How Effectively Did the Communist Party Deal With Opposition? (2a.1)

Question 1

What was a Danwei?

Answer 1

• A work unit through which housing, food and clothing was allocated
• Cadre in charge of each Danwei was issued with a supply of food ration cards (powerful device with which to enforce conformity)

Question 2

When were the Reunification Campaigns?

Answer 2

1949-50

Question 3

What were the three Reunification Campaigns?

Answer 3

• Guangdong
• Xinjiang
• Tibet

Question 4

Why we’re communists concerned about Guangdong?

Answer 4

• Traditionally pro-nationalist
• Mao feared enemy spies and saboteurs remained (anti-communist sentiment)
• 28,000 executed during the ‘repress the counter-revolutionaries’ campaign

Question 5

Why was Xinjiang problematic for the communists?

Answer 5

• Bordered soviet-controlled outer Mongolia
• Large muslim population with close ethnic ties to muslims in the soviet union
• Mongols, Turkics and Iranians had different written languages and cultural heritage

Question 6

What methods did the communists use to bring Xinjiang under control?

Answer 6

• CCP used a combination of military force and negotiation
• Rumours spread that Mao had nationalist leaders killed in a plane crash
• PLA cleared all resistance
• Secured territory to ensure safety for government-sponsored in-migration of the Han Chinese settlers

Question 7

What were the aims of the invasion of Tibet by the PLA?

Answer 7

• Convince observers areas that all areas had once been part of a larger Chinese State
• Wanted to ‘liberate it from imperialist oppression’ but in reality they wanted to remove the threat of a rival belief system (Buddhism)
• Tibet was far from Beijing and vulnerable to foreign influence
• Tibet was led by Mao’s opponent Dali Lama

Question 8

What actions were taken by the communists upon taking control of Lhasa?

Answer 8

• Soldiers positioned in Lhasa
• 17 point agreement on Measures for the Peaceful Liberation of Tibet’
• Set up government that was superficially Tibetan but in reality was controlled by Beijing

Question 9

How did the Chinese attempt to destroy Tibetan identity?

Answer 9

• Traditional religious practice, teaching of Tibetan language/history in school prohibited
• Mandarin Chinese enforced
• Political meetings prohibited with the threat of imprisonment
• Many Tibetans forced to take part in the communal land reform as boundaries were redrawn to ensure they lived outside Tibetan borders (in Sichuan instead)

Question 10

What was the purpose of the labelling?

Answer 10

• To be able to monitor members of the ‘bad’ classes
• Police could move beyond the obvious targets of known GMD sympathisers
• Although, even those of a ‘dubious’ background were not victimised for the 1st 12 months of their professional expertise was contributing to the regime
• Any reprieve earned by confessions/recanting in public may only be temporary as everything was noted down in a dossier (dangan/paperwork)

Question 11

Who were part of the ‘Red’ class?

Answer 11

• Cadres
• Soldiers
• Martyrs
• Industrial workers
• Poor/lower middle peasants

Question 12

Who were part of the ‘Black’ class?

Answer 12

• Capitalists
• Nationalists
• Landlords
• Rich peasants

Question 13

Crackdown on Crime

Answer 13

• Police ordered to clean up cities by removing petty criminals and ‘nuisances’ by relocating them to the countryside/locking them up
• Beggars/prostitutes targeted
• Broadly popular amongst urban residents (longed to see order restored after years of war/chaos)
• ‘Re-education’ camps quickly full
• Tackled criminal gangs/triads
• 150,000 criminal arrested, over half of whom were executed

Question 14

What is a Re-education Camp?

Answer 14

• Re-educating to be loyal communists
• Prison camp
• Forced labour
• Beating

Question 15

When was the Great Terror?

Answer 15

1950-51

Question 16

What was the Great Terror?

Answer 16

• Designed to remove opponents and deter others
• Launched at same time as PLA was sent into North Korea
• War gave Mao an excuse to crush whoever still stood in the communists way

Question 17

Tao Zhu (Great Terror)

Answer 17

• Ruthless
• Orchestrated the clampdown in Guangxi Province
• Proudly killed 46,000 bandits on the next 12 months
• Purged in Cultural Revolution

Question 18

Luo Ruiqing (Great Terror)

Answer 18

• Head of security in Beijing
• Transmitting Mao’s wishes to provincial leaders
• Pressure from Luo led to leader of Hubei Province stepping up killings from 220 to 45,000 in 1951
• Victim of infighting in Cultural Revolution, tried to commit suicide by jumping out a window

Question 19

What did Mao suggest was an acceptable target for killing?

Answer 19

1/1000 of the local population in each area

Question 20

Rao Shushi (Great Terror)

Answer 20

• Party leader in Shanghai
• Proposed that killings be extended to enemies inside CCP itself
• So many people arrested in 1951 (bottleneck in prisons) that arrests had to stop until sufficient members had been executed to make more space inside them

Question 21

How many died in the Great Terror?

Answer 21

Between 710,000-2 million and

Question 22

What happened in Jinan?

Answer 22

• Initially the Terror claimed fewer lives in the cities (due to fears of adverse publicity and the urban professionals were still needed)
• March 1951 top-ranking military official was shot dead at a public concert in Jinan, Shandong
• April the police swept through 16 cities in a co-ordinated raid
• 17,000 arrested followed by a wave of confessions, executions and suicides

Question 23

What did young party activists have to do?

Answer 23

Hoping to advance their careers in the party, young activists were forced to watch mass executions to ‘immerse’ themselves in the revolutionary experience

Question 24

What was the ‘Three Antis’ movement?

Answer 24

• 1951
• Targeted corruption, waste and delay in the government
• Bo Yibo in charge of the clean up campaign
• Mass meetings

Question 25

What was the catalyst for the ‘Three Antis’ movement?

Answer 25

• Arrest of Zhang Zishan and Liu Qingshan
• 2 leading members of the CCP hierarchy in Tianjin
• Charged with embezzling large amounts of money from the party
• Executed

Question 26

What were ‘flies’ and ‘tigers’

Answer 26

• Flies: small scale embezzlement
• Tigers: large scale embezzlement
• Bo Yibo proudly said he hunted 100,000 ‘tigers’ in East China
• Many involved knew the accusations were often false

Question 27

What was the ‘Five Antis’ campaign?

Answer 27

• 1952
• Targeted bribery, tax evasion, theft of state property, fraud and economic espionage
• Denunciation meetings
• Directly targeting bourgeoisie
• Activists encouraged workers’ groups to accuse employers of criminal activities

Question 28

What was a Denunciation box (Five Antis)?

Answer 28

• Written accusations could be dropped in, speeding up the process of denunciation
• Once accused, a victim a such a negligible chance of acquittal that the main problem was getting their confession believed quickly (to shorten the ordeal of interrogation and imprisonment)

Question 29

Who was Bo Yibo (Five Antis)?

Answer 29

• Former guerrilla fighter who has joined central committee in 1945
• Went on to become a leading economic planner in 1950s
• Purged during cultural revolution due to his moderate views

Question 30

What happened to the victims (Five Antis)?

Answer 30

1% shot
1% sent to labour camps for life
3% jailed for more than 10 years
The rest were fined
The humiliation drove many to suicide

Question 31

Why was it hard to commit suicide (Five Antis)?

Answer 31

• Suspects closely supervised
• Nets were attatched to break people’s falls from high buildings
• Parks patrolled to stop people hanging themselves from trees

Question 32

What happened to Rao Shushi and Gao Gang?

Answer 32

• Top level of the party purged
• Gao Gang and Rao Shushi accused of infringing the ban on fractions and building up their own empires inside the party
• Gao Gang: suicide
• Rao Shushi: arrested and died in prison 20 years later

Question 33

When was the Hundred Flowers Campaign?

Answer 33

1957

Question 34

What was the Hundred Flowers Campaign?

Answer 34

• First 5 year plan came to an end, Mao called for an open debate about its results and the future pace of change
• ‘Let a hundred flowers bloom and a hundred schools of thought contend’
• Still got no support as people were too worried about what would happen if they spoke out
• A trickle of comments surfaced when Mao embarked on a stage-managed railway tour, developed into a flood of criticisms
• Mao rounded on critics (branded them ‘rightists’
• Anti-rightist campaign launched, produced 500,000 new inmates for re-education camps

Question 35

What prompted Mao’s call for debate? (Hundred Flowers)

Answer 35

• Desire not to expose himself to the same critics being levelled at Stalin
• Outbreak of Hungarian Rising made Mao realise that being too open minded may backfire
• May have been trying to win over the intellectuals (had a valuable contribution to the economy of China)