The Cultural Revolution

Cards (24)

  • The Four olds campaign (1966)

    • Was a campaign to destroy old ideas, culture, customs and habits.
    • Bird keeping was punished as a traditional custom.
    • Surgeons cancelled appointments as if it went wrong they were accused of class revenge.
    • Customers were checked of class origin before served at restaurants.
    • Children's names were changed to Red Glory or Face The East.
    • Changed traffic lights so that red meant go.
    • Changed road names so the British embassy was on 'Anti-imperialism Road'.
  • The mass rallies of 1966

    • Started when guards from a uni sent Mao a big character poster that said 'long live the proletarian revolution spirit of rebellion'.
    • Mao published his own poster that said 'bombard the headquarters!'
    • Invited young people to travel on free public transport to Tiananmen square to get involved in 1 of 8 rallies.
    • They had Mao badges and Little Red Books.
    • Those who got close enough were disappointed by how old and weak their hero's looked after seeing them presented as God-like for so long.
  • Mao's hold on young people

    • Indoctrinated by his control of the education system
    • They had little recollection of his Great Leap Forward failure and didn't blame him for the famine
    • Propaganda taught them that the Little Red Book was like the words of God
    • After years of a Confusion based hierarchal society, Mao told the youth to 'rebel' against authority
    • This excited them and led to millions joining the revolution
    • Teacher called Zheng, who criticised Mao, was made to sleep in a cow shed with her baby by her students
  • Divisions between Mao's supporters and opponents

    • Had to be subtle to not raise concern when ridding of his enemies.
    • Wu Han's play 'Hai Rui Dismissed From Office' which had a character criticise the Ming-era emperor, who then had him dismissed.
    • Comparisons were made to Peng and the Great Leap Forward.
    • Mao praised it in 1961, but ordered a negative review in 1965. Han was deputy mayor of Beijing, under mayor Peng Zhen, both of which were forced to resign.
    • They were allies of Liu and Deng, Mao had subtly weakened his enemies.
  • The quest for permanent revolution

    • Mao feared party had become bureaucratised.
    • After removing China's old rulers, the new elites had taken advantage of the masses and were now living in luxury.
    • Only way to fix this would be a permanent revolution, where you are constantly replacing those in authority.
    • "A proletarian party must also get rid of the stale and take in the fresh, for only thus can it be full of vitality" - Mao.
  • Divisions within the CCP

    • Mao became distrusting of Zhou, as he criticised the Great Leap Forward targets, and Liu, who had dismissed the bad weather claim at the 1962 7000 cadres conference.
    • Jealous that the new economic policies, that replaced his focus on mass mobilisation, seemed to be far more successful.
    • Party was split between Ideologues and Pragmatists.
  • Use of violence during the Red Terror

    • Denunciation gave way to brutality.
    • Re-education in labour camps.
    • People saw suicide as the only escape.
    • Intellectuals kidnapped and killed.
    • Renowned playwright Lao She's house was burned by middle school Red Guards.
    • Lao had to wear a dunce hat at struggle meetings.
    • To escape harassment he drowned himself in Taiping Lake in 1966.
    • Ding Ling was forced to stand in an airplane position for hours and sleep in a stable.
  • Cultural destruction during the Red Terror

    • Homes of people with Western books, traditional gardens or musical instruments were ransacked
    • 1100 libraries closed
    • 7 million library books lost, stolen or destroyed
    • The Confucius Temple attacked by 200 teachers and students
    • Destroyed 6618 registered cultural artifacts
    • 928 paintings, 2700 books, 200 graves
    • Old 19th century hero Wu Xan was declared elitist and his corpse was exhumed, his body was torn apart and burned
  • Attack on Liu Shaoqi

    • He supported the sending of party work teams to campuses to control the student uprisings, used as evidence of his traitorous rightism
    • His wife was embarrassed in front of 300,000 Red Guards and his children sent to countryside to work as peasants
    • Jiang Qing asked him to be left alive to be used as a 'living target'
    • Accused of being a CIA informant after Jiang interrogated over 28,000 people.
    • Resigned as Head of State in 1967
    • Locked in an unheated Beijing building and his hair grew to his feet in jail
    • Contracted pneumonia
  • Attack on Deng Xiaoping

    • Accused of trying to establish his own 'independent kingdom'.
    • Sent to a tractor factory in rural Jiangxi.
    • His son jumped out a window to avoid punishment and was paralysed from the neck down.
  • The purging of party members

    • Regional and provisional - 70-80% of all party cadres purged.
    • Yunnan - 14,000 party cadres were executed as 'traitors'.
    • Only 9/23 Politburo members were left.
    • 2/3 of the Central Committee had been deposed.
  • The purging of capitalist roaders and foreigners

    • Red Guards attacked 3 embassies in Beijing: Burma, Indonesia and India.
    • Shops, restaurants and hotels put up signs declaring that Soviet citizens would no longer be served.
    • Posters in train stations saying 'smash Brezhnev's head'.
    • Staff at the British Embassy in Beijing were manhandled and beaten and the building was set on fire.
  • 'Up to the mountains and down to the villages' campaign

    • Had to end their terror when they took over the Beijing Foreign Ministry for 2 weeks
    • 18 million Red Guards sent away
    • Being chosen was treated as a privilege, as you were learning from the peasants to reach true unity.
    • Not welcomes by the peasants as they feared their involvement would disrupt agriculture.
    • Had little spare food to give the newcomers.
    • Formerly ideologically committed young people were shocked and dismayed by conditions.
  • Lin Biao's death, 13th September 1971


    • Rumours of him and his son attacking Mao’s private train with artillery spread
    • Paranoid he was going to be purged next, fled from Mao’s security in such a panic, that it meant the plane wasn’t fully fuelled, it crashed in Mongolia, killing his whole family
    • People started questioning communist rule after Lin was denounced, as he was previously described as Mao’s ‘close comrade in arms’
  • Deng Xiaoping's return to power

    • Mao in bad health, couldn't read or exercise and spent all day watching Hong Kong kung-fu movies
    • His other allies who could replace him were also sick, with Zhou diagnosed with lung cancer in 1972, and Kang with bladder cancer
    • In 1975 Deng was picked to join the Politburo's standing committee and was appointed PLA chief of staff
  • Mao wanting to return from the side lines

    • Had been distant since Great Leap Forward failure.
    • In 1966 he swam in the dangerous Yangtze River.
    • Propaganda claimed he swam 9 miles in 65 minutes - a new world record.
    • Called for 'a new stage in the socialist revolution'.
  • Escalating anarchy with the 'January Storm'
    • ‘January storm’ was when radical red guards destroyed the party establishment in Shanghai and created their own form of controlled modelled on the Paris Commune of 1871
    • 30th December 1966, 100k radical reds attacked and defeated 20k other red guards, knows as the Scarlet Guards, who were mobilised by the Party
    • The radical reds declared for the party itself to be abolished, believing that they were doing Mao’s bidding
  • Death of Mao - Hua Guofeng
    • Picked to succeed him because his obscure background as a bureaucrat ensured he had no enemies with either pragmatists or ideologues
    • Handed him a note saying ‘with you in charge, I am at ease’
    • He announced what would become known as the ‘two whatever policies’: dedication to uphold whatever policy decisions and to follow whatever instructions were given by Mao
  • Death of Mao - Jiang Qing
    • she was ignored
    • She tried to organise a coup against coup and criticised Hua at the July 1976 State Council meeting
    • Hua order the arrest of Jiang and the gang of four one month after Mao’s death, on the 6 October 1976
    • Zhang sentenced to death, Yao served 20 years and Wang died of cancer while serving their life sentence
    • Jiang defended herself by saying ‘I was Chairman Mao’s dog. I bit whomever he asked me to bite’
    • She was sentenced to death, later changed to life imprisonment
    • She hung herself in 1991, due to cancer and depression
  • Death of Mao - Deng Xiaoping
    • Returned to Beijing and undermined Hua as China’s Paramount Leader
    • This was not an official title, bit meant that Deng was the most powerful man in China, allowing him to introduce economic reforms that granted freedom
    • ‘To be rich is glorious’, announced Deng, the people celebrated his liberties
  • Deng's 4 modernisations
    • Deng’s four modernisations of agriculture, technology, industry, and defence reversed Mao’s efforts of mass mobilisation
    • Encouraged further by Deng telling senior party cadres that ‘the worst that could happen is you could be overthrown a second time. Don’t be afraid. If you’ve done a good job, it’s worth being overthrown for!’
  • Collapse of the party - the gang of four
    • Launched the ‘criticise Lin, criticise Confucius’ campaign, where intellectuals were forced to find linkages between the two, to prove that Lin was always against the revolution
    • Jiang hoped this campaign would grow into a mobilised revolution against Zhou and Deng, the last two rivals
    • Campaign failed as the people clearly saw the personal political motive, reducing supporters for the party
  • Collapse of the party - Zhou Enlai's death
    • Died in a Beijing hospital on 8th January 1976
    • 1 million people lined in the streets to pay respects when his body was taken to be cremated
    • Mao was too sick to attend the funeral, so Deng delivered the eulogy
    • Jiang then attacked Deng as ‘China’s new Khrushchev’, but had misread the feelings of the masses
    • The people of Beijing lay wreaths in Tiananmen square, this angered the gang of four as within the tributes, were attacks on them
    • Government sent trucks to remove the wreaths, leading to 10,000+ protesting, some being violently removed
  • Collapse of the party - Deng's second removal
    • Gang of four blamed Deng for the ‘Tiananmen Square incident’
    • He was banished to a pig farm in the south and was removed of all political posts
    • Gang of four hoped to create an anti-rightest unrest with this, but the people were not interested in yet another political campaign