over the central apparatus could do nothing to
restore China to order and sanity.
By September 1967 Mao was ready to accept
that the most important task now was to stop
China from disintegrating further. Only the pro-
fessional army could restore order; blame for
excesses could now be shifted on to Mao’s
advisers and the Red Guards, who had exceeded
their functions. The betrayal of his most fervent
supporters meant nothing to Mao. The myth of
his detached infallibility of judgement had to
be preserved, although he was the author of
China’s woes. His wife indirectly admitted to mis-
takes and now sided with the army against the
Red Guards, who were exhorted to practise self-
criticism. Mao had to admit that they had proved
incapable of providing leadership and impetus to
revolutionary China. Only strife and chaos had
followed in their path. Behind the scenes Prime
Minister Zhou Enlai and Lin Piao, the defence
minister, were taking charge. The distinction
between a Red Guard and a criminal became
blurred. Many were executed. The restoration of
order was an enormous task, only gradually
achieved, and social ferment and the killings by
radical factions continued sporadically even as late
as 1968. The army was now praised for imposing
revolutionary discipline and for defending the
‘dictatorship of the proletariat’. The Red Guards,
yesterday in the vanguard of socialist progress,
had become ‘leftist opportunists’, ‘anarchists’ and
‘class enemies’. Mao’s army ‘Thought Teams’
were sent in to take charge of universities and
colleges.
Mao now initiated a new movement that won
the approval of both the army and the Beijing
moderates. The cities and universities were
cleared of students and intellectuals and rowdy
youths; they were overpopulated anyway. Some
20 million Chinese were forced into the country-
side in 1968 and 1969 to learn to labour as
peasants. The ‘young intellectuals’ were under-
going re-education. In October Liu Shaoqui’s
disgrace was complete. Only Mao emerged intact.
Lin Piao at the Ninth National Congress of the
Chinese Communist Party in April 1969 absolved
Mao of all blame and buried the Cultural
Revolution, describing its demise as a ‘great
victory’. The cost, in lives and in blighted careers,
was enormous and was to set China back by a
decade even after the immediate losses of pro-
duction in 1967 and 1968 had been made good.614 TWO FACES OF ASIA: AFTER 1949
China, 1949–68Indices of gross industrial and agricultural output value
at constant prices (1952 = 100)
Agriculture Light industry Heavy industry Population (millions)
1 1949 67.4 46.6 30.3 542
2 1953 103.1 126.7 136.9 588
3 1958 127.8 245.1 555.5 660
4 1960 96.4 269.7 1,035.8 662
51961 94.1 211.4 554.2 659
51962 99.9 193.6 429.0 673
51965 137.1 344.7 651.0 725
5 1966 149.0 394.7 830.0 745
51968 147.5 348.7 630.1 785
Key:
1 Reconstruction (1949–52)
2 First Five-Year Plan (1953–8)
3 Great Leap Forward (1958–60)
4 Gradual Recovery and Conflict with Soviet Union (1960–5)
5 Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966–8)
Source: Liu Suinian and Wu Qungan (eds), China’s Socialist Economy: An Outline History, 1949–1984(Beijing
Review, 1986), pp. 477, 479.