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Mao’s handwritten draft of “Bombard the Headquarters”

Bombard The Headquarters – My Big-Character Poster (Chinese: 炮打司令部——我的一张大字报; pinyin: Pào dǎ sīlìng bù——wǒ de yī zhāng dàzì bào) was a short document written by Chairman Mao Zedong on August 5, 1966, during the 11th plenary session of the 8th Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party,[1][2] and published in the Communist Party‘s official newspaper People’s Daily a year later, on August 5, 1967.

It is commonly believed that this “big-character poster” directly targeted Chinese President Liu Shaoqi and senior leader Deng Xiaoping, who were then in charge of the Chinese government’s daily affairs and who tried to cool down the mass movement which had been coming into shape in several universities in Beijing since the May 16 Notice was issued, through which Mao officially launched the Cultural Revolution.[3]

Many larger-scale mass persecutions followed the publication of this big-character poster, resulting in turmoil throughout the country and the death of thousands of “class enemies“, including President Liu Shaoqi.[4]

Text

The original text of the poster was:

全国第一张马列主义的大字报和人民日报评论员的评论，写得何等好呵！请同志们重读这一张大字报和这个评论。可是在50多天里，从中央到地方的某些领导同志，却反其道而行之，站在反动的资产阶级立场上，实行资产阶级专政，将无产阶级轰轰烈烈的文化大革命运动打下去，颠倒是非，混淆黑白，围剿革命派，压制不同意见，实行白色恐怖，自以为得意，长资产阶级的威风，灭无产阶级的志气，又何其毒也！联想到1962年的右倾和1964年形“左”实右的错误倾向，岂不是可以发人深醒的吗？[5]

English translation:

China’s first Marxist-Leninist big-character poster and Commentator’s article on it in People’s Daily are indeed superbly written! Comrades, please read them again. But in the last fifty days or so some leading comrades from the central down to the local levels have acted in a diametrically opposite way. Adopting the reactionary stand of the bourgeoisie, they have enforced a bourgeois dictatorship and struck down the surging movement of the Great Cultural Revolution of the proletariat. They have stood facts on their head and juggled black and white, encircled and suppressed revolutionaries, stifled opinions differing from their own, imposed a white terror, and felt very pleased with themselves. They have puffed up the arrogance of the bourgeoisie and deflated the morale of the proletariat. How poisonous! Viewed in connection with the Right deviation in 1962 and the wrong tendency of 1964 which was ‘Left’ in form but Right in essence, shouldn’t this make one wide awake?

— ”Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung Volume IX”[6]

Content

The “first Marxist-Leninist big-character poster” Mao makes mention of was the 25 May 1966 poster created and displayed by Peking University radicals, Nie Yuanzi among them, which was a key trigger of the Cultural Revolution.

Though Mao’s poster only vaguely targeted “some leading comrades” who had “enforced a bourgeois dictatorship and struck down the surging movement of the great Cultural Revolution of the proletariat”, everyone at the time knew that the person under attack was Liu Shaoqi.[7]

Mao’s reference to “Right deviation in 1962″ refers to Liu Shaoqi’s statements during the Seven Thousand Cadres Conference that the Great Leap Forward famine was caused predominantly by human error. Mao’s reference to “the wrong tendency of 1964” refers to Liu Shaoqi’s leadership of the Socialist Education Movement, and the Taoyuan Experience report, during which Mao and Liu came to be divided.[1]

Impact

The poster gave fuel to the Red Guards movement and more posters criticizing Liu Shaoqi were created by radicals at Tsinghua University and in Beijing.[8][9] Relations further deteriorated between Mao and Liu, who was then still Mao’s ostensible successor; the publication of the poster caused some surprise that Mao would attack his successor so openly. Zhou Enlai promoted the poster, and Wu Faxian recalled that Zhou stated, “Liu Shaoqi can no longer be in charge of the Central Committee’s work, because he has disappointed the Chairman’s hopes. The Central Committee has now decided to bring comrade Lin Biao to Beijing to take over from Liu Shaoqi.”[1]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c Yang, Jisheng; Mosher, Stacy; Guo, Jian (2021). The world turned upside down: a history of the Chinese Cultural Revolution (First American ed.). New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. pp. 97–98. ISBN 978-0-374-29313-0.
  2. ^ “中国共产党大事记·1966年–资料中心–中国共产党新闻网”. cpc.people.com.cn (in Chinese). Retrieved July 14, 2024.
  3. ^ “第七章 十年”文化大革命”的内乱”. www.gov.cn (in Chinese). Retrieved July 14, 2024.
  4. ^ “集中共受害者与迫害者于一身的刘少奇”. BBC News 中文 (in Simplified Chinese). November 12, 2014. Retrieved July 14, 2024.
  5. ^ 毛泽东. “炮打司令部——我的一张大字报”. 人民网. Archived from the original on September 24, 2015. Retrieved November 28, 2014.
  6. ^ Mao, Tse-tung (2021). Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung (PDF). Foreign Languages Press. p. 282. ISBN 9782491182489.
  7. ^ 毛, 泽东 (1996). “炮打司令部——我的一张大字报” [Bombard the headquarters—my big-character poster]. Highlights of Da-Zi-Bao during the Cultural Revolution (in Chinese). Flushing, NY: Mirror Books. p. 28.
  8. ^ Leijonhufvud, Göran (1989). Going Against the Tide: On Dissent and Big Character Posters in China. Copenhagen: Nordic Institute of Asian Studies. p. 65.
  9. ^ Wang, Tuo (2014). The Cultural Revolution and Overacting: Dynamics Between Politics and Performance. Lanham: Lexington Books. p. 35.