- Divisions within the CCP After the failure of the great leap forward Mao retired from front line politics, he let Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping run China but Mao became suspicious of them and how dedicated they were to communism.
- Liu Shaoqi spoke against him at the 700 cadre’s conference in 1962 and Zhou had been critical of his targets in the great leap forward. They also dismissed Mao’s claims that the great famine was caused by bad weather.
- Mao felt threatened and that his policies were being watered down. He was also jealous of the new leader’s success as the new economic policy ‘Walking on two legs’ seemed to be successful.
- The party was also split between ideologies and pragmatisms. Mao was a ideologue, he worried that the next generation of the party would lack the revolutionary experience of him or his colleges. Anyone who didn’t stick rigidly to his interpretation of communism to him was a "capitalist roader".
- In contrast, pragmatists like Zhou, Lui and Deng believed that if China move to quickly towards communism then it would suffer terrible consequences such as the ones of the great leap forward
- Mao was also heavily influenced by his wife Jiang Qing. She took the ideas of Mao even further than he did and wanted to destroy all Chinese traditional culture and replace it with purely socialist ideas. Consequently the Cultural Revolution took the form of attacks on anything that was ‘old’. On the other hand anything that was ‘new’ was accepted, almost without criticism.
- In August 1966 Mao launched the 'Four Olds Campaign', with the intention of destroying 'old ideas', 'old culture', 'old customs' and 'old habits'
- - Destruction of the burial site of Hai Rui who was the subject of the play by Wu Han
- - Denunciation of 19th century cultural hero Wu Xun
- The Cult of Mao urged total and unthinking commitment to Maoist thought
- - One factory created a routine later known as 'asking for instructions in the morning and reporting back in the morning'.
- The Red Guards attacked Mao's enemies, beating, torturing and even murdering them
Extra Information
- The Cult of Mao:
- Rituals in factories which quickly became policy, encouraged total devotion to Maoist thought and the workers bowed to his image and asked him for help; like a God.
- The Red Guards:
- Young people formed violent groups to eliminate 'the four olds'.
- Mobilised the 'elite' in middle schools, those who didn’t have party connections already used the group for opportunities
- The Gang of Four:
- Four political leaders that were modernists who tried to force out the older party members. Madame Mao attempted to stop the movement but it was dismissed as rightist nonsense. She still had Deng removed from the party.
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