IGCSE History

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• Revolution in China 1949 - 1996 (A14)
  • 1949 - 1976
    • China under Mao
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    • The reasons for the Cultural Revolution
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    • China 1971 - 1976
  • 1976 - 1996
    • The defeat of the Gang of Four
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• Conflict and Crisis is the Middle East 1946 - 1996 (A16)
  • Unit overview
  • 1946 - 1967
    • The creation of Israel
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  • 1967 - 1996
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• The First World War (B4)
  • The Schlieffen Plan
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• The USA 1917-1929 (B7)
  • The Roaring Twenties
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• China under Mao Zedong 1949 - 1959 (B10)
  • The creation of the Communist State
  • Land Reform
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  • The First Five Year Pan
  • The 100 Flowers
  • The Great Leap Forward
• The Changing Nature of Warfare (C3)
  • Unit overview
  • Warfare at the beginning of the 20th Century
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  • Warfare at the end of the 20th Century
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China 1971 - 1976

From 1971, Mao began a process of reconstruction with the support of the Prime Minister Zhou Enlai, who had been a colleague on the Long March. Zhou was keen to rebuild relations with the West after the Cultural Revolution. Many western countries had been angered by the behaviour of Chinese diplomats in the late 1960s and so Zhou was only too pleased to arrange the visit of President Richard Nixon to Beijing in 1972. He spent a week in China, but, apart from an enthusiastic welcome from Zhou, received almost no attention from the Chinese people.

Zhou then began to invite western opera companies, orchestras, academics and tourists to China, but his policies ran up against the opposition of Mao and more especially Mao’s wife, Jiang Qing. While the attacks on authority during the Cultural Revolution came to an end in 1971, art and culture remained under the control of his wife Jiang Qing until 1976. She became a more important figure in China as Mao grew weaker in his old age.

In 1974 Zhou was attacked in the press along with western influences as a whole. This was part of a process aimed at re-establishing the influence of Mao, who thought that his position was being undermined by Zhou’s policy with the West. Mao was keen to avoid any repeat of the Cultural Revolution, but at the same time wanted to prevent western ‘bourgeois’ influences. Jiang Qing encouraged the production of new revolutionary operas, which glorified the Chinese people and western medicine was rejected. Operating procedures that had been introduced from the West were discouraged and traditional Chinese medicine was revived. At the same time, however, while an anti-western policy was adopted in art and music, Party leaders who had been disgraced during the Cultural Revolution were restored to their former positions.

These were all attempts to maintain the position of Mao at the top of the Communist Party, but it was clear that this could not last long. He was suffering from advanced Parkinson’s disease and could hardly stand. Zhou was also gravely ill with cancer and died in January 1976. At his funeral he was praised by Deng Ziaoping, who was hoping to succeed him as Prime Minister. But Mao had other ideas. He chose Hua Gaofeng. Mao believed that this would ensure that China would continue to follow his ideas. Deng Xiaoping was disgraced and stripped of all of his offices.

Mao died in September 1976. There was no widespread mourning and the numbers of people who filed passed his coffin were smaller than had been at Zhou’s funeral earlier in then year. Hua moved quickly to assert his position. In addition to being Prime Minister, he now took over the chairmanship of the Central Committee of the Communist Party and the Party’s Military Commission. Mao’s death led to a period of uncertainty in China. As long as he had been alive he had been the most powerful and most influential figure in the country. While he was mourned as the father of the Chinese revolution, there were many Chinese who were secretly glad to be rid of his out-dated ideas and underhand tactics. The problem was what to do next.

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