MAO Social and Cultural Changes Flashcards
What had first brought women more rights?
1911 Revolution
What promised the abolition of restrictions affecting women?
Clause 6 of the Communist Common Program of 1949
When was foot binding officially outlawed?
1911
Where had the Communists experimented with new marriage laws in the 1930s?
Jiangxi; Yanan
What was one of the first social changes the Communists introduced?
1950 Marriage Law
When was a second propaganda campaign launched to aid the 1950 Marriage Law?
1953
Why did the land redistribution campaign aid the advancement of women’s rights?
Gave women the chance to own land in their own name for the first time
When did women’s vulnerability increase?
1958-62
When did the family unit come under renewed attack?
During the Cultural Revolution
How many teenagers were uprooted between 1968-72?
12 million
How did the population grow under Mao’s rule?
From 540 million to 940 million
When were contraceptives made widely available?
1962
Who did Mao use to encourage women to restrict the number of children they had?
Female cadres in the Women’s Federation
When did Mao finally clarify his stance on population policy?
1971
In the first year after the Marriage Law was passed, how many women used the new divorce system?
Over a million
How did the proportion of women in the overall workforce change between 1949-76?
Quadrupled from 8% to 32%
In which areas of China had women rarely worked in the fields before the Great Leap Forward?
Northern areas
Model female worker
Deng Yulan in Jehol province
Wang Jinxi
‘Iron Man’ Wang Jinxi was feted for breaking China’s dependence on oil imports
People’s Daily
Acted as the mouthpiece of the Communist Party
By when was a national system of primary education set up with successful results?
Mid-1950s
How did the national literacy rate change between 1949-1976?
Rose from 20% in 1949 to 50% in 1960, and stood at 64% in 1964- by 1976, it had only risen to 70%
How much of the total budget went on culture and education in 1952?
Only 6.4%
When did China split away from Russia?
1959
Pinyin
Modernised form of phonetic Mandarin, the language of most of China
When was Pinyin officially adopted to assist the spread of literacy?
1956
Why did Mandarin present a problem in assisting the spread of literacy?
Its pronunciation varied widely from region to region; it had no alphabet
When did schemes aiming to introduce a standardised language system become a reality?
When Zhou Yougang was asked to oversee its introduction by the Education Ministry
For which period were schools and universities closed?
1966-70
How many young people’s education simply stopped between 1966-70?
130 million
What was a key part of Zhou’s Four Modernisations?
Rebuilding confidence in the education system
Barefoot doctors
During the Cultural Revolution, one million medical trainees were sent to provide rudimentary medical help to the rural peasantry
What sort of training did the barefoot doctors undertake before they were dispatched to provide free basic health care?
6 months of intensive study, with emphasis on practical skills
What did barefoot doctors promote?
Simple hygiene; preventative health care; family planning
What was a chronic feature of rural China?
Endemic diseases (notably cholera, typhoid, dysentry, malaria and scarlet fever); high mortality rates
Why was the barefoot doctors campaign enforced for ideological reasons?
Exposure to peasant conditions would prevent young medical intellectuals from slipping into a bourgeois mindset
What helped the barefoot doctors win local confidence more readily?
Spent half their time working in agriculture, alongside the people they were looking after
Who paid the wages of the barefoot doctors?
Local village government
When did the government introduce ‘patriotic health movements’?
1952
Patriotic health movements
Propaganda drives led by teams of Party workers who explained the importance of hygiene to the peasantry
What was exaggerated partly to get the first of the patriotic health movements off the ground?
Germ welfare scare during the Korean War
Who endorsed health schemes similar to the barefoot doctors elsewhere in the world?
World Health Organisation
What stated that there would be freedom of religion in the PRC?
Article 5 of the Common Program
What did communists view religion as?
Device used by the bourgeoisie to give false hope of a better future to the masses
When it came to religion, who was Mao particularly critical of?
Christian missionaries in China
What was the official view of religion?
Since the workers had thrown off their oppressors, there was no longer any need for religion to exist
How did the CCP originally deal with religion?
Set up national religious associations for each of the main religions, following the Soviet model
What social improvement did the communists have high hopes of, which wasn’t explicitly promised in the Common Program?
Extending health care to everyone
What was the human waste used as fertiliser in the fields also called?
‘Night soil’
What was one of the successes of the ‘patriotic health movements’?
Reducing the death rate from waterborne diseases
Which insect was there also a concentrated health campaign about?
Snails that spread schistosomiasis
What is schistosomiasis?
Serious abdominal infection
What provided a useful ploy in stimulating participation in the ‘four pests’ campaign during the GLP?
Invoking a spirit of competition
Who had the best access to hospital treatment?
Urban workers in large industrial enterprises or SOEs
How was most medical care administered in rural areas?
County hospitals staffed by trained doctors; outpatient care provided by village health centres
What is the evidence that there were significant improvements in health under Mao?
Life expectancy rose from 41 in 1950 to 62 by 1970; infant mortality rates fell
What did Mao think that the writers, artists and musicians whose work helped to shape culture should be?
Ordinary people- their work should reflect ordinary people’s concerns
What were clear reminders to the residents of Beijing of the political purpose behind cultural change?
Creation of the Ten Great Buildings; remodelling of Tiananmen Square in time for the 10th anniversary of the Communist accession to power
What were the changes made to Tiananmen Square in the space of less than a year?
Levelled and extended to accommodate over 500,000 people
What was the remodelled Tiananmen Square made deliberately bigger than?
Red Square in Moscow
What was built to accommodate the National People’s Congress?
Great Hall of the People
When were the Ten Great Buildings rapidly constructed?
1958-59
What was one of the new Ten Great Buildings?
Beijing’s new railway station
Since when had Confucian values been regarded as the main obstacle to progress?
May 1919
What first dealt a major blow to traditional Chinese values?
Land Reform of 1950
What provided the government with the ideal opportunity to put a stop to the social customs and rituals to which the peasants were accustomed?
Collectives, and then their communes
What did peasants in the collectives/communes find themselves attending in their leisure time?
Political meetings where the new values were reinforced; watching shows and propaganda films put on by agit-prop touring groups
What were examples of Jiang Qing being inconsistent when it came to her culture policies?
Most Western cultural influences were banned because of their bourgeois origins, but piano music and oil paintings were allowed because they suited her personal taste
What was the main result of Jiang’s control?
Creativity stifled completely
What was the only form of theatrical entertainment available and commissioned by Jiang Qing?
A set of 8 opera ballets
Who was less than complimentary about the new theatre arrangement, arguing that the people wanted entertainment and variety, not battlefield scenes?
Deng Xiaoping
What were the main offerings of cinemas between 1966-73?
Feature films made from many of the 8 model works
Who had been trained by the Party to produce wall paintings promoting the GLP?
Peasant women in Huxian, in Shaanxi province
How many novels were published during the Cultural Revolution?
124
What were the main faiths practised in China pre-CCP?
Buddhism; Confucianism; Christianity; Islam; ancestor worship
How long had Buddhism been practised in China for?
Well over 1,000 years
Where did most of China’s Buddhists live?
Tibet
Why did Buddhism come under such an intense attack?
Strategic rather than ideological reasons
In purely ideological reasons, how did Buddhism share some common ground with communism?
Both were atheistic; both deplored possession of material goods
Why did the Buddhist outlook clash with that of the communist leadership?
Its contemplative nature made its adherents potentially more difficult to mobilise in mass activity; its pacifism
What was the Tibetan form of Buddhism?
Lamaism
What did part of destroying Tibetan identity involve?
Banning Lamaism from being practised in public; replacing the Tibetan language with Mandarin
When was there a mass uprising against Chinese rule in Tibet?
1959
Who was particularly targeted in the PLA’s attempt to quell the 1959 Tibet uprising?
Buddhists
If Buddhist monasteries wanted to remain open after the Tibet uprising, what did they have to do?
Come under the control of the Chinese Buddhist Association
Where did the Dalai Lama flee to after the Tibet uprising?
Northen India
How many Tibetan monasteries were destroyed during the Cultural Revolution?
6,000
How long had Confucian ideas dominated Chinese philosophy for?
2,500 years
What was the Confucian approach to life?
To make society as harmonious as possible by showing respect for legitimate authority
Since the early 20th century, who had Confucianism come under attack from?
Intellectuals, who blamed it for China’s weaknesses
Why is Confucianism not technically classed as a religion?
No god, church or clergy; no concern with the afterlife
What did communist propaganda denounce Confucianism as representing?
All that was bad with China’s past
When had Christianity established a foothold in China?
By the 19th century
After 1949, what quickly drove most Protestant missionaries out of the country?
Fear of arrest; accusations of espionage
What put Catholic missionaries in a difficult position in China after 1949, compared to the Protestant missionaries?
Pope’s insistence that they stay
What did the Communists create to make themselves appear tolerant when it came to Christianity?
Patriotic Churches
Patriotic Churches
Such churches lost all independence, the state having the right to appoint the clergy and dictate doctrine
What did the Protestant Church come under the authority of?
Three Self Patriotic Movement in 1953
When did some Catholics reluctantly follow the Protestant’s surrender in 1953?
1957
Which were the provinces in which most Chinese Muslims lived?
North-western provinces of Xinjiang, Gansu and Qinghai
Who was Xinjiang home to?
Uighur, Kazakh, Hui and Kirghiz peoples, all of whom resented Chinese rule
What is the core belief of ancestor worship?
There is a reciprocal relationship between the living and the dead
What does ancestor worship overlap heavily with?
Confucianism
What did the Communists do to ancestor worship in public?
Condemned it as a superstition that was no longer acceptable in the new China, as it focused on the past
What was Mao’s opinion on population policy?
Birth rate should be reduced to 2%
Why was Mao particularly critical of Christian missionaries in China?
They were a reminder of the West’s attempts to colonise China in the 19th century
How did the patriotic health movements reduce the number of deaths from waterborne diseases?
Encouraged the digging of deeper wells for obtaining drinking water; promoted more careful disposal of waste in pits away from homes
What did the opera ballets commissioned by Jiang Qing contain?
Triumph of heroic workers over their class oppressors
Why were the Communists so focused on destroying the family as a social unit?
Family relations embodied Confucian values; existence of family encouraged a bourgeoisie mindset
Why were the impacts of social reforms for women limited?
Merely passing laws is not enough to alter deeply ingrained attitudes
How was the PLA instructed to treat women?
With respect
When was the 1950 Marriage Law drafted?
During the civil war
How was the 1950 Marriage law effectively imposed?
With a huge propaganda campaign; through posters and leaflets
Why were the gains of women from the land redistribution campaign of 1950 short-lived?
Due to the compulsory collectivisation scheme a few years later
Why were the communes theoretically supposed to be beneficial for women?
They would provide canteens, laundries and kindergartens to free women from domestic chores
Why were women in agriculture put at a serious advantage compared to men?
Typically, they earned fewer work points than men because of the nature of agricultural work
What is an example of the divorce rate rising over the famine years?
Rose by 60% in Gansu province
How did the communes aim to destroy traditional family life?
By reducing women’s roles as mothers and family raisers
Who were the main victims of the 1958-62 famine?
Very young; very old
Which period of Mao’s China worsened the position of women?
Cultural Revolution
What did the growth in numbers of working women owe much to?
Expansion of industry and the services sector in the 1FYP
When were some of the prejudices about women doing farm work weakened?
When they stepped in to the fill labour shortages caused by the mass mobilisation of men on construction projects
Why did Mao strive for a more educated society?
Economic progress depended on China producing its own technical specialists; communist ideas could be spread more quickly among literate people
Why did Mao believe that the health of China need to improve?
A healthy workforce would be more productive; successful health policy would provide major propaganda opportunities
How many children aged 7-16 were in full-time education by 1956?
Less than 1/2
What was education like after the CR?
Greater emphasis on practical and vocational training; fewer exams to be taken
What were the wages of the barefoot doctors like?
Roughly 1/2 of those of a traditionally trained urban doctor
How many villages were involved in the barefoot doctors scheme by 1976?
90%
What can the ‘patriotic health movements’ be seen as?
Mass mobilisation
What were many Buddhist monasteries turned into?
Army barrracks; adminastrative buildings
Why did the government respond so harshly to the outpouring of grief at Zhou Enlai’s death?
It seemed like a revival of ancestor worship
