The Cult of Mao and Societal Change in China's Cultural Revolution

Apr 1, 2018

In 1966, the Cultural Revolution sought to eradicate religion from China—inadvertently, it created a new one. A poster from the era.

Despite having its culture being notably influenced by a wide variety of religious and philosophical thought, the modern-day People’s Republic of China and its ruling apparatus remains officially atheist. Although the country’s constitution guarantees the freedom of religious belief, the ruling party remains firmly committed to Marxist–Leninist atheism to this day, as evidenced by President Xi Jinping’s speech to fellow party cadres in 2016. Yet the inherent ability of religion or pseudo-religious doctrines to garner the support of the population has always been a phenomenon that the Communist Party has sought to co-opt and appropriate.

Political religion, formed by combining the mass-mobilization abilities that accompanies religion together with a party’s political ideology, has often served as a means by which the Communist Party of China legitimizes its rule and policies. Despite a formal adherence to atheism, nowhere was this contradiction more obvious than during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. State-sanctioned attempts to at apparent state-building were in-fact solely driven by a political variant of religion: The Cult of Mao Zedong.

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About the Author

Kenddrick Chan

is currently an international relations undergraduate at the University of London. His research interests include the evolving role of identity in Global South states, as well as the relationship between diaspora engagement and transnational governance in China and Israel.

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The Cult of Mao and Societal Change in China's Cultural Revolution