Establishment of authoritarian and single party states

Methods: FORCE and LEGAL

Force used in Mao’s China

• Party Purges • Class warfare

MAO

• He was brought up under strict Chinese traditional values • These values were ingrained in him thus shaping his political & personal persona • Ruthless yet kind an understanding dictator • A fatherly figure • He thus resorted to using violence and terror to alienate his opposition and to destroy his potential threats.

The use of force in Mao’s China occurred extensively during the cultural revolution of 1966 - 1976

WEAPONS

• The People's Liberation Army • The Red Guards, whom he mobilized by closing down the schools.

RED GUARDS

• Young revolutionary activists • Dedicated to eliminating people who were perceived to deviate from Mao’s teachings • A powerful and destructive political force during the Cultural Revolution

TARGETS for party purges • the party • governmental structures of China

Methods of establishing authority

Party purges • Mao overthrew the then current government using violent means such as the Guerilla warfare and succeeded in 1949. • Mao operated under the concept that suspicion was a reasonable enough reason to condemn

Removal of party officials

• 1959

Peng Dehuai

denounced the Great Leap Forward. Subsequently removed from office, imprisoned until death ◦ • • 1964

Liu Shaoqi

refused Mao’s order, Mao decided liu had to go

Zhou Yang

, deputy director of the Central Committee Propaganda Department eventually purged as a revisionist along with many intellectuals

• 1965 - Mao, who has by now regained some control of the CCP, begins a purge of the party that will develop into the 'Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution' of 1966-76.

• believes that the integrity of the CCP and its gains need to be defended against the emergence of a new elite of bureaucrats by a process of continuous revolution. • Among those to be stripped of their party posts is Deng Xiaoping.

Party purges

• Communists officials labeled as "enemies" were sent to labor camps like the May 17th Cadre Schools, which resembled a Stalin-era Siberian gulag – Chinese gulags are slave labour camps with deadly conditions – 10-15 million people tortured and imprisoned here for many years

Class warfare

• Mao deemed his enemies to be:

rich peasants, landlords, intellectuals, rightists and counter revolutionaries

• Children of landowners were thrown into trashcans • Families who lived in large houses where squeezed into single rooms as their possessions were smashed by Red Guards and poor families moved into the other rooms • In the Cultural Revolution, learning was a crime.

WHY?

• Mao wanted to create a country where there was no gap between urban and rural, labourers and intellectuals. • Thus he made the intellectuals learn from the peasants, having to manual labour.

After Mao’s rise to power,

• Mao developed a cult of personality which further solidified his support base for his regimes • Mao gained support from the people through legal means - Propaganda.

– Example: propaganda posters, Mao’s “Little Red Book”

Use of propaganda

• Used during the cultural revolution and the ‘Great Leap Forward’ • Brainwashed people into believing Mao’s doings were all correct • To portray a ‘God-like’ image of Mao to the people

Re-education

• Re-education can be seen as a form of propaganda as well • Teachings based on Mao’s ‘Little Red Book’ • To educate the people of China to be like Mao

DEATH TOLL

• • Mao is said to have killed the most number of people during his rule among the other people such as Stalin and Hitler.

49-78,000,000

deaths