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Mao Ze-dong planned secretly and ignited from the basic level. With the determination that would spare nothing, even possibly resulting in shattering the whole Party, Mao, from top to bottom and from bottom to top, started off the cultural revolution. He organized the Central cultural revolution committee, conducted the nationwide campaign; and, in August, 1966, personally wrote Bombshelling the headquarters - one of my large character posters. The spearhead was directly aimed at Liu Xiu-qi, signifying that Mao would only feel comfortable if the former could be got rid of, displaying his determination to be the only unoffendable leader of "the proletariat". The slogan at the onset of the cultural revolution was: "to wipe out all the bulls, ghosts, serpents, spirits." Soon afterwards, it was quickly turned into "the emphasis of this revolution" was to rectify "those in power within the Party, but who are treading the path of capitalism" . . . The spearhead of the conflict was swiftly aimed at : Liu, Deng, Tao . . . Thus, the plan of those cream of the Chinese Communist Party, which was to primarily rectify Mao's policy faults, and thereupon further mobilize the whole Party and the whole nation to make changes to the corruption within the Party, on the "sudden" assault of the cultural revolution campaign driven by Mao Ze-dong, was rapidly disintegrated. As to the acute confrontation between the Chinese Communist Party and the extensive masses of the whole country, under the cultural revolution initiated by Mao Ze-dong who instigated revolutionaries to struggle against different levels of Party committee members, the masses did gain some "substantial benefit" in power. During the "assault" operations against Communist Party institutions, the long-term restraint and depressed feeling of the masses for more than a decade, plus the fervour generated by the acute confrontation between the Party and the masses, were initially discharged. Mao Ze-dong and his Party's crisis thus obtained a temporary easing up. However, the aftermath of the cultural revolution clearly indicated that: Mao Ze-dong used the initiation of the so called cultural revolution to get over the crisis, thus rendering himself and the whole of China being drawn into a much greater crisis. As for Buddhists in China, before this unprecedented cultural revolution, the viewpoint of regarding Buddhism as superstition had already been established as a "common knowledge" concept in some ideological strata of the society. Therefore, during the "onset" stage of the cultural revolution: "to make a clean sweep of all the bulls, ghosts, serpents, spirits", "Buddhism", "Buddhist temples", "Sangha", "Buddha statues", "Buddhists", "Buddhist beliefs" . . . were all included in the "list of items to be swept away". As a result, they bore the brunt and received nationwide large scale onslaught. Temples were torn down, scriptures were burnt, Buddhist monks and nuns, high Sangha and virtuous ones were coerced to resume secular life. The sufferings were beyond expression . . . |
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