MAO Agriculture Flashcards
Why was it decided that agriculture had to be collectivised?
To feed industrial workers; release peasants from land to work in industry
Why had arguments broken out within the Party about the Jiangxi Base Area and Yanan?
Landlords had been driven out and their land redistributed, but richer peasants weren’t targeted because they were the most productive
When was the Agrarian Reform Law?
1950
What did the Agrarian Reform Law make clear?
Land reform meant redistribution, not lower rents/low interest loans
Who played a crucial role in the land reform process?
Army
How many landlords had lost their land by the end of 1951?
10 million
What did official figures put the number of deaths at by the end of 1951?
700,000
What were the Mutual Aid Teams (MATs)?
Groups of 10 or so families were encouraged to unite; to pool labour, animals and equipment; while retaining rights of private ownership
Who were the MATs managed by?
Peasant associations
Were the MATs compulsory?
Membership was ‘voluntary’
What were the Agricultural Producers’ Co-operatives (APCs)?
Successful MATs were encouraged to combine and form APCs of 40-50 families
How many rural households were in APCs by March 1955?
14%
When was the great famine?
1958-62
Who was private farming restored by?
Liu Shaoqi; Deng Xiaoping
When did Mao call for an initial slowdown of collectivisation?
Spring 1953
When did things stabilise enough again to resume collectivisation?
1954- peasants started buying and selling their food and land, just as they would under capitalism
What prompted the government to begin requisitioning grain?
Poor harvest of 1954
What happened as a result of the grain requisitioning of 1954?
Caused so much rural protest that Mao announced a policy of ‘Stop, Contract and Develop’
When did Mao decide to go for all-out collectivisation?
July 1955
Who did Mao announce his plans for all-out collectivisation to?
Conference of Local Party Secretaries
How many households were in APCs in July 1955?
17 million
How many households were in APCs in January 1956?
75 million
How many peasants were still farming as individuals by the end of 1956?
Only 3%
What was the official reason given for the drive to collectivisation?
Response to demands of peasantry
What was most likely the real reason for the drive to collectivisation?
Mao’s fear that supplies to the cities would continue to be unreliable as long as peasants owned the land
What were the new APCs created after July 1955 classed as?
‘Higher’ (HPCs)
What were the HPCs?
Consisted of 200-300 households; peasants no longer owned land/equipment
When did Mao return from his second visit to Moscow?
November 1957
How long did Mao plan for it take for China to overtake Britain as an industrial power and complete collectivisation?
15 years
How did Mao plan to overtake Britain as an industrial power?
By merging the collectives into larger units and making them responsible for range of activities as well as farming- industrial production; education; welfare provision; local defence
Who did Mao get to put their support behind the idea of the People’s Communes?
Liu Shaoqi (Vice chairman of the CCP); Deng Xiaoping (CCP secretary general)
What was a further, ideological reason for wanting to press ahead with the communes?
Mao’s determination to prevent the revolution from losing impetus
What was the Great Leap Forward officially known as at the time?
Three Red Banners
What would the GLP involve?
Developing industry and agriculture at the same time
Why was it a surprise that Mao managed to get the GLP endorsed by the Congress?
Faced bitter opposition from conservatives within CCP leadership during previous months
How long did Mao say it would take for China to overtake Britain as an industrial power after the announcement of the GLP?
7 1/2 years
Why was Mao eager to decentralise economic planning during the GLP?
Enthusiastic local officials could push changes forward without being restrained by government technical experts
What was the first People’s Commune called and where and when was it established?
The Sputnik- established in the Henan province in April 1958; involved the merging of 27 collectives and brought over 9,000 households under its control
How many collectives were merged into communes between 1958-60?
750,000 collectives were merged into 26,000 communes, which in total contained about 120 million households
What else were the communes supposed to be other than huge collective farms?
Unit of local government- took over responsibility for providing local services
How did the communes free up women for work?
By providing childcare and canteen facilities
What did the communes provide for the elderly?
‘Happiness homes’
What did the most advanced communes claim to offer people?
10 guarantees
What were the ten guarantees?
Meals, clothes, housing, schooling, medical attention, burial, haircuts, theatrical entertainment, money for heating in winter, money for weddings
Did villagers have a choice about being absorbed into the commune?
No
What happened when villagers were absorbed into the communes?
Had to surrender all private property without any form of compensation
How was a military dimension added to the communes?
Everyone between 15-50 had to be militia members and periodically train with weapons
When had Stalin relied on Trofim Lysenko’s theories?
In the aftermath of the Russian famine of the early 1930s
When was Lysenkoism made an official policy?
1958
Which points of Lysenkoism were common sense?
Development of new farm tools; use of new breeds and seeds; improved field management; increased irrigation
Which points of Lysenkoism were potentially dangerous?
Close planting; deep ploughing; increased fertilisation; pest control
What were the four pests targeted in the Four Pests Campaign?
Sparrows; rats; flies; mosquitoes
When did Mao announce that the commune system was now successfully in place and the whole of the countryside had been collectivised into some 26,000 communes?
CCP Central Committee meeting in December 1958 at Wuhan
How much grain did Mao declare was the harvest figure for that year at the CCP CC meeting in Dec 1958?
A record 430 million tonnes
What was the figure that the Party revised the grain production to after Mao’s bold claims in 1958?
375 million tonnes
What was the real grain production figure closer to in 1958?
200 million tonnes
What did Mao also announce at the Central Committee meeting in December 1958?
He was stepping down as Chairman of the PRC, while remaining chairman of the Party
Why did Mao claim he was stepping down as Chairman of the PRC?
Claimed to dislike the formal duties that came with being head of state
What was a clear sign that Mao knew the GLP was running into difficulties?
Decision to call special Party conference at Lushan July 1959
Who was the only person willing to challenge Mao openly at the Lushan conference?
Peng Dehuai- wrote a letter to Mao outlining his concerns
Peng Dehuai
Straight talking Long March veteran, with a history of falling out with Mao; led PLA in Korean War and became defence minister in 1954
When was Peng actually arrested?
During the Cultural Revolution
Who was the only person who spoke for Peng?
Aged Marshal Zhu De
Who conveniently developed illnesses which stopped them from attending the Politburo meeting about Peng’s fate?
Liu Shaoqi; Deng Xiaoping
When did the Chinese government officially acknowledge that there had been a famine at all?
1980
What is the generally accepted figure of deaths for the great famine?
30 million
Where was the famine worst?
Rural areas
Which Chinese region was by far the worst hit by the famine in terms of the proportion of people killed?
Tibet- 25% of its population of 4 million was wiped out
How did the government deliberately make the famine worse for Tibet?
Forced Tibetans to switch from growing barley to other crops not suited for local conditions; made nomadic yak herdsmen stay in villages
Why did the government deliberately make the famine worse for Tibet?
To destroy Tibet’s cultural identity
Where were the provinces worst hit by the famine in China?
Formed an arc across central China
How many people were killed in the famine in Shadong?
7.5 million
How many people were killed in the famine in Anhui?
8 million
How many people were killed in the famine in Sichuan?
9 million
Which provinces formed this damaged arc through central China?
Shadong in the east, Anhui, Henan, Hubei, Gansu and Sichuan
How much grain did the government continue to requisition during the great famine?
17% of crop in 1957; 21% in 1958; 28% in 1959; 21% in 1960
What happened even if communes did manage to produce surplus?
Transport and communication systems were too poorly developed to move food where it was needed
How many more crops did Mao believe that Lysenkoism was capable of producing?
16 times more
When did the number of inmates in the laogai swell again?
After 1958
What were the main causes of China’s great famine?
GLP was overly ambitious; Lysenkoism; lack of experts; climate of fear; lack of motivation; Mao’s own perspective of China’s priorities
How could the damage of the great famine have been avoided?
If Party leadership had responded positively to Peng’s comments
What played a part in the great famine, along with the political factors?
Adverse weather- 1960, worst drought in more than a century was followed by severe flooding across central China
When did an emergency directive allow villagers to keep their private plots of land and restored local markets?
November 1960
Who was the initial architect of the strategic retreat from collectivisation?
Li Fuchun
When did Mao call on Liu and Deng to take reponsibility for restoring food production levels and ending the chaos in the countryside?
1962
How was pressure reduced on urban food supplies in the restoration of private farming?
25 million city-dwellers forced to move to countryside
What happened as a result of Liu and Deng encourgaing local officials to make full use of the 1960 directive?
Many communes broke into smaller collectives of about 30 households, where villagers were rewarded for their individual input; some reverted entirely to private farming
How else did the government return the yield of the grain harvest in 1965 to what it had been in 1957?
Massive grain imports were arranged from Canada, Australia and even the USA in 1961
What was ideological fanaticism replaced with to help China recover from the great famine?
Economic realism
What was the Agrarian Reform Law?
Legal framework under which land reform took place, claiming that it would eradicate exploitation of peasants by ‘the landlord class’ as a first step towards industrialisation
How did the army play a crucial role in the land reform process?
Silenced those who might have been hostile to the new government; helped local Party officials organise work teams
How much of the Chinese land had changed hands by the end of 1951?
About 40%
How many people do historians estimate had been killed by the end of 1951 in the land reform process?
3 million
How did the government ensure that the peasants were at the centre of the land reform process?
Peasants conducted ‘speak bitterness’ meetings and passed sentences against landlords
Why did Mao push for collectivisation so quickly?
To avoid a repeat of the disastrous situation experienced by Stalin
When were the MATs formed?
1951
When were the APCs formed?
1952
Why did APCs theoretically lead to more effective farming?
Pooled land could be consolidated into larger units and cultivated more efficiently than traditional strips
What was a strong incentive for richer families to join the APCs?
Families with larger holdings were allowed to keep back some land for personal use, while renting the rest to the APC
How were profits shared out in the APCs?
According to resources contributed and food produced
How did Mao strengthen the illusion that increased collectivisation was in response to the peasants’ wishes?
‘Socialist Upsurge in the Countryside’- selectively edited compilation of favourable reports on collectives written by local activists
Why did Mao call for an initial slowdown of collectivisation?
Some APCs had been rushed and poorly planned and had gone into debt
What was ‘Stop, Contract and Develop’?
Called for a halt to APC development for next 18 months
When did Mao announce ‘Stop, Contract and Develop’?
January 1955
How were profits shared out in the HPCs?
According to work points earned by labour contributed
Why was collectivisation a tremendous success for Mao ideologically?
Chinese Marxism in action
Why was collectivisation Chinese Marxism in action?
State owned the means of production of food, the land, on which 90% of the population worked
What did collectivisation mark a distinct change in?
Relationship between CCP and peasantry
Why was collectivisation a political success for Mao?
Tribute to his authority within Party; greatly increased control Party exerted over local people at grass-roots level
How did food production increase over the 1FYP?
3.8% per annum
Why would it have been hard for the peasants to produce a surplus?
Yields per hectare were quite high, but productivity was low
Where did the initial encouragement for the creation of the communes come from?
Enthusiastic cadres in Henan- claimed local APCs were asking to merge to release more manpower for water control projects of winter 1957-58
How were industry and agriculture to be developed at the same time during the GLP?
People’s Communes that had already been created were to be expanded; labour force was to be mobilised on water conservancy and other civil engineering schemes
Why did Mao choose the term ‘People’s Communes’?
Wanted to recreate spirit of Paris commune of 1871
How much sleep were the Chinese people supposed to get in the communes?
6 hours every 2 days
Why did team leaders in the communes push their members to work so hard?
Competed to out-produce neighbouring communes
How did Mao himself push Lysenkosim?
Drafted an 8-point programme based on Lysenko’s ideas, which farmers had to follow
What was the most catastrophic aspect of Lysenkosim?
Sparrowcide
Which organisms multiplied uncontrollably and caused damage to plants and grain stocks due to sparrowcide?
Insects; rats and vermin
Other than upsetting the ecological balance, what was the other negative impact of sparrowcide?
Increased fertilisation of soil led to destruction of 1000s of peasants’ homes
Why did Peng Dehuai speak up at the Lushan conference?
When he returned to his native province of Anhui, he saw the suffering caused by the GLP
Who was so ashamed of failing to support Peng Dehuai that he drunk himself into a stupor in his room?
Zhou Enlai
What did the Lushan conference mark?
‘Second leap’
Who was jailed after sending Mao a long report accusing him of attempted genocide in Tibet?
Panchen Lama
What were peasants reduced to eating during the great famine to stay alive?
Tree bark; plants
When did Mao shockingly declare that the death of half of the Chinese population in nuclear war would be a sacrifice worth paying for victory?
During his 1957 visit to Moscow
Where did rice become a staple item?
Communist East Germany
When did the grain imports after the great famine remain at a high level until?
1970s
When did Deng Xiaoping make his comment about cats?
To Communist Youth League in July 1962
How did Mao initially attempt to retreat from the failure of collectivisation?
Launched campaign to overthrow management of communes and root out corrupt elements to shift blame onto subversive local officials
