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== Socialist Education Movement (1963-1966) == The Socialist Education Movement (simplified Chinese: 社会主义教育运动; traditional Chinese: 社會主義教育運動; pinyin: Shèhuìzhǔyì Jiàoyù Yùndòng, abbreviated 社教运动 or 社教運動), also known as the Four Cleans campaign after 1965, (simplified Chinese: 四清运动; traditional Chinese: 四清運動; pinyin: Sìqīng Yùndòng) was a movement launched by Mao Zedong from 1963 to 1966 in the People's Republic of China. In late 1962, with the economy stabilized, Mao Zedong emerged from political seclusion to launch the “Socialist Education Movement”. The new campaign aimed to counter bureaucratization, reverse socioeconomic policies that Maoists condemned as “revisionist” and believed were creating new forms of capitalism, and revitalize a collectivistic spirit within the Party and in society at large. It was to be Mao’s last attempt, prior to the Cultural Revolution，to implement his vision of radical social transformation through existing Party and state institutions.

Background:

Post-Great Leap Forward period

China suffered an economic crisis in the 1960s due to the Great Leap Forward, and this leads to conflicts within CCP leaders. Even though Party leaders shared Mao’s concern over cadre corruption and the retreat from collectivism, most Party leaders-for example, Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping-believed organizational and ideological soundness of the CCP and the quality and discipline of its cadres was the way to achieve successfully political and economic work, while Mao Zedong insisted that revolutionary creativity resided in the masses themselves, especially in the peasantry.

Two main issues they argued about were first, how to evaluate the economic condition after the Great Leap Forward in China, and the second was whether CCP needs to start practice Distribution of Land to Farmers for a Certain Term in Villages (包产到户). For the first problem, Mao evaluated the consequence of the Great Leap Forward as “ the relationship between one finger and nine finger”(一个指头与九个指头的关系)，which means Mao took the failure of the Great Leap Forward as one finger and the achievement of the Great Leap Forward as other nine fingers, and the successful achievement was the nature and mainstream of this movement. The relationship between the lost and the success of this campaign is like the minor and major aspect of the contradiction. While other CCP leaders like Liu Shaoqi, Zhou Enlai, Chen Yun or Deng Xiaoping pointed out that Chinese economy was in a catastrophe and worried about the development of the economy in later periods. Liu Shaoqi, for example, refuted Mao’s “theory on finger” in the Seven thousand people congress in 1962 and pointed out that “ in the past, we took the failure of our movement as only one figure when comparing to the achievement we got. However, things are changed a lot these years. Generally speaking, the relationship between our failure and success is like the relationship between three fingers and seven fingers. In some areas, the error is more like just three fingers. When I went to a countryside in Hunan province, a peasant told me that 30% of the hunger in these years were caused by natural calamities while 70% were lead by man-made disasters. Hence, the failure is the mainstream in some places rather than success. Mao totally disagreed with them and insisted that there were not many difficulties in the economy and the whole country was in a good condition. Everyone should keep practicing the ‘Three Red Flag”(三面红旗)，which were the general line of the Party, the Great Leap Forward and the People’s commune.

In 1956, socialist transformation in China came to an end. Several provinces, for example, Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Anhui, Guangdong started practice as “Distribution of Land to Farmers for a Certain Term in Villages”(包产到户). Different from situations in other provinces as a spontaneously incident practiced by the people, this kind of distribution of land in Yongjia county was led and supported by the official government. However, this practice was criticized and forbidden in the beginning of 1957 due to the Anti Right movement. ，and was seen as “a treat of history”. More than twenty official leaders were punished after 1957. Mao criticized this movement and said “ doing a single job will definitely lead to digression within one year. “ Even Khrushchev dared not to dismiss the collective farm”.

All these two major arguments within the CCP leaders led Mao Zedong to stress that “class struggle should be put on the table again”(重新提起阶级斗争). He declared that “we need to reconsider and restudy the class struggle in our country. The class struggle will exist in our country permanently. We need to educate the youth, the cadres, the mass. We also need to educate cadres in a central office and local government. We need to mention this issue every year, every month, even every day.” In Mao’s view, it is necessary to start again the class struggle.

Sino-Soviet Split

The economic crisis was compounded in the summer of 1960, when Khrushchev abruptly recalled the Soviet scientists and industrial specialists working in Chinese enterprises, The official explanation was that Russian specialists were ill-treated by Chinese hosts. The real reason was the deterioration of Sino-Soviet relations. The Soviet Union was not satisfied with the Great Leap Forward and the Chinese abandonment of the "Soviet model".

In 1958, Khrushchev objected the People’s Commune movement in China in his meeting with Władysław Gomułka, a communist leader in Poland. He indicated that “ We already launched a similar movement thirty years ago in the Soviet Union and now we have abandoned this kind of policy. However, Chinese communist won’t listen to us and learn from our experience. Let them do this kind of thing, and when they fail disastrously they will know they should listen to our advice.” After his public ridicule of the communes and the Peng Dehuai affair, this critique on Three Flag infuriated Mao and Mao said “ We should insist the Three Flag even we need to fight against the whole world. We will fight with people who object or suspect our decision within our party.”All these exacerbate the hostility between the two countries and between Mao and Khrushchev personally.

In 1960, Chinese leaders issued a public declaration of independence from the Soviet Union in terms of international affairs and domestic policy. In June, Sino-Soviet hostilities came into the open when Khrushchev made an attack on China at the Congress of the Rumanian CP in Bucharest. Several weeks later, Khrushchev ordered the specialists to return home.

The broken relationship with the Soviet Union and Mao’s critique of Khrushchev’s phony communism also indicated Mao’s belief that continuous revolution in building socialist China. The Chinese argued that Khrushchev’s motive differed from their own. CCP leaders claimed that they were continuing Lenin's pursuit of world revolution, while Khrushchev was prepared to betray the revolution in the interests of the Russian state. In the 1950s and 1960s, national security was the aim for both countries. Khrushchev adopted a way called co-existence, which meant acceptance by the capitalist world. While Chinese leaders suspected this kind of bargains. In 1958, Khrushchev made it clear that Russia would run no risks to support China. By 1960, Chinese leaders began to believe that depend too much on the Soviet Union would inhibit Chinese own position.

Process

The 7000 Party Conference （七千人大会）

In January of 1962, Mao delivered a speech to a national Party work conference attended by 7000 provincial and district Party functionaries. The speech criticized on the bureaucratic methods and practices that dominated Party life in the post-Great Leap Forward years. Mao affirmed the validity of the principle of democratic centralism and equated Leninist notion with his own principle of the mass lime. He defined that" First democracy, then centralism, coming from the masses, returning to the masses, the unity of leadership and the masses." By emphasizing democracy over centralism. Mao expressed his faith in the revolutionary spontaneity and initiative of the masses. In Mao's opinion, democracy represents that the masses were to speak first.

Another thing Mao pursued was that class struggles persist in a socialist society. He worried that "In a socialist society, new bourgeois elements may still be produced.", and " there are some people who adopt the guise of Communist Party members, but they in no way represent the working class- instead, they represent the bourgeoisie. All is not pure within the Party." He also defended the rights of a minority" Very often the ideas of a minority will prove to be correct. History abounds with such instances." Mao's speech this time had no influential effect on the policies and practices of the Party.

The Central Committee's Tenth Plenum

In September 1962, Mao spoke again at the Central Committee's Tenth Plenum. He repeated his vies and stressed the necessity and inevitability of class struggle to compete with the danger of "revisionism". Mao called for a massive ideological education campaign for both Party cadres and masses. This was approved by the Central Committee and was to put into practice in the next three and one-half years under the name of the " Socialist Education Movement". In Mao's view, the aims of the new movement were to revolutionize the Party and the thought and behavior of its cadres, raise the ideological consciousness and socialist spirit of the masses, and reserve what were viewed as "capitalist" and "revisionist" in the social and economic life of the country, especially in the countryside.

The Small Four Cleans

The campaign had its origins in a September 1962 speech to the Central Committee when Mao declared that classes and class struggle exist in socialist societies, and stressed that the class struggle in China would continue for a prolonged period. The Central Committee agreed that the entire historical period of the transition to communism would be characterized by a continuing class struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, condemned revisionist tendencies within the Party, and called for strengthening the socialist life of the rural people’s communes.

The first stage was a socialist education campaign in the countryside. It is aim was simple, to restore collectivization. In fall and winter in 1962, Hebei province started a movement focusing on “clean working points, clean tax, clean storage and clean property”, which was also taken as “the small four cleans”. This sample in Hebei province set a successful model for another countryside to carry out the socialist education movement. However, the first experimental work done in the villages revealed that corruption among grass-roots rural cadres was rampant. The focus of the movement was therefore switched from the restoration of collective agriculture to the rectification of the village leadership.

In the February of 1963, Mao Zedong decided to launch the Five-anti Campaign in the city, and the socialist education movement in the countryside.

First Ten Points

In February 1963, a draft resolution of the central committee on some problems in current rural work was circulated, which indicates that the socialist education movement would concentrate on the administration of collective accounts, communal granaries, public property and work points.( the four clean-ups)

It was not until May 1963 that the “Draft Resolution of the Central Committee on Some Problems in Current Rural Work” stated the purposes and methods of the Socialist Education Movement and launched the campaign on a nationwide basis.

The May 1963 resolution, or the “First Ten Points”, suggested the two major concerns which originally motivated the Socialist Education Movement. One was the decline of the communes and the disintegration of collective farming. The second was the increasingly bureaucratic character of the Communist Party and the wide-spread corruptions which pervaded local rural Party organs. The original aims of the movement were to restore collectivism in the rural areas by reestablishing the communes as functioning socioeconomic units and to cleanse the Party of corruption and bureaucratic elitism.

In this document, Mao believed Chinese society was experiencing a severe class struggle. The CCP must reorganize the revolutionary ranks and set the masses in motion. Mao kept asserting in this text that the great significance to avoid peaceful evolution from socialism back to capitalism and to prevent the appearance of revisionism in China.

The First Ten Points was the guiding document for the future socialist education movement in China. his early ten points made it clear that Mao was not content that the party should be left to reform the party by such administrative means. His solution was political, the tasks of the work teams were to mobilize the non-Party masses, resurrecting the old poor peasant leagues, to reassert their authority and to identify the errant cadres while the work team held the ring.

Later Ten Points

During the early period of this movement, some problems like fighting within groups emerged. In order to solve these practical issues, CCP decided to give a detailed instruction on how to carry out this movement. The document which was drafted by Deng Xiaoping and Tan Zhenlin in September 1963 was also called “ Later Ten Points.” In the autumn of 1963, Deng Xiaoping was given the task to update this resolution in the light of experience. The document which was drafted by Deng Xiaoping and Tan Zhenlin in September 1963 was also called “ Later Ten Points.”. The later ten points differed from Mao’s original one. Class struggle was not mentioned, the problems of the rural areas were said to be non-antagonistic contradictions to be resolved by educational means. The poor peasant leagues were to be under the control of the work teams. There was to be no interference with prosperous middle peasants and no disruption of an existing organization, Deng Xiaoping seems to have concerned that the more flexible system of farming which had established itself in the preceding two or three years.

Revised ten points

In June 1964, Mao insisted that the socialist education movement should be judged by its success in mobilizing the poor peasants and that cadres should not be hauled off for judgment by higher authority, but simply struggled against by the masses.

In September of 1964, Liu Shaoqi was given the task to produce another document, Which was called “Revised Later Ten Points.” The revised points took a much more radical view. Liu emphasized the problem of collusion between villages cadres and leaders at a higher level of the Party. He declared that " Cadres in basic level organizations who have made mistakes are usually connected with certain cadres of the higher level organization... and are instigated, supported and protected by them." The content of the "four clean-ups" was widened to "politics, economics, ideology, and organization'. The poor peasant leagues were given a commune-level organization so that they could exert influence at commune headquarters to prevent retaliation by threatened village cadres. The militia was called in to strengthen the leagues.

Liu's attack was directed against cadres only, and not against the capitalist elements among the peasantry whose ambitions provided the scope for corruption, Liu also regarded all cadres under suspicion, and indicated that all found guilty should be severely dealt with. While Liu's directive appeared to to give the poor peasant leagues an important role, in fact, they were swamped by work teams. Finally, even Liu focused on the problem of collusion between higher and lower levels of the Party, the campaign was directed against relatively low levels. Depending on work teams from the higher levels of the Party actually left Liu an accusation as "hit at the many to protect the few".

These two documents both quoted Mao’s writings and supported Mao’s ideology on class struggle, but the real purpose was to slow down the radical development of the movement, limit its scope and keep the movement under the centralized control of the Party. These two documents both suggested that dispatching “work teams” to villages and commune to supervise local cadres and the masses was an efficient way. These two texts emphasized the central importance of the Party which can rectify the errors of local level cadres and lead and educate the masses.

Twenty-three Articles

In 1964-1965, Mao Zedong and Liu Shaoqi declared a huge difference on the essence of this movement. Unlike Liu, Mao believed the essence of this campaign was the contradiction between socialism and capitalism. He suggested the formation of the class of bureaucrats in Chinese society and CCP need to fight with them.

On the national work conference in January 1965, Mao Zedong issued a new instruction known as the “Twenty-three Articles.”He demanded a triple alliance of peasants, cadres and work teams, express his technique to build the widest alliance in order to isolate the offending minority. He sought the regular re-election of grassroots cadres. Dealing with various points for decision in the village-both with points such as whom to punish and how, and also with policy points such as the question of private land reclamation. Mao insisted throughout the articles that these decisions must be taken by the peasants themselves. He advocated leniency towards those found guilty of misdemeanors, and only the most serious cases were to be dealt with by law, leaving the rest to village opinion.

At the same time, Mao asserted that the evils under attack existed at all levels, even in the central committed itself. Some leaders were taking the capitalist road within the CCP group. The implication was that the targets of the campaign need to include leaders in high status who encouraged local cadres to corrupt. At this point, the aim of this movement combined an attack on corruption and an attack on individualistic agriculture in the countryside.

This document shifted the focus of the movement away from cadres in rural localities to leaders who took the capitalist road within the Party. It was a declaration of political war against the Party bureaucracy and its top leaders. And this war was waged through a radical implementation of the principles of the mass line. There was a renewed call for the establishment of peasant associations and an injunction that specific problems were to be "judged and decided by the masses" and not to be decided from above. It also redefined all the socialist education campaign in city and countryside as “four cleans”, which are “clean politics, clean economics, clean organization, and clean ideology.”

Mao's assertion that even the central committee was tainted and polluted was a sign of future determination. It implied that the urban centers of Party power might have to be purged before the villages could be reformed. In this way, the "twenty-three articles" was ominous the Culture Revolution nine months later. The Socialist Education Movement now turned against " those people in positions of authority within the Party who take the capitalist road", and indicates the battle lines drawn for the Cultural Revolution. At the same time, the criticism of Liu Shaoqi anticipated the attacks to be made on him during the Cultural Revolution. And in this time, Mao decided that Liu Shaoqi was not a suitable successor.

Goal

The aim of this campaign was to expose the collusion between Party cadres and rich peasants and their exploitation of the majority of the rural population. The method to carry out the campaign was to set the masses in motion through the organization of poor and lower-middle peasant associations. The “four cleans” were later redefined as “clean politics, clean economics, clean organization, and clean ideology.”

Influences

The document of the socialist education movement revealed that Mao stood for a political, mass line solution, anticipated that this policy would solve both the problem of corruption and the problem of the spread of individualistic agriculture. He believed that the reassertion of the political power of the poor majority would dispose of both at once. Liu Shaoqi, however, chose to attempt a legalistic solution, which was to shatter the existing communist leadership in the villages to solve these problems. Den Xiaoping was more interested in the agricultural policies. He sought to preserve the economic gains which were achieved during the relaxation of collective farming. Mao focused more on Liu Shaoqi's faults of a political method in this period.

Although in the twenty-three articles Mao had made the definitive pronouncement on the future course of the socialist education movement, in the end, his policy was not applied. In the following months, the United States began to bomb North Vietnam, and with this threat, the Chinese communist party turned its attention to more urgent concerns

References

1 Maurice Meisner China and After, A History of the People’s Republic

2《毛泽东的九个指头和一个指头论》， 湘潭大学学报（哲学社会科学版）

3七千人大会. 国史网

4 三面红旗

5 《永嘉县包产到户之因再探析》，《浙江理工大学学报》（社会科学版）; 中共永嘉县委党史研究室，中国包产到户第一县，北京：中共党史出版社

6 杨奎松，《中华人民共和国建国史研究》，江西人民出版社2009年版。

7杨奎松， 《中苏关系史纲：1917-1991》（增订版），社会科学文献出版社2011年版。

8 Jack Gray, Rebellions and Revolutions, China from the 1800s to 2000.

9 中国共产党第八届中央委员会第十次全体会议公报