Hubbry Logo
Struggle sessionStruggle sessionMain
Open search
Struggle session
Community hub
Struggle session
logo
8 pages, 0 posts
0 subscribers
Be the first to start a discussion here.
Be the first to start a discussion here.
Struggle session
Struggle session
Struggle session
View on Wikipedia
from Wikipedia
A struggle session of Liu Shaoqi, former president of China, who was persecuted to death during the Cultural Revolution.[1][2] Red Guards were holding the "Little Red Book" containing quotations from Mao Zedong.
Struggle session
10th Panchen Lama of Tibet during a struggle session, 1964
Chinese name
Simplified Chinese批斗大会
Traditional Chinese批鬥大會
Transcriptions
Standard Mandarin
Hanyu Pinyinpīdòu dàhuì
Wade–Gilesp'i1-tou4 ta4-hui4
IPA[pʰítôʊ tâxwêɪ]
Tibetan name
Tibetanའཐབ་འཛིང
Transcriptions
Wylie'thab-'dzing
Lhasa IPAtʰʌ́msiŋ

Struggle sessions (Chinese: 批斗大会; pinyin: pīdòu dàhuì), or denunciation rallies or struggle meetings,[3] were violent public spectacles in Maoist China where people accused of being "class enemies" were publicly humiliated, accused, beaten and tortured, sometimes to death, often by people with whom they were close.[4][5][6][3] These public rallies were most popular in the mass campaigns immediately before and after the establishment of the People's Republic of China, and peaked during the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), when they were used to instill a crusading spirit among crowds to promote Maoist thought reform.[4][5][7][8]

Struggle sessions were usually conducted at the workplace, classrooms and auditoriums, where "students were pitted against their teachers, friends and spouses were pressured to betray one another, [and] children were manipulated into exposing their parents", causing a breakdown in interpersonal relationships and social trust.[3][9][10] Staging, scripts and agitators were prearranged by the Maoists to incite crowd support.[6][9][10]

In particular, the denunciation of prominent "class enemies" was often conducted in public squares and marked by large crowds of people who surrounded the kneeling victim, raised their fists, and shouted accusations of misdeeds.[6][9][10][11] Specific methods of abuse included hair shaving (阴阳头), dunce caps, "jetting" (喷气式) (similar to strappado), and verbal and physical attacks.[6][9]

Etymology

[edit]
See also: Class struggle and Violent Struggle

The term pīdòu (批鬥) comes from pīpàn (批判, 'to criticize and judge') and dòuzhēng (鬥爭, 'to fight and contest'), therefore the whole expression conveys the message of "inciting the spirit of judgment and fighting", and instead of saying the full phrase pīpàn dòuzhēng, one often speaks of the shortened version pīdòu (批鬥).[9][10]

The term "struggle session" refers to a session of pīdòu (批鬥): the session is held in public and often attended by a large crowd of people, during which the target is publicly humiliated and subject to verbal and physical abuse, for having "counterrevolutionary" thinking or behavior.[4][5][9][10][12]

History

[edit]

Origins and development

[edit]
See also: Land Reform Movement and Anti-Rightist Campaign
A struggle session of a landlord, during the Land Reform Movement, 1946

Struggle sessions developed from similar ideas of criticism and self-criticism in the Soviet Union from the 1920s. Chinese communists initially resisted this practice, as struggle sessions conflicted with the Chinese concept of "saving face"; however, these sessions became commonplace at Chinese Communist Party (CCP) meetings during the 1930s due to public popularity.[13]

Struggle sessions emerged in China as a tactic to secure the allegiance of the Chinese people during the Land Reform Movement (which ended in 1953).[14] As early as the 1940s, in areas controlled by the CCP during the Chinese Civil War, the CCP encouraged peasants to "criticize" and "struggle against" land owners in order to shape class consciousness.[15] This campaign sought to mobilize the masses through "speak bitterness" sessions (訴苦, sùkǔ, 'give utterance to grief') in which peasants accused land owners.[16][17]

The strongest accusations in the "speak bitterness" sessions would be incorporated into scripted and stage-managed public mass accusation meetings (控訴大會, kòngsù dàhuì). Cadres then cemented the peasants' loyalty by inducing them to actively participate in violent acts against landowners. Escalating violence during the Land Reform Movement resulted in the mass killing of landlords.[18] Later struggle sessions were adapted to use outside the CCP as a means of consolidating control of areas under its jurisdiction.[19][20][21]

Struggle sessions were further employed during the Anti-Rightist Campaign launched by Mao Zedong in 1957, in which a large number of people both inside and outside the CCP were labeled as "rightists" and subjected to persecution and public "criticism". Many alleged "rightists" were repeatedly "struggled against" and purged.[22] According to official CCP statistics released during the "Boluan Fanzheng" period after Mao's death, the campaign resulted in the political persecution of at least 550,000 people.[23]

Cultural Revolution

[edit]
See also: Red August, Five Black Categories, and Stinking Old Ninth

After the disasters of the Great Leap Forward, Mao Zedong had stepped back from presiding over the daily affairs of China's Central Committee. In order to regain power and defeat political enemies within the party, Mao leveraged his cult of personality to unleash the Cultural Revolution in 1966.[24][25]

A struggle session of Xi Zhongxun, the father of Xi Jinping, at Northwest A&F University during the Cultural Revolution, September 1967.[26][27] The banner reads "Anti-Party element Xi Zhongxun".

During the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), struggle sessions were widely conducted by Red Guards and various rebel groups across mainland China.[4][5][9][10] Though there was no specific definition for the "targets of struggle", they included the Five Black Categories and anyone else who could be deemed an enemy of Mao Zedong Thought. According to one source on classified official statistics, nearly 2 million Chinese were killed and another 125 million were either persecuted or "struggled against" (subject to struggle sessions) during the Cultural Revolution.[4]

In the early phase of the revolution, mass violence spread over school campuses, where teachers and professors were subjected to frequent struggle sessions, abused, humiliated, and beaten by their students.[4][5][28] Intellectuals were labelled as counter-revolutionaries ("反动学术权威") and were even called "Stinking Old Ninth",[29] subject to frequent struggle sessions and extensive torture.[27][30][31] During the Red August of Beijing in 1966, notable intellectuals such as Lao She and Chen Mengjia committed suicide after being humiliated and "struggled against".[5][32]

Meanwhile, Zhou Zuoren requested euthanasia from the local police after being harassed by Red Guards, but received no reply. Zhou eventually died of a sudden relapse of an illness on May 6, 1967.[33][34] Top government officials, including Liu Shaoqi, Deng Xiaoping, Peng Dehuai, and Tao Zhu, were also widely "struggled against" and even persecuted to death during the revolution.[1][2][35][36]

After the Cultural Revolution, struggle sessions were disowned in China, starting from the Boluan Fanzheng period, when the reformers, led by Deng Xiaoping, took power in December 1978.[37][38] Deng and other senior officials prohibited struggle sessions and other forms of Mao-era violent political campaigns, and the primary focus of Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese government shifted from "class struggle" to "economic construction".[39][40]

Academic studies

[edit]

Purposes

[edit]

Frederick T. C. Yu identified three categories of mass campaigns employed by the CCP in the years before and after the establishment of the People's Republic of China (PRC):[41]

  • Economic campaigns sought to improve conditions, often by increasing production in particular sectors of the economy.
  • Ideological campaigns sought to change people's thinking and behaviour.
  • Struggle sessions were similar to ideological campaigns, but "their focus is on the elimination of the power base and/or class position of enemy classes or groups."[42]

The process of struggle sessions served multiple purposes. First, it demonstrated to the masses that the party was determined to subdue any opposition (generally labeled "class enemies"), by violence if necessary. Second, potential rivals were crushed. Third, those who attacked the targeted foes became complicit in the violence and hence invested in the state. All three served to consolidate the party's control, which was deemed necessary because party members constituted a small minority of China's population.[19][20][21]

Both accusation meetings and mass trials were largely propaganda tools to accomplish the party's aims. Klaus Mühlhahn, professor of China studies at Freie Universität Berlin, wrote:

Carefully arranged and organized, the mass trials and accusatory meetings followed clear and meticulously prearranged patterns. Dramatic devices such as staging, props, working scripts, agitators, and climactic moments were used to efficiently engage the emotions of the audience—to stir up resentment against the targeted groups and mobilize the audience to support the regime.[43][44]

Julia C. Strauss observed that public tribunals were "but the visible dénouement of a show that had been many weeks in preparation".[45]

Accounts

[edit]

Anne F. Thurston, in Enemies of the People, gave a description of a struggle session for the professor You Xiaoli: "I had many feelings at that struggle session. I thought there were some bad people in the audience. But I also thought there were many ignorant people, people who did not understand what was happening, so I pitied that kind of person. They brought workers and peasants into the meetings, and they could not understand what was happening. But I was also angry."[46]

Depictions in media

[edit]
See also: Farewell My Concubine (film), To Live (1994 film), and 3 Body Problem (TV series)

The struggle session has become one of the most emblematic and recognizable visuals from the Cultural Revolution, often depicted in film and TV to immediately place viewers in the era.[47] Belinda Qian He, professor of East Asian and Cinema & Media studies at the University of Maryland, even describes these "show trials" as "the period's iconic form of violence".[48]

Pidouhui [struggle session] stands out as one of the most spectacular icons of China's socialist class struggle, with a few highly visible formal elements: gesticulating and slogan-shouting masses, the objects of the struggle with their heads hung or kneel down (sometimes also wear the "dunce caps" or hold their arms in a humiliating and painful position called the "jet plane style"), big sign boards with a denunciatory label written on it and with the person's name crossed out, among others.

Notable examples of struggle sessions shown in Chinese cinema can be found in Farewell My Concubine (1993) and To Live (1994). Both historical dramas achieved immense international acclaim, and both films were censored in mainland China for their critical depictions of the Cultural Revolution.[48]

3 Body Problem

[edit]

In 2024, Netflix's global adaptation of the award-winning Chinese science fiction novel The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin sparked significant controversy in China by opening with a brutal scene from the Cultural Revolution.[49] In the first episode, Ye Wenjie, one of the main characters, watches in horror as her father, a physics professor at the prestigious Tsinghua University, is publicly beaten to death in a struggle session.[49][50]

The scene may have been inspired by the true story of Ye Qisong, who was a renowned Chinese physicist persecuted during the Cultural Revolution, and who shares the same family name as the fictional character.[50] The real Ye even founded the Department of Physics at Tsinghua University.[51]

Though the series' opening was criticized on Chinese social media for casting China in a negative light, the portrayal of the struggle session was done with original author Liu Cixin's blessing.[52] In an interview with The Chosun Daily, a Korean newspaper, Liu stated that he "provided personal opinions as an advisor" to the Netflix production, and while not all of his suggestions were taken, "the depiction of the [Cultural Revolution] did not deviate from [his] original work."[52] Liu had originally intended to open the novel the same way, but moved the scenes to the middle of the narrative on the advice of his Chinese publisher to avoid government censorship.[49][50]

When asked why he emphasized the Cultural Revolution in his book, Liu stated:

"It was necessary to mention the event to develop the story. The plot required a scenario where a modern Chinese person becomes completely disillusioned with humanity, and no other event in modern Chinese history seemed appropriate except the Cultural Revolution."

See also

[edit]

References

[edit]
Revisions and contributorsEdit on WikipediaRead on Wikipedia

Struggle session

View on Grokipedia
from Grokipedia
A struggle session (Chinese: 批斗会; : pīndòu huì) was a public form of , , and often violent employed by the , most prominently during the from 1966 to 1976, wherein accused individuals—typically labeled as class enemies, capitalist roaders, or ideological deviants—were paraded before assembled crowds, subjected to , physical beatings, and coerced confessions of fabricated offenses against Maoist principles. These sessions, orchestrated by to reassert his dominance within the party following the failures of the and to mobilize youth against perceived internal threats, involved methods such as forcing victims to wear conical dunce caps, endure spitting and face-painting with ink, and withstand mob violence at mass rallies led by or revolutionary committees. The practice served as a key mechanism for enforcing ideological conformity and purging rivals, targeting high-ranking officials like President , who died in custody after repeated sessions, and , who was humiliated and exiled before later rehabilitating to lead post-Mao reforms. Estimates indicate that at least 30 million people endured struggle sessions and associated during peak campaigns like the 1967–1968 "Cleanse the Class Ranks," contributing to broader persecution affecting over 100 million and facilitating mass violence that claimed hundreds of thousands of lives. While rooted in earlier Communist rectification movements, the amplified their scale and brutality, reflecting Mao's strategy of unleashing uncontrolled factionalism to dismantle bureaucratic resistance, ultimately destabilizing the nation and paving the way for the reform era's rejection of such excesses.

Terminology and Definition

Etymology and Translation

The English term "struggle session" constitutes a calque of the Mandarin Chinese 批斗会 (pīndīn: pīdòu huì), literally "criticism-struggle meeting," where 批 (pī) conveys public criticism or denunciation, and 斗 (dòu) implies combative struggle, shorthand for the extended phrase 批判斗争 (pīpàn dòuzhēng, "critique and struggle"). This linguistic form encapsulates the Maoist reframing of Marxist-Leninist class antagonism as an ongoing, confrontational process requiring active ideological rectification through mass participation. The practice's terminology traces roots to pre-1949 communist tactics, evolving from "speaking bitterness" (诉苦, sùkǔ) sessions in drives spanning 1947–1951, during which rural poor were prompted to vocalize historical grievances against landlords to cultivate revolutionary fervor and legitimize asset seizures. These precursors emphasized emotional as a tool for class awakening, setting the stage for the more ritualized pīdòu huì of later campaigns. English variants such as "denunciation meeting" or "criticism session" occasionally appear in translations, which can dilute the inherent adversarial and punitive intensity of dòu by prioritizing verbal rebuke over embodied conflict, as evidenced in eyewitness records of physical coercion.

Core Characteristics and Variations

Struggle sessions, known in Chinese as pidou hui (批斗会) or douzheng hui (斗争会), constituted public rituals in Maoist China wherein individuals deemed ideological adversaries were compelled to endure denunciation, coerced admissions of guilt, and ritualized degradation to affirm revolutionary orthodoxy. Core elements included the victim's physical positioning—often with head forcibly bowed, arms twisted behind the back, and a detailing alleged crimes hung around the neck—while participants hurled scripted accusations and demanded exhaustive sessions that could extend for hours. These proceedings emphasized mass involvement, with attendees from workplaces, schools, or communities required to vocalize support through chants, slaps, or kicks, thereby transforming personal vendettas into apparent consensus. Unlike voluntary ideological debates or private reprimands, struggle sessions inherently featured coercion, where refusal to confess escalated risks of immediate violence, such as beatings with belts or forced consumption of filth, potentially culminating in torture or death; estimates from survivor testimonies indicate thousands perished directly from such sessions during peak periods. Peer accusations were not mere critique but performative acts incentivized by fear of complicity charges, ensuring the ritual's self-perpetuation through hierarchical pressure rather than genuine persuasion. Variations occurred primarily in scale and intensity across locales and targets. Smaller sessions in factories or villages might involve dozens reciting prepared indictments in enclosed settings, focusing on verbal harangues and symbolic shaming like hair shearing, whereas urban rallies could assemble thousands in stadiums for amplified spectacles, incorporating props such as dunce caps or to heighten theatricality. In ethnic minority regions like , sessions adapted local —termed thamzing—targeting religious figures with added elements of cultural , such as parading before despoiled temples, though retaining the core of forced and group-inflicted pain. Intensity fluctuated by perpetrator zeal: Red Guard-led events often devolved into spontaneous brutality, contrasting with party-supervised ones prioritizing extracted confessions over lethal outcomes, yet all shared the non-negotiable progression from accusation to submission.

Historical Development

Precursors in Early Communist Campaigns

Struggle sessions originated as a mechanism of during the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) campaigns in the mid-to-late 1940s, particularly in CCP-controlled areas amid the . These early iterations, known as "speak bitterness" (suku) meetings, involved peasants publicly recounting grievances against landlords and other designated class enemies, often escalating into accusation sessions, public trials, and physical confrontations. The process was formalized in CCP directives, such as the May 1946 "Outline for Land Reform Policy," which emphasized mobilizing to "struggle against" feudal elements through collective denunciations to redistribute land and consolidate rural support for the revolution. Mao Zedong endorsed these tactics as integral to class struggle, viewing them as a means to awaken revolutionary consciousness among the peasantry and dismantle traditional power structures. In his 1945 report "On ," Mao advocated for uniting the "overwhelming majority" against exploiting classes, laying ideological groundwork for participatory purges that empowered the masses to enforce proletarian dictatorship. By 1947-1948, speak bitterness sessions became a core ritual in military and political training, transforming personal hardships into collective indictments that justified violence against accused landlords, with participants often compelled to perform or face similar treatment. These campaigns affected tens of millions, as reached approximately 300 million rural inhabitants by 1953, though focused violence in the initial phases targeted landlords and their allies. Estimates of executions and deaths from beatings or suicides during the 1946-1950 phase range from 1.5 to 2 million, based on archival reviews of provincial reports showing widespread excess in mass trials where denunciations frequently led to immediate . The template of , forced confessions, and mob-enforced penalties proved effective for power consolidation, as it aligned local cadres with CCP goals while fostering dependency on party-led mobilization. A precursor escalation occurred in the 1957 Anti-Rightist Campaign, where similar denunciation meetings targeted intellectuals and party members accused of bourgeois tendencies following the Hundred Flowers Campaign's solicitations of criticism. Launched in June 1957, the drive labeled around 550,000 individuals as rightists, subjecting many to struggle-criticism assemblies involving verbal attacks, isolation, and labor re-education, which mirrored dynamics but shifted focus to ideological purification within urban and elite circles. This campaign, directed by Mao to counter perceived threats to socialist construction, reinforced the utility of mass sessions in preempting dissent, affecting over 3% of CCP members and setting procedural precedents for broader purges.

Implementation During the Cultural Revolution

Struggle sessions were institutionalized in 1966 as a core mechanism of the Cultural Revolution, with Mao Zedong directing Red Guards—primarily students—to initiate public denunciations against perceived "capitalist roaders" within the Chinese Communist Party and society at large. These sessions targeted high-ranking officials, intellectuals, and educators, often involving forced confessions, physical beatings, and symbolic degradations such as wearing dunce caps or placards declaring crimes against the revolution. Notable instances included the 1966-1967 purges of Liu Shaoqi, the PRC president labeled the "number one capitalist roader," who endured repeated public humiliations before dying in custody on November 12, 1969, from pneumonia exacerbated by torture and medical neglect; similarly, Deng Xiaoping, the party's general secretary, faced multiple struggle sessions leading to his demotion and exile. By late 1966, sessions had spread nationwide through Red Guard organizations, infiltrating schools where teachers were assaulted as "bourgeois intellectuals," factories where managers were toppled, and villages where landlords and dissidents were vilified. The peak occurred from 1966 to 1969, encompassing phases like the "" of August-December 1966 and the "all-round " of 1967, during which and worker militias conducted millions of such events. At least 30 million people were subjected to struggle sessions, with persecution contributing to widespread suicides—such as 704 recorded in alone in 1966—and beatings that formed part of the estimated 1.1 to 1.6 million total deaths from the Cultural Revolution's violence. Uncontrolled factional clashes among Red Guard groups escalated into armed conflict by 1967, prompting Mao to mobilize the in mid-1967 to disband radical factions and impose order, which curtailed the anarchic proliferation of sessions. By 1969, following the Ninth Party Congress, the intensity waned as the military suppressed remaining rebel activities and youth were redirected to rural labor programs, though sporadic sessions persisted until the Revolution's official end in 1976. The Chinese Communist Party's 1981 "Resolution on Certain Questions in the of Our Party" later conceded that the Cultural Revolution's methods, including struggle sessions, engendered "grave disorder" and negated prior achievements, marking an official admission of their excesses.

Operational Mechanisms

Procedural Elements

Struggle sessions adhered to a ritualized sequence intended to enforce ideological through orchestrated public . The process commenced with formal accusations leveled against the target, labeling them a "capitalist roader," "revisionist," or class enemy, often disseminated via posters or announcements to mobilize crowds. or designated facilitators then escorted or paraded the accused to the assembly site, where they were attired in a paper cone-shaped tall conical dunce cap (high hat) inscribed with their alleged crimes, such as "capitalist roader XXX," their faces blackened with ink, and compelled to wear a heavy black suspended from the neck inscribed with their purported offenses in large characters. This parading phase frequently involved marching the individual through streets or corridors in a bent-over posture amid jeers, heightening isolation prior to the main event. Venues were selected for maximum visibility and participation, such as auditoriums, courtyards, public squares, or temples, accommodating hundreds to thousands and ensuring mandatory by local units including workers, students, and residents to engender widespread complicity. Sessions typically unfolded over several hours, though some extended across multiple days with intermittent breaks for labor or repetition, preventing respite and amplifying psychological strain. Facilitators, often youthful empowered by Maoist directives, presided over proceedings from a raised platform, directing the flow and prohibiting any rebuttal or evasion by the target, who was positioned kneeling or bowed before the assembly. The core of the session involved collective denunciations, wherein participants—prompted by facilitators—recited prepared criticisms, chanted revolutionary slogans such as "Down with the reactionary!" in unison, and gestured in synchronized displays of fervor to simulate unanimous outrage. This phase transitioned to demands for the target's self-confession, where the individual was coerced into reciting a scripted admission of guilt, often enumerating fabricated ideological deviations under threat of escalation. The engineered structure precluded genuine dialogue or evidence, prioritizing performative submission to consolidate group loyalty and deter dissent among observers.

Physical and Verbal Tactics

Verbal tactics in struggle sessions centered on coerced recantations, where victims were compelled to publicly their personal histories to conform to narratives of class enmity, often under duress from mob chants of slogans and accusatory tirades. Participants, typically or members, bombarded the accused with ritualized denunciations, demanding admissions of ideological deviations or acts, regardless of factual basis. These sessions enforced verbal submission through repetitive , with failure to comply amplifying the barrage until breakdown occurred. Physical tactics encompassed a spectrum of direct assaults, including slaps, beatings with belts or clubs, and hair-pulling to inflict immediate pain and degradation. Victims were frequently forced into contorted positions, such as the "airplane" pose—arms twisted and bound behind the back, hoisted upward—or made to kneel on broken tiles or glass shards for prolonged periods, lacerating knees and symbolizing abject . In extreme instances, these escalated to fatal blows, as documented in accounts of educators and officials succumbing during sessions in 1966-1967. Urban struggle sessions often featured amplified spectacles with larger crowds enabling more coordinated violence, while rural variants, though smaller in scale, retained core elements of physical and public shaming to erode resistance, adapting to local resources but uniformly prioritizing breakage of the target's will.

Ideological and Social Functions

Stated Revolutionary Goals

Struggle sessions were officially justified in Mao Zedong's directives as essential for purifying the and society from revisionist influences and capitalist roaders, whom Mao described as representatives of the infiltrating the party. These sessions aimed to wage mass ideological struggle to combat selfishness and revisionism, preventing the restoration of by eradicating non-proletarian ideas that persisted despite socio-economic transformations. Mao emphasized that the , including such criticisms, constituted a "great revolution that touches the souls of the people and solves the problem of a world view," fostering proletarian consciousness through direct mass participation. A core stated objective was the eradication of the ""—old ideas, old culture, old customs, and old habits—to dismantle feudal and bourgeois remnants and establish a new socialist order aligned with proletarian . This aligned with Mao's principle, which called for trusting and relying on to educate and criticize, thereby arousing broad initiative to transform from the ground up. Official portrayed these efforts as renewing party vigor by "getting rid of the waste and letting in the fresh," with sessions serving as vehicles for peaceful struggle-criticism-transformation to instill correct proletarian outlook. However, the causal realities diverged from these claims, as from declassified post-Cultural Revolution statistics reveals 1.87 million people persecuted as or counter-revolutionaries, extending beyond verifiable revisionists to arbitrary targets including educators and officials with minor historical associations. Scholarly analyses confirm excessive and indiscriminate targeting, where sessions amplified "left" errors through vague criteria, undermining the precision of ideological purification rhetoric. This shortfall highlights how stated goals of targeted renewal masked broader enforcement mechanisms, though official tallies during the era insisted on widespread successes in reforming consciousness.

Actual Power Dynamics and Incentives

Struggle sessions enabled Mao Zedong and aligned elites to purge political rivals, thereby preserving personal authority within the Chinese Communist Party amid ideological pretexts. Mao targeted Peng Dehuai, the former defense minister who had openly criticized the Great Leap Forward's failures at the 1959 Lushan Conference, subjecting him to public denunciations and physical assaults by Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution with Mao's direct sanction. Similarly, sessions facilitated broader factional eliminations, as seen in the downfall of Liu Shaoqi, Mao's designated successor, whose accusations of revisionism led to his humiliation and death in custody in 1969. For grassroots participants, including , the sessions offered tangible incentives beyond rhetoric, such as rapid promotion through displays of fervent loyalty and the redistribution of confiscated property from designated class enemies during home raids tied to denunciations. These material and status gains encouraged accusations, often rooted in local power contests or grudges, transforming sessions into vehicles for individual opportunism under the cover of collective revolutionary fervor. The prevalence of fabricated claims became evident after Mao's death, when the rectification campaign from 1978 rehabilitated millions of persecuted individuals, prompting the CCP to classify the as a severe mistake marked by wrongful purges and excesses. This official reassessment highlighted how sessions prioritized elite power dynamics and participant self-interest over genuine ideological enforcement.

Immediate and Long-Term Impacts

Effects on Victims and Perpetrators

Victims of struggle sessions endured profound humiliation, often accompanied by physical violence, which precipitated immediate psychological collapse and . The renowned author , subjected to a public beating and by on August 23, 1966, drowned himself in Beijing's Taiping Lake the following day. This incident exemplified a broader pattern during Beijing's "" of 1966, when rampaging students targeted educators in secondary schools and universities, leading to at least 1,772 confirmed murders citywide and numerous suicides among intellectuals and teachers seeking escape from relentless persecution. Physical assaults, including beatings with belts and sticks, were routine elements of these sessions, resulting in debilitating injuries or death for thousands of participants across . Such ordeals frequently triggered disruptions, as victims were isolated, imprisoned, or dispatched to remote labor camps, fracturing ties under ideological pressure. Memoirs and survivor accounts document cases where immediate relatives were compelled to disavow the accused during sessions, exacerbating emotional rifts and physical separations that persisted for years. Perpetrators, typically youthful or factional militants, experienced fleeting empowerment through sanctioned aggression, yet this often inverted into personal vulnerability as factional rivalries and policy shifts targeted them in subsequent cycles of sessions. By late , many former accusers faced their own denunciations, fostering pervasive distrust and regret among participants who had denounced kin or colleagues under duress. This reciprocity eroded communal bonds, with some perpetrators later issuing public apologies amid the movement's backlash.

Broader Societal Consequences

The purges and campaigns of the targeted intellectuals, educators, and professionals, with tens of millions persecuted overall and universities shuttered for up to a decade, fundamentally undermining meritocratic institutions by replacing expertise with ideological loyalty. This displacement stalled technological and scientific advancement, as qualified personnel were sidelined or sent to rural labor, contributing to economic inefficiencies despite official GDP growth averaging approximately 5% annually from 1966 to 1976—a rate hampered by recurrent disruptions, factional violence, and policy zigzags that reversed productivity gains in key sectors. The normalization of public denunciations, frequently involving family members in struggle sessions to demonstrate revolutionary zeal, directly contravened Confucian principles of and relational harmony that had underpinned Chinese social order for centuries. This incentivized betrayal as a survival mechanism, eroding foundational trust networks and fostering a culture of suspicion that permeated communities, as participants internalized ideological imperatives over bonds. Empirical research on post-1976 cohorts indicates lasting macro-level damage, with regions experiencing intense violence exhibiting 10-20% lower generalized trust levels persisting across generations, as measured in large-scale surveys linking exposure to reduced and civic participation. These patterns reflect causal transmission through disrupted family structures and learned caution toward authority, constraining collective cooperation and institutional resilience into the and beyond.

Scholarly Analysis

Psychological Mechanisms

Struggle sessions induced compliance through exploitation of social mechanisms, particularly , wherein individuals align their behavior with perceived group consensus to avert isolation or punishment. The collective shouting, denunciations, and ritualized aggression by participants created an environment of unanimous hostility, compelling victims to publicly affirm accusations against themselves despite their falsity. This mirrors the dynamics in Solomon Asch's 1951 line judgment experiments, where 75% of participants conformed at least once to incorrect majority opinions under observational pressure from a group of seven peers, demonstrating how overrides personal perception when dissent risks exclusion. In the high-stakes context of sessions, such mob dynamics amplified , as victims faced not mere disapproval but threats of escalated violence, fostering rapid capitulation to restore perceived group alignment. A core mechanism for breaking victim resistance was , arising from prolonged exposure to uncontrollable stressors like iterative forced confessions and unpredictable abuse. Developed by from 1967 dog experiments showing that inescapable shocks led to passive endurance of subsequent avoidable ones, this theory posits that perceived non-contingency erodes initiative and agency, resulting in motivational, cognitive, and emotional deficits. Survivor psychological evaluations from the era reveal patterns of internalized defeat, with victims reporting eroded and habitual submission post-sessions, as repeated self-denunciations under duress conditioned expectations of futility in resistance. For accusers, engagement yielded short-term psychological reinforcement via status elevation and in-group validation, leveraging reward systems tied to social dominance. Behavioral studies indicate that public exertion of power in collective settings activates pathways associated with achievement and affiliation, as seen in hierarchies where subordinates gain hedonic boosts from aligned against targets. In sessions, this manifested as temporary prestige within factions, incentivizing participation despite long-term risks, as immediate group approval outweighed individual moral qualms through of denunciatory acts.

Empirical Studies on Outcomes

Empirical studies leveraging geographic and cohort variation in exposure to violence have established causal associations between struggle session intensity and enduring deficits in . Research presented at the 2016 annual meeting analyzed survey data alongside historical records of political turmoil, revealing that exposed individuals display interpersonal trust levels roughly 10-15% lower than unexposed peers, with regional hotspots of session density—marked by elevated abnormal deaths from accusations and purges—exhibiting the most pronounced legacies. These effects stem from the sessions' erosion of reciprocal norms, as participants faced incentives to denounce others amid widespread betrayals and reprisals. Psychiatric case reviews from the era document how struggle sessions precipitated mental breakdowns, often pathologized as "political madness" under revolutionary pressures. At facilities like F Hospital in southern (1969-1976), patient files indicate diagnoses triggered by fears of transgression during denunciations, with biomedical interventions (e.g., antipsychotics) applied amid coerced compliance to avoid further ; one recorded instance involved a post-session institutionalization following accusations. While quantitative PTSD prevalence among survivors is scarce due to data suppression, qualitative analyses link such violence to long-term trauma akin to mass atrocities, including heightened vulnerability to depression in educated cohorts exposed during . Historiographical assertions of voluntary ideological participation are undermined by evidence of systemic in extraction, including physical assaults and familial threats during sessions, which yielded admissions later invalidated through mass rehabilitations after Mao's death—reversing convictions for over 3 million cases by 1980. This pattern, drawn from archival rehabilitations and survivor accounts, reveals falsified testimonies as survival mechanisms rather than authentic conversions, with session correlating to immediate spikes and deferred societal distrust.

Contemporary Analogues

Parallels in Western Ideological Enforcement

In instances of campus activism during the mid-2010s, public confrontations enforced ideological conformity through shaming and demands for capitulation, as seen in the October 2015 Halloween costume controversy. Students surrounded and verbally accosted , master of Silliman College, for an from his wife advising tolerance in costume choices rather than rigid prohibitions on cultural appropriation; the encounter, captured on video, featured accusations of enabling and calls for his resignation. Christakis and his wife Erika subsequently resigned their residential college roles in 2016 amid sustained pressure. Title IX proceedings in U.S. universities during the exhibited structural features of coerced , with accused students facing investigative processes that withheld , limited , and imposed penalties like suspension or expulsion to extract admissions of guilt. Federal complaints alleging at higher education institutions surged beginning in 2009, escalating to record levels through the decade following the U.S. Department of Education's 2011 Dear Colleague Letter, which urged prompt resolutions often prioritizing complainant narratives. Post-2020, corporate (DEI) trainings in the U.S. frequently mandated exercises in personal accountability, requiring white participants to publicly or collectively affirm complicity in historical or unearned privilege, with non-participation risking professional repercussions. These sessions, implemented widely after George Floyd's death, prompted lawsuits claiming they fostered racial hostility by pressuring affirmations of collective guilt based on demographic traits, as in cases where employees alleged mandatory acknowledgment of "internalized dominance." Social media platforms have facilitated mass denunciations resembling orchestrated campaigns, where perceived violations of progressive norms trigger pile-ons demanding immediate public retractions or apologies, often culminating in job loss or . A 2021 survey found 58% of U.S. adults viewed such call-outs as more about punishment than accountability, with targets facing coordinated that mirrors group-enforced . Legislative responses, including state bans on trainings that compel racial guilt affirmations, reflect recognition of these coercive elements in institutional settings.

Debates Over Equivalence to Historical Forms

Analysts drawing parallels between contemporary public shaming practices and Maoist struggle sessions emphasize similarities in coerced and resultant professional ruin. A 2020 commentary from the highlights how demands for public apologies and ideological conformity in modern contexts mirror the "struggle sessions" of China's (1966–1976), where individuals faced humiliation for perceived insufficient radicalism, often leading to social and economic exclusion without formal trials. This view posits that both mechanisms serve to enforce orthodoxy through and reputational damage, eroding personal and fostering a on discourse. Opponents of the equivalence, often from progressive outlets, argue that modern instances differ fundamentally due to the absence of centralized state and mass incarceration seen in historical forms, which claimed millions of lives and involved physical . They characterize such practices as decentralized for verifiable misconduct, not purges driven by totalitarian ideology, and dismiss comparisons as hyperbolic to undermine legitimate social progress. Empirical surveys provide neutral ground for assessing impacts, revealing widespread akin to the fear induced by historical denunciations. A 2020 Cato national poll of Americans found that 62% withhold political views due to potential backlash, with higher rates among conservatives (73%) and independents (66%), indicating a pervasive reticence that aligns with the suppressive dynamics of struggle sessions regardless of violent intent. While job losses from public cancellations are documented anecdotally across sectors, systematic data underscores non-physical harms like affecting livelihoods, though exact annual figures remain elusive amid underreporting. These findings suggest functional resemblances in outcome—dissent suppression—despite variances in scale and methods.

Representations in Culture

Literary and Historical Accounts

In Jung Chang's memoir Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China (1991), she recounts the ordeal of her parents, Dehong and Wang Yu, who were labeled "capitalist roaders" during the Cultural Revolution and subjected to repeated public struggle sessions involving verbal abuse, physical beatings, and forced self-criticism, leading to her father's eventual death from injuries sustained in custody. These accounts emphasize the sessions' role in destroying family structures and personal dignity, with Chang describing how participants, often young Red Guards, were mobilized to extract confessions through humiliation and violence. Nien Cheng's Life and Death in Shanghai (1986) offers a detailed eyewitness narrative of her own struggle meetings following her 1966 arrest as a suspected spy due to her Western ties; she describes being paraded before crowds, slapped, and coerced into admitting ties to Shell Oil, while cleverly invoking Mao's quotations to challenge her interrogators, ultimately enduring six years of without . Cheng's testimony highlights the sessions' theatrical elements, including placards with accusations hung around victims' necks and the inversion of truth through mob pressure, as corroborated by her survival and later rehabilitation. Post-Mao official documents, such as the 1981 "Resolution on Certain Questions in the of Our Party since the Founding of the ," formally admitted that the (1966–1976) inflicted "the most severe setback and the heaviest losses" on the party and nation through erroneous persecutions, including mass struggle sessions that wrongly targeted millions, leading to rehabilitations of figures like in 1980. Roderick MacFarquhar and Michael Schoenhals's Mao's Last Revolution (2006), utilizing declassified party archives and internal reports, documents specific instances of struggle sessions, such as those against high officials in 1967, revealing Mao's orchestration to purge rivals via orchestrated public repudiations often escalating to and executions. These historical analyses underscore the sessions' systematic use for ideological enforcement, drawing on verifiable records to illustrate their scale, affecting over 27 million individuals in some locales.

Fictional and Media Depictions

In Liu Cixin's The Three-Body Problem (2008), a pivotal opening scene dramatizes a struggle session during the , where physics professor Ye Zhetai faces mob interrogation and fatal beating by at for refusing to denounce relativity theory as bourgeois . This portrayal underscores the intellectual purges' brutality, with the professor's young daughter witnessing the violence, which propels the narrative's themes of ideological and scientific suppression. The depiction aligns with documented accounts of such sessions targeting academics, emphasizing physical humiliation and mob psychology over mere verbal criticism. The 1986 film , directed by Xie Jin, depicts rural struggle sessions in province, where protagonist Hu Yuyin, a street vendor, endures public denunciation as a "new rich peasant" and faces forced labor and social ostracism amid anti-rightist and campaigns. The movie illustrates the sessions' role in enforcing class labels through theatrical shaming rituals, including placard-wearing and , reflecting the era's economic purges in small towns. As part of "" cinema, it highlights victims' resilience but critiques the arbitrary escalation from verbal abuse to life-altering persecution. Ha Jin's novel Waiting (1999) alludes to struggle sessions' lingering effects in post-Mao , portraying characters scarred by earlier purges, such as the surrender of to bonfires and accusations of bourgeois tendencies during hospital interrogations. These references evoke the sessions' psychological toll on intellectuals, contrasting ruthless enforcers with compliant survivors, though the narrative prioritizes personal stagnation over direct scenes. Some fictional works, particularly in traditions, distort historical realities by humanizing Red Guard perpetrators as ideological victims or misguided youth, downplaying the sessions' documented violence—such as beatings causing over 1,000 deaths in alone in August 1966—and emphasizing factional regrets over systemic terror. These sympathetic narratives, while capturing internal Red Guard conflicts, contradict survivor testimonies and official estimates of widespread fatalities from such mobs.

References

  1. https://www.sciencespo.fr/mass-violence-war-massacre-resistance/en/document/chronology-mass-killings-during-chinese-cultural-revolution-1966-1976.html
  2. https://digitalcommons.coastal.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1370&context=honors-theses
  3. https://factsanddetails.com/china/cat2/sub6/entry-7468.html
  4. https://www.asianstudies.org/publications/eaa/archives/crossing-the-river-by-feeling-the-stones-deng-xiaoping-in-the-making-of-modern-china/
  5. https://www.omgchinese.com/dictionary/chinese/%25E6%2589%25B9%25E9%25AC%25A5
  6. https://www.hanbook.com/chinese-dictionary/words/pi1-dou4-criticize-and-denounce-somebody
  7. https://char.bonsair.net/character/%25E6%2589%25B9%25E6%2596%2597
  8. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1179/1547402X14Z.00000000026
  9. https://alphahistory.com/chineserevolution/speak-bitterness/
  10. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/02/01/what-are-the-cultural-revolutions-lessons-for-our-current-moment
  11. https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstreams/7312037c-f8c1-6bd4-e053-0100007fdf3b/download
  12. https://edition.cnn.com/2016/05/15/asia/china-cultural-revolution-red-guard-confession
  13. https://www.cato.org/commentary/chinese-cultural-revolution-lessons-americas-cancel-culture
  14. https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/elizabethperry/files/the_1960s_wang_guangmei_and_peach_garden_experience.pdf
  15. https://tibetmuseum.org/cultural-revolution-struggle-session/
  16. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/272251185_Speaking_bitterness_Political_education_in_land_reform_and_military_training_under_the_CCP_1947-1951
  17. https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-3/mswv3_25.htm
  18. https://chinesehistoryforteachers.omeka.net/exhibits/show/chinese-land-reform
  19. https://www.jstor.org/stable/44288599
  20. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.2753/CLG0009-4609290436
  21. https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-9/mswv9_84.htm
  22. https://explaininghistory.org/2025/06/14/the-cultural-revolution-1966-1976-an-overview/
  23. https://ywang.uchicago.edu/history/1966teacher.htm
  24. https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/yuhuawang/files/wang_2021_bjps_cultural_revolution_final_print.pdf
  25. https://www.britannica.com/topic/history-of-China/The-Cultural-Revolution-1966-76
  26. https://www.marxists.org/subject/china/documents/cpc/history/01.htm
  27. https://factsanddetails.com/china/cat2/sub6/item67.html
  28. https://gaodawei.wordpress.com/2022/03/27/rightist-memoir-xvi-struggle-sessions-revolutionary-committee-and-red-guard-battles/
  29. https://tibet.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/TibetUnderCommunistChine-50Years.pdf
  30. https://www.ichistory.com/uploads/1/0/2/9/10290322/mao_cultural_revolution_free_teacher_resources_2025.pdf
  31. https://www.falltide.com/p/jung-chang-mao-mechanics-of-terror
  32. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/mar/27/china-cultural-revolution-sons-guilt-zhang-hongping
  33. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/may/09/cultural-revolution-peoples-history-frank-dikotter-review
  34. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/05/16/world/asia/17china-cultural-revolution-voices.html
  35. http://spice.fsi.stanford.edu/docs/introduction_to_the_cultural_revolution
  36. https://www.marxists.org/subject/china/peking-review/1966/PR1966-45f.htm
  37. https://www.jstor.org/stable/653883
  38. https://braddelong.substack.com/p/document-1959-07-14-peng-dehuai-to
  39. https://museumofcommunistterror.com/the-cultural-revolution/
  40. https://alphahistory.com/chineserevolution/red-guards/
  41. https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3156299/cultural-revolution-was-catastrophe-and-mao-was-responsible
  42. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/07/mao-little-general-horror-cultural-revolution
  43. https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2007/dec/22/familyandrelationships.features
  44. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/resrep24663.7
  45. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/aps.305
  46. https://fiveable.me/key-terms/history-modern-china/struggle-sessions
  47. https://www.chinafile.com/conversation/fifty-years-later-how-cultural-revolution-still-present-life-china
  48. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/15/world/asia/china-cultural-revolution-explainer.html
  49. https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/files/240000555/political-conflict-and-development-dynamics-economic-legacies-of-the-cultural-revolution.pdf
  50. https://www.hoover.org/events/what-china-remembers-about-cultural-revolution-and-what-it-wants-forget
  51. https://lithub.com/how-the-cultural-revolution-played-society-against-itself/
  52. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264999323000305
  53. https://www.aeaweb.org/conference/2016/retrieve.php?pdfid=10831
  54. https://www.simplypsychology.org/asch-conformity.html
  55. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4920136/
  56. https://www.jstor.org/stable/2758711
  57. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9388948/
  58. https://quillette.com/2018/12/18/the-children-of-the-revolution/
  59. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/11/the-new-intolerance-of-student-activism-at-yale/414810/
  60. https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2016/05/27/bullied-by-yale-students-erika-and-nicholas-christakis-resign-their-residential-posts/
  61. https://scholarlycommons.law.emory.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1088&context=elj
  62. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0049089X22000874
  63. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/government/2023/11/02/title-ix-activists-continue-push-new-rule-reflect-progress-made
  64. https://www.jacksonlewis.com/insights/what-do-recent-dei-training-focused-federal-agency-guidance-and-court-decisions-mean-employers
  65. https://www.hrmorning.com/news/woke-training-hostile-work-environment/
  66. https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2021/05/19/americans-and-cancel-culture-where-some-see-calls-for-accountability-others-see-censorship-punishment/
  67. https://billstatus.ls.state.ms.us/documents/2024/html/SB/2400-2499/SB2402IN.htm
  68. https://fair.org/home/panic-over-cancel-culture-is-another-example-of-right-wing-projection/
  69. https://www.cato.org/survey-reports/poll-62-americans-say-they-have-political-views-theyre-afraid-share
  70. https://books.google.com/books/about/Wild_Swans.html?id=RgErJTzjiKsC
  71. https://time.com/archive/6679911/life-and-death-in-shanghai/
  72. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/537404.Life_and_Death_in_Shanghai
  73. https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674027480
  74. https://www.jstor.org/stable/20039217
  75. https://worldliteraturetoday.org/2015/september/three-body-problem-cixin-liu
  76. https://www.reason.com/2024/04/03/the-3-body-problems-chilling-social-media-parallel/
  77. https://thechinaproject.com/2018/10/19/film-friday-5-classic-movies-to-remember-xie-jin/
  78. https://modernchinesemedia.wordpress.com/2016/12/14/chinese-scar-cinema/
  79. https://www.academia.edu/126422682/Conflicting_Masculinities_in_Ha_Jin_s_Waiting_Talented_Scholars_and_Ruthless_Men_of_Action_in_China_s_Mao_and_Post_Mao_Eras
  80. https://www.jstor.org/stable/27086115
Add your contribution
Related Hubs
User Avatar
No comments yet.