China AOS2 Quotes Flashcards
Korean War Propaganda Slogan
“Resist America Aggression, Aid Korea”
Mao on Sanfan (1951)
“We need to have a good cleanup…which will thoroughly uncover all cases of corruption…while following the policy of educating and remoulding”
Mao on Korean War (Negative)
“The war was a mistake and 100 per cent wrong.”
Mao on Mass Campaigns 1952
“We definitely have no benevolent policies towards the reactionaries or the counter-revolutionary activities of the reactionary classes.”
Hong Kong Reporter 1951
“Those who come out of communist China with an astonishing unanimity refer to… this constant haunting fear…”
Fanshen Policy
“Isolate the few to win over the many”
Lu Ting-yi (Director of Propaganda) Speech May 1956
“If we want our country to be prosperous and strong, we must… have a flourishing art, literature and science. That is essential.”
Liu Shaoqi on the Great Leap Forward 7000 Cadres Conference (1962)
“There is no Great Leap Forward, only a great deal of falling backward”
Mao on Hundred Flowers (speech July 1957)
“The purpose was to let demons and devils, ghosts and monsters ‘air views freely’…so that the people…would take action to wipe them out.”
Peasant Zhao Tongmin on the Great Leap Forward
“Those were the days…so many people came together. Their discipline was marvellous. Everyone came to work on time and all joined in with a will”
Historian Maurice Meisner on early years of CCP rule
“The new regime was authoritarian and often repressive, but the cities were governed honestly and efficiently for the first time in modern Chinese history.”
Yu Dehong (secretary to CCP cadre in Henan province) on Three Bad Years Famine
“All the communal kitchens were shut down … all the roots and tree bark had been consumed. After that, massive starvation deaths occurred…there were dead bodies everywhere.”
Li Zhisui (Mao’s doctor) on Mao
“Mao was a great philosopher, a great soldier, and a great politician, but he was a terrible economist. He had a penchant for grandiose schemes. He lost touch with the people… Mao was a complex and often contradictory man…He believed in his own infallibility.”
Lin Biao’s Foreword in Little Red Book
“Study Chairman Mao’s writings, follow his teachings and act according to his instructions and be his good fighters.”
Sixteen Points (August 1966)
“At present, our objective is to struggle against and overthrow those persons in authority who are taking the capitalist road.”
Mo Bo on his experience as a Red Guard
“We all enjoyed having no classes and degrading the teachers … This kind of experience was so intoxicating that some of us went off our heads”
Liang Heng (Red Guard sent to countryside; male lol)
“The peasants’ day-to-day life was miserably cruel. Where was the “Liberation” from suffering that the Revolution was meant to have given them?”
Jung Chang & Jon Halliday on Mao
“Mao began systematic terrorisation of the population, to induce long-term conformity and obedience … His aim was to scare and brutalise the entire population.”
