1. China Under Communist Rule The Cultural Revolution, 1966-1969
MAO’S RED CHINA
China Under Communist Rule
The Cultural Revolution,
In 1966, Mao initiated the Cultural Revolution, which caused the greatest disorder in modern Chinese history. Although Mao intended a huge upheaval, it seems clear that events got too far out of the Party’s control, even for Mao’s liking, and by 1969 the worst of the disruption was halted by action by the CCP and PLA. However, the Cultural Revolution did not end until Mao’s death in 1976.

2. WHICH ROAD TO FOLLOW? Earl 1960s: 2 Paths? Moderates vs Mao
1962: Socialist Education Movement
Education Movement to “Clean Up” China
Party Resistance to Mao’s Campaign
From 1962 to 1966, the leaders of the Communist Party argued with one another about which road they should follow in developing China. The moderates, led by Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping, wanted to bring about economic recovery after the disaterous results of the Great Leap Forward program. The CCP reverted back to a highly centralized economic planning that returned economic planning to officials in the central bureaucracy. The moderates wanted to introduce more incentives to get the peasants in the communes to work hard. These incentives included letting the peasants have private plots of land and to pay them wages according to how much work they did (most arable land remained under the control of the communes). The moderates also believed in going back to the ideas of the 1st 5-Year Plan to build up industry according to Russian lines. To manage industry more efficiently, they wanted to create a new class of skilled managers.Wage differentials for skilled and unskilled workers were re-introduced. 25 million unemployed urban workers were forced to move back to the countryside.
Mao Zedong totally opposed the policies of the moderates. He said they were taking the “capitalist road” and that they were allowing people to forget the original aims of the Communist party. In 1962, Mao launched the “Socialist Education Movement” to get people back on the right road to Communism. This was an attempt to re-educate the masses politically and bring about a fundamental change in the way the Chinese masses saw the world so that they took on new socialist attitudes. Mao intended that CCP officials should undergo self-criticism and subject themselves to criticism by the masses. He also launched a “Four Clean-Ups Campaign” to get rid of corruption and bad management in the Party and to discourage people who showed signs of ‘capitalist’ behavior - for example, peasants who spent more time on their private plots than on the communal land.
Throughout , Deng and Liu obstructed Mao’s attempt to mobilize the masses. They issued directions that fundamentally altered the Socialist Education Movement; rather than mass mobilization, the CCP leadership organized work teams to go into schools and factories in order to educate the people and with the objective of identifying and removing corrupt local officials. It would take until Mao until 1966 to get a mass campaign off the ground; this became known as the “Cultural Revolution”.

3. DEVELOPING HIS POWER BASE - SUPPORT FOR MAO
Mao’s Pleas to Deaf Ears
Support from the Military
The Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong” The Little Red Book
Mao Launches the Attack Against Reactionaries - The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution
From 1962 to 1966 Mao continually urged the Party to keep in touch with the ordinary people of China and to avoid the ‘capitalist road’. For much of his time, his advice fell on deaf ears.
In 1965 he gained powerful support from Lin Biao, the Minister of Defense ( he became Minister in 1959). In that year. Lin Biao abolished all ranks in the People’s Liberation Army, thus making all soldiers equal. Every dolsider was given a copy of a newly published book, ‘Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong’, known from its size and cover as the Little Red Book of Mao, and were ordered to study it. Although nobody in the government supported his ideas, Mao now had the support of the four million strong People’s Liberation Army. The Little Red Book became required daily study for the PLA and eventually for the population as a whole, who were encouraged to read it as their Bible. With the backing of Lin Biao and the PLA, Mao was strong enough to launch a new super-campaign against capitalists and any other reactionaries who stood in the way of true Communism. The campaign began in 1966 and was known as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.

4. THE RED GUARDS Cultural Revolution’s Impact on School Children
Formation of the RED GUARD
Red Guards Campaign Against the
“4 Olds”
Use of Violence
The Cultural Revolution began among schoolchildren and students in Beijing. In the summer of 1966, growing unrest began fomenting in universities as the struggle between radical Maoists and pragmatists intensified. Liu Shaoqi sent work teams into schools and universities to try and prevent the radicals using them to cause disruption. However, this time Mao’s efforts to launch a radical mass campaign would not be thwarted. Students in Beijing formed into military groups, which they called the Red Guards to carry out Mao’s will. At the same time, schools and colleges were shut down for 6 months so that the curriculum could be re-written to make young people more aware of Communist ideas. This meant that the Red Guards had plenty of time to give to political activities. Their first aim was to get rid of all ‘capitalist’ and ‘bourgeois’ influences in schools and in colleges.
The Red Guards began with a ‘Four Olds’ campaign against old ideas, old culture, old customs, and old habits. They expressed their criticisms in hundreds of thousands of wall posters. They marched through Beijing in monster parades numbering over a million at a time. And they attacked anything which seemed to them ‘capitalist’ or ‘bourgeois’.
Before long, the Red Guards were using violence to achieve their aims. They shaved off the hair of girls with Western styles and ripped off Western-style clothes. They smashed the windows of shops selling cosmetics, pets, jazz records, chess sets, fur coats, and other ‘bourgeois’ luxuries. They burnt down bookshops and libraries, and closed museums and art galleries, churches, temples, and theaters. They forbade couples to hold hands in public. They renamed places that had ‘reactionary names’ so that the Square of Heavenly Peace where they held their parades became “East Wind Square” and Beijing became known as “The East is Red”

5. TO REBEL IS JUSTIFIED
Mao Encourages Red Guards - Bombard the CCP Headquarters!
PLA Supported Red Guards
Red Guards Run Wild
Murders, Torture, Public Humiliation
Mao Zedong encouraged the Red Guards and all of their activities, and in August 1966 he publicly expressed support for the red Guard movement in Beijing, which led to Red Guard units being formed throughout the whole country. Mao expressed to the red Guard that ‘To rebel is justified” and they were given all the help they needed in their campaign against reactionaries. In August, Mao, in a poster, called on students to ‘bombard the CCP headquarters - to seek out and destroy all those taking the ‘capitalist road’ within the CCP. The result was a revolutionary enthusiasm that seemed spontaneous, though was orchestrated to a considerable extent from above.
The Red Guards were given the right to travel free on the Chinese railways so that they could visit places connected with the Long March or take part in monster rallies in Beijing. The police were under orders not to oppose them and the PLA often gave them enthusiastic support.
As a result, the Red Guards ran wild. By 1967, law and order had broken down in many parts of China. For much of 1967 the country was in a state of virtual civil war as Red Guards fought against ‘reactionaries’ and then, as they argued amongst themselves, with each other. In all, it is believed that they killed more than 400,000 people. Countless thousands more were beaten up, humiliated, tortured and imprisoned.

6. THE CULT OF MAO Mao Take Control
The Little Red Book Everywhere…Image Everywhere
Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping Expelled, Liu Imprisoned
Schools Re-Opened
PLA Stops Red Guards from Using Violence…Mao Tries to Stop Them
By 1969, Order Restored
Throughout the Cultural Revolution, the Red Guards followed every word of Mao. Much of their time was spent reading and memorizing the Little Red book, 740 million copies of which were printed between 1966 and Pictures, busts and statues of Mao were put up in every street and workplace. Many people bowed before his picture after getting up in the morning and before getting into bed at night.
II. Just as much as they worshipped Mao, they hated Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping, the leading moderates in the government. Both were expelled from the Party and Liu was imprisoned, dying in September 1969.
III. In September 1967, Mao attempted to restore order in China. Schools and colleges reopened and called on young people to return to their studies. In areas where the Red Guard were using violence, the PLA stepped in to disarm and disband them. To get rid of the millions of Red Guards who now occupied the cities, Mao encouraged them to go down into the countryside to re-educate themselves by learning from the peasants. In all, some 18 million young people went down to the countryside. And the restore order where the government had broken down, the PLA set up Revolutionary Committees consisting of soldiers, peasants and Red Guards.
IV. By 1969, order had been restored in most areas and the Cultural Revolution was over. The cost to China had been very high. Young people had missed s much of their education that, by 1981, the government estimated that around 120 million people under the age of 45 could not read or write. Industrial output fell drastically. Farming was severely disrupted. For the second time in 10 years, China had suffered ‘chaos on a grand scale’ under ma Zedong’s leadership.

8. WHAT WERE MAO’S MOTIVES FOR THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION?
Re-asserting Authority in the CCP
Move Against the Bureaucratization of the Party
Make a Change Before His Death
Restore the CCP’s Revolutionary Zeal
So, what were Mao’s motives for the Cultural Revolution? There are many possible motives, including:
He sought to reassert his authority over the CCP, ending Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xioaping’s influence.
He was desperate to stop the CCP’s movement towards developing an elite of officials and managers, which was something that he criticized the USSR for.
He wanted to change cultural values and sought to attack ‘bourgeois’ western and traditional Chinese values. Was this Mao’s last revolution? At the start of the Cultural Revolution, Mao was 73 years old and conscious of his own mortality. The movement was possibly a final opportunity to seek to remold the mentality and outlook of the Chinese people.
Mao intended to restore the CCP’s revolutionary zeal. Mao was looking to provide China’s younger generation with a revolutionary challenge. They were China’s future but had nor bee through the crucible of the Long March and Civil War.

9. WHY DID MAO RETREAT FROM THE RADICALISM?
Purges and Violence Went Too Far?
Emergence of Shanghai People’s Commune Dangerous
Chaos at an Inappropriate Time?
Purges to Extend to PLA?
The purges and violence probably went much further than Mao had intended.
In a democratic workers’ movement emerged in Shanghai, which set up the People’s Commune. Mao and other party leaders became worried that China was on the verge of civil war. Evidence of this was when thousands were killed in Wuzhou in southern China in clashes between rival Red Guard units. The emergence of the Shanghai People’s Commune may have threatened the CCP’s monopoly of power in China, which is something Mao would never have accepted.
The Cultural Revolution was causing chaos, at a time when the CCP leadership was increasingly worried by the prospect of war with the USSR.
A number of military commanders, though not Lin Biao, became worried that the purges of the Cultural Revolution might be extended to the PLA.

10. WHAT WERE THE RESULTS OF THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION?
Revisionists (Moderates) Defeated
Cult of Mao Achieved
Great Human Loss of Intellectuals
Massive Migration to the Countryside
Re-education Campaigns
Education Massively Disrupted
China Became Further Isolated
The defeat of Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping and the ‘revisionists’. Deng would be rehabilitated in 1973 and helped shape Chinas economic policies from then on.
The cult of Mao reached its zenith. In 1969, a new constitution defined Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought as the guiding line of the CCP.
About 500,000 people died (though some estimates are in the millions). The main victims were intellectuals and officials, not peasants as in the Great Leap Forward. Prison Camp system was expanded.
The period saw a massive transfer of million urban inhabitants to the countryside.
‘May 7th Schools’ were set up to re-educate party officials each year in Maoist thought and by working in the fields.
Education, particularly higher education, was disastrously disrupted. University admission was based on political consciousness rather than academic qualifications.
Chinese literature and art became sterile, as Jiang Qing (Mao’s wife, who was part of a group known as the Shanghai Forum) imposed strict controls on what could be displayed, performed, and published. The Red Guards destroyed massive numbers of ancient Chinese art, including Buddhist temples.
China became increasingly isolated internationally. Westerners were attacked in China and in August 1967 the British Embassy was sacked by a mob.
Mao saw the Cultural Revolution over by 1970, having defeated his revisionist opponents. However, the period of Mao indoctrination and domination, which the Cultural Revolution represents most of all, did not end until 1976 when he died.