China Summary Flashcards
Korean War
Date: 25th June 1950 - 27th July 1953 (China involvement 8th October 1950)
Summary: China supports North Korea in a battle that will eventually end in stalemale.
Causes:
- Korea divided into North & South following WW2
- Stalin agreed to support North Korea
- China feels they must honor their commitment to Korean communism
Effects:
- land reform escalates
- UN declares China aggressor (economic embargo)
- boost to morale (stood up to imperialism)
-heightened fear of spies within China
- heavy death tolls (500,000 Chinese killed)
Fanshen Land Reform
Date: Launched 28th June 1950
Summary: Nationwide CCP campaign to ‘turn over’ land to the peasants and denounce landlords.
Causes:
- Agrarian Reform Law
- considered fundamental element of revolution for peasants
- emotions of peasants
Effects:
- estimated 1 million landlords executed
- peasant involvement in revolution
- more support for CCP
Thought Reform
Date: September 1951
Summary: Early mass campaign targeted towards intellectuals to fix “incorrect” bourgeois thoughts.
Causes:
- desire to mobilise population
- consolidation of power
Effects:
- punishment and psychological damage of intellectuals
-forced labour
- fear & public denunciation
- fleeing
Sanfan (Three Antis)
Date: 7th September 1951
Summary: Early mass campaign against “corruption, waste and bureaucratism”.
Causes:
- suspicion of Guomindang civil servants
- need to “clean up” government
Effects:
- officials struggled against; removed from positions
- violence + executions
- fear of public humiliation
Wufan (Five Antis)
Date: 1st February 1952
Summary: Early mass campaign against the tax evasion, fraud, cheating, theft and bribery of industrial capitalists.
Causes:
- Mao believed capitalists were causing government corruption
Effects:
- 450,000 businesses investigated
- capitalists no longer ensured place in society
- ‘willingly’ hand over factories in fear
- widespread suspicion; reporting on neighbours
- state control over industry
First Five Year Plan
Date: 1st October 1953 - 1957
Summary: Economic campaign (largely successful).
Causes:
- inspired by Russian Five Year Plans
- $300 million loan from Russia
- transition to socialism
Effects:
- production quotas
- 10-16% increase in overall production
- able to produce trucks, cars, etc
- lack of funding for agriculture
- gradual collectivisation (met with some peasant resistance)
- Gao Gang affair
- High Tide of 1955 (mass collectivisation)
Hundred Flowers Campaign
Date: May 1957 - 8th June 1957
Summary: A campaign is launched to encourage freedom of expression among intellectuals, which ends in further suppression.
Causes:
- fears from anti communist uprisings in Hungary and Poland
- shortage of expertise (needed intellectual help)
- help Party be more responsive to public desires
- unity, criticism, unity ideology
Effects:
- initial suspicion
- widespread criticism (students, academics, worker strikes)
- communists accused of betraying ideals, having a monopoly on power, being corrupt, etc
- 300,000 sent to labour camps
- discredited intellectuals
Great Leap Forward
Date: Launched 5th May 1958
Summary: Campaign launched to improve China’s economic output, that ended in disaster.
Causes:
- end of First Five Year Plan
- excitement after Sputnik launch
- desire to overtake British industrial output
- lagging of agriculture
Effects:
- communal kitchens
- four pests
- statistical manipulation
- backyard steel
- people’s communes (collectivisation)
- three bad years famine
- Mao steps down from president due to failures (1959)
Three Bad Years Famine
Date: 1959 - 1961
Summary: ‘Man-made’ famine.
Causes:
- natural drought cycle
- misreporting of production stats
- mass consumption in communal kitchens
- killing of sparrows (locus infestation)
- lack of farming due to backyard steel
Effects:
- 30 million deaths
- cannibalism
- denial of famine among party cadres
- Mao adopts vegetarian diet
Socialist Education Movement
Date: September 1962 - 1966
Summary: Series of campaigns aiming to remove corruption within the party and encourage socialist values
Causes:
- Tenth Plenum (4–27 September 1962)
- need to improve ‘Four Clean-Ups’ (grain collection, work points, accounting, public property)
Effects:
- Little Red Book published (May 1964)
- emulation campaigns (learn from Lei Feng)
- Ten Points Directives (earlier & revised)
- officials avoid investigations (overall unsuccessful)
Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution
Dates: 1966 – 1969
Summary: Campaign mobilising the students of China.
Causes:
- failure of Socialist Education Movement to remove corruption
- May 16 Circular (Cultural Revolution Small Group Formed)
- Mao desire to leave legacy?
-power struggle within CCP?
- Hai Rui Dismissed from Office
Effects:
- Red Guard violence
- Rebel workers
- cult of Mao (Good Swim)
- destruction of Four Olds (ideas, culture, customs, habits)
- January Storm
- denunciation of party leaders (Liu Shaoqi)
- disruption of schooling (Up to the Mountains, Down to the Countryside Campaign)
