mao's china - theme 2

mao’s aims for agriculture?

-needed to increase food supplies to the cities to feed supplies to the cities to feed the workers in his new factories - knew how unpopular the comm

-he needed an agricultural policy that would both increase suppeis and enhance the popularity of communism in the countryside

attaacls on landlordism

-communist viewed china’s landowners as feudal class enemies

-work teams of party cadres were sent to villages be denounced for exploiting their tenants and forced to give up their land

-The communists whipped up anger against them in some cases releasing years of pent0up petty jealously and long-festering resentments. sentenced to death.

the redistribution of land

-introduced in 1950, the agrarian reform law stated that a ‘system of peasant land ownership shall be introduced’

-this country-wide land reform removed legal protection from landlords leaving them powerless to keep hold of their land

-violence encouraged by the work teams

-by the summer of 1952, 43% of the land had been redistributed to 60% of the population

-rural production boomed betwee 1950 and 1952 total agricultural production increasedd at the rate of 15% per annum

moves towards agricultural co-operation

-in 1951, the party introduced Mutual Aid Teams (MATs). These teams organised pesants into teams of 10 or feweer households. They shsared rresources like tools, fertilises and animals and pooled their of the beneffit of the whole community.

Agricultual Producers’ Co-operatives(APC’s)

-30 to 50 households

-local parties reorganised landholdings into larger units which could be farmed more efficiently and profitably

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