Purging Mao's Political Enemies: Liu Shaoqi, Deng Xiaoping and Lin Biao (Edexcel A Level History: Route E: Communist states in the twentieth century): Revision Note

Summary

• Mao had been under pressure to step back from frontline politics after the failure of the Great Leap Forward

• By the mid-1960s, he was ready to return and moved against the pragmatists who had steered China to recovery

  • Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping were characterised as 'capitalist roaders' and stripped of their senior roles

• The search for 'capitalist roaders' was then extended from the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to its bureaucrats and administrators

  • The purge of the CCP led to millions of people losing their jobs, and many thousands of people losing their lives

• Later, the search was extended to workplaces in both cities and the countryside, with millions of people being interrogated about their political beliefs

  • The widespread anger with capitalist beliefs spilt out into attacks on the embassies and citizens of foreign countries

Targeting class enemies: Liu Shaoqi, Deng Xiaoping, Lin Biao and the CCP purges

• After the failure of the Great Leap Forward and the subsequent Great Famine, a pragmatic approach was taken to help China recover

  • Mao tolerated policies such as a return to private farming as a way to end the starvation

  • However, when Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping continued to advocate pragmatic policies, Mao believed they were betraying the revolution

• Mao began to gather supporters and look for an opportunity to move against those he accused of taking the 'capitalist road'

• By the end of 1965, his supporters included:

  • Lin Biao, the defence minister and leader of the People's Liberation Army (PLA)

  • Jiang Qing, Mao's wife and leader of an influential group of radicals from Shanghai, who would later become known as the 'Gang of Four'

  • Kang Sheng, the security chief

  • Chen Boda, who controlled propaganda

• In 1966, Mao decided to act

Liu Shaoqi

• As President, Liu was Head of State and a popular member of the Politburo

  • He had overseen the recovery from famine in the countryside and advocated a return to private farming

  • This, along with possible jealousy over his popularity, caused Mao to target him

• Liu was accused of having 'rightist' sentiments

• In August 1966, he lost the party vice-chairmanship and was demoted

• In 1967, he was placed under house arrest

• In 1968, he was officially denounced as a traitor and expelled from the party

  • After a series of 'struggle sessions', he was imprisoned, suffered brutal torture and was refused hospital treatment for his diabetes and pneumonia

  • He eventually lost the ability to speak and died in November 1969

Deng Xiaoping

• Party General Secretary Deng was another pragmatist who had famously said that he did not care what colour a cat was as long as it caught mice

  • Mao did care about the 'colour of the cat' and identified Deng as a 'capitalist roader'

• Deng was dismissed from his roles in government and sent to perform 'corrective labour' in a tractor factory

  • Although Deng survived, his son was paralysed from the waist down after either jumping or falling from a window while escaping the Red Guards or being thrown out of it by them

• Deng was eventually recalled from his exile and returned to politics in the 1970s

CCP Purges

• Mao had become convinced that the CCP bureaucrats and administrators who helped run the country had become bourgeois and were betraying the revolution

  • He called on the Red Guards to 'Bombard the Headquarters', inviting and encouraging the radical youngsters to attack the CCP

  • Mao hoped to replace what he believed to be bourgeois bureaucrats with radicals who were determined to drive the revolution on

• Around three-quarters of all CCP officials at the regional level and two-thirds of officials in the central government were removed from their positions

  • Five of the six regional First Secretaries and 23 of the 29 provincial Secretaries were removed

  • Of the 23 members of the Politburo, only 9 remained in position

• Around 3 million CCP officials and bureaucrats were exiled to the countryside to undertake hard labour and indoctrination

  • Around 14,000 were executed as traitors

  • Many more took their own lives to avoid the torture, beating and humiliation

  • It is estimated that more than half a million people were killed in the purges

Lin Biao

• Unlike Liu and Deng, Lin was not from the pragmatist side of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)

• The reasons for Mao targeting him are less clear

  • Lin was seen as Mao's most trusted servant

  • He had ordered the compilation of the quotes and written the foreword for Mao's Little Red Book

  • He was the defence minister and was designated Mao's successor in 1966

  • However, in 1971, Lin died in strange and unclear circumstances

Lin Biao: Rise, Role, and Fall

NOTE: Please insert Lin Biao's photo here

• Lin Biao was celebrated for his role in the victory in the civil war over the Nationalists

  • Despite not appearing to be politically ambitious, Lin rose through the CCP ranks until he was appointed defence minister in 1959

  • He was credited with politicising the PLA by indoctrinating troops with the Little Red Book and by abolishing ranks

  • Under Lin's guidance, the PLA played a major role in organising the mass rallies of the Red Guards in 1966

• Lin took every opportunity to praise and flatter Mao

  • He embraced Mao's call to attack the 'Four Olds', even when PLA leaders demanded a crackdown on the Red Guards

• In 1969, Lin was formally designated as Mao's successor in the Party Constitution

  • He had the military support of the PLA

  • He was popular with many members of the Politburo

• This led to Mao becoming suspicious of him, and Lin gradually fell from favour

  • Lin became increasingly isolated, and Mao began to suspect that he was going to use the PLA against him

• In 1971, it appears as if Lin realised that he had lost Mao's trust and was in danger

  • A plane which he was travelling in crashed in a Mongolian desert, killing everyone on board

  • People have speculated that Lin was fleeing to the USSR when the plane ran out of fuel

• News of his death was not released until 1972, and official announcements claimed he was a traitor for fleeing to a hostile power

Capitalist roaders and persecution of foreigners in Cultural Revolution China

• 'Capitalist roader' was the term used to describe anyone who believed that any aspect of capitalism should be retained in China

  • Being accused of preferring China to follow the 'capitalist road' was a serious offence

  • It was the term used to justify the fall from power of pragmatists Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping

  • 'Capitalist roader' was soon being used as a convenient label that could be used to attack anyone

• People endured terrifying interrogations over their beliefs

  • They paid a terrible price if they were not considered sufficiently revolutionary or were discovered to have bourgeois family members

  • Although the search for 'capitalist roaders' began in the cities, it soon spread to rural areas

    • Committees were set up in the countryside that were tasked with eradicating all signs of capitalism

  • It is believed that these committees were responsible for between 500,000 and 1.5 million deaths

Persecution of Foreigners

• The Red Guards also targeted the embassies of foreign countries, particularly those from capitalist or 'imperialist' countries

  • Britain was particularly targeted because of its colony in Hong Kong

    • The British Mission (later British Embassy) in Beijing was stormed by Red Guards, the staff were physically attacked, and the building was set on fire

  • The embassies of the USSR, Indonesia, India and the Netherlands were all attacked

  • The citizens of over 30 foreign countries were attacked or abused in China during the Cultural Revolution

How far did Mao use the Cultural Revolution primarily to destroy his political rivals?

• The motives for Mao launching the Cultural Revolution can be viewed in different ways

  • Some see it as a straightforward attempt by Mao to return to power and destroy his rivals

  • Others believe it was down to an ideological disagreement over the future of the revolution

Destroying Mao's Rivals

• Mao felt he had been sidelined and criticised after the Great Leap Forward and wanted to return to power

Key historians

Mao feared the revolution had lost its impetus, that the party itself had become another privileged elite and that liberal bourgeois elements were still thwarting the growth of socialism. In part, too, he was clearly motivated by revenge against those who had opposed the Great Leap Forward and who had pushed him aside in 1961.

Michael Wood, The Story of China: A portrait of a civilisation and its people. 2020

Different Ideological Visions

• Some people felt the revolution was stalling due to corruption from people at the bottom of society, whereas Mao laid the blame on the people at the top, who were in power

Key historians

Not long after the Chinese economy had recovered from the Great Leap Forward there were rival lines of thought within the CCP on China’s future development. One line of thought was advocated by Liu Shaoqi, Chairman of the State, and the other by Mao, the Chairman of the CCP, the ruling communist party. By the early 1960s Liu did not seem to object to the idea that something had to be done in China or protests and turmoil against the CCP similar to those in Hungary and Czechoslovakia would occur. However, the two chairmen had completely different views on what the problems were and what measures to take. The Liu line of thought saw the problem organizationally as CCP grassroots corruption by elements from outside the party. The Mao line, however, saw the problem as being ideologically inside the party. Liu was of the idea that the communist cadres at grassroots level in rural China were either bribed by the former landlords or corrupted by capitalist thoughts of comfort, pleasure and greed. Therefore measures had to be taken to uncover the embezzling and corrupted cadres. Moreover, those measures should be imposed from top to bottom and from outside forces organizationally to wipe out these elements of corruption. In contrast, the Mao line of thought was that the majority of the grassroots cadres were either innocent or just following policies from above. Corruption and embezzlement were just symptoms of a deeper problem of ideology, the ideology of capitalist values and beliefs. To change the ideology fundamentally, measures had to be taken to correct those inside the party who made the policies. For Mao the organizational measure of dismissal or punishment of this and that cadre at grassroots level would not solve the root problem. The fundamental solution had to come from changes of values and beliefs, and those changes required a cultural revolution. Hence the idea of the Cultural Revolution was developed.

Mobo Gao, The Battle For China's Past: Mao and the Cultural Revolution, 2008