Mao tries to take control

The Cultural Revolution1966-69

An attempt at control or failure?

Consolidation and Control

1949-1966

Military

PLA take TibetXinjiang

Guangzhou

Political

The AntiThe 100 FlowersOne Party State

Economic

2 Five Yr PlansGLF

Results and achievements?

• Collectivization• Famine• Mao being sidelined while Liu Shaoqi assumes

control• Easing of policies of Mao• ‘70 % human failures and 30% natural

disasters’

Mao : The Great Helmsman

By 1966 the contenders for power

LEFTThe Gang of Four

The Shanghai Forum

CentreLin Biao

Chen Boda

RIGHTCapitalist roaders

Deng XiaopingLiu Shaoqi

Red BookDiary of Lei

Feng

Gang of Five

Dismissal of Hai Rai

Against Gang of Five

Led by Jiang Also wanted

dismissal of Liu and Deng

Origins of the Cultural Revolution• Mao shaken by Peng Dehuai’s challenge• He turned to Lin Biao, his new Defense minister• Using Socialist education as his target he raised fears about revisionism• He criticized the government’s return to traditional education

– The emphasis on quality education and education standards– Return of admission tests to education and tuitions– Return of two –track system of urban education and vocational type

education– Development of key-point schools to raised standards of education at all

levels• As a consequence of the changes, the education system had become

more elitist than it had been a decade earlier and thus became the focus of Mao’s campaign

Attack on Socialist Education

• Marked as the first salvo • Began as a general investigation into rural

conditions• Then a rectification campaign against Party

Cadres• Finally developed into a mass campaign directed

at cadre corruption and decline of the communes and collective farming and the rise of capitalist tendencies in the countryside

Theories about the origin of the CR

CR

Reaction to GLF

Ideological differences

A consequence of Hundred

Flowers

Desire to achieve

immortality

How did Mao launch the CR?

• He used the ‘Red Army’ or PLA and ‘revolutionary successors’ among the younger generation.

• According to JAG Roberts his intention was not revisionism but to target his opponents: Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping

John E.Shrecker

• His assessment of the start of the Cultural revolution:

• Mao’s need to the invigorate the party which he felt was becoming a closed group concerned with political power and short term gain.

• Mao used his power to create a bizarre replay of the May 4th Movement: The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. He was determined to reconstruct China from ground up once more. Once more he would turn to the youth of China

Tensions in 1966

• By late 1965 it was clear that Mao was seeking to eliminate Liu’s influence on politics

• Attack on Peng Zhen, the Mayor of Beijing• The Cultural revolution group in Beijing indicates

loss of power by Mao• With the help of Jiang Qing and Lin Biao he

regains control• Peng Zhen arrested in July 1966 and he

committed suicide four years later.

The start of the CR

• 18th August 1966 Million people in Tiananmen Square

• This first demonstration marked the start of the Cultural Revolution

• It was aimed to create a new kind of society• It was to be created by the youth of China• 4 ‘OLDS’ targeted for attack– Old culture, old thoughts, old customs and old habits– A contradiction:Mao was now 70 years old….

Why did Mao launch the CR? Was it a fear of being sidelined?

• A means to reassert authority which had been wrested away from him.

• To preserve himself in power and to leave his personal stamp on the revolution even after his death

• Mao’s fears that his vision of the revolution was being eroded and betrayed from within

Was it due to Mao’s convictions?

• Upper ranks of the CCP were infected by neo- capitalism

• Upper ranks desired personal power and therefore lacked revolutionary purpose

The Cultural Revolution stood for…

• An extension of Mao’s ideas of permanent revolution

• Revolution was not an event but a process.• An attempt to prevent the CCP from becoming

a self-justifying bureaucracy• A way for Mao to circumvent party

bureaucracy and appeal to the Chinese to consolidate the revolution

Was it the fall of Khrushchev in 1964?

• Deeply unsettling for Mao. Reason given for K’s fall was ‘harebrained economic schemes’

• Mao had disapproved of de-Stalinisation

• Mao was determined not to do what K. had done.

• Mao was convinced that CCP was looking for power like it was in the USSR

Other motives to explain the CR?

• Felt that there was a loss of revolutionary fervour among the elite

• Convinced that there was need for a ‘changing of the guard’

• Wanted to test the younger generation who did not have a shared history of Long March.

• Siege mentality a characteristic Mao shared with Stalin, hence this would be a means to impose strict political and social control

What else explains the CR?

• Mao’s determination to keep the Chinese revolution as a peasant movement.

• He did not want bureaucrats and intellectuals to run the revolution

• Indication of schism between Mao and the Intellectuals “reds vs intellectuals’

Defining images of the CR

Views about the start of the CR

Traditional view• Revenge on the class that

despised since his days as a librarian in Beijing University

Roderick McFarquahar• It was an attempt not so much

to destroy the intellectuals as it was to make them less elitist and more aware of the problems of the workers and peasants

• The reason: not as many intellectuals then. So it was really an attempt to bring the two classes closer but it failed with disastrous consequences

The CR – The First Phase

• The CR broadened from an internal party purge to a public campaign in the summer of 1966

• Encouraged by Mao to attack the education system for it divergence form the revolution, students invited to attack the system, boycott classes

• Deng and Liu Shaoqi tried to contain this by sending work teams to these institutions

• These were ineffective as they were targeted by the ‘Red Guards’

Mao’s contribution

• Encouraged these actions• Swimming the Yangzi stunt. What did it mean?• At plenary in 1966 he made a dramatic announcement

to downgrade Liu and promote Lin Biao to #2. Effectively making Lin Biao Mao’s successor.

• Lin responded by calls to the Red guards to show more ‘revolutionary fervour

• At the plenary Chen Boda accused Liu and Deng of spearheading the ‘erroneous line’

Downfall of Liu• Liu and Deng accused• 2 months given by my for ‘correction’• Then Mao had Liu and Deng formally dismissed as bourgeoisists

and soviet revisionists• Wall posters to denounce each• Both men beaten and brutalised• Liu died in 1973 due lack of proper medical treatment and Deng

suffered in a corrective labour camp before being rehabilitated• Deng’s son permanently crippled• The rising power of Jiang and Lin Biao. Mao withdrew to

Hangzhou

The Red Guard Terror

Background

• Red guards had been cultivated since the 1950’s• These were trained to acknowledge the

leadership and adulation of Mao• These students had been encouraged during

the 100 flowers and the anti rightist campaigns• It was to this group Mao turned to ‘rebuild’ his

nation

Antony Grey’s views

• Antony Grey a journalist imprisoned during the CR

• His observations of the CR phenomenon and the adulation of Mao

• Suggests that this is reminiscent of Chinese –society Emperor worship

4 OLDS

• Old ideas• Old Culture• Old knowledge • Old traditions• Mao said ‘to rebel is

justified’

Actions of the Red Guards• Mao’s words had a devastating effect• His ‘Red guards’ were now obeying a new Master: Mao• His words led to a level of destruction that would be repeated

once more: by Pol Pot• In China this led to violence and destruction on an

unprecedented scale• It led to brainwashing, terror tactics, airplane posture, and

name calling• Officially sanctioned by Xie Fuzhi minister for Public Security• 5 ‘bad’ categories: Landlords, rich peasants, reactionaries, bad

elements and rightists

The Backlash

• Fights break out among rival groups• PLA moved about China to proclaim Mao’s

superiority• It seemed as if Mao let the Red Guards wreak

havoc because he could use the PLA to pull back

Attempts to re shape Chinese Culture

• Part of the cult of the personality so reminiscent of Stalin and Hitler

• In China this was directed by Jiang Qing• Censorship and examining of works for

revolutionary purity

Aims•Removal of rivals•Purge CCP•Confirm peasant revolution•Continue revolution•Recreate Chinese Culture

Methods•Idealism•Terror•Coercion•Self criticism•Re-reducation

Victims• 4 olds • 5 bad elements

Targets4 olds

The InstrumentsThe Red Guards

The PLA

Results• Genocide• Class War• Cultural Revolution• Economic

Chaos

Michael Lynch’s Assessment• The Cultural Revolution was an act of madness but there

was method in it. The Red Guards were a highly visible and terrifying feature of the movement but they were essentially a front. Mao was using the apparent anarchy to enforce his will upon the CCP and the nation. It was a means of fulfilling his concept of 'continuing revolution', the belief that unless the Communist Party was regularly purified it would cease to be a revolutionary force and China would cease to be truly socialist. For ten years after 1966 the Cultural Revolution distorted China both internally and in its relations with the outside world.

Stuart Schram’s View

• Stuart Schram one of the earliest biographers of Mao

• Pro-Mao approach

• Throughout the last decade of his life, Mao strove to combine the need for leadership, and for a 'strong socialist state' in which he had always believed with the anti-elitism and encouragement of initiative from below which had constituted the justification and raison d'etre of the Cultural Revolution

Corrin Grasso and Kort

• CR dramatically and painfully changed peoples lives• Role swapping: people left the villages for cities and

from the cities were sent to the villages for re-reducation

• While there was benefit there was much that was very disruptive

• Efficiency was sacrificed for revolution. Well being of millions of young Chinese abandoned for the Revolution

• Education was profoundly affected