Tensions between CCP and Mao/Aims and methods of Mao/ Role of GoF and Red Guards

TENSIONS BETWEEN CCP AND MAO

• Mao’s setbacks

  • Great Leap Forward is major failure
  • Relinquishes PRC President to Liu Shaoqi

• Threat of Liu

  • Liu Shaoqi held a similar amount of power as Mao by 1965
  • Liu gains all of Mao’s conservative opponents
  • Mao moves to Shanghai to gather supporters with Jiang Qing which made way for the cultural revolution

• Play “Hai Rui Dismissed from Office” mocked Mao’s treatment of his defence minister

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AIMS AND METHODS OF MAO ZEDONG

• Regaining power after the GLF

  • Mao encouraged students to make propaganda posters that denounced Deng and Liu Shaoqi while praising Mao
  • Mao publicly denounced Liu and Deng for capitalist tendencies
  • Mao swims across the Yangtze river at 72yrs old which is heavily propagandised and showed his power even in old age

• Re-imposing Maoism

  • Mao encouraged the people to study of his writings
  • The Little Red Book, which highlighted Mao’s ideological beliefs about socialism and the purging of the ‘Four Olds’
  • Useful way of indoctrination and establishing cult of personality

• Purging capitalist and traditional sentiments

  • Encouraged students to name opponents of the regime
  • Red Guard attacked and killed millions without evidence
  • Public posters continued to repent the ‘four olds’ and were very effective

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ROLE OF THE GANG OF FOUR AND THE RED GUARDS; THE DESTRUCTION OF THE FOUR OLDS

• Gang of Four
  • Comprised of Jiang Qinq, Zhang Chunqiao, Yao Wenyuan and Wang Hongwen.
  • Purpose was to organise and carry out the Cultural Revolution
  • Yao criticised “Hai Rui…”, Jiang staged revolutionary operas, Zhang and Wang spoke in Shanghai and encouraged students
  • Influenced education, school structures and party polices on intellectuals
  • Controlled media and used propaganda outlets
  • Targeted Deng and Liu; able to get Deng exiled for conspiring against Mao
• Red Guards
  • Student Led paramilitary groups mobilised by Mao to diminish the Four Olds and purge capitalism
  • Used violence, accused intellectuals and teachers of capitalism and bashed/killed those who criticcised Mao
  • E.g. At a girl’s school in Beijing, the Red Guards decided to rid to school of bourgeois elements. They accused the members of forming a ‘Black Gang’ (gangs who opposed Maoist Thought), and as such, they splashed the girls with black ink and then bashed them with nail-studded clubs. Vice principle Bian was murdered. 
• Four Olds
  • Old Customs, old culture, old habits and old ideas
  • Red Guards attacked anything traditional, even hairstyles or shoes
  • Imposed their view on the population through violence and terror