china notes
China 1918-1934
During this period, the Kuomintang and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) emerged as two main parties that significantly influenced developments in China after 1934.
The Kuomintang
Also known as the People’s National Party.
Origins:
Established in 1912 by Sun Yet-sen based on his Three Principles:
Nationalism:
The Chinese people needed to restore their pride and devotion to their country.
This would help them eliminate foreign influence that had caused China humiliation.
Democracy:
China, similar to Western nations, should establish a government elected by the people.
Socialism:
Improve the lives of the poor.
Modernize industry and transport.
Land redistribution to peasants, known as 'land to the tiller,' which meant taking land from landlords and distributing it to peasants.
Warlords:
Sun Yat-sen aimed to eliminate foreign influence and the power of warlords.
Warlords were generals and military governors who had established their own governments in various provinces and used their armies to enforce their authority.
From 1916, these warlords engaged in conflicts for control of China.
Most warlords focused on their own power and wealth rather than helping the people.
They imposed high taxes and often governed with brutality.
Changes in the Kuomintang:
Between 1917 and 1922, Sun’s attempts to strengthen the Kuomintang base in Southern China to defeat the warlords and unite China were unsuccessful.
In 1923, he sought assistance from Russia, which was under communist control.
The Russians provided training for Kuomintang soldiers and supplied arms, money, and supplies.
In return, Sun allowed communists to join his party and collaborated with the newly formed Chinese Communist Party.
In 1925, Sun died of cancer.
Sun was succeeded by Chiang Kai-shek, a young general who had been appointed head of the Kuomintang army in 1923.
The Northern Expedition
Chiang Kai-shek's primary task was to eliminate the warlords through the Northern Expedition of 1926-1928.
Chiang sent political agents to mobilize support among the common people by promising a ‘national revolution’.
The expedition achieved significant success due to:
Peasants and workers welcoming Chiang’s armies, believing they would receive better treatment from Chiang and the Kuomintang.
Communist support in the expedition. One of the Kuomintang armies was led by communists, capturing Hankow in 1926.
Communists organized trade unions and helped peasants eliminate their landlords in captured cities.
Little opposition from many warlords due to low enthusiasm in their armies. Many mutinied and joined the Kuomintang.
The campaign started in June 1926. The GMD army moved north-east and occupied Hunan and Hupei provinces, gaining control of Nanjing and Shanghai.
By mid-1927, the GMD controlled all of China south of the Yangtze River.
In early 1928, Chiang continued the Northern Expedition and occupied Beijing in June.
China appeared to be reunified, and Chiang's government received recognition from foreign powers.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP)
Established in Shanghai in 1921 by Mao Zedong and twelve others.
The early CCP:
From 1918 to 1920, Marxist groups formed in Beijing.
In 1921, agents from the Comintern (an international communist organization founded in Moscow) arrived in China.
Mao studied the writings of Karl Marx, who advocated for shared property and goods, eliminating private property ownership.
In 1918, Mao established the ‘Society for the Study of Marxism’, which gained significant attendance.
The newly formed party worked to help workers form unions to improve their wages and working conditions.
The CCP collaborated closely with the Kuomintang to expel the warlords and unite the country.
The influence of the CCP rapidly grew.
Soviet Russia’s influence directed the CCP to focus on peasants and workers, while the Kuomintang tended to ignore them.
The CCP, led by Mao, proposed land reform, taking land from landlords and giving it to peasants.
Peasants accounted for 95% of the Chinese population.
The CCP represented peasants, leading to 2,000,000 people joining CCP organizations in 1926-1927 after the Northern Expedition began, representing approximately 10,000,000 people altogether.
Mao Zedong supported a peasant revolt in Hunan province in 1927.
Although it failed, many peasants turned to the CCP to deal with landlords.
The Kuomintang represented landlords and attracted few peasants.
The Shanghai Massacres:
Chiang had never been keen on the alliance with the communists.
He feared their growing influence in cities captured from the warlords.
Support for the CCP grew, with hundreds of thousands of new members, particularly in Shanghai.
Wuhan was designated as the new capital, situated in the communist-dominated area of China.
Chiang grew increasingly concerned that the Kuomintang was becoming more left-wing.
He faced pressure from business interests within the Kuomintang to take action against the CCP.
In 1927, Chiang turned against the communists.
As Kuomintang armies approached Shanghai, workers rebelled against the warlord controlling the area under the organization of local communists who set up a communist council to govern the city.
Upon Chiang’s army's arrival, they rounded up and executed communists using the red stain left by the red scarves worn by communists during the fighting against the landlords to identify communists.
Later in the year, the Kuomintang suppressed communists in Guangzhou and executed many in the streets.
Reorganizing the CCP 1927-1934:
Many communists escaped the massacres of 1927.
Some went underground in major cities, while the largest group fled to the mountains in Kiangsi province.
Here, Mao established the Kiangsi Soviet and created the Red Army, comprising 11,000 members by 1930.
Within a few years, the communists gained significant support from peasants.
In 1930, a Land Law was enacted, dividing cultivated land among the farming population, allowing millions of peasants to own their own land for the first time.
Land taxes were reduced, and Peasant Councils were established to involve peasants in their own affairs.
The Red Army maintained strict discipline, ensuring peasants were treated with respect.
The Eight Rules of the Red Army:
Speak politely
Pay fairly for what you buy
Return anything you borrow
Pay for everything you damage
Don’t hit or swear at people
Don’t damage crops
Don’t take liberties with women
Don’t ill-treat prisoners
The Red Army employed ‘hit and run’ guerrilla tactics involving ambushing the enemy at its weakest point and then retreating into the countryside.
Mao aimed to avoid direct confrontation with the better-armed, supplied, and numerically superior Kuomintang.
Mao on Red Army Tactics, 1930:
"When the enemy advances, we retreat. When the enemy halts, we harass. When the enemy retires, we attack. When the enemy retreats, we pursue."
Mao encountered opposition from within the CCP.
He recognized the necessity of peasant support for future communist rebellions.
Others adhered to Marx’s views and sought to win over industrial workers.
Mao was dismissed from the CCP Committee in Shanghai.
In 1930, the Red Army of the Central Committee launched unsuccessful attacks on several large cities, receiving little support from local workers.
China under the Kuomintang 1928-1934
During this time, Chiang attempted to reunify China but achieved only partial success.
Attempts to reunify China:
From April 1928, he launched a second Northern Expedition.
After a brief campaign, Chiang’s forces entered Beijing and transferred his capital to Nanking, the wealthiest region of the country to begin a modernization campaign involving the construction of new factories, railways, and roads, improvements to education, and increase in foreign trade.
Chiang achieved only limited success:
He primarily controlled the Lower Yangtse Valley.
The north-east, especially Manchuria, was under Japanese control from 1931, while large areas of Kiangsi were under communist rule.
Chiang did little to alleviate the poverty of peasants, who continued to pay high taxes.
He did not attempt to establish democracy in China and ruled as a dictator.
His popularity declined as he made little effort to force Japan out of Manchuria.
The extermination campaigns:
Chiang aimed to eliminate the communists in Kiangsi province.
Between 1930 and 1934, he initiated five major extermination campaigns.
Despite his armies greatly outnumbering the communists, the first four campaigns failed due to Mao’s forces’ guerrilla tactics.
These tactics had drawbacks, as Kuomintang units captured communist villages when lured into communist-held areas leading to the starvation or death of over a million peasants.
Mao faced criticism for employing cowardly tactics.
The triumph of Mao and the CCP 1934-1949
During these years, Mao successfully defeated Chiang and the Kuomintang and established a communist republic.
The Long March:
Played a crucial role in Mao’s ultimate success.
Reasons for the March:
In the summer of 1933, Chiang launched his fifth extermination campaign employing new tactics suggested by General Hans von Seeckt, a German military advisor.
Seeckt recommended ‘blockhouse’ tactics involving the Kuomintang army surrounding the Kiangsi Soviet with half a million troops and slowly advancing by building blockhouses (concrete shelters), digging trenches, and setting up barbed wire fences, preventing food from going in or out and reducing the area they controlled.
By October 1934, the communists had lost half their territory and 60,000 troops.
The communists in Kiangsi abandoned retreating and attacking using guerrilla tactics due to the influence of Otto Braun, a Soviet agent and the Red Army engaged in disastrous pitched battles against the advancing Kuomintang armies.
In April 1934, the Red Army lost 8,000 men in the Battle of Guanchang.
By the summer of 1934, the Red Army was surrounded by four lines of blockhouses and close to starvation.
Mao wanted to attack the Kuomintang from the rear but Braun overruled, suggesting the Red Army should force its way through the enemy lines and retreat to the communist base at Yenan in Northern Shensi.
Events of the Long March:
October 1934:
On 16 October 1934, 87,000 soldiers of the Red Army began the retreat led by Otto Braun and took with them as much equipment and guns as they could carry.
It took six weeks to break out of the ring of blockhouses.
At the end of November 1934, the Red Army reached the Xiang River where they lost over half their number when fighting the Kuomintang.
January 1935:
Braun was blamed for this defeat because:
He had allowed them to carry too much equipment which slowed down their retreat.
The retreat was in a straight line which made it easy for the enemy to predict the movements of the Red Army.
Therefore, in January 1935, the leaders of the CCP held a meeting and handed over the leadership of the march to Mao and Zhu De.
January - October 1935:
Under their leadership, they took off in a new direction, often changing routes and splitting their forces in order to confuse the Kuomintang.
One of the most famous events was the crossing of the Dadu River where 22 soldiers swung across the river gorge on chains while under enemy fire, securing a crossing for the rest of the Red Army.
After fighting a dozen battles, crossing 24 rivers and 18 mountain ranges, covering an average of 24 miles a day and a total of 6,000 miles, fewer than 30,000 reached their destination in October 1935.
Its importance:
The communists had survived and found a new base far enough away from the GMD to prevent attack far enough away from the Japanese to prevent attack.
Mao was hailed as the great hero of the March and was re-established as the unchallenged leader of the CCP.
Many Chinese people now saw the CCP as great heroes and began to support them.
The Long March became a key part of Chinese Communist mythology.
The good behaviour of the Red Army in the provinces they crossed impressed many local people, especially peasants, who were more inclined to support the CCP.
War with Japan, 1937-1945:
During these years China experienced not only civil war between the CCP and the Kuomintang but also war with Japan.
Reasons for war:
In 1931, the Japanese invaded the northern province of Manchuria and Chiang did little to stop the Japanese because he was preoccupied with the threat from the CCP and the Red Army.
Although many Chinese people wanted Chiang to declare war on the Japanese, he believed that national unity had to be achieved before attacking the Japanese.
In 1936 he organised another extermination campaign against the communists, determined to drive them out of their new base in Yenan.
However, the Kuomintang troops, commanded by Zhang Xueliang, were mainly from Manchuria and were more interested in the recovery of their province from Japan.
In 1936, Zhang made an agreement with the communists not to fight each other which Chiang opposed.
In December 1936 Chiang was kidnapped by Zhang’s troops for two weeks until he agreed to form a United Front with the communists against Japan, after which The Russian government agreed to give military aid.
Meanwhile, the Japanese continued to expand south into the rest of China and, in July 1937, Japan attacked Chinese troops at the Marco Polo Bridge, near Peking starting a full scale war which lasted until 1945.
By the start of 1938 there were one million Japanese troops in China and by the end of the year they had occupied many of China’s great ports as well as her industrial and commercial centres.
For the next five years the Japanese lacked the resources and manpower to make further inroads into China, from 1941, they were preoccupied with the Pacific War with the USA.
Even in the areas they occupied, the Japanese did not have total control allowing the Chinese to move back into some areas and take control of the countryside with The Japanese controlling the large cities, ports and airfields whilst most of the countryside was in the hands of the Chinese, either the Kuomintang or the CCP or both.
The Kuomintang during the war with Japan:
Chiang and the Kuomintang emerged weaker as a result of the war with Japan.
Chiang was seen as unpatriotic in his initial reaction to the Japanese threat and his later lukewarm acceptance of the United Front.
Moreover, many people in Kuomintang controlled areas did not like Chiang’s rule.
As Chiang retreated before the Japanese invasion and gave up the capital of Nanjing, he moved the government to Sichuan province, cutting the GMD off from the industrialised westernised areas of China, which were his main power base, meaning the GMD could do little to fight back against Japan appearing to be unwilling to attack the Japanese.
The GMD government became increasingly corrupt as officials competed for personal power and influence with inflation growing rapidly and the power of Warlords increasing.
Chiang governed like a military dictator with the name of the ‘Generalissimo’ with a private army of ‘Blueshirts’ which hunted down and tortured enemies of the Kuomintang, especially the communists.
Chiang did little to improve China’s welfare problems and did nothing to reduce the rents paid by peasants or to increase peasant ownership because The Kuomintang had little support in the countryside from peasants because it was seen as the party of bankers, merchants, businessmen and landowners.
The CCP:
The communists emerged from the war with Japan stronger than the Kuomintang.
The Japanese could not guard all the areas which they conquered as they went south enabling the communists to move into the occupied areas and take control.
From 1937 onwards they carried out a successful guerrilla operation against the Japanese, gradually moving eastwards from Yenan and taking control of many parts of Northern China.
In 1940 the communists began a campaign known as the Hundred Regiments Battle in which they attacked the Japanese controlled railway system and paralysed Japanese transport.
Small Red Army units struck deep into Japanese-held territory, hit important targets, and then retreated back into safety and worked among the peasants and soon controlled the countryside dissolving away if attacked and suddenly attacking when the Japanese were weak or caught unawares.
The Japanese retaliated in 1941 with the Three All Campaign – kill all, burn all, destroy all intending to turn people against the communists in areas which supported them, by burning down their villages and crops and killing the peasants, but this campaign had the opposite effect driving many peasants to support the communists.
In 1937 the communists held 30,000 square miles of China, with two million people and by 1945, when the Japanese surrendered, the communists controlled 300,000 square miles and 95 million people.
Life in the communist liberated areas was generally far better than in those areas under the control of the Kuomintang because:
Big estates were confiscated from rich lands and shared among the peasants.
Rents and taxes were reduced and peasants were given interest-free loans.
Out-dated and undesirable practices were abolished especially in the lives of women, such as foot binding.
Women’s Associations were set up to help women to free themselves from violent husbands.
The Red Army was very disciplined and never treated the peasants badly and in return, the peasants kept the Red Army informed about Japanese activities and also helped in the fields and around the villages.
The Civil War, 1945-1949:
The defeat of Japan, in 1945, was followed by four years of civil war between the CCP and the Kuomintang.
Most people thought the Kuomintang would win because they had a powerful American-trained and American-equipped army of three million men with all the main cities and railway lines and many of the richest areas whereas The communists seemed weak, only strong in the countryside and did not control one city and had no air force and only one million men.
Events of the civil war:
In December 1945, the USA sent General Marshall to try to prevent a civil war in China.
Marshall failed to reach agreement with the two sides, and hostilities broke out in early 1946.
In June 1946, a million Kuomintang troops launched a big offensive in Northern China capturing Yenan, the communist capital by March 1947
However, the CCP, led by Lin Biao, avoided pitched battles with the Kuomintang and used guerrilla tactics attacking enemy bases and railway lines at night and ambushing Kuomintang patrols.
These tactics enabled the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), previously the Red Army, to take control of large areas of central and northern China where thousands of peasants supported the CCP.
By 1948, the Red Army was big enough to fight the Kuomintang head-on and In the Battle of Huai-Hai the Kuomintang lost half a million men and masses of equipment.
The PLA now had control of Central China and was able to capture Beijing and Shanghai.
In January 1949, Chiang and 200,000 of his troops, fled to the island of Taiwan, realising he had lost the civil war.
On 1 October 1949, the communists were able to set up the People’s Republic of China.
Reasons for success of the CCP:
The communist victory was due to a combination of CCP strengths and Kuomintang weaknesses.
CCP strengths
The leadership of Mao ensured that the PLA was well behaved and was seen as the liberator for the tactics he had used against the Japanese during the Second World War.
The support of the peasants were impressed with the policies of the CCP and the behaviour of the PLA which contrasted to the soldiers of the Kuomintang who treated the peasants badly.
Successful guerrilla tactics 1946-48.
The Red Army had grown to 1,000,000 men by 1945 because of peasant support and By 1949 the CCP claimed that it was 4,000,000.
Kuomintang weaknesses
Chiang’s government was unpopular because it was seen as corrupt with aid from the USA going into the pockets of Chiang and his family.
High inflation and the brutality of the Blueshirts in Kuomintang controlled areas making The Kuomintang was seen as the party of the landlords.
The American government, which had given Chiang million in aid since 1945, saw that the Kuomintang were going to be defeated and, in 1947, cut off all aid.
At the same time the GMD forces had fallen to 1,500,000 as many deserted to the PLA.
Change under Mao, 1949-1963
Totally transformed China in the years 1949-63 by introduced economic, social and political changes.
Problems:
When Mao took over China in 1949,he took over the country’s problems:
Political: The communists had to prove that they were capable of providing a strong and effective government.
Economic: It was very poor including industrial production which was % down on the best pre-war figure and food production which was down by %. Manchuria was occupied by the Japanese and there was rapid inflation.
Social: Most of the people were peasants who could not read or write and did not want change, mistrusted all modern ideas in farming, industry, education, medicine and women’s rights.
Foreign: Most of the world refused to recognise the communists. The USA continued to recognise the Kuomintang in Taiwan. Only the Soviet Union would help the new China.
Political change:
From 1949 China became a one party state suppressing all other parties from 1950 to 1952 with anyone showing opposition to communism labelled a counter-revolutionary or an imperialist creating an environment where Chinese increasingly tried to prove their loyalty by accusing others to avoid accusations.
In 1951 the Party began a movement called the Movement for the Study of Mao Zedong’s Thought involving close study of his writings, combined with public self-criticism at Party meetings.to promote ‘thought reform’.
To gain further control, the Party organised mass campaigns including
In 1950 the ‘The Three Mountains’ campaign against feudalism, capitalism and imperialism.
In 1951 a ‘Three Antis Campaign’ was launched against corruption, waste and too much bureaucracy.
This was followed, in 1952, by the ‘Five Antis Campaign’ to rid of bribery, tax evasion, fraud, theft of government property and spying and People found guilty of any of these crimes were sent to labour camps to be re-educated with thought reform.
Possibly the strangest example of Party campaigns was the ‘Swat the Fly’ campaign which lasted throughout the 1950s asking Every citizen to kill at least ten flies a day.
Cities, where the GMD had been at its strongest was brought under Mao's control by killing people in Guangzhou and in Shanghai closing down all organisations, including churches and all religions.
Maoist slogans began to appear on walls all over China and Possible rivals to Mao were dismissed from office including Gao Gang who committed suicide, along with the execution of approximately one million opponents between 1949 and 1951.
Land reform:
Mao had already begun the process of giving land to the peasants in CCP controlled areas before 1949.
One of Mao’s first tasks was to take away the power which the landlords had exercised over the peasants with The Agrarian Reform Law passed in June 1950 to speed up land reform.
CCP members were sent out to the countryside to organise the peasants against the landlords and encouraged to hold mass meetings at which landowners were denounced in these ‘People’s Courts’ or ‘speak bitterness’ campaigns that became increasingly violent and often ended with the execution of the landlords, killing By 1952 reaching approximately two and three quarter million landlords killed and taking land from those who had more than they needed for their own use, giving it to those who had none Between 1950 and 1952, taking more than million hectares (nearly half the cultivated land) from the landlords and given to million peasants.
Land reform proved a disappointment to many peasants due to lack of equipment and finance setting up of mutual aid teams of about ten holdings in which they worked together on the land and shared animals and tools.
The economy:
The communist government introduced a series of measures to deal with the grave economic situation:
The state took over major banks, the railways and much heavy industry.
In 1951 a People’s Bank was opened which replaced private banks and controlled the issue of money, removing inflation by the mid-1950s by insisting on buying and selling at low fixed prices.
The government dealt with food shortages by making farmers sell % of their grain to the government at a fixed low price and the enforcement of an Agricultural Tax.
Women:
Mao aimed to change old attitudes to women who had been seen as second-class citizens in traditional Chinese families where marriages were arranged and wives were expected to completely obey their husbands.
The Marriage Law of 1950 placed women legally on an equal basis with men and broke the power of the traditional male-dominated family which had kept women in subjection by prohibiting child marriage and matchmaking for money and laying down the rights of women and children carefully alongside the provision of equal pay and maternity benefits as well as child care at the workplace so that women were encouraged to work outside the home.
The first Five-Year Plan, 1953-57:
Mao introduced changes in agriculture and industry during this period.
Reasons for the first Five Year Plan:
By 1952 the Chinese economy had been brought under control alongside inflation at down from 1000% to 15%, the introduction of a new currency, the yuan, the reduction of public expenditure, and the increase of taxes on city dwellers.
The GMD had already set up a national Resources Committee and 200,000 of its workers had stayed in China.
Mao was able to call upon Soviet advisers as well as a loan of billion.
The population of China's cities had grown rapidly, from to million between 1949-57.
The first Five Year Plan:
The main areas of concentration were coal, steel and petro-chemicals along side the construction of Seven hundred new production plants in central China and Manchuria.
Most targets were achieved, with the notable exceptions of oil and merchant ships including coal production which increased from million tons in 1952 to million in 1957.
During this period, all remaining private industry was taken over by the government. All businesses still in Chinese hands were taxed so heavily until their owners gladly handed them over while National expenditure rose from million yuan in 1952 to million yuan in 1957. The Plan was aided by the presence of advisers from Soviet Russia as well as Russian machinery and equipment alongside of Chinese students who were trainees in the Soviet Union.
Economic growth ran at % per annum during the first Plan.
light industry, such as cotton- making and food–processing, was neglected in favour of heavy industry which slowed growth with a shortage of consumer goods, especially bicycles.
Co-operatives:
Mao followed the Soviet model of collectivisation with his lower-stage co-operatives, followed in later years by higher-stage co-operatives.
Peasant farms were too small to be efficient and unable to provide for the needs of the rapidly growing cities.
Mao feared that if the peasants kept their land, they would become a new class of landowners, only interested in making a profit for themselves.
From 1953 the CCP encouraged peasants to join lower-stage co-operatives farms of 30-50 families where they would pool their land, equipment and labour.
Although the land still technically belonged to the individual peasants, it was on permanent loan to the co-operative, which paid each family a rent for its use.
Implemented Lower- stage co-operatives which merged into far larger high-stage co-operatives consisted of 200-300 families.
By 1956 these co-operatives had been set up in most areas of China not paying rent for their land and only received wages for their labour, and the families land and equipment became theCo-operative’s property.
The Hundred Flowers Campaign, 1956-7
In 1956 Mao launched what became known as the Hundred Flowers Campaign which allowed free discussion and criticism of the government and its work.
Reasons for the campaign:
There has been much debate about Mao’s motives for the Campaign because having travelled widely throughout China during the early 1950s and had always been received very warmly, he appeared to have believed that it was now possible to allow greater freedom of expression in China whilst By 1956 the CCP was losing much of its early unpopularity however:
Population rose by million leading to over-population, food shortages and housing problems as well as a shortage of consumer goods.
Many peasants were not keen on the higher-stage co-operatives in which they lost ownership of their land.
Local CCP officials had been accused of acting heavy-handedly and wanted to hear other opinions.
In 1954 President Liu Shaoqi had delivered a report to the Congress of the CCP in which he mentioned Mao's name 104 times, but At the next Congress in 1956 Liu mentioned Mao only four times.
Mao was calling for a great debate on the Five Year Plan, but in reality the campaign may well not have been sincere, but simply an attempt to discover any potential opponents which in the autumn of 1956 Wang Meng, a 22-year old son of a professor of philosophy at Beijing, published a short novel Young Man Who Has Justarrived at the Organisation Department which attacked laziness andincompetence in the communist bureaucracy.
Reactions:
Early in 1957 Mao urged Communist Party officials to be prepared to undergo criticism from the people with the statement, ‘Let a hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred schools of thought content’ meaning that free speech was healthy and should be encouraged.
There was a rush to respond and criticism of Mao, the government and the CCP gathered momentum. Many people openly criticized the Plan, especially university lecturers, artists, writers and teachers alongside Party policies and individuals were attacked as corrupt, inefficient or unrealistic, including Mao himself and other top figures for their failures.
The anti-Rightist campaign:
This was too much for Mao who, in June 1957, suddenly cracked down on his critics, reversing everything to replace an expression with an anti-Rightist campaign designed to flush out any critics of the CCP and the government and purge the Party.
The leading critics were forced to retract their statements.
University lecturers, school teachers, economists, writers and artists had to make public confessions and submit themselves to ‘re-education’ in camps in the countryside for ‘thought reform’.
Others were sacked from their jobs.
People were forbidden to speak freely and the press was censored.
Mao’s reaction has led to different schools of thought about the motives for his Hundred Flowers Campaign because: one school of thought argues that he genuinely encouraged free speech and criticism but was shocked by the reaction and then clamped down on his critics whilst The other school of thought believes that the Campaign was a deliberate plan by Mao to flush out critics of the government and CCP.
The Great Leap Forward
In 1958 Mao decided on a second five-year plan which became known as the Great Leap Forward.
Reasons
After ten years of communism Mao wanted another revolution in order to hand control of agriculture and industry away from the ‘experts’ who were similar to the mandarin class under the emperors.
There was vast resource of manpower that was not being used effectively with much unemployment in towns, cities and the countryside therefore, peasants would be fully employed on large irrigation and flood control projects and would also develop small-scale industries.
He was determined to turn China into a powerful industrial nation as quickly as possible, using the muscle power of the millions of peasants when China was short of money.
Mao intended that the Chinese economy would overtake that of Britain within fifteen years and that of the USA in twenty or thirty.
Party propaganda:
A key element in the Great Leap Forward was Party propaganda through Posters, slogans and newspaper articles used to encourage mass enthusiasm as well as long hours of work no matter what