REMOVAL OF DENG XIAOPING FROM POLITICS AND THE FLIGHT OF LIN

• Kang Sheng, an ally to Jiang, publicly listed traitors at a meeting of revolutionaries. Lin was first named.

• PLA

  • Revolutionary committees were formed and dominated by the army

  • Known as the People’s Liberation Army they replaced Red Guards and investigated political enemies

• Deng removed from public life in 1968

• Lin Biao

  • Appointed 2nd in command in 1969 following successful organisation of the PLA

  • Relationship with Mao deteriorated as Mao feared Lin might oust hum

  • 1971 Lin drew up a plan to overthrow Mao, Project 571, but the plot was discovered and Lin tried to escape but his plane ‘crashed’ in the Mongolian desert

IMPACT OF THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION ON SOCIETY, THE ECONOMY, EDUCATION AND CULTURE

• Society

  • Trading patterns overturned

  • Matches, soap, toothpaste unattainable due to classification as luxury items

  • Family members encouraged to spy on each other

  • Divorce encouraged

  • Children sent to serve as Red Guards or re-education camps

  • Love seen as bourgeois; relationships and sex were frowned upon

• Economy

  • Mobilisation of workers into factories often decreased quality and efficiency

  • Black market emerged

  • Economic structures varied on leadership resulting in a system made up of agricultural communes and individual landowners

• Education

  • Students not taught sex-ed

  • School was almost entirely ideological

  • Red Guards rampaged through schools

• Culture

  • Socialist realism only acceptable art form

  • Opera brought under state control and all except eight pro-communist operas were banned

• Religion

  • Belief systems forced out and had to be practised in hiding

  • Imposed harsh repression on religion to focus on ideological thinking