Peasants - early period

Question 1

Fenby view on peasants

Answer 1

On the contrary, the role of farmers was to feed the workers who would construct the new paradise, but they were not, themselves, to play the vanguard role. The myth that Mao led a revolution whose prime aim was to improve the lot of the peasants has had a long life, but was always based on a misconception, which the Chairman never shared.

Question 2

Health campaigns

Answer 2

• , health spending - starting fromthe very low level bequeathed by the Nationalists - never rose above 2.6 per cent of the state budget up to 1956
• Attention was focused on cities, while most ofthose affected by major illnesses lived in the countryside, where health care remained rudimentary.

Question 3

Fanshen

Answer 3

• • 28 June 1950 – Agrarian Reform Law – thousands of cadres sent to countryside to organise nationwide campaign to redistribute land and denounce landlords: fanshen
• Peasants’ Associations establish to identify opponents
• ‘Speak Bitterness’ meetings – public denunciations – a People’s Tribunal decided on the fate of the accused

**- **if landlord deemed ‘local despot’ his property tallied up and shared out

• allowed landlords to keep not only the land cultivated by their immediate family, but also rented land and fields farmed by hired hands, as long as this amounted to no more than half of their holdings
• intended to protect the most productive farms and ensure that food supplies not disrupted

• ‘Speak Frankness’ – in urban areas, people were encouraged to participate to express sorrow at wrongs committed

Question 4

First Five Year plan general

Answer 4

• 1 October 1953 – Chinese government announced beginning of ‘the general line for the transition to socialism’

Question 5

FFYP - industry

Answer 5

• heavy industry received 88.8% of government’s budgeted capital
• 700 new industrial enterprises – oil refineries, coal mines
• transport infrastructure – bridges, railways
• 10,000 Soviet engineers came to China; 28,000 Chinese went to USSR for training

Question 6

China loans

Answer 6

by 1955, China was repaying more than it was receiving in aid

Question 7

FFYP - nationalization

Answer 7

• late 1955 – industrialists proposed that nationalisation of private sector should be carried out
• 6 December 1955 – Mao declared that by end of 1957, all private enterprises would be taken over by joint-state ownership
• 15 January 1956 – rally at Tiananmen Square attended by 200,000 to celebrate the triumph over socialism over capitalism

Question 8

FFYP - success

Answer 8

• “The First Five-Year Plan achieved considerable success…A

Question 9

FFYP - staged collectivisation

Answer 9

• Mutual Aid Teams – up to 10 families shared tools, animals & labour;
• ‘lower’ Agricultural Cooperatives (20 – 40 families) – peasants receive payment depending on amount of land owned & labour contributed

‘higher’ Agricultural Cooperative (100 – 350) – land ownership became collective & farmers were paid for labour

• CCP Politburo had agreed in early 1955 that transition had to be careful and gradual
• Deng Zihui main critic - ‘Your mind needs to be shelled with artillery’
• Mao and Chen Boda believed that peasants might move towards capitalism if they remained unchecke

Question 10

FFYP - agricultural stagnation

Answer 10

• • excess labour carried out on small-scale irrigation works

• food production barely keeping pace with population growth of 2.2%

Question 11

FFYP - increase in rural collectivisation

Answer 11

• CCP leaders believed Agricultural Cooperatives could only be implemented carefully and gradually
• July 1955 – conference of regional and provincial CCP secretaries at which Mao rebuked those who had failed to embrace the ‘high tide’ of socialism through rapid collectivisation
• revolutionary fervour caused Communist cadres to mobilise support amongst poorer peasants
• by December 1956 – 97% of peasants had joined Cooperatives: ‘Little Leap’

Question 12

FFYP - resistance to collectivization

Answer 12

- March 1955, as mass riots broke out. Ina typical fertile county in Jiangsu province, the farmers were left with only 35 per cent of their output.

• began to attack cadres physically

Question 13

Fenby exploitation of peasants

Answer 13

the countryside was still a reservoir to be pumped dryto feed the industrial workers, and provide government revenue.

1952, the state directed 4 per cent of its expenditure to agriculture while

drawing 23 per cent of tax revenue from it

Question 14

Fanshen - outcomes

Answer 14

More than 100 million acres wereredistributed. The crop area held by poor peasants doubled to 47 per cent.

• about one million landlords were executed.
• “peasants who killed with their bare hands the landlords who oppressed them were wedded to the revolutionary order in a way that passive spectators could never be”

Question 15

12 Year Agricultural Plan

Answer 15

• Mao began to doubt Soviet-style economic planning, too bureaucratic
• called for grain and cotton output to double
• collectivisation should be pursued ‘better, faster and more economically’
• formally endorsed by Central Committee January 1956
• Zhou Enlai, other moderates worried about grain harvests being down due to collectivisation, criticised at September 1956 congress

Question 16

Removal of private firms

Answer 16

By 1956 approximately 67.5 percent of all modern industrial enterprises were state owned, and 32.5 percent were under joint public-private ownership. No privately owned firms remained.

Question 17

FFYP results

Answer 17

Thousands of industrial and mining enterprises were constructed, including 156 major facilities. Industrial production increased at an average annual rate of 19 percent between 1952 and 1957, and national income grew at a rate of 9 percent a year

Question 18

Fanshen - class divisions

Answer 18

Rural society was divided into new categories:** **

landlords, who possessed large holdings and performed no manual labour;

rich peasants, who owned land but worked it themselves while hiring other workers or renting land to others;

middle peasants, who owned land and worked it themselves without exploiting others;

poor peasants, who had very little land or equipment and had to rent land from others; and

labourers, who did not own any land and had to live on meagre wages or loans. In some villages individuals were required to wear a strip of cloth identifying their class background

Question 19

Speak Biterness - Frank Dikotter

Answer 19

Frank Dikotter suggests that CCP activists sometimes found it difficult to penetrate prevailing Confucian attitudes and to shift old social structures and patterns. In some villages the landlords and rich peasants were able to retain at least some status or influence. In some cases they were trained as cadres (local communist leaders), while in other areas class distinctions had scarcely existed, meaning there was little to ‘speak bitterness’ about. “The challenge was that none of these artificial class distinctions actually corresponded to the social landscape of the village,”* writes Dikotter, *“where most farmers often lived in roughly the same conditions”. He also argues that the CCP met with resistance because “ordinary people had qualms about persecuting and stealing from their erstwhile neighbours”, regardless of what they had done before. As a consequence the ‘Speak Bitterness’ sessions in these areas became a charade; the villagers complied with the wishes of the party but learned how to “perform as a way to survive”. If CCP cadres discovered this indifference to fanshen it was interpreted as resistance to reform, and dealt with through indoctrination, intimidation and violence.

Question 20

Speak Biterness - Morton

Answer 20

“The objectives of land reform were to improve the lot of the poor and to make them feel they had a stake in the country and a loyalty to the new government… But the objectives of land reform also included information and control. The CCP, by means of the cadres, obtained an insight into conditions in every part of China – and useful lists of enemies of the people. By implicating the local population in the ‘judicial’ process and the killings, control through fear was quickly established.” William S. Morton, historian

Question 21

Speak Biterness Schwarz

Answer 21

“This abusive spillover of ku hai, the ‘sea of bitterness’ that law buried in so many hearts, was but one manifestation of the public use of personal grief in the Chinese Revolution… Suffering was no longer a worthless personal burden. It now had a didactic value in communal life. The sour taste of ku became a source of positive insight. And thus, modern Chinese became spiritual kin to the Jews, who also had to learn to extract lessons from suffering.” Vera Schwarcz, historian

Question 22

Speak Biterness - hinton

Answer 22

According to Hinton, Speaking Bitterness was important for the peasants because, as one described, “only through hot argument can we get at the truth”.