    18

    18

    i nto making an economic miracle grew faint from hunger as they sat in

    school.  They learned to catch cicadas on poles with glue-coated tips,

    then forced themselves to swallow the still-squirming insects.  They

    scoured the hills for edible grass and weeds. Their mothers baked bread

    with flour augmented by willow and poplar leaves.  During three long

    years of heroic "progress" millions died of starvation.

    The 'Great Leap Forward' had crippled the economy, throttling the

    production of even the simplest things.  And the architect of the brave

    blunder--old Mao himself--lost power.10  He retired into ideological

    matters, leaving the day-to-day running of the state to a bureaucratic

    nest of lesser officials.  Those officials looked at a citizenry racked with

    malnutrition and quickly changed gears.  They abandoned theoretical

    rigor and worked to boost production of the household necessities that

    had all but disappeared.  Highest on the priority list was raising food.

    Lots of it.  Doctrine took a back seat to the simple task of putting meals

    on Chinese tables.

    The further the new policy proceeded, the more the officials

    responsible for implementing it felt that they were the real powers

    controlling China.  Their swelling pride told them that they were the

    new bosses, the men who had taken over the helm of history.  Mao was

    a relic, an antique, a figurehead.  When Mao tried to issue orders, his

    underlings treated him politely but shrugged him off.   The commands

    of China's Great Leader went unheeded.

    Mao Zedong did not enjoy being led to pasture.  And he wasn't

    the sort of man to take forced retirement lying down.  So this demigod of

    The Revolution contrived a plan to reassert authority, a plan that would

    be even more devastating to China than the Great Leap Forward.  His

    scheme would not just starve people, it would torture them, beat them to

    death, and force them into suicide.  It was The Cultural Revolution.

    Mao took advantage of a simple peculiarity of human nature: the

    rebelliousness of adolescents.  The defiant attitude of teenage punk

    rockers and heavy metal headbangers may seem like a rage spawned by

    the unique disorders of western culture.  It is not.  Adolescence awakens

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