Establishing Communist Rule

Question 1

What problems did China face in 1949?

Answer 1

• lack of food due to destruction of factories
• nationalist threat
• lack of skill in managing cities compared to rural areas
• lack of communication infrastructure made governing difficult
• few people really gave one about mao’s ideology

Question 2

When was the Land Reform policy and what did it do?

Answer 2

1948 - forced landlords to be beaten + sign a confession for the party to fairly distribute the land among the peasants - massively popular among peasants

Question 3

How did Land Reform fail in establishing communist rule among the peasants?

Answer 3

most peasants were interested only in events in their own villages and local areas; they were not concerned with national political issues or revolutionary ideology

Question 4

What percentage of land was redistruted during the land reform scheme and what percentage of the rural population recieved this?

Answer 4

the land reform succeeded in redistributing about 43% of China’s cultivated land to approximately 60% of the rural population

Question 5

What percentage of China lived in poor and rural areas in 1949?

Answer 5

80%

Question 6

What were the 3 anti’s?

Answer 6

campaign against corruption, waste and obstructionist bureaucracy

Question 7

what year was the 3 anti’s campaign launched?

Answer 7

August 1951

Question 8

what did the 5 anti’s campaign aim to eradicate?

Answer 8

bribery, tax evasion, theft of state property, cheating on government contracts + stealing state economic information

Question 9

When was the Korean War?

Answer 9

1950 - 1953

Question 10

What were the benefits of the Korean War?

Answer 10

• enhance position of China (make them seem more impressive)
• gave CCP an excuse to purge political opponents
• helped unite communist countries in the region: Stalin now liked Mao more
• raised nationalism as people were encouraged to donate to war

Question 11

What were the negative impacts of the Korean War?

Answer 11

• 3 million sent, 400,000 died
• costs $10 billion, unachievable with other committments to social change
• still recovering from civil war + japans invasion in WW2

Question 12

What was the PLA and when was it formed?

Answer 12

People’s Liberation Army - formed in October 1949

Question 13

Benefits of PLA for CCP?

Answer 13

• Between 1950 and 1953, the PLA was also
  assigned responsibility for the suppression of bandits – for any opposition to the CCP - over 100,000 enemies of the communists were killed.
• economic benefit - work teams contributed up
  to a week’s free labour a year

Question 14

When was the ‘Campaign to Suppress Counter-Revolutionaries’ started and what excuse did Mao use?

Answer 14

March 1950 - used the korean war as an excuse to increase use of terror

Question 15

When was the five antis campaign started?

Answer 15

February 1952

Question 16

What was the campaign to supress counter revolutionaries?

Answer 16

• tricked any possible counter revolutionaries into implicating themselves with promise of forgiveness then arresting them
• encouraged people to persecute counter-revolutionaries themselves in the name of the CCP

Question 17

how many people died in first half of 1951 due to the campaign to supress counter revolutionaries?

Answer 17

recorded 800,000 counter-revolutionary deaths during the first half of 1951

Question 18

Who did the Five Anti’s campaign target and what did this involve?

Answer 18

Middle Class + Business owners - workers were encourage to turn against their own employers
- led to mass suicide attempts from these business owners - those who survived sent to laogai

Question 19

Successes of the Terror campaigns

Answer 19

• both very successful - in shanghai 99% of businessmen were found guilty of at least 1 five-anti
• helped establish CCP’s control over private businesses
• suspicion + survival instinct caused people to realise they had to submit completely to the CCP

Question 20

When was the invasion of Tibet

Answer 20

October 1950

Question 21

Why was Tibet invaded and what did it involve?

Answer 21

• To eradicate the muslim religion in the area
• unify chinese population - remove tibetan identity
• successfully enforced manderin as official language in schools
• built massive highway to encourage emmigration + destroy traditional way of life

Question 22

What were the laogai’s and how many were in them by start of 1955?

Answer 22

Chinese gulags/ prisons.

By the start of 1955 there were more than 1.3 million people undergoing forced labour

Question 23

Why were laogai’s beneficial to the CCP?

Answer 23

Forced political rivals + criminals to create unpaid labour - by the mid-1950s contributing over 700 million yuan in industrial products and 350,000 tons of grain to the economy

• A means to intimidate and terrorise the population
• a way of converting former opponents by forcing them to attend study lessons where they would be bombarded with communist propaganda.

Question 24

When was the Hundred Flowers Campaign launched?

Answer 24

1956

Question 25

What caused Mao to start the Hundred Flowers Campaign?

Answer 25

• international concerns, Khrushchev denounced Stalins cult of personality
• Mao feared that the Party was becoming less revolutionary
• Mao hoped that the intellectuals would criticise
  these more conservative communists giving him the
  opportunity to remove them
• OR maybe optimism, a belief the successes so far would result in optimism and support from intellectuals

Question 26

What was the impact of the campaign at first and what did Mao admit to?

Answer 26

• many intellectuals remembered their previous treatment and chose to stay quiet
• Mao confessed to the deaths of 800,000 Chinese, the failings of the CCP, and the mistreatment of intellectuals

Question 27

Why was the Anti Rightest Campaign launched?

Answer 27

Criticisms from intellectuals due the Hundred Flowers Campaign made Mao hide in his room and cry and ultimately decide to kill them all

Question 28

What quota were Cadres given to arrest in a work unit during the Anti Rightest Campaign

Answer 28

5%

Question 29

How many intellectuals were purged or sent to laogai’s during the Anti Rightest Campaign

Answer 29

Between 400,000 and 700,000 intellectuals