CHINA UNDER MAO ZEDONG

INTRODUCTION:2200 BC – the recorded history begins. From then to 1911 AD – there were 15 Imperial dynasties - A rather stable country – Manchu Dynasty – 1644-1911- Han, Tibetans, Mongols, Manchu (Manchurians)- they didn’t have any contacts outside their part of continent - until 19th Century China didn’t have much of contact with other countries and China didn’t change albeit being highly developed - mostly because of the religion, Confucianism - there was a continuous civil service - China as a middle kingdom, between the earth and heaven;- 1794 – King George 4th of Britain send a trade mission to China- Lord Mc Cartney – he didn’t kowtow - Chinese did allow the British to buy their stuff but they didn’t buy British goods- Chinese told Britain to stop trading the opium * First opium war – British navy bombs the China and imposes a humiliating treaty * British imposed the buying of the opium;- the division into the spheres of influence - effective colonization

1910 – The great Boxer rebellion - a humiliating defeat from the hand of European

- Chinese considered European smelly barbarians;- 1911 – a lot of resentment;- the Manchu dynasty was considered a failure

- another rebellion – 1911 – China becomes a republic- 1916 – a disintegration of republic into local warlords- A period of national disunity - Guomindang (GMD) – Chinese Nationalist Party; main party- Its leader Sun Yatsen - - Chinese Communist Party – 1921; founded under Comitern - The Communist became a separate front within the Guomindang - The fused Guomindang and Communists in United Front

RISE TO POWER OF MAO ZEDONG & CCP 1922-1949 1. The United Front and the Northern Expedition GMD – Sun Yatsen 1925 – Sun Yatsen dies; Chiang Kaishek leads the party (now: Jiang Jieshi)- He was a military leader, very anti-communist and very right wing

The Northern Expedition – 1926-1928 - The army went onto the campaign of uniting the China;- 1927 – it was obvious the northern expedition is going to be successful

2. The White Terror 1927 - Kaishek decides to liquidate the communists- he used local warlord, gangsters and his own people to turn against the communist - 5,000 communists were executed in Shanghai;- by the end of 1927, communists were practically wiped out;- Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai manage to escape; organized a retreat to Jiangxi (mountain area) and made their base there

3. The Jiangxi Soviet 1928-1934- land redistributed to the peasants- Mao starts to split from the Leninist communism- Mao changed the ideology – he had a concept of building the strength in countryside - he got more and more support to his views - the orthodox communists began to loose power; in 1930 in small civil war, the orthodox part is crushed;- GMD began to siege the province - Mao realized that it was suicide to stay and decided to move to another province, northern one

4. The Long March Oct 34 – Oct 35 - a march to Yanan

- 100,000 marched north to fight the Japanese- The long march took 11 provinces, 18 mountain ranges, 24 rivers, 15 major battles,

daily skirmishes 10,000 kilometers; out of original 100,000 only 5,000 reached; - Out of the 5,000 the future lead crystallized; - There was a vote on the Mao’s peasant strategy - At the time it was seen as a defeat for communists - But it was a seed of propaganda

However, all the western powers recognized Chiang Kaishek as a legitimate leader of China;1936-1949 1. THE XIAN INCIDENT Communists setup in Yanan to fight Japanese; In 1937 Japanese mounted a full-scale offensive on China Except for trying to take Manchuria he was not willing to fight Japanese Many in GMD were unhappy with Chiang Kaishek’s leadership In 1936 in Xian, the troops arrested Chiang Kaishek and handed him over to Zhou Enlai They wanted Kaishek to agree on the United Front against Japanese between GMD and

Communists (CCP) Since Kaishek was kidnapped, he was pressed into the alliance

2. C.C.P. 1936 – 1945 - Chinese headquarters in Yan’an;- they could consolidate the power in Yan’an - they redistributed the land to peasants and setup the peasants Soviet- they were reasonably disposed towards the landlords if it was profitable- Mao kept on writing his philosophical books- they reorganized the army - they grew overtime: from 40,000 in 1937 to 1 million in 1945;- they were quite popular and even their army was quite popular

- it was building the popularity among the peasants

3. GMD 1936-1945 - their authority was never as extensive as it appeared - warlords were bought off in majority of cases- during this period GMD lost all its popularity - they didn’t fight the Japanese well even after the mainland invasion - the army of Guomindang wasn’t too good in treating the peasants – they did steal the grain and rape the women- it was a bourgeoisie party; they represented the rich from the city- they brought taxes on the city that caused their city popularity to wane- very corrupt - their foreign associates didn’t help them - Chiang Kaishek was a Christian Methodist which didn’t help him - he was good at impressing Americans, but not at Chinese - economic problem with the inflation

4. THE CIVIL WAR 1945-1949- the Second World War ended in the worst possible way: through the atomic bombs - no American army arrived to help Chiang Kaishek - Truman encouraged Kaishek to keep up the alliance - Similarly, Comintern was reluctant about starting off another Civil war in China; - Japanese surrendered to Communist forces and that boosted the communists - Kaishek predicted that; Americans airlifted the half million GMD troops to take over the occupied area- Communists took over the Manchuria and got the Japanese weapons- Americans kept on supplying the weapons to Kaishek while encouraging him to maintain the United Front - in 1945 there are two big battles as Communists don’t want the Manchuria to get into the hands of communists - Truman sent someone to negotiate a peace deal between Communists and GMD- 1946 the truce broke again; a full-scale civil war starts off- GMD couldn’t resist attacking the Communists - Americans withdrew all the support away from Chiang Kaishek - when the war broke out, it still seemed that GMD is going to win the war: they had 5 million army, support of warlords, international support, majority of resources;

Phase 1: July 1946 – June 1947: A phase when seemingly all goes well for Nationalists - they push the communists out of cities and Yan’an - this apparent victory was in fact a communist trick- the Red Army was reorganized as a People’s Liberation Army, led by Lin Biao- they tactically retreat and build up their forces Phase 2: June 47 – April 1948 - Nationalist troops were trapped in the cities - Communists switched from guerrilla tactics to regular warfare- they concentrated on recapturing Yan’an and Manchuria - Americans realized that Guomindang might lose and began supporting them massively Phase 3: June 19498 – October 1949

- by the end of 1948 Communists took over Manchuria - Guomindang army began deserting massively

- Corruption spread massively, up to the point of the Guomindang selling weapons to communists

- Numbers began turning in Communist’s favour- January 1949 Beijing, Nanjing April 1949- October 1949 in Beijing Mao declared the People’s Republic of China- Chiang Kaishek and his followers fled to Taiwan

REASONS FOR THE CCP VICTORY

GMD WEAKNESSES CCP STRENGHTS Economy (inflation because of constant war and printing of new banknotes; idea of selling gold and silver)

Mass peasant support

Corruption No corruption Stealing People’s power; Soviet communitiesLack of support (including the middle class) Use of terror (concentration camps, secret police) No policy to appeal to the people Food aid to the starving peopleForeign influence Anti-foreign influence Failure to fight the Japanese Fought the Japanese successfully Conscripted army – mass desertions Better army and tactics Undisciplined army Disciplined army

Mao’s personal importance

Mao Zedong’s wife – Jiang Qing

MAO’S RULE OF CHINA - 1949-1953 – Consolidation/Maintaining the power

when Chinese communists took over China, they had experience of ruling rural areas, but not in the urban areas

They had no representatives in the South They had to resort to cooperation in some places with older officials from Guomindang

who joined the Party They had to wage some military campaigns – pushing Guomindang out of South,

regaining Tibet, outer Mongolia campaign to impose the power on Muslim region The Party was ruled from top to the bottom, not from bottom to top as the ideology would

suggest The Party seized the property of Guomindang members who fled to Taiwan; the foreign

property were seized too; otherwise it was rather cautious Banks, gas, electricity and transport were all nationalized, but owners were paid for that The People’s Liberation Army was involved in a day-to-day running of the country The Central People’s Government Council (a Central Committee) whose chairman was

Mao Zedong Through the military they managed to impose their rule of country 1950 – Speak Bitterness Campaign - they decided there should be a change in countryside- the peasants were encouraged to take the land over - 2 million landlords were killed

- as a result of killing of landlords, the land belonged to peasants- there was no difference to the agricultural production

1949 – there have been ten legal political parties - an important person who was in the government and who wasn’t from the Communist Party was Sun Yat-Sen’s widow - by 1952 other parties merged into Communist party- Red Terror – against Guomindang, foreigners, gangsters (the triads)- the mafia bosses who escaped to Hong Kong became a problem for British- women were liberated – they were given equal work rights, equal property rights - Power consolidated and enemies eliminated MASS CAMPAIGNS The 3 Antis – against the bureaucracy (1951) And the 5 Antis – against the bourgeoisie (1952) both campaigns were against the corruption Mao was aware that corruption was a major problem for Guomindang; he knew he had to

get rid of it What happened was that 10% of civil service were sacked and fined The 5 Antis – against the bourgeoisie – for tax evasion Business went under the grater state control A Campaign against the counter-revolutionaries (1950)

THE ECONOMY 1949-1957- inflation problem (1000% in 1949)- by 1951 they brought it down to 15%- at first they weren’t interested in nationalizing the big businesses, they needed to get

the economy running - no one wanted to trade with them except of Soviet Union- Stalin took advantage of Chinese isolation and pressed them to accept a very bad deal

1st 5 Year Plan:- 1952-1956: they did what the Soviet Union did;- the factories became nationalized; but previous factory owners became mostly managers of the factories- there was central planning- the 1st Five Year plan concentrated on the heavy industry as well as on the infrastructure - it got the industry running - there was an agriculture aspect of it – they fixed the prize of grain - there was also a certain amount of collectivization; it was gradual, they were encouraged to make cooperatives - there was less resistance to it; there were no kulaks so collectives weren’t resisted that much- So largely it was all successful

THE 100 FLOWERS CAMPAIGN - it happened before the Great Leap Forward- Mao traveled around the country and met with the people- He decided that there should be more freedom of speech and that he wanted people to

criticize the government

- It could either possible that he wanted the country to be freer or that workers wouldn’t be alienated from the socialism or that it was a trick or that he decided to reverse the policy; Mao himself admitted later on that it was his trick; however it is possible that he had good motives but then backtracked once the criticism hit him;

- It affected the intelligent class - A taste of things to come

2nd 5 Year Plan or GREAT LEAP FORWARD- they decided to deviate from Soviet model- they called it “The Great Leap Forward”- Others in the party opposed it but Mao had his way - Mao perceived that they were becoming too depended on the Soviet advisors- He felt the First Plan ignored the needs of peasants - He also didn’t want the bureaucratic elite to emerge

AIMS:- to develop the industry and agriculture - reduce unemployment- get people out of countryside - push forward the collectivization, get the peasants into the cooperatives - to get workers- more efficient farming - gain the political control over the peasants - change the people, make them into socialists - bring industry to the countryside - assert independence of Soviet Union - spread power beyond the centralized bureaucracy to stop the elite, decentralize the

government MEANS:

- mass mobilization- propaganda campaigns

EFFECTS:- agriculture – disastrous: the collectivization went ahead and private farming was

abolished and government took full control of agriculture; but this caused a huge famine;

Lysenko – a biologists from USSR who believed in growing supercrops, opposing the genetics;

Mao thought this will work – but they were a nonsense, a pseudoscientific drivel Pest control – they killed all sparrows which in turn caused extensive breed of insects

which then aggravated the rise of vermins Those who wanted to change the things, risked death or prison (thousands were sent into

the ‘re-educational centers’) People committing their children to slavery, selling their wives Government officials were afraid to tell the truth When the truth was found, the officials were killed The great famine lasted for several years, longer than it could be expected

- industry – disastrous again: backyard furnaces Mao believed that peasants should produce iron in the countryside But there were problems with this: how would peasants get iron ore? Only through re-

melting other things. Iron produced was junk and getters.

They also dug the canals By 1964 they had an atomic bombs and by 1967 they had hydrogen bomb

Overall, the Great Leap Forward was a failure

THE POWER STRUGGLE 1960-1966- by the 1960 it was clear to Mao that Great Leap Forward was a complete failure- Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping were appointed to fix the problem- Mao retired as a head of state; Liu Shaoqi became the new chairman and Deng was

already the party secretary - They went with a similar method as N.E.P. – they brought back some degree of free

market, dismantled some large communes, land plots to peasants- Mao didn’t like these changes; furthermore other stopped consulting him- A split began between the pragmatists (Liu Shaoqi, Deng Xiaoping) and ideological

Maoists - The third Five Year Plan – it involved normal planning, much like the Soviet model, it

brought back the central planning, wage differentials were brought - By 1965 the industry and economy were recovered - From 1962 Mao began fighting back – he was more and more worried about Liu

Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping - He began regret stepping back and join with military leader, Lin Biao - In 1963 he attempts on another mass campaign – Socialist Education Movement

it was an attempt to change the way the young people thought the government and Party didn’t want that campaign and decided to stop Mao; they

managed to frustrate his efforts Mao turns to army to publish his book “The Little Red Book” – it was published by Lin

Biao and distributed among them People’s Liberation Army becomes Mao’s power base Mao sends people out into the universities to radicalize the youth Meanwhile Liu and Deng send their people August 1966 he swam through Yangzi river – he showed he was back. After the great swim he goes to the Central committee and puts forward to bombard the

headquarters He wanted the radicals to attack the Party moderates Then he organized a mass rally on the Tiananmen square with million people turning up

THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION

- lasts from 1966 till1976 - the violent period is between 1966-1968- A Tiananmen square speech; million turn up- Mao tells the people that they have to create new type of the society- 4 olds – old culture, old thoughts, old customs, old habits - Red Guards were fanatical Maoists who went out and did his bidding- In next two years they created a social upheaval in which millions died- Mostly affected were the urban intelligentsia and party members

Mao’s Purpose in Launching the Cultural Revolution

- it was a part of the power struggle- he resorted to fanatical tool in order to win the power struggle

he used the young to win the power struggle as he was pushed out more and more after the failure of the Great Leap forward- he might have genuinely believed that the revolution was betrayed by Lao and Deng;

Party was loosing its zeal, becoming the self-serving- a couple events in Soviet Union might have influenced his choice:

* 1956 Khrushchev denounced Stalin and his cult of personality, Mao was afraid a similar thing might be addressed in China by Liu and Deng.* in 1964 Khrushchev got sacked for “Harebrained schemes”, that is for his agricultural policies that were similar to Mao’s. - another purpose might have been to toughen the young people and get their revolutionary- it helped to return the power to the peasants and workers, away from the party and bureaucracy

THE FIRST PHASE OF THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION - Mao tried to sack Liu and Deng during the central committee meeting - Red Guards surrounded the voters at that time- Liu was beaten and sent to the prison where he died in 1973, Deng was defenestrated,

put in prison and then sent to reeducation center - Lin Biao and Jiang Qing (Mrs. Mao) were left in charge of Beijing, Mao moved to

countryside- Though Mao achieved this victory early on, the blood rein continued for two more

years

THE RED TERROR - the instrument of terror were Red Guards, the young people

they were easy to be influence- education was the first victim - Why young people liked Mao?

from youth the Chinese were taught that he was a hero he allowed them for that

- there were problems: educational system stopped working for two years culture was targeted so many buildings were damaged books were burned bad elements were attacked party members and teachers were whipped and forced to confess eventually it spread to the factories – workers began attacking their managers industrial production declines massively as workers do not work the situation was getting dangerous; it was close to collapse

ATTEMPTS TO RESHAPE CHINESE CULTURE - Jiang Qing was in the post of culture during the cultural revolution

- She employed massive censorship; all music and books were banned and replaced by 8 new operas and new books that didn’t have too high quality; imperial and bourgeoisie art were banned; flowers were destroyed

- Young children were not encouraged to love their parents - By early 1970’s China became the cultural wasteland- Later there was some relaxation but Jiang Qing remained in her post till Mao’s death- So on the cultural level it was destructive

THE FINAL PHASE OF THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION - 1968 – Red Guards began to fraction and attack each other - Country was at the brink- People’s Liberation Army was getting sick of it as well- PLA became worried about the position of Red Guards- In 1968 Mao called off the cultural revolution; Army demobilized the Red Guards and

spread them into the countryside- By the end of 1968 things began working again- Officially the cultural revolution continued although never as violently

THE LAST YEARS OF MAO 1968-1976

The fall of Lin Biao - Mao got worried about Lin Biao’s growing power; at certain stage he was the only

person who could get rid of Mao - Lin Biao was asked to submit himself to self criticism - It is possible that he was involved in a plot against Mao - His plane crashed while he tried to escape; either his plane crashed or was shot by

Soviets or Chinese

The Re-emergence of Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiaoping - Lin Biao’s death and betrayal weakened Mao - Zhou Enlai got Deng back to power- They struggled against the Maoists (the Gang of Four, including Mrs Mao)- It broke in 1975- This time Deng and Zhou mobilized the masses - Deng got sacked again; he retreated to countryside, waiting for Mao to die

Death of Mao- September 1976, Mao Zedong dies- The power struggle between Deng and party against the Gang of Four- Party and Deng won and