(15) Chapter 1 - Becoming a revolutionary

"Throughout his adult life Mao was a prolific writer."(16)

"Under Mao’s leadership China was transformed from a weak, disunited country to a power on the world stage. However, his vision for China’s social transformation failed. He did not find a way to make China both egalitarian and prosperous and his efforts to do so visited enormous suffering on his people. During the Cultural Revolution his ruthlessness towards his opponents or those he perceived as opponents and his cynical exploitation of his cult of personality ultimately disillusioned many of his followers. By the time of his death, Mao’s belief in constant class struggle and continuous revolution had become profoundly unattractive to ordinary people and the moral credibility of the Communist Party was ebbing away. His successors sought a new legitimacy for the communist-led state in the promise of improved standards of living. These were to be brought about through a return to a marketized economy, the abandonment of class struggle, and the acceptance of the development of considerable degrees of inequality. In sum, despite its extraordinary achievements, judged by Mao’s own standards, his revolution was only a limited success." [mijn nadruk] (16-17)

"The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) of which Mao was a founder member and the Nationalist Party or Guomindang eventually became bitter enemies, but both grew out of this nationalism and both declared their determination to free China from imperialist domination and to build a strong modern state."(18)

"As a small child Mao lived for some years at the house of his maternal grandmother. When he returned to Shaoshan he often quarrelled with his father whom he recalled as mean, harsh, and demanding, yet the young Mao benefited from the comparative prosperity that his father had won for the family. He began to help on the land when he was 6 but was also fortunate enough to attend the village primary school and to go further afield for education in his teens. He had the privilege, unusual in a village family, of a room of his own where he could read until late in the night. Mao’s love of his mother was in sharp contrast to his hostility towards his father."(21)

"At 14 he was married to a cousin on his father’s side, four years his senior. For his parents there was nothing extraordinary in such a match. Their own arranged marriage had taken place when his father was 15 and his mother 18. However, Mao told Edgar Snow that he never slept with this woman nor considered her his wife. She died in 1910, when he was 16. This experience no doubt contributed to the fierce opposition to arranged marriages expressed in his early writings."(23)

"In the same year, bored by farm work, Mao enrolled at a modern school 17 miles away in his mother’s home district of Xiangxiang.(...) In addition to the traditional curriculum of the Chinese classics, this school offered ‘western learning’ including the natural sciences, English, music, world history."(23)

"Soon Mao wanted more than Xiangxiang could offer. In 1911, aged 17, he journeyed the 40 miles to Changsha, the provincial capital, to enrol in another school. It was a time of great political ferment. In the first years of the 20th century the Qing dynasty had made some concessions to reform. These included attempts to create a modernized army with a trained officer core, a new government structure, the abolition of the traditional civil service examinations, the establishment of government schools teaching a modern curriculum, and, in 1908, the creation of elected assemblies intended to ‘advise the government’. The dynasty hoped that limited change would stem the demand for more. Instead it whetted the appetite for reform. Moreover, army officers, teachers, and civil servants in the new institutions, as well as the students enrolled in modern schools, tended to favour reform or even revolution."(25)

"His reading included Rousseau’s Social Contract and Montesquieu’s The Spirit of Laws, which introduced him to Enlightenment ideas of the freedom of the individual, equality, and the compact between the ruler and the ruled. Other works he recalled were Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, Darwin’s Origin of the Species, ‘a book on ethics by John Stuart Mill’, and ‘Herbert Spencer’s Logic’."(29)

"Mao was forced to abandon his self-study because his father refused to support him any more unless he enrolled at a school. He then decided to become a teacher and in 1913 he entered the Hunan Teachers’ College from which he graduated in 1918. He was clearly not a particularly easy student."(30)

[Hoe herkenbaar ... ]

"On Yang Changji’s recommendation, Mao read a Chinese translation of A System of Ethics by the neo-Kantian philosopher Friedrich Paulsen.(...) Steeped in Confucian discipline, Mao, like his teachers, was attracted by Paulsen’s idea of self-cultivation through self-discipline. He had already applied these ideas to his own life, studying hard, dressing simply, and exercising regularly."(32)

"It was Yang Changji who introduced Mao to New Youth, which from 1915 to 1926 was a major national forum for discussions on the transformation of society. In 1917 the journal carried Mao’s first published article."(33)

"In 1918, when Mao graduated, he went to Beijing where his former teacher, Yang Changji, had been appointed professor of ethics. Yang introduced Mao to Li Dazhao who was the librarian at the Beijing University and a co-editor with Chen Duxiu of New Youth. Li found him a job as a library clerk."(34)

"The modernizing movement that had been under way since 1917 henceforth became known as the May Fourth Movement. Its demands included not only the rejection of the Treaty, but also the adoption of science and democracy as guiding principles for government, the replacement of classical Chinese in favour of the vernacular written language in order to facilitate mass literacy, and changes in the family and the position of women. For intellectuals of Mao’s generation the May Fourth Movement was the formative experience.(...) Some women took part in the May Fourth Movement, but much of the writing advocating women’s emancipation was produced by men, many of whom, like Mao, had developed an interest in what was called ‘the Woman Question’ because of their own experience of arranged marriage." [mijn nadruk] (36)

"In Beijing, Mao was able to read some works about Marxism and became enormously excited by The Communist Manifesto, newly translated into Chinese.(...) At this stage, despite his interest in Marxism, Mao was uncertain of his beliefs and was attracted by anarchist ideas of mutual aid and shared resources. Only in January 1921, in a letter to his friend Cai Hesen, who was studying in France, did Mao finally repudiate anarchist ideas and accept Marx’s materialist conception of history. He had found the ideology on which he would base the rest of his life."(38)

(38) Chapter 2 - Organizing revolution

"The main power base of the revolutionary groups and secret societies that had overthrown the Manchu dynasty was in the south. In 1917, their leader, Sun Yatsen, set up a government in the southern city of Guangzhou and in 1919 he reorganized these revolutionary groups as the Guomindang or Nationalist Party.
In the summer of 1921, delegates from various small provincial communist groups came to the First Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Representatives of the Comintern sent to China from Moscow were in attendance. Immediately, the tensions that would characterize Sino-Soviet relations for years to come began to appear. First, Moscow was trying to assert leadership over the international communist movement through the Comintern. The Chinese communists resented the Comintern’s assumption of supremacy. Secondly, Moscow, and therefore the Comintern, was ambivalent about the potential of communist movements in underdeveloped countries. Orthodox Marxism had created the expectation that revolutions led by communist parties and based on the industrial working class would first occur in capitalist countries. When the October 1917 revolution in Russia was not followed by successful revolutions in industrialized Western Europe, Moscow was isolated. By 1924, Stalin was arguing that ‘socialism in one country’ was possible. Soviet Russia sought to break its isolation by supporting anti-imperialist or anti-colonialist movements in colonized countries. According to the Marxist analysis of history, these still agrarian societies might be ready for bourgeois democratic revolutions but not socialist ones, for these required a working class. The Comintern line was therefore that communist parties in ‘backward’ countries could survive only by cooperating closely with nationalist movements. The CCP however required its members to break all ties with all other political organizations. The Comintern representatives viewed this as an error and urged the tiny Chinese Party to ally itself with the Guomindang." [mijn nadruk] (40)

"When he returned to Hunan, he obtained provincial government backing to set up a ‘Self-study University’ at which students would ‘read on their own and study together’. Its constitution contained ideas on education that Mao would promote at other times in his life, notably during the Cultural Revolution. For example, the university was to be inclusive, admitting students without formal qualifications if they were capable of benefiting from the courses. It would bring together the intellectual class and working class and have a horticultural garden, a print shop, and ironworks, putting an end to the Chinese tradition that intellectuals did not engage in physical labour or sports. Despite a focus on modern thought and Marxism, the curriculum also gave space to traditional Chinese learning, reflecting Mao’s belief that Chinese should not neglect their own history and culture." [mijn nadruk] (41)

"This was a time of great tension in Guangzhou, the seat of the Guomindang government. Sun Yatsen’s death from cancer the previous March had been followed by a struggle for succession between the right and left wing of the Guomindang. In March 1926 Chiang Kaishek made a bid for the Party leadership by declaring martial law, arresting a number of CCP members, and putting his Russian advisers under house arrest. The affair was smoothed over when the Russians agreed to a military expedition to the north to achieve national reunification under a Guomindang government. Chiang Kaishek was confirmed as the Guomindang leader."(45)

"Mao was not the only communist leader to insist on the revolutionary potential of the peasants but it was a point of difference between him and most of the CCP leadership. The peasant question was complicated.(...) Comintern advisers were frustrated with the CCP leadership for ignoring the peasantry, yet they criticized Mao for overestimating the revolutionary nature of the peasants and even alleged that his analysis seemed to give peasants the role of the proletariat. Some CCP leaders regarded the peasants as backward, ignorant, and irrelevant to the modern revolutionary society they wished to build. As a party, the Guomindang formulated a policy towards the peasants, and set up training institutes for them earlier than the CCP. However, many Guomindang officials, like many in the CCP leadership, were ambivalent about the peasant movement as violence against landlords increased and condemned it as ‘out of control’."(45)

"This passage [over de rol van de boeren - GdG] was dropped when Mao’s Report was tidied up for his official Selected Works published in the 1950s, as was his advocacy of sexual freedom. But the main importance of the Report was that it presented the peasantry as a class capable of playing a leading role in the revolution, a vision that was fundamental to Mao’s ideas and strategies." [mijn nadruk] (49)

"A left-leaning Guomindang government was set up in the important central China city of Wuhan, while Chiang Kaishek established his headquarters at Nanchang and prepared an advance on Shanghai. Chinese businessmen and foreigners in the city who saw Chiang as a dangerous radical were at first very alarmed. The labour movement welcomed him. Shanghai’s General Labour Union called for a strike and an armed insurrection against the warlords and in support of the Nationalist army. However, Chiang had decided to break with the left which he saw as threatening his leadership of the Guomindang. When his Nationalist troops entered the city at the end of March, Chiang was quick to win the support of industrialists, bankers, and secret society bosses and to reassure the foreigners that their interests were safe. On 12 April he began a vicious campaign of suppression against the labour movement. Many activists were shot and hundreds more arrested.(...) The Comintern advisers fled back to the Soviet Union, and Guomindang generals began the suppression of peasant associations in Hunan and Hubei. Chiang Kaishek assumed total control over the Guomintang and set up a new government of the Chinese Republic based in Nanjing." [mijn nadruk] (50)

"By the end of 1927, the communist movement in China was at its lowest ebb. It had suffered heavy casualities, and its organization in the cities had gone underground."(52)

"New marriage regulations gave women equal rights, outlawed arranged marriage, and made divorce available at the request of either partner. Efforts were made to involve women in political activities and in support work for the army."(54)

(63) Chapter 3 - Yan’an

"Even in these theoretical pieces, however, Mao insists on the primacy of experience over book-learning, advancing one of his basic positions that ‘All genuine knowledge originates in experience’ and that one must ‘discover truth through practice and through practice again verify the truth’." [mijn nadruk] (68)

"A core document was Mao’s essay ‘Reform our Study’ in which he attacked what he called subjectivism, sectarianism, and dogmatism and accused some Party members of ‘studying the theories of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin in the abstract, without any aim, and without considering their relevance to the Chinese revolution’. Another lively essay argues in Mao’s earthy style that shit is more useful than dogma: ‘A dog’s shit can fertilise the fields and a man’s can feed the dog. And dogmas? They can neither fertilise the field nor feed the dog. Of what use are they?’ (References to shit were later expurgated in the version that appeared in the official Selected Works.) The campaign quickly gained the support of most of the leadership and was extended to the rank and file of the Party. Everyone had to study the rectification documents, absorb Mao’s view of Party history, and consider their own past roles. Even such a senior figure as Zhou Enlai, henceforth Mao’s loyal lieutenant, made an abject self-criticism for his past opposition." [mijn nadruk] (74)

"Even the creative arts came under new Maoist guidelines contained in a course of lectures Mao gave in 1942, later published as the ‘Yan’an Talks on Art and Literature’. These basically demanded that art and literature should serve the revolution and that political criteria should be put ahead of artistic ones in judging the quality of creative works. Until the death of Mao in 1976, the ‘Talks’ were used to impose an increasingly repressive literary orthodoxy." [mijn nadruk] (75)

"For many Chinese intellectuals, Yan’an under Mao came to symbolize a modest utopia. They saw it as a revolutionary society free from corruption and from the restrictions the traditional family imposed on the individual, offering effective opposition to the Japanese and hope for a new China. Patriots made their way to it from both Guomindang China and the Japanese-occupied areas. Their hopes were not wholly delusory but Yan’an certainly had its dark side. Rectification was hard on its victims."(77)

"In 1943, Mao finally attained supreme leadership of the CCP, being elected chairman of the Politburo and of the Central Committee. In April 1945, the seventh Party Congress, the first to be held since 1928, confirmed his appointments. All members of the new Politburo were Mao’s associates. Mao could now afford to show some generosity to his opponents — Wang Ming and two of his faction were included in the Central Committee — but Congress records reflect Mao’s control." [mijn nadruk] (79)

"Soon after He Zizhen’s departure, Mao started to live with a pretty young woman originally from Shandong who had been a struggling actress in Shanghai under the stage name Lan Ping — Blue Apple. Mao gave her the name Jiang Qing.(...) Other women veterans were particularly disapproving of the liaisons formed by male leaders with attractive young women arriving from the cities. Rumours about Jiang Qing’s past, both personal and political, led to questions about her suitability as a wife for Mao." [mijn nadruk] (83)

"When Japan surrendered in 1945, a few months of negotiations between the Guomindang and the CCP followed. In reality both sides were preparing for civil war but neither wished to appear to initiate it. Both were sensitive to the public’s longing for peace; moreover, their patrons in Washington and Moscow favoured coalition government. The CCP no doubt resented the Soviet position. Mao had become aware that at Yalta, and again at Potsdam, Stalin had received assurances that the Chinese Eastern Railroad and Lüshunkou (Port Arthur), former imperial Russian concessions in China that had been ceded to Japan in 1905, would be returned to the Soviet Union. Stalin had also assured Roosevelt and Churchill that the Guomindang was the only party capable of ruling China after the war and he signed a treaty with Chiang in 1945 acknowledging him as the leader of China’s legal government. In exchange Chiang recognized the independence of Outer Mongolia, and agreed to the continued Soviet occupation of Lüshunkou and control of the Chinese Eastern Railway. Meanwhile, despite outside pressure, negotiations between the CCP and the Guomindang soon broke down and civil war ensued." [mijn nadruk] (86)

[Dat heeft Mao uiteraard als een groot verraad ervaren. Ik kan me voorstellen dat hij schoon genoeg had van de machtshonger van Chiang ten koste van de bevolking van China. Typisch: De VS stonden aan de kant van Chiang en steunden hem op allerlei materiële manieren.]

"By the end of the year [1949] the Guomindang government had fled to Taiwan and the CCP controlled the Chinese mainland. On 1 October 1949 Mao Zedong, with his characteristic talent for symbolic gestures, stood on the rostrum of the old Forbidden City overlooking Tiananmen to proclaim the birth of the People’s Republic.(...) His decisive control over his Party had involved freeing it from Soviet domination and he was now able to promise a New China that would be free from all foreign interference. It was a promise that had great appeal to his fellow countrymen." [mijn nadruk] (88)

(88) Chapter 4 - First years of the People’s Republic

"Mao also made it clear that China would seek an alliance with the Soviet Union. He knew that this policy of ‘leaning to one side’ would cause concern. Many educated Chinese greatly admired the United States, conscious of its wealth and power but also seeing it as the home of freedom and democracy."(91)

[Waarschijnlijk meer het eerste dan het laatste. Je moet wel blind zijn als je in die periode eind veertiger, begin vijfiger jaren denkt dat er in de VS sprake is van vrijheid en democratie.]

"Soon the Korean War put new strains on the Sino-Soviet relationship. It began in June 1950 when the North Korean army, well armed by the Soviet Union, swept south through the divided peninsula."(93)

"Unbelievably, in this short war, the Chinese suffered almost one million casualties. Participation cost China dear in other ways. It confirmed the US adoption of Taiwan as a client state, isolated Beijing diplomatically, and increased its dependence on Moscow. Having been branded as an aggressor by the UN, the People’s Republic was excluded from the UN until 1971. China’s seat was instead occupied by the rump Guomindang government in Taiwan. China’s expenditure on the war was US$10 billion. The Chinese were disappointed that the Soviet Union did not provide the air support they had expected and resentful at having to pay the USSR for military supplies when they felt they were fighting on behalf of the whole socialist camp."(95)

"Of course Mao’s main preoccupations were with national affairs, especially economic policy. The period 1949–53 laid the basis for recovery and development through the establishment of peace, civil order, and regular communications, all lacking in China throughout the first half of the century. The hyperinflation that had contributed significantly to the fall of the Guomindang was brought under control. During the civil war, the CCP had gained peasant support by redistributing land from landlords and sometimes rich peasant families to the poorer peasants in the areas it controlled. Land reform continued after the Party came to national power. Mao was at first associated with a comparatively moderate system under which the rich peasant economy would be preserved and production levels protected. In the end, a much tougher policy prevailed under which almost half China’s cultivated acreage was redistributed. Class struggle was emphasized in land reform, old scores were settled, and there was considerable violence. It has been estimated that between one and two million landlords were killed." [mijn nadruk] (101)

[Ik zou wel eens willen weten waar die enorme aantallen vandaag komen, waar de onderbouwing ervoor te vinden is.]

"The Soviet-style First Five Year Plan, which ran from 1953 to 1957, brought some real successes. There was enormous investment in infrastructure, especially in railways, bridges, and some key heavy industrial plants. Soviet technical aid played an important role. By 1956 both industry and trade had been brought under state control but former capitalists were compensated and the change was achieved with comparatively little disruption. The industrial growth rate was impressive though it started from a very small base. Economic progress was enough to raise public morale, and to create some improvement in the standard of living. There were remarkable advances in education and health in the urban areas but progress in the villages was more modest."(101)

"Bypassing the formal decision-making process, he called for the pace of cooperativization to be speeded up. By 1957, almost every peasant household had been pressed into higher-level co-ops in which land, livestock, and equipment were all collectively owned and remuneration depended on labour alone. Despite the speed of the process, production was not disrupted and this allowed Mao to claim a triumph. However, the basic problems in Chinese agriculture remained intractable. The amount of cultivated land per head of the population was one of the lowest in the world."(103)

"Most of the population received some sort of ‘political education’ to explain and win support for the new government and its policies. This took place in the workplace, and in all sorts of organizations such as Peasant Associations, the Youth League, the Women’s Federation, and even in the Young Pioneers, the communist children’s organization." [mijn nadruk] (105)

"On the other hand life was becoming very difficult for certain groups. Campaigns were launched successively against counter-revolutionaries, corrupt cadres, and businessmen accused of defrauding the state. Intellectuals underwent ‘thought reform’, designed to break their intellectual independence and to discredit all ideologies other than Marxism. They were made to feel guilty for their privileged past. At regular meetings, usually held at their place of work, they were required to consider their past actions and ideas and to make self-criticisms as well as criticisms of others. From the time of the Korean War life was particularly difficult for those who had connections with the United States, had been educated in mission schools, or had relatives in Taiwan. Individuals under attack were isolated, a painful state that imposed great psychological pressure in a society that seemed overwhelmingly united in the pursuit of economic progress, national self-determination, and socialism. Dissent resulted in tragic consequences for the dissidents and their families."(106)

"Meanwhile, in China, possibly in response to questions under debate after Khrushchev’s secret speech about how a socialist country should be run, Mao and some other Party leaders had begun to advocate greater intellectual freedom. In spring 1956, Mao raised the slogan ‘Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom, Let a Hundred Schools of Thought Contend’, urging that academic debate should take place without undue political restriction, and that the Party and officials should submit to public criticism. This seemed like an extraordinary reversal after the Hu Feng affair. It seems that Mao feared that economic development would be stalled if intellectuals, technical experts, and managers were held back by conformity or fear. The movement was intended to harness their energy and enthusiasm." [mijn nadruk] (112)

"Encouraged by what appeared to be a sustained relaxation, intellectuals, academics, scientists, technical experts, and managers began to attack the Party and its authoritarian role. They complained of narrow repressiveness and of inappropriate political interference in many spheres of life including education, research, industrial management, and construction. They also protested against low standards of living, political repression, and the slavish imitation of the Soviet Union. Mao’s colleagues became more alarmed than ever, and Mao himself seems to have been at first taken aback, and then angered by this crescendo of resentful voices. In the summer, despite all Mao’s promises about accepting criticism, a campaign of repression was launched, overseen by Deng Xiaoping, then a newly powerful figure as Deputy Premier, General Secretary of the CCP Central Committee, Director of the Organization Department, and Vice Chairman of the Central Military Commission. Over half a million ‘rightists’ were identified in universities, enterprises, and government offices including leading writers and thinkers. They were punished with varying degrees of severity, many being sent into exile or imprisonment for years. Their family members were discriminated against in education, job selection, and promotion." [mijn nadruk] (114)

"Whatever the real meaning of the Eighth Congress, any tensions that existed in this period were to be dwarfed by what happened in 1958 when Mao led China into the disastrous Great Leap Forward."(118)

(118) Chapter 5 - The Great Leap Forward and its aftershocks

"China faced unyielding hostility from the United States, the Americans had given Taiwan the latest military equipment, and the American trade embargo had excluded China from world markets. Reliant on the Soviet nuclear deterrent, China was alarmed by any indication that Moscow might be ‘going soft’ rather than standing up to Washington." [mijn nadruk] (119)

[Het was toen niet anders dan nu.]

"The developing differences with the Soviet Union convinced Mao that China would have to depend more on its own efforts to industrialize and also inclined him to the belief that China should not slavishly follow the Soviet model. Mao revived the idea of an economic leap that he had first suggested in 1956. The Great Leap Forward was launched in the winter of 1957–8 with the aim of speeding up economic growth."(121)

"Social revolution was another objective of the Great Leap. The remuneration system in the People’s Communes was at first extremely egalitarian. The patriarchal family came under new attack. Drives to get women involved in work outside the home were underpinned by the opening of communal kitchens and nurseries. The Great Leap involved a visionary attempt to use human labour power, of which China had so much, to replace the capital and the equipment that it lacked." [mijn nadruk] (121)

"The Great Leap was characterized by an extreme anti-expert bias. It was better to be ‘red’ than ‘expert’, and engineers who protested that production targets were impractical or mentioned the technical limitations of machinery could find themselves accused of counter-revolutionary behaviour." [mijn nadruk] (123)

"Reliable statistics were among the first casualties of the Great Leap."(124)

"Predictably the result of this ruthless grain procurement by the state in what was still a largely self-sufficient agricultural economy was an appalling famine. Death rates shot up while birth rates plummeted. Between 20 and 30 million deaths — some estimates go much higher — resulted from the direct and indirect effects of the famine."(125)

[Opnieuw geen bronvermeldingen voor die grote aantallen.]

"Mao, as the chief architect of the policies that produced the famine and of a political culture in which even his oldest comrades increasingly feared to bring up unpalatable truths, bears responsibility for one of the greatest disasters in human history."(126)

[Waar of waardeoordelen?]

"Mao called an expanded Central Committee work conference in Beijing attended by 7,000 cadres. He hoped the meeting would stop the retrenchment which he perceived as a retreat from socialism. In the event, grass-roots cadres were so eloquent in their condemnation of Great Leap policies that Mao was forced to make a rather perfunctory self-criticism. After the meeting Mao withdrew to south China for several months leaving Liu, Zhou, and Deng in charge of affairs in Beijing. The economy gradually recovered and, although rationing remained, by 1963 food was becoming more plentiful. Even policies towards literature, the arts, and education were somewhat relaxed." [mijn nadruk] (133)

"The Sino-Soviet split is an essential background to understanding Mao’s evolving ideas in this period. Relations between the two parties worsened after the withdrawal of Soviet aid in 1960."(135)

"In 1964 the cult of Mao was intensified. His name was mentioned with ever greater frequency in broadcasts. Chinese radio increased its output of revolutionary songs vaunting Mao’s leadership while western classical music went off the air. His Selected Works was reissued, and a collection of extracts from his writings edited for the use of the army by Lin Biao appeared. Later editions were bound in a red vinyl cover and within two years a copy of Quotations from Chairman Mao, better known in English as The Little Red Book, would be owned and carried by everyone in China as the study of Mao’s thought became obligatory."(139)

(140) Chapter 6 - The Cultural Revolution: it’s right to rebel

"However, by 1965, Mao was becoming increasingly disillusioned with the way Chinese society was developing. He believed that socialism was endangered by the measures introduced to restore the economy after the Great Leap disasters, in particular the introduction of material incentives in industry and the modifications to the collective system in agriculture."(141)

"As the different strands of his unease came together, Mao seems to have concluded that the idea of his withdrawal to the second line had been a mistake. He decided to initiate one last campaign to safeguard his revolutionary legacy. This was the titanic struggle which became known as the Cultural Revolution. Its violent and chaotic phase lasted until from 1966 to 1969 when Mao pronounced it complete, although, to the horror of many, he sometimes said that there would be a need for further cultural revolutions in future. The post-Mao leadership redefined the Cultural Revolution as the ‘ten years of catastrophe’, the period from 1966 to 1976, in order to discredit the leftist policies of the 1970s, and this periodization is now quite generally adopted." [mijn nadruk] (143)

"Many of the young activists who threw themselves into this new revolution were attracted by what they saw as a grass-roots movement which would at last lift the heavy hand of bureaucratic Party control."(144)

"All sorts of grievances emerged. Common themes were tyrannical Party leaders, nepotism, cronyism, and poor teaching, but local and individual issues also fuelled direct action."(148)

"The target of the movement should be those in authority who were taking the capitalist road. Old ideas, culture, customs, and habits were to be resisted and education, literature, and art transformed."(151)

"The Red Guard movement now took off. In their home towns Red Guards raided private houses and confiscated or destroyed property defined as representing old or bourgeois culture. Often they ransacked their own homes, burning books and photographs and smashing possessions. Having detained, interrogated, ill treated, and even beaten leaders supposed to represent bourgeois authority, they dragged them to struggle meetings where they were publicly humiliated. Some were beaten to death and others committed suicide."(152)

"Red Guard organizations tended to divide into factions and fight amongst themselves. Those with ‘good class backgrounds’, the children of peasants, workers, and old revolutionaries whose families had benefited from the communist revolution, were usually less radical and tried to defend the status quo. Those with ‘bad class backgrounds’—the children of the pre-revolutionary elite, landlord families, intellectuals, and those with connections in Taiwan or abroad—resented the discrimination to which they had been subject. They tended to be very radical. Yet they were subject to attack from other groups precisely because their background was questionable. All groups justified their policies and actions with reference to Mao’s works. When Mao gave a clear order they tried to obey it. Much of the time, however, Mao was careful to hide his hand. His comments were Delphic in their ambiguity leaving Red Guard organizations considerable room to act on their own initiative. Communist leaders vying for power or survival whether at local or national level tried to manipulate Red Guard groups, sometimes through their own children. Like gang members anywhere, Red Guard organizations developed their own rivalries and antagonisms, albeit with ideological rationalizations. In some cases, they imprisoned, tortured, and even murdered each other with disturbing brutality."(154)

"Ignorant of the details of China’s revolutionary history, the young Red Guards idolized Mao as China’s only saviour while they ill treated and interrogated others who also had dedicated their lives to the revolution. Intellectuals, teachers, and old revolutionaries alike were accused of being bourgeois and ill treated, imprisoned, beaten to death."(155)

"The campaigns against Liu, Deng, and many other senior revolutionaries were largely masterminded by members of the Cultural Revolution Small Group, notably Jiang Qing, Kang Sheng, Chen Boda, and Zhang Chunqiao. They also instigated attacks on officials, intellectuals, and people from the world of the arts and of literature. Jiang Qing would later say in her own defence that she had been Chairman Mao’s dog and that when he told her to bite someone, she bit."(160)

"Finally in the summer of 1968, faced with near civil war in various provinces, Mao decided to call a halt. Work teams were sent onto the campuses to restore order but were sometimes viciously attacked. Mao called a meeting of Red Guard leaders in the capital. Confronting their complaint that a ‘Black Hand’ was attempting to suppress the campus revolution, he announced that he himself was that Black Hand. Lin Biao, Zhou Enlai, Jiang Qing, Chen Boda, and Kang Sheng were all present to hear Mao effectively ending the Red Guard Movement."(163)

"The costs were high. Millions had died or been humiliated. Mao had damaged the structure and standing of the party to which he had devoted so much of his life."(169)

"Intriguingly, the horrors of the Cultural Revolution remain better known than those of the Great Leap Forward and are often made more of in critiques of Mao’s record, yet if the two are compared, the Leap with its incomparably higher death toll was the greater human catastrophe. The difference is that the majority of those who died in the famine were peasants and quickly forgotten in the world outside their villages. The victims of the Cultural Revolution by contrast were educated people, intellectuals, officials, and Party leaders. Their sufferings were more visible, even at the time, and a number of the survivors would later write moving memoirs." [mijn nadruk] (169)

(170) Chapter 7 - Decline and death

"Two extraordinary events brought drama to the last years of Mao’s life. The first, in 1971, was the defection and death of his heir apparent, Lin Biao, and the second was the visit of President Nixon to Beijing in 1972. These events astonished even well-informed onlookers and explanations for them are still a matter of dispute."(170)

"The fall of Lin Biao inevitably cast doubt on Mao’s judgement and he was quietly ridiculed by some. How could the Chairman have made such a poor choice? To lose one successor (Liu Shaoqi) might seem like bad luck, but to find that two were traitors? Even those who had retained some idealism about the Cultural Revolution became cynical."(179)

"In April 1971, the US table tennis team visited China—the so-called ping pong diplomacy. In July, President Nixon’s security adviser Henry Kissinger made a top secret trip, and in October, with US support, the UN finally voted that the People’s Republic, not Taiwan, should occupy China’s place in the UN. Détente culminated with Nixon’s visit to China in February 1972 (see Figure 13). This revolution in China’s foreign policy initiated by Mao and carried through by Zhou Enlai improved national security and reduced the need to spend on the armed forces but tended to weaken ideological faith."(181)

"Despite the radicals’ dominance in the CCP hierarchy, at this stage the executive was basically run by Zhou Enlai and other pragmatists. To general astonishment, and to the horror of the radicals, in February 1973 Mao allowed Deng Xiaoping, once condemned as ‘the number two capitalist roader’, to come back to the capital. A month later, Mao approved his appointment as vice premier in charge of foreign affairs. In 1974, Mao upset the radicals again by sending Deng to speak at the United Nations. As Zhou Enlai became weaker, Mao allowed Deng to take over much of the work of the executive, where he achieved considerable success especially in managing the economy."(185)

"As Mao’s physical decline progressed, the battle for the succession intensified."(189)

"Finally, on 9 September 1976, just after midnight, the feverish efforts of his doctors failed and Mao died. In China many reacted to the news with grief, some no doubt felt joy and hope; everyone was apprehensive."(193)

(193) Chapter 8 - Legacies and assessments: the posthumous Mao

"Mao’s death immediately posed the problem with which he had tussled for so long: who would succeed him? Power first passed to Hua Guofeng, Mao’s designated heir, who had been parachuted into the national leadership at the end of the Cultural Revolution."(193)

"Despite all this, the new leader’s position was not secure. Deng Xiaoping began to lobby old friends to arrange his rehabilitation.(...) Deng then out-manoeuvred Hua politically. In summer 1977 he was restored to his former posts and by the end of 1978 had effectively replaced Hua. Deng then began to put in place the range of new policies that became known as the ‘economic reforms’: incentive-driven household responsibility systems in agriculture, market mechanisms and incentives in the industrial and commercial sectors, and a general emphasis on expertise and technology. China’s international trade increased rapidly and foreign investment was welcomed, cautiously at first, but as the years went by on an ever increasing scale. This new modernization drive was characterized by astonishing growth rates, improved living standards, rapid industrialization, and widespread privatization. It also involved the abandonment of the ideals of public ownership, collectivism, simple living, self-reliance, self-sacrifice, and egalitarianism promoted in Mao’s China."(197)

"How would Mao have judged China today? Much of what he feared has come to pass. Since Mao’s death, perhaps in reaction to the grim experience of the last years of his chairmanship, the CCP has practised collective leadership and has managed regular leadership transitions. Leadership struggles have been partially hidden from view. But the post-Mao communist leadership is part of a wealthy and powerful elite whose lives are very different from those of the ordinary people. This privileged class maintains its position through its vastly superior access to resources, education, and health."(207)

"Society is extremely inegalitarian; corruption and nepotism are rife. Workers of the old state factories have been laid off, land is seized from the peasants for urban development with miserably inadequate compensation, young migrant workers toil for grotesquely long hours in poor conditions to produce goods for the world market. Conspicuous consumption and ambition have replaced austerity and self-sacrifice. The commercial reprocessing of Mao’s image reflects a dismissal of most of what the Chairman stood for."(208)

Timeline