Aggriculture and Industry

Question 1

Overview of stages until Communes in agriculture?

Answer 1

Agrarian reform law 1950
Mutual Aid Teams 1951
Agricultural Producer Cooperatives 1952
Protesting then Higher Producer Cooperatives 1953-54
Communes complete by 1958

Question 2

What was the 1950 Agrarian reform law?

Answer 2

Land taken from landlords and given to the peasants

PLA organised this

Question 3

What were the Speak Bitterness campaigns? (1950)

Answer 3

Peasants encouraged to shame (vague) landlords for years of repression. Turned violent, killing 700,000

Question 4

What were Mutual Aid Teams (MAT’s)? (1951)

Answer 4

10 or so families working together (pooling resources) for efficiency - personal land still owned and profits shared according to contribution

Question 5

What were Agricultural Producer Cooperatives (APC’s)? (1951)

Answer 5

Successful MAT’s join to make 40 or so families - profits still shared according to contribution and some personal land owned

Question 6

Why did rural protest begin in 1954?

Answer 6

Mao had started to harshly requisition food (he was appalled at peasants capitalist values and the slow pace of collectivisation)

Question 7

What was Mao’s reaction to the rural protest in 1954?

Answer 7

Called for a 18 month stop to collectivisation

6 months later he forcefully introduced Higher Producer Cooperatives (HPC’s)

Question 8

What were Higher Producer Cooperatives (HPC’s)? (1954-56)

Answer 8

250 or so families working together - peasants no longer owned land and work points were distributed by the state according to contribution

Question 9

Describe large agricultural collectives (introduced 1958)

Answer 9

Peasants ate and slept in communal canteens and dormitories. Everything (in theory) was provided for
Peasants had no possessions (no incentive to work)
Everyone from 15 to 50 had to be weapon trained

Question 10

What was Lysenkoism?

Answer 10

A Ukrainian scientist’s theories Mao insisted everyone follow. These were extremely damaging (such as planting close together), even the peasants knew they were false but the climate of fear was too strong

Question 11

Causes of the Great Famine? 1958 - 1962

Answer 11

Mao’s personal delusion
Climate of fear
Lysenkoism
Poorly run collectives with no incentives
Extreme grain requisitioning
Mao’s belief that the ends justify the means

Question 12

What did Mao declare at the conference in Wuhan? (1958)

Answer 12

An impossible harvest figure of 430million tonnes (revised down to 375 before publicising)

Question 13

Death figures of the Great famine? (1958-62)

Answer 13

At least 30 million died

1/4 of Tibetans died

Question 14

What happened at the Lushan conference? (1959)

Answer 14

Mao calls it to assess the Great Leap forward
Peng Duhai Mao’s policies in a closed letter to him (telling him of the atrocities)
Mao demands the conferences backing that Peng is wrong
Although many agreed with Peng, they all backed Mao out of fear
Peng was purged from the CCP

Question 15

What happened at the 7000 cadres conference? (1962)

Answer 15

When the Great Leap’s failing became obvious, Mao stepped back (without accepting blame)
Deng and Liu (helped by Zhou and Chen Yun) then took over economic reform: Restored private farming, relaxed communes and general persecutions, grain imports were accepted from the West
Mao criticised this as taking the ‘capitalist road