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Mao, Maoism and the Evolution of The Chinese Communist Party: An Historical Commentary Isolated from its neighbours by the vast windswept deserts of central Asia and the mighty Tibetan plateaus to the west, by the Jungles of the south, and by the Pacific Ocean to the east, China developed a civilization and cultural tradition independent from the rest of the world, even though it accepted many inventions and ideas created elsewhere. Because of this isolated evolution, the social institutions with which Chinese society are built upon are unique. Included amongst this uniqueness is the development of a code of morality called Confucianism. Confucius believed that both the world and its people were essentially moral, and that it was the duty of superior minds to train themselves in benevolence or humanity (ren) and then to extend this out to all people.
Confucianism encouraged the submission of younger generations to their elders, of women to their men, and of all to the ruler of the state. The leader of ancient China, the King, was considered to be personally responsible for the welfare of the world, and he operated upon a Mandate of Heaven. Thus, this mandate offered the option of legitimate rebellion in Chinese life, if the ruler no longer was seen to be given this mandate through heaven, but it did not allow for revolution. This deeply ingrained cultural acceptance of a single supreme leader transcended into the creation of Mao and Maoist thought.
Chinas millennium-old heritage of nondemocratic beliefs and institutions provides a backdrop for a cultural and historical understanding of the limits of democracy in China. What democracy could mean in the Chinese context has been an issue since the first attempts to turn China into a democratic republic with the overthrow of imperial China, and the establishment of the Kuomintang (KMT) or Nationalist party, within the new Chinese Republic in 1912. This Republic proved incapable of administering a democratic government in China. With less than ten years in existence, the Republic began to disintegrate as China entered into an anarchical warlord period in the 1920 s. China had entered a period of extreme radicalization of political life, which involved the creation and rapid growth of revolutionary movements that planned both political and social revolution. Out of these groups arose a half dozen Communist-led base areas, each with a guerrilla army, in Central and South China.
These bases existed mainly by virtue of the efforts of the local Communist leadership, in an attempt to satisfy the serious economic and social grievances of their local communists. Of these base areas, or Soviets, the most important and the largest was the one led by Mao Tse-tung, it was centred in the southeastern city of Kiangsi. Eventually, Mao was elected chairman of a Central Soviet Government, and he was given supposed control of all the Chinese Communist base areas in 1931. However, Mao's rise to become leader and Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party did not really begin to take shape until late 1934, during what is historically referred to as The Long March. This term represents an instrumental period of time for the Maoist movement, and the beginning of Mao legendary; the Long March has no parallel in society; it is as enormous a legend, and as daunting a reality, as the Great Wall.
The Long March involved a group of over 100, 000 communist insurrectionists, led by Mao, who were forced to embark on a 12, 500 kilometre journey from the south-eastern city of Juichin to the remote city of Yanan. Hounded almost continually by the vicious anti-communist Kuomintang soldiers, the march continued for an entire year, with only 8, 000 followers surviving. The Long March forced Mao to prove his ability and determination as an able leader of the Chinese people. His daring, resilient courage, good manners, and confidence was in stark contrast to the common Chinese perception of the roguish soldier or the oppressive warlord. He had proved himself to be a man of iron: he stoically withstood disease and the death of his wife at the hands of the Kuomintang forces. Mao had even been forced to abandon his two sons at a passing village because it hindered the groups progress.
Throughout the Long March, Mao showed much of the same stubbornness and stamina as he admired in George Washington, and had the same magical effect on his mens morale. The Long March gave Mao conclusive authority over his comrades, an authority that would be institutionalised in Chinese politics and society until his death four decades later. Mao and his followers wondered throughout the countryside of South-Eastern China seeking refuge and political asylum. Eventually they ended their journey in the small mountainous village of Yanan.
Once the Communists had settled in Yanan, a government was constructed. Mao and the communists began to construct a framework for social revolution which would stress peasant empowerment, land reform, greater education and political awareness, as well as a politically conscientious Red Army which would plant crops instead of looting larders. During the Yanan period, the doctrines of pure Maoism began to be incorporated into decree and law. Mao urged writers and artists to produce works that either served the Party or had a direct and positive impact upon the working and peasant classes.
This transformation of art, called Zhengfeng was naturally conformist, however many intellectuals were still drawn into the Maoist vision. Most likely this can be attributed to the even stricter and more oppressive conditions which were imposed upon the Nationalist or Japanese controlled areas of China. The Yanan period encouraged a more just and liberal atmosphere than that which the rest of China faced during that time. Mao therefore, attracted both Chinese and foreign intellectuals into his movement. Edgar Snow, the author of Red Star Over China, was entranced by Mao's ebullience and industriousness. Mao lived amongst his followers, he tolerated no elitism within the Yanan camp, he ate peasants fare, lived in a cave like the others, and slept in the same hard-pressed conditions.
Often he would spend his evenings writing poetry or political theory, attempting to understand Marxism-Leninism within the Chinese context. As the Communists influence spread to other towns throughout the Chinese countryside, Mao began to initiate several programs which would mirror eventual Maoist principle. He attempted to end peasant political apathy by mobilising them into government activities; rents which the landlords could exact from the peasants were more than halved; large projects were established for the communities to carry out; and the ultimate vision of a classless, cooperative society was emphatically preached to the people. During this period, violence was avoided and order was restored. The Sino-Japanese war of 1937, saw the Kuomintang government and military suffer major defeats and the loss of control of most of Eastern China.
The Nationalist government probably would have been completely destroyed had it not been for Japans suicidal decision to attack the United States and invade Southeastern Asia and the Pacific rim countries. This military rescue from the claws of Japan however, brought no significant improvement in the Kuomintang's domestic performance in the political and economic fields, which if anything were getting worse. This is the atmosphere in which the CPC began to develop its own national agendas of leadership and growth, under the direct tutelage of Mao. The result being a strong determination on the part of the Chinese Communist Partys leadership to weaken foreign influence within China, to modernize their country, and to eliminate Western influence over Eastern Asia, which included the Soviet Union. China was changing and developing, yet its overwhelming characteristics were still poverty and illiteracy. The Chinese Communists, like most politically conscious Chinese, were aware of these conditions and were anxious to eliminate them.
Maoists envisioned a mixed economy under Communist control, such as had existed in the Soviet Union during the period of the New Economic Policy. The stress was more upon social justice, and public ownership of the commanding heights of the economy than upon development. In 1945, Mao was talking more candidly about development, still within the framework of a mixed economy under Communist control, and stressing the need for more heavy industry; because he had been impressed by the role of heavy industry in determining the outcome of World War II. In his selected works he said that the necessary capital would come mainly from the accumulated wealth of the Chinese people but latter added that China would appreciate foreign aid and even private foreign investment, under non exploitative conditions.
The Post World War Two period saw the Kuomintang government of Chiang Kai-shek begin to break away from the precarious and temporary cease-fire with the CPC, and the beginning of an all out Chinese revolutionary war. The Communists found themselves in a condition that they were not really prepared for, they had no armed forces or territorial bases of their own and they had no program of strategy. Hence, the following years were extremely hectic for Mao, as Chiang kai-Shek's Republican armies continually attacked and pursued the Maoist rebels across the countryside. The tide began to turn however in the mid- 1940 s, after a string of decisive victories in Southern China for Mao's and the communist forces. Mao and his supporters began to gather momentum, sweeping the countryside and gaining support and willing soldiers from throughout the peasant villages. By 1949 after a long struggle with both the vicious Japanese Imperial Army, and the ferocious army of Chiang Kai-Shek, Mao and the communists were able to claim victory and the Peoples Republic of China was given birth on October 1.
Mao immediately began to formalize the governments power with the help of several of his top Party officials: political commissar Zhou Enlai, the military strategist Zhu De, General Lin Mao, party member Liu Shaoqi, and the General Secretary of the Party at the time, Deng Xiaoping. The government, based largely on a Leninist model, was divided into two groups: one for the Party and one for the nation. The Party began to establish mass organisations, which were intended to inform and mobilise different social groups. Examples of this are the All-China Federation of Democratic Youth, the All-China Federation of Cooperatives, and the All China Federation of Democratic Women. These mass organisations allowed almost all Chinese people to participate in Party decisions, it created the impression at home and abroad that the Communists enjoyed overwhelmingly popular support. Through these mass organisations, Mao was also able to present publicly the efforts of the Communist Party to improving the situation of the Chinese people, and thus he was able to garner an increasing level of popularity for himself and his governments policies.
Mao began to construct the mechanisms of the new Chinese government, installing a system of government and administration. Attitudes changed with these structural reforms, and new policies evolved. The initial series of of policies implemented after 1949 were successful in large part because they were relevant to Chinas needs at that time and because they could become firmly rooted in the structures and values that the Chinese Communists were simultaneously cultivating. These policies were to be developed within the framework of Five-Year Plan initiatives. Although the party leaders appeared generally satisfied with the accomplishments of the First Five-Year Plan (1952 - 57), Mao and his followers believed that more could be achieved in the Second Five-Year Plan (1958 - 62). This was to be achieved through the ideological arousal of the people and the more efficient utilization of domestic resources for the simultaneous development of industry and agriculture.
Thus, in 1958 Mao and the CCP launched the Great Leap Forward campaign under the new General Line for Socialist Construction. The Great Leap Forward was aimed at accomplishing economic and technical development in China at a vastly faster pace and with much greater results. The party developed an intensified mobilization movement of the peasantry and mass organizations, led by the ideological guidance and indoctrination of technical experts, and the building of a more responsive political system. The last of these undertakings was to be accomplished through a new Xiafang or down to the countryside movement, under which cadres inside and outside the party would be sent to factories, communes, mines, and public works projects for manual labour and firsthand familiarization with grass-roots conditions. Mao's decision to embark on the Great Leap Forward was based in part on his uncertainty about the Soviet policy of economic, financial, and technical assistance to China. That policy, in Mao's view, not only fell far short of his expectations and needs but also made him wary of the political and economic dependence in which China might eventually find itself.
The Great Leap Forward centred on a new socioeconomic and political system created in the countryside and in a few urban areas such as the peoples communes. By the fall of 1958, some 750, 000 agricultural producers cooperatives, now designated as production brigades, had been amalgamated into about 23, 500 communes, each averaging 5, 000 households, or 22, 000 people. The individual commune was placed in control of all the means of production and was to operate as the sole accounting unit; it was subdivided into production brigades (generally coterminous with traditional villages) and production teams. Each commune was planned as a self-supporting community for agriculture, small-scale local industry, schooling, marketing, administration, and local security.
Organised along paramilitary and labour saving lines, the commune had communal kitchens, mess halls, and nurseries. The system was based on the assumption that it would release additional manpower for such major projects as irrigation works and hydroelectric dams, which were seen as integral parts of the plan for the simultaneous development of industry and agriculture. Unfortunately, the Great Leap Forward was an complete economic failure. Among the Great Leap Forwards economic consequences were a famine (partly as a result of drought), shortages of raw materials for industry; overproduction of poor-quality goods; deterioration of industrial plants through mismanagement; and exhaustion and demoralization of the peasantry and of the intellectuals, as well as the party and government cadres at all levels.
Throughout 1959 efforts to modify the administration of the communes got under way; these were intended partly to restore some material incentives to the production brigades and teams and to decentralize control. In April 1959 Mao, who bore the chief responsibility for the Great Leap Forward fiasco, stepped down from his position as chairman of the Peoples Republic. The National Peoples Congress elected Liu Shaoqi as Mao's successor, though Mao remained chairman of the CCP. Moreover, Mao's Great Leap Forward policy came under open criticism at a party conference at Lushan, Jiangxi Province during what was called the era of 100 hundred flowers. This was to be a period of time in which 100 flowers of thought were to be allowed to bloom, and intellectuals could openly criticize the Ccp's policies.
One of the most vicious attacks upon Maoist policy was led by Minister of National Defense Peng Dehuai, who had become troubled by the potentially adverse effect that Mao's policies would have on the modernization of the armed forces. Peng argued that putting politics in command was no substitute for economic laws and realistic economic policy; unnamed party leaders were also admonished for trying to jump into communism in one step. After the Lushan showdown, Peng Dehuai, was deposed. Peng was replaced by Lin Mao, a radical and opportunistic Maoist...
Militancy on the domestic front was also echoed in external policies. The soft foreign policy based on the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence to which China had subscribed in the mid- 1950 s gave way to a hard line in 1958. From August through October of that year, the Chinese resumed a massive artillery bombardment of the Nationalist-held offshore islands of Jinmen and Mao. This was accompanied by an aggressive propaganda assault on the United States and a declaration of the Communists intent to liberate Taiwan.
Chinese control over Xizang had been reasserted in 1950. The socialist revolution that took place thereafter increasingly became a process of oppression for the Tibetans. Tension culminated in a revolt in 1958 - 59 and the flight to India by the Dalai Lama, the Tibetans spiritual and temporal leader. Relations with India, where sympathy for the rebels was aroused, deteriorated as thousands of Tibetan refugees crossed the Indian border. There were several border incidents in 1959, and a brief Sino-Indian border war erupted in October 1962 as China laid claim to Aksai Chin, nearly 103, 600 square kilometres of territory that India regarded as its own. The Soviet Union gave India its moral support in the dispute, thus contributing to the growing tension between Beijing and Moscow.
The Sino-Soviet dispute of the late 1950 s was the most important development in Chinese foreign relations. The Soviet Union had been Chinas principal benefactor and ally, but relations between the two were cooling. The Soviet agreement in late 1957 to help China produce its own nuclear weapons and missiles was terminated by mid- 1959. From that point until the mid- 1960 s, the Soviets recalled all of their technicians and advisers from China and reduced or cancelled economic and technical aid to China.
The discord was occasioned by several factors. The two countries differed in their interpretation of the nature of peaceful coexistence. The Chinese took a more militant and unyielding position on the issue of anti-imperialist struggle, but the Soviets were unwilling, for example, to give their support on the Taiwan question. In addition, the two communist powers disagreed on doctrinal matter. Rivalry within the international communist movement also exacerbated Sino-Soviet relations. An additional complication was the history of suspicion each side had toward the other, especially the Chinese, who had lost a substantial part of territory to tsarist Russia in the mid-nineteenth century.
Whatever the causes of the dispute, the Soviet suspension of aid was a blow to the Chinese scheme for developing industrial and modern technology. In the early 1960 s, Mao was on the political sidelines and he went into semi-seclusion. By 1962, however, he personally began an offensive to purify the Communist Party, having grown increasingly uneasy about what he believed were the creeping revisionist and anti-socialist influences in the Party. Mao fiercely believed that the material incentives that had been incorporated into the governments policy were corrupting the peasants and the masses and were counter to Maoist developments. To arrest this capitalist trend, Mao launched the Socialist Education Movement (1962 - 65), in which primary emphasis was placed upon restoring the ideological purity and revolutionary fervour of the party and government bureaucracies.
There were internal disagreements, however they were not directed against the goals of this government-sponsored social movement but on the methods with which the party was carrying it out. Opposition came mainly from the moderates represented by Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping, who were unsympathetic to Mao's policies. The Socialist Education Movement was soon coupled with a simultaneous Mao led campaign, the theme of which was for the people to learn from the Peoples Liberation Army. Minister of National Defense Lin Biao's appointment to power was accompanied by his call on the CCP and the Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) to accentuate Maoist thought as the guiding principle for the Socialist Education Movement and for all revolutionary undertakings in China.
In connection with the Socialist Education Movement, a thorough reform of the school system, which had been planned earlier to coincide with the Great Leap Forward, went into effect. The reform was intended as a sort of quasi work-study program, in which education was slated to accommodate the work schedule of agrarian communes and factories. It had the dual purpose of providing mass education less expensively and of re-educating intellectuals and scholars to accept the need for their own participation in manual labour. The drafting of intellectuals for manual labour was part of the partys rectification campaign, publicized through the mass media as an effort to remove bourgeois influences from professional workers. Official propaganda accused them of being more concerned with having expertise than with being truly red.
By mid- 1965 Mao had gradually but systematically regained control of the party with the support of Lin Mao, Jiang Qing (Mao's wife), and Chen Boda, a leading socialist theoretician. In the next six months, under the guise of upholding ideological purity, Mao and his supporters purged or attacked a wide variety of public figures, including State Chairman Liu Shaoqi and other party and state leaders. By mid- 1966 Mao's campaign had erupted into what came to be known as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, the first mass action to have emerged against the CCP itself. Mao felt that he could no longer depend on the formal party organization, convinced that it had been permeated with capitalist and bourgeois corruptions. He turned to his minister Lin Mao and the PLA to counteract the influence of those who were allegedly left in form but 'right in essence. The PLA was widely extolled as a great school for the training of a new generation of revolutionary fighters and leaders.
Maoists also turned to middle-school students for political demonstrations on their behalf. These students, joined also by some university students, came to be known as the Red Guards. Millions of Red Guards were encouraged by the Cultural Revolution group to become a shock force and to bombard with criticism both the regular party headquarters in Beijing and those at the regional and provincial levels. Red Guard activities were promoted as a reflection of Mao's policy of rekindling revolutionary enthusiasm and destroying outdated, counterrevolutionary symbols and values.
Mao's ideas, popularized in the Quotations from Chairman Mao or The Red Book, became the standard by which all revolutionary efforts were to be judged. The four big rights were speaking out freely, airing views fully, holding great debates, and writing big-character posters, which all became an important factor in encouraging Mao's youthful followers to criticize his intra-party rivals. The four big rights became such a major feature during the period that they were later institutionalised in the state constitution of 1975. The result of the unfettered criticism of established organs of control by Chinas exuberant youth was massive civil disorder, punctuated also by clashes among rival Red Guard gangs and between the gangs and local security authorities. The party organization was shattered from top to bottom. The Central Committees Secretariat ceased functioning in late 1966.
The resources of the public security organs were severely strained. Faced with imminent anarchy the PLA, which was the only organization whose ranks for the most part had not been radicalized by Red Guard-style activities, emerged as the principal guarantor of law and order and the begrudging political authority. Although the PLA was under Mao's rallying call to support the left, PLA regional military commanders ordered their forces to restrain the leftist radicals, thus restoring order throughout much of China. The PLA also was responsible for the appearance in early 1967 of the revolutionary committees, a new form of local control that replaced local party committees and administrative bodies. The revolutionary committees were staffed with Cultural Revolution activists, trusted cadres, and military commanders, the military frequently holding the greatest power.
The radical tide receded somewhat in late 1967, but it was not until after mid- 1968 that Mao came to realise the uselessness of further revolutionary violence. Liu Shaoqi, Deng Xiaoping, and their fellow revisionists and capitalist readers had been purged from public life by early 1967, and the Maoist group had since been in full command of the political scene. Viewed in larger perspective, the need for domestic calm and stability was occasioned perhaps even more by pressures emanating from outside China. Mao was alarmed in 1966 - 68 by the steady Soviet military build ups along their common border.
The Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 heightened Chinese apprehensions. In March 1969 Chinese and Soviet troops clashed on Zhenbao Island in the disputed Wusuli Jiang border area. The tension on the border had a sobering effect on the fractious Chinese political scene and provided the regime with a new and unifying rallying call. The activist phase of the Cultural Revolution, considered to be the first in a series of cultural revolutions, was formally brought to an end in April 1969. This end was formally signalled at the Ccp's Ninth National Party Congress, which convened under the dominance of the Maoist group. Mao was confirmed as the supreme leader.
Lin Mao was promoted to the post of CCP vice chairman and was named as Mao's successor. Others who had risen to power by means of Cultural Revolution machinations were rewarded with positions on the Polit Bureau; a significant number of military commanders were appointed to the Central Committee. Despite this formal cessation, historians refer to the Cultural Revolution as a decade long experience extending all the way into 1976 and until the death of Mao Ze Dong himself. Mao died on September 9, 1976 and Hua Guofeng was quite suspiciously named successor to the leadership. Although the Cultural Revolution or sometimes now referred to as the ten bad years ended in 1976, it took some years to sort out the new leadership.
By late 1978, the new leadership had successfully consolidated their power to embark on a major shift in policy. China began to move gradually and steadily away from a centrally administered economy to a more decentralised system in which all types of enterprises, including farms, gained more autonomy. Markets became the major pricing mechanism for virtually all agricultural products. Contracts rather than centrally determined production targets became the major instrument for determining production. These reformers contended that ideological commitments to collective production do not preclude production activities of a private character; and that markets do not necessarily create capitalist social relations. However it might be referred to, post- 1978 economic policies emphasize profits and efficiency and specifically non Maoist principles.
The Party, in evaluating Mao, likes to say that his policies had been 30 % hard on China, but since he had helped it to stand up, his leadership had been 70 % good for it. According to the CCP, left wing extremists have twisted the history of Mao and his ideas to serve their own purpose. Further, they contest that Mao was a proletarian revolutionary, and he should be forgiven for his leftist errors. Despite the Partys attempted alienation from some of the evils of Maoist policies, Mao Ze Dong Thought still remains valid, for it is the summation of the Ccp's collective wisdom since 1935 - 1976. Thus, Mao remains ever present, yet somewhat forgotten. His collected works and the infamous little red book are no longer a required reading in schools, nor does his picture represent the same majesty to the Chinese people.
But the leadership is very aware that without Mao and without Maoist thought the socialist revolution might not have been possible. Reciprocally, the CCP owes its governance to the revolutionary vision of Mao. This lies at the heart of almost every unresolved issue in China today: In what respects can reforms disregard Mao's thoughts? Interestingly enough, protesters in 1989, demonstrating in demand of democratic reform, referred repeatedly to Mao and Maoist thought.
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