Feudal fascism, alsorevolutionary-feudal totalitarianism,[1] were official terms used by thepost-Mao ZedongChinese Communist Party to designate the ideology and rule ofLin Biao and theGang of Four during theCultural Revolution. The draft of theProject 571, written in 1971, declared that China underMao Zedong's rule pursuedsocial fascism andsocial feudalism.[2] At the Central Working Conference held in 1978,Ye Jianying was the first to callLin Biao and theGang of Four "feudal fascists". He believed that "Lin Biao and theGang of Four usedfeudalism to disguisesocialism, saying that they were usingsocialism to opposecapitalism, but in fact they were usingfeudalism to opposesocialism". This was recognized byLi Weihan,Hu Yaobang,Deng Xiaoping and others.[3] In 1979, the Chairman of theStanding Committee of the National People's Congress,Ye Jianying, describedMao Zedong's reign as a “feudal-fascist dictatorship” due to hisrevolutionary terror-basedcult of personality,nationalism, andauthoritarianism despite superficiallysocialist policies.[4]
In China'sreform and opening up era, the Communist Party used the phrase to frame the excesses of the Cultural Revolution as coming from individual actors, such as those in the Gang of Four, rather than to the Party as a whole.[5] After the death ofLin Biao and the conclusion of the Cultural Revolution, the official Communist Party interpretation was thatLin Biao and theGang of Four represented the remnants offeudal ideology inChina who had used the terrorist methods offascism to suppresspeople's democracy. The methods criticized as feudal fascism includedautocracy, ritualizeddogma,mango worship, and military repression.[6] It also referred to a general lack of stable integration between the party and the state, which came from abuse of themass line and a lack of regard to theYan'an process for handling inter-party dissent.
In 1977, thePeople's Daily ran an editorial calling formore elections and other democratic institutions for China in order to prevent a repeat of feudal fascism.[7] One line from theConstitution of the Chinese Communist Party was considered particularly emblematic of feudal fascism and was stripped during the post-Cultural Revolution10th Congress: "Mao Zedong Thought is Marxism–Leninism of the era in which imperialism is heading for total collapse and socialism is advancing to world-wide victory".[1] Soon afterwards, the reformist leadersHu Yaobang andDeng Xiaoping began torehabilitate citizens who had been labeled ascapitalist roaders, bad elements andcounter-revolutionaries. This sharp rise in political freedom led to theDemocracy Wall movement,[7] with some dissidents suggesting that the period of "feudal fascism" began much earlier than the Cultural Revolution.[5] The movement grew to be such threatening to party rule that it was suppressed and reform proceeded more cautiously thereafter.[7]
