Word: mao
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...meant to, his appearance before an audience of 11,000 packed into Peking's Great Hall of the People emotionally evoked the most sacred day in the calendar of Chinese Communism: Oct. 1, 1949, when Ye and other victorious revolutionary leaders stood at the side of Mao Tse-tung as the Great Helmsman proclaimed the People's Republic of China, declaring: "The Chinese people have stood...
...triumph. He made plain in his nationally televised speech that the ideals of the revolution had failed to become tangible reality, and he implicitly placed much of the blame on the late Great Helmsman. Pushing de-Maoification to its furthest limit to date, Ye made the electrifying charge that Mao's Cultural Revolution of 1966-69 had been an outright "calamity." Said he: "The most severe reversal of our socialist cause since the founding of the People's Republic," the Cultural Revolution "plunged our country into divisiveness and chaos abhorred by the people, into blood baths and terror...
...also repudiated two other major policies associated with Mao. In connection with the 1957 campaign against "bourgeois rightists," Ye said, "the mistake was made of broadening the scope of the struggle." It was a euphemistic but clear reference to the imprisonment of more than 100,000 of Mao's opponents who were not released until after his death in 1976. Ye had a similar complaint about the 1958-60 Great Leap Forward that left China's economy in a shambles. Said Ye: "We made the mistake of making arbitrary decisions, being boastful and stirring up a 'Communist...
Apparently cooperating with Deng and his gerontocracy was Chairman Hua Guofeng, 57, who made his own contribution to de-Maoification. In a long-winded toast at a state banquet commemorating the anniversary, Chairman Hua did not once mention Chairman Mao...
...modernization effort, the 30th celebration was strikingly subdued. Gone were the lavish fireworks displays and parades of earlier anniversaries. Still, the New China News Agency had promised that Peking would be given "a new look, with many billboards freshly painted." As it turned out, this meant that some Mao quotations were painted over and replaced with road safety signs and exhortations to strive for modernization. Peking's 7.5 million population salvaged some holiday spirit from the capital's markets, which were specially stockpiled with 1 million chickens and 300,000 ducks, geese, grouse, hare and fish. In addition...