How Mao Radicalized Peasants to Kill Landlords

How Mao Radicalized Peasants to Kill Landlords
‘People’s Courts’ were held in which peasants were encouraged to accuse the landlords; sometimes, this resulted in immediate executions Public Domain
Jack Phillips
Updated:

The word for today is “classicide,” which means “extermination of a class” rather than ethnicity, race, or religion.

The term is aptly applied to an unknown, under-reported period in Chinese history that started in the late 1940s and ended in the early 1950s. Right before Chinese Communist Party leader Mao Zedong took power, a Mao associate in 1948 proclaimed the Communist Party’s intent: “30,000,000 landlords and rich peasants will have to be destroyed.”

Jack Phillips
Jack Phillips
Breaking News Reporter
Jack Phillips is a breaking news reporter who covers a range of topics, including politics, U.S., and health news. A father of two, Jack grew up in California's Central Valley. Follow him on X: https://twitter.com/jackphillips5
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