Mao and CCP

Mao's Early Years

  • Born in 1839 in Shaoshan, China, to a peasant family.
  • Father was a landowner and businessman; mother was a religious Buddhist.
  • Introduced to Marxism at Beijing University in 1919, worked as a librarian.

Problems Facing China

  • Weak Qing dynasty emperors and incompetent officials.
  • Heavy taxes, widespread poverty, and corruption.
  • Foreign countries had spheres of influence.

Mao's Beliefs

  • Believed in dialectical materialism: historical development through class conflicts.
  • Progress results from suppression of weaker by stronger.
  • Power gained through violence, confirmed by the Bolsheviks' rise.

Rise to Power

  • Founding member of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
  • Studied peasants and advocated for them to lead the revolution.
  • Worked with nationalists until Chiang Kai-shek declared war on communists.
  • Organized guerrilla resistance in Jiangxi mountains.

Jiangxi Soviet

  • Developed taste for torture and purges, executing 4,000 troops (Fuchin incident).
  • Jiangxi Soviet crushed in 1934, leading to the Long March (1934-1935).

Long March

  • The GMD launched extermination campaigns, but Mao escaped to the north.
  • The Zunyi Conference in January 1935 blamed Otto Braun's tactics and turned towards Mao.
  • The Long March was a 10,000-kilometer journey that took over a year.

Yenan Base

  • CCP set up base in Yenan (1935-1945), where Mao imposed personal authority.
  • Won peasants over with land redistribution, rent controls, and anti-corruption efforts.
  • Membership rose significantly; treatment of peasants converted many.
  • Mao established himself as de facto leader, wrote political works, and launched rectification campaigns.

Mao's Ideology

  • Argued peasant masses were capable of revolution, differing from Marx.
  • Published On New Democracy in 1940, advocating a nationalist movement.

Japanese Occupation

  • Japanese occupied Manchuria in 1931.
  • Second United Front created in 1937 to fight Japan.
  • The CCP was strengthened, while the GMD was weakened.

Chapter 2: Mao And Ccp

  • In 1941, USA sends 500,000,000500,000,000 in military aid to China.
  • CCP benefited from war with Japan, controlling the countryside by WWII's end.
  • Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs helped end the war, and the cold war begins between The USA and The USSR.
  • George Marshall sent to China to broker peace between the CCP and the GMT.
  • Chinese civil war. The odds of the CCP victory were very slim.

Civil War

  • GMD outnumbered CCP four to one with weapons and aids.
  • In 1947, the GMD were able to take Yanan from the communist.
  • In 1948, The CCP began to take control of cities.
  • USA drew support and aid from GMD as a lost cause.

People's Republic of China

  • October 1949: People's Republic of China declared.
  • Aimed to free from imperialism, smash class divisions, and further revolution.
  • Initial aim was to bring stability, using former government servants and police state.
  • China divided into regions governed by bureaus, under effective military control.
  • Reunification campaigns: PLA sent to annex outlying parts, including Tibet and Xinjiang.

Censorship and Propaganda

  • Launched anti-movements and five-anti campaign to strengthen national army.
  • Attacked religion, Chinese customs, and intellectuals.

Chapter 3: Authority Of Mao

  • Get rid of any elements of feudalism hierarchy.
  • Journalists, editors had gone through reeducation, and all reports fell into the party line.
  • People were reeducated, which was also known as the reform.

Great Terror

  • Household registration system used to rank individuals based on loyalty.
  • Local officials turned China into a nation of informers.
  • Poppers, beggars, pickpocketers, prostitute prostitutes, refugees, and the unemployed were seen as a drain on society and resources.
  • Reform through labor camps modeled on Soviet gulags; millions sent there, many political prisoners.
  • Mass killings with quotas issued for executions.

One Party State

  • Speak bitterness campaigns were used to humiliate, punish, and wipe out the human landlords.
  • Peasants were organized into mutual aid teams and cooperatives.
  • Only CCP authorized by 1952.
  • Democratic centralism adopted, with Mao holding ultimate authority.

Power Struggles

  • Challenges from Korean War and first five-year plan.
  • Korean War: China's involvement and propaganda efforts.

Mao and Stalin

  • Tensions due to differing ideologies.
  • Sino-Soviet treaty of alliance: USSR supported China with loans.

CCP Economic Policies

  • Inflation decreased through cuts in public spending and taxation.
  • First five-year plan: industrialization targeted, with Soviet assistance.

Hundred Flowers Campaign

  • Encouraged open criticism, then turned on critics in anti-rightist movement.
  • Led by Deng Xiaoping.
  • Struggles over bureaucracy and industrial/agricultural reform.

Great Leap Forward

  • Aimed to bypass stages of development, combining agricultural and industrial growth.
  • Emphasis on heavy industry and steel production in backyard furnaces.
  • Establishment of state-owned enterprises (SOEs).

Chapter 5: Threat To Mao

  • Ineffective steel production.
  • Environmental implications, emissions, decreasing grain production, peasants, abandoned farm work.
  • The Cultural Revolution, threat to Mao, Peng was critical of Mao for the Great Leap Forward.
  • The Tiananmen Square was expanded.

Cultural Revolution

  • Launched in 1966 to reassert authority and remove capitalist/traditional elements.
  • Lin Biao compiled the Little Red Book, central to PLA training.
  • Attacks on Wu Han's play criticized Mao
  • The Gang of Four pushed radical policies.

Red Guards

  • Youths formed paramilitary movement, denouncing parents and destroying cultural sites.
  • Attacked intellectuals and took control of public transport and media.
  • Education comes to a whole.

Chapter 6: Mao Consolidate His Power

  • Attacks on moderate:Den Xiaoping and Liu Xiaoping were not following the party line.
  • The end of the Cultural Revolution abroad Chinese militants were behind violent attacks.
  • The PLA and the Red Guards moved in the countryside and took over.
  • The decline of the Cultural Revolution, Lin's fall was not reported until 1972.

Mao's Foreign Policy

  • Sino soviet rift aimed to undermine the USSR.
  • Relations with The USA CTP in Korea
  • Bandung Conference. In April 1955, government gatthered.

Collectivization

  • Landlords wiped out, land redistributed, and peasants organized into cooperatives.
  • Communes established, with PRC controlling framing methods.
  • Private farming ended, and land reforms were enforced.

The Great Famine

  • Following the failed Lysenko's super crops and eradication of pests.
  • Millions died due to the Great Famine, with officials falsifying production targets.