CULTURAL REVOLUTION IN CHINA

Given that the Cultural Revolution is now regarded widely as a crazy aberration, can you explain why Mao Zedong should have launched such a movement?

International Journal of East Asia Studies, 2018

This study examines “Mao Zedong Thought” in leading the Chinese Communist Party, China, and the Thought that led to the eruption of the Cultural Revolution in 1966 and its impacts. It is found that Mao Zedong Thought was mainly developed from Marxism-Leninism, his background and experience. The key elements of Mao Zedong Thought are Marxist revolution, the importance of the peasants, mass mobilization and voluntarism, continuous revolution, proletarian revolution, self-criticism, class struggle, and the primacy of Mao Zedong Thought. He was also interested in employing conflict theory to change the culture and socio-political system of China. Campaigns launched under Maoist ideology had an important and serious impact on China and Chinese people. Reasons for the Cultural Revolution, which erupted in 1966, are quite complex. For Mao, it is as an ideal of social transformation and his response to revisionism that threatened his thought of social equality and class struggle. Although purging the Party leaders, condemned as revisionists, was his personal reason, it was the Thought on continuous revolution and mobilizing the masses. The Cultural Revolution went beyond the stage of historical development and failed to lead effectively. It greatly impacted on various parts of China and changed the Chinese people’s world outlook and values.

Journal of Contemporary Educational Research, 2018

This paper presents an analysis of the former Chinese Communist Party leader Chairman Mao Zedong’s political career (reigned 1949-1976), with regards to his success and failures. Mao was one of the most prominent Communist theoreticians who governed a quarter of humankind for a quarter of a century. His political philosophy, particularly his Method of Leadership, focusing on the “masses” is discussed here. The analytical arguments are centered on three phases of his leadership: the rise, the apex, and the fall. In the first phase, the paper attributes his victory before 1949 to his profound understanding of Chinese peasants. In the second phase, it elaborates on his successful method of leadership in the early 1950s. And in the third and last phase, it criticizes his disastrous political movements, particularly the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, from the late 1950s to the mid-1970s. The study hopes to offer an objective and a balanced view of Chairman Mao, who had a complex personality and was a highly controversial figure in human history. The article also wishes to help readers gain a better understanding of China’s top leader in recent history, and how China came to be what it is today.

Protest in the Vietnam War Era, 2022

Harvard Asia Quarterly, 2008

Kayla Gilmore, 2019

After the end of Ma Zedong's Great Leap Forward, began the Chinese Cultural Revolution that was led by Mao. This Revolution drastically changed Chinese culture, politics, and way of life between 1966 and 1976.