People's Republic of China Formed / 30 September Movement assassinated Indonesian army generals - October 1

Mao Zedong proclaimed the formation of the People's Republic of China on this day in 1949. / On this day in 1965, a group of Indonesian National Armed Forces members calling themselves the 30 September Movement assassinated six high-ranking Indonesian army generals.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello everyone, it's Eves checking in here to let you
know that you're going to be hearing two different events
in history in this episode, one from me and one
from Tracy V. Wilson. They're both good, if I do
say so myself. One with the show, Welcome to this
day in History Class from how Stuff Works dot Com
and from the desk of Stuff You Missed in History Class.
It's the show where we explore the past one day

(00:21):
at a time with a quick look at what happened
today in history. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Tracy V. Wilson and it's October one. On this day.
In nineteen nine, Mao Zadong established the People's Republic of China.
Mao Zadong was born in Hunan Province on December eight,

(00:42):
and at that point China was still under imperial rule.
The emperor abdicated in nineteen twelve following a revolution when
Mao was eighteen. He trained as a teacher for a
time before working at a university library in Beijing, and
he became interested in Marxism and then in one he
became a founder member of the Chinese Communist Party or

(01:03):
the CCP. Between nineteen and nineteen forty nine, the CCP
was sometimes allied with, but sometimes at war with another party,
the Koming Tang Nationalist Party or KMT. The CCP and
the KMT united to drive war lords out from northern
China and to fight Japan during the Second Sino Japanese War,

(01:24):
and that ran from nineteen thirty seven to nineteen forty five.
But between those two events and before and after, they
were not united. They were adversaries. After the Sino Japanese
War ended, the CCP and the KMT went to war
against each other, and the CCP one that is when
on October one of nineteen forty nine, Male founded the

(01:46):
People's Republic of China. At this point, China was very poor.
It was the mostly a grarian nation that was covering
from years and years of warfare. At first, the government's
primary goal of this newly established People's for Public of
China was just to recover from the war. There was
widespread damage to both the nation's agricultural and industrial systems.

(02:08):
They got support in this from the Soviet Union, and
they followed the Soviet Union's model on how to modernize
both industry and the economy, and the process of all
this modernization and all this recovery, China moved from a
capitalist supply and demand model to a socialist model, and
China nationalized a lot of its industries. By nineteen fifty six,

(02:30):
virtually all of the major industries in China were either
state owned or joint public private enterprises, and then by
ninety seven almost all of China's farms were part of
a collective. In a lot of ways, these first five
years were a success. There were good harvests, there were
a lot of modernizations. People got better farm equipment, that

(02:52):
sort of thing. But at the same time, all of
these modernizations really strained the Chinese economy. There's good harvest
were paired with a population boom, so while the harvests
were bigger, there were also more people to feed. All
the improvements propelled the nation forward faster than the agriculture
and the infrastructure could keep up. The government had achieved

(03:14):
its goals, but the people of China a lot of
times felt like they were not better off than before,
and this led to the first of many attempts at
wide scale reforms that Chairman Mau implemented while he was
ruling China. These were often efforts to completely change the
People's Republic of China and the way its government worked.

(03:36):
The Chinese government under Mao Zadog built new hospitals and
schools and funded new scientific and medical research, and the
life expectancy in China increased from thirty five years in
nineteen nine to sixty five years in nineteen eighty. But
so so many of the attempted reforms did a lot
more harm than good. Chairman Mau's rule over the People's

(03:57):
Republic of China was marked by extensive campaigns modernization and improvement,
but also with massacres and famines and purges and huge
social unrest and the widespread destruction of Chinese works of art, architecture,
and culture. In nineteen seventy one, there was an attempted
coup and an attempt on mal Zadong's life. He died

(04:19):
on September nine of nineteen seventies six. You can learn
more about China under Chairman Mao in the four part
series from Stuff You miss in History class, including the
Great Leap Forward on September one, the Great Famine on
September eight, and the two parts on the Cultural Revolution
on September fifteenth and seventeen. All of that again is

(04:39):
in thanks to Tari Harrison for her audio work on
this podcast, and you can subscribe to This Day in
History Class on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts and where a
realty to get your podcasts. Can tune in tomorrow for
a massacre. Welcome to This Day in History Class, where

(05:03):
we bring you a new tidbit from history every day.
The day was October one, nineteen. A group of Indonesian
National Armed Forces members killed six high ranking Indonesian Army

(05:24):
generals in a failed coup in Jakarta. The army linked
the assassinations to the Indonesian Communist Party, and for the
next several weeks, the military detained and killed hundreds of
thousands of communists, alleged communists, and their sympathizers. The coup
led to Indonesia's first President, Sukardinal being put on house

(05:47):
arrest in General Suharto being appointed to the presidency. President
Sukardino had begun promoting the system of guided democracy since
he believed parliamentary democracy was ineffective in Indonesia. As he
began implementing a form of socialist populism. He attempted to
balance relations with the military, communists and religious groups. He

(06:11):
supported the Indonesian Communist Party and the army, which was
largely anti communist, though many in the military did support communism.
Land reforms, which the Communist Party pressured su Cardinal to implement,
were a major source of tension between the party, Muslim
religious leaders, and the people who controlled the land. As

(06:33):
the Indonesian Communist Party gained more influence, seeds of doubt
grew among army members who were suspicious of the party's
intentions and religious groups who were unsure of the party's views.
Sukarno became more anti imperialist and championed economic independence for Indonesia,
but the economy declined due to a lack of effective policy.

(06:57):
Western nations encouraged anti communist efforts against the Indonesian Communist Party,
Sucardino and the left. In nineteen sixty five, the Indonesian
Communist Party had three million members and was the third
largest communist party in the world, but by this time
there were rumors that senior army generals were planning a

(07:18):
coup against Ucardinal. In the early morning hours of October one,
thirtieth September movement kidnapped and murdered six of Indonesia's top
military generals. The movement members announced over the radio that
they had seized power to protect the president and prevent
a military coup. The leader of the movement, Lieutenant Colonel Untun,

(07:40):
told listeners that the president was safe, that generals had
been arrested, and that there was about to be a
new revolutionary government. But the coup was crushed quickly. The
army claimed that the Communist Party was responsible for the
coup attempt. At the time, there was not much evidence
that the Party had any involvement in the action against
the milio terry, but General Suharto, commander of the army

(08:03):
Strategic Reserve, capitalized on anti communist sentiment and quickly launched
propagandistic attacks against communists. He shut down a communist and
left his publications, while pro army publications flourished. The pro
army press circulated stories that the murdered generals had been
tortured and mutilated. Through this campaign, the army inflamed anti

(08:27):
communist feelings and convinced people that the Party was complicit
in a huge conspiracy. The military took the opportunity to
eliminate the political power of communism in Indonesia, which it
perceived as a threat. The army, police and civilian militias
imprisoned and killed communists and their supporters in Jakarta, Central

(08:49):
and East Java, and Bali, as well as parts of
other islands. The death toll has been estimated at at
least half a million people. It was later discovered that
some leaders in the Indonesian Communist Party did play a
role in planning the coup, but most people in the
party did not know about it. There are many conspiracy

(09:09):
theories around exactly who planned the thirty of September movement
and what its goal was. The Communist Party was banned
in Indonesia in nineteen sixty five and has been ever since,
along with any public discussion of the massacre. The military
dictatorship that soon took over, led by Suharto, roled Indonesia
until with Western support, Indonesia became pro western and the

(09:34):
downfall of communism in Indonesia benefited capitalist countries. I'm eve
deaf Code, and hopefully you know a little more about
history today than you did yesterday. If there are any
upcoming days in history that you'd really like me to
cover on the show, give us a shout on social
media at t d i HC podcast. We'll see you

(09:58):
here in the same place tomorrow. For more podcasts from
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