Establishing Communist Rule 1949-57 Flashcards

Question

Why was the reality of the common programme different?

Answer 1

The reality was different as the common programme also gave the army and the police the right to suppress all counter-revolutionary activity, powers they used to great effect in the years that followed.

Answer 2

When it came to passing legislation, the central government simply rubber stamped proposals put in front of them by the politburo. The CPPCC began to draft the future constitution and until this was published, it acted as legislature. All existing laws that had been passed by the GMD were abolished as was the old judicial system.

Answer 3

In 1954 the new constitution was finally published, at which point China was confirmed as a Communist Country. It was very much based on the Soviet model, where couched in Democratic terms, with various references to elections, the CCP retained control of the entire electoral process. Real power remained in the higher bodies, where decisions were taken before being endorsed by state bodies.

Answer 4

As the Communist system became more established the number of bureaucrats needed to staff it grew enormously: from 720,000 in 1949 to 8mil in 1959. It may have increased the CCP's power in theory but it worried Mao who was aware that such growth of administrators could slow down the pace of the revolution.

Answer 5

This was the thought that Bureaucrats behind their desks become more interested in preserving the Status quo in order to safeguard their careers than advancing in the cause of the revolution, and the more paperwork there is, the longer it takes to change anything. Mao felt this had happened in Soviet Russia.

Answer 6

The PRC was to be run by the CCP however much of the language in the constitutions of 1949 and 1954 tried to disguise this. Leading CCP officials always held key posts in the state and the army. For example Zhou Enlai and Peng Dehuai. These men were at the core of the party hierarchy. The collective leadership of the party was theoretically responsible for deciding policy in the Politburo, but as Mao became more powerful, it became harder to oppose him.

Answer 7

Having defeated the Japanese and GMD to enable the Communist party to come to power, the PLA enjoyed a special place in Communist mythology, epitomising revolutionary values of discipline, self-sacrifice and perseverance against the odds. It was the world's largest army, made up of 5mil men, and consuming 40% of the state budget. Because of the cost, it was reduced to 3.5mil in 1953 and 2.5mil by 1957 under supervision of the minister of defence Peng Dehuai.

Answer 8

By reducing the PLA, Mao was ensuring that it was the party holding the gun referring to his saying: 'Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.

Answer 9

As it became smaller, the PLA became more professional, more advanced and less egalitarian with differentiated pay scaled between clearly defined ranks.

Answer 10

The PLA remained in pivotal importance to the PRC. Internally it acted as a means of indoctrination ( supervising the 800,000 young conscripts that joined each year on a 3 year term), as a workforce in the many public works projects needed to build the transport infrastructure after the Civil war and as a means of enforcing central government control in the regions. Externally, the PLA's role was to achieve great power status for China, the opportunity arose following China's involvement in the Korean war.

Answer 11

This came from the essays that Mao wrote during his Yanan years, which eventually came accepted as official party doctrine. The Key elements being: - Nationalism - Continuing revolution - Listening to the people - mass mobilisation

Answer 12

As time went by, Mao's power became increasingly insecure. The more authority he gained, the more he feared losing it and the more he feared enemies within were plotting against him, which helps to explain why there was so many internal purges and 'anti' campaigns.

Answer 13

Reaffirmed in the 1954 constitution as one of the principles of which the PRC was based. The entire process was controlled by the CCP so the democratic element is only theoretical, there is no choice of party. The centralism aspect was real enough. Political decisions were made by at the top level by senior officials, who claimed to be taking into account the best interests of the people. The justification was for this that was the officials were the only ones educated enough in the science of revolution to understand what course of action would need to be taken to serve the interests of the workers.

Answer 14

He became increasingly insecure. The more authority he gained, the more he feared losing it, and the more he feared enemies within plotting against him, which helps to explain why there was so many internal purges and 'anti' campaigns.

Answer 15

His initial priority had to be mopping up the remaining GMD military resistance in the south and establishing as much political control over China. This involved sending out the PLA into GMD heartland of Guangdong province and into outlying provinces of the far west, which had been asserting their independence from Beijing since 1912.

Answer 16

The pace of change speeded up. At the same time as the Korean War, he also launched an internal wave of terror against enemies of the party. It began in rural areas in October 1950, spreading to the cities in April 1951. It had accounted for one million deaths.

Answer 17

While direct violence had only inflicted a small percentage of the population, fear affected everyone, and even people who were overtly sympathised with the revolution embraced the new ideology. The laogai system awaited for those who didn't embrace it.

Answer 18

After the terror, the next target of the regime were the professionals who had been asked to stay in their posts, but whose support became less important as time passed. Over 1mil gov officials were sacked in the 3 antis movement of 1951, in 1952 the business community was attacked in the five antis movement. In 1955 the drive to collectivise agriculture signalled an end to a brief period of peasant land ownership, and the following year private land was nationalised. In 1957, it was the turn of the intellectuals to suffer in the Hundred Flowers Campaign.

Answer 19

It gave Mao the perfect excuse to crush whoever stood in the communists way at home, in case they jeopardised the gains of the revolution so far. The terror was brutal and widespread, designed not to only remove opponents but also deter others. Mao set the overall tone but set the others below him to work out the details.

Answer 20

Mao thought that an acceptable target of 1 person per 1000 of the local population in each area was an acceptable target. In March 1951, Mao agreed to Rao Shushi's proposal that killings should be extended to those inside the party.

Answer 21

Initially, the terror claimed fewer lives in the cities, partly due to fears of adverse publicity and partly because the urban professionals were needed. However this changed in March 1951 when a top-ranking military official was shot dead. Mao responded with police sweeping through 16 cities arresting 17,000 people. Confessions and executions followed with some committing suicide.

Answer 22

Even those who survived the Terror with their reputations in tact lived in fear. So many had informed on their friends to protect themselves that human relations changed- since friends knew most about you, the fewer friends you had, the less likelihood they would be betrayed. Survival therefore encouraged people to become more isolated.

Answer 23

Was launched at the end of the year of the Great Terror (1951) and targeted corruption, waste and delay in the government and party.

Answer 24

The catalyst was the arrest in November of two leading members of the CCP hierarchy in Tianjin, charged with embezzling large sums from the party. Mao insisted on their execution and put minister of finance, Bo Yibo, in charge of orchestrating a clean-up campaign.

Answer 25

Employing the methods employed earlier in the Yanan reunification campaign, mass meetings were held where managers and officials were denounced by their work colleagues.

Answer 26

Roughly 1% victims shot, 1% sent to labour camps for life, 3% jailed for more than ten years and the rest fined, although the fear of humiliation drove a lot of people to suicide.

Answer 27

It had been on corrupt practises within the management levels of the party and businesses. However, the top level of the party was also purged. Rao Shushi and Gao Gang were attacked in 1953, reinforcing Mao's position at the top of the party and made the cadres lower down realise that it was dangerous to take opposition too far. This was a lesson that would come much more obvious in the Hundred Flowers Campaign.

Answer 28

The official explanation of the laogai system is that it was a re-education rather than Punishment. Misguided people who had failed to grasp the benefits that communism had brought would be shown the error of their ways, before being eventually reintegrated as useful citizens.

Answer 29

In reality, the system supplied the terror that the regime depended on in order to frighten most of the population into conformity.

Answer 30

It simply could not cope with the extra number of inmates produced by the Great Terror. Soviet experts were brought in to provide guidance on the management of a new labour camp system. By 1953, there were 2 million prisoners, over half of whom were working as forced labourers in the laogai system.

Answer 31

It served an economic purpose as the camps were of significant economic value, contributing 700 million yuan in industrial products and 350,000 tonnes of grain to the state each year by 1955. Under the Great Leap forward, prisoners were used as a convenient means of getting hazardous jobs completed such as mining and clearing malaria infested swamps.

Answer 32

Socially, the prison population represented a cross section of Chinese society, ranging from poor farmers in debt from the state and technical experts accused of being counter-revolutionaries. However 9 out of 10 people were political prisoners.

Answer 33

Varied to circumstances but were predictably brutal, involving constant fear of violence and sleep deprivation and other torture techniques along with the poor diet and hard labour. Added to this was the psychological effect of thought reform which involved endless self-criticism and indoctrination meetings, designed to make prisoners lose their previous identity.

Answer 34

With the First Five Year Plan coming to an end, Mao surprised everyone by calling for an open debate about its results and future pace of change. In an address to the CCP, Mao called on delegates to 'Let a Hundred Flowers bloom, and a Hundred schools of thought contend'. This apparent call for an open debate was at least partly influenced by recent events in Russia, where De-stalinisation was leading to uncertainty.

Answer 35

Although Mao had never trusted the intellectuals as a group, he knew that they had a valuable contribution to make to the Chinese economy, and he may have been trying to win them over by giving them some opportunity to make constructive criticisms.

Answer 36

It may have been prompted by his desire to not expose himself to the same criticisms of Stalin. However, the outbreak of the Hungarian uprising later that year must have also made Mao realise that being too open-minded might backfire, by encouraging challenges to communist rule.

Answer 37

After prompting criticism and receiving nothing, which is not surprising following the campaign of Hu Feng, Mao summoned the editor of the people's daily newspaper and demand that coverage be given to the debate. Finally, a trickle of comments did surface, which, as people gained confidence, developed into a flood of criticisms. Suggestions of improvement became denunciations of policies and even of individual leaders.

Answer 38

Suddenly- and the speed with which Mao acted may suggest that he had been planning to do this all along- a halt to the debate was announced and Mao rounded his critics branding them as 'rightists', whose intention was to destroy the revolution. An Anti-rightist campaign was launched.

Answer 39

What began as a call for open expression became another exercise in Thought Control, which produced around half a million new inmates for the 're-education camps'. He accused them of wanting to turn back the clock by overthrowing the the Communists and returning China to the rule of the nationalist bourgeoise. Mao's grip on the CCP tightened further, but the goodwill of intellectuals was lost forever.

Answer 40

Reluctant at first, he was worried that an American victory would leave China vulnerable to attack from US bombers working from North Korea. Therefore, he did intervene when the US forces entered the North Korea. While fear of what would happen to the PRC if the US conquered Korea was important to Mao, he was manipulated into intervention from Stalin, who hoped to get Mao to deal with the Americans, without it draining Russia's resources.

Answer 41

Mao took the outbreak of war as a way to take more extreme measures at home. If the PRC was becoming in danger then further measures to tighten the party's control over the population would be needed and could be easily justified. Therefore, Mao launched the Great Terror against counter-revolutionaries in October 1950, as soon as the PLA was sent to aid North Korea. The 3 and 5 antis followed.

Answer 42

Using these methods, which could be justified by the threat to national security posed by the war, Mao was able to not merely to destroy the lingering remnants of nationalist opposition, but also to remove elements who might emerge as future opponents. The wartime terror increased the power of the party because local party officials were given key roles in organising its details and ordinary workers were only too pleased to get involved by denouncing unpopular colleagues and exploitative bosses to party officials.

Answer 43

The party orchestrated a concerted propaganda campaign against the USA, calling on people to 'Resist America, Aid Korea, Preserve Our Homes, Defend Our Nation'. Mass meetings were organised in the workplace and schools. Zhou Enlai took the lead in organising student demonstrations and patriotic parades where anti-American chants were repeated. The persecution of those who refused to participate meant mass participation. This helped create a sense of unity in which China was portrayed as bravely standing up against the forces of a hostile world.

Answer 44

People were pressurised by the party into donating their money and goods to help finance the war. Forced donations of anything for up to 3 months salary was collected from intellectuals in the cities, while farmers in the countryside saw crops compulsory requisitioned. Taxes were raised to new levels.

Answer 45

UN and Russian observers estimate about 1 million lives lost. Most of these were conscripts, but the CCP referred to them as 'volunteers' so the Americans could not blame the Chinese and subsequently invade them. Following the death of Mao's eldest son, he took the blow badly and became even more distanced from ordinary people and their sufferings after this. While the scale of the losses was high, to Mao, this was unimportant, as the population was so vast that the losses would soon be made up.

Answer 46

The war had very damaging effects on the Chinese economy, which had to be entirely refocused in order to supply the military equipment. The financial cost of the war was colossal, half the spending in 1951 being on the military.