The Launch of the Cultural Revolution: After the Great Leap Forward

0: Preface

It’s been a long time since I last sat in a history class—let me indulge myself for a while…

1A: The Korean War (“Resist America, Aid Korea”)

As World War II neared its end, Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin met at Yalta. To persuade the Soviet Union to declare war on Japan and help bring the Pacific War to a swift conclusion, the United States promised that if the Soviets entered the war against Japan within three months of Germany’s defeat, they could claim certain interests in the Far East—most notably the restoration of control over southern Sakhalin and the ports of Port Arthur (Lüshun) and Dalian. Korea, annexed by Japan in 1910, was still a Japanese colony at the time, with no clear plan for who would administer it after Japan’s defeat.

On August 6 and 9, 1945, the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. On August 8, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan, sending troops into northeast China and northern Korea. Within weeks, the Red Army had advanced rapidly, and by late August it controlled the territory north of the 38th parallel. After Japan’s surrender on August 15, the Allies had to arrange for the acceptance of Japan’s surrender and the occupation of Korea. Fearing a complete Soviet takeover, the U.S. military hastily drew a dividing line at the 38th parallel: Soviet forces would accept the Japanese surrender in the north, while American forces did so in the south.

The Soviet Union sought to establish a strategic buffer zone in the Far East to prevent American influence from pressing too close. Northern Korea thus became part of the Soviet sphere, where Moscow supported Korean communists such as Kim Il-sung, who had trained in the Soviet Union. The Soviets provided weapons, advisers, and assistance in creating the Korean People’s Army. In the south, under American sponsorship, Syngman Rhee’s regime took shape as the Republic of Korea in 1948. In the north, with Soviet backing, Kim Il-sung established the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea that same year.

Kim Il-sung, born Kim Song-ju in 1912 near Pyongyang, came from a modest farming family. His father, a Christian with strong nationalist convictions, gave the household some degree of educational and ideological influence, though they were not wealthy. By then, Korea was already under Japanese colonial rule.

In the 1920s, amid harsh repression by the Japanese authorities, Kim’s family moved to Manchuria (northeast China). They were not alone: many Koreans fled to northeast China at the time. Korean customs left a lasting imprint there. Cold noodles (naengmyeon) became a popular regional specialty in Jilin’s Yanbian region and parts of Heilongjiang. Tteok (rice cakes) and kimchi were gradually adopted by local Han Chinese households. Korean barbecue and bibimbap later became important parts of what is now known as “northeastern barbecue,” and the practice of dining around a heated floor-table (kang) also reflects Korean influence. The long-standing debate over whether kimchi is “Chinese” or “Korean” touches on this legacy: were these foodways innovations of the northeast itself, or were they carried there by Korean migrants in the 1920s? Personally, I suspect the latter—chili peppers, for instance, are hardly native to the northeast, suggesting an outside origin. It reminds me of how Qingdao’s beer tradition, now fully localized, was originally introduced by Germans.

In Manchuria, Kim came into contact with Chinese communists and Soviet ideology. In the 1930s, he joined anti-Japanese guerrilla forces active in the Manchurian mountains. His unit was small and not among the most important of the many resistance groups in the region, but he did accumulate some military experience. He was young, energetic, and, by all accounts, fluent in Chinese—able to blend in with local forces. In today’s terms, he might be considered a Korean-Chinese of the first generation.

By 1940, after guerrilla operations faltered, Kim retreated into the Soviet Union. There, he was incorporated into the Red Army’s Far Eastern divisions and received formal military training, rising to the rank of lieutenant. The Soviets valued him highly, seeing in him a potential “Korean leader” to install once they occupied northern Korea.

After Japan’s defeat in 1945, the Red Army entered northern Korea. Stalin needed a loyal, reliable, and thoroughly pro-Soviet local figure. Kim was ideal: he had anti-Japanese credentials that made him easy to portray as a national hero; he was still only in his thirties, with political prospects ahead of him; and he had served in the Soviet military, demonstrating absolute loyalty to Moscow. In 1948, under Soviet sponsorship, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea was established with Kim as its premier, later president. Through personality cult and the elimination of rivals, he consolidated all power in his own hands.

Kim always regarded the division of the peninsula as temporary; true legitimacy lay in unification. He repeatedly pressed Stalin for approval to “march south.” In June 1950, with a green light from the Soviets and tacit consent from China, he launched the Korean War.

In June 1950, after the outbreak of the Korean War, the Soviet Union was the first major power to back Kim Il-sung, supplying tanks, aircraft, artillery, and military advisers. Yet when U.S. forces landed at Incheon and advanced northward toward the Yalu River, Stalin was reluctant to confront the Americans directly. Instead, he “encouraged” China to send troops. Once the Chinese People’s Volunteers crossed into Korea, the Soviets refrained from committing ground forces, but provided support through other means: air cover, weapons and equipment, and economic aid. In practice, the war became China-led, with the Soviet Union in a supporting role. Soviet pilots flew combat missions in the so-called “MiG Alley,” often under Chinese or Korean markings; the tanks, artillery, and aircraft were Soviet-supplied. Although Moscow extended economic assistance, a portion of China’s war expenses was structured as loans to be repaid in installments.

Mao Anying, Mao Zedong’s eldest son, had studied in the Soviet Union, fought in the Great Patriotic War, and spoke fluent Russian. After the Volunteers entered Korea, he insisted on accompanying the army, serving as translator and staff officer at Peng Dehuai’s headquarters. On November 25, 1950, during an American air raid on the command post at Dayudong in northern Korea, Mao Anying was killed while preparing food. He was only twenty-eight. The news devastated Mao Zedong, though outwardly he showed little grief. In retrospect, it seems puzzling—if it were my son, I would never have allowed him to go to the front. For China, the death of the supreme leader’s son, combined with the Soviet Union’s heavy material assistance, became potent propaganda, transformed into the narrative of a “blood-forged Sino-Soviet friendship.”

During the 1950s, Sino-Soviet relations did indeed grow closer as a result. The Soviets increased economic aid to China and signed a series of cooperation agreements. In the winter of 1950, Mao Zedong personally traveled to Moscow to meet Stalin and signed the Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship, Alliance, and Mutual Assistance. This “blood alliance” reached its peak in the early 1950s, but began to unravel after Khrushchev’s rise to power and his denunciation of Stalin.

1B: The Great Leap Forward

After the Korean War, politically, the conflict had given the new People’s Republic of China a sense of “hard-earned dignity.” Mao Zedong and the Communist Party gained enormous prestige. But it also locked China firmly into the Cold War structure: long-term hostility with the United States, and dependence on the Soviet Union. Economically, the war had drained resources, leaving the country in ruins and in need of rebuilding. Yet because the Korean War had displayed the “unity of the socialist camp,” the Soviet Union increased its aid to China, especially in industrial development. With Soviet support, China launched its First Five-Year Plan, focused on heavy industry—steel, machinery, and energy. Moscow helped construct 156 major projects, including Anshan Steel, the First Automobile Works in Changchun, and the Yangtze River Bridge. While industrialization advanced rapidly, agriculture and consumer goods were neglected, and social tensions gradually surfaced.

After the founding of the PRC, intellectuals lived cautiously, often in silence. In 1956–57, Mao Zedong called for “letting a hundred flowers bloom and a hundred schools of thought contend,” inviting intellectuals to criticize the Party and the state. On one hand, Mao genuinely sought to harness intellectual contributions; on the other, he wanted to test the social climate and identify potential dissenters. Writers, teachers, students, and scholars began to publish essays and give speeches, pointing out problems such as bureaucratism, personality cults, economic hardship, and restrictions on free expression. Some called for separating Party and government, for more democratic oversight, even questioning one-party rule. Others criticized the overemphasis on heavy industry at the expense of livelihoods, or the stifling of creativity in literature and the arts.

Mao’s stance shifted quickly. At first, he said intellectuals were “helping us rectify our style.” Soon, however, he judged that “many rightists are seizing the chance to attack the Communist Party.” State media like People’s Daily and Xinhua began calling these criticisms “poisonous weeds,” accusing intellectuals of trying to “overthrow the socialist system.” Constructive criticism was recast as an ideological struggle: “bourgeois rightists attacking socialism.” The boundary between “well-intentioned critique” and “hostile attack” was deliberately blurred. Mass denunciations, self-criticisms, and wall posters created a climate of people struggling against one another. The government even issued quotas for how many “rightists” each workplace had to identify. In the end, about 550,000 intellectuals nationwide were labeled rightists. Many were sent to labor camps, dismissed from their jobs, or driven to suicide. Chinese society entered a state of silence: no one dared openly criticize policy again. Politically, Mao had achieved absolute ideological unity—and laid the groundwork for the Great Leap Forward, where no one would dare oppose him.

After World War II, the globe was divided into the capitalist camp led by the United States and the socialist camp led by the Soviet Union—a pattern that persists in some form even today. Yet whether capitalist or socialist, both sides relied heavily on technology. The U.S.-backed Marshall Plan and its technological superiority made the capitalist model highly attractive. For the newly founded PRC, it was essential to prove that socialism was viable; otherwise, China risked being dismissed as a mere Soviet satellite or an unstable regime.

By the mid-1950s, Khrushchev was promoting “peaceful coexistence,” softening revolutionary rhetoric. Mao considered this too “weak,” and argued that “the Chinese road” could move faster and more radically than the Soviet model. The Great Leap Forward was not only a challenge to the United States but also a race against the Soviet Union. Having seized power in 1949, the CCP needed to prove—both to the Chinese people and the world—that it was more effective than the Nationalists. Rapid industrialization, a leap out of backwardness in the shortest possible time, was the most straightforward answer. Mao firmly believed that “man can conquer nature,” that mass political enthusiasm could overcome economic laws. To sustain mobilization, he set ever more grandiose targets—“surpass Britain and catch up with America,” “ten thousand jin per mu” (fantastical grain yields). In his mind, socialism’s triumph had to be overwhelming and immediate, not gradual. He often declared: “To move fast is Marxism; to move slowly is revisionism.” I am not entirely sure what “revisionism” really meant, but it is clear that for Mao, Marxism was not a result but a process. All roads may lead to Rome, but Mao saw himself as the leader who would make China “catch up with the world” within his lifetime. He was not satisfied with China merely “standing up”; it had to “grow strong”—and fast.

Mao also believed Stalin, though helpful to China, treated it with condescension. At the 1957 Moscow conference, Khrushchev proclaimed, “In twenty years we will bury capitalism.” Mao immediately retorted, “China will surpass Britain in fifteen years.” It was an open contest. After the Anti-Rightist Campaign, no one inside or outside the Party dared challenge him. Mao now needed a massive social experiment to validate his line and prove the superiority of “Mao Zedong Thought.”

1C: The Great Famine

In the early years of the PRC, the countryside gradually moved from mutual-aid teams to lower-level cooperatives, then to higher-level cooperatives, advancing step by step toward collectivization. It resembled the path from the Young Pioneers, to the Communist Youth League, to full Party membership. By the end of 1956, higher-level cooperatives had essentially been completed nationwide, and peasant land was, at least in name, collectively owned. In 1958, amid the fervor of the Great Leap Forward, Mao proposed upgrading agricultural cooperatives into People’s Communes—a new system that went beyond economic cooperation to encompass politics, military organization, culture, and daily life.

A single commune often comprised several thousand to tens of thousands of people, merging multiple villages. The hierarchy ran from commune (lowest), to brigade, to production team (largest unit). Cadres frequently managed production with military slogans, even proclaiming that “the commune is both an army, a school, and a factory.” Peasants had to surrender their pots, bowls, and grain to the collective, eating instead in public canteens. The slogan was “meals free of charge,” but in practice waste was rampant. Even the small private plots peasants had retained were confiscated, leaving individuals with virtually no independent means of production. Some localities even proposed collectivizing family functions: children raised in nurseries, the elderly sent to “happiness homes.”

Each day peasants reported for collective labor under the work-points system: their effort was scored according to intensity, with distribution made at year’s end. Output was first requisitioned by the state, then used for collective expenses, and only afterward did any reach individual households. Because yields were exaggerated and inflated at every administrative level, peasants received very little food in reality. With land, livestock, and tools confiscated, they lost motivation to work. In the early days, canteens often staged feasts to display “abundance,” but supplies soon ran out. Without private plots or property, the family’s role weakened, and peasants felt deep insecurity. Communes controlled every aspect of peasant life, granting cadres enormous power. The system stripped peasants of all capacity to withstand famine: once the canteens ran dry, there was no fallback. In many places, “the communal pot” and “the People’s Commune” became synonymous with disaster. The commune system endured until the reforms of 1978, when it was dismantled and the household responsibility system restored farmers’ link between effort and reward.

In Mao’s eyes, steel output was the most direct measure of a nation’s industrial and modern strength. In 1958 he declared, “the Marshal of Steel must seize the flag,” raising the slogan “surpass Britain and catch up with America in fifteen years,” demanding a dramatic increase in steel production in the shortest possible time. Steel was framed not only as an economic issue but as a political task, a matter for the entire nation. Crude backyard furnaces sprang up in villages, schools, government offices, and factories. Workers, peasants, cadres, students, even intellectuals were mobilized to make steel. Lacking iron ore, many melted down their own pots, farming tools, door handles, even bed frames. These “backyard furnaces” were scientifically unsound: temperatures were too low, smelting techniques rudimentary. Much of the so-called steel produced was brittle slag, useless for industry. It consumed fuel and labor while destroying countless items essential for daily life and agriculture.

Masses of peasants were diverted into steelmaking, disrupting the agricultural calendar. Farming tools were melted down, further reducing productivity. Agriculture weakened, grain output declined. To please superiors, local governments inflated figures, and central newspapers printed stories of “miracles,” fueling a culture of exaggeration. Under political pressure and propaganda, no one dared question the campaign’s scientific basis. The Great Steelmaking Movement became a symbol of loyalty and revolutionary zeal, not a rational act of economic development.

The Great Leap Forward called for “large army-style campaigns to conquer nature.” Millions of peasants were mobilized to build reservoirs, dams, and canals—hauling earth barefoot in freezing water during winter, carrying stones under the blazing summer sun. Projects pursued speed and scale over planning and engineering. Many reservoirs were poorly sited, dikes hastily built, and within a few years collapsed or were abandoned. Vast amounts of labor were diverted away from farming, leaving fields untended at planting and harvest. Agriculture declined further. Peasants were physically exhausted; illness and malnutrition became widespread.

From 1959 to 1961, China entered the gravest crisis since its founding. Famine spread across the country. The official explanation spoke of “natural disasters,” but scholarly estimates place the death toll between 15 and 30 million. In some regions, entire villages were depopulated. People survived on wild herbs, tree bark, and roots; eventually even leather and clay were consumed. Many collapsed in the fields from hunger. In extreme cases, cannibalism occurred. After the Anti-Rightist Campaign, questioning policy could mean being branded “right-leaning.” Even grassroots cadres who saw the famine firsthand dared not report it truthfully. For a time the central leadership was deceived by the façade of abundance, until the catastrophe could no longer be concealed.

At the 1962 “Seven Thousand Cadres Conference,” Liu Shaoqi declared that the famine was “thirty percent natural disaster, seventy percent man-made.” Deng Xiaoping and Chen Yun, together with Zhou Enlai, led efforts to stabilize the economy. Mao temporarily stepped back from daily governance, leaving Liu, Zhou, and Deng to direct policy under the new line of “adjustment, consolidation, enrichment, and improvement.”

The famine left profound psychological scars. Generations of rural families came to value “having enough to eat” above all else. ChatGPT has noted that the famine also helps explain Mao’s later hypersensitivity to “revisionism.” Haunted by the fear that his line might again be repudiated, he turned toward launching the Cultural Revolution as a way to reclaim unchallenged authority.