Mao's China 1949-1976 Topic 3

What was Deng's famous dictum?

It doesn't matter whether the cat is black or white, so long as it catches the mouse

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What reasons potentially could have motivated Mao to launch the Cultural Revolution?

Distrust of Liu and Deng who appeared to be taking the capitalist road; jealousy at the successes of their pragmatic policies; fear about what would happen to the revolution once he was gone

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What did Mao complain about?

That he was treated as a dead ancestor; shown respect but fundamentally ignored

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What personal slights angered Mao?

The Party propaganda department said that the phrase "thought of Mao" should not be used to target foreign audiences; Liu said that Mao Zedong Thought should not be said to rival Marxism-Leninism

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What did Mao fear that his Party had become?

Mao sought "permanent revolution", yet saw the Party becoming bureaucratised; Mao thought that he needed to replace the "new elite" in power

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What were the Ten Points?

Mao wanted to mobilise the masses to cleanse the Party of non-communist ideas; response was lukewarm

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What happened with the Ten Points?

Liu and Deng re-wrote Mao's document to de-emphasise class struggle; campaign failed, Mao blamed L+D's lack of commitment

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What was Hai Rui Dismissed from Office?

A play about the Emperor sacking a principled and loyal official; interpreted as an attack on Mao, writer Wu Han forced to resign

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What was the CRG?

A seven member sub-committee of the Politburo, dominated by loyal ideologues including Jiang Qing and Chen Boda

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What did they do?

Help ferment criticism of people in "top Party authority who were taking the capitalist road."

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Why did Mao swim the Yangtze?

In July 1966 Mao swam the dangerous Yangtze River; claiming to have swam nearly 9 miles in 65 minutes - Mao was as fit and strong as ever

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Why culturally were young people attracted to the Red Guards?

Chinese society is hierarchical, young people should obey elders as per Confucian thought

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Why were young people so loyal to Mao?

They were not old enough to remember the Famine, had been indoctrinated by Mao's cult of personality

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What reasons perhaps motivated young people to join the Red Guards?

Pragmatic careerism, students with no Party connections took opportunity to remove senior communists; peer pressure as they were groups of friends

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What were the children of the "Black Elements"?

Young people whose parents were not necessarily loyal to the Party; had the option to prove their loyalty, most violent and determined of the Red Guards

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What did the regime expect?

Total and unthinking commitment to Maoist thought; e.g. switchboard operators greeted callers with "Long Live Chairman Mao"

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What did Mao organise in Beijing in August 1966?

A massive rally, students came in from all over the country, arrived carrying their Little Red books

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What did the Red Guards do?

Attack anything that represented old, feudal culture

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What were some examples of the ridiculous heights that this reached?

Visitors to restaurants had to declare their class origins before they were served; simply owning a pet bird was enough to make one a potential target of violence

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What did the Red Guard target?

Old customs, old culture, old ideas and old habits

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What happened to the Confucius Temple in Shandong?

200 students and teachers from Beijing Normal University attacked it

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Why was the Qing era archway attacked?

Because it was under the Qing Dynasty that China was subjugated by the west with opium and gunboats

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Where was cultural destruction particularly fierce?

Tibet; where religious artefacts were particularly vulnerable; looted monasteries and defaced statues

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How was terror used?

Red Guards often subjected people to struggle meetings; particularly the intellectual Lao She

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What happened between rival groups of Red Guards?

Desperate to prove their worth, rival groups of Red Guards began to fight each other

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What evidence is there that the idea that Red Guards were motivated by ideological worth was dubious?

In Heilongjiang province, one former opponent of the GLF attempted to seize power as a way to prove his revolutionary commitment to Mao.

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Why could Mao not control the Red Guards?

He had done a lot to encourage them, it would undermine their reason for existing

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What was the February Adverse Current?

When Zhu De, former PLA commander; and Chen Yi, foreign minister, protested against Mao's encouragement of chaos, he accused them of flowing against the tide of revolutionary change

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What was Mao concerned about and why did he establish revolutionary committees?

Mao was concerned that the anarchy would challenge the legitimacy of the party

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What were revolutionary committees?

Merged the role of the party, the state and the army; Party remained dominant

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By 1968, what had Mao concluded?

That he had to end the anarchy; worried that if it continued other countries would try and take land from China

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What summed up Mao's new attitude?

When Red Guards complained that a "black hand" was trying to suppress them; Mao admitted "I am that black hand."

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Why did Mao dislike Liu Shaoqi?

His pragmatic policies were popular, there had been talk of hanging his portrait alongside Mao's on the gates of the Forbidden City

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How was Liu treated?

Kept alive by Jiang Qing as a living target, wife subjected to a struggle session in front of 300,000 people

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How was Deng treated?

Sent to a tractor factory in Jiangxi, his son fell from a window and was paralysed apparently while trying to escape torture

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Who attempted to position himself favourably within the Party?

Lin Biao, who published the Little Red Book that was given to all PLA soldiers; indoctrination assured that Mao could depend on the PLA's loyalty

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What happened to Party members?

Many were purged, 70-80% of party cadres were purged; only nine out of 23 Politburo members survived the purge

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Where were many of them sent?

May 7th cadre schools; intensive labour camps

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What happened to Peng Dehuai?

Brought back from exile, endured struggle meetings, beaten so hard by jailers that his ribs were broken

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What were three examples of the treatment of foreigners in China?

British Embassy set on fire; crowds trapped ambassadors in their cars for hours; Dutch women and children were denied exit visas to leave China

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What happened to American Sidney Rittenberg?

An avowed communist who criticised Liu Shaoqi on Chinese radio, in 1968 sent for re-education

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How did Mao wind down the CR?

Sent 18 million Red Guards to "learn from the peasants" in Up to the Mountains, Down to the Countryside

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How did this work out?

Peasants resented having to take in the idealistic youngsters, ones with Party connections got to go home quickly so others became bitter

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Where did Lin Biao end up?

In a good position to succeed the ageing Chairman, attempted to reinstate head of State which Mao viewed as a power move

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How did it all end for Lin Biao?

Fled Mao's security services, convinced he was about to be purged, plane crashed and he died

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Why did Mao decide to call Deng back from Jiangxi?

All his colleagues were ill, Mao desperately needed a successor, Deng's capitalist "crimes" were lesser than Liu's

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What was Deng's Four Modernisations policy?

Sought to use experts to advance defence, technology and agriculture

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What did Jiang Qing try to do?

Have Deng purged in the "Criticise Lin Biao, criticise Confucius" campaign. Deng remained her main rival in the Party

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What happened when Zhou Enlai died?

A massive outpouring of grief, Jiang attacked Deng as China's "New Khrushchev"

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What did the Gang of Four do to Deng?

Aware that he was popular, they had him banished to a pig farm in the south

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Who did Mao pick to succeed him?

Hua Guofeng, a little known bureaucrat who was amiable and could bridge the ideologues and pragmatists

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What did the Chinese people take to be a bad omen?

A massive earthquake hit northern China, killing a quarter of a million people; showed Mao's failure to eradicate superstition

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What was Hua Guofeng's "Two Whatevers" policy?

Uphold whatever policy decisions Chairman Mao made/follow whatever instructions Chairman Mao gave

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What happened to the Gang of Four?

On 6 October 1976, Hua ordered that the Gang of Four were arrested

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How did Jiang Qing defend herself?

"I was Chairman Mao's dog, I bit whomever he asked me to bite."

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What did Deng become?

China's paramount leader, although not Chairman, he was the most powerful man in China

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What did Deng declare?

"To be rich is glorious"

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What evidence was there that Mao was motivated only to remove Liu and Deng?

He reigned in the anarchy shortly after they had been purged.

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Mao's China 1949-1976 Topic 3

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