The Oxford Illustrated History of Modern China by Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom

Author:Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780199683758
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Published: 2016-05-08T16:00:00+00:00

A monumental cult of Mao had been burgeoning since the early 1960s when Minister of Defense Lin Biao exhorted PLA soldiers “to arm our minds with Mao Zedong Thought, to defend the purity of Marxism-Leninism, and combat every form of ideological trend of modern revisionism.” Soldiers were organized into study groups to read Chairman Mao’s essays, and out of this experience a book of quotations was published in 1964 that would have a global impact as the Little Red Book. The potency of Mao’s ideas was propagated through campaigns “to learn from Dazhai” (a brigade in eastern Shanxi) in agriculture, and to “learn from Daqing” (a giant oilfield in Heilongjiang) in industry, the success of these two model sites being ascribed to assiduous study of Mao Zedong Thought. Educated youngsters were sent into the villages as Mao Zedong Thought counselors to teach the masses the “three constantly read articles,” which dealt, respectively, with serving the people, Communist internationalism, and perseverance in the face of hardship. In Chen village in Guangdong one counselor recalled: “We had every party member, every Communist Youth League member, and every counselor memorize the entire articles. After that, all the peasants were set to memorize the articles, but their level of literacy was too low.” Nevertheless study sessions and struggle meetings do appear to have instilled rudimentary elements of Maoist ideology into the peasantry. “Hey, you’re selfish!,” one might say to another: “Chairman Mao tells us to work selflessly for the collective.” At a deeper level, the ceaseless blitz of propaganda reinforced in millions of people a sense of Mao as an emperor, the symbolic father of the nation, his every utterance a sacred edict.

The years between 1949 and 1964 witnessed the most ambitious attempt in history to smash an existing social order and to replace it with a radically improved society, in this instance one based on collectivism, equality, and ideological uniformity. Against the odds, the CCP rapidly built a powerful state, using violence, mass campaigns, and relentless propaganda, and extended its extractive power and ideological influence deep into the population. In many respects, the PRC was a quintessentially totalitarian state in that the population, especially in the countryside, was subjected to traumatic social engineering, with little thought to the human cost, and to a remorseless campaign to rework its beliefs and values in line with those of the Great Helmsman. Yet beneath the totalitarian carapace, the population displayed a qualified independence of mind and action, proving restive and truculent by turns, which was partly a reflection of the limits of state power and partly a reflection of the resilience of traditional culture.

These years between 1949 and 1964 also saw China fall in and out of love with the Soviet Union. Up to 1958, the Sino-Soviet alliance was purposeful and dynamic, although never free of tension. It was Mao’s unwillingness to play “younger brother” to Khrushchev plus his determination to institute rapid and far-reaching economic and social transformation with no heed for “objective” circumstances that

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