China

The Cultural Revolution, 1966–76

As the clash over issues in the autumn of 1965 became polarized, the army initially provided the battleground. The issues concerned differences over policy directions and their implications for the organization of power and the qualifications of senior officials to lead. Much of the struggle went on behind the scenes; in public it took the form of personal vilification and ritualized exposés of divergent worldviews or, inevitably, “two lines” of policy. Lin Biao, in calling for the creative study and application of Mao’s thought in November and at a meeting of military commissars the following January, consistently placed the army’s mission in the context of the national ideological and power struggle. In these critical months, the base of operations for Mao and Lin was the large eastern Chinese city of Shanghai, and newspapers published in that city, especially the Liberation Army Daily, carried the public attacks on the targets selected.