Mass Mobilization, Non-Competition and Proletarian Expertise: Mass Callisthenics and the Contested Egalitarian Politics in the Early People’s Republic of China, 1949–1976

Abstract

After the establishment of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) promoted ‘mass sports and physical culture’ (qunzhong tiyu) to justify its political claims and serve socialist construction. The relative ease of promoting its easily amendable forms and collective spirit earned mass callisthenics a distinctive role in Maoist physical culture. Much energy went into the distinctive creation of what became Mao-era China’s (1949-1976) two most pervasive and significantly symbolic forms of mass callisthenics: broadcast callisthenics (guangbo ticao) and production callisthenics (shengchan cao). However, this development was inundated with twists and turns for the CCP, sports leaders and experts, and ordinary participants due to the Party’s ambivalent egalitarian politics, which relied heavily on mass mobilization and revered proletarian expertise, reflecting its complicated and divided interpretation of the Soviet model and its recollection of its own revolutionary legacy. Through an analysis of abundant central and local materials, this article tells the unheeded story of mass callisthenics, which was a miniature of the contested anti-elitism movements of Mao-era China.