THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION BEGINS
THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION BEGINS
In the 1960s, Chinese Communist Party leader Mao Zedong came to feel that the current party leadership in China, as in the Soviet Union, was moving too far in a revisionist direction, with an emphasis on expertise rather than on ideological purity. Mao’s own position in government had weakened after the failure of his “Great Leap Forward” (1958-60) and the economic crisis that followed. Mao gathered a group of radicals, including his wife Jiang Qing and defense minister Lin Biao, to help him attack current party leadership and reassert his authority.
Mao Zedong managed to take command of a small rebel force when it was one the run and guided it through some turbulent times until it finally took control of China. After that, government policy made a country that was basically an agricultural nation into a modern economy, though along Communist/Stalinist lines.
In the Communist world, he is credited with making the peasant’s part of the revolutionary structure. The Leninist/Stalinist way of thinking was that the urban workers -- the proletariat -- were the most important part of the working class, and if you didn't have that group, you didn't have a revolution. Since China was mostly agricultural, and the cities were mostly controlled by Triads that were allied with the government, he went into the countryside and organized the peasants.
In the international realm, you can think about his support of North Korea in the Korean War as being instrumental in how the Cold War affected Asia. Then he was the driving force between the split with the Soviet Union and the meeting with Nixon, which changed the Cold War in the 70s. He brought peace and unity to the nation after a particularly long and brutal civil war. Under his leadership, China became one of the most industrialized countries in the world.
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In the 1960s, Chinese Communist Party leader Mao Zedong came to feel that the current party leadership in China, as in the Soviet Union, was moving too far in a revisionist direction, with an emphasis on expertise rather than on ideological purity. Mao’s own position in government had weakened after the failure of his “Great Leap Forward” (1958-60) and the economic crisis that followed. Mao gathered a group of radicals, including his wife Jiang Qing and defense minister Lin Biao, to help him attack current party leadership and reassert his authority.
Mao Zedong managed to take command of a small rebel force when it was one the run and guided it through some turbulent times until it finally took control of China. After that, government policy made a country that was basically an agricultural nation into a modern economy, though along Communist/Stalinist lines.
In the Communist world, he is credited with making the peasant’s part of the revolutionary structure. The Leninist/Stalinist way of thinking was that the urban workers -- the proletariat -- were the most important part of the working class, and if you didn't have that group, you didn't have a revolution. Since China was mostly agricultural, and the cities were mostly controlled by Triads that were allied with the government, he went into the countryside and organized the peasants.
In the international realm, you can think about his support of North Korea in the Korean War as being instrumental in how the Cold War affected Asia. Then he was the driving force between the split with the Soviet Union and the meeting with Nixon, which changed the Cold War in the 70s. He brought peace and unity to the nation after a particularly long and brutal civil war. Under his leadership, China became one of the most industrialized countries in the world.
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