S12: Permanent Revolution

• What is the “Cultural Revolution”?
• Why and how did Mao bring down the party-state bureaucracy?
• How did ordinary Chinese experience the revolution?

• “Ten years of chaos”
• “Millions of death”
• “Red guards”
• Mao as mastermind
• “Just another power struggle”
• “Too far and too removed”

• Why did Mao attack the party-state that he built?
• Why did the party-state collapse so quickly? Why was order so hard to restore?
• Why was the Cultural Revolution such a global phenomenon?
• Why do people feel nostalgic about such a calamitous event?
• Why is the Cultural Revolution still relevant in China today?

• Panchen Lamas are living emanations of the buddha Amitabha
• The incarnation line began in the 17th century after the 5th Dalai Lama gave Chokyi Gyeltsen the title.
• Choekyi Gyaltsen (1938 – 1989) became the 10th Panchen Lama in 1949.

• What happened to the 10th Panchen Lama?
• How did he remember the Mao era? What are the turning points?
• Who is the intended audience of his speech? What effect did it have?

• By April 1958: Widespread food shortages and riots
• By early 1959: Famine spreading nation-wide
• Result: Worst famine in human history, with excess deaths of between 24 and 30 million

“In earlier years, you did quite a few good things, but … all officials in and out of the capital know that your mind is not right, that you are too arbitrary, too perverse. You think you alone are right, you refuse to accept criticism and your mistakes are many.”

Excerpt from Hai Rui Dismissed from Office

• Who is Rae Yang? What is her life story before the Cultural Revolution?
• How did she feel about the Cultural Revolution in the beginning?
• What happened to her teachers and neighbors?
• How did Rae feel about Chairman Mao? What was her reaction when she saw him for the first time?

• Young pioneers, Youth League, Party memberships
• State system as vessel for Communist ideologies, but it was a path to membership and material benefits
• The most important mechanism for class differentiation in Mao’s China

• Selective educational pyramid
• Closed system: all schools run by party committees
• University graduates given mandatory job assignments by school authorities
• Assignments based on specialization, grades, political background and performance

• Affirmative action, Chinese style
• Preferential recruitment of working, peasant, and revolutionary classes
• Way to counter influence of old elites – disenfranchised, but still culturally advantaged

• 1952: “Workers and peasants accelerated middle school”
• Combining theory and practice
• Regular participation in manual labor; distinction with physical labor removed

• Old educated elites: Dispossessed but still culturally advantaged
• New political elites: From peasant revolutionaries to technocratic officials
• Old educated elite and new political elites both attacked

• Red Guards attacked old educated elites in name of workers and peasants
• Red Guards made up of revolutionary cadres’ children

• What is the “bloodline theory” of family background?
• Why is Yu Luoke against the idea that family influence is greater than social influence?
• How does Yu invoke Mao Zedong thought? Why, despite his attempt, was he still executed?

• Describe Rae Yang’s trip to Guangzhou.
• What happened during the meeting with Zhao Ziyang, the first secretary of the CCP Guangdong Committee?
• Who is a “perpetrator”?
• How credible do you find Rae as a narrator?

• Red Guard activism structured by existing party organization
  • Extensive hierarchy linking party organization to network of political loyalists
  • System of loyalty and activism
• Elite sponsorship from Mao and the Central Cultural Revolution Group

• Replaced Politburo in Feb 1967 in wake of top leadership purges
• Led by Kang Sheng, Jiang Qing, and allies from Shanghai propaganda dept
• Marginal political figures dependent on Mao’s political patronage
• Leadership role in Beijing insurgency: meetings with student leaders, intelligence networks, etc.

• Escalation of economic demands: Higher wages, welfare, and urban household registration status, etc.
• Factory and gov officials held hostage and struggled
• New fault lines: Radicals (against local leadership) vs. Moderates (loyal to party apparatus)
• In Shanghai: Workers’ General Headquarters vs. Scarlet Guards

Impact:

• Military under renewed attack; factions against army found upper hand in struggle with rivals
• Summer 1967: climax of armed battles between rebel factions

Factional identities are defined by:

• Common interests and prior status of individuals, or
• Interactions that generate choices and outcomes?

• “Dual adversary” strategy, struggling against both the “imperialists” (United States) and the “social imperialists” (USSR).
• Soviet Union: Increase of troops along border, defection of Uyghurs from Xinjiang, thawing of relations with US after Cuban Missile Crisis
• United States: Taiwan Strait; Vietnam War

• Relations with neighboring nonaligned states deteriorated during the 1960s.
• Border war with India in 1962, with Chinese forces achieving significant territorial gains.
• Anti-Chinese massacre in Indonesia in 1965, with General Suharto accusing China of supporting the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) and a failed coup in Jakarta. Over a million ethnic Chinese killed.

• China aimed to export revolution by supporting communist parties and insurgency movements in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
• The 1960s marked a revolutionary phase in China’s foreign policy, with the goal of forming a global united front against the Soviet Union and the United States.

Ghana

• Chinese aid initially supported the radical president Kwame Nkrumah.
• However, in 1964-1965, China began training left-wing movements in Ghana, which contributed to an army coup that overthrew Nkrumah.

Algeria

• Initial partnership after Algerian independence in 1962
• Relationship soured in 1965 due to Algeria’s increasing cooperation with the Soviet Union.

Cuba

• Ideological similarities between Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, and China’s socialism
• However, Cuba’s alignment with the Soviet Union was a significant disappointment for Beijing.

• China supported the communist government of North Vietnam led by Ho Chi Minh and the Viet Cong guerrilla forces fighting against the South Vietnamese government and its American allies.
• The Johnson administration viewed the war in Vietnam as directed by Beijing, leading to a significant increase in American military forces in 1965.

• Mass civil defense project built in the mountains of inland China.
• “Dig tunnels deep, store grain everywhere, and never seek hegemony”
• Largest developmental initiative during Mao’s era, with over fifteen million people mobilized

1964:

• China successfully launches Atomic Bomb
• Spiritual A-Bomb (The Little Red Book) published by PLA

• During the Cultural Revolution, China’s foreign relations were in chaos, with uncertainty about the direction desired by Chairman Mao.
• Chinese diplomats and students abroad were called back to China for self-criticisms and training in Mao Zedong Thought.
• Foreign students in China were expelled; British embassy stormed and set on fire in August 1967
• Growing xenophobic atmosphere: anything foreign was viewed with suspicion.

• What initially started as a strike at an artificial flower factory escalated into a significant anti-colonial movement led by local leftists.
• Greatest threat to British colonial rule: 51 deaths, 4,500 arrests, and a series of bombings.
• In response, the colonial administration implemented a range of emergency and security measures to counter the movement.

• Revolutionary base: Emphasizing the significant role of peasants in the revolution under proletarian leadership.
• Military strategy: Advocating for the use of people’s war, where the revolutionary party surrounds cities with the countryside and employs the mass line in a people’s army.
• Overcoming imperialism: Proposing New Democracy as a method to overcome imperialism.
• Applying Marxism-Leninism: Providing a method to apply Marxism-Leninism to the specific national realities of different countries.

• What is Mao Zedong’s message to African Americans? Why is he addressing them?
• What’s the global significance of the civil rights movement, according to Mao?
• How do you think Mao Zedong’s message was received? Why?

• Why did African Americans support Mao’s China?
• Why did China support African Americans?
• What makes the relationship “paradoxical”? How did it change?

• Prague revolt against Soviet communism
• French May uprising, the Vietnam Tet offensive, African anticolonial insurgencies, the civil rights movement
• Campus eruptions in Latin America, Yugoslavia, and the United States

• How did a Sinified version of Marxism-Leninism become a universal model for revolutionary change?
• Mao and Maoism are not seen as existing in abstraction or singularity: Not just a product of CCP manipulation, with Maoists as mere followers.
• Resilient, adaptable, and an alternative to dominant ideologies

• The Khmer Rouge, led by Pol Pot, received significant support from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and Mao Zedong.
• 90% of the foreign aid from China, including substantial economic and military assistance.
• Goal: Transform Cambodia into an agrarian socialist republic based on Maoist policies and influenced by the Cultural Revolution.
• In 1976, the Khmer Rouge renamed the country Democratic Kampuchea.

• From 1975 to 1979 and resulted in the deaths of an estimated 1.5 to 2 million people (nearly 25% of Cambodia’s population) in 1975
• The Vietnamese military invaded in 1978, ending the massacres and toppling the Khmer Rouge regime.