The development of the Mao cult of personality, including the formation of Mao Zedong Thought at the Seventh Congress in 1945, the role of Lin Biao and the Little Red Book, the cult's peak in the Cultural Revolution, and the eventual repudiation in the 1981 Resolution

What this dot point is asking

NESA expects you to explain the development and function of the Mao cult. Strong answers integrate the Yan'an doctrinal foundation, the 1945 enshrining of Mao Zedong Thought, the role of Lin Biao and the Little Red Book, the Cultural Revolution apotheosis, the artefacts and rituals, and the post-1976 repudiation.

The answer

Yan'an and the Seventh Congress

The Yan'an period saw the construction of the cult. The Rectification Campaign of 1942 to 1944 disciplined the CCP into ideological uniformity. The Seventh CCP Congress (23 April to 11 June 1945) elected Mao Chairman of the Central Committee, the Politburo, and the Secretariat. Liu Shaoqi's report "On the Party" (Lun dang) constructed the doctrine of Mao Zedong Thought (Mao Zedong sixiang) as "Sinified Marxism-Leninism" and wrote it into the Party Constitution. Liu's role was conspicuous; he later paid for it in 1966 to 1969.

Edgar Snow's Red Star Over China (1937), based on Snow's 1936 interviews at Bao'an, gave Mao a Western reputation as a peasant intellectual revolutionary. The 1949 publication of the Selected Works of Mao Zedong, prepared by Hu Qiaomu, codified the canon.

Suspension and revival, 1956 to 1962

The Eighth CCP Congress (15 to 27 September 1956) removed Mao Zedong Thought from the Party Constitution. The change reflected the post-Khrushchev anxiety about cults of personality. Liu Shaoqi delivered the political report, with Deng Xiaoping presenting the new Constitution. Mao did not visibly object but resented the move.

The Anti-Rightist Campaign of 1957 and the Great Leap Forward of 1958 restored Mao's ascendancy. The Lushan Conference of 1959 and the dismissal of Peng Dehuai consolidated it. After the Great Leap collapse, Mao retreated to the "second line", but the cult was already revived by Lin Biao in the PLA.

Lin Biao and the Little Red Book

Lin Biao replaced Peng Dehuai as Defence Minister in September 1959. Lin used the cult of Mao as the instrument of PLA loyalty, in part to consolidate his own power against the old marshals. Lin's slogan "the four firsts" prioritised man over weapons, political work over other work, ideological work over routine, and "living ideas" over book ideas.

The PLA Daily compiled Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong (Mao Zhuxi yulu) for army study from 1961, with a single-volume edition published in May 1964 with Lin Biao's foreword. The Little Red Book (the title reflects its small vinyl-covered red format) ran to over 1 billion copies by 1976 in 36 languages. The recitation of quotations became a ritual; the book was held up at rallies and used to "destroy" opponents in struggle sessions.

The 1965 reissue of the Selected Works and the 1966 "Quotations" with red plastic covers were the textual basis of the Cultural Revolution.

Cultural Revolution peak

The Cultural Revolution, from May 1966, produced the apotheosis. Features included:

• Eight Tiananmen rallies, 18 August to 26 November 1966, reviewing about 12 million Red Guards. Mao in his green PLA uniform on the rostrum, waving, became the iconic image.
• Mao badges (xiang zhang). About 4.8 billion produced between 1966 and 1971. Workers spent more on badges than on stamps. Mao ordered the production halted in 1969 to recover the aluminium.
• Portraits and statues. A Mao portrait was required in every home. About 2,000 large statues were erected, mostly between 1967 and 1969.
• The "three loyalties and four boundlesses" (san zhongyu, si wuxian): loyalty to Mao, to Mao Zedong Thought, to Mao's proletarian revolutionary line, and boundless love, faith, admiration, and worship of Mao.
• Loyalty dances (zhongziwu) and morning and evening reports to Mao's portrait (zaoqingshi, wanhuibao).
• Songs. "The East is Red" (Dongfang Hong) replaced "March of the Volunteers" as a de facto anthem for most of the Cultural Revolution.
• Schools. Mao Quotations and Selected Works displaced curricular content.

The cult was a substitute for institutional politics. With the Party Congress not meeting between 1956 and 1969, with the State Council and NPC sidelined, Mao's word transmitted by the Central Cultural Revolution Group was the decisive lever.

Mao's own ambivalence

Mao distinguished the "correct cult" of true leaders from the "incorrect cult" of Stalinist exaggeration. In his October 1970 conversation with Edgar Snow, Mao called himself "a monk holding an umbrella, alone with neither hair nor sky" (a Chinese pun: wu fa wu tian, "no law no heaven", but also "no hair no sky"). The remark, characteristically obscure, may have been a self-deprecating reflection.

Mao limited some manifestations: he ordered the Mao badges halted in 1969 (the aluminium was needed for aircraft); he criticised loyalty dances and morning reports as wasteful in 1969 and 1970; he reduced the displays after Lin Biao's fall in 1971.

The 1981 Resolution

After the arrest of the Gang of Four (October 1976) and Deng Xiaoping's accession at the Third Plenum (December 1978), the CCP confronted the cult problem. Deng's solution was to repudiate the late-Mao errors while preserving the Party's foundational figure. The Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of Our Party Since the Founding of the People's Republic (Guanyu jianguo yilai dang de ruogan lishi wenti de jueyi), adopted at the Sixth Plenum of the Eleventh CC on 27 June 1981 after two years of drafting under Hu Qiaomu, found:

• Mao's contributions to the revolution outweighed his errors; on Deng's gloss, 70 percent correct and 30 percent in error.
• The Cultural Revolution was "an erroneous initiative by a leader, exploited by counter-revolutionary cliques, that brought serious disaster and turmoil".
• Mao Zedong Thought was retained as a guiding ideology, distinguished from the personal errors of Mao Zedong.

The portrait remained at Tiananmen; the body remained in the Memorial Hall at the south end of the square. The cult became a state ritual of legitimation, not a daily mobilising force.

Numbers and artefacts

• Little Red Book: about 1 billion copies in 36 languages by 1976.
• Mao badges: about 4.8 billion produced.
• Mao portraits and statues in every danwei work unit.
• Eight rallies, 18 Aug, 31 Aug, 15 Sep, 1 Oct, 18 Oct, 3 Nov, 11 Nov, 26 Nov 1966.
• Three Selected Works volumes; a fourth issued in 1977.

Timeline

Historiography

Daniel Leese (Mao Cult, 2011) gave the canonical study, with detailed reconstruction of artefacts, rituals, and tensions.

Lowell Dittmer (China's Continuous Revolution, 1987) treated the cult as functional substitute for institutional politics.

Stuart Schram (The Thought of Mao Tse-tung, 1989) gave the intellectual history of Mao Zedong Thought as a corpus.

Geremie Barme (Shades of Mao, 1996) traced the cult into its post-Mao commercialisation.

Frederick Teiwes and Warren Sun (China's Road to Disaster, 1999; The End of the Maoist Era, 2007) emphasised the cult as Mao's instrument against institutional rivals.

Common exam traps

Treating the cult as spontaneous. Lin Biao and the propaganda apparatus constructed it.

Forgetting Liu Shaoqi's 1945 role. Liu's "On the Party" report wrote Mao Zedong Thought into the Constitution.

Treating the 1981 Resolution as a denunciation. It was a controlled rehabilitation.

In one sentence

The Mao Zedong cult of personality was constructed at Yan'an through the Rectification Campaign of 1942 to 1944, enshrined as Mao Zedong Thought in the Party Constitution at the Seventh Congress of 1945 by Liu Shaoqi's report, demoted at the Eighth Congress of 1956 in the de-Stalinisation reaction, revived from 1962 in the PLA by Defence Minister Lin Biao who compiled the Little Red Book of 1964 (over 1 billion copies), reached apotheosis at the eight Tiananmen rallies of August to November 1966 reviewing 12 million Red Guards, sustained through about 4.8 billion Mao badges and 2,000 statues, and was rationalised in the Sixth Plenum Resolution of 27 June 1981 as Mao "70 percent correct, 30 percent in error".