Yet the war also provided an opportunity for successful mobilization of society at a level that had not previously seemed possible in China. From this point on, mass mobilization would become the norm. The endless campaigns in Maoist China, from the public humiliation and killing of landlords in the land-reform campaign of the 1950s to the ritual public torture of teachers and doctors in the Cultural Revolution, had their roots in practices forged in wartime, turning the indifferent and unsure in society into true believers.
