Theme 3 Revision Flashcards
Mao’s position in government
1960-65
Mao’s authority was weakened by the failure of the Great Leap Forward.
• Mao had retreated from an active role in day-to-day government. Liu Shaoqi became president of China, as Mao gave up the presidency. (Mao continued to be chairman of the CCP.)
• The economic policies of Liu Shaogi and Deng Xiaoping had been successful in ending the great famine. By 1962, the economy was growing again. Senior CCP officials trusted
Liu and Deng’s economic leadership more than Mao’s.
• Between 1962 and 1964, Mao tried to launch five new initiatives, including one to reduce the growth of private farming. Li and Deng stopped them.
Mao’s criticisms of Liu and Deng
Mao opposed what he saw as the capitalist road to development that Liu and Deng were following. Instead of the socialist road, which meant peasants and workers benefiting most, Mao said ‘capitalist roaders’ were making experts and bureaucrats powerful and rich while the workers and peasants were ignored. Mao also criticised Liu and Deng’s policies as
revisionist: going back on socialist policies and reintroducing capitalist elements. For example:
• Reintroducing private farming and allowing communes to break up.
Putting experts in charge of factories and planning, instead of letting the workers run the factories themselves.
• Making the CCP bureaucracy more powerful than peasants and workers.
Re-establishing dominance
In the early 1960s, Mao tried to get back
control of the CCP. His key allies (supporters)
were Lin Biao, defence minister and head of the
People’s Liberation Army, and Mao’s wife, Jiang
Qing.
Socialist
Education Movement,
• In 1963, Mao launched the Socialist Education Movement, which included plans to remove capitalist elements from the CCP. This would have damaged Liu and Deng. • Liu and Deng stopped this challenge by putting the CCP in charge of the campaign, not the people. Mao saw that many in the Party did not want his changes.
Purification of communism: reasons
Mao’s campaigns in the 1960s were designed to purge the CCP of capitalist roaders and revisionists, and preserve the spirit of the revolution.
• Instead of elites - Party bureaucrats and industrial experts - Maoism said that everyone in China should be equal.
• Instead of deciding on policies based on whether they were pragmatic (practical), policies should be ideologically correct first. For example, if a policy made some people poorer than others, it could not be correct
even if it appeared to have many practical benefits. China could achieve anything through the mass mobilisation of its people, as long
as the CCP stayed connected to the
revolutionary spirit of the people.
• It was the duty of the CCP to organise and lead the people towards communism. This included even leading the people to identify and destroy anything that got in the way of
communism.
The Socialist Education Movement,
1963- 10 points
This was Mao’s campaign to combat capitalist elements. It began with the launch of Mao’s Ten Points in January 1963. These strongly criticised revisionism in agriculture.
• Lin Biao introduced a simple version of Mao’s ideology, the Little Red Book’. As well as training how to fight, the ‘Little Red Book’ was used to train soldiers how to think. A campaign to ‘learn from the PLA’ was part of the Socialist Education Movement.
• Instead of going to school full time, students would spend part of their day working in communes. This combatted education reforms
in 1960 that allowed CCP bureaucrats to get their children into better schools.
• Mao said ‘experts’ and intellectuals should be re-educated by working as manual labourers in industry and as peasants in communes.
The Twenty Three Articles, 1965
The struggle for control of the CCP meant that Mao’s socialist education campaigns had sometimes been controlled and toned down by the moderates Liu and Deng.
• Mao’s Twenty-Three Articles stated that the main obstacle to the Socialist Education Movement was enemies within the CCP.
• Mao and his allies called for a purge of corrupt officials within the CCP. They said this purge should be led by groups of peasants and workers.
Although he didn’t challenge Mao directly, Liu Shaoqi blocked this proposal. His concern was that any large-scale attack on China’s government would plunge China’s
economy back into chaos.
What did Mao use the Twenty-Three Articles for
Mao used the Twenty-Three Articles to remove
his rivals for power. He blamed revisionists
within the Party for the re-introduction of
capitalist elements into China.
The purification
of communism:
key features
The Central Cultural Revolution Group (1966), The Socialist Education Movement (1963), The Twenty- Three Articles (1965), Criticism of the play Hai Rui dismissed from office (1965)
Hai Rui dismissed from office
In 1965, Mao began a campaign against capitalist culture in the PRC. This started with criticism of a play written by writer Wu Han called Hai Rui dismissed from office. The play, about a 16th-century official who criticised an emperor, was seen as an attack on Mao. Mao’s allies said that Hai Rui stood for Peng Dehuai, who was dismissed after
criticising Mao’s Great Leap Forward.
The CCP set up a committee - the
Five Man Group - to check if a cultural
purge was needed. The committee, led by an ally of Liv and Deng, decided that the play was not political. Mao and his allies were outraged and replaced the committee with the new Central Cultural Revolution Group.
The Central Cultural Revolution
Group
Set up by Mao in May 1966 to lead a culture purge. Led by Jiang Qing, it took control of the CC's propaganda department. - Used propaganda to inspire young people to join 'the Red Guards' to purge the CCP of 'capitalist roaders"
Mao’s hold on young people
Mao appealed to young people to reject CCP ‘capitalist roaders’
• The CCP’s education reforms had made it easier for elite CP officials to get their children into top schools and universities. Other young people resented this. In January 1966, the CCP began to distribute copies of the ‘Little Red Book’ to students. Mao praised young people in this and said
that China’s future belonged to them.
• Students liked Mao’s radical, utopian ideas more than the practical policies of Li and Deng. Mao’s ideas gave young people an exciting, revolutionary role in society.
The Red Guards
The Red Guards were groups of students from universities and schools in cities and towns.
• The first Red Guard group was formed in a middle school in Beijing in 1966. The students were angry about the play Hai Rui dismissed from office. They called themselves ‘Chairman Mao’s Red Guards’
• Each Red Guard group was organised like an army battalion. Red Guards dressed in a military way and wore red armbands.
• Red Guards were inspired by the PLA and its commitment to revolutionary socialism.
• The Red Guards aimed to fight against capitalist roaders in the CCP and protect Mao and ‘Mao Zedong Thought
The mass rallies of 1966
In August 1966, Mao addressed a mass rally of a million Red Guards in Tiananmen Square in Beijing. There were eight mass rallies in total
in 1966, attended by around 12 million Guards. Mao’s message was to ‘bombard the headquarters’. He criticised the attempts by the CCP to defend itself from the Red Guards. He wanted the Red Guards to pressurise the CC and force his rivals out.
Reasons why students supported radical change
Inspiration from Quotations from
Chairman Mao Tse-tung: the ‘Little Red Book’, Resentment about
educational reforms, Dislike of strict,
traditional teachers, who were often
arrogant and intimidating, Poverty,
fear of becoming a wealthy
target, and peer pressure, Respect for Mao as a revolutionary leader, Idealism - belief in revolutionary socialism
Attacks on universities
• In May 1966, Beijing University students protested against their lecturers. In June, these protests turned into physical attacks
• The students were angry that the lecturers set themselves up as intellectual experts.
• Liu Shaoqi ordered rival Red Guard student groups to be formed, which supported the CCP. Their role was to defend CCP officials from attack by Mao-supporting Red Guards.
Mao ordered these rival groups to be shut down. In August 1966, in his 16 Articles document, he made the Red Guards free to overthrow ‘capitalist roaders’ wherever they
found them.
Jiang Qing’s attack on the CCP
Jiang Qing was the deputy director of the Central Cultural Revolution Group and Mao’s wife. She used her control over the CCP’s propaganda ministry to encourage Red Guards to attack CCP officials who were suspected ‘capitalist roaders’
The ‘four olds’
The ‘four olds’ campaign was launched by Lin Biao at a mass rally in August 1966. The ‘four olds’ were parts of Chinese culture that had
helped to oppress and exploit poor people. Old ideas, customs, habits, culture. The Central Cultural Revolution Group told Red
Guard groups across China to attack the ‘four olds’ wherever they found them. People who read old or foreign books, sung traditional or foreign songs or dedicated themselves to
religion were targeted. Many Red Guard groups also used terror to attack authority figures
wherever they found them.
Cultural destruction
• Red Guards attacked museums and
destroyed old books and artworks. They also attacked religious shrines and temples. These attacks even included raiding the tombs of ancient Chinese emperors and mistreating the human remains.
• Red Guards broke into people’s homes and destroyed old books, older styles of furniture and religious items. Hundreds of thousands of people lost their possessions and homes.
• Red Guard attacks included attacks on people’s hairstyles and clothing, especially if they were seen as Western styles.
• Red Guards replaced old paintings with pictures of Mao. They renamed streets with revolutionary slogans, and even renamed themselves with revolutionary names
Red Terror: attacks on people
Red Guard attacks on culture quickly turned into attacks on people. Mao encouraged this and the police were forbidden from stopping it.
• Red Guards, dressed in uniforms and carrying ‘Little Red Books’, patrolled China’s towns and cities, targeting intellectuals, bureaucrats and wealthy people.
