Cultural Revolution

Question 1

When was the cultural revolution launched?

Answer 1

May 1966

Question 2

What are the 4 olds

Answer 2

old ideas, old culture, old customs, old habits

Question 3

Why was the cultural revolution launched?

Answer 3

• eradicate lin biao + deng from ‘destroying communism’
• establish mao’s legacy
• continuous revolution

Question 4

How was the eradication of old culture achieved?

Answer 4

• 1100 libraries with western literature burned
• temples like confucius in shangdan were ransacked

Question 5

How did eradication of old culture fail?

Answer 5

• ancester worship never destroyed - zhou enlai had tributes paid to him during the quingming festival
• temples destroyed but many still practiced buddhism in private + christian gatherings in family homes

Question 6

Sucess of eradicating old ideas?

Answer 6

• shop signs changed to read ‘defend mao zedong’ + ‘permanent revolution’
• childrens names changed to ‘red glory’ and ‘face the east’
• named the road the british embassy was on ‘anti-imperalist road’

Question 7

how did eradication of old ideas fail?

Answer 7

• earthquake in july 1976 interpretted as a bad omen - failure to remove superstition

Question 8

What did Mao encourage within the youth during the cultural revolution?

Answer 8

• too successful in radicalisation them against the old ideas - masscare of teachers
• told them to question elders
• sent them to countryside to learn from peasantry

Question 9

What was the Cultural Revolution Group?

Answer 9

In March 1966, Mao formed the Cultural Revolution Group (CRG) to direct the Cultural Revolution. It was a seventeen-member sub-committee of the Politburo.

Question 10

What did the Cultural Revolution Group do and what are they later known as?

Answer 10

• Ran the PRC’s cultural policy, controlled media
• Later known as the Gang of Four

Question 11

How was the Red Guard loyal to Mao?

Answer 11

• Full of young people who had been taught to view Mao as a ‘god’
• indoctrinated by propaganda
• They could not remember the Great Leap Forward
• Read the little Red Book

Question 12

What did Mao tell students in May 1965?

Answer 12

‘Dare to rebel against authority’

Question 13

What were the ‘five red types’ and ‘five black types’?

Answer 13

‘Five Red types’ - workers, poor and lower middle-class peasants,
revolutionary cadres, revolutionary soldiers and dependents
of revolutionary martyrs

‘Five Black Elements’ – landlords, rich peasants,
counter-revolutionaries, bad elements and rightists

Question 14

What is an example of Mao’s cult reaching an extreme?

Answer 14

One factory in Beijing
created a ritual later known as ‘asking for instructions in
the morning and reporting back in the evening’ using a portrait of Mao

Question 15

Who commissioned the Red Book?

Answer 15

Lin Biao

Question 16

When was the Little Red Book published?

Answer 16

1964

Question 17

What did passengers at train stations have to do before boarding a train during the cultural revolution?

Answer 17

a loyalty dance

Question 18

What was the unofficial national anthem during the cutural revolution?

Answer 18

‘The East is Red’

Question 19

Why could Mao not control the violence between the Red guards and rival groups?

Answer 19

‘It could not be
controlled because
attempting to control it would undermine the movement … what had been unleashed could not easily be re-leashed.’

Question 20

How many Red Guards did the PLA arrest in Spring 1967?

Answer 20

500 leaders of radical Red Guards and worker groups for attacking the party

Question 21

How did Mao prevent the rise of anarchy in September 1967?

Answer 21

• Created Revolutionary Committees based on a 3-way alliance of state, army and party
• However, the party remained dominant and radicals were represented but never in control
• However those who had been purged months before from old power structures re-emerged to take control of the committees

Question 22

How did Mao restore order against Red Guard anarchy in 1968?

Answer 22

He used the PLA to violently re-establish the control of the party

Question 23

What was Jiang Qing’s 1968 campaign? And how many were arrested for being spies/ counter-revolutionaries?

Answer 23

• Called ‘cleansing the class ranks’ - an effort to get rid of capitalism completely
• They used surveillance, mass rallies and struggle meetings to extract confessions.
• Some 1.84 million people were arrested

Question 24

How many in Yuunan died due to ‘death by enforced suicide’ during the ‘cleansing the class ranks’ campaign?

Answer 24

Almost 7000

Question 25

When and where was Lin Biao announced as Mao’s successor?

Answer 25

April 1969 at the Ninth Party Congress

Question 26

Who were Mao’s political targets in the Cultural Revolution?

Answer 26

Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping

Question 27

How did Mao get rid of Liu Shaoqi?

Answer 27

• Possibly set him up by allowing him to send party work teams onto campuses to control the violence
• Humiliated his wife + sent her to prison
• Sent his kids to work as peasants in the countryside
• Put Liu Shaoqi in house arrest, charged him with betraying the party, allowed him to get pneumonia and buried him in an unmarked grave in November 1968

Question 28

How did Mao get rid of Deng Xiaoping?

Answer 28

• Sent him to a tractor farm
• Possibly pushed his son out a window (or he jumped)

Question 29

Purging of party membership during the Cultural Revolution:

Answer 29

• At regional and provisional level 70–80 per cent of all Party cadres were purged, 60–70 per cent in the organs of central government
• In Yunnan 14,000 Party cadres were executed as ‘traitors’
• Only 9 out of 23 Politburo members survived the purge
• 2/3rds of the Central Committee had been deposed.

Question 30

How many bureaucrats and cadres were exiled during the Cultural Revolution and how many were killed?

Answer 30

• 3 million sent
• Half a million killed

Question 31

How did Mao purge capitalist roaders and foreigners living in China?

Answer 31

• The Red Guards attacked three embassies in Beijing: those of Burma, Indonesia and India
• Shops, restaurants and hotels put up signs declaring that Soviet citizens would no longer be served. Posters were put up at train stations declaring ‘Smash Brezhnev’s head’
• The French trade counsellor was confronted outside his embassy and made to stand in the freezing cold while being denounced for seven hours. The police watched and did nothing to assist him.
• Staff at the British Embassy in Beijing were manhandled and beaten. The embassy itself was set on fire.

Question 32

Conclusion of Mao’s attack on political opponents and class enemies:

Answer 32

Mao had come to power promising to free the nation from political repression yet by the end of the 1960s the Chinese people were once again ruled by an ‘Emperor’ of absolute power

Question 33

How many Red Guards were sent to ‘cool off’ in the countryside to wind down the Cultural Revolution?

Answer 33

18 million

Question 34

What was the effect of sending the 18 million Red Guard to the countryside?

Answer 34

• they became disillusioned with politics and began to question the CPP
• those with party connections/ influential families were returned to the city

Question 35

What did Lin Biao do during the wind down of the cultural revolution that upset Mao?

Answer 35

• tried to reinstate the position of ‘head of state’ that had been vacant since the purging of Liu Shaoqi

Question 36

When did Lin Biao die?

Answer 36

September 1971

Question 37

When did Deng Xiaoping return from fixing tractors to politics?

Answer 37

1974

Question 38

What was the Four Modernisations Campaign?

Answer 38

After his return, Deng Xiaoping supported a program that directly reversed Mao’s trust in mass mobilisation - Deng realised the people wanted a return to normalicy and pragmatism rather than campaigns calling for upheaval

Question 39

What was the 1973 criticise Lin, criticise Confucius campaign?

Answer 39

Jiang Qing’s attempt to get rid of Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiaoping as they were most likely to suceed Mao rather than her
- it failed, but she still had enough influence to have Deng removed to a pig farm in the South

Question 40

Who succeeded Mao before Deng?

Answer 40

Huo Guofeng

Question 41

How did Deng fix China after Mao’s death?

Answer 41

By taking the ‘Capitalist Road’