economy 1949-65 Flashcards
1
Q
1950 land reform laws
A
- june 1950
- land reform across china
socialised into communism - hard to adminster as the majority of china was in clans and therefore believed in family ties
- not the same across china:
- landlords much more influential in the south
- not a problem in the north
2
Q
attacks on landlords
A
- work teams/cadres organised land reform
- struggle meetings
- mao unclear on level of violence so sometimes violence escalated
- landlords easy target to generate class consciousness and enthusiasm for communism
- estimated 1-2million landlords executed
- 43% of land redistributed, 60% of population benefited
3
Q
mutual aid teams (MATs)
A
- december 1951
- co-operative ownership of land - gradual and moderate
- peasants pooled resources
- small scale, 10 or fewer households → enthusiastically accepted as it mirrored a common practice
- by 1952, 40% of peasant households in a MAT
4
Q
voluntary agricultural producers co-operatives (APCs)
A
- 1953
- land reorganised into a single unit
- all land privately owned but decisions made by local party organisations (centrally)
- 3-5 MATs in an APC - around 30-50 households
- only 14% of peasants joined
- joint contributors = unpopular
- by december 1955, 63.3% of households in APCs, 4% in higher APCs (200-300 households)
5
Q
enforced collectivisation
A
- january 1956
- private ownership abolished
- members compensated ONLY for labour
- compulsory membership
- end of 1956, 88% of peasants in higher level APCs
6
Q
abolition of private farming
A
- declared people’s communes to be the ‘basic social units of communist society’
- july 1958 = first commune (in Henan province) called Sputnik commune
- end of 1958, 740k co-operatives turned into 26k communes
- would become self-reliant due to mobilisation
- communal living: communal eating in mess halls, women would be liberated as they wouldn’t have to work in the kitchen, creches and boarding schools
7
Q
communal living
A
- able to target residents with propaganda as they all lived in one location
- commune militia (all able-bodied 16-50 yrs old)
- parents lost influence on children due to communal eating
- time wasted due to travelling to mess halls, poor quality food and diets worsened
- womens’ lives actually harder, forced to do hard physical labour
- production didn’t rise enough (mao blamed sparrows)
8
Q
four pests campaign
A
- 1958
- dedicated to rid china of sparrows, flies, mosquitoes, rats
- make noise to prevent sparrows from resting → die from exhaustion
- crops rotted due to time wasted
- numbers of birds that ate caterpillars reduced → caterpillar population increased → devoured harvest
- Lysenkoism: fraudulent ideas → reduced agricultural production
- cadres afraid to report missed targets so reported success so targets increased more
9
Q
what were the aims of the first five year plan?
A
- political: become an independent and respected nation, become a modern industrialised superpower
- ideological: follow the USSR model and have the foundation of socialism
- economic: become self-sufficient as china’s only ally was the USSR (West imposed grain embargo)
10
Q
what were the targets of the first five year plan?
A
- quickly increase industries like coal and steel
- build advanced industrial plants
- become self-sufficient and protect China from Western aggression
11
Q
sino-soviet mutual assistance treaty
A
- Feb 1950
- loan of $300mil
- help with construction of steel plants, electric power stations and machinery plants
- 11,000 experts from USSR sent to China
12
Q
successes of the first five year plan
A
- annual growth of over 9%
- surpassed most targets
- bicycles = achieved 211.5% of plan, coal = achieved 115% of plan
- heavy industry output increased by 3x
- geological exploration of minerals in Xinjiang
- many amazing engineering works such as a bridge over the Yangtze River
- living standards and job security guaranteed
- population of towns and cities doubled to over 10mil
- CCP had greater control of the people
- improved housing, healthcare and education
13
Q
failures of the first five year plan
A
- dependent on USSR loans
- low supply of consumer goods
- agriculture only grew 2.1%pa
- lacked organisational and managerial experience -> lack of co-operation between industries and central planners
- low living standards among poorest peasants
14
Q
reasons for launching the second five year plan (the great leap forward)
A
- transform China into a great economic power, make China into the leading communist power in Asia
- convinced quick and large improvements in agriculture could be made due to the large improvements in industry (18.3%)
- ‘Walking on Two Legs’ = increasing agricultural and industrial production at the same time
- people’s sheer force of will could overcome technological obstacles
- communists winning Cold War (1957 Sputnik, space race) -> Mao optimistic
15
Q
successes of the second five year plan
A
- massive irrigation terracing -> made agricultural land more fertile
- construction projects e.g. Tiananmen Square remodelled into a modern urban space (propaganda success)
- people in communes lived more closely to communist model (system was more ideologically socialist)
