Making a new world and a new people: Cold War, Maoist austere architecture and the ‘Rammed-earth Campaign’, 1966–76

Abstract

Abstract After the Sino-Soviet split in the 1960s, Mao’s China replaced the Soviet way of urban planning with a new campaign of adopting Chinese vernacular architecture and decentralized Maoist urban planning. This article examines the neglected political intention of the Maoist architectural and urban planning project, the ‘Rammed-earth Campaign’. My study argues that socialist China aimed at shaping itself as a ‘Maoist austere aesthetics regime’ to manufacture a new socialist space and to cultivate a new socialist people who were able to both physically and mentally combat against ‘American imperialism’ and ‘Soviet revisionism’. This article reminds historians that without considering the cultural context of the socialist era, it is impossible to understand China’s urban planning and architecture in the late Mao era.