Cultural Revolution in China

The Cultural Revolution was a very important event in Chinese history. The Cultural Revolution started on October 1st, 1949. It started when Mao Zedong declared China to be formally known as the People's Republic of China or PRC. This announcement ended the civil war between the Chinese Communist Party and the Nationalist Party.

The Chinese Communist Party and the Nationalist party had been at war on and off since the 1920’s.

The Chinese Communist Party was founded in 1921 in Shanghai. The Chinese Communist Party was originally founded as a study group working with the Nationalist Party. Chinese Communists worked with the Nationalist Party in 1926 to 1927 to get rid of the “warlords” that worked against the government. This event continued to occur until the “White Terror” started. The White Terror was an event when the Nationalists turned on the Communists and killed them, releasing them from the party. After Japan had invaded a part of China named Manchuria in 1931, The Government of the Republic of China had three problems:

The Japanese attacking their country again, Communists starting a new movement, and all of the warlords in the country. The Communists were not happy at the time with their leader at the time. His name was Chiang Kai-Shek.

At the time he was only paying attention to inside threats, and not the Japanese assaults that were going on. The communist’s responses to this were quite extreme. A group of generals abducted Chiang and forced him to cooperate with the Communists. This then forced the Communists to fight against the Nationalists. During WW2, the Communists grew more popular. U.S officials in China started to report disappearances of Nationalist-controlled areas.

This drop of Nationalist-controlled areas made the Republic of China Government more prone to a Communist attack. The Communist Party was praised for their efforts fighting against Japanese invaders. After all the fighting between Japan and China, the Japanese surrendered. This then started the resurrection of civil war in China. The Nationalist Government led by Chiang Kai-Shek continued to get help from the U.S. The reason they continued to get help from the U.S was to prevent the Communists from taking over China.