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