Topic 3 - The Cultural Revolution and its Aftermath - Attacks on Mao's Political and Class Enemies

Question 1

Liu Shaoqi - What role did Liu play post GLF and what was Mao’s reaction to this?

Answer 1

• As Head of State, Liu’s pragmatic policies had helped rebuild China after the GLF
• He was popular amongst the people and Mao may have been jealous

Question 2

Liu Shaoqi - What did Liu do when Mao first encouraged the students to rise up and what was this used as evidence of?

Answer 2

• When Mao first encouraged the students to rise up, Liu had supported the sending of Party ‘work teams’ onto the campuses of schools to control the violence
• This was used as evidence of his traitorous ‘rightist’ sentiments

Question 3

Liu Shaoqi - What was Liu and his family subject to as a result?

Answer 3

• Liu was subject to constant struggle meetings – he was abused and beaten and his family were also targeted
• His wife was publicly denounced and his children sent to the countryside to live as peasants
• Liu wrote to Mao begging to be allowed to resign, but Mao did not reply

Question 4

Liu Shaoqi - What happened at the 9th Party Congress?

Answer 4

• At the Ninth Party Congress, Jiang Qing denounced him as a traitor who was working for the CIA
• The evidence for this had been gathered by Jiang Qing and Kang Sheng, who had tortured prisoners to get it

Question 5

Liu Shaoqi - What happened to Liu after the 9th Party Congress and when did he die?

Answer 5

• Denounced as a ‘renegade, scab, and traitor’, Liu was stripped of all his posts and replaced by Lin Biao
• Liu was exiled from Beijing and, in time, torture and neglect meant he could no longer speak
• He died in Nov 1968 and was buried in an unmarked grave

Question 6

Deng Xiaoping - How did Mao feel about Deng and what was Deng’s dictum?

Answer 6

• Mao was angered by Deng Xiaoping
• His famous dictum about the irrelevance of the ‘colour’ of a policy was a direct affront to Mao’s belief that it was better to be Communist than practical

Question 7

Deng Xiaoping - What were Mao’s complaints about Deng?

Answer 7

• Deng had helped Liu introduce economic reforms without Mao’s advice
• Mao complained that ‘Deng Xiaoping never came to consult me… from 1959 to the present he has never consulted by over anything at all’

Question 8

Deng Xiaoping - What was Deng damned as and accused of?

Answer 8

Damned as ‘the number two person in authority taking the capitalist road’, Deng was accused of trying to establish his own ‘independent kingdom’

Question 9

Deng Xiaoping - What happened to Deng and his family?

Answer 9

• Deng disappeared from public sight, having been sent to a tractor factory in rural Jiangxi
• Deng’s family also suffered – his son attempted to escape torture by jumping out of a window and was paralysed from the waist down

Question 10

Deng Xiaoping - What happened to Deng later on?

Answer 10

Deng was later returned to power by Mao, who needed him to help end the chaos of the CR

Question 11

Deng Xiaoping - Who was Deng a target of and what did they accuse him of?

Answer 11

• He was a target of radicals and so was blamed for the protests that followed the death of Zhou Enlai
• The Gang of Four radicals blamed Deng for the violent clashes with police during the 1976 Qingming festival

Question 12

Deng Xiaoping - What did the Gang of Four convince Mao to do and what happened after Mao’s death?

Answer 12

• The Gang of Four convinced Mao to take away Deng’s positions of gov leadership
• However, after the death of Mao, Deng eventually became the most important leader in the PRC

Question 13

Lin Biao - Who was Lin Biao and what did he help create?

Answer 13

• Lin Biao was Mao’s most subservient follower whose loyalty had impressed Mao so much that he was chosen to replace the disgraced Peng Dehuai after the Lushan Conference
• He also helped create the Little Red Book that helped spread Mao’s cult of personality

Question 14

Lin Biao - What did Lin’s foreword in the Little Red Book do, what was it made, and what did it demand?

Answer 14

• Lin wrote a foreword to that book that lauded Mao as practically a deity
• It was made compulsory reading for PLA soldiers
• It demanded self-sacrifice in the service of the Chairman and was distributed to millions of soldiers

Question 15

Lin Biao - What did the PLA newspaper begin to publish and what were soldiers ordered to do?

Answer 15

• The PLA newspaper began to publish a quotation from Mao every day
• Soldiers were ordered to cut them out and compile their own collections of Mao’s quotes to be studied and recited

Question 16

Lin Biao - What did the cult of Lei Feng do and what happened at the outbreak of the CR?

Answer 16

• The cult of Lei Feng encouraged obedience to Mao Zedong Thought
• When the violence of the CR spiralled out of control, Mao was able to rely on the complete loyalty of the PLA to control it

Question 17

The purging of the CCP membership - What did Mao encourage and what campaign was launched as a result of this?

Answer 17

• When Mao told young people to ‘Bombard the Headquarters’, he was encouraging them to attack the CCP
• The launched a so-called ‘rectification campaign’ against the CCP to remove any members who had been bourgeois and elitist
  and replace them with young, fervently revolutionary people – led to a devastating impact

Question 18

The purging of the CCP membership - How many regional and provisional party cadres were purged?

Answer 18

70-80%

Question 19

The purging of the CCP membership - How many party cadres in the organ of central gov were purged?

Answer 19

60-70%

Question 20

The purging of the CCP membership - How many party cadres were executed in Yunnan?

Answer 20

As many as 14,000 party cadres were executed in Yunnan as ‘traitors’

Question 21

The purging of the CCP membership - How many regional party first secretaries and provincial party first secretaries were removed?

Answer 21

• Four out of six of the regional party first secretaries removed
• 23 out of 29 provincial party secretaries were removed

Question 22

The purging of the CCP membership - How many members of the Poliburo survived the purge?

Answer 22

Only 9 out of 23 Politburo members survived the purge

Question 23

The purging of the CCP membership - How much of the Central Committee were removed?

Answer 23

Two-thirds of the Central Committee were deposed

Question 24

The purging of the CCP membership - What were the purged officials sent to do?

Answer 24

Many were sent to undertake ‘productive labour and political study’ which in reality translated to a life of back-breaking hard labour and indoctrination in the May Seventh Cadres Schools

Question 25

The purging of the CCP membership - How many bureaucrats and cadres expelled and how many Chinese killed?

Answer 25

• In total, 3 million bureaucrats and cadres were exiled to the countryside
• An estimated half a million Chinese were killed

Question 26

The purging of the CCP membership - What happened to the Party First Secretaries of Shangxi and Yunnan?

Answer 26

The Party First Secretaries of Shanxi and Yunnan committed suicide to escape torture and intimidation

Question 27

The purging of the CCP membership - What happened in 1975?

Answer 27

In 1975, the new Party constitution named Mao Zedong Thought as the official guiding principle of the CCP – Mao had defeated his opponents

Question 28

Capitalist roaders and foreigners living in China - What was the label ‘capitalist roaders’ used to describe?

Answer 28

The label ‘capitalist roaders’ was used to criticise anyone suspected of not being ideologically committed to Communism and who wanted to take the ‘capitalist road’ instead

Question 29

Capitalist roaders and foreigners living in China - What were people subjected to and what happened to foreigners in China?

Answer 29

• People were interrogated to check that their beliefs were sufficiently revolutionary and their family backgrounds were scrutinised to check if they had any bourgeois family members
• Foreigners in China, particularly those from capitalist or ‘imperialist’ nations were attacked

Question 30

Capitalist roaders and foreigners living in China - What happened to the British, French, and Soviet embassies?

Answer 30

• A mob of Red Guards stormed the British embassy in Beijing, staff were attacked and the embassy was set on fire
• Mobs lay siege to the French and Soviet embassies, where they set up loud speakers to play Maoist slogans

Question 31

Capitalist roaders and foreigners living in China - What happened to the families of Western embassy staff and what did the CR do internationally?

Answer 31

• The families of Western embassy staff were denied visas to leave China
• The CR broke all rules of international diplomacy – in total, citizens of 30 countries were attacked or abused

Question 32

Capitalist roaders and foreigners living in China - What happened to the Dutch chargé d’affairs?

Answer 32

The Dutch chargé d’affairs was imprisoned in the embassy by a mob for nearly six months

Question 33

Capitalist roaders and foreigners living in China - What happened to Soviet embassy staff?

Answer 33

Soviet staff who left the embassy to buy tockets for their families to leave China were trapped in their cars by a mod for 16 hours

Question 34

Capitalist roaders and foreigners living in China - What happened to the French trade counsellor?

Answer 34

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

Question 35

Capitalist roaders and foreigners living in China - What happened to Anthony Grey?

Answer 35

A British journalist, Anthony Grey, was put into solitary confinement for 26 months – later, Red Guards broke into his house and killed his cat