Books
Linda Jaivin
Bombard the Headquarters!
In the West, the Cultural Revolution has become a rhetorical bogyman to ward off ideological excesses on university campuses, an analogy that suffers from the fact that the Cultural Revolution was top-down, instigated by Mao Zedong to check reform. It is worth considering why it remains the high-water mark of ideological puritanism and mob justice, remarkable as its actors – mostly students – had no memory of the pre-revolutionary world they were railing against.
Sinologist Linda Jaivin somehow provides a full account in just over a hundred pages in her new book, which takes its title from a scrawling by Mao that became a dàzìbào, or big-character poster. Jaivin interrogates this paradoxical slogan: Mao “was the leader of the Party – he was the headquarters. Or was he?”
Old and increasingly sidelined by reformers such as Liu Shaoqi after the catastrophic Great Leap Forward, Mao sought to resist the Khrushchevian counter-revolution that happened after Stalin’s death in the USSR. Instead, Mao wanted to reaffirm his central position and recapture revolutionary dynamism, demanding that politics, bureaucracy, economy and ideology were four necessary “clean-ups”.
Frustrated by waning fervour, university students began turning on their professors, beginning in August 1966. They accused their lecturers of undermining the revolution – humiliating, beating and often killing them in the process. Millions of Red Guards carried violence throughout cities, attacking the so-called Five Black Categories: landlords, rich peasants, counter-revolutionaries, bad elements and rightists. Mao refused to intervene, endorsing the violence, treating moderation as betrayal. Revolution was not a dinner party, he said. In Beijing, the crematoriums could not keep up. Particularly Orwellian was the “thought reform” – public “struggle” sessions used to purge reactionary thought from enemies and oneself.
For a decade the violence spread from cities to the countryside, reaching the far corners of Tibet, Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang, where the cultural vandalism and attacks on ethnic minorities could be seen as a pogrom, if not outright cultural genocide. Today there is a greater collection of cultural heritage in Taiwan than in mainland China.
By the time the terror waned, the dead numbered 1.7 million. Most perpetrators were quietly sidelined. Jaivin rushes the ending, yet it still contains a fascinating summary of the terror’s long shadow, how the Communist Party’s reluctance to confront its crimes has warped memory so that nostalgia and neo-Maoism threaten to repeat history.
This is an impressive primer, sharpening the frenetic, self-propagating mania with shocking specifics and personalities. Given the Australian habit of misunderstanding China, it should be widely read.
Black Inc, 128pp, $26.99
Black Inc is a Schwartz company
This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on June 28, 2025 as "Bombard the Headquarters!".
For almost a decade, The Saturday Paper has published Australia’s leading writers and thinkers. We have pursued stories that are ignored elsewhere, covering them with sensitivity and depth. We have done this on refugee policy, on government integrity, on robo-debt, on aged care, on climate change, on the pandemic.
All our journalism is fiercely independent. It relies on the support of readers. By subscribing to The Saturday Paper, you are ensuring that we can continue to produce essential, issue-defining coverage, to dig out stories that take time, to doggedly hold to account politicians and the political class.
There are very few titles that have the freedom and the space to produce journalism like this. In a country with a concentration of media ownership unlike anything else in the world, it is vitally important. Your subscription helps make it possible.
Purchase this book
Bombard the Headquarters!
BUY NOW
When you purchase a book through this link, Schwartz Media earns a commission. This commission does not influence our criticism, which is entirely independent.
Subscriber exclusive
Send this article to a friend for free.
Share this subscriber exclusive article with a friend or family member using share credits.
