Unit 2: How successful was the first five year plan? Flashcards
What was the aim of the first five year plan?
1952-56
The aim of the first Five Year Plan was to make the PRC self-sufficient in food and manufactured goods in order to protect China in a potentially hostile capitalist world.
Targets would be set above from by economic planners rather than in response to consumer demand.
It also aimed to channel resources into heavy Industries rather than consumer goods.
Why was China reliant on the USSR for the first five year plan?
China had signed the Sino-Soviet mutual assistance treaty in February 1950
where both countries would render the other all possible economic assistance.
But the development of this economic relationship was delayed by the Korean War.
How did the annual inflation rate change during the first five year plan?
By 1951, the annual inflation rate had been cut to a manageable 15% due to cuts to public spending, increases in taxation and the replacement of the old Chinese dollar with the yuan.
What were the successes of the first five year plan?
The annual growth rate was about 9% per year which was a similar figure in Russia’s experience in the 1930s.
Urban living standards improved in terms of wages and job security, but at the expense of losing the freedom to change jobs or travel.
Some sectors achieved over their targets such as coal at 115% of target.
What were the failures of the first five year plan?
The figures were unlikely to be completely reliable because officials exaggerated levels of production to please their superiors.
The Soviet guidance highlighted that Chinese workers were unskilled and illiterate which would only improve when the education system was updated which was a long way from happening.
The economic planners who worked for the nationalists had been driven out in the anti campaigns in 1951-52 which caused the standard of bureaucratic administration to suffer.
Food shortages in the countryside because it was being exported to Russia to pay for the Soviet advice.
