In 1949, After the Chinese Civil War, the People's Republic of China was declared the official government of China under the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party. Mao Zedong, a founding member of the Chinese Communist Party and revolutionary leader during the Chinese Civil War, rose to power as the leader of the CCP and the PRC. His leadership brought about an era of socialism and permanent revolution throughout the country that would last until his death in 1976. Under Mao, China operated under a centrally planned economy. The government heavily regulated economic output, establishing production targets, controlling prices, and distributing resources across the economy.Though Mao’s rule initially brought success, with the implementation of the Soviet economic model, the state of China would become diminished over the next decades, with no apparent aspects of modernization. Over the course of his rule, Mao was constantly obsessed with being in power and maintaining the loyalty of Communist party members and the whole of China to his rightist ideals. In order to maintain power and loyalty, Mao would purge intellectuals, anti-rightists, and anyone who opposed his views, even if doing so would further damage the country.
In 1955, Mao launched the Great Leap Forward initiative to drive economic stimulus and restructure society, an effort to shift China into communism. The Great Leap Forward was a shift from an agrarian society and instead took a focus on heavy industrialization. A significant part of the Great Leap Forward was the collectivization of agriculture and industry into state-run communes, a Soviet idea that combined governmental and economic functions. In addition, the government shut down all free markets within China's countryside and eliminated incentives for work, such as money bonuses. Nevertheless, the Great Leap Forward failed due to a combination of ideological extremism, flawed economic policies, and suppression of dissent. Driven by inflated reports of success, leaders made critical errors by reallocating resources from agriculture to industry and increasing grain procurement, which reduced food production. External factors like poor weather and the withdrawal of Soviet advisers worsened the situation. This failure ultimately caused a great famine that took the lives of thirty million people, wiping out entire village populations. This failure turned into a major economic crisis in China. With famine causing high mortality rates, economic struggles plaguing the nation, and grain production considerably low, China’s economy was on the verge of collapsing economically, agriculturally, and demographically.
The Great Leap Forward's failure left a permanent stain on China. Yet, over the next few years, China got back on its feet; that is, until 1966 when Mao started the Cultural Revolution, a ten-year period of political and cultural insurgency to consolidate Mao’s power further. The Cultural Revolution is typically interpreted as either Mao's attempt to employ youth to rekindle China's revolutionary spirit and rid the country of bureaucratic tendencies or as his scheme to remove his own rivals from positions of power. Mao brought together a group of revolutionaries called the Red Guard, composed of young people, students, and revolutionaries motivated to overthrow corrupt members of the CCP. During this period of time, Mao and the Red Guard shut down museums and libraries and terrorized temples and historic landmarks; the entire country was shut down. Most significantly, the government shut down schools and universities and sent teachers and students to the countryside to farm the land to re-educate them through farm labor. The Cultural Revolution hindered any progress within China, and with schools shut down, literacy rates decreased. Society began to fear the government and the Red Guard. Until Mao’s death, political strife persisted, dividing China, but more acutely, dividing the CCP into two sides: Mao and the Red Guard versus anyone who opposed revolution.
The Cultural Revolution and the Mao period in China saw its demise in 1976 with Mao’s death. After suspicion that Deng Xiaoping was a capitalist, Mao sent him to internal exile. In 1973, Deng returned from exile, and the year after, Mao allowed him to re-enter politics, and he reclaimed his position of Vice Premier. Mao suffered from Lou Gehrig’s disease and eventually died in 1976. Hua Bocheng was Mao’s successor, and he took control of the Chinese Communist Party.
Cover Image From: https://www.britannica.com/event/Cultural-Revolution
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