Backnotes

Mao’s Economic Policies + Great The Cultural Revolution 

  1. The August Rally, 1966
  • Aug 18, Tiananmen Square in Beijing full of 1 mil people
    • Cheered Mao whenever he appeared
      • Head of PLA Lin Bao appealed to crowd to destroy revisionism by attacking the ‘4 olds’
        • Old thoughts
        • Old Habits
        • Old Culture
        • Old customs

Response of the Young

  • Mao invited young Chinese join in destruction of obsolete people + values
    • Young demonstrators saw Mao as different from the government.
      • Problems caused by incompetent revisonist officals
        • Denying young opportunity + career prospects 
      • Sought to reform China by removing revisionists + bureaucrats 

The Red Guards

  • Formed by head of secret police Kang Sheng to operate as terror squads
    • Created to destroy ‘four olds’
    • Made up mostly of teens + men and women
    • Unhindered by police, began attacking people and property
      • Dragged teachers/lecturers from classrooms
        • Denounced as reactionaries for perpetuating myths of the past
      • Commandeered public transport, took over radio/tv stations
      • Broke into homes looking for signs of decadence
        • Anything western
      • Vandalised temples, museums and libraries
      • Writers and artists branded as ‘class enemies’
        • Publicly paraded with signs around necks
        • Forced to confess to abusing positions of privilege
    • Arrested prominent CCP leaders Lio Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping
      • Accused of being reactionary and revisionist 
      • Forced into struggle meetings
        • Both imprisoned in labour camps to be ‘re-educated’
        • Deng survived, Liu dies 1973
  • Mao withdrew from public view, left CR to be run by Lin Bao + Central Cultural Revolution Group
    • Staffed by hardline supporters of Mao, including his wife Jiang Qing
      • Gang of Four
    • Prov. names + locations of officials/Party member viewed as against Mao 
  • By 1968, appeared Cult. Rev had gone too far
    • Industrial prod. Halted 
    • Schools and unis closed 
    • Red Guards clashing with each other + groups of other factory workers 
    • CCRG decided Red Guards no longer necessary, replaced with PLA
      • Mao believed pl of privilege should be learned via. Physical labourt 
      • Called on them to live among peasants to deepen understanding of revolution
        • Up to the mountains and down to the villages campaign 
        • 12 mil young people moved to countryside 
        • Unprep. For hard reality of peasant life
          • Homesickness and starvation widespread
          • Caused many to question truth of Maoist propaganda

Cleansing the ranks campaign 

  • Gang of 4 formed committees throughout china to eradicate all signs of capitalism
    • Conducted brutally by PLA
      • Porv. great opportunities to eliminate opponents
        • Created many falsified cases
        • Use of systematic tourture, trial by suspicion, conviction by forced confessions, mass killings
        • Over 30 mil peopled subjected to ‘struggle sessions’ tourture 
        • Death toll of over 500,000
  • Cultural Rev. slowed down from 1970
    • Despite inability to criticize Mao, doubts growing within Party
    • Persutions less extreme 
    • Ended with Mao in 1976

China’s International relations under Mao (Pg. 157-162)

  • Mao thought that international relations must always strengthen and never weaken his authoritarian control of China
  • PRC formed in 1949 just at start of Cold War
    • China pressure to lean towards other comm. Countries
    • PRC and USSR had a very tense relationship
  1. Mao’s China and the Soviet Union 
  • Based on mutual suspicion

Ideological Differences

  • Mao regarded Marxisim as a regeneration of China as a great nation
    • It was vital, according to Mao, that Chinese rev. Interpet the Marxist prog. In their own terms 
    • Rev. outside of china should not dictate the Chinese people
  • Differences between the meaning of marxism plagued relationship between Stalin and Mao starting in the 1920s
    • Stalin hated Mao’s Sino-Centric approach
      • Stalian claimed that true rev. had to urban based 
    • Mao found it hard to accept USSR as international voice of Marxism
      • Thought Stalin wanted a dis-united China leaving USSR the dominant force in Asia

 Mao and Stalins clash of personalities 

  • Mao’s visit to USSR in 1950s confirmed his about Stalin’s attitude towards the PRC
    • Mao offended by Stalins ‘superior air’ 
  • Biographers suggested that they disliked each other as people

Sino-Soviet Treaty, 1950 

  • Soon after treaty signed Mao realized that the USSR intended on exploiting this agreement 
  • Stalin had struck a hard bargain 
  • Under the terms of the treaty
    • The $300 million Soviet had to be repaid in full with high interest 
    • The upkeep of 10,000 Soviet economic and military advisors who went to China had to be paid for by the PRC 
  • Maos resentment of treaty put Sino-Soviet relationship under great stress
    • Intensified by the Korean War
      • Stalin played on Mao’s fear of an anti-communist takeover of Asia by the USA to join the war
        • Stalin refused to let USSR to enter in the war 

The PRC’s dependence on the Soviet Union

  • As Mao judged it the young PRC was badly in need of resources
    • Internally isolated as a communist state the only other ally with enough economic power was the USSR
  • Remained the case until the 1960s when China was able to launch its own nuclear research program

China and de-Stalinization 

  • There were expectations that after Stalin’s death in ‘53 relations would ease
    • In Feb ‘56 Khrushchev staggered the communist world by launching an attack on Stalin’s record
    • A change that alarmed Mao was Stalins ‘cult of personality’
      • Mao thought that the denunciation of cult of personality criticized his own leadership style
      • Fear that de-Stalinization might undermine his rule of China made Mao an opponent of Khrushchev 

Mao’s concerns over Soviet revisionism and detente 

  • Mao equally offended by the Soviets weakening attitude towards the West
    • Moscow abandoned the idea that there would be a violent conflict where comm. Would win defeating capitalism
    • Mao still believed this would happen and that all revs. Should prep for it 

Mao’s deeping distrust of the Soviet Union

  • In ‘57 Khrushchev worried by the discontent among Marxist nations organised a conference between the worlds communsit parties
    • Mao attended and declared that Moscow’s approach to the west was too accommodating
      • He wanted USSR to return to ‘the true Marxsit-Leninst Path’ 
      • This only left China further isolated internationally

Deterioration Sino-Soviet Relations

  • Further deteriorated by USSRs reaction to the Great Leap forward
    • Mao was enraged that the USSR viewed his attempt to restructure the Chinese economy. as a total failure
    • Also enraged by his chief of staff passing on information about the famine to Moscow 
  • Mutual distrust became so profound that relations were served in 1961 after the Chinese delegation walked out of a Moscow congress
    • Mao claimed that a speech by Khrushchev was to intentionally offend the PRC
  • Territorial disputes increased tension
    • Throughout the 60s and 70s there were frequent disputes along the Sino-Soviet border 

Sino-Indian War, 1962

  • Mao annoyed by Soviet attitudes during the Sino-Indian War
    • USSR formerly neutral however began providing planes and diplomatic support
    • Mao rejected the USSRs forgein ministers offers to act as a mediator between India and China as another attempt by the USSR to undermine Chinese power 
  1. Mao’s response to the Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962
  • CMC prov. Mao to criticise USSRs claim to global leadership
  • Criticised on 2 counts
    • Its original ‘adventurism’ in sitting detectable warheads in Cuba
    • Its subsequent ‘capitulationism’ in abjectly bowing to the American threat to realitate 
  • Mao did not congratulate Kennedy and Khrushchev on their statesmanship unlike rest of international community
    • Dismissed idea of cooperation as Khrushchev was seen as ‘betraying the revolution by giving into threats by the USA’
    • Soviet reply was to accuse the PRC of total responsibility 
    • This raised the question of who was the true global comm. Leader China or the USSR 

The Nuclear Issue

  • The controversy over weather coexistence was compatible with Marxist-Lenisim was at its fierceness dispute over the Test Ban Treaty of 1963
    • Mao dismissed it as another betrayal of the USSRs revolutionary role
      • The PRC wanted to see the East and West destroy themselves in nuclear war leaving China free to dominate what was left
      • The irony in Khrushchev’s speech was that Mao was only a year away from developing its own nuclear weapon
    • Deteriorating relation lead to the Soviets withdrawing their scientists in ‘59
      • Underterd the PRC detonated its first nuclear weapon in 1964
        • China officially elevated to superpower after detonating a H-bomb in in 1967
      • China’s emergence as a nuclear power frighted the international community 

Mao and Brezhnev

  • Little to improve Sino-Soviet relations
    • Brezhnev believed Russia had the right to impose authority on all other communist nations 

Sino-Soviet Confrontation, 1969

  • 1969 Brezhnev called a international communist conference with the aim of outlawing China
    • However due to the Soviet crushing of the Prague Spring soviet leadership had morally weakened
      • Conference failed to agree to condemn China
  • International communism was so fragmented and 1969 marked the lowest point in relations between the USSR and the PRC
    • They aimed their nuclear warheads at each other rather than the West
  1. Mao’s Relations with the USA
  • Since 1949 the relations between the USA and the PRC were tense and bitter the reasons were clear
    • American anger at the fall of China to Mao’s communists in 1949
    • USAs protection of Taiwan, recognizing it as the legitimate Chinese nation
    • USA refusal to grant diplomatic recognition to the PRC
    • From 1950 the PRC mounted a continuous attack on ‘American Imperialism’
    • The PRCs development of nuclear weapons in the 60s
    • The moral and diplomatic support the PRC gave to Vietnam in its war with the USA
    • The underlying ideological divide between the capitalist and marxist systems each nation represented 

Parting of the ‘Bamboo Curtain’, 1972’

  • US-PRC relations improved greatly during the early 70s
    • A significant factor was the USAs formal recognition of the PRCs right to replace Taiwan in the UN
      • This sofend the PRC approach to the USA
      • Mao and Nixon met in 1972
        • This showed that China was prepared to lift the ‘Bamboo Curtain’ making way for the potential for diplomatic contact and trade    

Mao’s Aim of undermining the USSR       

  • Softening of Mao’s attitude towards America was part of Mao’s plan to undermine the Soviet Union
    • The chinese hated the Soviet policies of detente
      • Saw this as an attempt to draw closer the woesten powers to leave the PRC internationally isolated 
      • PRC resolved to beat the Soviets at their own game forming a detente with the US 
      • US equally as eager to embarrass the Soviets 

Mao’s Achievements in forgein affairs 

Established a claim to be the leading international voice of communism

Looking back Mao had a series of forgein policy successes elevating chain to an international superpower while consolidating authority in China 

He had;

Established China as an independent sovereign state 

 Turned the PRC into a word leader

Achieved superpower status via. The development of the PRCs own nuclear programme and weapons

Attained international recognition in the UN as the legitimate China

Faced down the Soviet Union in a series of confrontations 

Established a claim to be the leading internatinal voice of communism