4.2 - Consequences of Chinese Revolution INTERPRETATIONS

Question 1

Interpretations
Peasants and Land Reform
x2

Answer 1

• “Peasants… were wedded to the new revolutionary order” (Short)
• “a pact sealed in blood between the Party and the poor” (Dikotter)

Question 2

Interpretations
Mass Campaigns
x1

Answer 2

• “the CCP replaced its relatively pragmatic early approach with a renewed drive for revolution” (Fenby)

Question 3

Interpretations
Thought Reform
x2

Answer 3

• “carefully cultivated Auschwitz of the mind” (Dikotter)
• “mounted to bring intellectuals into line” (Fenby)

Question 4

Interpretations
1st Five Year Plan
x1

Answer 4

• “a formidable achievement” (Spence)

Question 5

Interpretations
Five Antis
x3

Answer 5

• “an opportunity to pulverise China’s capitalists politically” (Gray)
• “Many capitalists turned red when the heat went on, silently, like lobsters put in hot water” (Terrill)
• “the so-called tigers had been declawed” (Ryan)

Question 6

Interpretations
Early Communist Rule
x5

Answer 6

• “governed honestly and efficiently for the first time in modern Chinese history” (Meisner)
• “dedicated government” (Fairbank)
• “brought order and discipline to their environment” (Escherick)
• “one of the worst tyrannies in the history of the twentieth century” (Dikotter)
• “guided by pragmatic considerations” (Moise)

Question 7

Interpretations
Hundred Flowers Campaign
x4

Answer 7

• “an extraordinary response… that demonstrated Mao’s naïvety and then his utter ruthlessness” (Fenby)
• Mao was determined for his “garden to bloom” (Ryan)
• “Mao had hoped for moderate criticism of the details, not the fundamentals” (Mitter)
• “started as an attempt to bridge the gap between the Party and the people… became a trap” (Short)

Question 8

Interpretations
Great Leap Forward
x4

Answer 8

• “not based on sound economic analysis but from the air of a whim” (Lynch)
• “on an adrenaline high pumped up by the limitless vista of a bright Communist future” (Short)
• “a revolutionary project… to remake the world” (Karl)
• “‘utopian’ in nature from the beginning” + “assumed that failure in the end was inevitable” (Meisner)

Question 9

Interpretations
High Tide of Collectivisation
x1

Answer 9

• “electrifying effect” (Ryan)

Question 10

Interpretations
People’s Communes
x3

Answer 10

• “The state had become the ultimate landlord” (Fairbank)
• “aim was to make slave driving more efficient” (Chang and Halliday)
• “many ordinary people were genuinely enthusiastic for the People’s Communes” (Ryan)

Question 11

Interpretations
Statistics in the Great Leap Forward
x2

Answer 11

• “disregard for reality” (Chang)
• “the lies became more and more fantastic, a ghastly parody of Chinese Whispers” (Becker)

Question 12

Interpretations
Backyard Furnace
x1

Answer 12

• “The country looked as though it had been picked clean by iron-eating ants” (Salisbury)

Question 13

Interpretations
Lushan Plenum
x2

Answer 13

• “Mao turned his brand of brothers into a claque, clapping hands and nodding heads like mechanical dolls” (Salisbury)
• “When Mao insisted that he was, metaphorically, well clothed … few besides Peng cared to contradict him” (Lee)

Question 14

Interpretations
Three Bad Years’ Famine
x3

Answer 14

• “an all-time first-class manmade famine” (Fairbank)
• “a Mao-made catastrophe” (Fairbank)
• “in terms of sheer numbers, no other event comes close” (Becker)

Question 15

Interpretations
Socialist Education Movement
x1

Answer 15

• “a hardship to be endured rather than an experience to be cherished” (Hsu)

Question 16

Interpretations
Cultural Revolution
x6

Answer 16

• “a campaign of cataclysmic proportions” (Ryan)
• “extraordinary revolutionary movement against revisionist influences” (Ryan)
• “political storm of dizzying complexity” (Ryan)
• “a power struggle fought at the top” (Leys)
• “many impulses at once feeding and impeding each other” (Spence)
• Mao “wanted to achieve revolutionary immortality” (Liftan)

Question 17

Interpretations
Red Guards
x2

Answer 17

• “Mao’s arse kickers” (Jocelyn)
• “had widespread support… which left many youths as if they had the best days of their lives” (Mitter)

Question 18

Interpretations
Little Red Book
x1

Answer 18

• “a weapon of mass instruction” (Cook)

Question 19

Interpretations
Mao’s Good Swim
x2

Answer 19

• “get back into the swim of things” (Craddock)
• Demonstrate Mao was “in fine health and more ready than ever before to steer China through revolutionary waters” (Ryan)

Question 20

Interpretations
Reasons for Red Guard Violence
x2

Answer 20

• “repressed, angry and aware of their powerlessness” (Spence)
• “responding to social and human elements that had little to do with ideology” (Fenby)

Question 21

Interpretations
Impact of Cultural Revolution
x4

Answer 21

• “left an enduring legacy of social justice, feminist ideals and even many democratic principles” (Feigon)
• “an inspiration to many” (Karl)
• “China’s greatest experiment in participatory democracy” (Kraus)
• Rural areas: “real social and economic gains were made” (Ryan)

Question 22

Interpretations
Cleansing the Class Ranks
x2

Answer 22

• “neighbours killing neighbours” (Dikotter)
• “most violent aspect of the Cultural Revolution” (Kraus)

Question 23

Interpretations
May Seventh Schools
x1

Answer 23

• “as much prisons as schools” (Spence)

Question 24

Interpretations
January Storm
x1

Answer 24

• “a bewildering situation” (Spence)