China theme 4: social and cultural changes Flashcards
how was chinese education before Mao’s revolution?
Before the PRC, vast majority of people in China – mainly peasants - had no education at all. Some Western style universities had been established during Western involvement in 19th and 20th Centuries, but they only educated a small professional class. Early 20th Century only 30% of Chinese adults were literate & no more than 20% of children attended school.
what was the role of education in communist china?
For Mao, education was to play a vital role in the building of a socialist society – political indoctrination could only be achieved through mass literacy and the shortage of educated people in China in 1949 was a serious brake on the future development of the country; economic development required the training of large numbers of skilled specialists.
Mao rejected the traditional Chinese form of education for its elitism, its old-fashioned curriculum and teaching methods and its reliance on learning from books. For Mao, learning should be come from experience. Training doctors studied practical courses for 6 months; followed by practical experience among the peasants (barefoot doctors) – by 1973 over a million new doctors had been trained. Mao opposed Western influence in Chinese schools and universities, which he regarded as a form of cultural imperialism.
how was education improved under mao?
PRIMARY EDUCATION was emphasised, but progress was slow. By 1956, less than half of children aged between 7 and 16 were in full-time education. Twenty years later the proportion in primary schools had increased to 96%. This was because education was starting from a very low base – especially in rural areas. It is also because spending on education was not given a high priority – only 6.4% of investment from the total budget.
New universities were established – from 200 in 1949 to 1289 in 1961 BUT this figure dropped to 434 after the start of the Cultural Revolution and remained at that level until 1976.
Language Reform: 1955 - a new form of Mandarin was adopted. Up to that date there was no standardised form of written Mandarin that everybody could understand. This was because pronunciation varied from area to area and Mandarin had no alphabet – it was made up of ideograms (pictures), not letters – all words had to be learned separately.
PRC hit on the idea of introducing a written form of Mandarin that all speakers and writers could recognise and use. This led to the adoption of PINYIN (a modernised form of Mandarin) – all the sounds in Mandarin were given a particular symbol. This greatly eased the learning process since all Mandarin speakers could now express the words they said in a standardised recognisable written form.
what was the result of improvements in education?
Literacy rates rose from 20% to 70% from 1949-1976.
what were the failures of mao’s educational policies?
Failures in Education Policy
During final decade of Mao’s life, gains that had been made were squandered.
Census of 1982 showed that:
Less than 1% of working population had a university degree
Only 11% had received schooling after the age of 16
Only 26% had received schooling between ages 12-16
Only 6% of government officials had been formally educated beyond age of 16
what were the reasons for a lack of progress in education under mao?
Reasons for lack of progress:
Main reason = CULTURAL REVOLUTION
1966-1970 – 130million of China’s young people stopped attending school or university
Students were encouraged to ridicule teachers, tear up the curriculum and reject all forms of traditional learning – this undermined the purposes of education itself.
Everything became politicised. Learning and study were dismissed as worthless unless they served the revolution. It was more important to train loyal party workers than it was to prepare China’s young people to take their place in a modern state. That was why, after the CR, Mao then sent 12 million of them ‘up to the mountains and down to the villages’ instead of back to school.
what was the role of women in traditional chinese society?
Traditional Chinese society – women owed obedience to their fathers, as wives to their husbands and as widows to their eldest sons. Practice of foot binding was still widespread in early 20th C.
Arranged marriages (often involving the payment of a dowry) were common.
Rich and powerful men kept concubines as well as wives.
Before 20th C few Chinese women received education. Lives of peasant women involved raising their family and working as a labourer.
Under Guomindang administration China’s cities did begin some progress with building of new schools – hospitals – led to some opportunities for women. In countryside, social change was non-existent – foot-binding and arranged marriages continued.
what was the marriage law?
HE NEW MARRIAGE LAW 1950– outlawed arranged marriages and the payment of dowries to a husband or his family. Concubinage was banned and unmarried, divorced or widowed women were given the same rights to own property as men. Divorce was made available to men and women on equal terms. Many women used their right to divorce immediately.
what was the impact of collectivisation on women’s rights?
The impact of Collectivisation on the status of women:
Life in the communes did bring women one immediate advantage – everyone ate in the mess halls together – women did not have to find food and prepare it for their family. HOWEVER now that they were officially regarded as equals of men, they could be called on to do the work of men – between 1949 and 1976 the proportion of women in the workplace quadrupled from 8% to 32%. If it was heavy physical labour women were worse off than they were before. Few women felt happy that their role as mothers and raisers of families was now to be written off as no longer being necessary. It seemed to go against nature. Many of the communes separated men and women and could only see each other for conjugal visits. The concept was a blow against the family as a social unit and this all happened too quickly in a conservative nation. Many women became disoriented and the famine deepened their helplessness.
what was the impact of the cultural revolution on family life?
The impact of the Cultural Revolution:
The traditional nuclear family fell into one of the categories of the ‘four olds’ that the young set out to destroy. Children were told to look on Mao and the CCP as their new parents and deserving their first loyalty. A seven year old at school was taught to say ‘I love you Chairman Mao’ instead of ‘I love you Mamma or Papa’. The young were urged to inform on their parents (REMINDER OF NAZIS) – it was hard for any semblance of family life to survive. The Red Guards moving ‘up to the mountains and down to the villages’ could never return to their families and pick up the pieces – they became the lost generation.
what was the population trend during mao’s leadership?
Population trends: during Mao’s time the number of people almost doubled in China – Mao approved of this population explosion – he believed ‘more people, more power’. The greater number of people in revolutionary China, the greater their economic achievements would be and the greater their ability to defend themselves against any external enemy.
what were the attitudes towards women under mao’s rule?
Attitudes: Women still had to fight deep-seated ingrained notions of female inferiority. There was a common prejudice against female babies – it was the wish of nearly all Chinese couples to have male children. Girls were a drain on resources – boys would bring another source of income and honour.
Communist authorities may not have been committed to gender equality as they claimed. Song Qingling (she had been the wife of Sun Yatsen – the Nationalist leader) was one of the few women to hold a high position in the PRC govt under Mao. She later complained that her Communist colleagues did not really treat her as an equal and did not accept that women comrades could play key roles in govt and the party. During Mao’s time, women made up only 13% of the membership of the Communist Party.
what was mao’s impact on health and doctors in china?
HEALTH PROVISION
Mao’s aim: to improve health of people by introducing preventative methods – a series of programmes called ‘patriotic health movements’ = teams of party workers went into the countryside to explain in simple terms the connection between dirt and disease. Local population – enlisted in great communal efforts to drain swamps and eradicate bugs, rats, mosquitoes and flies that carried dysentery, malaria and other endemic diseases.
Many doctors were trained in the early years – by 1950 most people were treated by doctors.
However, politics intervened – disruption of Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution meant the number of qualified doctors never reached the original targets set. Life expectancy increased to 65 years by 1976 (achievement)
what were mao’s ideas about culture in china?
Mao’s ideas – Culture was about the life of the people. It was a nation’s culture that defined its character. Culture of every society in history was the direct product of the values laid down by the ruling class – their means of controlling people. In the days of the feudal emperors, Chinese culture had been feudal. Now China was a proletarian society the culture had to be proletarian. All traces of bourgeois and feudal culture had to be eradicated. Removing the ruling class would have to be done by force ‘the more brutal, the more revolutionary’ …’A revolution is not a dinner party… it is an act of violence by which one class overthrows the other’.
what were mao’s methods in reshaping culture?
Methods
Mao demanded that all creative artists (writers, painters, musicians, film-makers) must accept that their first duty – to serve the people.
Their works must further the cause of the revolution.
Mao stated there was no time for artistic self-expression – ‘no such thing as art for art’s sake … Proletarian literature and art are part of the whole revolutionary cause’.
