Was the Cultural Revolution 'Mao's Revolution' Essay

Was the Cultural Revolution 'Mao's Revolution' - Essay Example This revolution has been named sometimes as Mao’s Revolution owing to the fact that Mao Zedong was the initiator of this revolution and ruled the country through this period (Macfarquhar & Schoenhals 2006). The Cultural Revolution is correctly referred to as the Mao’s Revolution because it was Zedong who started this revolution and he used his tactics to commence this revolution to attain back his power and strength in the Chinese Communist Party. Mao rose to power mainly following the Second World War. He headed the Chinese Communist Party and he was a strict follower of Communism. Zedong was the one who declared the formation of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. The failure of the Great Leap Forward which was a program put forward by Zedong persuaded him to come up with a better strategy to make his stand more powerful in the party. The Great Leap Forward was a step to improve the agricultural and industrial sector of China but it had rather produced a ne gative result by leading to famine and the loss of many lives. Losses were also faced in both the industrial and agricultural sector. This produced a setback in the political career of Zedong. Liu Shaoqi and his lieutenant Deng Xiaoping were given greater importance in the party and this pushed Mao to come up with a new strategy which was the Cultural Revolution (Meisner 1999; Spence 1999). Mao Zedong was of the belief that the Chinese Communist Party had lost its original essence and its principles had been contaminated with the capitalist thoughts and acts. This was another factor which led him to push for the Cultural Revolution. Mao also argued that the society was also losing the communist path and capitalism had started to build its roots in the Chinese Society. He argued that the rich people were living their expensive lifestyles at the expense of the hard work of the poor farmers. He was of the opinion that China was moving back to its class system and thus he assessed that he had to target the younger generation for the commencement of this revolution. Mao believed that the younger generation had not been infiltrated with the capitalist thoughts and manipulation of their thinking in favor of communism would result in bringing about a change and a revolution. This led to the beginning of the Cultural Revolution by the youth in the year 1966. This revolution was thoroughly based on the thoughts and the opinions of Zedong. His personal, as well as political motives, convinced him to start this revolution and thus, it is correctly known as Mao’s Revolution (Meisner 1999; Spence 1999). The students formed groups in the year 1966 beginning from the Beijing University. They were referred to as the Red Guards. They asked for Mao’s signal and when he approved they started functioning on the national level. Millions of supporters joined the Red Guards and their main aim was to teach politicians as well as the other people to let go of capitalist p olicies. In 1966, a mass approval and supporting for Mao was shown in Beijing. This really explained a very important fact that this revolution was more about Mao and his opinions and not about what the Chinese Communist Party considered as a whole. It was initially believed that the functioning of the Red Guards would stay peaceful but this route was not followed for long.