The Cultural Revolution did not fully end until Mao's death in 1976, but by the early 1970s it had begun to lose some of its momentum. In part this was because serious concerns about it had crept in among some Chinese. These were not openly stated since open criticism of Mao was still not possible, but behind the scenes doubts were growing. These were stimulated by the strange fate that befell Lin Biao. In 1971, Lin was killed when his plane crashed in Mongolia while he was trying to flee from China, having been implicated in a plot to assassinate Mao. Since Lin had been Chief of the PLA, the Minister of Defence and Mao's nominated successor, his disgrace created doubts. A village elder remarked: 'When Liu Shaoqi was dragged down we'd been very supportive. Mao Zedong was the red sun and what not. But the Lin Biao affair made us see that the leaders up there could say today that something is round; tomorrow, that it's flat. We lost faith in the system.'
The laogai
In order to enforce conformity and obedience in China, Mao created a vast network of labour camps in which those who opposed him or were suspected of opposing him were imprisoned. As the title laogai suggested, the official theory was that the camps were not places of punishment but re-education, where dissidents could be retrained and enlightened. The camps were also economically important since they provided a constant supply of slave labour. Many of the mass workforce used in the Great Leap Forward on hazardous projects, such as clearing malarial swamps and mining in dangerous areas, were camp prisoners.
World History
