Live TV. This Day In History. History Vault. Recommended for you. Mao Zedong. Ping-Pong Diplomacy in China. Cultural Revolution The Cultural Revolution was launched in China in by Communist leader Mao Zedong in order to reassert his authority over the Chinese government. Long March In October , during a civil war, embattled Chinese Communists broke through Nationalist enemy lines and began an epic flight from their encircled headquarters in southwest China.
Domino Theory The domino theory was a Cold War policy that suggested a communist government in one nation would quickly lead to communist takeovers in neighboring states, each falling like a perfectly aligned row of dominos. His leadership, especially the Cultural Revolution initiative, has been hotly debated. In June the Party Central Committee approved a resolution that criticized Mao's rule after , but affirmed his place as a great leader and ideologist of the Chinese Communist revolution.
From Focus on Asian Studies , Vol. IV, No. Reprinted with permission. Zhou Enlai was, for decades, one of the most prominent and respected leaders of the Communist movement. Born into an upper-class family, he was drawn into the vortex of Chinese politics during the May Fourth Movement. In he traveled to Europe on a work-study program in which he met a number of future CCP leaders. He joined the Party in and returned to China in , becoming the political commissar of the Whampoa Military Academy in Canton during the first united front with the Nationalists.
But Zhou was always most prominent during periods in which the CCP reached out to otherwise hostile political forces. General George Marshall. After the founding of the People's Republic in , Zhou became premier of the Government Affairs later State Council and foreign minister. In he acted as China's bridge to the nonaligned world at the Bandung Conference, and in the same year helped engineer initial contacts with the U. He passed the foreign minister portfolio to Chen Yi in but continued to play an active role in foreign policy.
Zhou supported Mao Zedong in the latter's Cultural Revolution attack on the entrenched Party bureaucracy, and subsequently played a critical role in rebuilding political institutions and mediating numerous political quarrels. With the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, Zhou advocated an opening to Japan and the West to counter the Russian threat. That same year Zhou was diagnosed as having cancer, and he began shedding some of his responsibilities, especially to Deng Xiaoping who was rehabilitated in April Zhou was also a strong advocate of modernization, particularly at the Fourth National People's Congress in January Amid radical attacks on him during the Anti-Confucius Campaign, Zhou entered the hospital during and died on January 8, Zhou continued to affect Chinese politics even after his death.
In April , the removal of memorial wreaths placed in Tiananmen Square in Zhou's honor sparked riots that led to the second ousting of Deng Xiaoping.
With the purge of the "Gang of Four" in October , his policy of "four modernizations" received the full endorsement of the new leadership. He ruled as the Chairman of the Communist Party from until his death in While he is often credited with modernizing the country and making it a world power, his Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution were violently oppressive and responsible for the death of millions of people.
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