Mao Zedong and the PRC

Question 0

Little Red Book

Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong

Answer 0

• secular bible of China, source of all truth
• made by Lin Biao and Chen Boda
• daily part of military training
• represented true revolutionary spirit and was a model for all to copy
• social necessity to have a copy at all times

Question 1

Backyard furnaces

Answer 1

• primitive smelting devices that every family was encouraged to build to draw in supplies of iron and steel
• became a national movement = morale
• unsuccessful = unusable steel
• heavy environmental price
• took time away from farming

Question 2

Four Olds

Answer 2

1. old ideas
2. old culture
3. old customs
4. old habits
   - targets of the Culture Revolution

Question 3

Five Anti-Movement

Answer 3

• 1952
• attacked industrial sabotage, tax evasion, bribery, fraud, and theft of government property
• means to stimulate economy
• destroy remnants of what Mao defined as “the bureaucratic capitalist class”

Question 4

Labeling

Answer 4

• chief means of enforcing conformity
• neighbors spied on neighbors, workers snooped on their mates, children reported their parents, each street/tenement block officially appointed “watchers,” and community associations became means of exerting control

Question 5

Korean War

Answer 5

• 1950-3
• Mao felt obligated to join
• harmful results = million Chinese lives lost, huge drain on PRC’s economy, and PRC had no possibility of reclaiming Taiwan by force
• benefits = Mao and the CCP able to consolidate their hold over China, hardened China’s resolve to stand alone, Mao able to brag about China shedding blood for communism (while the USSR didn’t), and able to match USA in combat and remain undefeated

Question 6

Anti-rightist movement

Answer 6

• rightist had no precise definition and instead applied to anyone Mao wanted to remove
• result of the Hundred Flowers Campaign
• many of the best minds and the most able public servants were obliged to make abject confessions and submit themselves to reeducation
• Party purged of members

Question 7

State-owned enterprises (SOEs)

Answer 7

• attempt to bring industry under total government direction
• existing firms/companies worked together as SOEs
• prices, output targets, and wages were fixed by state
• inefficient because there was no incentive
• any surplus earned was sent to the state
• provided workers with accommodation and medical and educational benefits for their families
• no plan for turning what had been produced into manufactured goods

Question 8

Three Anti-movement

Answer 8

• 1951
• targeted waste, corruption, and inefficiency
• means to extend political control

Question 9

The Great Leap Forward

Second Five-Year Plan

Answer 9

• 1958-62
• aim = turn PRC into a modern industrial state in shortest time
• underlying weakness = no plan for turning what had been produced into manufactured goods
• China lacked essential skills and systems and thus couldn’t become a modern country like Mao had hoped
• limitations = political interference, poor quality of finished goods, no detailed instructions on how things were to be done, much was left to local initiative, no integrated national plan, no effective organization and quality control, and USSR stopped providing assistance in 1960
• Mao wasn’t a economic planner

Question 10

Lysenkoism

Answer 10

• made official policy in 1958
• agricultural constitution = popularization of new breeds/seeds, close planting, deep ploughing, increased fertilization, innovation of farm tools, improved field management, pest control, and increased irrigation = all together destroyed benefits
• named after Soviet scientist
• one of the factors that caused famine

Question 11

Iron Rice Bowl

Answer 11

• system that provided workers with a guaranteed job and protected their wages
• benefit of the SOEs for workers

Question 12

Sparrowcide

Answer 12

• absurd extermination of sparrows for they were seen as pests who ate crop seeds and thus decreased output
• catastrophic = without birds, insects and small creatures gorged themselves on grains and plants, and vermin multiplied
• part of the Great Leap Forward

Question 13

Communes

Answer 13

• organized regions where the collectives were grouped together
• agricultural land divided into 70,000 communes, and each commune was roughly 750,000 brigades, and each brigade contained 200 households = whole system under control of PRC’s central government

Question 14

Red Guards

Answer 14

• the revolutionary students whose name derived from their practice of wearing red arm bands, supplied by Maoist officials
• key part of Cultural Revolution
• instruments for reimposing Mao’s will on the nation and reshaping it according to his vision
• Mao thought of them as “monkeys to disrupt the palace”
• Mao knew that their need to conform made them susceptible to suggestion, and following him was better than schoolwork

Question 15

Cultural Revolution

Answer 15

1. to preserve Mao’s power for the rest of his life by removing all opposition
2. to obliterate the record of the Great Leap Forward
3. to ensure his concept of revolution would continue after his death by remolding China in such a way it couldn’t revert back
4. to prevent China making the same mistakes as the USSR
5. to break the power of urban bureaucrats and restore the peasant character of China’s revolution
   - climax to a power struggle that went back to 1962 between Mao and his ministers (Deng Xiaoping and Liu Shaoqi)
   - ended with Mao’s death
   - 1966-76

Question 16

Lushan Conference

Answer 16

• 1959
• opportunity to acknowledge the famine but only one did and he was ridiculed
• called to limit spreading hunger though no one would admit it for fear of offending Mao
• Mao brought his wife, Jiang Qing
• Mao’s suppression of criticism

Question 17

Gang of Four

Answer 17

• made up of Jiang Qing, Mao’s wife and her 3 male associates
• they dominated the Shanghai Forum
• on left side of power struggle
• members of the Central Cultural Revolution Group (CCRG)

Question 18

Laogai

Answer 18

• meaning reeducation through labor
• used to describe the vast prison-camp system established under Mao
• deliberate brutality
• provided slave labor and thus significant to the economy
• terrified the whole population
• means of social and political control

Question 19

Collective farms

Answer 19

• areas where peasants farmed communally
• part of the Great Leap Forward
• imposed on the peasantry as part of a massive social experiment in which the wishes of the peasants were simply ignored
• Mao thought of peasants as having too large families, eating too much, and hoarding = low opinion
• aim = to provide basis for industrialization and to revolutionize food production, which didn’t work

Question 20

Great Famine

Answer 20

• 1958-62
• peasants had no means of preventing famine
• high death toll, children/women sold for food, mothers became prostitutes to feed their families, and account of cannibalism
• government officials refused to acknowledge famine
• Mao’s explanation = caused by hoarding by peasants, mistakes by local officials, and bad weather
• causes = backyard furnaces, collectivization, lysenkoism, sparrowcide, agricultural constitution, and failure to acknowledge

Question 21

Reunification campaigns

Answer 21

• Chinese government’s euphemism for forcibly bring the invaded provinces into line in the 1950s
• sent to Tibet, Xinjiang, and Guangdong
• form of military control

Question 22

First United Front

Answer 22

• GMD and CCP wanted a unified China, free from imperialist powers
• against the warlords who were eventually destroyed
• afterwards, GMD claimed the government and announced the new capital of Nanjing
• formed in 1922

Question 23

Warlord period

Answer 23

• caused by death of Yuan Shikai
• China broke up into small states/provinces, each controlled by a warlord and his private army who ran their territories independently with their own currency and laws
• increased sense of humiliation felt by many Chinese that led to increase in nationalism
• encouraged the First United Front to be formed
• peasants suffered

Question 24

Regionalism

Answer 24

• regions acting independently
• China divided between warlords who acted independently and fought many wars against each other
• increasing lack of unity

Question 25

May 4th Movement

Answer 25

• began in 1919
• against warlords, traditional Chinese culture, and the Japanese
• hostility ignited by Versailles settlement when Allies humiliated China
• goal = rebirth of China as a proud independent nation
• new bolshevik government

Question 26

White Terror

Answer 26

• 1927
• peak of GMD attacks on communists in Shanghai
• 5,000 communists were shot
• GMD carried out similar attacks in other cities
• massacre of thousands of communists, trade unionists, and peasant leaders = about a quarter of a million people killed
• by the end of the year, the CCP was nearly crushed

Question 27

Second United Front

Answer 27

• against Japanese who had occupied part of China
• formed April 1937
• civil war was suspended
• “National war of resistance”
• Mao called for another United Front, and this was supported by the majority
• sealed when Jiang was kidnapped in Xi’an by the warlord Zhang

Question 28

Long March

Answer 28

• CCP, facing extermination, trekked 9,600km to Shaanxi, which took 368 days and led the the death of more than 90% of the 90,000 communists
• ensured survival of CCP
• made Mao the unchallenged leader
• offered defensible base in Yan’an
• propaganda victory
• CCP gained fighting experience
• welded survivors into tight, dedicated group of revolutionaries

Question 29

Guerrilla warfare

Answer 29

1. set up base areas
2. organize to slowly take over the countryside with bases
3. defend bases and train peasants
4. guerrilla phase = creating an army as CCP fled
5. protracted/long war = allow for number of guerrillas to grow
6. seize power = guerrilla troops join main army

Question 30

Tibet

Answer 30

• Tibetans = different in race, culture, and religion and regarded themselves as separate people
• known for spirited resistance
• reunification campaign = within 6 months resistance was tamed and PLA imposed a regime of terror aimed at wiping out Tibetan identity
• 1959 rising = became a national rising against Chinese occupation, which resulted in the PLC spreading the famine to Tibet and the destruction of Tibetan religion and farming

Question 31

Rectification campaigns

Answer 31

• formally called “rectification of conduct” campaigns
• series of ferocious purges by which Mao removed any member of the CCP he suspected of opposing him
• early 1940s
• showed Mao’s paranoia and distrust of others

Question 32

Hundred Flowers Campaign

Answer 32

• 1957
• Mao asked for criticism of the party and policies as a way of preventing comparison between him and Stalin
• after overcoming initial fear, officials rushed to respond on grounds of corruption, inefficiency, and lack of realism
• Mao called a halt when a few started criticizing him, and changed the campaign into heavy repression
• critics forced to retract their statements
• party purged of members who had been too free with their objections, even high ranking members

Question 33

First Five-Year Plan

Answer 33

• 1952-6
• aim = develop the state-directed growth of heavy industry
• partial basis for this already existed = GMD’s National Resources Committee
• significant population shift = migration from the countryside to towns doubled
• first 2 years, PRC brought inflation under control
• targeted areas = coal, steel, petrochemicals, automobiles, roads, and bridges
• tendency for officials to massage figures of economic performance
• economic growth rate = nearly 9%

Question 34

Wu Han

Answer 34

• playwright
• wrote a play called “The Dismissal of Hai Rui from Office,” an interpretation of Mao’s previous dismissal of Peng Dehuai about the famine (shown between 1961-5)
• provided Lin Biao with a pretext for moving against anti-Maoist elements in the CCP
• series of attacks made on Wu, and he eventually committed suicide

Question 35

Chinese Civil War

Answer 35

• allowed the CCP to consolidate its control over China at the end
• long war experience was a guidebook for the new communist regime
• society had been militarized and Mao was god-like
• had two stages - divided by the war with Japan

Question 36

Lin Biao

Answer 36

• leader of the PLA during the Civil War, dedicated Maoist, field-marshal of the PLA, and had been a defense minister since 1959
• created Little Red Book with Chen Boda
• his influence grew in the Cultural Revolution, and thus had to submit himself for self-criticism
• became a reluctant conspirator in his son’s plot to murder Mao, but his daughter leaked the details and in an attempt to escape to the USSR, the plan carrying Lin and his family crashed (accident?)
• this affair depressed Mao greatly and he fell ill

Question 37

Twenty-Eight Bolsheviks

Answer 37

• replaced Li Lisan, Comintern official

- influence of Comintern remained strong enough to remove Mao as chief commissar of the Red Army

Question 38

Liu Shaoqi

Answer 38

• right (political standpoint)
• assigned by Mao to help solve the famine after the Great Leap Forward
• his growing popularity helped inspire the Cultural Revolution as a way for Mao to reestablish his power
• President of PRC in 1959

Question 39

Jiang Qing

Answer 39

• Mao’s wife
• accompanied Mao to the Lushan conference
• devoted right (politically)
• member of the Gang of Four
• was basically left in control after Mao’s death

Question 40

Deng Xiaoping

Answer 40

• right politically
• assigned to stabilize the economic situation after the Great Leap Forward, and did so by reestablishing private farming

Question 41

Zhou Enlai

Answer 41

• Mao’s foreign Secretary
• international statesman
• Hundred Flowers Campaign - forced to submit to humiliating self-criticism, showed that even high ranking members weren’t safe