Atrocities or catastrophes?: The Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution in China’s History curriculum
The actor-observer bias is a phenomenon whereby people tend to attribute their own actions to external situational factors while they tend to attribute the actions of others to their character. This phenomenon also prevails at nation level when creating historical narratives. Often, when describing conflict situations between nations, the “other” is portrayed as committing aggressive or “evil” acts, while the “self” nation’s actions are portrayed as reasonable defensive or retaliatory responses. As outlined in this previous article (contrasting Israeli and Palestinian narratives), omission, accentuation, minimisation, and value-loaded language are common techniques for realising these contrasting portrayals.
Yet while many nations have to decide how to create historical narratives around atrocities they have committed to other nations, China’s recent past also demands an account of brutalities directed towards large numbers of its own citizens. Outside China, these are often portrayed as indefensible acts stemming from an intrinsically inhumane state or governing power. But how does China ‘s history education make sense of these and portray them?
The Great Leap Forward and Famine
The Great Leap Forward was a social and economic campaign by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), led by Chairman Mao Zedong, from 1958 to 1961. The primary goal was to rapidly transform China from an agrarian society into an industrialised socialist nation. However, the campaign resulted in widespread social and economic upheaval, causing immense suffering and setbacks. It is estimated that around 30 million lives were lost (estimates range between 15 and 60 million), the majority of which can be attributed to famine but some of which can be attributed to corporeal punishment, torture and executions.
Key components of the Great Leap Forward include:
- The large-scale collectivisation of agriculture, forcing peasants to merge their farms. The intention was to increase agricultural productivity through economies of scale and collective effort but instead, productivity declined due to misaligned incentives, diversion of labour to other industries, and natural disasters.
- Backyard furnaces to produce steel and ambitious targets. The intention was to increase steel production to accelerate industrialisation and grow the economy. However, the unrealistic production targets and poor-quality materials led to the production of unusable steel.
- Persecution of those who resisted collectivisation, criticised the regime, or dared to point out that the targets were unrealistic. Punishments included forced labour, beatings, public humiliation and even execution.
The Great Leap Forward is covered in the history curriculum in China as part of “Difficult Exploration and Achievements with Construction”. A grade 8 history textbook gives the following account:
“the climax of the ‘Great Leap Forward’ and the movement of people’s communes were spread across the country. The ‘Great Leap Forward’ and the people’s commune movement reflected the people’s urgent desire to change the backwardness of our country’s economy, but they were so eager for success that they ignored objective economic laws. In addition to significant natural disasters and other factors at that time, from 1959 to 1961, China’s national economy experienced serious difficulties.”
In this account, agency and responsibility are assigned to “the people” — they are the ones with an “urgent desire” for change and who “ignored objective economic laws”. Furthermore, the role of natural disasters appears to be more prominent than “other factors”, which are unspecified. There is also an omission of the persecutions that occurred as part of the program. Instead, it is portrayed as a collective error of judgement born from aspirations for change.
The Cultural Revolution
The Cultural Revolution was initiated by Chairman Mao Zedong and lasted for ten years, from 1966 up until his death in 1976. The campaign aimed to reassert Maoist ideology and eliminate perceived threats from “bourgeois” influence and “traditional” thought. It is estimated that a few million lives were lost (estimates range from 400,000 to almost 8 million).
Key components of The Cultural Revolution include:
- The mobilisation of students and young people in the Red Guard movement to enforce ideological conformity.
- Campaign to destroy the “Four Olds”: old customs, old culture, old habits, old ideas. This included the destruction of historical artifacts and traditional Chinese cultural elements.
- Persecution of anyone perceived to be a class enemy or tied to the old regime. This resulted in numerous purges and massacres across China, as well as public humiliations and corporeal punishment.
- Promoting a cult of personality around Mao Zedong, with the “Little Red Book” with a compilation of his quotations from him becoming a symbol of ideological purity.
- Educational and economic disruption, with schools and universities shut down and the working population consumed by ideologically oriented activities.
In the account of the Cultural Revolution given in a grade 8 textbook, there is again no explicit reference to persecutions:
“The ‘Cultural Revolution’ caused the most serious setbacks to the Party, the country, and the people of all ethnic groups since the founding of New China. Its launch had complex social and historical reasons. The history of socialist countries was very short up until this point, and our party did not fully understand what socialism is and how to build socialism, so it took a detour in its explorations. There is no smooth sailing endeavor in this world, and world history is always moving forward in a series of ups and downs.”
In contrast to the account of The Great Leap Forward, this account does attribute responsibility to “our party”, but the explanation for what happened is again one of misjudgement rather than anything morally reprehensible and the complexity of the context is emphasised.
Reconciling narratives
In 1996, the Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China issued the “Outline of History Teaching for High Schools”:
“The ultimate goal of history education is to foster students’ determination to support reform and open up to the world.”
This revised approach to history education was driven by an intention to participate in international discourse and can be seen as a primary motivation for including topics such as the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution. For those outside China it may seem that the narratives found in the history curriculum actively suppress certain aspects of these events and periods in history. Yet when we reflect on how humans attribute actions, the minimisation of moral failure and accentuation of contextual factors in textbook accounts can also be explained by the natural inclination to absolve oneself of committing atrocities and see them rather as catastrophes.
This article is part of the World School History project, which studies the content and underlying principles driving history education in different populations over time, with a view to better understanding different narratives and perspectives. Readers are warmly invited to comment on this article, point out mistakes and omissions (I’m sure there are many), and engage in a respectful conversation with other readers. For those who would like to give deeper feedback or have a more extensive dialogue, please use the World School History Project participation form.
