Provides a summary of the reasons for Mao launching his Cultural Revolution and describes the internal tensions and conflicts of the Communist Party, in particular between the ideologues (Mao, Lin Biao, Jiang Qing) and the pragmatists (Deng Xiaoping, Liu Shaoqi, Zhou Enlai).
After retreating from political life following the Great Leap Forward, Mao started to become
suspicious how committed Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping were to creating communism. He
believed ‘capitalist roaders’ and ‘bourgeois elements’ had infiltrated the party. Now an old
man, he felt threatened and worried what would happen to the revolution he had done so
much to create once he was gone. He decided the entirety of Chinese culture, as well as
politics, needed to be destroyed and replaced with a new, communist culture.
He also felt that the party had become bureaucratised with some cadres exploiting their
power for their own advantage, and that after removing China’s old rulers, they had become
a new elite enjoying a life of luxury compared to the masses. Therefore, he felt the revolution
needed to be permanent, constantly replacing those in authority so that no one became too
comfortable.
During the ‘Red Terror’ anyone who was deemed as disloyal to Mao was targeted by the
Red Guards until this campaign of violence and terror got out of even Mao’s control.
What were the conflicts within the Communist Party?
Zhou had been critical of the overambitious targets of the Great Leap Forward and Liu
Shaoqi had spoken out at the 1962 7000 cadres conference, dismissing Mao’s claims that
bad weather caused the Great Famine. Unlike Mao’s revolutionary fervour, they favoured
Pragmatism and were watering down Mao’s policies. Ideologues (Mao, Lin Biao, Jiang Qing
- Mao’s wife) believed China should be transformed to communism as quickly as possible
through mobilisation of the masses. The pragmatists (Deng Xiaoping, Liu Shaoqi, Zhou
Enlai) felt that if China attempted to move too quickly towards communism, mistakes with
catastrophic consequences would be made and that rather than trusting the masses, experts
should be given power to make rational decisions.
Mao was also angered when a report by the Party’s propaganda department in March 1960
warned against using Mao’s writings to explain achievements like medical breakthroughs or
sporting victories. Party leaders publicly stated that ‘Mao Zedong Thought’ shouldn’t surpass
Marxism-Leninism. Mao felt this was a personal attack and that he was being ‘treated as a
dead ancestor’ – shown respect but fundamentally ignored.
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