Theme 2 from quizlet

1. What was Mao's 'overriding aim' for the Chinese economy?

- to modernise the country through urbanisation and industralisation

2. How did Mao intend to do this in place of economic planning?

- put blind faith in political willpower, supported by the mass participation of the peasantry

3. What were the phases of economic change?

Agriculture

* peasant ownership to collectivisation
* would intially be voluntary
* dramatically accelerated in 1955 and completed in 1957
* 1958 - merged collectives into larger communes

Industry

* stablised the economy
* first five year plan - until 1956, broadly successful in achieving its targets
* second five year plan - disaster, created communes, man-made famine

4. What experience had the Communists already had of land reform and management?

- in the areas they controlled before they acquired power in 1949
- in both the Jiangxi base area and later in yanan, landlords had been driven out and their land distributed but richer peasants (those who owned land but didnt rent to tenents) were not targeted because they were the most productive

5. Why was the 1950 Agrarian Land Reform carried out?

- to eradicate exploitation of peasants by the 'landlord class' as a first step towards industrialisation
- hoped it would restrain overzealous activists from taking law into their own hands
- made it clear land reform meant redistrubtion

6. What role did the army and work teams play in the land redistribution?

- silenced those who might have been hostile to the new governemnt and helping the local party officials organise work teams
- work teams calculated how much land people owned so they could be taxed accordingly
- organised meetings to decide how each villager should be labelled: 'landlord, rich peasant, middle peasant, poor peasant, labourer'

7. Who are Jung Chang and Jon Halliday?

- jung chang was a red gaurd but the persecution suffered by her parents and the disruption to her education convinced her the young had merly become victims to Mao's manipulation
- her husband, jon halliday, is a professional historian who's biography of Mao paints the regime in a very negative light

How many landlords lost there land by the end of 1951?

- 10 million

What percentage of land had changed hands in 1951?

- 40%

What are the officials number of deaths and what is the estimated figure after the attacks on landlorism?

- 700,000
- 3 million

8. What was the impact of land distribution by 1951?

\-

9. Why did the Communist Party want the poor and middle-ranking peasants to take ownership of the process?

- so they could underline its claims that this was a peasant led revolution against the landlord class
- by making sure it was the villagers themeselves, the communists were implicating them to such an extent that there was no turning back

10. Why did collectivisation begin rapidly?

- the party never intended the peasantry to become established as a new class of landowners

11. Why did Mao want to take a 'measured approach' initially?

- hoped it would avoid a repeat of the disastrous situation experienced by Stalin in Russia. Stalin had recieved so much resistence to collectivisation that he ended up eliminating the kulaks as a class as the peasants had already been in possession of there own land

12. What were the MATs and how were they used?

- 10 or so families were encourgaged to unite to form mutual aid teams (MATs), in which they could pool their labour, animals and equipment while retaining their rights of private ownership

13. What were peasants associations and how were they used?

- organisations to help peasants to defend their rights and campaign for lower rents in the 1920s and revived in the 50s by the work teams in order to get the villagers used to the idea of collective activity
- managed the MATs

14. What changes were made in 1952?

- successful MATs were encouraged to comine and form agricultural producers co-operatives (APCs) of 40-50 families
- land could also be pooled and could therefore be consolidated into larger units and cultivated more effciently than in traditional strips
- families with larger holdings were still allowed to keep back some land for personal use while renting the rest to the APC
- profits were shared out at the end of the year accoridng to resources contributed and food produced

What percentage of rural households were in APCs by March 1955?

- 14%

15. Why was there a slowdown of collectivisation in 1953?

- APCs had gone into debt because they had to borrow money to buy equipment due to the fact local officials had been rushed into creating them before theyd been properly planned

16. What impact did the stabilisation of 1954 have on the peasants and how did Mao react?

- peasants started buying and selling their land and food
- infuriated mao, so he renewed the pressure on peasants to join APCs
- however, this led to rural protest as grain was being requisitioned and people often slaughtered there animals instead of giving them over
- mao did a u-turn halting APCs development for the next 18 months

17. What evidence is there of Mao moving to a 'full-scale drive' of collectivisation between 1955 and 1956?

- from 17 million households in APCs in july 1955, the figure grew to 75 million by january 1956, until by the end of the year, only 3% of peasants were still farming as individuals

18. Why had Mao changed his mind regarding the pace of collectivisation?

- it was in response to the demands of the peasantry, an illusion that Mao helped foster by publishing 'socialist upsure in the countryside'
- the real reason was more likely ro be mao's fear that supplies to the cities would continue to be unreliable as long as peasants owned the land

19. What were HPCs?

- the new APCs were classified as 'higher' HPCs and consisted of 200-300 households
- peasant families no longer owned the land or the equipment and the profits at the end of the year were shared out accordingly to work points earned by the labour contributed
- those who produced the most recieved the same rewards for their labour

20. Why was collectivisation an ideological success for Mao?

- the state now owned the means of production of food, the land, on which 90% of the population worked
- this was chinese marxism

21. How might collectivisation have impacted the relationship between the CCP and the peasants?

- the peasantry had now become servants of the party, rather than loyal allies whose support theyd earned
- the speed with which the big surge towards higher-level APCs were achieved made Mao dangerously over-confident - he no longer worried about practical obstacles that stood in the way of change

22. Why was collectivisation a failure economically until 1958?

- food production had increased by 3.8% per annum, but this was still insufficent to sustain the growing industrial workforce, which was growing even faster
- the amount of cultivated land per head of popluation was so low
- yields per hectare were quite igh but labour productivity was low and it would have been hard for the peasants to produce a surplus, whether collectivised or not
- lack of state investment in agriculture

23. Why did the idea of larger communes appeal to Mao?

- they ought to enable the pooling of even larger resources of equipment and labour
- higher food yields and more peasants being freed up to work on construction schemes

24. Why did Mao believe that collectivisation had been a success by 1958?

- because of the high initiatives that impressed Mao, who had embarked on a fact-finding tour of the countryside in the spring of 1958

25. What ideological considerations did Mao place on creating Communes?

- determination to prevent the revolution losing impetus
- didn't want Revolution to become becalmed by the bureaucrats who prefer to keep the status quo

26. What was meant by the term 'Walking on two legs'?

- developing industry and agriculture at the same time

27. How was Mao going to achieve his rapid growth in steel and grain production (decentralisation)?

- it was the task of farmers to produce the grain in order to feed the workers who would make steel
- decentralised economy planning, so that enthusiastic local officials could push changes forward

28. Why was the name 'People's Commune' chosen?

- wanted to recreate the spirit of the Paris commune of 1871 in which a left-wing workers government that ran the city for several months, in defiance of the government after the Franco-Prussian war

29. What evidence is there that Mao succeeded in establishing the Communes system?

- over the next two years, 750,000 collectives were merged into some 26,000 communes, which contained about 120 million households

30. What would a typical commune have?

- communal canteens and communal dormitories
- tractor station to provide tractors for brigades to provide tractors for brigades that could not afford them to carry out repairs

31. How did the communes begin to replace the local government?

- it was supposed to become the unit of local government and take over responsibility for providing local services e.g education, public health, policing and militia

32. How did the Commune system impact women and the family?

- it provided childcare and canteen facilities which freed up women for other work
- people were encouraged to abandon 'bourgeois emotional attachments' in favour of a regimented lifestyle where they worked long hours for communal good

33. Why might it be argued that some of the most advanced communes had moved closer to Communism?

- the most advanced communes claimed to offer people the ten guarantees of meals, clothes, housing, schooling, medical attention, burial, haircuts, theatrical entertainment, money for heating in winter and money for weddings
- talk of moving away from monetary economy

34. What did peasants have to do when being 'absorbed' into a commune?

- they had to surrender all of their private property - land, agricultural equipment, livestock and household possessions - without any compensation

35. Why was motivation reduced?

- because rewards were the same regardless

36. What measures were introduced to keep peasants working?

- compelled to work hard by team leaders, who competed to out-produce neighbouring communes

37. What evidence is there that the communes also served a military purpose?

- everyone between ages 15 and 50 had to be militia members and periodically train with weapons; marching together to work was common practice, and peasants worked in the fields with antiquated rifles stacked alongside them, to invoke the spirit of fighting for a better future

38. Who was Lysenko?

- a Ukrainian agricultural scientist, whose theories Stalin had relied upon in the aftermath of the Russian famine of the early 30s

39. What ideas did Mao propagate in his eight-point programme?

- some were common sense: development of new farm tools, use of new breeds and seeds, improved field management, increased irrigation
- some potentially dangerous: close planting, deep ploughing, increased fertilisation and pest control

40. What was the 'pest control' and what impact did it have?

- focused on killing birds to prevent them eating seeds - peasants banged pots and pans until they fell from the sky
- upset the ecological balance, insects (particularly locus) and small creatures birds normally ate multiplied uncontrollably and destroyed the plants; so too did rats and vermin which destroyed the grain stocks

41. What did Mao announce at the December 1958 meeting?

- that the commune system was now successfully in place and the whole countryside had been collectivised into some 26,000 communes
- the harvest figure for that year had been a record 430 million tonnes of grain - revised down to 375 million

42. What was the reality of Mao's announcements?

- mao was not as confident
- real figure for grain had been around 200 million tonnes
- he announced he was stepping down as chairman of the PRC, while remaining chairman of the party

43. Why might Mao have stood down as the Chairman of the PRC and who took the position?

- claimed to dislike the formal duties that came with being head of state but in reality it may have been easier to shift the blame on to others if the Great Leap Forward ran into trouble
- handed them over to Liu Shaoqi

44. Who was Peng Dehuai and what role did he play?

- a long march veteran who led the PLA in the Korean War and became defense minister in 1954
- he openly challenged the wisdom of the plan, writing a letter to Mao outlining his concerns
- he was sacked and replaced with Lin Biao

45. How did others respond to Peng's concerns?

- Marshal Zhou De spoke up for Peng
- Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xioping developed convent illness that prevented them attending the politburo meeting
- Zhou Enlai was so ashamed of his failure to stand by Peng that he drank himself into a stupor in his room

46. What is the approximate figure for the death toll of the Great Famine?

- between 30-50 million deaths

47. What happened during the famine in Tibet?

- 25% of its population of 4 million were killed
- the government deliberately made the situation worse by forcing them to switch from growing barley to other crops not suited to local conditions and by making nomadic yak herdsmen stay in villages, rather than roaming the grasslands as they had always done
- an attempt to destroy Tibet's culture

48. What other horrific examples are there of the impact of the famine?

- from Shandong in the east, 7.5 million dead
- through Anhui, 8 million dead
- Henan, Hubei, Gansu and Sichuan, 9 million dead
- people eat trees bark and plants
- husbands sold wives and parents sold children in return for food
- prostitution and banditry reappeared
- reports of cannibalism

49. What were the grain production figures for 1958 and 1961?

- 1958, 200.0 million tonnes
- 1961, 147.5 million tonnes

50. What were the meat production figures for 1958 and 1961?

- 1958, 4.3 million tonnes
- 1961, 1.2 million tonnes

51. What evidence is there to suggest the famine was caused by the ambition of Mao?

- peasants could not be producing food, supervising backyard furnicases and working on water conservancy projects miles from their village all at the same time, especially when the facilities of the communes were often not even in place
- it was not possible to allocate manpower efficiently enough to increase food production levels
- expecting substance farmers to be able to produce huge surpluses
- Mao had blind faith the communes would work because private ownership had ended

52. What evidence is there to suggest the lack of experts led to the famine?

- Mao eagerly accepted Lysenko's claims that his 'super crops' could produce yields 16x greater than those produced by conventional methods
- uncritically accepting of lysenkoism

53. What evidence is there to suggest that fear among the cadres and others was the main reason for the famine?

- the climate of fear created by the anti-rightists campaign
- cadres didn dare to speak out when things went wrong and passed on to their superiors excessively optisimistic reports on how much their communes were producing
- anyone who spoke out was sent to the laogai

54. What evidence is there to suggest that motivation was the cause of the famine?

- villagers were dispirited by losing what they regarded as their own property and knew that the same amount of food would or wouldn't be available in the communal canteen irrespective of how hard they worked

55. What evidence is there to suggest that it was Mao's perspective of China's priorities that led to the famine?

- industrialising china rapidly and convincing the rest of the world that Chinese communism was a success was far more important than the lives of millions of 'expendable' peasants
- was prepared to let his country suffer to become a world power
- they continued to export food during the famine - people were urged to consume less so that they could maintain exports and therefore show the success of the Great Leap Forward

56. Why do some historians focus on the lack of action at Lushan as being a critical moment in the famine?

- damage could have been limited if the party leadership had responded positively to Peng's comments at the Lushan conference
- by demoting Peng, they were officially denying the existence of the famine
- at Lushan, grain procurement targets were increased and exports to other countries continued

57. What evidence is there to suggest the weather was significant in the famine?

- in 1960, the worst drought in more than a century was followed by severe floodl\=ing across much of central china
- it was suggested it may have caused the famine
- in 1959, almost half the cultivated area was affected by heavy floods and serious drought
- in 1960, drought, typhoons, floods and pests struck 55 million hectares, more than half the cultivated land , and seriously affected another 2-24 million hectares some bore no crop at all
- the yellow river practically dried up for a month

58. What was the emergency directive of November 1960?

- allowed villagers to keep their private plots of land and to engage in side occupations as well as farming and restored local markets

59. Who was Li Fuchun and what impact did he have?

- initial architect of the strategic retreat (1960) and economic planner
- managed to present grim facts to Mao without incurring his wrath

60. What happened after Liu and Deng took responsibility for food levels?

- many communes broke up into smaller collectives of about 30 households, where villagers were rewarded according to their individual output while some reverted to private farming
- 25 million city dwellers were forced to move to the countryside
- 1961, massive grain imports were arranged from candid, Australia and the USA
- by 1965, the yield of Chinese grain harvest was back up to its level of 1957

61. Why did Mao dislike Liu and Deng's actions?

- he was unhappy that people had rejected the communes and uneasy that the reversion to capitalist practices was undermining the values on which his reputation was based

62. Why was the First Five Year Plan not immediately introduced?

- more immediate problems had to be solved
- the communists had to consolidate their power by mopping up the remenets of the nationalist opposition and conquering the outlying provinces
- they had to reduce the annual inflation rate from the staggering 1,000% they inherited
- it was also necessary to reward the peasants by arranging land distribution
- high level of military spending and disruption caused by participation in the Korean War from October 1950

63. Why did China focus on a Soviet based system?

- Russia was an inspiration to the Chinese communists
- wanted to align themselves with Russia rather than the west
- the centrally planned soviet system enabled them to defeat nazi Germany
- best and only system to copy

64. Why was Mao's job of creating a centralised economy easier than Russia in 1917?

- there had been some degree of state involvement in Chinese industry since imperial times and this had accelerated rated under Chiang Kai-shek, who'd established a national resources committee (NRC) to control industrial investment and encourage migration from the countryside to the cities

65. What did the Sino-Soviet Treaty of 1950 provide the PRC with?

- soviet advisers who came to china to teach them how to run a communist state
- over 10,000 civilian technicians brought their specialist knowledge of civil engineering, industry, government organisation and higher education

66. What evidence is there to suggest this was not a 'gift' from the USSR?

- the soviets high salaries were paid by the Chinese and they were housed at chinas expense in closely guarded compounds outside the main cities
- Russia lent $300 million which they expected to be paid back with interest

67. What evidence is there of Soviet influence?

- in the buildings, new office blocks and construction projects built in 'soviet brutalist' style
- in schools: Russian was the only foreign language taught, lunch hour was pushed back to three in the afternoon to to copy the Russian practice of having six consecutive morning classes
- TASS, the official soviet news agency became the main source from which the Chinese newspapers gathered their information
- Lysenkoism in the countryside

68. What were the main features of the First Five Year Plan?

- targets would be set from above by economic planners, rather than in response to consumer demand, and heavy industry (steel, transport, chemicals etc) would come first
- several spectacular public works project were added
- channel resources into heavy industries
- by forcing collective farms to sell food at low prices to the government it was hoped to keep industrial; workers wages low because cheap food would be readily available in the urban areas

69. When were businesses nationalised within the PRC?

- early 1956

70. From Source 4, pick out 3 of the most prominent successes

- coal (mil tonnes): 1952 (actual), 68.50; 1957 (target), 130; 1957 (actual), 130
- steel (mil tonnes): 1952 (actual), 1.35; 1957 (target), 4.12; 1957 (actual), 5.35
- electrical power (mil kWh): 1952 (actual), 7.26; 1957 (target), 15.90; 1957 (actual), 19.34

71. What evidence is there that the plan worked?

- according to official statistics, most sectors of the economy succeeded in reaching their targets
- the annual growth rate was about 9% per year during the plan - compared favourably to Russia in the 1930s
- urban living standards improved in terms of wages and job security
- in the cities, population grew from 57 million in 1949 to 100 million by 1957

72. Why might historians be cautious about the data?

- figures are unlikely to be completely reliable because officials had an obvious vested interest in exaggerating levels of production in order to please their superiors in the same way
- emphasis on reaching targets also inevitability put the emphasis on quantity over quality

73. What were the negative aspects of the plan (as well as in the countryside)?

- soviet guidance was invaluable, it exposed shortcomings in the skill and literacy levels of Chinese workers that would only improve when the education system was updated
- many of the economic planners who worked for the nationalists had remained in place after 1949 but by the time the plan beaten, the 'anti' campaigns of 1951-52 had driven many of them out the standard bureaucratic administration suffered as a result
- there was competition for resources between private and state-owned enterprise (SOEs), which was not resolved until their ending of private ownership in 1956
- peasants in communes were going short of food

74. What was the 'Great Leap' and why was Mao pursuing it?

- new ambitious targets for industrial growth were pursed simultaneously as that for agriculture
- he was impatient at the relatively slow economic progress so far
- he wanted china to become a modern industrial power without bothering to go through the normal phases of development that other leading powers had experienced

75. Why might it be argued that the Second FYP was not a 'plan'?

- the responsibility for economic planning had been moved from the state to the party
- didnt involve planners announcing carefully thought out targets that specific industrial sectors were supposed to reach by a certain time
- the organisation and detail was often left to the initiative of local cadres and direction from above came in the form slogans

76. What was the economic thinking for launching the GLF?

- industrialisation depended on agriculture becoming more productive and efficient in orders to feed the industrial workforce - freeing up peasants to move to the city and become urban workers
- the agriculture progress had been sufficiently rapid

77. What evidence is there to suggest Mao was not fully supported in launching the GLF?

* there was a split between the 'carrot' approach - rewarding high food producers with material incentives and the stick - punitive measures against low producers and requisitioning food


* wasn't purely the result of economic logic as the arguments to the best way foreword had not yet been won
* 70% of his party were peasants so he couldn't choose the stick approach

78. What personal circumstances may have led to the GLF?

- mao's confidence was at a new high due to the success of collectivisation and burst of activity on water conservancy schemes during winter 1957-8 and his provincial tour of early 1958 had been enthusiastically received

79. What political circumstances may have led to the GLF?

- mao had just returned from Moscow determined to show the Soviet Union that he could act independently to them
- by moving from socialism to communism along the 'Chinese road', rather than Russian model, mao hoped to demonstrate his credentials as the next leader of the communist world

80. What was decentralisation and how was it intended to work for the GLF?

- gives more freedom to local party officials, cadres, to harness the energy of the masses who Mao regarded as China's greatest assets
- the plans reliance on mass peasant mobilisation fitted in with Mao's thinking and the greater degree of decentralisation, compared to the first plan, gave more scope for local initiative to thrive
- wanted peasants and workers who he believed were eager to participate in transforming the country

81. What were the backyard furnances?

- the idea was to produce as much steel as possible
- melted objects to produce steel in handmade furnaces not professional ones

82. Why were they introduced?

- mao wanted steel production to quadruple inside the next four years , to reach 20 million tones per annum - he proceeded to double this
- may 1958 target was from 6 million to 8 million tonnes then to 10.7 million in September
- targets couldn't be reached by existing conventional steel plants so mao ordered the backyard furnaces campaign
- also due to success of the water conservancy campaign of the previous winter in which 100 million peasants had been involved

83. What impact did they have?

- practically even village and town got involved
- smoke blotted out the sun
- September 1958, 14% of chinas steel came from local furnaces and by October it was 49% and at its peak, around 25% of the population abandoned their normal activities in order to take part
- unstable strain on food production
- schools closed
- peasants deployed into shock brigades in order to get in the harvest
- the steel was useless - authorities took it and buried it
- negative ecological consequences as it led to destruction of vast swathes of woodland to supply fuel for the furnaces - faster soil erosion and worse flooding

84. What were SOEs and what impact did they have on the workforce and the economy?

- those enterprises that had remained initially private hands in 1949, nationalised in early 1956 and were know now as state-owned enterprises
- prices, output targets and wages were set by the state - no longer any bargaining for better conditions between workers and employers
- guaranteed jobs and wages 'iron rice bowl', and medical and educational benefits
- system was inefficient because it removed incentives to work harder

85. What evidence is there to suggest some of the new irrigation schemes were a disaster?

- The Three Gate Gorge Dam, designed to control the flow of the vellow River
and reduce the damage caused by silt deposits, was perhaps the most ambitious, but within a year it was being rebult.
- By 1961, twice as much mud was being deposited downstream, and foreign visitors
were banned from going near the dam.
- the cost in terms of lives lost and labour taken away from farming was colossal.
- In many areas, the disruption of existing drainage patterns caused by building new irrigation systems led to an increase in salinisation, which reduced the productivity of the land.

86. What methods were used to carry them out and how did Mao measure success?

- expert advice (which the Soviet specialists offered) was welcomed when it speeded things up, but technical issues that threatened to cause delays were normally brushed aside.
- Mao's response when doubts arose about the design of the Three Gate Gorge Dam was to write an editorial in the People's Daily newspaper,
entitled What is this trash?'
- His main criterion for judging the success of a project was the cubic tonnage of soil that had been shifted, which helped to stimulate competition between provinces, but
was hardly a true reflection of a project's worth.

87. Using Source 10, find 3 statistics that reveal the Second FYP had failed

- coal (millions of tonnes): 230 in 1958, 180 in 1962
- cotton (billion metres): 5.7 in 1958, 3 in 1962
- steel (million tonnes): 8 in 1958, 8 in 1962
- by 1962, china was only produced half the amount of heavy industrial goods and three quarters the amount of light industrial goods that were being made, at the start of the plan

88. What was the SINO-SOVIET SPLIT and why was it significant for the Chinese economy?

- finally came to a head in 1961. when in a stage-managed but dramatic gesture, Zhou Enlai led his delegation out of a conference in Moscow.
- He was expressing China's support for the Albanians, who Khrushchev was abusing for failing to follow Moscows orders, and who China backed for exactly the same reason.
- it meant Khrushchev withdrew all the soviet experts who had helped with the first five year plan

89. What impact did the lack of planning have?

- heart of the plan's failure
- mao relied on intuition and assumed that the massive deployment of manpower was an adequate substitute for informed planning and direction from above

90. What were the 'eye-catching successes'?

- the construction of Tiananmen Square in Beijing
- 1964, the development of nuclear weapons, the main picture was of haphazard development in which the basics were often neglected

91. What economic impact did the Lushan Conference have?

- it meant the Great Leap Forward would continue apace Before Lushan,
there had been signs that Mao was considering moderating aspects of the Second Five-Year Plan
- for example, by reining in the development of the backyard furnaces - but afterwards, China embarked on what is called the second leap' and the agricultural policies, in particular, pushed on at full speed.

92. What political impact did the Lushan Conference have?

- Whereas beforehand it was assumed that any leading Party comrade could express their views freely at a Party conference, it had now become clear that the only person who could criticise Mao was Mao himself.
- Party leaders were much more guarded about their views in future, and Mao was able to become even more dictatorial in his approach.

93. ANALYSIS - Why might historians point to the Lushan Conference as being a huge opportunity missed by the CCP (Consider the date... Could things have been averted?

- it could have (possibly) prevented the famine and many lives could have been saved

94. What did Liu and Deng do once they were put in charge in 1962?

- allowed the communes to be broken up
- closed down thousands of inefficient projects that had been set up in the GLF and announced a more realistic coal and steel target
- relaxation of the persecution of scientists and intellectuals

95. What were the features of the Third Five Year Plan?

- decisive shit back to centralised control, with production targets being
reviewed annually and made more realistic.
- Experts were back in favour and financial incentives were restored to encourage workers to greater efforts.

96. What were the successes of the Third FYP?

- The results were positive across all sectors of the economy: agricultural production recovered to 1957 leveis, oil and natural gas production rocketed, and manufactured goods were produced in much greater quantities.
- Chinese scientists succeeded in exploding China's own atom ever, having pieced together the documents that the Soviet advisers had hurriedly shredded