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Mao's consolidation of power - Coggle Diagram

- - - - Spies, underground agents, criminal bosses, gangs and triads were haunted
- - - - China was divided into six regions, which were governed by four major officials: the Chairman, Party Secretary, Military Commander and Political Commander
      - The central authority was with the Central People's Government Council, which had 56 Party members of which six served as vice-chairman under Mao
      - Mao was the leader of the government
  - - - CCP claimed the power rested with the people and the party officials and the government were servants of the people, claiming that elections were held at a local level and the people were elected were the members of the National People's Congress: in reality, party officials oversaw the election process so that anybody critical of Mao would have little chance of making a stand
        
        The PRC supposedly controlled appointment of judges and each xitisen was granted equality and right to a publlic trial - was practiced only after Mao's death
      - Politburo had the real authority: inner group of 20 or so leading members of CCP, whose decisions were rubber stamped by the NPC
    - - Reminiscient of the Futian Incident of 1930s
      - Two provincial CCP leaders went first, who Mao claimed to have been abusing their position and establishing independent kingdoms in Manchuria and Shangdong, letting them go from their positions
      - A witch hunt followed as other leaders were denounced and sent to prison camps for "treachery" and "splitting the party
- - - - Enshrined Mao's position as a cult leader, was a social necessity in schools and at home
  - - - The Shanghai Forum also argued PLA should root out all those "taking the capitalist road
      - The purge of the Group Five (a set of moderate officials led by Peng Zhen, the mayor of Beijing)
      - The Central Cultural Revolution Group, a subcommittee of the Politburo, was established in 1966, and became a key figure in the purges
  - - - Mao called the CCP to renew the class struggle and remove revisionists from the party, Lin Shaoqi was relegated and Lin Biao was promoted to second in command
    - - Tiananmen Square rally in 1966, which was orchestrated by Lin Biao and Chen Boda
        
        Over a million people, mostly young adults, waved their copies of the Little Red Book, chanting slogans in worship of Mao
      - Further seven rallies took place over the following months
    - - In the rally, Lin Biao identified "four olds" for the young to attack
        
        Old ideas
        
        Old culture
        
        Old customs
        
        Old habits
      - The young would fanatically follow these orders, feeling that they were defending the revolution and its leader who had liberated China from foreign humiliation and oppression
        
        These young people formed themselves into paramilitary social movement they called the Red Guards
        
        The Red Guards denounced their parents, smashed and tore up any remnants of the Confucian past by destroying thousands of historic and cultural sites
        
        Also took control of the public transport and the media
        
        Schoolteachers, university staff, and intellectuals were denounced as rightists and forced to commit their class crimes
        
        However, by 1968, the Red Guards were getting out of hand, turning on one another, competing over their level of devotion to Mao, and gravely affecting the industrial production, and also schools and universities were closed so that students could join the Red Guards
        
        To go up the mountains and down to the villages campaign
        
        Mao sent the Red Guards to the countryside to live among the peasants and learn their hardships, and the fanatic youth obviously followed their leader's order
        
        Mao believed it to be necessary for the privileged to learn the "dignity of labour", but it was also necessary to save the urban area from anarchy and chaos
        
        Between 1967-72, over 12 million young people were sent to the countryside, unprepared for their hardship: they begun questioning their idealism and even Mao, contributing later to the decline in support for the Party
      - The Ministry of Public Security provided the Red Guards five targets
        
        Landlords
        
        Rich peasants
        
        Reactionaries
        
        Bad elements
        
        Rightists
    - - Liu and his wife were publicly beaten and Liu was imprisoned, where he was denied medical care for his diabetes, eventually dying
      - Deng was imprisoned and sent to the Jiangxi Province to do "corrective labour", and his son was thrown out of an upstairs window, leaving him paralysed
      - Lin Biao's and Jiang Qing's influence increases, bolstered by Kang Sheng as the head of the PRC's secret police
      - At the trial of the Gang of Four in 1980, it was stated that the Red Guards murdered more than half a million CCP officials
    - - To promote anti-imperialist unrest in other countries, Mao sent Chinese militants to do violent attacks in over 30 countries outside China
      - For example, Zhao Enlai sent Chinese terrorists to destabilise the region and force the British to retaliate, however the British did not answer with hostility so no mass demonstration against the British rule
    - - Committees across China to remove any forms of capitalism
      - Mao left Jiang and the extremists in control, even though he still had authority