12 May 2021 15:20:38
Translator’s preface: May 7 Cadre Schools, so-called
after Chairman Mao’s May 7 directive on education, were one of the great
socialist initiatives of the Cultural Revolution. Officials in pre-revolutionary
China were an elite who despised manual labour and regarded the masses as
ignorant and dirty. The officials (cadres) of the new socialist society were
encouraged to change that view of things, to “remould their outlook”, by doing
productive labour on a regular basis. This could be on a regular weekly basis
close to their own work unit, or by being “sent down” for a longer period to a
cadre school in a rural area. Lao Tian uses photos from pictorial magazines
published during the Cultural Revolution to illustrate his point.
...........................
During Snow's visit to China in 1971, Premier Zhou
received him and briefed him on the situation of officials working in the May 7
Cadre Schools. Premier Zhou said.
"In the past, there were ninety departments
directly under central government. Now there are only twenty-six left. They are
now all administered by revolutionary committees, with a party caucus playing a
leading role in each of them. In the past, there were more than 60,000
administrative staff in the central government. Now there are about
10,000." "Where did those displaced cadres go? In Beijing, about
eighty percent of the displaced cadres were sent to the rural centres commonly
known as the May 7 Cadre Schools'. ...... ‘Going down’ to communal schools was
not for punishment, but was said to be seen as continuing re-education within
the party. In future, all but the most senior cadres would periodically be 'sent
down' to undergo ideological check-ups as a kin of routine political
therapy."
[The Long Revolution, by Snow, translated by Wu
Zhixiang, Shanghai People's Publishing House, 1975, pp. 13-14][1] By the way, Chairman Mao's
youngest daughter, Li Ne, also went to the May 7 Cadre School of the Central
Government, and she found a man to marry in the cadre school.
According to the Chronicle of the History of the
Communist Party of Wuhan:
On October 21, 1968, the Wuhan Municipal Revolutionary
Committee (WRC) and all the district and bureau revolutionary committees (revolutionary
leading groups) immediately organized cadres to study the experience of
Heilongjiang. The 4500 cadres of the former municipal organs (about 75% of the
total number of cadres of the municipal organs) were sent to several farms and
suburbs in 6 brigades by squad, platoon and company to carry out
"fighting, criticism and reform", starting the stage of
"comprehensive cleaning of the class ranks" among the cadres of the
organs. By December, another 2,492 people in the city's urban areas had gone
down to the farms to engage in "fighting, criticism and reform". On
the 26th, in a report written to the Provincial Revolutionary Committee, the
Municipal Revolutionary Committee praised the cadres of the authorities for
"going down and waging a people's war to clean up the class ranks",
and for clearing out more than 700 so-called "bad guys" in just one
month, accounting for 13.5% of the total number of sent-down cadres.
Huang Jisu is the son of a cadre. I once asked him
what it was like for his parents to go to a cadre school, and he said that when
he was in primary school, he told his friends.
"My
father and mother went to the cadre school, and it was the same feeling that
people have today when they say who in our family went to university, they are
very proud. When his mother came home from the cadre school, he felt that his
mother had a militant feeling and was very capable, and in the past, when the
taps and light bulbs broke, they had to find someone else to repair them, but
now they were all fixed by themselves, and they were fixed immediately."
The reason why it was called the May 7th Cadre School
was the Heilongjiang Revolutionary Committee. They took the lead in finding a
way to relocate surplus officials. This method was promoted by the People’s
Daily as an advanced experience and was affirmed by Mao. On October 4, 1968,
the "People's Daily" published the experience of the "May Seven
Cadres School" in Liuhe, Heilongjiang. The editor's note also conveyed Mao
Zedong's call for "sending the majority of cadres down to do labour."
There was a phenomenon in the 60s and 70s: many people
rebelled against and criticised the people in power, and a lot of the dark side
of what had been going on for years was exposed. However, the masses not only
had no doubts about the "legitimacy" of this, but many also agreed.
This phenomenon has not attracted the attention of the academic community.
There is a saying from Mao's time that "practice leads
to true knowledge and struggle leads to ability", and it seems that this
is not just a saying, but a true one.
It became convenient to enhance the responsiveness of cadres to legitimate demands by criticising them. Prior to the introduction of Article 13 of the 1975 Constitution, which guaranteed the rights of the " Four Bigs"[1], there was no longer any risk of writing a big-character poster to cadres, and as long as the demands made in the big-character poster were reasonable, the cadres' responsiveness was timely and adequate.
Workers generally liked study sessions and criticism
meetings, because they objectively reaffirmed the right to criticise whatever was
said. In essence, it did not matter what was said or what was heard at these
meetings, but rather that they were held regularly to strengthen the position
of the "vulnerable masses in the face of the powers that be".
In the view of many older workers, one of the great
advantages of such meetings was that the position of the masses vis-à-vis the
cadres was improved and the risk of exercising the right of criticism against
them was reduced to near zero.
There are many old and new elites who despise the old
cadres of the Mao era, saying that they were just a bunch of poor peasants led
by Chairman Mao into the city to take power. However, there is partly a basis for this. This
deputy department-level senior official would have herded sheep originally, and
learned it during the Yan'an period, which is regarded as old experience.
Chairman Mao's "Highest
Instructions" for the May 7 Cadre School
The Xi'an
Revolutionary Committee set up the May 7th Cadre School in Nanniwan and
organised the city's remaining officials, in the words of Premier Zhou, who
told Snow, to take part in "routine political therapy".
When they arrived at the Cadre School, they were all known as May 7 soldiers, regardless of their former status as officials. The militarisation of operations was a feature, and at that time the training exercises were the equivalent of today's group donkey walks.
Old soldiers gave lectures.
Old farmers gave lectures.
Doing
homework: the cadre school is all about living and learning and relating to
practice, it is not enough to listen to the teacher, you have to say it
yourself, and it is not enough to say it verbally, but occasionally you need to
write it down in black and white to make it count.
Taking a
labour class
Report
cards for Labour Classes
Social Research
Classes
For the agricultural labour class, fishing for three days and drying the net for two days is not enough. You must have a plan for a protracted battle.
In the course of hardship and simplicity, the needle and thread bag had to be carried with you, and you could not rely on your mother or wife to help you, let alone on a female secretary; the old men had to learn to do it by themselves, or in a mutual supervision or mutual study session.
The famous poem that all primary school children would
have memorised back then was dedicated to praising the needle and thread bag
and the craft of mending clothes - "The little needle and thread bag is a
revolutionary heirloom; when the Red Army climbed the snowy mountains, they
used it to mend their cotton coats; they fought the wolves in the north and
south, sewing their shoes and hats."
It was the
educational policy of the Maoist era that to advance the building and
construction industries, you had to study industry, agriculture and the
military.
Advance animal husbandry, raise authentic local pigs, local
pork is really delicious, yes!
Be self-reliant and raise your own sheep to eat.
Diversify your business and develop it comprehensively.
Chairman Mao said: develop sports to enhance the
physical fitness of the people.
Some people have said that during the Cultural
Revolution there was only one writer and eight model plays, and it seems that
this propaganda team's performance was omitted.
A "luxury vegetable growing program" in a
cadre school.
They have a "majestic and heroic" look to
them, and they look happy, not like they are going to sow the fields.
[1] The “four bigs” were
rights entrusted to the masses in the Cultural Revolution and enshrined in the
1975 Constitution. They were the rights of speaking out freely, airing views
fully, holding great debates and writing big-character posters. In March 1978
Deng required that these be restricted, and they were finally removed altogether
in 1980 to stifle opposition to the capitalist reforms that Deng was
introducing.
[1] For the English reader, you will find this on p. 14 of the same title published by Hutchinson and Co., in 1973)
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