U4AOS2 INTERPETATIONS Flashcards
Ryan
Yenan
“Mao and his comrades built a thriving community in this impoverished rural backwater”
What did Mao say about the ‘welfare of the people’
“We should convince the masses that we represent their interests” - ‘THE WELL-BEING OF THE MASSES’ (1934)
S
Agricultural Reform
“Peasants who killed with their bare hands were wedded to the new revolutionary order” (Short)
Fairbank
Three Bad Years Famine
“Mao-made catastrophe”
K + D
Cleansing of the Class ranks movement
“the most violent aspect of the Cultural Revolution” (Kraus)
“neighbours killing neighbours” (Dikotter)
M
CCP during WWII
“the CCP were struggling more vigorously and competently for nationalist goals than the GMD” (Moise)
Moise
Early years of CCP rule - Land Reform, 1st 5YP, Mass Campaigns
“The first few years of the new regime were guided by pragmatic considerations”
K + L + S
Motivations for the Cultural Revolution
“The politics of the Cultural Revolution were self-consciously theatrical” (Kraus)
CR was a quest by Mao to achieve ‘revolutionary immortality’. (Lifton)
CR’s orgins/aims are complex bc born from multiple of Mao’s paranoias simultaneously (Spence)
R
Outbreak of Cultural Revolution 1966
“a political storm of dizzying complexity” (Ryan)
Esherik
Mass campaigns
“The CCP brought order and discipline to their environment, and this was probably as important to many as was any sense of liberation”
Mao
Reasoning for selecting peasantry as the focus of the GLF
“The Ch ppl are, first of all, poor, and secondly blank”
CC delegate (name?)
Initial response of party cadres + political idealists to the GL of the GLF
“We are supernatural” - Xie Fuzhi
Peasant Zhao Tongmin
Initial enthusiasm for GLF
“so many ppl came together. Their discipline was marvellous. Everyone came to work on time and all joined in with a will”
R + F + C&H
Reasons for GLF
“Whatever the aims of the CCP leadership, many ordinary ppl was genuinely enthusiastic abt the PCs” (Ryan)
‘The state had become the ultimate landlord’. (Fairbank)
“with collectivisation came slave-driving” (Chang & Halliday)
Peng
Criticism of Mao’s ideological focus in GL of the GLF
“putting politics in command [M idea – ideology trumps all other considerations = change from mass line] is no substitute for econ principles, much less for econ measures”
F
Impact of atmosphere of fear around Mao at Lushan (July 1959)
“Peng had told the emp had X clothes… few besides Peng dared to contradict him” Feigon
Mao
Criticism of party cadres for inflating statistics + not telling him GL of GLF was not working
“If you have to shit – shit! If you have to fart – fart!”
Liu + Deng
Reasoning for pragmatic recovery from GLF
“We can’t go on like this” (Liu)
“A donkey is slow, but at least it rarely has an accident” (Deng)
Liu
Impact of Three Bad Years Famine on Mao/CCP’s reputation
Famine attributed “30% to natural calamities, 70% to human failings”
D
Women
“China’s women had risen to the status second-class citizens”
Dietrich
Fenby
New political system
Inclusion of non-CCP members in provisional govt = “window dressing”
Mao
Reasoning for Fanshen
“The peasants are clear-sighted. … the peasants keep clear accounts”
“a mass education of the peasants in to socialism”
S + M + D
Reasons for Thought Reform
“In this superheated atmosphere, the campaign to suppress counter-revolutionaries burned white hot” (Short)
the CCP saw their campaigns as ‘educational’ rather than vindictive, with the aim of producing ‘correct thoughts’ that → correct political and social behaviours (Meisner)
‘carefully cultivated Auschwitz of the mind’ (Dikotter)
Liu
Reasoning for ‘gradualist’ approach to collectivisation
“The Soviet road is the road all humanity will eventually take. To bypass this road is impossible”
‘no collectivization without modernisation’
