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Cultural Revolution 1966, Contemporary Worlds - HIST C375 - Article

   

Added on  2020-03-07

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Running Head: CONTEMPORARY WORLDSContemporary WorldsName of the StudentName of the UniversityAuthor Note

1CONTEMPORARY WORLDSMao Zedong mobilised the Chinese youth in 1966 to start the Cultural Revolution. It is aviolent process that led to an elimination of the customs, culture, habits and thoughts of Chinesepeople. This Cultural Revolution purged counter Revolutionary party members. It alsoheightened Mao's personality cult as he intended to reassert his authority over the Chinesegovernment (Ho 2014). This paper discusses if political, ideological or economic considerationsare responsible for Mao's decision to launch the Cultural Revolution in 1966. Based on thearguments in the essay it will be concluded what the reasons for launching the cultural revolutionby Mao were. According to Gao (2016), the Cultural Revolution by Mao was due to a conflict betweenhis economic reality and political ideology. Mao did not firmly believe in Communism, as hewas not a pure communist. His understanding of Chinese history was based on Russia's earlyleader Lenin. However, Mao was not found of Lenin’s successors. Mao was revisionist andbelieved in the Leninism he adapted. Mao was popular among base class farmers and workers.He had strict control of an army, and his party holds good coordination, which formed a basis forhis ideology and success. It was believed that the reason for Cultural Revolution was Mao’s aimto increase his popularity among the base class (Wu 2014). This act would eliminate the hope ofcapitalism revisionist. However, with the failure of the Cultural Revolution, the capitalismrevisionist did open and ultimately reform the country. Mao was influenced by the socialist ideology. It is was evident from the ideas of Mao’swife, Jiang Qing. Using the socialist ideology, the Chinese tradition and culture were destroyedto replace it with the purely "socialist ideas". It was the reason that attacked anything that wasold in China may it be economic or political policy. Anything new was accepted readily, withoutcriticism. The socialist ideology was evident from the Mao’s attempt to equalize the value of

2CONTEMPORARY WORLDSmental and the physical labour in different socioeconomic areas. This ideology meant to equallyreward the contributions of people in society and economy. However, this goal was not fulfilledby the devastation of China between 1966-1968 (Starr 2015). According to Li (2015), Maowanted to bring China under one ideological movement. He wanted the country to becomesocialist after the fashion of Stalin's (Lenin’s son) Soviet Union. In short, he tends to implementhalf-hearted socialism. Mao was pushed out of economic affairs, but no positive economic considerations werefound to be a reason for him to push the Cultural Revolution. For instance, the Great LeapForward was recognized by the “Peng Dehuai, Liu Shaoqi, and Deng Xiaoping” as workingagainst intended cause. The industrial and the agricultural output precipitated as famine. It left 45million people to death. Further, it was observed by them that it was ruining China both sociallyand economically. This was loyally criticized in Lushan Conference (Kim et al. 2014). However,Mao failed to understand the economic implications of it and rather took the criticism personally.In response to the criticism, Mao did nothing to improve the economic affairs of the countryrather purged Peng and his supporters from the party and PLA respectively. This event made Liuand Deng more cautious that tend to keep Mao out of the day-to-day running of the Party andeventually out of the presidency of the PRC (Callahan 2015). Instead of Mao, it was Liu andDengwho modified the economic reforms for the country’s benefit. In turn, they gainedpopularity in CCP. Thus, improvement in economic affairs and the decline in Mo's power werethe main reason for the Cultural Revolution by Mao. Mao’s failure reflected clearly in the GreatLeap and the Cultural RevolutionIt can be argued that Mao launched the Cultural Revolution to resist the government andthe CCP from becoming too remote from people. The country’s industrial and agricultural

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