* The Comintern tried to dominate the CCP
* Mao launched a series of 'rectification of conduct' campaigns (A series of ferocious purges by which Mao removed any member of the CCP he suspected of opposing him.)
* Mao wrote his major political works setting out his revolutionary ideas.
* Victory over the GMD 1945-9
* after the defeat of Japan in WWII, Mao reinstated the intermittent civil war
* after 4 years of struggle, the Communists won completely.
* Mao's policy in the Countryside 1945-9
* The CCP forced the peasants to join the fight against Chiang Kaishek's Nationalists between 1945-9.
* Mao sent his son, Anying (Mao Zedong's eldest son who led a lonely and unhappy life in his father's shadow before dying in 1950, aged 28, in the Korean war), because he thought he needed toughening up.
* One incidence Anying was forced to witness includes the rounding up of peasants for five days in the cold winter and forcing them to denounce the landlords while some froze to death and making them chant “kill, kill, kill” while the landlords where punched to death.
* Anying recorded in his diary that the barbarity was worse than anything he had seen or heard of while studying soviet Communism in Stalin's USSR (1929—53, the Soviet Union was under the rule of Joseph Stalin).
* Anying described the party cadres as 'thugs' and 'the dregs of society'.
* The CCP did not lose total support of the peasants because the nationalists were a little worse.
It did not make sense for CCP to oppress the peasants as it came to power to 'liberate the people', so when the blame came from within the party, Mao blamed Liu Shaoqi (1898-1968, a gifted party organizer who was to become President of the PRC in 1959), who did as he was told and confessed to the party that he had let things slide until corrected by Mao.
Political Beliefs and Ideology and/or Guiding Principals
The Little Red Book, was a Marxist who later on developed his on ideologies known as Maoism.
Ideologies
1. The importance of political indoctrination (fighting for a political idea instead of the leaders) within the Red Army to form a cohesive unit. He also used the army to distribute propaganda and organize peasant associations. The army grew more popular and more people started to join it; its number increased from 22000 in 1936 to 90000 in 1945.
2. To establish a relationship between the Party and the people. To establish a stable relationship between the Army and the people through the "Three Rules and Eight Points of Behavior"
3. The development of a mobile warfare strategy against the nationalists; Defeated Chiang Kai-shek and the Nationalists in the Civil War 1945-9
Attitude toward war and violence
Believed a continuing revolution was the only solution for China to be as prosperous as it used to be.
Racial Attitudes and Nationalist Attitudes
Opposition: Perceived threats and method for overcoming opposition
Within the party, opposing his violent methods
* Mao invites Criticism
* Early in 1957: 'Let a hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred schools of thought contend'
* party members criticized CCP on the grounds of corruption, inefficiency and lack of realism. Leading figures were censured including mild criticism of Mao Zedong himself.
* Mao changes direction
* The Hundred Flowers campaign was abandoned and replaced by an anti-rightist movement (Rightist had no precise definition; it was applied to anyone Mao wanted to remove).
* The party was purged of those members who had been too free with their objections to government and party orders.
* Zhou Enlai, despite being one of Mao's most loyal supporters, was obliged to make a humiliating self-criticism in front of a large party gathering.
* If someone as respected as Zhou Enlai could be treated in this way, then nobody was safe.
Methods of Maintaining Power: Terror
Economic Policies: central planning;
Economic Policies: command economy;
Economic Policies: autocratic aims and reasons for these;
Economic Policies: agricultural and industrial policies and their emphases;
First five year plan (1952-1956)
Plan(aim) – improving the countries heavy industry followed the soviet model
Accomplishments
* boosted urbanization from 57 mill (1949) to 100 mill (1957)
* Yangzi rail and road bridge connecting north and south China
* heavy industrial output almost tripled
* light industrial output rose by 70%
* targets exceeded by 20%
* Agricultural investment was low
Great Leap Forward (1958-1961)
He convinced the Central Committee to cancel the abandon the second five year plan, completely abandoning the USSR methods, and follow a new plan, the Great Leap Forward, which set ambitious plans.
Plan(aim) – for China to be able to “walk on two legs” because during the first five year plan, the high emphasis was on heavy industry and light industries and agriculture were being ignored.
Mao believed that the will-power and mobilization of masses could deliver huge advances in industry and agriculture
Wanted to quadruple steel output (to 20 mill per annum)
* Between January – April 1958, he undertook a tour of China and returned to Beijing with great enthusiasm for a Great Leap Forward
* he believed to achieve what he wanted, the way to go would be to use labor-intensive projects
Outcomes
* 600,000 backyard furnaces, were built in 1958, meeting the target laid by the government – but was of poor quality – abandoned in 1959 – but met their aim of 20 mill tones of steel
* 1958 – 200 mill tones of grain, government published 260 mill tones, and set unrealistic aims for 1959
* Catastrophic famine – between 1959-1961, 38 mill people died
Failure
* far fetched
* unrealistic
* CCP was not ready to handle the size of the communes – local cadres
* bad weather 1959-1961, severe drought in the north-east, flood in the south
* CCP refused to admit the famine
* claimed 280 mill tones of grain production in 1959
* Mao created a climate of fear that no one, not even the people holding key positions dared to criticize him
* The GLF (Great Leap Forward) continued when Mao criticized by his old comrade Marshal Peng at the central committee meeting. The party backed Mao up for fear of going to a civil was, Peng was dismissed and the GLF continued.
* End of 1960, China suffering from its worst crisis
* took 5 years of agricultural production to recover fully from the damage inflicted from the GLF
Economic Policies: employment;
Industrial reforms caused unemployment since industries were
closed
Economic Policies: extent of success/failure of such policies
Social Policies: Use
of propaganda
Social aims
The Three and Five-Antis Campaign (1951-1952)
The three anti-campaign (1951) targeted corruption, waste, and elitism; directed at former GMD officials, and members of the CCP
officials required to go through self criticism and criticism, in the hands of their colleagues and the public
The five anti-campaign (1952) targeted bribery, tax evasion, fraud, theft of government property, and of economic secrets; directed against the business community
both cases – fines, prison sentences, and dismissal from official posts were common punishments
The Hundred Flowers Campaign
1956 – informed his government and party colleagues that it was now time to allow the freedom of expression for those who would want to give constructive criticism.
Aim – to avoid comparison between him and Stalin by encouraging criticism from the party and outside of the party as well.
Individuals and policies were complained against. There were mild criticisms on Mao himself
the hundred flowers campaign abandoned and replaced by anti-rightist movement, educated people had to submit themselves to “re-education”
High officials who criticized Mao ordered to make a humiliating self-criticism in front of a large party gathering.
Social Policies: Personality Cult
China became, probably even more than the USSR, a slogan-ridden society. The first and most important part of the society that Mao had targeted was the Peasants.
The party didn’t simply destroy religion in China, but they also destroyed cultural customs, traditions and practices like songs and dances depicting the old ways.
The peasants were now expected to join Maoism as their new faith.
Troupes of the Agitation Propaganda: the act of imposing propaganda ideas through entertainment. would go around the country into small peasant villages and put on shows and plays.
The messages of these plays and movies were always the same: that the old ways were crude and barbaric while the new Maoism would change all that and bring the peasantry out of its misery.
And usually, the plays would portray the old ways as evil landlords that heavily embezzled their peasants.
Mao then decided to keep religion in very few places to portray the idea of tolerance and thus let some of the churches continue under state control called Patriotic Churches.
The fact that Mao rejected religion in China, especially Christianity, angered the Vatican community and thus they refused to recognize patriotic churches as Christian churches.
The fact that some semblance of religion actually remained shows that even the Party knew how unrealistic a goal it was to eradicate religion completely from the Chinese community.
The persecution of religion was so severe within China that even outside groups and denominations urged the PRC to call it off.
Confucianism had also represented all that was wrong with the old Chinese ways and ‘Confucius and Co’ became a standard term of abuse directed at any individual or group that seemed to follow the old ways.
The most basic fear of the PRC was that religion with the help of Nationalism would encourage resistance and the breakaway tendencies in the Western provinces.
Therefore, since the PRC had gained power in 1949, it has stressed that independence will not be granted to any state or province.
The Party also feared the strategic position of Xinjiang as it shared borders with Pakistan, Tajikistan and Kazakhstan, all of them strongly Muslim. And in order to prevent the chance of this happening, Mao condemned all independence organizations in China’s border regions.
Social Policies: Women and different minority groups
Social Policies: Relation to peasantry
The Cultural Revolution led to deaths of people, and brought about a chaos in China that would take a long time to stabilize. Mao's aims were not met, for example, his concept of the revolution was not continued after his death. Mao employed strategies during the Cultural Revolution that led to disorder, violence, and loss of life of the people of China. Mao failed to design a viable and enduring alternative political order to replace the one he sought to overthrow, or to transform the political resources he had mobilized from a destructive force into a constructive one. Mao was unsuccessful in designing effective populist institutions to replace the Leninist Party-state. When looking in the agricultural and economical side of the Cultural Revolution it can be seen that, grain production rose in both 1966 and 19697, fell substantially in 1968, but then regained 1966 levels in 1969. Industrial output fell 13% in 1967 due to the disruption of the normal work of both factories and transportation lines. Industrial output in 1969 exceeded the level of 1966. By the beginning of 1971, industrial production had achieved full recovery. Therefore, the effects if the Cultural Revolution on the economy were limited.
The Cultural Revolution was a failure for Mao, and China, on the political and social reforms, while it barely affected the economy and industry, except for some times (1967).
* Ensuring Mao stays in power until he dies, eliminated all of his enemies
* his ideologies to stay after he died, which did not work out
* deaths
Mao employed strategies during the Cultural Revolution that led to disorder, violence, and loss of life of the people of China.
1st he expected party cadres to welcome criticism on their own leadership, while they tried to suppress or manipulate the mass movement in order to keep their positions. Mao failed to design a viable and enduring alternative political order to replace the one he sought to overthrow, or to transform the political resources he had mobilized from a destructive force into a constructive one. Mao was unsuccessful in designing effective populist institutions to replace the Leninist Party-state.
Mao believed that the Cultural Revolution was a timely, necessary, and appropriate device for ensuring that China would follow a truly revolutionary course after his death.
Grain production rose in both 1966 and 19697, fell rose substantially in 1968, but then regained 1966 levels in 1969. Industrial output fell some 13% in 1967 due to the disruption of the normal work of both factories and transportation lines. Industrial output in 1969 exceeded the level of 1966. By the beginning of 1971, industrial production had achieved full recovery. Therefore, the effects if the Cultural Revolution on the economy were limited in extent and duration.
The Chinese stage screen stopped presenting any work of art other than a handful of “revolutionary” films, operas, and ballets written under the sponsorship of Jiang Qing. The sale of traditional and foreign literature was halted and libraries and museums were closed.
Universities were shut down in the summer of 1966, and they were kept closed for the next four years. In the summer of 1970, the first new class of university students were recruited, and that process was limited to a fraction of China's institutions of higher learning.
The indictment in the trial of the gang of four claimed that 2600 people in literary and art circles, 142,000 cadres and teachers in units under the Ministry of Education, 53,000 scientists and technicians in research institutes, and 500 professors and associate professors in the medical colleges and institutes under the Ministry of Public Health were all “falsely charged and prosecuted”.
Party and government leaders were maltreated. The rate if political purge became 70-80% at the regional and provincial levels; four of six regional Party first secretaries and 23 of 29 provincial Party first secretaries fell victim of the Cultural Revolution. In the central organs of the Party, the purge rate was about 60-70%. 9 Politburo members out of 23, 4 secretariat members out 13, 54 CC members out of 167 only survived the cultural Revolution with their political position intact. Only about half of the fifteen vice-premiers and 48 cabinet ministers remained on the State Council at the end of the movement.
The total number of is not known certainly. 34,800 are said to have been persecuted to death. These include 3000 people in Hebei, 14000 in Yunnnan, 16000in Inner Mongolia, and more than 1000 in the PLA. Fox Butterfield attributes to a well-informed Chinese the estimate that 400000 people died during the Cultural Revolution. Extrapolations based on deaths in particular provinces, such as Fujian and Guangdong, are somewhat higher, ranging between 700,000 and 850,000. However, these numbers are based on provinces that that experienced higher than the average level of violence and disorder. It can be estimated that out of the population of around 135 million in 1967, about half a million Chinese died as a result of the Cultural Revolution.
Leadership at the central and provincial levels was divided among veteran party officials, regional and main force military commanders,, mass representatives, and lower-level cadres who had risen to power as a result of the Cultural Revolution.
The chaos of the Cultural Revolution officially ended in 1976. For the chaos to end, the Gang of Four had to be purged, and a reform program had to emerge, by Deng Xiaoping.
The first “enduring consequence” was a deep-seated factionalism infecting almost every government agency, industrial and commercial enterprise, and Party committee. Factional conflict was created by the struggle for power at the height of the Cultural Revolution, was preserved by the insistence on broad consensus and representation in the formation of revolutionary committees, and was strengthened by the rehabilitation of large numbers of victims of the Cultural Revolution during the mid-1970s.
The second “enduring consequence” that the events of the 1960s created a serious crisis of confidence among the young people of China. For more than 4 million high school and university students – many of them former Red Guards – who were relocated to the countryside in 1968 and 1969, the suspension of normal patterns of schooling meant a dramatic and often devastating change in their future prospects. Most of them were able to return home by the end of the 1970s, but most were unable to complete their education meant that their career paths and life chances had changed for the worse.
The Cultural Revolution, led the reform in the post-Mao period to have gone as far and fast as it did. It led to China's recovery, and once again, falling onto the hands of the military.
Social Policies: Religion
Chinese Communism being a form of Marxism saw religion to be a superstition that is deliberately used as a way of suppressing exploited peasants.
The peasants would work harder and harder thinking that the harder they work now the more they will be rewarded in heaven.
Moreover, since Mao was saying that religion is poison and since he was comparing it to the Nazis in Germany, it was obvious that Mao would not tolerate religion.
The attack on religion began almost immediately after the Communists gained power in China.
Mao’s official justification was that since the people were now in power, there was no reason for religion to exist.
Religious worship was then replaced by loyalty to the communist party and the state.
The state then attacked religion by: forcibly closing churches and then claiming their property or destroying it, physically abusing their ministers, and most of the propaganda methods used by the old regime were now changed into a means of condemning religion.
China then became, probably even more than the USSR, a slogan-ridden society.
The first and most important part of the society that Mao had targeted was the Peasants.
Even ancestor worship was prohibited in China as a superstition that was no longer acceptable
Ancestor worship is the practice of paying respect to the dead members of the family by a simple remembrance.
The party didn’t simply destroy religion in China, but they also destroyed cultural customs, traditions and practices like songs and dances depicting the old ways.
The peasants were now expected to join Maoism as their new faith.
Troupes of the Agitation Propaganda would go around the country into small peasant villages and put on shows and plays.
Agitation Propaganda: the act of imposing propaganda ideas through entertainment.
The messages of these plays and movies were always the same: that the old ways were crude and barbaric while the new Maoism would change all that and bring the peasantry out of its misery.
And usually, the plays would portray the old ways as evil landlords that heavily embezzled their peasants.
Mao then decided to keep religion in very few places to portray the idea of tolerance and thus let some of the churches continue under state control called Patriotic Churches.
The fact that Mao rejected religion in China, especially Christianity, angered the Vatican community and thus they refused to recognize patriotic churches as Christian churches.
The fact that some semblance of religion actually remained shows that even the Party knew how unrealistic a goal it was to eradicate religion completely from the Chinese community.
The persecution of religion was so severe within China that even outside groups and denominations urged the PRC to call it off.
Confucianism had also represented all that was wrong with the old Chinese ways and ‘Confucius and Co’ became a standard term of abuse directed at any individual or group that seemed to follow the old ways.
The most basic fear of the PRC was that religion with the help of Nationalism would encourage resistance and the breakaway tendencies in the Western provinces.
Therefore, since the PRC had gained power in 1949, it has stressed that independence will not be granted to any state or province.
The Party also feared the strategic position of Xingjian as it shared borders with Pakistan, Tajikistan and Kazakhstan, all of them strongly Muslim. And in order to prevent the chance of this happening, Mao condemned all independence organizations in China’s border regions.
Social Policies: Educational policies: Curriculum, focus of education
* The Party had begun with the goal of raising the educational levels of the Chinese people as by 1949, the majority of peasants were illiterate and Mao had envisioned that under communism, China would see a major spread of education among the people and a sharp decrease in illiteracy.
* Mao definitely kept his word as from 1949 to 1976 literacy rate rose by 50% of the entire population.
* There was also a language reform where in 1955; a new form of Mandarin was adopted.
* Mandarin didn’t have a consistent written form mainly because of two reasons: firstly because the pronunciation of mandarin is different from place to place and secondly because the language has instead of alphabets, ideograms.
* Ideograms are small pictures that are used in place of alphabets used to portray the meaning of the spoken word.
* The PRC then introduced a method of solving this problem by creating a form of written mandarin that became universalized around China.
* This resulted in Pinyin where all the words and pronunciations were given separate written symbols.
* Even though on figures, Mao had achieved his goal of reducing illiteracy, the real figures actually showed that in the rural areas, most of the population didn’t receive half as much as those in urban areas.
* An embarrassing fact about the Communist Party was that of all the members only 6% of them had had education after they were 16 years old.
* The main reason for the sharp decrease in qualified youngsters was the closure of schools and universities during the Red Guard phase of the Cultural Revolution causing 130 million people to stop attending school.
* This meant that the Chinese Cultural Revolution policy of students attacking their teachers backfired as it almost completely destroyed the curriculum and thus went against Mao’s goal of reducing illiteracy.
Social Policies: Educational policy: Youth Groups
combination of education and production – to provide peasants with minimal technological knowledge and basic literacy necessary for operation of local rural industries and the future introduction of modern agricultural techniques.
Half-work, half-study ideal - new rural school system - served immediate productive needs, seen as a means to realize the Maoist ideal for "the masses to make themselves masters of technology," lessen the need for specialized urban universities and schools, forestall the growth of a technological intelligentsia, and thus contribute to the realization of the Marxist goals of abolishing the distinctions between town and countryside and between mental and manual labor.
Programs based on the combination of education with productive labor described as ones "designed to foster students who are socialist- minded and cultured laborers and ensure their moral, Intellectual and physical development to produce new men of communism."
Classification based primarily on income and function. Education system a powerful way of promoting socioeconomic equality, or inequality. Educational policies of early 1960s promoted inequality.
Between 1949 and 1957 the number of primary school students increased from approximately 26,000,000 to 64,000,000, while university enrollment almost quadrupled, from 117,000 to. 441,000.
educational policies patterned on the Soviet policies
overwhelming emphasis on scientific and technological education to produce scientists to carry out the first five year plan. Thousands of graduates went to the USSR for advanced training in modern science and technology.
Great progress in the 1950s in expanding educational opportunities to a wider section of the population than under the old regime; opportunities still remained limited and unequal.
Stated purpose of the new educational system was to serve workers and peasants, the criterion of formal academic achievement for admission to middle schools and universities favored both the old and new privileged groups in Chinese society—the sons and daughters of the remnant urban bourgeoisie, higher Party and government officials/and the technological intelligentsia.
Educational opportunities unevenly distributed between cities and rural areas.
Universities located in the cities, urban oriented curricula, and most of their students drawn from urban classes.
The educational policies of the GLF were designed to correct these inequities through new programs of education, particularly in the countryside.
Variety of "half-work, half-study" programs – adult education for adult peasants "red and expert universities" part-time evening schools for peasants and workers were hastily established.
- In-accordance with the GLF goals of permitting "the masses to make themselves masters of science and technology" and eliminating the distinction between mental and manual labor.
- Regular six-year primary schools and three-year middle schools were expanded in the rural areas under the administration of the communes so as to better serve local needs and realize the Marxian goal of combining education with productive activities.
- half study half work schools abandoned, and primary and middle schools were removed from communal control and returned to the administration of Xian education departments.
Generally reflective of the heavy emphasis on scientific and technological education is the composition of college and university graduates for the year 1962. According to official data, only 7,000, or4 percent, of the 170,000 graduates majored in the social sciences and humanities; 59,000 of the 1962 graduates were engineers; 11,000 were graduates in science; 20,000 in agriculture and forestry; 17,000 in medicine arid public health; and the remaining 56,000 were graduates of teachers' or normal colleges, where a similar technological orientation was present, as it was in the primary and middle schools.
Of the 170,000 graduates in1962, only 1,000 passed examinations to become research students (graduate students). Prior to1949, it might be noted, there was not a single graduate school in China, save for a small number of medical and professional schools. Postgraduate education developed only very slowly after 1949, but on a high and rigorous academic level. Most Chinese students who went on for postgraduate study did so in the Soviet Union, and to a lesser extent in the Eastern European countries.
In 1965 it was reported that 30,000,000 primary school-aged children, mostly in the rural areas, were not receiving formal education.
Educational resources were concentrated in the urban areas, not only in middle and high schools, but also in primary schools.
Entrance exams and a conventional grading system, the enforcement of rigid age limits for attendance, and the imposition of tuition fees severely limited educational opportunities for the urban poor and even more so for rural youth.
In the early 1960s, the rural and part time schools declined, while urban preparatory schools designed for the Children of Party and government officials expanded.
Mao was a sever critic of the educational system before 1966. In 1964, he concluded that “the present method of education ruins talent, and ruins youth”.
He advocated that a new system based on 'the union of education and productive power” replace the old learning from a book and not life.
The most positive feature, of the Maoist policies was the expansion of education in the rural areas. State aid to relatively well-off urban districts was reduced, and funds were redirected to the poorer areas, primarily in the countryside.
During the "cultural revolution decade" (1966-76) there was a dramatic increase in primary and secondary enrollments in the countryside, with primary enrollments increasing from about 116,000,000 to 150,000,000 over the decade and secondary enrollments (including the addition of two-year junior middle school classes to village primary schools) rising from 15,000,000 to 58,000,000.
The cultural revolution called for local community control of the school system. Primary schools were generally to be managed by production brigades and middle schools by communes, with the aim of providing peasants a greater voice in selecting teachers and teaching materials, in recommending students for admission to middle schools and universities, and in refashioning the curriculum to meet particular local needs.
Tuition fees, entrance examinations, and age limits on student attendance were abolished. Many of the spare-time and work- study educational programs introduced during the Great Leap Forward were revived. Changes in admissions criteria and curricula in middle schools and universities enhanced opportunities in higher education for rural youth.
GENERAL: Successes and Failures
Ten most important events/facts about the ruler (facts that should be in most any essay)
1. One of the major successes of Mao’s revolutionary strategy was his flexibility and identifying what worked in any specific place at any specific time.
2. Mao’s flexibility in his rise to power made him very successful (shifting policies and positions in order to appeal to the largest base, being willing to abandon key places to survive—Jiangxi in 1934 and Yanan in 1947) By 1927
3. 2 million peasants had joined the Peasant Associations
