May Seventh Cadre School

May Seventh Cadre Schools were a system of rural communes in China established during the Cultural Revolution to train Chinese Communist Party (CCP) cadres to follow the mass line, including through the use of manual labor.

Origins of term
There are two interpretations of the origin of the term "May Seventh Cadre School."

According to the majority view, the term comes from Mao Zedong's May Seventh Directive of 1966. The May Seventh Directive (also translated into English as the "May Seventh Instructions") was issued by Mao to Lin Biao and detailed Mao's views on basic socialist tenets. Eight days later, the CCP Central Committee forwarded the document to all party members with the note, "The letter Comrade Mao Zedong wrote to Comrade Lin Biao is a historically important document. This is a new development in Marxism and Leninism." Recalling the experience of the revolutionary base areas during the Second Sino-Japanese War, Mao wrote that the People's Liberation Army should not only focus on military matters, but should serve as a broader school which would provide opportunities for political study, agricultural work, and mass production. In Mao's view, these activities would integrate the people and the military, enabling millions of troops to also advance civilian activities. According to Mao, workers should take production as their first priority but should likewise be trained in military affairs and culture, and should take an active role in political matters such as the Four Clean-ups Movement. Farmers and students should likewise be involved in broader matters than agricultural production and traditional academic study. Thus while it did not specifically concern itself with the training of cadre or rehabilitation of wayward cadre, the May Seventh Directive broadly advocates for a polytechnical culture.

An alternative view is that May Seventh Cadre Schools take their name from that of the first such cadre school, which was established on May 7, 1968. In this regard, academic Sing-Nan Fen observes that unlike the May Seventh Directive, a directive issued by Mao on October 4, 1968, addresses cadre training specifically: "Sending the masses of cadres to do manual work gives them an excellent opportunity to study once again; this should be done by all cadres except those who are too old, too weak, ill or disabled. Cadres at work should also go group by group to do manual work."

Development
The Cultural Revolution sought to address the disconnect between the people and the bureaucracy. Among the Maoist prescriptions for addressing this "bureaucratism" was through requiring officials and other intellectual workers to participate regularly in labor, based on the rationale that such participation would prevent them from becoming "divorced from the masses." May Seventh Cadre Schools were an institutionalized means of implementing this concept. Generally, those assigned to May Seventh Cadre Schools spent six months to two years at these rural communes.

After the creation of the first such cadre school on May 7, 1968, they were established throughout China, and nearly every province had them. They became prominent topics in Chinese journals and newspapers and a feature of Chinese political and public life during the Cultural Revolution. During this period, they were acclaimed for their role in countering bureaucratism. Between 1968 and 1976, millions of people attended May Seventh Cadre Schools. These included many Communist Party officials and cadre who had resisted the policies of the Cultural Revolution. Historian Maurice Meisner writes, "Tilling virgin lands and living a spartan life for several years, it was hoped, would cure them of their bureaucratic habits before they were returned to their official posts." May Seventh Cadre Schools were thus intended as a means to ease tensions between the masses and the CCP.

At May Seventh Cadre Schools, the day was divided between productive labor and Marxist study. Manual labor was the main point of emphasis at May Seventh Cadre Schools. Manual labor was emphasized not just for its productive value, but also because it was seen as a tempering influence or mechanism for personal transformation.

After 1969, May Seventh Cadre Schools began placing an increased emphasis on the study of communist doctrine.

In the 1970s, debates occurred over how to balance book learning and manual labor at May Seventh Cadre Schools. Proponents of greater focus on manual labor cited Mao's May Seventh Directive, while proponents of greater focus on theoretical study cited a later directive by Mao to "study conscientiously, [and] become expert in Marxism." Ultimately, manual labor remained the core focus of May Seventh Cadre Schools countrywide while some schools did incorporate more theoretical study.

The institutional status of May Seventh Cadre Schools became uncertain after Mao's death. On November 9, 1978, People's Daily reported that Beijing and Shanghai authorities were exempting technical and scientific cadre from being required to attend May Seventh Cadre Schools which focused primarily on manual labor.

The May Seventh Cadre Schools were officially abolished by the State Council in February 1979.

Memoirs

 * Yang Jiang:《干校六记》- Six Chapters from My Life "Downunder", tr. Howard Goldblatt (University of Washington Press, 1988).

Fiction

 * Cao Wenxuan, Bronze and Sunflower, tr. Helen Wang (Walker Books, UK, 2015; Candlewick Press, USA, 2017).

Posters

 * May Seventh Cadre Schools in Chinese propaganda posters.