U4AOS2 INTERPETATIONS Flashcards
Ryan
Yenan
“Mao and his comrades built a thriving community in this impoverished rural backwater”
What did Mao say about the ‘welfare of the people’
“We should convince the masses that we represent their interests” - ‘THE WELL-BEING OF THE MASSES’ (1934)
S
Agricultural Reform
“Peasants who killed with their bare hands were wedded to the new revolutionary order” (Short)
Fairbank
Three Bad Years Famine
“Mao-made catastrophe”
K + D
Cleansing of the Class ranks movement
“the most violent aspect of the Cultural Revolution” (Kraus)
“neighbours killing neighbours” (Dikotter)
M
CCP during WWII
“the CCP were struggling more vigorously and competently for nationalist goals than the GMD” (Moise)
Moise
Early years of CCP rule - Land Reform, 1st 5YP, Mass Campaigns
“The first few years of the new regime were guided by pragmatic considerations”
K + L + S
Motivations for the Cultural Revolution
“The politics of the Cultural Revolution were self-consciously theatrical” (Kraus)
CR was a quest by Mao to achieve ‘revolutionary immortality’. (Lifton)
CR’s orgins/aims are complex bc born from multiple of Mao’s paranoias simultaneously (Spence)
R
Outbreak of Cultural Revolution 1966
“a political storm of dizzying complexity” (Ryan)
Esherik
Mass campaigns
“The CCP brought order and discipline to their environment, and this was probably as important to many as was any sense of liberation”
Mao
Reasoning for selecting peasantry as the focus of the GLF
“The Ch ppl are, first of all, poor, and secondly blank”
CC delegate (name?)
Initial response of party cadres + political idealists to the GL of the GLF
“We are supernatural” - Xie Fuzhi
Peasant Zhao Tongmin
Initial enthusiasm for GLF
“so many ppl came together. Their discipline was marvellous. Everyone came to work on time and all joined in with a will”
R + F + C&H
Reasons for GLF
“Whatever the aims of the CCP leadership, many ordinary ppl was genuinely enthusiastic abt the PCs” (Ryan)
‘The state had become the ultimate landlord’. (Fairbank)
“with collectivisation came slave-driving” (Chang & Halliday)
Peng
Criticism of Mao’s ideological focus in GL of the GLF
“putting politics in command [M idea – ideology trumps all other considerations = change from mass line] is no substitute for econ principles, much less for econ measures”
F
Impact of atmosphere of fear around Mao at Lushan (July 1959)
“Peng had told the emp had X clothes… few besides Peng dared to contradict him” Feigon
Mao
Criticism of party cadres for inflating statistics + not telling him GL of GLF was not working
“If you have to shit – shit! If you have to fart – fart!”
Liu + Deng
Reasoning for pragmatic recovery from GLF
“We can’t go on like this” (Liu)
“A donkey is slow, but at least it rarely has an accident” (Deng)
Liu
Impact of Three Bad Years Famine on Mao/CCP’s reputation
Famine attributed “30% to natural calamities, 70% to human failings”
D
Women
“China’s women had risen to the status second-class citizens”
Dietrich
Fenby
New political system
Inclusion of non-CCP members in provisional govt = “window dressing”
Mao
Reasoning for Fanshen
“The peasants are clear-sighted. … the peasants keep clear accounts”
“a mass education of the peasants in to socialism”
S + M + D
Reasons for Thought Reform
“In this superheated atmosphere, the campaign to suppress counter-revolutionaries burned white hot” (Short)
the CCP saw their campaigns as ‘educational’ rather than vindictive, with the aim of producing ‘correct thoughts’ that → correct political and social behaviours (Meisner)
‘carefully cultivated Auschwitz of the mind’ (Dikotter)
Liu
Reasoning for ‘gradualist’ approach to collectivisation
“The Soviet road is the road all humanity will eventually take. To bypass this road is impossible”
‘no collectivization without modernisation’
Ryan
Reaction to Mao’s appeal for collectivisation
M’s appeal had ‘electrifying effect’ on pol cadres in countryside
R
Hundred Flowers Campaign
’fine rain’ of criticism [that M was expecting] grew into a heavy downpour of resentment”
Mao
Reaction to Hundred Flowers Campaign
“Any word or deed at variance w socialism is completely wrong”
F
Significance of Hundred Flowers Campaign
“demonstrated Mao’s naivety and then his utter ruthlessness’ (Fenby)
Young academic
Criticism of CCP
CCP treated intel like “dog shit one moment and 10,000 ounces of gold the next”
Mao
Inspiration for the GLF
“the E wind prevails over the west wind”
Mao
Reasoning for the CR
‘even party members are enthusiastically promo feudal + cap art but ignoring soc art’
C
Little red book
‘a weapon of mass instruction’
R
Significance of Mao’s Good Swim
M ‘in fine health + more ready than ever to steer Ch thru rev waters’ (Ryan)
Lin Biao
M’s ‘closest comrade in arms’
Mao
Criticism of party centre in major newspapers Aug 1966 (after 16P)
Party centre actions = ‘poisonous’
Former Red Guard
RG rally in Tianamen Square (18 Aug 1966)
“The atmosphere was thrilling. We were so excited that we wept”
M
Role of Mao in the violence of the RG
M’s vagueness forced RG to “conjure up pictures of the enemy from their imaginations’.
LZ (photojournalist during CR)
Cult of personality around Mao
‘Mao was more than a leader. He was our saviour’
Li Zhenseng
Rebel worker
Social importance of CR
“In the CR people talked about anything, without restrictions”
S
Impact of the January Storm (1967)
“Mao had looked into the abyss and didn’t like what he saw” (Short)
9th Party Congress
“congress of unity and congress of victory”
CCP
retrospective view of CR
“ten years of calamities”
F + K
Significance of the CR
CR created “enduring legacy of social justice, feminist ideals, and even many democratic principles” (Feigon)
“China’s greates experiment in participatory democracy” (Kraus)
Peasant
Farmers’ view of CR
“farmers felt proud and elated”
MB + LH (both former RG)
RG view of ‘Up to the Mountains, Down to the Countryside’ movement
“the newspapers had fed us crock” (Ma Bo)
“Where was the ‘Liberation’ from suffering that the Revolution was meant to have given them?” (Liang Heng)
R
Significance of ‘Up to the Mountains, Down to the Countryside’ movement
“Mao’s ‘arse kickers’ had been cast out” (Ryan)
S
May 7th Schools
“as much prisons as schools” (Spence)
M
Mao’s purge of the CCP during CR
M spent rest of 1970/71 “throwing stones, mixing in sand, and digging up the cornerstones” of LB’s rep” (MacFarquhar)
Tiger (LB’s son)
View of Mao
“he is the greatest feudal tyrant in Chinese history…wrapping himself in the guise of a Marxist-Leninist anc behaving like the First Emperor”
T
Impact of LB’s death
LB’s death “had a disorientating effect among ordinary Communists and cadres, intellectuals and social groups more broadly” (Teiwes)
Peasants + student sent down to countryside
Impact of LB’s death
“I had felt faithful in Mao, but the LB stuff affected my thinking” (peasant)
“We lost faith in the system” (student sent down to c/side)
Student in Beijing
Reaction to Zhou Enlai’s death
“I had never seen such universal grief”
L
Mao’s view on peasants
“He believed that peasants [needed to] be controlled and directed” (Lynch)
G
Wufan
‘an opportunity to pulverize China’s capitalists politically’ (Gray)
Rittenburg
Mao’s attitude towards GLF
“it was grotesque, in that Mao was an adventurer who didn’t hesitate to embark on adventures w/ 100s of 1000s ppl’s lives at risk” (Rittenburg)
“Working like this, with all these prog, 1/2 of Ch may well have to die” (Mao)
