Socialist Education Movement
Launched to combat corruption and "capitalist tendencies" in rural areas, the Four Cleanups campaign sent urban cadres to villages and became a precursor to the Cultural Revolution's mass-mobilisation tactics.
Background and Launch
By the early 1960s, post-famine recovery had allowed some restoration of private plots and rural markets that Mao viewed as incipient "capitalism." The Socialist Education Movement (also called the Four Cleanups — 四清 — for its focus on cleaning up politics, economics, organisation, and ideology) was launched in 1963 to reassert collective discipline and root out corruption in rural cadres. Urban work teams were sent to villages across China.
Escalation and Factional Conflict
The movement became a site of conflict between Mao and Liu Shaoqi, who oversaw its implementation. Liu's "23 Articles" guidance (1965) targeted corrupt local cadres, while Mao's preferred approach focused on a broader attack on "capitalist roaders" at all levels. This factional dispute over the movement's direction was a direct precursor to the Cultural Revolution: Mao cited Liu's approach as evidence that "revisionists" had infiltrated the Party leadership itself.
Legacy
The Socialist Education Movement accelerated the political climate of suspicion and denunciation that defined the Cultural Revolution. The practice of sending urban teams to villages, holding struggle sessions against local leaders, and mobilising poor peasants against "class enemies" all became templates for Cultural Revolution mass campaigns. It also reinforced Mao's belief that the Party organisation itself — not just external class enemies — was the problem to be overcome.