The history of Communist China is shrouded by censorship and propaganda from the Chinese Communist Party, but even the famously obtuse CCP can’t hide the legacy of one of its darkest episodes. The Cultural Revolution which gripped China from 1966 to 1976 remains a topic of great discomfort and regret for many in China due to the incredible amount of disorder, violence, and death that it caused.
Today on A Day In History, we explore what happened during the Cultural Revolution and why it is so infamous to this day. If you enjoy videos like this, don’t forget to drop a like and subscribe to keep up to date with future content.
Prelude
The 1960s were a difficult time for China. Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward had been a catastrophic failure. Mao’s agricultural reforms had produced colossal famines that killed tens of millions of people and shattered confidence in his leadership. Although public blame has been deflected to others, Mao was forced to reign as President in 1959 and China pivoted away from his more radical policies under its new President Liu Shaoqi and Party Secretary General Deng Xiaoping.
While he wasn’t involved in day-to-day governance, Mao was still Chairman of the CCP with significant power in the party and he remained popular with the public. Moreover, Mao was unhappy with the less radical direction of the new leadership and believed that the Communist Revolution was being betrayed by a secret counter-revolutionary element within China.
Mao’s power base at the time was Shanghai, as opposed to the party administration in Beijing. He had key allies there, namely the ‘Gang of Four’ made up of his wife Jiang Qing, the cultural critic Yao Wenyuan, the political theorist Zhang Chunqiao, and the young but dedicated Wang Hongwen. Another key ally was Mao’s right-hand man and presumed successor, Lin Biao. The public scapegoating after the Great Leap Forward had preserved Mao’s public image so he retained huge popular support, especially among the peasants and young people. Additionally, Mao was popular with the military, and withLin Biao as Defence Minister, he could count on it as a reliable ally. This combination of grassroots, military, and well-placed elite support would be the key to Mao wrestling back control.
#ccp #history #maozedong #china #chinesehistory
Music: Motionarray.com
Sources
He Qinglian, ‘The Thousands of Forgotten Innocent Victims – The Massacre of Shaoyang County, Hunan 1968’,https://hqlenglish.blogspot.com/2011/09/forgotten-victims-of-shaoyang-county.html
Lo Bo, ‘I Was A Teenage Red Guard’, New Internationalist Magazine, (April 1987), https://newint.org/features/1987/04/05/teenage/
Richard Curt Kraus, ‘The Cultural Revolution Era, 1964-1976’, in Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom (ed.), The Oxford Illustrated History of Modern China, (2016)
Roderick MacFarquhar and Michael Schoenhals, Mao’s Last Revolution, (2008)
Yongyi Song, ‘Chronology of Mass Killings During the Chinese Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), Mass Violence and Resistance – Research Network, August 25th 2011, https://www.sciencespo.fr/mass-violence-war-massacre-resistance/en/document/chronology-mass-killings-during-chinese-cultural-revolution-1966-1976.html
Yoquin Wang, ‘Student Attacks Against Teachers: The Revolution of 1966’, Issues and Studies, (March/April, 2001), http://ywang.uchicago.edu/history/docs/2001_03_05.pdf
Copyright © 2021 A Day In History. All rights reserved.
DISCLAIMER: All materials in these videos are used for entertainment purposes and fall within the guidelines of fair use. No copyright infringement intended. If you are, or represent, the copyright owner of materials used in this video, and have an issue with the use of said material, please send an email to adayinhistory2021@gmail.com
