communism

Question 1

Problems in China before Mao

Answer 1

• industrial sector hardly developed because of the fighting
• destruction of most of the country’s infrastructure
• trade at a virtual halt
• 80% of population were peasants (exploited and oppressed by landlords)
• inflation was very high
• great unemployment
• scarcity of food
• opium addiction, crime and prostitution rampant,
• low life expectancy in rural areas

Question 2

Administrative reform

Answer 2

• china was divided into 6 regions
• ccp officials headed the councils at each of these levels
• such vast representation at every level enabled communists to gain control over the nation

Question 3

Economical reform

Answer 3

Financial:
- government nationalised major banks and heavy industries
- people’s bank was established to control monetary matters
- measures were successful and inflation was brought under control
Agricultural:
- Agrarian Reform Law– land in the village was seized and redistributed between the peasants
- peasants put landlords on trial in “people’s courts” (fully ran them and made decision), landlords were accused of charging high rents/mistreating tenants
- Mao encouraged peasants to form cooperatives: land was jointly owned so 1 large crop could be grown efficiently and the resources of the cooperative would be pooled to buy resources and equipment
- this would increase production when families work together and increase the income
Industrial:
- greatly dependent on Soviet Union for industrial development
- S.U. agreed to load 300 million over 5 years to develop industries
- 10 000 soviet engineers were sent to help China develop industries

Question 4

Social and Educational reforms

Answer 4

• government cleaned up areas
• opium dens closed
• corrupt businessmen and politicians were punished
• public health campaigns were undertaken to bring diseases under control
• schools were reopened to reduce illiteracy rate

Question 5

Position of women reform

Answer 5

• women had equal rights as men
• given the right to jointly own land with men
• equal wages as men
• given maternity benefits

Question 6

Thought reform

Answer 6

• purpose: prepare people for the socialist society they wanted to create
• get the people to contribute to the best if their ability but to accept an equal share of the benefits
• “struggle meetings” helps in schools and workplaces to get Chinese people to change their mindset and accept the thought reform
• confucianist teachings replaced with socialist teachings

Question 7

Enemies of the State reform

Answer 7

• government executed millions who posed a threat to their vision (landlords, rich merchants, Kuomintang sympathisers)
• Chinese society closely controlled as Mao saw independent thought as the enemy of his movement
• used his party worked and propagandists to spread his communist ideas
• newspapers controlled by communist party
• aim of propaganda: expose anyone who might oppose communist rule

Question 8

outcomes of reforms

Answer 8

• Mao was popular: peasants saw him as a benefactor who took decisive actions for their interests
• inflation was brought under control
• food production increased
• cpc won the trust and support of the people: were seen as improving the lives of the people
• however everyone learned to hide their true feelings about communism, learnt to say and do what the party wanted them to say and do out of fear of being singled out as anti-communist

Question 9

methods of achieving aims of five year plan

Answer 9

• followed example of soviet union: focused on increasing capacity of ‘heavy’ industry
• priority given to production of iron and steel, energy, transport, industrial machinery
• ordinary Chinese citizens were exhorted to save money in state banks (helped to finance industrial investment)
• by deliberately limiting the supply of consumer goods, government ensured that Chinese peasants and workers had little to spend money on (saving was further stimulated)

Question 10

results of five year plan

Answer 10

• according to official figures most targets were achieved by 1956 and by the end of the five year plan period most industrial sectors had exceeded their targets
• however officials would often massage the figures as they were anxious to appear to be fulfilling their targets
• often a large-scale conspiracy to adjust the figures so that they appeared to appear as impressive as possible
• however Five year plan was considered to be successful

Question 11

social and economic consequences of five year plan

Answer 11

• expensive modern equipment ruined: lack of maintenance, not installed properly and new workers were not trained for work
• workers gained greater job security and stable incomes
• however had loss of personal freedom (strict controls on jobs and right to travel)
• living standards in cities rose (however the peasants’ standard of living was deliberately held down in order to finance the industrial development)
• increase in population shift from countryside to cities

Question 12

100 flowers campaign

Answer 12

• Mao was convinced that he was in touch with the chines people because of success of five year plan & the raptors receptions achieved whenever he went
• campaigns as to allow greater freedom of expression to those who might wish to comment constructively on how its aim of turning the nation into a proletarian state
• prove that communist ideas were correct (and was convinced that massive support he saw from people would bode favourably for him and cap –> would prove socialisms popularity)
• would allow people to view the ccp as an open party and let them know that their inputs would be taken into consideration 9greater freedom of expression)
• allowed intellectuals to have a greater say in debate
• Mao urged CCP officials to be prepared to undergo criticism
• called on critics within the party to state openly where they thought the CCP had gone wrong
• once the people overcame their initial fear that they might be thought of as being anti party, members rushed to point out mistakes that had been made
• successful to a certain extent, a lot of response from the people but a large majority of the responses were complaints rather than constructive feedback–> unable to prove socialisms popularity

Question 13

anti-rightist movement’s

Answer 13

• became a time not of freedom of expression but of fierce repression
• intellectuals forced to make abject confessions and submit themselves to ‘reeducation”
• purged CCP members who had been too free with their objections to the gov
• only way to avoid suspicion was to conform absolutely to Mao’s wishes

Question 14

aims of GLF

Answer 14

• Mao believed that it would be possible for China to achieve rapid and sustained economic growth to take China from socialism to fully developed communism by mobilising the energies and practical experience of the Chinese people
• increasingly caught up in the euphoria of his belief that communist rule could finally unlock china’s vast potential and transform the country into the world’s leading economic power (surpass the west)
• declared that China would be producing twice as much steeper; by 1970

Question 15

reasons for GLF

Answer 15

economic problems:
- under first five year plan agricultural yields increased but cooperatives were not producing enough to keep up with the demand for food, export, raw materials
- china needed a system which allowed the country to use its huge resources of labour as effectively as possible
- would solve unemployment, economic development, increase agricultural and industrial output that could rival the west
need for Chinese communism:
- china was relying on the Soviet Union but mao believed soviet style was not suitable
- revolution should be won with the support of the peasants
increase prestige of communist china
- show superiority of communist system
- if China could overtake the world superpowers in 15 years this would demonstrate that communism was far better than all other political systems

Question 16

GLF initiatives

Answer 16

communes:
grouped collective farms into large units called communes
- communes ordered to become centres of industrial and agricultural production
- backyard furnaces established to produce iron and steel in communes
- large scale civil engineering projects built largely by mobilising thousands of labour’s o dig and built by hand ratter than machinery
- peasants private plots of land were taken over by communes
aim: abolish private family sphere of peasant life and decentralise economic planning process
- mao had concluded that communism in china could be built in a way that ignored the economic realities of country’s development
- speed at which communes were being build and exaggerated production figures reported by local officials (anxious to avoid being labelled ‘rightists’) confirmed mao in his belief that he had set China on the right track

backyard furnaces:

• mao had a naive belief that simply by producing masses of steel china would somehow solve all its economic problems
• insisted on building backyard furnaces
• china would draw its supplies of iron and steel from small family kilns instead of large factories
• became a national movement and a communal activity in which all the people could participate in
• disastrous failure
• people were faithful but not successful: homemade steel were smelted from domestic oddments which ended up as large hard blobs, unusable and worthless
• authorities knew it was unsuccessful but did not fare to let on

china lacked the technical skills, managerial; know how efficiently run factories and plants, adequate transport system
- china could not build the modern economy that mao had promised would overtake the world in a great leap

Question 17

agricultural consequences of GLF

Answer 17

• disruption caused by ending of private farming:
• caused major hunger because mao discouraged individual peasants from producing food beyond their own needs
• lysenkoism: Lysenko claimed to have developed techniques that resulted in crops yielding up to 16 tines more food than under traditional methods
• mao made lysenkoism official policy: families were forced to follow
• Lysenko’s ideas were largely worthless and theories ere fraudulent
• sparrowcide:
• whole Chinese population was called on to end the menace of sparrows and other wild birds on the false grounds that such birds consumed large quantities of seed and grain to the point of hurting the economy
• campaigns so effective that ecological balance was disrupted
• vermin multiplied and destroyed stocks of grain
• cause a lot of hunger but nobody dared to say a critical word publicly since to have done so would have been to challenge Mao’s wisdom

consequences
starvation:
- peasants were unable to make sense of order imposed on them, became defeatist in the face of impending doom
- peasants who tried to ignore the new regulations and carry on with their old ways of farming were imprisoned as rightists
- millions starved to death in labour camps
- many advisors were well aware that people were doing but they dared not speak out (reported back to Beijing that production targets were met and GLF was on course)

Question 18

political consequences of GLF

Answer 18

peng duhai

• found that people were starved, were in the mood of rebellion and highly critical of party policies
• did not immediately speak out against failures of GLF as he was well aware of the dangers facing those who openly criticised Mao (mao already suspicious of his idealogical purity)
• put his views in a private letter of opinion ()argued that GLF policies were correct in theory but flawed in practice)
• intended as a private letter to mao alone but was published by mao to all and used as an opportunity to destroy Mao’s career
• Peng had a repudiation for being incorruptible and independent minded
• long history of arguments and disagreements with mao
• reputation and status was not enough to save him fro Mao’s determination to destroy him
• Peng denounced as a rightist
• accused of objectively aiding Chinese enemies and leading a rightist opportunist anti-arty clique
• career was finished

significance:

• before: assumed that any comrade could express his views freely at the party meetings as long as the final decision was accepted by all
• after: the message was crystal clear: any criticism of the partys flaws was now tantamount fo criticism of mao and there would be consequences
• in 1959 there had been signs that mao was beginning to moderate some of the wilder aspects of the GLF but now he doubted down ion his original vision and launched a second GLF
• an opportunity had been lost fo correct. failing policy and the resulting disaster was even greater than it might have otherwise been
• another purge was launched against party members and low level officials–> effort to root out any wider opposition within the CCP

Question 19

reasons for failure of GLF

Answer 19

1. small-scale factories could not produce enough goods of the right quality
   - steel produced in backyard steel furnaces was often so poor it was useless
2. agricultural plan based on poor science
   - food production suffered
   - 2 pronged approach of GLF had peasants working on construction projects while harvests rotted in the fields
   - 16 million starved to death
3. political interference made the plan impossible to manage purely as an economic enterprise
   - officials issued demands and threats but did not produced clear and effective instructions as to how things were actually to be done
4. fall out of Soviet Union and china
   - S.U. stopped sending aid and technical assistance
   - resulted in closure of half the 300 industrial plants that S.U, had sponsored in china

Question 20

Mao’s responsibility for failures of GLF

Answer 20

Claim
the death, suffering and economic failure that characterised the Great Leap Forward can ultimately be traced back to his leadership, policies, and ideologies.

1. Mao’s weakness as an economic planner
   - planning was influenced by politics rather than evidence and rationality

Evidence:

• backyard furnaces (naive belief based on intuition rather than facts)
• economical targets set were unrealistic (he declared that China would be producing 40 million tonnes of steel by the 1970s, a figure twice as high as the one that had been approved by the Central Committee only two months before and nearly eight times as high as China’s actual steel output at the end of the First Five Year Plan→ clearly beyond the capabilities and capacity of the Chinese people)
• quality of life actually decreased further
• sparrowcide
• failure of the Great Leap Forward’s industrialisation effort can be directly traced to the flaws in Mao’s policies

2. Mao’s unwillingness to accept responsibility for failure
   - would not accept that his policies were at fault –> interpreted the lack of economic achievement not as a failure of Communist planning but as a result of sabotage (would first deny the bad results, and then search for culprits responsible for administering the policies wrongly)
3. Mao’s basic misunderstanding of economic processes
   - strategy was flawed and misconceived
   Evidence
   - believed that by relying on China’s considerable supply of manpower he could bring about the same advances that the western nations had made
   - lacked the knowledge and understanding of industrial processes
   - accepted that industrialisation was essential but he had a very imperfect idea of what that meant in practice
   - simply believed that by a massive deployment of manpower, China could achieve industrialisation
4. Mao’s reliance on intuition
   - not qualified as an economic planner
   - assessed the country with political mindset
   - his approach was a series of intuitive leaps

Question 21

effects of GLF

Answer 21

• resistance and challenge to Mao’s position
• demonstrations against the authorities spread in provinces
• division in CCP (rightists and leftists)
• rightists led by Liu shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping