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Summary Unit 5: The Cultural Revolution - AQA The Transformation of China Revision Notes $16.62   Add to cart

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Summary Unit 5: The Cultural Revolution - AQA The Transformation of China Revision Notes

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Covers unit 5 of the core AQA A-level textbook (The Cultural Revolution) I have added additional information from wider reading around the subject so it has all the information and facts you could need for your A-level exam and more. It is organised into separate subsections making it easy to r...

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China
Section 5
Revision
Notes

, SECTION 5: The Cultural Revolution, 1966-1976
The Origins of the Cultural Revolution:
- 1966 – Mao launched the ‘Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution’
- Extraordinary & violent upheaval – threatened foundations of regime which he had done so much to
establish
- Lin Biao’s Poster Campaign in May 1966 = event that brought the CR to the attention of the Chinese people
first.
- 18th August 1966 - Tiananmen Square in Beijing – reception of 1 million Red Guards (students / young etc)
waving copies of Mao’s ‘Little Red Book’ – THE AUGUST RALLY
o They chanted = ‘Chairman Mao, may you live for a thousand years!’ / ‘Mao Zedong is the red sun
rising in the east’
o Lasted for a whole day  evidence for the organising skill of Lin Biao & Chen Boda
o Also  evidence for the effectiveness of the development of the cult of Mao.
- Wore a green PLA uniform to emphasise warlike mood & closeness to the army
- Lin Biao = addressed the crowd described Mao as the ‘Great Leader, Great Teacher, Great Helmsman and
Great Commander’
- Very enthusiastic from the students  Liu & Deng = tried to contain the violence  party splits – Zhou Enlai
(good diplomat) – tried to keep the peace between those in the party who wanted to restore peace & those
who wanted the Maoist elements to spread.
- 1st of 8 rallies in Beijing – Red guards = violent campaigns against ‘all those people in authority who are
taking the capitalist road’
- Parts of China = descended into chaos until movement was finally brought under control by PLA in 1969
- Violent phase of CR was over then  but repercussions were felt into the 70s and beyond.

Shanghai radicals:
- Mao had assembled a coalition of supporters to help him take on Party leadership
- Included – radical group of intellectuals in Shanghai
- Centred on his wife – Mme Mao (Jiang Qing)
- Mao = responsible for launching it – he was careful in the early stages to let the Shanghai radicals take the
lead in attacking cultural policies of the CCP
- Meant that he could stay in the background & wait until sure he could succeed in aims of purging Party
leadership & remoulding Chinese culture

Reasons for launching the CR:
The CR was a means for Mao to reassert his authority over China  now aware of his mortality.

 To preserve himself in power for the rest of his life by removing all possible sources of opposition
 To get rid of the damaging record of failure of the GLF
 Ensure PERMENANT revolution
o He believed that the continuing revolution = being betrayed from within
o Wanted the CR = to be viewed as an extension of this continuing revolution
o Believed that if it stopped = it would undo everything the CCP had achieved since 1949
o Therefore – to prevent it  Mao = appealed directly to the people – great populist gesture – he
would enlist them in a campaign to save & consolidate the revolution.
 REACTION to Soviet developments

, o 1956 – Mao = interpreted Soviet attack on Stalin’s ‘cult of personality’ as a criticism of his leadership
of China
o 1964 – Fall of Khrushchev  official reason given by Soviet authorities for his fall = ‘hare-brained
economic schemes’
o No one in China = had dared to use such a phrase in regard to Mao’s economic policies BUT…
parallels between the USSR and China’s political situations = too close for comfort
o ALSO  Mao saw in the USSR – a party – originally pure in revolutionary spirit – corrupted by its
own exercise of power into a self-satisfied elite
o He viewed Khrushchev and his successors as guilty of betraying the revolution by encouraging
revisionism & by détente with the west
o Mao = determined that such developments wouldn’t happen in China after his death
 Wish to renew party’s revolutionary spirit
o He believed that = CCP & government officials who had defeated the nationalists & established the
PRC = had lost their revolutionary fervour
o He thought that the only way for him to save his revolution = to wage war against the CCP hierarchy
itself.
o He thought = time for a new generation of party members to replace the old guard
 Undermining bureaucrats and intellectuals
o Determined to preserve the Chinese Revolution as an essentially peasant movement
o Believed that the peasants were the main revolutionary force in China
o Tensions between Mao & urban intellectuals – it was them who had criticised the GLF
o He distrusted the type of political thinker who was more interested in theory than in action
o Possible to INTERPRET his assault on the intellectuals in the CR as an act of revenge on a class which
he felt had always hated him (their criticisms etc)

Mao’s aims:
1. Struggle to remould Chinese culture
2. Purge of the Party leadership
3. Rectification campaign

- Was Mao & his allies who defined these aims
- Original aims of the movement  broadened & new targets added for the Red Guards to attack
- Difficult to reduce the complexities of CR to a simple formula – but helpful to consider them under the main
headings above

Struggle to remould Chinese culture:
- Attack on all modes of thought and behaviour that didn’t conform to Mao’s vision of a socialist society
- To be a ‘great revolution that touches people to their very souls’
- Changing Chinese culture & making Mao Zedong Thought the guiding principle of the people = a ‘truly’
communist society could be built in China
- Aim – to create a ‘new socialist people’
- 1st battle  play Hai Rui dismissed from Office = written by Wu Han (intellectual, historian & deputy mayor of
Beijing) – an allegory for Mao’s corruption (direct criticism of Mao throughout the play)
o Nov 1965 – article in a Shanghai newspaper attacked the play & the author for being anti-socialist 
article was written by Yao Wenyuan (one of the Shanghai radicals) – saying that this was a bad play
etc = Mao’s way of communicating what he felt about it
o Often said that this was the first act of the cultural revolution – to say that communist culture is
under attack.

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