1. Aim: How should we remember the Great Leap Forward and Chinese Cultural Revolution?

2. I Chinese Civil War
1945 Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong came to a truce after WWII, but civil war renewed in The Communists did not hold any major cities after WWII, but had a superior military organization, and large stocks of weapons seized from Japanese supplies in Manchuria. In Oct 1949 Mao Zedong established of the People’s Republic of China. Chiang and his forces fled to Taiwan. The Nationalist Government of Chiang Kai-shek continued to receive U.S. support.

3. Military Organization
Mao Zedong (CCP)
VS.
Chiang Kai-Shek (KMT)
Communists
Common Name
Nationalists
Northern China
Area Controlled
Southern China
USSR
Foreign Support US
Communism
Domestic Policy
Capitalism
Peasantry
Public Support
Landowners
Guerilla warfare
Military Organization
Not as effective

4. Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial, Taipei Taiwan

5. II The Great Leap Forward 1958 - 1961
The Great Leap Forward was a push by Mao Zedong to change China from an agrarian to a modern, industrialized society in just 5 years , China’s small farmers, their small plots of land, and their limited draught animals, tools, and machinery were forcibly brought together into larger and, presumably, more efficient cooperatives. The Great Leap Forward was supposed to be a 5-year plan (similar to Stalin’s 5 Year Plans), but it was called off after just 3 years, which lead to 20 to 43 million deaths.

6. Great Leap Forward Continued…
Mao encouraged the establishment of small backyard steel furnaces in every commune and in each urban neighborhood. Peasants were urged to produce steel out of scrap metal. To fuel the furnaces the local environment was stripped of trees and wood taken from houses. Pots, pans, and other metal artifacts were used to supply the "scrap" for the furnaces. Many male farmers, factory, school, and hospital workers were diverted to help the iron production. The steel output was of poor quality, and due to the diversion of farmers from farming, there were mass food shortages.

7. Backyard Furnace and Starving Children During the “Great Leap Forward”

8. Mao’s Great Leap Forward Continued…
“The worst catastrophe in China’s history, and one of the worst anywhere, was the Great Famine of 1958 to 1962, and to this day the ruling Communist Party has not fully acknowledged the degree to which it was a direct result of the forcible herding of villagers into communes under the “Great Leap Forward” that Mao Zedong launched in In all, the records I studied suggest that the Great Leap Forward was responsible for at least 45 million deaths. Between 2 and 3 million of these victims were tortured to death or summarily executed, often for the slightest infraction… Punishments for the least violations included mutilation and forcing people to eat excrement. One report dated Nov. 30, 1960 tells how a man named Wang Ziyou had one of his ears chopped off, his legs tied up with iron wire and a 10-kilogram stone dropped on his back before he was branded with a sizzling tool. His crime: digging up a potato...” By FRANK DIKÖTTER Published: December 15, 2010 NY Times

9. III Mao’s Cultural Revolution 1966 - 1976
A) Believing that current Communist leaders were taking China and the Communist Party in the wrong direction, Mao called on the nation’s youth to purge the “impure” elements of Chinese society. B) Mao launched the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in August He shut down the nation’s schools, calling for a massive youth mobilization to take current party leaders to task for their embrace of bourgeois values and lack of revolutionary spirit. The students formed paramilitary groups called the Red Guards and attacked and harassed members of China’s elderly and intellectual population. C) Defense Minister Lin Biao saw that the now-famous "Little Red Book" of Mao's quotations was printed and distributed by the millions. D) , President Liu Shaoqi and other Communist leaders were removed from power. (Liu died in prison in 1969.) With different factions of the Red Guard movement battling for dominance, many Chinese cities reached the brink of anarchy by September 1967, when Mao had Lin Bioa send troops to restore order. The Chinese economy plummeted, with industrial production for 1968 dropping 12 percent below that of 1966.

10. Red Guards
Mao gave the Red Guards free rein to confiscate private property, destroy national treasures and torture whoever they labelled “counter-revolutionaries”. Official record shows they murdered 1,772 people in Beijing alone in August and September 1966.

11. Cultural Revolution Continued…
E) In 1969, Lin was designated Mao’s successor. He used the excuse of border clashes with Soviet troops to institute martial law. Disturbed by Lin’s premature power grab, Mao maneuvered against him with the help of Zhou Enlai, China’s premier, splitting the ranks of power. September 1971, Lin died in an airplane crash in Mongolia, allegedly attempting to escape to the USSR. Members of his military command were purged, and Zhou took over greater control of the government. F) The capture of the Gang of Four (top Chinese Communist Party leaders) Oct 6, 1976, is often seen as the end of the Cultural Revolution.
Lin Biao 1907 – 1971
“One word from Chairman Mao is worth ten thousand from others. His every statement is truth. We must carry out those we that understand as well as those we don't.”
Biao proposed The 4 Olds “old ideas, culture, customs and habit of the exploiting classes” need to be destroyed.

12. Mao’s Little Red Book
A man is holding a “Little Red Book”; a book of selected statements from speeches and writings by Mao. Paramilitary "Red Guards” ensured every Chinese person carried one and could quote from it.
“A revolution is not a dinner party, or painting a picture, it cannot be leisurely, gentle, kind, courteous, and restrained. A revolution is an act of violence by which one class overthrows another.”
“Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”
“Just because we have won a victory, we must never relax our vigilance (watchfulness) against the mad plots of revenge by the imperialist.”

16. Key Vocabulary
Chiang Kai-Shek Cultural Revolution Kuomintang (Chinese Nationalist Party), also called KMT Little Red Book Lin Biao Mao Zedong New Life Movement Taiwan