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China 1950–1981: The People and the State

Causes and impact of the Cultural Revolution, the Red Guards and Tibet

  • 3 things to know
  • Paper 1

Overview

Mao Zedong's weakened grip after 1962, his charges against Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping, fears about the young, the closure of schools and the treatment of intellectuals, the sent-down youth, the Red Guards and the Four Olds, and the rising of 1959 and religion in Tibet.

What you need to know

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Key term

Why was Mao Zedong’s grip on the leadership weaker after 1962?

Key term

What was the ‘up to the mountains and down to the villages’ movement of 1968?

Key term

Which ‘Four Olds’ were the Red Guards ordered to destroy?

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

  1. 1

    Why was Mao Zedong’s grip on the leadership weaker after 1962?

    Model answer

    The famine that followed the Great Leap Forward forced him to hand day-to-day government to Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping.

  2. 2

    What did Mao Zedong accuse Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping of doing to the revolution?

    Model answer

    Taking the capitalist road by allowing private plots, bonuses and profit, and letting the Party become a privileged elite.

  3. 3

    Which fear about the young helped push Mao Zedong into launching the Cultural Revolution in 1966?

    Model answer

    That a generation which had never fought for the revolution would grow soft and let China slide back towards capitalism.

  4. 4

    What happened to schools and universities after 1966?

    Model answer

    They were shut and entrance examinations abandoned, so a whole generation lost years of education.

  5. 5

    What was done to teachers, writers and scientists during the Cultural Revolution?

    Model answer

    They were denounced as bourgeois, paraded in dunce caps, beaten and sent to the countryside for manual labour; many were driven to suicide.

  6. 6

    What was the ‘up to the mountains and down to the villages’ movement of 1968?

    Model answer

    The despatch of millions of city teenagers to work in remote villages, which scattered the Red Guards and separated families for years.

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