The change from voluntary to enforced collectivisation

why was Mao frustrated with the development with the APC system?

he was frustrated with its slow pace

by March 1955, what percent of rural households were in APCs?

only 14%

until what year did Mao continue to follow a cautious approach regarding the APC system?

1955

what had Mao's wishes for faster change caused many local officers to do?

to create APCs before they had been properly planned

what were the consequences of the creations of APCs before they had been properly planned?

these APCs had gone into debt because they had to borrow money to buy equipment

what did APCs going into debt prompt Mao to call for?

a slowdown in the spring of 1953

what happened once things stabilised in 1954?

peasants started buying and selling their land and food, just as they would under capitalism

why did peasants buying and selling their land and food infuriate Mao? what did he do?

he saw it as an apparent rejection of revolutionary values and condemned the previous slowdown as a 'rash retreat' and renewed the pressure on peasants to join APCs

what did even better-off peasants do after conforming to local pressure and reluctantly joining the local APC?

they often slaughtered their animals and ate them rather than handing them over

which harvest was poor?

the 1954 harvest

what did the government do after the poor 1954 harvest?

they requisitioned grain to get enough to feed the cities

what did the forced requisition of grain after the 1954 harvest lead to?

it caused so much rural protest that in January 1955, Mao did an other U-turn and announced a policy of 'Stop, Contract and Develop'

what did the policy of 'Stop, Contract and Develop' call for?

a halt to APC development for the next 18 months

what did Mao decide 6 months later in July 1955?

to go for all out collectivisation when he announced to a Conference of Local Party Secretaries that a full scale drive would be started immediately

how many households in APCs were there in July 1955?

17 million

how many households in APCs were there in January 1956?

75 million

by the end of 1956, what percent of peasants were still farming as individuals?

3%

what was the official reason given for the drive to collectivisation?

that it was in response to the demands of the peasantry

what illusion of the demands of the peasantry did Mao help to foster?

the publication of 'Socialist Upsurge in the Countryside'

what was 'Socialist Upsurge in the Countryside'?

a selectively edited compilation of favourable reports on collectives written by local activists

what was likely to have been the real reason for the drive to collectivisation?

Mao's fear that supplies to the cities would continue to be unreliable as long as peasants still owned the land

how did Mao see the peasantry?

as instinctively reactionary that they needed to be forced into collectives, where the state would operate as their landlord, otherwise they would revert to capitalism at the first opportunity

what famous quote did Mao say in regard to the peasantry?

'the peasants want freedom, but we want socialism'

what were most of the new APCs classed as?

'higher' (HPCs)

what did HPCs consist of?

200-300 households

what happened in an HPC?

peasant families no longer owned the land or the equipment, and the profits at the end of the year were shared out according to work points earned by the labour contributed

what did HPCs mean for the peasantry?

that those who contributed the most land and other assets might find themselves receiving the same rewards for their labour as those who had surrendered the least in terms of material possessions

what percent of the peasantry withstood pressure to join co-operatives?

only 3%

why did the financial situation drive peasants to co-operatives?

banks had been nationalised in 1949 and would not lend money to individual peasants who stayed outside the co-operative

why was collectivisation a tremendous success for Mao ideologically?

because the state now owned the means of production of food, the land, on which 90% of the population worked

how was collectivisation politically successful for Mao?

the fact it had been carried out far more quickly than imagined was a tribute to his authority within the Party, and his ability to outmanoeuvre powerful conservative opponents such as Zhou Enlai

how did collectivisation increase the power of the party?

it increased the control the party exerted over local people at grass-roots level

how did collectivisation mark a distinct change in the relationship between the CCP and the peasantry?

the peasantry now became servants of the Party, rather than loyal allies whose support had to be earned

how did collectivisation show Mao to be dangerously overconfident?

the speed with which the big surge towards higher level APCs was achieved made him dangerously overconfident. This meant he no longer worried about practical obstacles that stood in the way of change, and this was soon to lead to catastrophic mistakes in the Great Leap Forward of 1958

what was the impact of collectivisation in economic terms?

it was disappointing

over the period of the First Five-Year Plan, how much had food production increased by?

3.8% per annum

why was an increase of 3.8% in food production still insufficient?

it could not sustain the growing industrial workforce, which was growing even faster

what was the problem with the amount of cultivated land?

the amount of cultivated land per head of the population was so low

what were yields per hectare and labour productivity like?

yields per hectare were quite high, but labour productivity was low which meant that it would have been hard for the peasants to produce a surplus whether collectivised or not

how was the economic aspect of collectivisation worsened?

by the lack of state investment in agriculture and the demotivating effect created by the fact that people no longer owned their own land, so did not directly benefit from the work they put in