Tibet, propaganda and the Mao cult
The Mao Personality Cult
The personality cult around Mao Zedong reached its greatest intensity during the Cultural Revolution (1966–76), though its foundations had been laid throughout the 1950s. Lin Biao, head of the People's Liberation Army from 1959, was the cult’s chief architect. Lin oversaw the mass publication of the Little Red Book, organised the gigantic Tiananmen rallies of 1966, and required soldiers to read Mao’s writings as part of daily military routine. Mao badges — produced in the hundreds of millions — were worn by virtually every Chinese citizen. His portrait hung in every home, classroom, and workplace.
Lin Biao promoted the Mao cult more aggressively than anyone else in the leadership. Yet in September 1971, Lin was killed when his plane crashed in Mongolia. The official account said he had been attempting to flee after a failed coup plot against Mao. His death remains contested: it was a severe blow to the cult he had built, and Mao spent his final years increasingly isolated.
Propaganda and Thought Reform
Communist propaganda under Mao was pervasive and multi-layered. Newspapers, radio broadcasts, theatrical productions, and school lessons all transmitted the same ideological messages: class struggle, revolutionary heroism, selfless service to the collective, and absolute loyalty to Mao. The Party press did not report independently — it performed ideology.
Thought reform sessions were a central mechanism of control in workplaces, universities, and Party cells. Workers and students were required to attend regular meetings where they studied Mao’s texts, criticised their own thinking, and denounced colleagues. Refusing to participate, or appearing insufficiently enthusiastic, invited suspicion. These rituals bound together political loyalty and social conformity in daily life.
Tibet’s position within the PRC is a contested historical and political question. The PRC incorporated Tibet in 1950–51 through a combination of military force and the Seventeen Point Agreement. The PRC frames this as “peaceful liberation” from a feudal theocratic system that had kept Tibetans in poverty; Tibetan exile accounts and many Western scholars describe it as invasion and occupation that ended Tibetan political autonomy. In 1959, a Tibetan uprising against Chinese rule was suppressed; the Dalai Lama fled to India, where he established a government-in-exile. During the Cultural Revolution (1966–76), Red Guards destroyed hundreds of Tibetan monasteries, and religious practice was banned. The Jokhang Temple in Lhasa was used as a pigsty. The destruction of Tibetan religious and cultural heritage during this period is documented by both Chinese and international sources, though assessments of its scale and significance remain a point of dispute between the PRC government and Tibetan exile communities.
Dazhai as a Model of Communist Ideals
The Dazhai commune in Shanxi Province was central to propaganda during the Cultural Revolution and its aftermath. Its brigade leader Chen Yonggui was elevated to national hero status — a peasant who had supposedly transformed barren hillsides into productive terraces through collective effort and ideological commitment alone. The slogan “In Agriculture, Learn from Dazhai” was broadcast constantly. Chen became a vice-premier and appeared regularly alongside Mao and other leaders. Dazhai illustrates how the propaganda apparatus used individual cases — whether wholly or partly fabricated — to promote ideological messages about what revolutionary society could achieve.
Propaganda during the Cultural Revolution operated through multiple channels simultaneously: the personality cult (badges, portraits, rallies), the Party press, thought reform sessions in workplaces and schools, and model campaigns like Dazhai. Its aim was not merely to persuade but to make public displays of loyalty inescapable — creating a society where dissent had nowhere to hide.
The death of Lin Biao in September 1971 presented the CCP with a profound problem. Lin had been designated Mao’s chosen successor in the 1969 Party constitution. Now he was posthumously denounced as a traitor and counter-revolutionary. The regime that had elevated him found itself explaining why its propaganda had praised a man it now labelled a criminal. The “Criticise Lin Biao, Criticise Confucius” campaign that followed in 1973–74 attempted to redirect the political narrative, but many Chinese people drew private conclusions about the reliability of official propaganda more broadly. The incident illustrated the inherent instability of systems built on personal loyalty to a single leader.