ABSTRACT
The Tenth plenum saw Mao Tse-tung's initiative for a new rectification effort in the form of the Socialist Education Movement. Mao's call for socialist education was closely linked to his other preoccupations of summer and fall 1962. By the middle of 1964 Chinese Communist Party leaders, including Mao as well as Liu Shao-ch'i, were engaged in a major reassessment of the situation and the policies required to deal with it. Apart from the conduct of socialist education itself, new moderate policies emerged in 1965 on a number of social and economic questions affected by the hard line of 1964. The need to soften economic policy was another consequence of Liu's "'left' in form but right in essence" policies. Both the moderate approach of 1965 and the launching of the Cultural Revolution in 1966 came in the context of an escalating war in Vietnam and worsening Sino-Soviet relations.
