafang (Jian, 1957a). Indeed, in popular discourse the campaign itself became known as daming dafang.

Most scholarship about the 1957 Party Rectification campaign has focused, with good reason, on how it unfolded in intellectual circles (Andreas, 2009; Chen, 1960; MacFarquhar, 1960). The invitation to criticize party officials was extended to intellectuals in particular, and schools and offices became the center of daming dafang activities. Students and faculty at universities and other schools responded with particular enthusiasm, organizing “free speech forums” 自由论坛, distributing petitions, and posting big character posters. Great excitement animated campuses around the country, as students and faculty jumped on the opportunity to raise pent-up grievances, criticize school party leaders and policies, as well as debate broader issues.

The call to participate in the campaign was also extended to China’s factories, but in a more limited fashion. Workers’ Daily 工人日报, the newspaper of the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU), which was controlled by the CCP, published the central guidelines for the campaign on May 1 and in the following weeks carried numerous articles about it. Commentaries criticized the bureaucratic work styles of factory leaders as well as union leaders, who were described as isolated from the masses of workers and unwilling to seriously take up their concerns. The head of the ACFTU, Lai Ruoyu, used the campaign to push for a more autonomous role for the union and to promote the mass supervision functions of staff and workers’ representative congresses. ¹⁵ These congresses had recently been established or reestablished in a growing number of factories and Workers’ Daily carried articles about elected representatives of the workers gathering criticisms, grievances, and demands to be submitted to factory leaders.

It seems, however, that workers were never invited to engage in the kinds of daming dafang activities—free speech forums, outspoken big character posters, and so on—that electrified schools and other venues in which intellectuals were concentrated. From our interviews it is evident that although these activities did take place in factories, they seldom reached the shop floor. We interviewed ten individuals who worked in factory production jobs during this period and six individuals not involved directly in production—two worked in factory offices, one worked in a railroad design office, one studied in a factory technical school, and two worked in trade union offices. While all of those not involved in production reported that they had participated in the movement, the production workers all insisted that their workshops were not involved. “[The campaign] didn’t happen in factories,” a worker in a large electronics plant told us. “There were no big character posters. The party leadership was strong in the factory—no one would dare criticize it” (Interviewee A1). Although we were only able to interview a small number of individuals who experienced the campaign, the consistency of their recollections is remarkable. The impression they impart—that the daming dafang campaign was largely confined to office staff and factory schools, while workers remained on the sidelines—is reinforced by coverage of specific daming dafang activities in Workers’ Daily, which included many reports about meetings of engineering and technical staff and of union cadres, but hardly mentioned workers, unless they were serving as representatives in employee congresses. ¹⁶

In late 1956 and the first half of 1957, Workers’ Daily did carry many accounts of workers’ grievances as well as a few reports about strikes, slowdowns, and protests by dissatisfied workers, although these articles gave only hints about what was actually a major strike wave. In May and June of 1957, as daming dafang meetings were taking place in schools and offices, strikes broke out in hundreds of factories in many different cities. These strikes, in which workers raised a wide range of grievances and demands, were clearly inspired by the Party Rectification campaign, but they were not an authorized part of it (Chen, 2014; Dillon, 2015; Frazier, 2002: 197–99; Harper, 1969; Hoffman, 1974: 144–50; Perry, 1994). It is difficult to tell whether the formal involvement of workers in the daming dafang campaign was restricted because Mao himself was hesitant to disrupt production, or whether efforts to extend the campaign to the shop floor were thwarted by local leaders. In either case, the campaign came to be identified almost exclusively with intellectuals.

Anti-Rightist Backlash

When the daming dafang campaign was launched in late April, authorities suggested that it would last six months, but in early June, after five weeks of increasingly outspoken criticism by intellectuals, CCP leaders struck back in what became the Anti-Rightist movement. Party cadres were clearly unwilling to accept this kind of freewheeling criticism from subordinates and outsiders, and even Mao—who had initiated the ill-fated endeavor—was not happy with the results. The educated employees who staffed the country’s schools and offices had raised criticisms about the bureaucratic work styles of Communist cadres, just as Mao had encouraged them to do, but many went beyond this prescribed topic and raised issues of their own that were not to his liking. Some challenged the legitimacy of party authority, or at least the extent to which the party imposed its will on all aspects of society. In factories, as in other institutions, members of the technical staff complained that party leaders were attempting to run things they knew nothing about. Mao and other Communist leaders saw these objections—and the underlying idea that “non-specialists cannot lead specialists” 外行不能领导内行—as a challenge to the party’s revolutionary mandate (Andreas, 2009: 32–41). Nor was Mao inclined to support a more autonomous union, which he thought would encourage workers to pursue individual and group interests, diverting them from collective Communist goals.

During the Anti-Rightist movement many of those who had raised criticisms of party leaders during the daming dafang campaign were severely punished for their temerity. Hundreds of thousands were declared to be rightists, and many were removed from their posts and sent to work in the countryside (Chen, 1960; MacFarquhar, 1960; Teiwes, 1993: 216–58). In the industrial sphere, the movement was directed against those in factory offices and schools who had spoken out during the Rectification campaign. One interviewee, who was working in an engineering unit of the national railway system at the time, was among those who suffered as a result. During the daming dafang campaign, the unit party secretary had publicly encouraged everyone to write big character posters, but the head of the Communist Youth League had privately warned students to be careful about what they wrote. The interviewee promptly wrote a poster denouncing the Youth League leader for suppressing criticism, illustrated with a drawing of a young man with tape over his mouth. For this offense—and because he refused to admit he had done anything wrong—during the subsequent Anti-Rightist campaign the author of the poster was deemed to be a “medium rightist” and sent to work laying track in Yunnan for a year. Afterward, he returned to the engineering unit in Beijing, but this blemish in his file meant he was not able to join the party, severely limiting his career prospects (Interviewee B8).

A basic-level cadre in a steel mill office told a similar story, recounting how he was denounced as a rightist and sent to work in the countryside for a year after he had raised criticisms about factory leaders during the daming dafang campaign. “I shouldn’t have been a rightist—my family background was peasant, very poor, and I joined the army when I was sixteen,” he explained. “But I believe in seeking truth from facts, if you have something to say, speak openly.” When he returned to the steel mill, he was demoted to a production job.

Although in industrial enterprises the Anti-Rightist campaign was carried out primarily in factory offices and schools, it was accompanied by a smaller scale wave of repression on the shop floor. Interviewees reported that workers who had raised complaints interpreted as hostile to the CCP regime were denounced as “bad elements” and faced harsh retribution. Many of the workers who had led strikes were also severely punished (Hoffman, 1974: 146–47; Sheehan, 1998: 77–80).

Although union cadres largely escaped criticism during the Anti-Rightist campaign, after Lai Ruoyu died of cancer in 1958 he was posthumously criticized as an “anti-party element.” He was accused of promoting “economism,” “opposing the party’s leadership over the union,” and “worshiping spontaneous actions of the workers” (Han, 2012). ¹⁷ Hundreds of his supporters in the ACFTU were investigated, denounced, and demoted (Dillon, 2015: 221–25; Harper, 1969; Zhang, 2003). A union leader who was among those censured told us, “The criticism had a very negative impact. There was a big change in the union. . . . No one dared to say anything anymore” (Interviewee B6).

Disastrous Results

The 1957 Party Rectification campaign was an unmitigated failure. Mao’s experimental effort to subject party officials to unscripted criticism from below was quite limited and ended disastrously. It was contained within narrow social boundaries; the scope was largely limited to intellectuals, leaving the great majority of the population—workers and peasants—on the sidelines. Although many workers took advantage of the campaign to carry out protests and strikes, hesitant efforts by union leaders to bring workers into more organized forums to criticize the bureaucratic behavior of factory cadres hardly got off the ground. Moreover, the campaign lasted only a few weeks before it gave way to a massive backlash. Because participation was largely limited to intellectual circles and the party’s critics typically raised their objections from liberal perspectives, they were easily attacked as anti-socialist. Communist cadres certainly did not learn to accept criticism from below. Instead the harsh punishment of those who had spoken out had a chilling effect on the whole country and muted criticism of party officials for years to come.

The dramatic reversal of this experiment is reflected in changes in the discursive use of daming dafang in the pages of People’s Daily. During the heady weeks of the Party Rectification campaign in the spring of 1957, daming dafang was celebrated as a means of strengthening the party by subjecting it to open criticism from below. Even after the tables were turned in early June, defensive party leaders did not renounce the slogan, but only its misuse. Those who were now accused as rightists were charged with taking advantage of the daming dafang movement for malevolent purposes. Jian Bozan, the historian who had been entrusted with promoting the slogan in April, was now compelled to help rein in its use (which for him was undoubtedly a much more disagreeable task), writing a new editorial condemning luan daming 乱大鸣, that is, speaking out wildly (Jian, 1957b). Jian’s two articles served as bookends for the brief period of unscripted criticism of the party. For a time afterward, party authorities continued to employ the daming dafang slogan, repurposing it to call on loyalists to speak out against the party’s critics. Even in this form, however, use of the term—so foreign to the party’s normal ways of operation—trailed off and soon disappeared completely from the pages of People’s Daily.

Throughout 1957, big democracy remained a discursive threat, rather than an active endeavor, at least in the press. During the tumultuous days of the daming dafang movement, People’s Daily ran editorials penned by intellectual critics warning party officials that if they did not listen to those who were speaking out in measured tones now, they would be inviting a more calamitous reckoning in the future. For instance, Fudan University professor Wang Zaoshi—echoing Mao—warned, “If in some places they don’t allow a bit of small democracy, or even small, small democracy, they’ll find themselves in trouble down the road when [the masses] go in for big democracy” (Wang, 1957). Workers also employed the term as a threat, sometimes with more concrete and immediate implications. Referring to an earlier march by thousands of factory apprentices protesting low pay, the leader of a group of workers who were sitting in at the Shanghai Labor Bureau to demand jobs was reported to have said, “Do you want us to try ‘big democracy’ like the apprentices?” (Dillon, 2015: 215).

After the Anti-Rightist counterattack began, party officials turned the term against their critics, accusing them of attempting to foment big democracy in order to overturn the new order; Professor Wang was among those denounced as a rightist (Guo, Li, and Hao, 1998: 84). Thus, both in the hands of the party’s critics and its defenders, big democracy was raised exclusively as a term of menace. It then disappeared almost entirely from the pages of People’s Daily for nearly a decade.

In the fall of 1957, Mao revived the Party Rectification campaign and this time it was extended to the factory floor. ¹⁸ Workers were mobilized to criticize factory leaders in order to “combat three winds and five airs” 反三风反五气 afflicting Communist cadres. The three winds were the familiar bureaucratism, sectarianism, and subjectivism, while the five airs referred to “officious, lethargic, lavish, pampered, and arrogant” 官暮阔骄娇 attitudes and behaviors. In early 1958, as the Great Leap Forward gained momentum, the focus shifted to “opposing waste and conservatism” 反浪费反保守. The campaign was Mao’s belated effort to extend the abortive Party Rectification campaign to production workers and in the fall of 1957 and winter of 1958, he visited a number of factories to personally read big character posters. The revived movement took on the frenzied atmosphere of the production campaigns of this period, with factory leaders competing to quantify impressive results. The Yaohua Glass Factory in Qinhuangdao, for instance, which had about 3,500 employees, recorded 1,600 big character posters and 12,298 specific suggestions and criticisms of cadres (Yaohua Gazetteer Editorial Office, 1992: 377). Workers we interviewed reported that they were strongly encouraged—even required—to write big character posters. The entire campaign, however, was carefully managed by union and party leaders, and no one dared luan daming.

In the wake of the events of 1957, a chastened and more quiescent union continued to convene employee congresses in factories and the party continued to organize periodic mass supervision campaigns in which workers were urged to criticize factory party leaders in meetings, confidential letters, and big character posters. All of these activities, however, were orchestrated by the party. During the largest and most sustained of these campaigns, the Four Cleans movement (1962–1966), Mao returned to the CCP’s conventional practice of dispatching party work teams to lead the effort. At factories across the country, workers were convened in meetings large and small to criticize local leaders. Interviewees recounted that workers were strongly encouraged by work team members to report cadre malfeasance, and many cadres were punished. Work teams tightly controlled the entire process, however, and during these years, articles in the People’s Daily almost never mentioned daming dafang.

Mao’s intentions in 1957 have been debated ever since. Some scholars have claimed that he encouraged criticism during the Party Rectification campaign only to lure critics into raising their voices so they could be suppressed, an interpretation supported by Mao’s own statements during the Anti-Rightist campaign (Chang and Halliday, 2005: 416–21; Thurston, 1987: 62–72). Roderick MacFarquhar (1960: 12; 1974: 270–81) and others (Dittmer, 1987: 65; Walder, 2015: 148–51) have disputed this interpretation, arguing instead that after the Party Rectification campaign gave rise to unexpectedly sharp criticisms of the CCP, Mao was compelled to retreat, yielding to party leaders who had always opposed the daming dafang initiative. This explanation is supported by subsequent events. Mao’s second—and much more potent—experiment with freewheeling mass supervision in 1966 leaves little doubt that his call to criticize the party’s shortcomings in 1957 was more than a ploy.

Opening the Way for Big Democracy in Factories

Like the 1957 daming dafang campaign, the initial focal point of the Cultural Revolution was in schools, but this time factory workers were involved from the first days of the movement. The earliest events of the Cultural Revolution, beginning in June 1966, had a profound impact on factories, and by the end of the year, industrial workers had become the main protagonists of the movement.

In factories, as in schools, the movement was initially led by officials—factory party committees or work teams dispatched by local authorities. In many factories, work teams sent to lead the Four Cleans campaign remained in charge, while in others new work teams arrived. Shortly after the new movement was launched, however, Mao began commissioning newspaper articles and radio broadcasts that undermined the authority of the work teams and at the end of July he demanded the removal of work teams from schools. On August 5, he penned what he called his “first big character poster,” titled “Bombard the headquarters,” in which he sharply denounced work teams and party authorities for stifling “opinions differing from their own” (Mao, 1966). Then on August 8, at Mao’s insistence, the Central Committee issued new guidelines, known as the Sixteen Points, which called for a striking change in how the movement was to be conducted. “The only method is for the masses to liberate themselves, and any method of doing things in their stead must not be used,” the guidelines insisted. “Trust the masses, rely on them and respect their initiative. Cast out fear. Don’t be afraid of disturbances.” Much of the document was dedicated to advising party leaders not to suppress critics and, cognizant of the fact that those who had challenged local authorities were almost invariably in the minority, it specified: “Any method of forcing a minority holding different views to submit is impermissible. The minority should be protected, because sometimes the truth is with the minority. Even if the minority is wrong, they should still be allowed to argue their case and reserve their views” (CCP Central Committee, 1966a: point 6). A commentary on the Sixteen Points published in Red Flag, the party’s leading journal, issued an even sharper warning to party leaders:

There is a very dangerous tendency among some comrades who are bent on standing on a commanding height and divorcing themselves from the masses. . . . They are accustomed to monopolizing everything themselves, giving orders and reducing the masses to inactivity; they have often developed from standing aloof and fearing the masses to opposing and oppressing them. . . . Taking the stand of the reactionary bourgeoisie, they oppress the revolutionaries, put a damper on dissenting opinions and exercise the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. (Red Flag, 1966)

From that moment on, efforts by party officials to stifle autonomous activity—commonly referred to as “carrying out the bourgeois reactionary line”—became the main target of the fledgling rebel groups. The Sixteen Points specified that going forward the movement was to be led by “Cultural Revolution groups, committees, and other organizational forms created by the masses” (CCP Central Committee, 1966a: points 4 and 6). The document, however, remained ambivalent about extending the movement to factories and villages. Although it called for the election of Cultural Revolution committees in industrial enterprises, it reiterated that schools and government offices would continue to be the focal point of the movement. In factories and villages, it stipulated, the Four Cleans campaign “should continue in accordance with the original arrangements,” while being “enriched” by the Cultural Revolution (CCP Central Committee, 1966a: points 9 and 13). In practical terms, this meant that although work teams had been recalled from schools, they would remain in place in factories.

Responding to the Sixteen Points, factory authorities—whether the enterprise party committee or an outside work team—oversaw the election of new Cultural Revolution committees, composed largely of workers, which formally took charge of the movement. Taking a cue from developments on school campuses, party leaders also encouraged the organization of Red Guard groups. But while on school campuses these groups were actually self-organized, factory Red Guard organizations were creations of the party organization and they were composed exclusively of workers who were deemed to be politically reliable and had impeccable class backgrounds; efforts by workers to organize autonomous groups continued to be suppressed. Mao’s sharp criticism of the work teams, however, emboldened recalcitrant workers and many were no longer willing to follow the direction of any authorities appointed by the party establishment. Guo Zhenghua, a filter manufacturing plant technician who had been dismissed from a Four Cleans committee after he raised questions about the committee’s methods, was among the early rebels. “We grabbed hold of the Sixteen Points as our weapon,” he recalled. “We became braver and our enthusiasm grew—we didn’t have to operate underground anymore, we could operate openly” (Interviewee W4).

Mass Organizations Autonomous from the Party

By early November, workers in factories around the country had begun openly establishing their own “rebel” groups, and in Shanghai, Wuhan, and other cities they even formed incipient citywide coalitions. On November 9, several thousand Shanghai workers commandeered a train to Beijing, seeking to gain Mao’s blessing for their newly created organization, which the Shanghai Municipal Party Committee had refused to recognize. Local authorities stopped the train in Anting, just north of Shanghai, but many workers refused to return to work and instead blocked the railroad lines. The Central Cultural Revolution Small Group (CCRSG), the ad hoc body set up by Mao to guide the movement, dispatched Zhang Chunqiao to negotiate with the workers and, in a stunning move, he signed off on their demands, recognizing the legitimacy of their organization. ²⁰

Shortly thereafter, Mao endorsed Zhang’s decision and within days the CCRSG issued a decree declaring that workers not only had the constitutional right to establish their own Cultural Revolution organizations, but they also had the right to link up with workers in other factories and form federations and associations. The decree encouraged workers to visit schools and students to visit factories to “exchange experiences in the Cultural Revolution.” Expanding on the content of the Sixteen Points, the CCRSG insisted that the movement in factories be led by Cultural Revolution committees and Cultural Revolution congresses elected by the masses. “These organizations,” the decree stipulated, “must not be manipulated behind the scenes; they must be based on the election system of the Paris Commune, including full deliberation by the masses, repeated discussions, and the implementation of a comprehensive election system allowing for the recall [of those elected] and new elections at any time” (Central Cultural Revolution Small Group, 1966). This initiative was sharply debated at a series of central meetings held over the next few weeks, with top party leaders insisting that workers should not be allowed to form rebel groups and that “students and workers must not be permitted to join forces in rebellion” (MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, 2006: 142–44). This, however, was precisely what Mao had in mind. He prevailed, and in early December the Political Bureau issued an authoritative decree affirming the right of workers to form their own organizations (CCP Central Committee, 1966b).

Since the first days of the movement, workers had been visiting universities to read big character posters and listen to debates and some had begun to develop ties with student groups. In October and November, large numbers of students—including emissaries of the most influential university rebel organizations—moved into factories and played a critical role in helping fledgling groups of rebel workers formulate demands, articulate criticisms of factory leaders, write big character posters, and publish fliers.

One such factory was the aluminum mill in central China in which Liu Zhenbang worked. Liu, a brash Youth League activist who had been named to head the semi-official Red Guard organization in the mill, recounted the process through which he became alienated from factory party leaders and helped organize the rebel opposition. “The party committee formed the Red Guards,” he recalled, adding contritely, “we were hired to protect the emperor; we were palace guards.” He was soon influenced, however, by radical students who came from Beijing to investigate problems in the mill and he was upset when factory leaders tried to drive the students out. Noting that the newspapers were denouncing local party committees for suppressing criticism, he called a meeting of the Red Guards. “I told them that under normal circumstances we have to listen to the party committee, but under abnormal circumstances we have to listen to Mao and the center.” He and others then posted a big character poster asking why the factory party committee was attacking the students and why it had failed to distribute key Cultural Revolution documents in the factory. Party leaders immediately removed Liu from his position as head of the Red Guards and organized a mass meeting to denounce him. Unbowed, Liu traveled hundreds of kilometers to Beijing, where he visited prominent universities and went to the reception center of the Central Cultural Revolution Small Group. At the center he met with a military officer and asked him whether workers could form their own organizations, as students were doing. “He told me ‘Of course you can—you must educate yourselves and liberate yourselves.’” Soon after Liu returned to the aluminum mill in early December, he and other workers jumped on the stage while the party committee secretary was addressing a whole factory meeting, grabbed the microphone and appealed to the crowd to organize themselves to oppose the party committee’s suppression of criticism. “That was the beginning of the Cultural Revolution in our factory” (Interviewee H6).

During the final weeks of 1966, rebel workers around the country grew increasingly aggressive and factory leaders grew more hesitant to suppress their challengers. Yuan Yunshan, a textile worker who helped organize a rebel group in his factory, recalled, “When the Cultural Revolution started, every work unit formed a Cultural Revolution committee. But once the majority of people realized that the official committee couldn’t represent their own thinking, they rejected it and organized their own.” Workers, he explained, adopted a new attitude, completely at odds with the way the CCP had run mass campaigns in the past. “If they wanted to really have a Cultural Revolution, they had to have their own organizations. Only by having their own organizations could they represent their own will.” By December, there were two competing Cultural Revolution committees in Yuan’s textile mill, the official one, which had an office in the administration building, and an unofficial one, which operated out of the factory’s residential compound (Interviewee H11).

Rebels versus Conservatives

Employees in factories across China typically split into two broad camps. On one side were the new rebel organizations, which attacked the party establishment. On the other side were conservative organizations, which emerged in response to rebel attacks in order to defend the factory party leadership and the status quo. While the rebels enjoyed Mao’s support, they were loosely organized and in most factories they were in the minority. On the other hand, the conservative groups, a product of the factory party organization, were typically larger and better organized. Nevertheless, the rebels made up for their disorganization and numerical disadvantage with enthusiasm as they eagerly took up Mao’s call to “bombard the headquarters.”

The rebel activists on whom Mao relied to advance his agenda during the Cultural Revolution were very different than the activists on whom the party had relied to carry out previous mass movements. Factory party organizations had painstakingly cultivated a select group of workers who had characteristics the party identified as “advanced,” including actively participating in the affairs of the factory and placing the public interest above individual interests. Workers identified as advanced were recruited to join the Communist Youth League and the party and they played key roles in organizing production and mobilizing political participation. Mao, however, could hardly expect these “advanced” workers to serve as agents of big democracy. The party’s recruitment apparatus systematically selected for conformism and it fostered relations of dependency between activists and leaders. Because they were close to the factory establishment and accustomed to working within the system, these activists were not inclined to challenge party leaders. Big democracy required insurgents and Mao found them among the disaffected, nonconformist, discontented, alienated, and unfettered. Thus, the Cultural Revolution upended normal politics and political categories, leaving Mao at the head of a rebel movement that depended on workers who had been considered “backward” according to the CCP’s conventional standards.

The leaders and core members of conservative organizations had typically been very active in factory affairs in the past; they were basic- and middle-level cadres, shop floor supervisors, “backbone” workers, rank-and-file party members, Youth League activists, militia members, and so on. On the rebel side, in contrast, many of the previously non-activist workers were now on the frontlines of the movement. Rebel leaders were generally young, relatively well educated, and intensely interested in politics, even if they found it difficult to conform to the demands of the party organization. They were typically workers; very few were cadres. Many were disaffected rank-and-file party members, but others were independent-minded individuals who were never able—or never inclined—to join the party. Rank-and-file members of the rebel camp were generally young workers who had not been closely associated with the party establishment or particularly interested in politics, at least as it was practiced by the CCP. Workers joined the rebel camp for a variety of reasons—they were attracted to Mao’s radical ideas, they were dissatisfied with the status quo, they did not like the party’s tight system of control, they had grievances against factory leaders, they figured rebel activism might bring opportunities for political advancement, or they followed trusted friends, family members, and fellow workers. ²¹

Inspired by Mao’s slogan “to rebel is justified” 造反有理, rebel workers groups coalesced around a common aspiration to challenge the authority of party officials, which had previously been unassailable. “Those who joined the rebel faction all had a rebellious spirit, that is, they dared to raise objections, to stand up and fight,” Dong Laifu, a young worker who became a rebel activist in a plywood factory, told us. “Most of the rebel leaders were the type of people who were always dissatisfied with the world, dissatisfied with the leaders” (Interviewee G3).

Those who chose to join the conservative organizations, on the other hand, were averse to the disruption caused by the rebels. “The workers divided into two factions, one defended the factory leaders and the others opposed them,” Tian Dingxin, who worked in a large steel mill, recalled. He joined the conservative camp, he explained, because “I was against overthrowing everything and smashing everything. If there’s a problem, you should discuss it, right?” (Interviewee W8). Wang Miaoxin, a production team leader who had been a Four Cleans activist in his vacuum tube factory, joined the conservative faction because he thought the rebels were too extreme. Some leaders deserved to be criticized, he said, but the rebels went too far. “According to the thinking of the rebels,” he told us, “the old factory party committee secretary, the party committee members, along with the party branch secretaries, the workshop directors, all of these people, including us, everyone was reactionary. It was a problem of the system—the whole system was reactionary” (Interviewee A2). He noted that most of the older workers ended up joining the conservative camp. “They were not comfortable with the word zaofan 造反 [rebel]. It made them feel uncomfortable—under the Communist Party, who are you rebelling against?” (Interviewee A2). Zhang Mingtang, a young rebel leader in a meatpacking plant, echoed this interpretation. “Many workers, especially older workers, supported the status quo,” he explained.

Their reference point was 1949. Before liberation, conditions for them were bad. After liberation their conditions improved—there was no unemployment, they had health care, they had a stable life. And their status improved, the working class was respected, it was the leading class. So they wanted to protect the existing order, they didn’t want to undermine it. (Interviewee H4)

Although the Cultural Revolution has been identified with an array of radical industrial management practices, support for these practices was not what drove workers to join the rebel movement or what divided rebel workers from their conservative colleagues. Indeed, the kind of workers most likely to be inspired by these practical reforms—those who regularly took responsibility for factory affairs, got involved in technical innovation, and were recognized as “advanced producers”—were more likely to be found in the conservative camp. Throughout their brief existence, the rebel organizations’ main purpose was to attack the overbearing control of the party organization in their workplaces. The rebels criticized the privileges enjoyed by leading officials and eagerly carried out Mao’s crusade against bureaucratism, condemning cadres’ arrogant and domineering behavior and their suppression of criticism and contrary views.

Broader and Louder Daming

Just as in 1957, the opening for freewheeling criticism in 1966 generated tremendous excitement in schools, but this time the excitement was extended to factories and other workplaces, unleashing a far more powerful movement with much broader participation. Although workers had been mobilized to participate in party-led mass supervision movements in the past, including the second round of the Party Rectification campaign in the fall of 1957 and the Four Cleans campaign, participation had largely been passive and formalistic. Mao’s call for rebellion in 1966 inspired participation that was much more intensive and passionate. The majority of workers were much more involved, including many who had never been very active in party-organized activities in the factory in the past.

Even the conservative organizations mobilized workers in a manner that previous campaigns had not. In the face of rebel attacks, they were able to mobilize large numbers of ordinary workers to become fervent defenders of the party leadership and the status quo. Moreover, those who ended up at the forefront of the conservative movement during the upheavals of the Cultural Revolution were often not the same people who had thrived in the routine politics of the party and youth league organizations.

The Cultural Revolution polarized Chinese factories and, because it did, it engaged—on both sides—much larger segments of the workforce with much greater intensity. “In past movements the masses hadn’t all participated,” Han Xianglin, a worker in a large ball bearing factory, told us. “They were all under party control; mass participation was limited.” The Cultural Revolution, he said, “was a higher form—all the masses participated in the movement, it didn’t matter whether you were a conservative or a rebel, everyone participated” (Interviewee H23).

Factories, like schools, became sites of fervent debates, which took place among groups gathered in residential compounds, canteens, and production facilities, in public meetings called by competing organizations, in fliers and big character posters, and via factory public address systems. Competing factions convened “criticism/struggle” meetings in which factory leaders were hauled up on stages to be criticized by subordinates. “When we called meetings there were debates,” recalled Gao Jingwen, a railroad worker who ended up joining the rebel camp. “The conservatives insisted that the party committee had not made any mistakes. It was a debate among the masses. We debated all the time—when we were working, when we ate, after work” (Interviewee H2).

Rebels Loyal to Mao

As he had done in 1957, Mao once again went outside the party organization in 1966 to summon popular criticism of party cadres. This time, however, he was able to create in the rebel movement an organizational instrument to pursue his agenda, and as a result he was better able to steer the direction of the criticism. Nevertheless, steering the rebel movement proved to be a difficult task, as it lacked any effective chain of command. The rebel groups that emerged during the Cultural Revolution were unlike any other mass organizations that had existed since 1949. They were self-organized—their leaders nominated themselves and recruited their own followings. They first organized small fighting groups, usually composed of people in the same workshop, which coalesced into factory-wide coalitions. These coalitions linked up with groups in other factories and schools, forming municipal and eventually provincial alliances. ²² Moreover, rebel coalitions were unstable combinations with fluid memberships and little in the way of a formal organizational structure. Even within each factory, the rebel camp was a loose coalition of fighting groups, each of which published their own fliers and called their own meetings, often with contrary opinions and agendas. Although the CCRSG, composed of a handful of Mao’s trusted lieutenants, sought to guide and manipulate local rebel organizations, these efforts were often frustrated.

As unruly as they were, however, most rebels fervently believed in Mao and they also could scarcely afford to stray from his auspices, as their existence depended on his support. Although rebel groups were self-organized and were independent from the party organization, they did not arise spontaneously. They rose up in response to Mao’s call, they embraced his goals, and sought to follow his leadership.

While rebels took pride in their “rebel spirit” 造反精神 and “independent thinking” 独立思考, their dependence on Mao severely limited their autonomy, compelling them to restrict their agenda to Mao’s agenda. This became starkly evident in December and January, as the authority of local party organizations was faltering, and many workers began raising economic demands. Temporary workers demanded permanent status, apprentices demanded promotion, employees in collective enterprises demanded more extensive social insurance, regular state workers demanded the resolution of housing problems and adjustments in wages and job assignments, and so on. Mao viewed these demands as an unwelcome diversion from the direction he had set for the movement, and they were harshly condemned in the press as “economism,” which was said to reflect selfishness and a lack of public spirit. Rebel leaders quickly followed suit, renouncing economic demands and echoing the condemnation of economism. ²³ Following cues from Beijing, they reined in the movement so that it focused exclusively on the task Mao had given them—criticizing party officials for bureaucratism, privilege-seeking, and political transgressions.

If rebel organizations were constrained from advancing economic demands, they were even more constrained from advancing political ideas deemed too radical. Mao’s rhetoric about overthrowing capitalist roaders and seizing power (see below) inspired among some rebel activists visions of radical political and social change. The heady atmosphere and the breakdown of mechanisms of social and political control encouraged the flowering and dissemination of ideas about overthrowing an entire class of “Red capitalists.” ²⁴ Despite Mao’s inflammatory language, however, his aim was to reform the Communist Party, not overthrow it. Workers were encouraged to challenge the authority of the local party organization and condemn the capitalist roaders in the party, but not to challenge the legitimacy of the party as a whole. Any criticism of Mao was forbidden and rebels who interpreted Mao’s call as an opening for systemic change were denounced as anarchists and ultra-leftists and many eventually faced severe repression. Although workers were encouraged to attack local party authorities, the bounds of ideological and political toleration were quite narrow.

The criticisms of the party establishment raised by rebels during the Cultural Revolution were similar in many ways to those raised by intellectuals in 1957. This is not surprising because in both cases the critics were responding to Mao’s call to criticize bureaucratism among party officials. There were, however, crucial differences. First, the intellectuals who spoke up in 1957 could easily be denounced as defenders of the old order, in which they had been part of the privileged elites. This was especially true because although most of the critics in 1957 carefully couched their criticisms in socialist language, the vantage point from which they raised these criticisms was typically to the right of the CCP. Many favored a more liberal version of socialism and they criticized what they portrayed as leftist practices by dogmatic officials, enunciating views easily associated with those of contemporary liberal critics of the socialist regimes in Eastern Europe.

In contrast, the worker rebels of 1966 could not be so easily dismissed by party leaders. They were less vulnerable in part because they were workers, celebrated as the leading class in socialist society, but also because their criticisms were raised unambiguously from the left. Their fiery denunciations were made under Mao Zedong’s banner and they condemned party cadres as betrayers of the Communist cause. This language was not simply strategic; it came naturally to a generation of workers educated by the Communist Party. The liberal ideas of the 1957 critics had been proscribed in China after the Anti-Rightist movement, and they were foreign to Cultural Revolution rebels.

Moreover, although rebel workers directed their fire mainly at Communist cadres, they had no compunction about also criticizing members of the old elites, including senior technical cadres in their factories. These individuals were legitimate targets under the official guidelines for the movement, including the Sixteen Points, and they had been favorite targets of the semi-official Red Guards in the summer and fall of 1966. Even when factory rebels criticized party leaders, complaints about recent behavior were often combined with accusations involving “historical problems” and problematic family ties, a line of attack more reminiscent of the Anti-Rightist movement and the Four Cleans campaign than the 1957 daming dafang movement. Thus, although the primary target in both the 1957 Rectification campaign and the Cultural Revolution was the bureaucratic behavior of the Communist cadres, the protagonists and the discourse of the two movements were significantly different. For these reasons, the worker rebels of 1966 became a far more potent challenge to the party officialdom than their intellectual counterparts had been in 1957.

Top and Bottom versus the Middle

The key factor that made the Cultural Revolution far more powerful than the 1957 daming dafang campaign was the link between Mao at the top and the rebel fighting groups at the bottom. Party cadres, located between the two and the target of both, proved particularly vulnerable to this combination. ²⁵ Virtually all party leaders were susceptible to the charge that they were capitalist roaders and could, therefore, be considered class enemies. The meaning of the term was ambiguous and the size of the group to which the term referred was also unclear, which was key to its power (Kraus, 1981). On the one hand, Mao insisted that the great majority of Communist cadres were “good” or “relatively good,” while on the other hand, people in every work unit were encouraged to treat the leaders of their own unit as if they were all capitalist roaders. In practice, in most industrial enterprises all factory-level leaders were removed from power as were most leaders at the workshop level. Many had to endure struggle/criticism meetings and admit their mistakes before their subordinates, who were tasked with determining whether or not they should be considered capitalist roaders. “It wasn’t clear who was a capitalist roader—you didn’t know,” an electronics factory worker recalled. “So it was up to you to expose them, it was up to the masses to decide” (Interviewee A3).

For rebel activists the operative meaning of the term “capitalist roader” was clear—it referred to party leaders who abused subordinates, managed autocratically, and suppressed criticism, especially those who repressed the fledgling rebel movement in the early months of the Cultural Revolution. Although previous mass supervision movements had been harsh, the untethered mass supervision of the Cultural Revolution was even harsher. Party leaders were often cruelly humiliated and physically abused. Many rebel workers we interviewed told us that in retrospect they realized they had mistreated factory leaders and exaggerated their problems and shortcomings.

The cadre behaviors that Mao was particularly concerned about—those associated with bureaucratism—came under far more severe assault during the Cultural Revolution than they had in any of the past mass supervision movements, including the 1957 Party Rectification and the Four Cleans campaigns. While the work team method employed in the latter campaign was effective in rooting out corruption, its top-down nature made it inherently ineffective in controlling the ills connected with bureaucratism. In contrast, the rebel movement—born to challenge authority—was specifically fitted for this task.

Most of the old leaders were ultimately brought back into positions of authority, but only after a protracted process that usually involved the consent of rebel factions, and when they returned their authority was circumscribed. Workers believed that the Cultural Revolution had a profound and lasting impact on the attitudes of both workers and cadres. An electronics factory worker described the impact on cadres: “There was a big change in cadres’ attitude toward the masses. Cadres who have been attacked—who have been through the masses putting up big character posters—are different than those who have not been attacked. The old capitalist roaders who had been overthrown and then came back to work, their work style was much better” (Interviewee A3).

Reining in Big Democracy

In January 1967, Mao called on rebels throughout the country to overthrow the party committees in their workplaces and local governments and “seize power.” As might be expected, this led to a chaotic struggle for power among competing mass organizations. Teams of military officers were subsequently dispatched to larger factories as arbitrators and contention over who was to be named to new “revolutionary committees” that were to govern municipalities and factories led to complex and shifting alliances. Factional conflict continued for nearly two years and in many places generated violent confrontations. Depending on the results of these battles, leaders of some rebel groups were integrated into the new governing bodies, while other rebel leaders were excluded.

Just as happened in 1957, the early daming dafang period of the Cultural Revolution was concluded with a fearsome round of repression. This time, however, the daming dafang period was much more protracted, disruptive, and violent, and the subsequent period of repression was also much harsher. In late 1968 and early 1969, all rebel groups were compelled to disband; those that resisted were violently suppressed. A series of repressive campaigns, conducted largely by local military authorities, crushed all outward indications of factional activity, and, just as in 1957, a remarkable period of daming dafang gave way to a period of enforced reticence.

In both episodes, Mao was complicit in the suppression of those who had responded to his call to speak out. In the end, he was unwilling to countenance lasting autonomous organizations. In late 1968, as Mao was trying to curb the unruly forces he had unleashed and revive the party organization, a steady stream of articles in People’s Daily insisted on the need for “unitary leadership” 一元化领导. Ultimately, Mao remained committed to this principle and it was necessary, therefore, to rein in big democracy.