The Cultural Revolution in China – Fascination and Misunderstanding

Kai Froeb2026

This text is a preview of History of the Reception of Hegel, volume II, to be published in 2026 by Reflexivity Press.

The Western Projection onto China

The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) becomes, in the West, a projection screen for revolutionary longings—without most sympathizers knowing or understanding the reality in China. What is experienced in China as traumatic destruction appears to Western students as a radical alternative to Soviet “revisionism” and Western capitalism.[1]

The starting point: after the failure of the “Great Leap Forward” (1958–1962, an estimated 15–55 million deaths from famine), Mao Zedong loses influence. To regain his power, he mobilizes the youth from 1966 onward—the Red Guards (红卫兵). Students and pupils, often between 14 and 21 years old, are called upon to destroy “all old ideas, old culture, old customs, and old habits.”[2]

The reality: what follows is a catastrophe. Teachers are publicly humiliated, intellectuals persecuted as “rightist deviationists,” historical sites and works of art destroyed, families torn apart, entire population groups sent to the countryside. Estimates speak of 1.5 to 2 million deaths, but the psychological traumas are even harder to quantify. An entire generation loses its educational opportunities—the “lost generation.”[3]

Western perception: but in the West one sees something else. One sees:

  • Young people fighting against “ossified bureaucracy.”
  • A student movement with genuine social power.
  • Permanent revolution (Mao’s slogan) that does not freeze into restoration.
  • An alternative to the Soviet Union (regarded as “revisionist” after 1956).
  • A Third World perspective (China as a non-Western model).

This projection is fundamentally false—it confuses authoritarian mobilization with self-organization, personality cult with emancipation, destruction with liberation. But it is psychologically understandable: Western students are searching for a model that is neither capitalist (USA) nor bureaucratic-socialist (USSR). China seems to offer this “third model.”

The Role of the Red Guards – Hegel’s Critique of Abstraction Realized

The Red Guards embody—tragically—Hegel’s warning about the brutality of realized abstraction. In the Phenomenology, Hegel describes “absolute freedom” (using the example of the French Revolution): when freedom does not mediate itself through institutions but wants to assert itself directly, it becomes terroristic. The abstract idea (“Everyone is free!”) tolerates no mediation, no differentiation, no compromise—and thereby becomes destructive.[4]

The structure among the Red Guards:

  • Abstraction: “The old must be destroyed”—without distinguishing between valuable and problematic traditions.
  • Lack of life experience: young people (often teenagers) judge adults, scholars, artists—without understanding the complexity involved.
  • Ideological certainty: the “Little Red Book” gives simple answers to complex questions—Hegel would say: abstraction instead of the concrete concept.
  • Immediacy of violence: no institutions (courts, procedures), but spontaneous “people’s justice”—Hegel would say: arbitrariness instead of law.

This is not specifically Chinese but a structural danger of any revolutionary movement that believes it can dispense with mediation. The Red Guards wanted good things (against bureaucracy, for equality), but the form of their action (abstract, immediate, violent) made them destructive.

The Western identification: Western students see in the Red Guards a confirmation: youth can change the world. Students, intellectuals, idealists are not powerless—they can fight. This identification overlooks the instrumentalization: the Red Guards are not autonomous but mobilized by Mao for his intra-party power struggle. They are not subject but object of politics.

Western Maoism – Indirect Third World Solidarity

Western Maoism (the K-Gruppen in Germany, Maoist parties in France/Italy) is a double projection:

First: projection onto China. China becomes a utopian counter-image—“there,” what fails “here” supposedly works. That “there” millions suffer is blocked out or denounced as “Western propaganda.”

Second: projection onto the Third World. Through identification with China (as part of the Third World), an indirect solidarity with liberation movements is established. Whoever is for China is against imperialism—even if the connection is constructed.

The anti-Soviet dimension: Maoism also offers a legitimation for anti-Sovietism. One can be leftist (revolutionary, anti-capitalist) and at the same time criticize the Soviet Union (as “social-imperialist,” “revisionist”). This makes possible a left position beyond bloc logic.

Critical question: is it legitimate to say “China is better than the Soviet Union” when both regimes produced millions of deaths? The honest answer is: no. Both regimes were authoritarian, both produced mass suffering. The differences (Mao mobilized youth, Stalin the bureaucracy) are tactical, not principled. The Western Maoists understood neither Mao nor Stalin—they projected their wishes onto regimes that betrayed their values.

Great Culture Survives – Resilience and Self-Criticism

But—and this is decisive—China survives the Cultural Revolution. This is not self-evident. A civilization 5,000 years old, whose written culture, artistic tradition, and philosophical schools (Confucianism, Daoism, Buddhism) rank among the richest of humanity—this civilization is systematically attacked for ten years. And yet: it survives.[5]

How is this possible?

First: the culture is rooted more deeply than any political campaign. Even when temples are destroyed, books burned, scholars persecuted—the oral tradition, family practices, quiet transmissions endure.

Second: after Mao’s death (1976), self-criticism sets in. Deng Xiaoping rehabilitates victims, opens up the economy, allows debate. The Cultural Revolution is officially described as an “error” (1981: “Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of the CCP”). This is remarkable: an authoritarian regime publicly admits massive mistakes.[6]

Third: Chinese culture is dialectical (in the non-Hegelian sense of the word)—it thinks in yin and yang, in opposites that complement one another. Destruction and construction, order and chaos, tradition and innovation are understood not as contradiction but as process. The Cultural Revolution becomes part of history—painful, but not the end.

Systematic Reflection – What Can Be Learned from This Today?

In retrospect, the Cultural Revolution offers several philosophically relevant lessons:

First lesson: abstraction without concretion is destructive. Hegel was right: whoever rejects the “old” wholesale, without differentiating, destroys the valuable along with it. Tradition is not only oppression—it is also accumulated wisdom, orientation, identity. The task is not destruction but sublation—preserving what is valuable, overcoming what is obstructive.

Second lesson: youth without experience needs institutions. The Red Guards show: idealism without life experience can turn brutal. This is not an argument against youth (every generation must be allowed to criticize) but an argument for institutions—procedures that limit arbitrariness, rights that protect minorities, a public sphere that creates transparency.

Third lesson: revolution without mediation produces terror. The Cultural Revolution wanted “permanent revolution” (Mao’s slogan)—but permanent revolution without institutional mediation becomes civil war. Hegel’s insight remains valid: freedom needs institutions, law, ethical life. Without these mediations, freedom turns into arbitrariness.

Fourth lesson: great cultures have resilience. China shows: a civilization can survive severe traumas if its roots are deep. The question is not: can a culture survive anything? But rather: under what conditions can it regenerate itself? The answer seems to be: when it practices self-criticism, when it learns, when it does not freeze into nostalgia but transforms itself.

Hegel’s Philosophy of History and China – An Open Question

As is well known, Hegel made problematic statements about China (see Chapter 15). He saw China as “stationary,” as standing outside world history, as the childhood of humanity. The Cultural Revolution—and China’s development afterward—definitively refutes this thesis.

China is not stationary but dynamic. It undergoes catastrophes (the Opium Wars, the Taiping Rebellion, the warlord era, the Japanese invasion, the Cultural Revolution) and transforms itself each time. Since 1978 (Deng Xiaoping’s reforms), China has experienced the fastest economic development in human history—800 million people lifted out of poverty, becoming the second-largest economy, leading in many technologies (5G, AI, renewable energy).[7]

The open question: is this development “progress in the consciousness of freedom” (Hegel’s definition of world history)? The answer depends on what is understood by “freedom”:

  • Economically: unambiguously transformative. Hundreds of millions of people have gained material agency—nutrition, health, education, mobility. Poverty reduction is historically unprecedented.

  • Politically: here the civilizational difference shows itself. The Chinese political system is based on a different tradition—Confucian orientation toward harmony, long-term planning, the priority of collective over individual freedom. From a Western perspective, elements of liberal democracy are lacking (a multi-party system, free elections, an independent press). From a Chinese perspective, the system offers stability, achievement orientation (meritocracy), and the capacity for long-term transformation. Both perspectives are internally coherent—but incommensurable, because they presuppose different concepts of freedom.

  • Culturally: China has regained self-confidence—no longer as the “sick man of Asia” or “victim of the West,” but as an independent civilization that understands itself as equal to the West.

An updated Hegelian philosophy must think polycentrically (see Chapter 15.5). There is not one path to freedom (the Western one), but several paths that realize different aspects of freedom. The Anglo-American tradition emphasizes individual freedom (negative freedom, protection from the state). The Confucian tradition emphasizes collective self-determination (harmony, long-term development, social stability). Both have strengths and weaknesses—neither is “better,” but they weight things differently.

The task is not evaluation from outside (by Western standards) but understanding from within (what rationality does the system have in its cultural context?)—and mutual recognition as equal civilizations with different solutions to universal problems.

  1. On Western perception of the Cultural Revolution see Richard Wolin: The Wind from the East: French Intellectuals, the Cultural Revolution, and the Legacy of the 1960s (2010). ↩︎

  2. On the history of the Cultural Revolution see Roderick MacFarquhar & Michael Schoenhals: Mao’s Last Revolution (2006); Frank Dikötter: The Cultural Revolution: A People’s History 1962-1976 (2016). Both works are based on Chinese archives and are internationally recognized. ↩︎

  3. The number of victims is disputed. Official Chinese figures (1980s) speak of 1.5 million dead. More recent research (Dikötter 2016) speaks of 2–3 million. On the “lost generation” see Yongyi Song: “Chronology of Mass Killings during the Chinese Cultural Revolution” in: Online Encyclopedia of Mass Violence (2011). ↩︎

  4. G.W.F. Hegel: Phenomenology of Spirit, Chapter VI.B.III (“Absolute Freedom and Terror”). On its application to modern revolutions see Domenico Losurdo: Hegel and the Freedom of Moderns (2004). ↩︎

  5. On the resilience of Chinese culture see Jacques Gernet: A History of Chinese Civilization (1979/1988); John K. Fairbank: China: A New History (1992). ↩︎

  6. Resolution of the CPC “On Certain Questions in the History of Our Party since the Founding of the People’s Republic of China” (1981). German translation in: Beijing Rundschau No. 27/1981. ↩︎

  7. On China’s economic development see Barry Naughton: The Chinese Economy: Adaptation and Growth (2018); on poverty reduction see World Bank: China Systematic Country Diagnostic (2022). ↩︎