The PRC’s Impact On Education And Health Flashcards
By how much did literacy rates rise from the founding of the PRC to Mao’s death?
From 20% to 70%
When was pinyin introduced?
In 1955 with the language reform
What were the findings of the 1982 census with regards to education?
Fewer than 1% of the working population had a university degree.
Only 35% had received schooling after the age of 12.
What percentage of CCP officials had been educated past the age of 16 after Mao’s death?
6%
How many of China’s youths stopped attending education during the cultural revolution?
130 million
How many youths were sent “up the mountains and down to the villages”?
12 million
How many universities were operating in China during the Cultural revolution?
434, a third of levels beforehand
Give examples of patriotic health movements
Party workers would go to the countryside and explain the connection between dirt and disease. Locals were enlisted in efforts to drain swamps and eradicate bugs, rats, and mosquitoes that carried endemic diseases such as dysentery and malaria.
Outline the main successes and failures of the governments early health policy
Many more doctors and nurses were trained, to provide care in the remoter parts of China. 1950s large numbers of Chinese were treated by a qualified doctor for the first time in their lives.
However, many of these doctors never reached their targets as the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution undermined these efforts.
How were doctors attacked politically?
During the anti-movements and Cultural Revolution, doctors were included in the list of classes who lived off of the labour of the workers, who used their skills to make money to spend on a bourgeois lifestyle.
This resulted in the subordination of medical considerations to political ones, with surgeons cancelling operations to sweep floors and clean toilets. Some doctors didn’t use anaesthetics and analgesics, as showing pain was seen as a bourgeois reaction and not flinching was a sign of revolutionary purpose.
What were barefoot doctors?
Mao knew that provision of basic medical care to the people would boost the popularity of the regime, so a crash programme to train doctors was introduced in the 1960s. These would be 6 months intensive courses focussing on practical things, after which doctors would be dispersed among the peasants.
What were the main successes of the barefoot doctors scheme?
By 1973 over a million new doctors had been trained, and contributed greatly to the improvement of the peasants’ lives. They often provided treatment free of charge. However, these doctors were a stop-gap measure, and could not provide the full medical service required by a modern China.
When was 普通话 standardised?
1955, allowing people to communicake
How did the number of universities increase from 1949 to 1961?
200 to 1300
How did the CCP aim to promote birth control, and when?
In 1963 the PRC introduced a campaign, sending medical workers into the countryside to advocate sexual abstinence, couples having no more than two children, and sterilisation. There was limited success as the peasants traditionally viewed big families as a matter as pride and fortune.
