What happened after the Great Leap Forward? (Mao's revenge)

in 2021 we went through the history of modern china series and to be honest i made a big mistake now if you enjoyed that series don't panic i didn't give you wrong stats or wrong names i actually did what most history curriculums do and jump straight from a video on the great leap forward to a video on the beginning of the cultural revolution why is this an issue you might ask well the great leap forward ended in 1962 with around 30 million chinese dead and a total pr disaster for mao but the cultural revolution wouldn't actually begin until four years later in 1966 that's effectively four years of major policy and personality change in china and in today's video i'm going to make the argument that what happened in those four years was exactly what created the cultural revolution and led to one of the most impactful events in chinese history so stick around to see the communist party abandon maoism now fill out with his number two and see some political purges that were even worse than those in the cultural revolution hello there so if you don't know much about the great leap forward i'd firstly recommend checking out this video here but let's be real you're too lazy to watch two educational videos in one day so here's the tldr in 1958 meow completely collectivised the farm so that 25 000 people were working on the one commune with no private market to sell the grain on effectively mao sent tens of millions of farmers to work in urban factories with the goal of overtaking first the soviet union and then britain's industry and the communist would have mass-produced the crops to fade these workers now for a number of reasons the video explores this didn't work and they went through a bad famine with 30 million dying and so as a result mao took a backwards step from governing china and in his place luxo chi joe and lai and deng xiaoping took primary responsibility for governing china and they subtly but quickly scrapped the great leaf reforms for example the communes were retained but were dramatically reduced in size with work units being reduced to 30 people incentives were also introduced as rural markets were once again allowed to operate joe and lai also made the decision to authorise grain imports from other countries which went against mao's vision for the chinese peasants to feed the urban factory workers with this industrial production increased by 27 percent from 1963 to 1965 and steel electricity production was doubled out of 1957 the year just before the great late joe and lu also made the call that the urban areas had become too populated and so sent 26 million chinese who had initially left the farms to work in factories back to the countryside and joe actually went a step further with the overpopulation issue at a conference in september of 1963 the party aimed to reduce birth rates from 33 births per 1000 people in a year to just 20. joe headed up a propaganda effort promoting late marriage and even floated the idea of sterilizing husbands after their second baby the propaganda also extended to work a combination of no private incentive and the need to preserve energy made many chinese less productive in the fields to encourage a greater work ethic propaganda was built around a worker named leifung according to the legend leifon was a hardworking student who helped build china in the factories until he died after being hit in the head aged just 21 and the chinese would have continued lei's legacy with hard work and i will finish what you started [Music] secondly the early 1960s were an important period of chinese history because it was the era in which mao zedong fell out with his number two liu xiao qi now after the great leap when mao was taking a backwards step from policy lou launched what was called the socialist education movement effectively this movement sought to clean out the communist party of all excesses and corruption after conducting reports that were not even really that extensive what lou found was pretty grim over 100 000 cases of profiteering had been reported by the public and in just four cities 103 million yuan in waste was found in the province of qinghai 47 percent of cadres were deemed worthy of dismissal and in fujian cadres forced peasants to build them houses using communal materials and spent state funds holding endless parties [Music] now with lou heading this investigation and at the same time writing how to be a good communist would function as a bible to party officials mao became wary of luke now feared china becoming what the soviet union had become stalin had formerly been the all-powerful leader but since his death had become a bureaucracy with khrushchev having less power than his predecessor the first move that mao made against lou was in 1964. lord contracted tebeculosis and now actually ordered that the central bureau of health stopped giving special treatment to the party leadership coincidence i think not mal then accused lieu of trying to stop him from intervening in party debates and extended the criticism to deng xiaoping for suggesting he missed meetings to rest with poor health and things only continued to get worse for lou now invited him to his 71st birthday in which he proceeded to yell at and roast his number two in front of everyone later mao would tell the american journalist edgar snow that when lou denied that there was a capitalist faction within the party that's when he decided lou had to go and to replace lu mao gave responsibility to four new people the first was the new pla boss limbial the second was security chief kung sheng the third was media titan chen boda and the fourth was his wife jung ching and you can actually check out videos we made on li and zhang right here and so the cultural revolution is famous for its political purges such as luchachi himself but before that there were some pretty significant purges which helped create the environment for the cultural revolution with the first purge young chikun there wasn't heaps to the story effectively he was fired and replaced by wang dong-jing who vetted everyone who came in to see mao in his office including his wife jung ching the next two are more interesting though so this guy lobu ching was the former security chief before kung sheng and he presided over china's gulags during the 1950s now luo made the fatal mistake of supporting the modernization of the military rather than politicizing it to become an arm of mao zedong that specialised in guerrilla warfare he also made the fatal mistake of criticizing his boss liam bier who was head of the army for sucking up to mao as a result lin's wife accused lue of trying to take lynn's job and a politburo meeting was held in shanghai to try him dossier had been compiled against him but liu xiao xi and deng xiaoping found nothing treacherous in loyo's conduct and the tribunal wasn't keen to convict him however low buckled under the pressure of being an enemy of mao and offered his resignation and offered self-criticism a practice where mao's enemies were made to publicly confess their sins luo also had to face a shame session where party officials would harass and lecture the wrongdoer about their mistake in luo's session 95 people were in his face all of those were actually joe and lion deng xiaoping who did the maths and came to the conclusion that luo wasn't worth sticking their necks out for the atmosphere in the shame session was actually so volatile that lloyd jumped out of the three-story building breaking his legs his suicide attempt was taken as proof of guilt finally pangzhen was also purged now there's a lot of names here so go slow and repeat this if you need to pong jen was the boss of beijing and was also the minister of culture basically the deputy mayor of beijing wuhan wrote a play about har brui a chinese court official who stood up to the ming emperor in the 1500s now in 1959 now actually praised haru we for his bravery but since then mao's former chief of the pla punched hawaii had criticized mao in the same way that harui had stood up to the emperor punctuate was being praised for standing up to mao and so now mao strongly opposed any works on highway being published as it was seen as an attack on him and so this is where his new gang came into play zhengcheng got shanghai newspapers to publish an article saying that wuhan's play had spread like poison and that encouraged capitalism but given that wuhan was deputy mayor of beijing and pangzhen was the boss of beijing pung wasn't willing to give up his man because he was the boss of the nation's capital pung had the authority to direct the people's daily the communist party's national newspaper and he ordered that they run an article expressing the need for freedom to criticize and while pong's loyalty was commendable it sealed his fate in the communist party at a party session that deng xiaoping chaired he was found guilty of contravening mao zedong thought and sentenced to life in prison under house arrest so dongjo ping and joe and lai were clearly not fans of mao zedong thought during the early 1960s joe completely scaled back the great league forward while in the 1980s dung would go on to establish his own deng xiao ping thought so why go along with the purge of logo ching who they found no wrong doing with and pong zhen who they probably agreed with well dung and joe were not in the business of being heroes while pong's defense of wuhan was admirable and very noble he sacrificed it little for the direction of the party if dung and joe would give up their political lives then mao's seeker fans were destined to fill that void and if dung especially stuck his head out at that exact moment huawei feng would have probably been the leader of china after mao's death and the modern prc could have much more closely resembled north korea thanks for watching if you found this video helpful don't forget to hit the like button so that youtube knows to share it with other people too subscribe if you haven't already with 35 towards our chinese history podcast and if you disagree with my closing analysis let me know why below i may have taken it too far we can't wait to see you next time for our next venture into a fascinating part of history