Unit 3

• Division in the CCP

  • Mao believed in mass mobilisation, class conflict and power of revolutionary commitment
  • Liu and Deng had a pragmatic approach to decision making which made Mao believe that he was being subverted
• Mao's communist beliefs

  
  

  Permanent revolution, if people became too comfortable they would slip back into old traditions and every new generation needed to experience revolution
• Attack on bureaucracy

  • He believed they stopped working to create revolution and would becoming lazy, taking advantage of their status
  • The CR was launched to mobilise masses to purge bureaucrats and replace them with loyal members
• Mao's supporters

  • Chen Boda (Chief of Propaganda)
  • Kang Sheng (Chief of Secret Police)
  • Jiang Qing
  • Lin Biao (Head of PLA)
• Mobilise the young

  • They didn't remember the disaster of the Great Famine and didn't blame him and had learnt in school that Mao was a hero
  • They read the Little Red Book
  • Mao wrote a 'Big character poster' titled 'Bombard the Headquarters'
• Mass Rallies 1966

  • Mao and Chen Boda invited millions of students to attend a series of rallies in Beijing
  • Lin Biao organised transportation of the students
  • Mao encouraged them to 'dare to rebel' as a veiled attack on teachers and government officials
• Red Guards and 'Smash the Four Olds'

  • Shop signs changed to 'Defend Mao Zedong' or 'Permanent Revolution'
  • Religious building destroyed
  • Figures of authority attacked and forced to make self-denunciations at struggle meetings
  • Young people with a bourgeois background couldn't join the RGs and became known as 'black elements'. To prove their loyalty they committed to brutal crimes.
• January Storm 1967 and the February Adverse Current

  • RGs seized power from the CCP and set up a government modeled on the 1871 Paris Commune
  • Mao used the PLA to close down the commune and crushed radicals across China
  • Mao then denounced the crackdown and encouraged radicals to greater violence
  • Mao realised the violence made China vulnerable to foreign attack and used the PLA to restore order
• Cultural destruction

  • Cultural objects like sculptures, statues and artifacts
  • Libraries with Western books or traditional literature were burnt
  • Temples ransacked - Confucius temple in Shandong
  • Buddhist relics attacked in Tibet
• Liu Shaoqui

  • Liu supported the sending of Party 'work teams' to control violence (evidence of rightist elements)
  • Liu was subjected to struggle meetings, abuse and was denounced and his family was sent to the countryside to work as peasants
  • He was exiled after Jiang Qing denounced him at the 9th Party Congress as an agent for the American CIA
• Deng Xiaoping

  • Introduced economic reforms with Liu without Mao's advice - Mao damned him as 'the number two person taking the capitalist road'
  • He disappeared from the public as he was sent to a tractor factory
  • He eventually returned to help end the chaos of the CR however the Gang of Four blamed him for the police clashed in the Qing Ming festival
• 'Learn from the PLA' campaign 1963

  • Lei Feng was a loyal soldier to the Party and Mao
  • He issued posters showing Mao digging wells for peasants and helping old ladies cross the road
  • Mao said 'be like comrade Lei Feng'
  • When he died his diary was published showing him to be unselfish in service of the revolution
• Rectification campaign

  • Remove any members who had been bourgeois and elitist and to replace them with young, revolutionary people
  • 70-80% of Party cadres purged
  • 14,000 Party cadres executed as traitors in Yunnan
  • 2/3 Central Committee deposed
  • Many sent to undertake 'productive labour and political study'
• Purging of 'capitalist roaders'

  • People were interrogated to check their beliefs were revolutionary
  • Foreigners from capitalist or 'imperialist' nations were attacked
  • Mob of RGs stormed the British embassy in Beijing and staff were attacked and the embassy was set on fire
• PLA restoring order

  • 1967 Mao declared the purging of capitalist roaders to be 'unstrategic'
  • PLA used terror - 1.84 million arrested for being 'spies' or 'bad elements'. Thousands were imprisoned, beaten to death or committed suicide
  • Schools and colleges were reopened after being closed for two years
• 'Up to the Mountains Down to the Villages' campaign

  • 1968
  • 18 million RGs sent to the countryside to understand the importance of manual labour and peasants in the revolution
  • In reality, they were sent so they couldn't organise violent actions
  • The young people hated it and were shocked
  • The peasants hated sharing their food supply
  • Barefoot doctors helped train paramedics to care for peasants
• Lin Biao Affair

  • Mao believed he was plotting to seize power
  • Lin fled to the USSR but did not have time to put fuel in his plane so it crashed and he died
  • It showed the public that he was a spy after being called a hero by Mao
  • This led to skepticism and many no longer trusted the government
• Zhou Enlai's return to power

  • Not purged as he was very useful
  • Called for the introduction of 'The Four Modernisations' (advancement in agriculture, industry, defence and technology)
  • This would make China a modern world power and a greater trade link for the West
• Gnag of Four

  • They launched the anti-Confucius campaign and denounced Lin as a 'rightist'
  • Zhou Enlai body was cremated and 1 million queued to pay respects
  • In April during the Qing Ming festival people layed wreaths to dead ancestors and Zhou in Tinanmen Square - Governemnt sent trucks to remove the wreaths, Gang of Four attacked and blamed Deng