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Key Learning Points:

1. Economic and Social Overreach: The ambitious collectivization and industrialization policies, such as backyard furnaces and people's communes, prioritized rapid development over practical sustainability.

2. Human and Environmental Costs: Poor planning, inflated production figures, and unscientific methods led to widespread famine, deforestation, and environmental degradation, resulting in millions of deaths.

3. Role of Propaganda and Fear: Local officials exaggerated production figures to avoid being labeled as 'rightists,' perpetuating false success narratives.

4. Consolidation Through Suffering: The failures of the Leap consolidated Mao’s ideological control as critics, such as Peng Dehuai, were purged.

Enduring Understanding:

Ideological zeal, combined with centralized control, can lead to catastrophic outcomes when practical realities and dissent are ignored.

Essential Questions:

When is it acceptable to trade economic progress for social and environmental costs?

How does fear within a political system perpetuate failure and silence dissent?

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The 'Great Leap Forward' - an attempt to rapidly develop Communist China's agrarian economy between 1958 and 1961 - led to one of the most disastrous famines of all time.

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Mao's Great Leap Forward : Cold War Documentary

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Mao's Great Leap Forward : Cold War Documentary

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Our historical documentary series on the history of the Cold War continues with a video on the Great Leap Forward - the Chinese industrialization plan enacted under the chairman of the Chinese Communist Party Mao Zedong, which ultimately led to a famine.

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Mao's Great Leap Forward - Cold War DOCUMENTARY

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A rapid historical run-through of Chairman Mao's Hundred Flowers Campaign

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A rapid historical run-through of Chairman Mao's Hundred Flowers Campaign

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The Hundred Flowers Campaign of Chairman Mao Zedong in 1956. One of the most widespread acts of deceit in human history. Devastating consequences wrought from a desire to oppress & conquest.

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The Hundred Flowers Movement: Never Trust a Tyrant

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Alternative Perspective: Still ashamed of my part in Mao's Cultural Revolution

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Alternative Perspective: Still ashamed of my part in Mao's Cultural Revolution

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In an effort to head off challenges to his leadership, Chairman Mao unleashed a wave of unrest that swept across China in the 1960s. He wanted to root out opposition and rid the country of any semblance of old Chinese culture, social values and history. At the forefront of the Cultural Revolution were the Red Guards - young, radical students and fanatical supporters of Mao and his circle. Parents and teachers were vilified and in some cases beaten and killed. Old temples, architecture and literature were destroyed too. Saul Yeung was a member of the Red Guards. He spoke to Witness about his memories of that time and the guilt he still carries.

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Still ashamed of my part in Mao's Cultural Revolution - BBC News

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Alternative Perspective: Chinese Cultural Revolution: the boy who denounced his mother

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Alternative Perspective: Chinese Cultural Revolution: the boy who denounced his mother

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Chinese Cultural Revolution: the boy who denounced his mother

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How Mao used propaganda campaigns to fortify control and minimize dissent

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How Mao used propaganda campaigns to fortify control and minimize dissent

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TOP 10 Craziest Propaganda Campaigns of China After World War II | (Short Animated Documentary)

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The photo that triggered the Cultural Revolution

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The photo that triggered the Cultural Revolution

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Mao wanted to leave behind a powerful Communist legacy, like Marx and Lenin before him. And in order to do so, he needed to connect with the younger generation before he died. So after announcing his Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, he swam across the Yangtze River. Mao had done the same swim 10 years earlier to prove his vitality, and he hoped it would work again. His "Cultural Revolution" was a call to hunt down and eliminate his enemies, and reeducate China’s youth with the principles Maoism. Led by the fanatical Red Guards, the Cultural Revolution was a devastating 10-year period in Chinese history that didn’t end until Mao died in 1976.

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This photo triggered China's Cultural Revolution

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The Chinese Cultural Revolution (1966-1976)

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The Chinese Cultural Revolution (1966-1976)

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The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution was a decade-long period of political and social chaos caused by Mao Zedong's bid to use the Chinese masses to reassert his control over the Communist party.

Its bewildering complexity and almost unfathomable brutality was such that to this day historians struggle to make sense of everything that occurred during the period.

However, Mao's decision to launch the "revolution" in May 1966 is now widely interpreted as an attempt to destroy his enemies by unleashing the people on the party and urging them to purify its ranks.

When the mass mobilisation kicked off party newspapers depicted it as an epochal struggle that would inject new life into the socialist cause. "Like the red sun rising in the east, the unprecedented Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution is illuminating the land with its brilliant rays," one editorial read.

In fact, the Cultural Revolution crippled the economy, ruined millions of lives and thrust China into 10 years of turmoil, bloodshed, hunger and stagnation.

Gangs of students and Red Guards attacked people wearing "bourgeois clothes" on the street, "imperialist" signs were torn down and intellectuals and party officials were murdered or driven to suicide.

After violence had run its bloody course, the country's rulers conceded it had been a catastrophe that had brought nothing but "grave disorder, damage and retrogression".

An official party reckoning described it as a catastrophe which had caused "the most severe setback and the heaviest losses suffered by the party, the country, and the people since the founding of the People's Republic" in 1949.

Whose idea was it and what was the aim?

The Cultural Revolution was the brainchild of China's 'Great Helmsman', Chairman Mao Zedong.

Seventeen years after his troops seized power, Mao saw his latest political campaign as a way of reinvigorating the communist revolution by strengthening ideology and weeding out opponents.

"Our objective is to struggle against and crush those persons in authority who are taking the capitalist road... so as to facilitate the consolidation and development of the socialist system," one early directive stated.

Frank Dikötter, the author of a new book on the period, says Mao hoped his movement would make China the pinnacle of the socialist universe and turn him into "the man who leads planet Earth into communism."

Chinese red guards during the cultural revolution in 1966. Photograph: Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty Images

But it was also an attempt by the elderly dictator, whose authority had been badly hit by the calamitous Great Famine of the 1950s, to reassert control over the party by obliterating enemies, real or imagined.

"It was a power struggle waged... behind the smokescreen of a fictitious mass movement," Belgian scholar Pierre Ryckmans wrote in his damning account of the Cultural Revolution, The Chairman's New Clothes.

How exactly did it start?

Most historians agree the Cultural Revolution began in mid-May 1966 when party chiefs in Beijing issued a document known as the "May 16 Notification". It warned that the party had been infiltrated by counter-revolutionary "revisionists" who were plotting to create a "dictatorship of the bourgeoisie".

A fortnight later, on 1 June, the party's official mouthpiece newspaper urged the masses to "clear away the evil habits of the old society" by launching an all-out assault on "monsters and demons".

Chinese students sprung into action, setting up Red Guard divisions in classrooms and campuses across the country. By August 1966 - so-called Red August - the mayhem was in full swing as Mao's allies urged Red Guards to destroy the "four olds" - old ideas, old customs, old habits and old culture.

Schools and universities were closed and churches, shrines, libraries, shops and private homes ransacked or destroyed as the assault on "feudal" traditions began.

Gangs of teenagers in red armbands and military fatigues roamed the streets of cities such as Beijing and Shanghai setting upon those with "bourgeois" clothes or reactionary haircuts. "Imperialist" street signs were torn down.

Party officials, teachers and intellectuals also found themselves in the cross-hairs: they were publicly humiliated, beaten and in some cases murdered or driven to suicide after vicious "struggle sessions". Blood flowed as Mao ordered security forces not to interfere in the Red Guards' work. Nearly 1,800 people lost their lives in Beijing in August and September 1966 alone.

What happened next?

After the initial explosion of student-led "red terror", the chaos spread rapidly. Workers joined the fray and China was plunged into what historians describe as a state of virtual civil war, with rival factions battling it out in cities across the country.

By late 1968 Mao realised his revolution had spiralled out of control. In a bid to rein in the violence he issued instructions to send millions of urban youth down to the countryside for "re-education".

He also ordered the army to restore order, effectively transforming China into a military dictatorship, which lasted until about 1971. As the army fought to bring the situation under control, the death toll soared.

Between 1971 and the Cultural Revolution's official end, in 1976, a semblance of normality returned to China. US president Richard Nixon even toured the country in February 1972 in a historic visit that re-established ties between Washington and Beijing.

It was, in Nixon's words, "the week that changed the world".

How many victims were there?

Historians believe somewhere between 500,000 and two million people lost their lives as a result of the Cultural Revolution.

Perhaps the worst affected region was the southern province of Guangxi where there were reports of mass killings and even cannibalism.

Appalling acts of barbarity also occurred in Inner Mongolia where authorities unleashed a vicious campaign of torture against supposed separatists.

Even China's feline population suffered as Red Guards tried to eliminate what they claimed was a symbol of "bourgeois decadence". "Walking through the streets of the capital at the end of August [1966], people saw dead cats lying by the roadside with their front paws tied together," writes Dikötter.

Yet contrary to popular belief, the government was responsible for most of the bloodshed, not the Red Guards.

"We read a lot of horror stories about students beating their teachers to death in the stairwell," says Andrew Walder, the author of China Under Mao.

"[But] based on the government's own published histories well over half, if not two-thirds of the people who were killed or imprisoned during the Cultural Revolution suffered that from 1968 to early 1970" as the army moved in to halt the violence.

The lives of some of the Communist party's most powerful figures were upended by the turbulence, including future leader Deng Xiaoping, who was purged in 1967, and Xi Zhongxun, the father of China's current president, Xi Jinping, who was publicly humiliated, beaten and sent into exile.

President Xi's half-sister, Xi Heping, is said to have taken her own life after being persecuted.

How were foreigners affected?

As chaos enveloped Beijing in the summer of 1966, foreign diplomats found themselves at the eye of the storm. "Earplugs became standard embassy issue," the former British ambassador Percy Cradock writes in his memoirs recalling how a cacophony of songs praising "our beloved Chairman Mao" became the soundtrack of life in the capital.

By the following year things had taken a more sinister turn. Red Guards laid siege to the Soviet, French and Indonesian embassies, torched the Mongolian ambassador's car and hung a sign outside the British mission that read: "Crush British Imperialism!" One night, in late August, diplomats were forced to flee from the British embassy as it was ransacked and burned. Outside protesters chanted: "Kill! Kill!".

Anthony Grey, a Reuters journalist in Beijing, spent more than two years in captivity after being detained by Chinese authorities in July 1967.

What was the Little Red Book?

The Cultural Revolution's official handbook was the Little Red Book, a pocket-sized collection of quotations from Mao that offered a design for Red Guard life.

"Be resolute, fear no sacrifice, and surmount every difficulty to win victory!" read one famous counsel.

At the height of the Cultural Revolution, Little Red Book reading sessions were held on public buses and even in the skies above China, as air hostesses preached Mao's words of wisdom to their passengers. During the 1960s, the Little Red Book is said to have been the most printed book on earth, with more than a billion copies printed.

Peasants study Chairman Mao's quotations in the Little Red Book - the 'bible' of the Cultural Revolution during a break from rice planting, 1970, Guangxi, China. Photograph: Sinopix/REX/Shutterstock

When did it end?

The Cultural Revolution officially came to an end when Mao died on 9 September 1976 at the age of 82.

In a bid to move on - and avoid discrediting Mao too much - party leaders ordered that the Chairman's widow, Jiang Qing, and a group of accomplices be publicly tried for masterminding the chaos. They were known as the "Gang of Four".

Jiang contested the charges claiming she had merely been "Chairman Mao's dog" but was sentenced to death in 1981, later reduced to life in prison. In 1991, on the eve of the 25th anniversary of the Cultural Revolution, she hung herself.

How did the Cultural Revolution affect China?

Mao had hoped his revolutionary movement would turn China into a beacon of communism. But 50 years on many believe it had the opposite effect, paving the way for China's embrace of capitalism in the 1980s and its subsequent economic boom.

"A common verdict is: no Cultural Revolution, no economic reform," Roderick MacFarquhar and Michael Schoenhals write in their book on the period, Mao's Last Revolution. "The Cultural Revolution was so great a disaster that it provoked an even more profound cultural revolution, precisely the one that Mao intended to forestall."

Another enduring legacy, experts say, is the obsession of today's rulers with stability and political control.

Leaders such as Xi Jinping, a 13-year-old Beijing schoolboy when the cultural revolution began, had a front row seat to the mayhem, and some even partook in the violence.

"They saw a China that was totally chaotic for about two years and they saw atrocities sometimes," says Walder, a Stanford University expert on the period. "They view the loss of the party's control as something that will lead to chaos."

Dikötter believes the nightmarish upheaval also served to destroy any remaining faith the Chinese people had in their Great Teacher. "Even before Mao died, people buried Maoism."

How is the Cultural Revolution remembered today?

After Mao's death, the Communist party made some attempts to confront the horrors of the previous decade. Some were punished for the violence while those unfairly purged or persecuted were rehabilitated.

But those efforts petered out in the early 1980s as Beijing became wary of implicating itself in the killing at a time of growing opposition from Chinese youth. Academics were discouraged from digging into the party's inconvenient truth.

Experts say Beijing would seek to mark this year's 50th anniversary with deafening silence.

"They won't go there - it is just too damaging to the party," says MacFarquhar. "The party is guilty of three massive blows to the Chinese people: the [Great] Famine, the Cultural Revolution and the destruction of the environment which is ongoing now and may in fact be more deadly that the other two in the long run. And the last thing it wants to say is that we were the guilty ones."

However, a bitter public row over a Mao-themed extravaganza held in Beijing earlier this month has unexpectedly thrust the decade-long upheaval back into the headlines.

What should I read to understand the Cultural Revolution?

The seminal work on the period is Mao's Last Revolution by Roderick MacFaquhuar and Michael Schoenhals, a blow-by-blow account of the turmoil.

An earlier book by Schoenhals - China's Cultural Revolution, 1966-69: Not a Dinner Party - contains a trove of documents, speeches and photographs, that chronicle the country's descent into anarchy.

Perhaps the most withering critique of the political mobilisation can be found in The Chairman's New Clothes: Mao and the Cultural Revolution, by Belgian scholar Pierre Ryckmans.

Ji Xianlin's The Cowshed: Memories of the Chinese Cultural Revolution is a harrowing first-person account of the period. First published in 1998 and recently translated into English, the book recounts the hardship of a Peking University academic who spent nearly nine months as a prisoner of the Red Guards.

Another powerful Cultural Revolution memoir is Life and Death in Shanghai by Nien Cheng, a Chinese graduate of the London School of Economics whose life was turned upside down by the Red Guards in 1967.

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The Cultural Revolution: all you need to know about China's political convulsion

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Fifty years ago one of the bloodiest eras in history began, in which as many as two million people died. But who started it and what was it for?

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Not your computer? Use Guest mode to sign in privately. Learn more about using Guest mode

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Get access to files anywhere through secure cloud storage and file backup for your photos, videos, files and more with Google Drive.

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2025 Year 3 History_Unit 1_Hundred Flowers Campaign_Role Play Template

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Hundred Flowers Campaign Debate Activity

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Hundred Flowers Campaign Debate Activity

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Debate: Frame debates around the question of whether the collective good justified the policies implemented and their outcomes.

As a class, what criteria should we use to make our judgment/stand?

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Download NLB mobile. Most of the reads are in e-book versions.

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China's Cultural Revolution and its aftermath in fiction and memoir

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100 books based on 55 votes: Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China by Jung Chang, Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie, Life and Death Ar...

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Y3 History SBQ Comparison Skills Rubric.docx

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Y3 History SBQ Reliability Skills Rubric.docx

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1. Detecting Aspects of Authoritarianism:

In what ways can authoritarian tendencies be observed in democratic systems, such as Trump's America? Provide specific examples of policies, rhetoric, or actions that reflect these tendencies and discuss their implications on democratic processes.

2. Undermining Democracy:

How do leaders use democratic institutions or principles to undermine democracy itself? Compare Trump’s methods to similar strategies used by Mao, particularly in justifying policies under the guise of collective good while centralizing power.

Follow-Up Research and Comparative Analysis:

Focus for the Coming Weeks:

Investigate Trump's motivations behind specific actions (e.g., challenging election results or limiting press freedom) and compare them with Mao's justification for collectivization during the Great Leap Forward.

Examine how both leaders utilized propaganda, rhetoric, or policies to align the population’s perception of the “collective good” while consolidating power.

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BBC News on Instagram: "Donald Trump has signed a number of executive orders after being sworn in as US president for a second term.
 
The 47th US president wasted no time in using his powers to act on a range of policy priorities, such as withdrawing the US from the World Health Organization.
 
Trump also signed off on withdrawing the US from the landmark Paris Agreement designed to limit rising global temperatures, as he previously did in 2017. But he will have to wait a year before it happens.
 
The secretary of the interior has also been directed to to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the 'Gulf of America' and rename Alaska's Mount Denali to Mount McKinley - in honour of America's 25th president whose tariff policies Trump admires.
 
Executive orders carry the weight of law, but can be overturned by subsequent presidents or the courts. Several of those planned by Trump face legal challenges.
 
Tap the link in @BBCNews’s bio to read all the executive orders signed by Trump so far.
 
(📸 Getty Images)
 
#BBCNews"

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94K likes, 2,430 comments - bbcnews on January 21, 2025: "Donald Trump has signed a number of executive orders after being sworn in as US president for a second term.
 
The 47th US president wasted no time in using his powers to act on a range of policy priorities, such as withdrawing the US from the World Health Organization.
 
Trump also signed off on withdrawing the US from the landmark Paris Agreement designed to limit rising global temperatures, as he previously did in 2017. But he will have to wait a year before it happens.
 
The secretary of the interior has also been directed to to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the 'Gulf of America' and rename Alaska's Mount Denali to Mount McKinley - in honour of America's 25th president whose tariff policies Trump admires.
 
Executive orders carry the weight of law, but can be overturned by subsequent presidents or the courts. Several of those planned by Trump face legal challenges.
 
Tap the link in @BBCNews’s bio to read all the executive orders signed by Trump so far.
 
(📸 Getty Images)
 
#BBCNews". 

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7 questions about China's Cultural Revolution

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7 questions about China's Cultural Revolution

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May 16 marks 50 years of China's Cultural Revolution. Here's what you should know about the political movement.

1. What is the Cultural Revolution and its goal?

The Cultural Revolution (May 1966 - October 1976) was a political movement launched by Chinese leader Mao Zedong, with the express purpose of eradicating "the bourgeois headquarters" and seizing power from capitalist roaders, or people accused of favouring capitalism, according to the official Chinese narrative.

It plunged the country into chaos, with the economy paralysed and millions of Chinese persecuted in violent struggles.

Mao consolidated power after purging officials he deemed to be political rivals, notably State President Liu Shaoqi. The paramount leader rose to a god-like status amid a series of propaganda campaigns.

2. Who were the Red Guards?

The Red Guards often refer to the fanatical armband-wearing students who pledged allegiance to Mao and vowed to act in line with his instructions during the Cultural Revolution. As the political movement gained momentum, young workers and peasants also joined the Red Guards.

Mao gave the Red Guards free rein to confiscate private property, destroy national treasures and torture whoever they labelled "counter-revolutionaries". Official record shows they murdered 1,772 people in Beijing alone in August and September 1966.

The violence soon spun out of control after the Red Guards started to storm government and party buildings. The group was also plagued by factionalism that led to armed clashes.

The central government decided to restore order from early 1967, with the People's Liberation Army deployed to crack down on armed factions. Members of the main Red Guard units were subsequently dispersed after Mao launched the "Up To the Mountain, Down To the Village" movement, which saw millions of jobless youth sent to villages for re-education.

3. What were the Four Olds?

The Four Olds - a concept proposed in 1966 by Marshal Lin Biao, Mao's then heir apparent - referred to the "old ideas, culture, customs and habit of the exploiting classes" that need to be destroyed.

Lin did not elaborate on the definitions, so the Red Guards took it upon themselves to smash things and torture people they thought are representative of the Four Olds.

The radicals started a reign of red terror by confiscating private property belonging to teachers and former businessmen. They evicted some 77,000 "monsters and freaks" from Beijing, and publicly humiliated and attacked "counter-revolutionaries" including officials, intellectuals and monks in the so-called struggle sessions.

Also, the Red Guards desecrated thousands of historical sites in Beijing. In what may be the worst case of destruction, they smashed 6,618 registered cultural artefacts in the Confucius Temple in Shangdong province.

They also renamed people, streets and schools to remove "feudal" overtones. Personal names like Wei Dong (Protect Mao) and Xiang Hong (Follow Red) gained popularity. In Beijing, the Chang'an Avenue, named after the capital of the Han and Tang dynasties, was changed to "East is Red Avenue". Some even proposed to rename Beijing the "East is Red City", but it was rejected by Premier Zhou Enlai.

4. What is the Little Red Book?

The Little Red Book, or Quotations from Chairman Mao, was the bible of the Red Guards, who often waved it while chanting the quotes as part of the ritual to show loyalty. Some people even started their daily conversations with a Mao-quote.

The book, first launched in 1964, came with different editions, but the compact ones that could fit into a pocket were the most popular. Billions of copies were believed to have been printed during the Cultural Revolution.

Marshal Lin promoted the book to the Red Guards during Mao's first rally with the students in 1966. He reportedly called on the students to "say Long Live in your months, hold the Quotations in your hands".

Here are some oft-used quotes from the Little Red Book:

Study well, and make progress every day.
A revolution is not a dinner party.
Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.
We should support whatever our enemies oppose and oppose whatever our enemies support.
All reactionaries are paper tigers.

5. Who were the sent-down youth?

The sent-down youth, also known as "educated youth", were the young people who left cities to work and live in the rural areas between 1950s and 1970s. Many of them lost the opportunity to go to university.

The authorities began to glorify labour in the countryside as early as 1953, but mass migration of the young started in late 1960s when Chairman Mao launched the "Up To the Mountain, Down To the Village" movement.

More than 16 million people, mostly students, were sent to the countryside between 1967 and 1976 for re-education, which historians say was a means to disperse the Red Guards. Another reason for the movement could be a lack of urban employment opportunities, with more than four million idle high school graduates in 1968.

6. How many people died as a result of the Cultural Revolution?

China did not release official data on the number of victims, but various estimates put the death toll at between hundreds of thousands and several million.

An article published in 2003 by The China Quarterly claims that between 750,000 and 1.5 million of people died in the countryside, with a similar number permanently injured. About 36 million suffered some form of political persecution, the article adds.

Professor John Fairbank, a prominent American historian of China, says the number of victims "hover around a million".

Hong Kong's Cheng Ming magazine, citing China's undisclosed "internal investigation", says 1.72 million people suffered from unnatural death, and another 237,000 died in "armed struggle".

7. How did the Cultural Revolution end?

The capture of the Gang of Four on Oct 6, 1976, is often seen as marking the end of the Cultural Revolution.

As Mao's health declined in the later stages of the Cultural Revolution, the clique wielded tremendous power and took aim at moderates like Premier Zhou, raising the ire of the party's influential elders.

Shortly after Mao's death, his designated political heir Hua Guofeng won the support of the army and party elders, and staged a coup against the Gang of Four. Hua later said crushing the clique symbolises the end of the Cultural Revolution.

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7 questions about China's Cultural Revolution answered

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May 16 marks 50 years of China's Cultural Revolution. Here's what you should know about the political movement. 1. What is the Cultural Revolution and its goal? The Cultural Revolution (May 1966 - October 1976) was a political movement launched by Chinese leader Mao Zedong, with the express purpose of eradicating "the bourgeois headquarters" and seizing power from capitalist roaders, or people accused of favouring capitalism, according to the official Chinese narrative.

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How Mao's Hundred Flowers Campaign (1957) set the context for China's Great Leap Forward

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How Mao's Hundred Flowers Campaign (1957) set the context for China's Great Leap Forward

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In February 1957, Chairman Mao Zedong rose to speak to a packed session of China's Supreme State Conference in Beijing. The architect and founding father of the People's Republic of China was about to deliver what one scholar described as "the most important speech on politics that he or anyone else had made since the creation of the communist regime" eight years before.

Mao's speech, titled, "On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People," began with a broad explanation of socialism and the relationship between China's bourgeoisie and working class. Joseph Stalin, he said, had "made a mess of" unifying the classes in the Soviet Union. In a section of his speech that the Communist Party would delete before publishing the text in the Peoples Daily, he claimed that China had learned "from the mistakes" of the Soviets, who had killed too many people they should not have killed, as well as from those of the Hungarian communists, who had not executed enough. He acknowledged that the Chinese government had killed 700,000 "counterrevolutionaries" between 1950 and 1952, but said, "Now there are no more killings." If the government had not carried out those executions, he claimed, "the people would not have been able to lift their heads. The people demanded their execution and the liberation of the productive forces."

Yet Mao's speech may be best known for marking the beginning of the Hundred Flowers Movement-a brief campaign that ended in the betrayal of the principle on which it was based and the people he had invited to take part. A few months earlier, as anti-Soviet demonstrations erupted in Eastern Europe, Zhou Enlai, China's popular and highly influential premier, had emphasized a greater need for China's intellectuals to participate in governmental policy-making. "The government needs criticism from its people," Zhou proclaimed in a speech. "Without this criticism the government will not be able to function as the People's Democratic Dictatorship. Thus the basis of a healthy government lost....We must learn from old mistakes, take all forms of healthy criticism, and do what we can to answer these criticisms."

Mao, in his speech before the Supreme State Conference, declared his support for a policy of allowing criticism of the bureaucracy, provided that writers and intellectuals put forth competing ideologies and opinion and did not engage in "destructive acts." "Let a hundred flowers bloom" Mao declared, borrowing a line from a Chinese poem, "let a hundred schools of thought contend." Such a campaign, he said, would allow truth to emerge from a sea of falsehoods. He even mentioned the Chinese writer Hu Feng, who had been detained in 1955 for publishing his "three-hundred-thousand-word letter," which accused Mao of politicizing art and literature:
Among these hundred flowers blooming forth there are...all kinds of different flowers. They include flowers of different types. For example, among the hundred schools contending, idealism is present. Let a hundred flowers bloom. It may be that Hu Feng is locked up in his cell, but his spirit still roams the country, and we might still see some more works like his appear. It is all right if don't engage in destructive acts. What was it about Hu Feng? He organized a secret group; and that was something he should not have done. If only he had not organized a secret group.... What do a few flowers matter in a land of our size-nine million square kilometers? What's so upsetting about a few flowers? Let them bloom for people to look at, and perhaps criticize. Let them say, "I don't like those flowers of yours!"
At first, Zhou told Mao, writers and intellectuals were wary and skeptical of what would be called the Hundred Flowers Movement. He advised Mao to encourage the central government to help create an exuberant response to the policy, reassuring intellectuals that their criticism was not only welcome but necessary for reform. Soon, writers, lawyers, academics and scientists began speaking out, criticizing party cadres for meddling and obstructing important work. Students began protesting low standards of living, pointing out the hypocrisy of corrupt party members enjoying privileges at the expense of the workers.

By the summer of 1957, millions of letters began to arrive at Zhou's office. Some of them adhered to the constructive criticism he envisioned, but many rose to what Mao later described as a "harmful and uncontrollable" pitch. A "Democratic Wall" had been erected at Beijing University, with posters criticizing the Communist Party. There were calls for the Party to give up power through transitional governments, claims that communism and intellectualism could not co-exist, and demands for more freedoms. Some posters attacked Mao himself.

Mao began to sense that the movement was spiraling out of control, and in July, he quashed it. The "fragrant flowers," he announced, must be distinguished from the "poisonous weeds"; criticism would no longer be tolerated. In the Anti-Rightist Campaign of 1957, critics and detractors were rounded up by the hundreds of thousands and shipped off for execution or re-education through labor. The Hundred Flowers Movement, Mao would later say, had "enticed the snakes out of their lairs."

The government's treatment of Ai Qing, one of China's first modern poets, was typical. He had joined the Chinese Communist Party in 1941, and after the party took power in 1949, Ai Qing consulted with Mao on China's literary policies and traveled the world representing the government. But in 1957, after he defended the writer Ding Ling against accusations that she was a "rightist," Ai Qing was denounced and stripped of his writer's association membership and his possessions. He and his family were exiled to the new city of Shihezi, in the remote region of Xinjiang in northwest China, where they lived amid squalor and hunger. Among hundreds of thousands of "Reform through Labor" convicts, he was assigned to cleaning public toilets seven days a week. After he and his family were relocated to a farm on the edge of the Gobi Desert, they lived in a "pithouse," a cave-like structure that had been built for the birthing of livestock.

Ai Qing performed backbreaking work until he was in his 60s, moving heavy stones in construction assignments at labor camps. At times, he was paraded in public, forced to wear humiliating signs while villagers taunted him and threw paint in his face. Prohibited from writing, the poet attempted suicide several times.

By the end of the Cultural Revolution, in 1976, Ai Qing was deemed "rehabilitated," and after nearly twenty years in exile, he was allowed to return to Beijing with his family. His son Ai Weiwei remembers one advantage he had as a child: when he wasn't working in a factory, he was going to schools where the teachers were exiled intellectuals. He may have grown up in a remote land known as "Little Siberia," but the exposure to writers and artists living in exile, and the indelible stamp of a government's suppression of ideas and free speech have all played a vital role in Ai Weiwei's work today, and helped him become China's best-known contemporary artist and highest-profile government critic.

The tragedy of the Hundred Flowers Movement was compounded by its timing: critics of the government were silenced just as Mao tried, with the Great Leap Forward, to transform China quickly into a modern industrialized state. The social plan, which lasted from 1958 to 1960 and mandated collective farming, led to catastrophic grain shortages and a famine that killed tens of millions of Chinese. Mao ensured that no one dare speak out about the potential for catastrophe.
Sources
Books: Robert MacFarquhar, The Origins of the Cultural Revolution, Volume 1, Contradictions Among the People, 1956-1957, Oxford University Press, 1974. Mao Tse-tung, Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung, On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People, February 27, 1957, http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-5/mswv5_58.htm Robert Weatherley, Politics in China Since 1949: Legitimizing Authoritarian Rule, Routledge, 2006.

Articles: "Original Contradictions on the Unrevised Text of Mao Zedong's 'On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People'," by Michael Schoenhals, The Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs, No. 16, July, 1986. "An Early Spring: Mau Tse-tung, the Chinese Intellectuals and the Hundred Flowers Campaign," by John M. Jackson, 2004. http://filebox.vt.edu/users/jojacks2/words/hundredflowers.htm

Film: Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry: A film by Alison Klayman, MUSE Film and Television, 2012.

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The Silence that Preceded China's Great Leap into Famine

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In February 1957, Chairman Mao Zedong rose to speak to a packed session of China's Supreme State Conference in Beijing. The architect and founding father of the People's Republic of China was about to deliver what one scholar described as "the most important speech on politics that he or anyone else had made since the creation of the communist regime" eight years before.

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agree.

i think it was a setup, but he could also be given the benefit of the doubt, where he actually wanted to hear feedback but didn’t expect the backlash

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agree. the government encouraged criticism, but once they did, the ccp turned on them and used it to target and punish those who spoke out. l think it was a trap to identify and silence opposition parties/people who opposed so they could get rid of potential parties to run against them in the future.

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Disagree.

Mao did not expect that there would be more criticisms than praises, which shows that his intention was never to capture so many people who criticised him , thus I think it was not a set up.

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My stand: Disagree (that the Hundred Flowers Campaign was a set-up)

I feel that the aftermath of it all wouldn’t have been desired. After the ‘opposition’ was weeded out, I feel that the people - the ordinary citizens - would feel betrayed, and their image of Mao would have been much worse than before (after the five-year reform). This would probably increase the chance of more outrage and protests later on.

Then again, maybe Mao didn’t mind being seen as a cruel and untrustworthy dictator as long as it meant he was undisputed, so I don’t strongly disagree.

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Disagree. He implemented the Hundred Flowers Campaign with the genuine intention of bringing about improvement and development. When introducing it, he did not consider and expect the backlash he eventually received. As such, we do not think it was a set-up.

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Yes, the Hundred Flowers Campaign was a setup. (agree)

Mao Zedong's initial invitation for people to freely express their opinions was deceptive. He encouraged people to criticise the government, which made many believe they were allowed to speak openly. This was a trap, as the government was secretly preparing to target those who spoke out too much.

Mao’s goal was not to encourage real criticism but to test the loyalty of intellectuals and the public. By luring them into criticising the government, Mao could identify those who would later challenge his authority and remove them from power.

In conclusion, the Hundred Flowers Campaign can indeed be seen as a setup, as it tricked people into believing they could express their views freely, only to punish them once they did.

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Agree. Mao took advantage of the intellectuals that fell for his facade, imprisoning them for opinions that he said he wanted. It was an unfair and tyrannical way of ruling as he exploited their want for freedom of speech and used it against them so he could eliminate the opposition.

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i agree that the Hundred Flowers Campaign was a set-up. I think Mao invited criticism from people as a way to prevent comparison between him and Stalin. I also think that he wanted to weed out potential enemies and counter-revolutionaries to ensure his undisputed legacy

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I believe it was a setup as mao’s goal was to achieve complete subordination of his people, and the hundred flowers campaign presented an opportunity to sort out those who opposed him

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Disagree. Mao might have launched the campaign with the assumption that Chinese citizens are mostly content with his previous reforms, and therefore only expected to hear positive feedback/praise. He did not expect to receive so much backlash on his party’s policies. So when the criticism began rolling in, he changed the direction of the campaign to one intended to suppress counter-revolutionaries.

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agree.

i think that the campaign could have been set up as he took advantage and imprisoned those who expressed their opinions, but it could have also been a way for him to get feedback without expecting criticism.

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I agree that the Hundred Flowers campaign was a setup because Mao should have expected that criticisms and concerns would be raised since that was the point of the campaign.

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I agree. I think it was a really risky gamble for Mao if it was really a genuine campaign, and that given his obsessive and suppressive control over his people, it was bound for him to receive more criticism than praises. The hundred flowers campaign also presented an opportunity to weed out any remaining resistance that might still not have been intimidated into silence. However, in the early 1950s, Mao had travelled extensively and the rapturous reception he had received might have made him think of himself as well received, hence it could also be a genuine campaign for his people to have free speech.

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I don’t think Mao planned it as a set-up at first. I think at first he expected people within his party to praise him, and give constructive feedback for improvement, but after seeing how even his own party members could criticise and bash him, he feared what the rest of society would do, so he used the opportunity to “receive feedback”, to disguise his true intentions of weeding out the rebels, and condemning the opposition to ensure his position.

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i don’t know much about mao zedong but i get the vibe that he was a clever and deceptive person. it makes sense to me that the campaign was a set-up, considering that it would have been an easy method for mao to identify just how many people opposed him, and he could plan out another campaign to purge the oppositions.

but i also disagree because i feel like mao was not expecting the society to have so much criticism about him. i think after all the reforms he had implemented to benefit his people, he might have thought that people saw him as a good leader, and that they might have lots of positive feedback about him. i also feel like he thought highly of himself because he managed to work his way to gaining the position of leader

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 Elimination of ‘Four Olds’  - Chinese Cultural Revolution

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 Elimination of ‘Four Olds’  - Chinese Cultural Revolution

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Analysis: How the Cultural Revolution changed China

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Analysis: How the Cultural Revolution changed China

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Analysis: How the Cultural Revolution changed China

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✍️ Your Task: Was Mao a Reformer or a Destroyer?

Based on everything you've learned in Unit 1, write one clear statement to show whether you think Mao Zedong was more of a reformer or a destroyer of China.

👉 Include:

1. Your Claim – Choose one: Mao was a reformer or Mao was a destroyer

2. Explanation – Use at least two specific examples from what you've learned to support your view.
(E.g. land reforms, the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, propaganda, women’s rights, etc.)

🧠 Think about:

Did his actions improve lives or cause more harm?

Did he bring stability or create chaos?

🎯 Aim for 4–5 sentences. Be clear, be specific!

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We think that Mao was a destroyer.

This is because of the policies he implemented that caused suffering and chaos in China. The Great Leap Forward was a failure that led to a massive famine, killing millions of people due to poor planning. Furthermore, the Cultural Revolution caused even more destruction as Mao encouraged students to turn against teachers, family, and traditions, destroying China’s culture and education system. Moreover, the Cultural Revolution led to what was called a ‘lost generation’. Mao’s leadership brought chaos, suffering, and destruction to China.

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Mao was a reformer. He improved women’s rights which allowed them to have equal standings as men. Additionally, most of his policies and campaigns were intended for the good of China, like the industrial, agricultural and government reforms.

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Mao was a destroyer.

during the Hundred Flowers Campaign, he encouraged citizens to openly criticize the government, saying that constructive feedback would strengthen the ccp. However, when the criticism became too intense and threatened his authority, he labelled them as rightists and made them face harsh consequences such as imprisonment, and forced labour. Families were torn apart and many lives were lost. This destroyed political trust and created a culture of fear, where independent thinking was seen as dangerous. He also destroyed political stability, as after hundred flowers campaign, China became a paranoid society where people were terrified of speaking their minds.

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Mao was a destroyer. He caused chaos all throughout the country and caused the economy to collapse due to his mistakes. During the cultural revolution, he amplified the Red Guards’ manifesto, and encouraged them to destroy any and all buildings and objects associated with the ‘old’ China. As a result, a lot of private property was lost and people lost their homes and belongings. For a long time after that, China was in a state of chaos and virtual civil war. Furthermore, his weak leadership caused the Great Leap Forward to be a massive failure, as he had poor economic planning and insufficient contextual knowledge about the conditions of China, resulting in widespread death and famine. Thus, Mao was a destroyer as his policies and campaigns led to chaos and immense economic instability throughout his reign.

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Mao is a revolutionary.

He adapted the Marxist, lennist ideology in his planning of his ideal china, known as Maoism, which also influenced many other revolutionary movements worldwide.

Mao aimed to modernise China’s economy through GLF, which attempted rapid industrialisation, nationwide female empowerment and land distribution, this reflected his drive to revolutionise China’s economic and social structure.

He had useful ideas that would revolutionize china and would be beneficial if carried out well. However, his execution of these ideas were flawed and unrealistic. Mao’s revolutionary status stems from his success of overthrowing the old political order and leadership, reshaping China’s economic and social developments.

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Mao was both a destroyer and a reformer.

Reformer:

Mao’s first five-year campaign had many positive impacts on society, such as social changes (advocating for the equal rights of women etc)

He contributed to industrialising china which aided China economically.

Destroyer:

In 1957, he launched an anti-rightist campaign which effectively destroyed the people’s confidence to speak freely.

During the Great Leap Forward, he destroyed the agricultural and industrial sector’s production as he forced farmers to migrate to industrial sectors even though they had no expertise in them.

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Linyu, Charlotte (New version because we can’t delete)

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Linyu, Charlotte (New version because we can’t delete)

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Hundred Flowers Campaign (1957), pages 10-14

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Hundred Flowers Campaign (1957), pages 10-14

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Key Learning Points:

1. Ideological Experimentation and Control: Mao’s intention to allow criticism under the slogan "Let a hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred schools of thought contend" was both an attempt to promote intellectual engagement and a trap to identify dissenters.

2. Backlash Against Intellectual Freedom: The campaign quickly shifted into an anti-rightist movement, punishing those who criticized the government, illustrating the limits of ideological freedom under authoritarian rule.

3. Mao's Leadership Style: The campaign revealed Mao’s tendency to shift between openness and repression to consolidate control, a pattern that would recur throughout his rule.

Enduring Understanding:

Governments may persuade or coerce individuals to ensure compliance while maintaining power, often suppressing dissent under the guise of openness.

Essential Question:

Should leaders bear personal responsibility for inviting criticism only to punish it later?