he energy of the people could help China achieve a high tide of Communist development. This ideology exploded in the Great Leap Forward in 1958. Mao called upon all Chinese to engage in zealous physical labor to transform the economy and overtake the West in industrial and agricultural production within a few years. Afraid to disappoint their leaders, peasants falsified grain production numbers. Several poor harvests caused massive famine and the deaths of millions of people throughout China. Mao’s policies had failed, but those in the government who criticized him directly, such as Peng Dehuai, were humiliated and purged from office. Criticism of Mao from outside the government was also muted because the educated elite remembered the turmoil of the “Hundred Flowers” and “Antirightist” campaigns of 1957. Mao’s relationship with intellectuals was an uneasy one, and he was critical of the gap between the lives of the urban educated elite and the rural masses. These tensions were among the underlying causes of the Cultural Revolution, a period of social unrest and political persecution launched by Mao in 1966. Mao mobilized youth into the Red Guards to attack his political rivals, including his chosen successor, Liu Shaoqi. With the help of Lin Biao, the leader of the People’s Liberation Army, Mao established himself as a godlike cult figure. All Chinese were encouraged to read the Quotations of Chairman Mao (known as Mao’s Little Red Book), and Mao’s writings were elevated to an infallible philosophical system called “Mao Zedong Thought.” Although Mao became widely revered, his Cultural Revolution policies led to cataclysmic death and destruction throughout China. He died of Parkinson disease on September 9, 1976. At the National Party Congress in 1977, the CCP declared the Cultural Revolution to have officially ended in October 1976. CONCLUSIONAfter Mao’s death his r...
