By Jianli Yang
Watching the Trump administration’s so-called “Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)” bulldoze through government institutions, I cannot help but be reminded of the Central Cultural Revolution Group (CCRG), a pivotal organization in the early years of China’s Cultural Revolution from 1966-1976.
I was three years old when the Cultural Revolution was launched by the Chinese Communist Party’s paramount leader Mao Zedong. At the time, many of Mao’s comrades in the top leadership ranks had challenged his power and authority due to his string of disastrous and deadly policy failures (including the Great Leap Forward and the Great Famine). Mao aimed to pull them down through the Cultural Revolution by inciting the masses to rebel against them.
Established in May 1966 by Mao, the CCRG surpassed the Chinese Communist Party’s Politburo in power and became a ferocious instrument of Mao’s political agenda aimed to purge “bourgeois” elements, reshape Chinese government and society, and consolidate Mao’s authority. While it may seem like a stretch to compare President Trump’s DOGE with Chairman Mao’s CCRG due to their vastly different political foundations, having lived in both systems, I believe there are valuable lessons to draw from this comparison to preserve America’s constitutional democracy.
DOGE and the CCRG share striking parallels as unconventional entities wielding immense power, disrupting established systems and leaving lasting impacts. Both represent populist-authoritarian experiments that bypassed formal legal frameworks, operated with significant public support, and targeted entrenched bureaucracies. However, their contexts, methods, and consequences differ in ways that highlight the resilience — or lack thereof — of constitutional governance.
Source: https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/elon-musk-doge-china-cultural-revolution-mao-rcna193562
This article first appeared on MSNBC on Feb 28, 2025
