1. Enacting the Maoist Vision

2. Maoist Concerns 100 Flowers Campaign (1956-7) 百花運動
Hungarian Uprising (1956), Khrushchev denounces Stalin
Anti-Rightist Campaign (1957) 反右派運動

3. 100 Flowers Campaign (1956-7) 百花運動
Encourage Criticism from Non-party Intellectuals
Purpose to gather support for modernization
Intellectuals call “government workers”

4. Khrushchev Denounces Stalin “Cult of Personality” February 1956
Mao see personal threat
Disputes over aid, economic and nuclear
Disagree over peaceful co- existence
Later border clashes

5. Hungarian Uprising October 23-November 4, 1956
Popular uprising
Molotov Cocktail
Crushed by Soviet Army

6. Anti-Rightist Campaign (1957) 反右派運動
Reaction to 100 Flowers
Ten Percent Rightists
Reform through labor

7. Anti-Rightist Campaign (1957) 反右派運動

8. Maoist Alternative and Failure
Great Leap Forward ( )
Theory: Permanent Revolution
Communal dining
Backyard Furnaces
Result: Starvation and chaos
Lushan Conference 1959
Mao steps down from government
Peng Dehuai criticized

9. Communes: Like a Gigantic Dragon, Awe-inspiring

10. Path to People’s Communes
Mao speech in July 1955
Peasants, “tornado” like revolutionary force
Countryside repository of revolutionary energy
Mao critical of Party leadership, dependent on Soviet Model
Agricultural Cooperatives, Summer 1956
90% of Rural Households
Mao emboldened to innovate

11. Mass Mobilization

12. Communal Dining Remake Family, Liberate Women

13. People’s Communes Are Good (人民公社好)

14. Great Leap Forward Political Rationale
Permanent Revolution
Rapid social and ideological transformation
Prevent backsliding into capitalism
Build communist social organization
Progress results from struggle
Begin transition from socialism to communism

15. Great Leap Forward Economic Rationale
Economic problems
Unemployment in cities, underemployment in countryside
Control rural-urban migration, labor intensive industry in rural areas
Lack of foreign investment, most rely on agriculture
Avoid exploitation of countryside for cities
Need technological revolution without technological elite (red vs. expert dilemma)
Break dependency of Soviet technician, unleash Chinese creativity

16. “Backyard Furnaces” Technological Solution?

17. Mass Campaigns to Eradicate Four Pests

18. Great Leap Forward
Increase industrial and agricultural productivity
“More, faster, better, and cheaper”
Ideological exhortations replace material incentives
Three years of suffering, 1000 years of communist happiness
Mass mobilization
Longer hours
Larger and larger communes April 1958
“Walking on two legs”
Modern industry and indigenous technology

19. The Future

20. Great Leap Disasters Food shortages and starvation, Autumn 1958
Administrative Chaos
90% of peasantry “formally” in communes
Average 5000 families
Physical exhaustion
Agricultural and industry
Backyard furnaces
Inferior output, consumed useful resources
Food shortages and starvation, Autumn 1958
30-40 million deaths?

21. Aftermath of Great Leap Forward
Causes of Starvations
Inflated statistics
Poor storage of grain
Government control of supply
Grain shipments needed for export

22. Lushan Conference, August 1959
Peng Dehuai sent personal letter to Mao
Points out problems of Great Leap
Mao steps down from government
Acknowledge Problems of Great Leap
Blame local party, bad weather, Soviet pull out
Peng Dehuai Removed as Defense Minister
Criticized for closeness to Soviet Unions
Lin Biao, Replaces Peng as Defense Minister

23. Economic Recovery Liu Shaoqi, Head of State
Deng Xiaoping Secretary-General
Drastically Downsize communes
Allow private plots
Free markets in cities
Attack corruption

24. Socialist Education Campaign 1963 (社会主义教育运动)
Mao Proposed Yan’an-style rectification
Serious threat of “revisionism,” return of capitalism
Last effort to use the Party to implement radical vision
Mao wanted mass mobilization to clean up:
Politics, economy, organization, and ideology
Party leadership oppose grass roots movement but endorse goals
Use Mao’s rhetoric but blunt radical program
Party work teams, not mass movement