The role of propaganda in Mao's domestic policy

Assess the role of propaganda in the domestic policies of one single party and authoritarian state that you have studied.

Ari Albalak

November 2014

China under the communist régime of Mao Zedong was characterized by mass campaigns and radical domestic policies. When the CCP rose to power, more than 580 million people inhabited the country, ninety-percent of them peasants. In the years of its most intense reform, the CCP drew inspiration from the Nazi and Soviet methods of propaganda with the aim of cultivating appeal of its ambitious domestic policies. The exam question is assuming that propaganda did play some role in the authoritarian state’s domestic policy, which it certainly did; to a great extent in fact. China, between 1949 and 1976, was famous for its effective and radical propaganda that was used to trigger mass movements in support of the fresh revolutionary cause.

The first domestic policy of the CCP, which originally gained wide support for the cause of Mao and his comrades, was widespread land reform in the early 1950s. It was also one of his most propaganda- intensive campaigns. It, quoting an eloquent passage of Land Reform propaganda, "broke open the peasant's soul and released a flood of mass passion". Large, brightly-colored posters could be seen with the beaming faces of peasants receiving their fair share of land, and contrastingly disturbing images of landlords disgraced in massive show-trials were exhibited for the eyes of the populace to behold. Employed propaganda was not always palpable, in visual form. Mass ‘speak bitterness’ campaigns were carried out by peasant associations against members of the landlord class, appealing to the desire that many peasants had of denouncing their superiors in the most humiliating of ways. Mao’s party, by truly understanding the negative sentiment of the peasantry towards the feudal system (unlike the KMT), was able to implement mass propaganda campaigns such as these show trials; and they were without doubt the propelling force of his radical policy of land reform.

1958 marked the beginning of the Great Leap Forward which, in the light of the first Five Year Plan’s success, was intended to further the expansion of China’s agriculture and heavy industry. The great “Helmsman”, Mao Zedong, asserted that at that point there wasn’t a thing that the Chinese masses, in their communes of course, could not do. The Great Leap Forward would allow China to surpass Britain and the America! The newspaper China’s People’s Daily Newspaper (1958) released the statement “…today, in the era of Mao Zedong, heaven is here on earth….” It lasted until 1961 and, because of its disastrous impact on China, was considered to be a turning point in Mao’s authority. Domestic policy in the late 50s was characterized by mass campaigns geared towards the industrialization of China, but in the country’s communes where peasants worked hand in hand, they lacked some incentive to put in the extra effort to increase crop yields; not to mention the complete failure of his implementation of widespread individual steel furnaces which produced pig iron instead of steel. Whereas in all of Mao’s previous campaigns, propaganda proved effective in achieving the desired outcome, the Great Leap Forward saw its demise as a result of propagandistic trickery. All that remained to motivate and temporarily “sustain” the workers was propaganda. Posters of gargantuan fruits, children walking on excessive heaps of grain, and communes full of joyful and well-fed peasants in their communes were the norm. Inflated figures of crop-yields became a source of light for peasants… but alas, they turned against them. Instead of collecting a realistic proportion of the crops grown in the communes, government officials collected the amounts corresponding to the reported figures, which were terribly manipulated to meet unrealistic demands. This cycle of deception in the propaganda was essentially what led to the failure of this domestic policy-mirroring campaign known as the Great Leap Forward.

By 1963, Mao tired of political seclusion and decided that he, with the help of the man only second to him, Lin Biao, would incite the revolutionary spirit in China once again. Its objective was to rid China of all of its ‘rightist’ elements. A Michael Lynch puts it: “(Mao) unleashed the Cultural Revolution to secure the continuation of the China he had created.” Today, historians and the Chinese government agree that the Cultural Revolution only hurt China, and consider its years (1966-1976) to be some of the most unproductive and harmful in the party’s past. The view held by historian Jack Gray is representative of the modern consensus with regards to the Cultural Revolution: “Mao’s two great attempts (Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution) to transform Chinese socialist society had ended in failure. Both had roved destructive, demoralizing, and disastrous.” Throughout these years of Cultural Revolution, propaganda was the main source of instruction to the population on how to carry out renewed revolution. Often propaganda posters, in addition to strong supporting imagery, contained some phrase(s) of instruction: “Criticize the old world and build a new world with Mao Zedong Thought as a weapon” (1966), “Revolution is no crime, to rebel is justified” (ca. 1966) and “thoroughly smash the rotting counterrevolutionary revisionist line in literature and art (1967) – all examples taken from propaganda posters in the early years of the movement. As the Cultural Revolution consisted of many smaller campaigns, it was up to those in charge of propaganda to spread the ideas as rapidly as possible to the populace. Additionally, propaganda was backed by Mao more than mainstream media which at the time would have been declared ‘rightist’ or ‘revisionist’. It was the spontaneity of the movement that set such an important role for propaganda in transmitting its radical ideas of revolution.

Besides the three domestic policies/movements mentioned – Agrarian Reform, Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution – there were numerous other campaigns with their own objectives. Some of the most common ones involved the purging of officials and those deemed ‘rightists’ or ‘counter-revolutionaries’. Others were more specific and even a bit peculiar by our standards; one of them was the Four Pests Campaign which was a mass mobilization effort to eradicate rats, flies, mosquitos, and sparrow. Another well-known propaganda campaign in 1963 was the ‘Learn from Comrade Lei Feng’ campaign that encouraged the imitation of the PLA soldier Lei Feng that died at the age of 21. In that case, the propaganda fashioned a role model for the people to follow; one that represented communist ideals, altruism, and a fervent dedication to the party. In such a large country such as China – which by the time of Mao’s death had a population of 930 million – a minute percentage of the people ever got the chance to even see their Chairman, Mao Zedong, or to take part in massive parades that were common in urban areas. Much of what the countrymen and women understood about the party came from propaganda. And given the low-standards of education in the enormous peasant populations, party propaganda needed to be as straightforward as possible with catchy slogans to foster enthusiasm. Although not all of Mao’s domestic policies enjoyed success, they rarely failed rally support from the people.

References

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/70902/c-m-chang/maos-stratagem-of-land-reform

http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/greatleap.htm

http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/great_leap_forward.htm

http://chineseposters.net/themes/cultural-revolution-campaigns.php

http://alphahistory.com/chineserevolution/historiography-of-the-cultural-revolution/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_campaigns_of_the_Communist_Party_of_China