The United States and China in Power Transition - Strategic Studies ...

half a million individuals were repressed for what the
CCP later claimed was the “wrong doing of a handful
of anti-CCP conspirators.” 27 Most of the so-called
“rightists” were intellectuals who answered Mao’s call
to “help the CCP improve its governance.” Their criticism
of the CCP and suggestions for the betterment of
China apparently were too harsh for Mao. The result
was devastating. Almost a whole generation of talented
people who would otherwise have been valuable
assets for China’s modernization was laid to waste in
jail, reform camps, demoted positions, or simply in
political and psychological trauma for decades.
While the Anti-Rightist purge spun out of control
(扩大化 in the CCP’s later admission), Mao would
make the situation even more fanatic—he charged the
nation to make a “Great Leap Forward (大跃进)” in
economic development. Mao claimed that with his,
and presumably the Chinese people’s, unmatched political
will and courage, China’s development could
catch up with that of Great Britain in 15 years and the
United States in 20 to 30 years. 28 But in 3 years (1958-
60), this misguided movement became a laughing
stock, with people fabricating forged productivity reports
everywhere. China did not make any leap in its
modernization. Its economy had instead moved backward.
The misconduct of these political movements
brought 3 years of severe economic disasters to the
people nationwide. 29
In the aftermath of these disastrous political movements,
some levelheaded CCP leaders, Liu Shaoqi (刘
少奇) and Deng Xiaoping (邓小平) most notably, took
measures to bring China back on track to develop its
economy in realistic but not fanatic ways. But in a few
years, Mao could not stand their efforts, accused them
of leading China astray to capitalism, and launched
the infamous “Cultural Revolution” in 1966 to remove
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