China Theme 2: Agriculture and industry, 1949 to 1965. Flashcards
How was the Chinese economy regulated after the CCP took power?
REGULATION OF ECONOMY: new currency, higher taxation and government expenditure cut. Banks, gas, electricity and transport industries were nationalised.
Property of GMD and all foreign assets(apart from Soviet Union) – confiscated by the State.
what was the sino-soviet agreement of 1950?
SINO-SOVIET AGREEMENT OF 1950 – secured Soviet loans (unfavourable rates for China)
what were the land reforms of 1949-52?
Too soon to start collectivisation – peasants had been through enough landlord exploitation and Mao needed to consolidate Communist rule. Instead, property of landlords was confiscated and redistributed among their former tenants. Some landlords were allowed to keep a portion of their land provided they became peasants, but the great majority were put on public trial and denounced as enemies of the people. 3 million died. The landlord class ceased to exist.
what were MATs?
1951: MATs: First cautious steps towards collectivisation were taken. Mutual-aid teams (MATs) grouped together up to 10 peasant households in order for them to share tools, labour and animals.
what were APCs?
1953: APCs : Second stage of agricultural cooperation was started. APCs (Agricultural Producers Cooperatives) grouped together between 30 and 50 households who pooled land as well as labour. By working together, peasants could get rid of the old system of strip farming which released more land for cultivation and cut down travelling time between scattered strips. Peasant families retained their private ownership of land within the APC and any profit at the end of the year was shared between the households on the basis of a ‘land-share’ and a ‘labour-share’.
what was collectivisation?
1956: COLLECTIVISATION
In 1956 Collectivisation began. In January 75 million households – 63% of the peasant population – had been pushed into APCs. By the end of the year only 3% of peasant households still farmed as private individuals. In 1958 Mao made this collectivisation process an essential part of the Great Leap Forward:
China’s agricultural land was divided into 70,000 communes. The whole system was under the direct control of the PRC’s Central Government – farming methods, the sale and distribution of produce and the setting of prices were to be dictated from above. Private farming would cease to exist.
what were the consequences of collectivisation?
Consequences:
The impact on agricultural production was disappointing – over the period 1953-57, agricultural produce grew by only 3.8%. The effect on living standards is a matter of debate. Spence (1990) believes that the peasants were better fed in 1956-57 than they had been in the early 1950s. Chang and Halliday (2006) argue that the peasants experienced severe hardship as a result of collectivisation.
what were the features of the first five year plan?
INDUSTRY: THE FIRST FIVE-YEAR PLAN, 1953-57
AIM: SELF SUFFICIENCY
Mao’s govt drew up the First Five Year Plan for China in 1952. Precise targets were set, with the focus on ‘heavy industry’ – iron, steel, energy, transport and communications, industrial machinery and chemicals.
According to official figures, most of the targets were achieved by 1956 and by the end of the plan most industrial sectors had exceeded their targets. China’s economic growth rate of nearly 9% between 1953 and 1957 compared favourably with that of the USSR in the 1930s. HOWEVER other serious problems became apparent: many workers were illiterate and did not have skills to read instructions properly to install modern equipment. There was an emphasis on quantity rather than quality. Despite stable incomes and job security freedom to travel had been eliminated.
what was the great leap forward?
THE GREAT LEAP FORWARD – 1958 (an ambitious economic plan to modernise all aspects of China’s production capacity)
Mao announced 2nd Five Year Plan to last from 1958 to 1963 – The Great Leap Forward. Under the slogan ‘More, faster, better, cheaper’, Mao proclaimed his vision that China could be transformed into a leading industrial power in record time – he believed they could overtake Britain and USA within 15 years. How? Through mass mobilisation of the Chinese people and correct leadership of CCP- gigantic experiment with far-reaching and potentially devastating consequences.
what were Mao’s aims for the great leap forward?
Mao’s aims: GLF – China’s second Five Year Plan. Unlike first plan, it was not to be a centralised State bureaucracy – Mao envisaged a decentralisation of control to local Party cadres whose task it would be to mobilise the energies and practical experience of the Chinese people. This would take China from socialism to the stage of fully developed Communism. It would transform China into the world’s leading economic power. He was determined to match the Soviet Union’s achievement but he wanted to do it without slavishly following the Soviet Union’s methods. SELF-RELIANCE was to be the major policy – China must be INDEPENDENT from the USSR. High targets - set and then re-set - eg China would be producing 100 million tonnes of steel by 1962 and 700 million tonnes by the early 70s.
what were the methods of the great leap forward?
Methods: Mao set out to achieve industrial ‘lift-off’ for China by harnessing what he regarded as the nation’s greatest resource: its massive population. He believed Chinese people could develop both agriculture & industry (‘walking on two legs’)
The collectivised peasants, working in their communes, would produce food for the work force and a surplus of food that could be sold abroad to raise money for the expansion of Chinese industry – he was disappointed by grain production since collectivisation had started – this could hold back industrial developments.
The workers could create a modern industrial economy literally with their own hands – powerful enough to compete with the West and the Soviet Union. Emphasis = heavy industry.
in what way was china reformed in the great leap forward?
CHINA WAS REFORMED INTO A SERIES OF COMMUNES:
Most communes contained about 5000 families /All gave up ownership of tools/animals – shared ownership/ Each individual became part of a smaller work unit – a brigade – like a village/ People worked for commune – not for themselves/Work was organised in a communal, military style/ Life of an individual – controlled by commune via local party officials/Schools/nurseries provided so everyone could work/ Family ties were dismissed as ‘bourgeois emotional attachments’/Elderly moved into ‘houses of happiness’ – so families could work/The state set a quota for each commune – the state would collect a percentage from each commune and the rest would sustain the commune members/
By end of 1958 700 m people had been placed into 26,578 communes (astounding speed). Propaganda was everywhere – loud speakers in fields where workers could listen to political speeches. Everybody urged to beat targets/use bare hands if machinery failed. Farmers – instructed to follow Lysenkoism – close planting of crops – deep ploughing – pest control – led to disastrous results for grain yields. Under the slogan ‘walking on two legs’ communes were ordered to become centres of industrial as well as agricultural production – ‘Backyard furnaces’ established to produce iron and steel in schools, colleges and communes – these people had no experience – metal implements of all kinds eg cooking pots & cutlery were requisitioned to be melted down into pig iron, while wooden doors were used as fuel. Yet so much of the home-made steel was worthless! Authorities just dumped it in waste pits and it was unusable.
Large-scale civil engineering projects eg bridges/canals- built by mobilising labourers to dig and build with their bare hands.
what were the consequences of the great leap forward?
CONSEQUENCES OF THE GREAT LEAP FORWARD – why did it fail?
1959- things started to go wrong: AGRIC – 1958 there had been a good harvest due to good weather; but amount of grain produced fell short of govt claims – govt said 375m tonnes – reality – 200m tonnes. Mao set target for 1959 at 430m tonnes, yet harvest in 1959 was worst for many years. Actual figure was 170 m tonnes – well below what China needed at most basic level. BY summer of 1959 food shortages began to hit cities. 30 million died in Famine. Weather made it worse in 1959 – floods in south of China & a drought in north reduced harvest. Farm machinery fell to pieces - tools had been melted down for steel production. Also, work teams were too busy fulfilling steel targets in ‘backyard furnaces’ to work in the fields - used too much coal and China’s rail system suffered accordingly. Farming methods (crops planted close together) led to death of many plants. Agric production fell to 143.5m tonnes in 1960! INDUSTRY - steel production fell short (only 9 million tonnes of steel – target was 100m) due to failure of backyard furnaces and little steel of acceptable quality was produced – targets were revised downwards. 1960 Soviet Union withdrew its financial assistance and technical expertise. Anti-Rightist Campaign removed any criticism of Mao –Lushan Conference 1959 - they just said what he wanted to hear leading to inflated production reports. In 1958 Mao stepped down as President and was replaced by the moderate Liu Shaoqi – abandoned GLF & allowed element of capitalist free-market trade to flourish. Private ownership of land was reinstated and communes were cut down to a manageable size. Private plots were allowed so that farmers could augment their families’ diet from their own individual gardens after completing their work for the commune – production levels rose – 160m tonnes of grain in 1962.
