History GCSE - Establishing Communism in China - 1950 - 1956

China before Communism

Poverty and Inequality - most were peasants growing their own food

Lack of Government - Emperors ruled China for hundreds of years but in 1911 revolution overthrew Emperor causing chaos and Warlords to divide Country

GMD (Nationalists formed 1911) and CCP (founded 1921) worked together to defeat Japanese

Some areas were controlled by foreign countries

1931 - GMD fighting full scale war with CCP

1934 - Mao (leader of CCP) marched across China and spread communist ideas along the way to peasants - Propaganda Success

1936 - Mao was established leader

How did GMD lose support of the Chinese population during the war against Japan and during WW2

Japanese took advantage of Civil war in China and invaded (1937 - 1945) - CCP and GMD worked together to fight the Japanese

Nationalists (GMD) alienated the Chinese population while the CCP used WW2 to spread the Communist message further

The GMD Scorched Earth Policy (destroying infrastructure and crops to hinder invasion of Japanese forces) failed to stop the Japanese and brough starvation and misery to millions of Chinese

Americans supplied GMD’s Chiang with weapons and supplies to fight the Japanese, instead he stockpiled them to use against Communists - backfired as he lost support of his own forces and Chinese population

Red army used guerrilla tactics effectively

Red army lived among peasant villagers and treated the peasants with respect and courtesy contrasting to Nationalists causing them to lose even more loyalty

Why did communists win the civil war? 1946 - 1949

1945 - GMD occupied most of southern China, but CCP took the north

Early 1946 - CCP and GMD signed a truce but attacks began in spring

GMD forces became overstretched and often re imposed land lords and dealt brutally with opposition

Chiang’s government was corrupt and inflation rose quickly while The CCP appeared to be honest and disciplined

Red Army grew to 1 million men due to peasant support (People’s Liberation Army formed in 1946 - Red army)

1947 - GMD forces in the cities in the north were increasingly isolated and began to desert to the CCP, giving more resources to the CCP

October and November 1948 - Final collapse of GMD - many soldiers deserted to Mao and Chiang resigned as president and fled to Formosa

PLA entered Beijing in January 1949 and The People’s Republic of China was proclaimed in October 1949

Early Purges 1950-1952 + Suppression of Counter revolutionaries

Mao’s word became law and criticism was virtually impossible

Mao eliminated any remaining support for the GMD, as many as 500,000 people were killed in cold blood

China became a one party state - all other parties were suppressed in purges from 1950 - 1952

Anyone who showed any opposition was named counter revolutionary

65,000 people were killed in Guangzhou and 28,000 in Shanghai - all organisations were closed down, including churches and all religions

Possible political Rivals were dismissed from office

Hysteria used to cause anti-western feeling and foreign businesses were taken over + attacked

Mass party-sponsored trials targeting foreigners and Christian missionaries

Artist and writers were also persecuted for failing to follow Mao’s statement that culture and literature must reflect the class interest of the working people, led by the CCP

Thought Reform

Policy to force university professors, and other intellectuals to abandon western ideas and adopt Soviet principles

Campaign from CCP to reform thinking of Chinese citizens into accepting Maoism thoughts (1951-1952)

The Laogai system

1949 - CCP invited Soviet specialists to assist them in establishing the Laogai System

Based on gulags constructed in the Soviet Union in the 1930s to hold political prisoners

Aimed to maintain Communist Party’s monopoly on power through detaining convicted criminals and anyone believed to be disruptive to political stability + aimed to overcome resistance from capitalists or landowners

Efforts were made to transform people to conform to socialist ideals through forced labour and political indoctrination

Provided free prison labour to enhance competitiveness of Chinese Exports + Enrich CCP officials

Three Antis Campaign

1951 - Aimed at removing corrupt officials and targeted corruption, waste and “bureaucratism” among officials

10% of officials were sacked and others heavily fined - CCP was concerned about the large number of GMD officials who had kept their post after PRC establishment

Five Antis Campaign

1952 - aimed to end bribery, tax evasion, theft of state property, cheating and stealing economic information

75% of businesses were fined

Impact of Suppression of Counter revolutionaries and the Antis Campaigns

Mass meetings organised for people to admit their crimes or to Denounce others

200,000 - 300,000 suicides by those wishing to avoid public denunciation

Criminal gang control of cities like Shanghai was reduced, drop in corruption of nationalist China, prostitution virtually wiped out

Loss of personal freedom, state control of an individual was absolute

The Hundred Flowers Campaign

Early 1957 Mao called for public discussion “Let a hundred flowers bloom and a thousand schools of thought contend”

Wanted to show that communist ideology was more open and superior to capitalist ideology to increase the appeal to communism

Food and housing were in very short supply and there was a great deal of criticism of the First Five Year Plan

Why did Mao begin the Hundred Flowers Campaign

Mao travelled widely through China in the early 1950s and had always been received very warmly - appeared to have believed that it was now possible to allow greater freedom of expression in China

Mao wanted to hear other opinions - on the face of it, calling a great debate on the Five Year Plan

May have been an attempt to discovery an potential opponents as it wasn’t typical of Mao to receive criticism from intellectuals

Results of the Hundred Flowers Campaign

Many people openly criticised the 5 Year Plan - especially lecturers, artists, writers, teachers

Party individuals, including Mao, were attacked as being corrupt, inefficient or unrealistic

Mao called an end to the Campaign - wasn’t expecting the level of criticism - and began the anti-rightist movement

Most critics were arrested, lost their jobs, underwent periods of re-education - 300 - 750k people were persecuted and sent to labour camps

Some leading figures in CCP were purged, many made public apologies

Economic, social and political changes; the changing role of women (social reform) 1949 - 1976

Unemployment fell dramatically

Eight hour, six day working week was introduced - workers received one week paid holiday a year

Urban workers had no right to choose where they worked

Residence permits prevented people moving and it was virtually impossible for peasants to move to the cities

Health services and education were free for all - Education became a right and compulsory

Education reform

National system of primary education was set up: The literacy rate was 20% in 1949 and went up to 70% by 1976

Education was free for both boys and girls

Education beyond the basic was despised - only a quarter of the working population had been to school beyond 12

Health reform

Infant mortality rate was high in the 1950s but numbers declined in 1980s

Life expectancy rose dramatically in this period

China’s long history of herbal remedies were discouraged and looked down upon by Mao

Poppy fields were destroyed and drug dealers were shot to prevent opium addiction

Many physicians in the urban went to the countryside and trained local peasants to become health workers

Women Social Changes

Before 1950s, women had few rights and were considered second class citizens

Peasants wanted sons, so women were often sold as slaves or forced to marry

From 1950 - equality of the sexes in education, employment and pay was made law - Women were given the right to own property

In 1950 - the Marriage Law banned arranged marriages, child betrothal and concubinage

Efforts were made to encourage women to work and many were moved from the countryside to towns to work in textile factories

Female literacy was encouraged

Other Mao Social Changes

Environment was cleaned up

Families had to produce one rat tail a week as proof of removal of rats

Residents had to form comities to tidy up streets

Ancestor worship was condemned

Churches and temples and shrines were all destroyed

Religion was regarded as superstitious - Mao declared that it was poison and harmful to society

If a company was selling something not approved by the government, they would not get loaned to by the bank

Businesses and banks came under state control

Peasants had performed customs and rituals for generations but were replaced by political meetings and discussions organised by the Communist Party

Songs and Dances at weddings and festivals were banned

Collectivisation

All people had to work - promoted equality

Women still ended up being responsible for all household chores and Men always received more work points than women

By 1970s, almost 50% of China’s doctors were women and 30% engineers and scientists

Land Reform

1950 - Mao began elimination of Landlords

Believed that “landlordism” was so deeply ingrained in Chinese society that landlords had to be destroyed altogether

Agrarian Reform Law

1949 - 89% of the Chinese population were farmers but they only produced 12% of the national income

Traditional farming was independent and family run

50% of agricultural land was owned by landlords and leased to peasants

Mao’s main aim was to allow peasants to continue to farm while penalising rich landlords

From 1950, landlords were forced to give up their property which was then redistributed among the peasants

Many land lords were then tried by village courts and often executed - as many as one million people died

Why were land lords treated so badly?

Village communities were allowed to decide how landlordism was to be dealt with

Village courts had no official status so they often became violent

Land Reform offered an opportunity for old scores to be settled

Impact of Land Reform

A third of Agricultural land was redistributed

Poor peasants benefited from the break up of estates and the Landlord class virtually disappeared

Agricultural production fell

Land reform did not last very long - by 1956, Mao had taken land away from the peasants and it was being run by the state

Why did Mao begin the first Five year plan?

By 1952, Chinese economy had been brought under control and inflation was down from 1000% to 15%

Population of China’s cities was growing rapidly

The First Five Year Plan

1953 - 1957

Mao wanted to China to become industrial superpower

Aimed to build new industries

Steel, coal, chemicals would provide raw materials to build planes, trains and engines to improve transport infrastructure

Thousands of Russian scientists and engineers supervised millions of Chinese workers on almost 700 Major projects

Mao put factories in small towns so they would be near newly discovered raw materials and so industries would start from scratch without old ways interfering with Mao’s new ideas

All businesses were taken over by the government

Impact of the First Five Year Plan

Achieved targets of increasing heavy industry and stimulating the economy, but worsened economic imbalance between rural and urban populations

Industrial output more than doubled with an annual growth rate of 16%

Steel production grew to 5.2 million tonnes in 1957

Improved quality of life for urban Chinese

State control meant that workers were no longer free to move from one job to another

Emphasis on quantity rather than quality - many of the workforce could not read and write, leading to modern machinery being ruined as they could not read instructions

Second Five Year Plan/Great Leap Forward

1957 - Mao announced “The Great Leap Forward” - part of the Second Five Year Plan

Concentrated on ordinary people in towns and villages getting involved in small-scale industry

Mao was encouraged by success of the First Five Year Plan and believed that mass manual labour could turn China into an industrial superpower

Population of China’s cities had grown, but food supplies had not matched the increase

Industry in the Great Leap Forward

Mao believed that the methods used in agriculture could be applied to industry

All over China, people were asked to set up backyard blast furnaces to produce steel - however steel was often unusable as it was of very poor quality

Mao believed that China could have produced more steel than the rest of the world within 15 years - unrealistic

Peasants neglected their crops to produce steel - harvest was left to rot and this caused famine

Communes/Collectivisation

1953 - 1958

Mao decided that peasants must be bought under control and ordered the creation of 25,000 communes

Most contained 5-6000 people but some contained several hundreds of thousands

Family life was replaced by canteens. barracks and dormitories

Some people worked in the fields while some mined coal and iron ore or smelted it in Backyard furnaces

In Communes, workers were exposed to propaganda

Schools and hospitals and roads built

By 1958 - most Chinese citizens belonged to one of China’s 40k communes

Impact of Communes

Corruption in Communes by Commune leaders meant many starved

Some people did less work than others

Backyard furnaces took people away from the fields, causing them to neglect harvest

The Great Famine

1958 - 1962

30,000,000 Chinese died

Peasants were left with vastly decreased surplus to meet their quotas implemented by the state

As famine worsened, accusations of peasants hoarding crops prompted wide spread atrocities, like massive grain confiscations, leaving millions of peasants to starve

Successes and Failures of the Great Leap Forward

Successes: Steel production doubled in a year

Failures:

Steel that was produced was unusable

Targets of production became unrealistic

Mao’s agricultural policies based on Russian scientist, Lysenko, was to plant crops close together and plough the soil much deeper than normal

Peasants were forced to use this method even if it didn’t work in their part of the country

Mao quarrelled with USSR and split China from the Soviet Influence/expertise

Consequences for China after the Plans

1958 - Mao resigned as President of the PRC but remained chairman of CCP

1961 - he allowed Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping to play larger roles in the government

Commune Canteens were abandoned and Peasants were allowed to cultivate their own land

In industries, the five year plans were ditched

The Great Sparrow Campaign / Four Pests Campaign

1958-1962 - targeting four pests, rats, flies, mosquitoes and sparrows

Sparrows were one of the four pests

People were expected to kill sparrows

People killed as many sparrows as possible and made sure that they could not land

Insect population went up due to sparrows being dead and not being able to kill insects

Dazhai Commune

1964 onward - their methods became a model for the whole of China to follow

in 1963 a major flood destroyed Dazhai, however they rebuilt themselves using only peasant labour, resulting in record grain production

“in agriculture, learn from Dazhai” - Mao

Farmers built reservoirs, tunnels, canals and so on.

In Dazhai, their agricultural land was spread over several slopes - Chen proposed Ten Year Reclamation Plan to make dams to enable land to be terraced and joined together to become larger fields.