Mao period

Question 1

First Five Year Plan dates

Answer 1

1952-57

Question 2

How was life expectancy affected by the First 5-Year Plan?

Answer 2

1949-57 life expectancy rose from 36 to 57 years

Question 3

How were urban incomes affected by the First 5-Year Plan?

Answer 3

1949-57 urban incomes rose by 40%

Question 4

What positive impacts did the first 5-year plan have?

Answer 4

1949-57 life expectancy rose from 36 to 57 years

1949-57 urban incomes rose by 40%

City housing standards increased

Question 5

Negatives of the First 5-Year Plan

Answer 5

Agricultural production was unable to keep up with industrial production, resulting in a huge imbalance between rural and urban populations

Farmers had to work even harder during this period to keep up.

Question 6

Intro

Answer 6

After CCP took over (1949), the years immediately following (1950-55) China was believed to be relatively peaceful.

Peace could be seen to be achieved within the people, within the party, and with other countries and regions.

However, when looked at more closely, it is clear that there was a great deal of unrest within these areas due to Mao’s attacks on the people, his purging of party members, and the Korean War, to name a few.

Despite China appearing to be more peaceful than other periods of Chinese history during the early 1950s, that does not make it ‘truly at peace’.

Question 7

Para 1 topic

Answer 7

Peace within the people (social)

Question 8

Para 1:
Peace within the people
At Peace:

Answer 8

The CCP claimed that all the power rested with the people and that the party officials and the government acted as servants to the nation

First 5-Year Plan:
o Economic development with focus on industry
o China had an economic growth rate of nearly 9% between 1953 and 1957
o Life expectancy rose from 36 to 57 years, city housing standards improved, and urban incomes increased by 40% between 1949-57

Question 9

Para 1:
Peace within the people
Not at Peace topics

Answer 9

First 5-year Plan
Mass Terror
Mass Conformity
Attack on the middle class

Question 10

Para 1:
Peace within the people
Not at Peace - First 5-year plan
2

Answer 10

Agricultural production was unable to keep up with industrial production, resulting in a huge imbalance between rural and urban populations

Farmers had to work even harder during this period to keep up.

Question 11

Para 1:
Peace within the people
Not at Peace - Mass terror
3

Answer 11

A concerted attack was launched against the ‘anti-socials, counter-revolutionaries, and imperialists’ - catch-all terms that could be used to condemn anyone

Encouraged the Chinese people to spy on their friends, neighbours, and co-workers and turn them in if they believed they were against ‘New China’

In Shanghai and Guangzhou in the early 1950s, the CCP turned on the gangsters that they had previously used to gain control of the city and rounded up 130,000 of them (over half of these were executed).

Question 12

Para 1:
Peace within the people
Not at Peace - Mass Conformity

Answer 12

No tolerance of independent thinking

Religion was attacked - Mao compared Christian missionaries in China to the Nazis in Europe

Conformity was maintained by exploiting the traditional fear Chinese people have for being publicly exposed/humiliated, resulting in widespread fear and anxiety

Question 13

Para 1:
Peace within the people
Not at Peace - Attack on Middle Class

Answer 13

After using them to help the PRC through its initial troubles, Mao set to destroy them.

Mao insisted that the proletarian revolution could only be achieved through violence – he believed they would never conform or give up power willingly, so the party showed no mercy in annihilating the bourgeoisie.

In 1955 Mao said to the party leaders on Agricultural cooperation, it will “isolate the bourgeoisie”, “facilitate the final elimination of capitalism” and that in this area they are “quite heartless” and will be “cruel and have little mercy.”

Question 14

Para 2 topic

Answer 14

Peace within the party (political)

Question 15

Para 2
Peace within the party
At peace

Answer 15

They practiced Democratic Centralism.

This is the idea that although there is one leader (Chairman Mao) and a smaller governing body (the Politburo), the government still held elections for party officials and administrators in the villages, localities, and regions.

This meant that the National People’s Congress was elected as the people’s choice, resulting in a small amount of peace being achieved within the party as the party members were supposedly representing the will of the population

Question 16

Para 2
Peace within the party
Not at peace topics

Answer 16

Democratic centralism

1951 and 1952 Anti-movements

Party Purges

Question 17

Para 2
Peace within the party
Not at peace - democratic centralism

Answer 17

The Politburo and Mao were still in control of the elections so it was unlikely that anyone would be successful if they showed any opposition to Mao and his policies.

Question 18

Para 2
Peace within the party
Not at peace - 1951 and 1952 ‘Antis’ Movements

Answer 18

1951 - Mao launched the Three ‘Antis’ Movement with the targets being on waste, corruption and inefficiency.

1952 - Five ‘Antis’ Movement, targeting industrial sabotage, tax evasion, bribery, fraud, theft of government property.

By doing this, he was able to draw out class enemies and anti-revolutionaries or people with any opposition to him.

Caused party members to turn on each other just like the rest of the population and claim that people were going against the revolution when they most likely were not.

Question 19

Para 2
Peace within the party
Not at peace - Party Purges

Answer 19

After launching these movements, Mao began his party purges, in which Members of the CCP who did not slavishly follow official CCP policy were liable to be condemned as ‘Rightists’ and could be sent to labour camps

Question 20

Para 3 topic

Answer 20

Peace with other countries and regions (militarily)

Question 21

Para 3
Peace with other countries and regions
At peace

Answer 21

Sino-Soviet Treaty (1950)

o Although China was heavily exploited in this treaty, it did prevent a direct war between the two countries

o Mao could also claim that the PRC paid for all Soviet equipment in the Korean War – increasing the people’s faith in his power and retaining peace between the party and the people

Question 22

Para 3
Peace with other countries and regions
Not at peace - topics

Answer 22

Reunification campaigns
Taiwan
Korean War

Question 23

Para 3
Peace with other countries and regions
Not at peace - Reunification campaigns

Answer 23

Tibet (1950-51), the PLA invaded Tibet in early 1950 and it took 6 months of long fighting for the CCP to establish control.
When Tibet was under complete CCP control, they began a campaign to destroy Tibetan identity by bringing in Han Chinese settlers and promoting Chinese traditions – led to a series of uprisings.

Xinjiang (1950), within a year of the PLA’s arrival in Xinjiang, strict controls were imposed on religious worship in an attempt to undermine the sense of local identity.

Question 24

Para 3
Peace with other countries and regions
Not at peace - Taiwan

Answer 24

In 1949, the GMD had fled to Taiwan

Mao wished to invade Taiwan and reclaim it but this was prevented by the Cold War and the USA’s large support of Taiwan (Mao couldn’t risk an invasion)

Question 25

Para 3
Peace with other countries and regions
Not at peace - Korean War

Answer 25

Felt threatened by the US when the advanced too close to the Chinese border - Yalu

Influenced by the traditional Chinese strategic culture of regarding crisis (weiji) as constituted by both danger (wei) and opportunity (ji), the outbreak of crisis in Korea was seen by the CCP as both a challenge and a rare opportunity for the CCP to achieve credibility and authority.

Deaths of around a million Chinese soldiers - 1/3 of the total PRC forces involved

Massive drain on the young PRC’s economy

Question 26

Para 4 - topic

Answer 26

Comparison with before and after the early 1950s

Question 27

Para 4
Comparison with before and after the early 1950s
Before
5

Answer 27

Before the early 1950s, the Civil War was accounting for 80% of the government’s expenditure (1945)

To meet the economic needs of the war the gov. printed money - huge inflation

GMD troops were viscous - Shanghai saw street beheadings

Warlords still had a great deal of power

Second Sino-Japanese War - 15 years of atrocities committed on the Chinese People by the Japanese
– Shenyang/Mukden Incident (When the Japanese blew up a small portion of their own railway line in Manchuria in 1931 and blamed it on the Chinese so that they could have a reason to invade Manchuria)
- Nanjing Massacre in 1937 killed 40,000-300,000 Chinese civilians.
Compared with the Second Sino-Japanese war which led to 211,000–10,000,000+ military casualties, the Korean War is seemingly insignificant.

Question 28

Para 4
Comparison with before and after the early 1950s
After

Answer 28

The 1956 Hundred Flowers Campaign and the subsequent 1957 Anti-Rightist Campaign led to 500,000 – 750,000 party officials being sent to labour camps

In the late 1950s, the Great Leap Forward (1958-62) caused the Great Famine which killed 30 million people (values vary). As there was mass starvation, people turned to cannibalism in some areas - not peaceful

The Cultural Revolution led to the destruction of 4922 of Beijing’s 6843 ‘places of cultural and historical interest’ as well as the Red Guards killing around 1.5 million people, torturing most of them.