4 - social and cultural changes Flashcards
(16 cards)
1
Q
What was the impact of the 1950 Marriage Law?
A
- Impacts:
–> A married woman had the right to divorce her husband if their marriage was arranged.
–> Arranged marriages were outlawed.
–> Women had the right to keep property they already owned when they married. - The impact of the law was limited by traditional resistance, especially in Muslim areas and cadres who resented the change.
- In the first year that the ML was passed, over 1 million divorced their husbands.
2
Q
What was the impact of collectivisation and the communes on women’s lives?
A
- Women had to do both farming and domestic chores as collectives lacked facilities.
- Women earned less work points as they were worse at heavy physical labour.
- Cadres held traditional attitudes towards equality so didn’t grant women requests for absence due to pregnancy. However, these attitudes were weakened when women filled labour shortages.
- During the Famine (1958-62), men claimed more food rations as they were more productive workers, so women had to decide whether to feed themselves or their children.
–> This led to more prostitution, wife-selling and divorce (in the Gansu province, the divorce rate increased by 60%).
3
Q
How were families impacted?
A
- During the Famine (1958-62), children with no mothers were abandoned and old people who could no longer work weren’t supported.
- During the CR, children were told to inform on relatives who clung onto old attitudes, and during the Rustication Program, 12m teenagers were removed from their families and found it hard to reintegrate.
- Population policy:
–> The Famine meant that contraceptives were made widely available in 1962 and female cadres encouraged mothers to restrict the number of children they had.
–> In 1971, Mao declared that the birth rate should be reduced to 2%, and paired it with a propaganda campaign pressuring mothers into marrying later and restricting them to 2 children.
4
Q
What was the extent of change for women?
A
- Women in the workforce went from 8% in 1949 to 32% in 1976, however career progression opportunities were limited due to male dominance.
- The pressure on women to fulfill domestic roles prevented them from taking advantage of higher education.
- Women couldn’t gain more rights whilst retaining their feminine roles (they had to become soldiers, metal workers, Red Guards).
- The CR worsened the position of women as class issues were the focus.
5
Q
How did literacy grow?
A
- By the mid-1950s, a national system of primary education had been set up.
–> The literacy rate rose from 20% in 1949 to 50% in 1960, and 64% in 1964.
–> Progress was slowed down by the CR as by 1976 it was only 70%.
—> Between 1949-57, primary schools increased from 24m-64m. - Only 6.4% of the total budget went on culture and education, and by 1956 less than 50% of children aged 7-16 were in full-time education.
- The elitist ‘key schools’ remained, which had the best teachers and had places reserved for children of high-ranking Party officials.
6
Q
How did Pinyin improve literacy?
A
- It was a modernised form of Mandarin that was adopted in 1956, as Mandarin had no alphabet and pronunciation varied from region to region.
- It gradually replaced other forms of written Chinese and facilitated communication with other countries and spread literacy faster.
7
Q
How did education collapse after the start of the Cultural Revolution?
A
- The closure of schools/universities between 1966-1970 meant that the education of 130m people stopped.
- When schools reopened, it was difficult to restore belief in the system because teachers had been attacked and the curriculum was dismissed as a waste of time.
8
Q
What was the barefoot doctors campaign?
A
- During the CR, 1m medical trainees were sent to the countryside. They undertook 6 months of intensive study and promoted simple hygiene, preventative healthcare and treated common diseases.
- Ideological purpose: exposure to peasant conditions would prevent young medical intellectuals from slipping into ‘bourgeois’ mindsets.
- Economic purpose: it was cheap, with training only lasting 6 months and wages were low (half of traditionally trained urban doctors). Also, doctors spent half their time working on agriculture.
- By 1976, 90% of villages were involved in the scheme.
9
Q
What were the successes and failures of health-care reform?
A
- Successes:
–> ‘Patriotic health movements’ were propaganda drives informing the peasantry of the importance of hygiene.
–> Life expectancy rose from 41 in 1950 to 62 by 1970.
–> The death rate from waterborne diseases reduced, as the government encouraged digging deeper wells to obtain water and more careful disposal of human waste. - Failures:
–> The eradication of the ‘four pests’ during the GLF damaged the ecological balance and led to a rise in bed bugs.
–> Hospital facilities were limited, especially in rural areas.
10
Q
How was traditional culture attacked?
A
- The main aim of Communist policy before the CR was the undermine traditional peasant customs and discredit Confucianism.
- Land Reform of 1950 broke down the power of landlords, so peasants could now work collectively.
- In communes, peasants spent their time attending political meetings where new values were reinforced, and watched propaganda films put on by agit-prop groups.
- From June 1966, Red Guards hunted down the ‘four olds’.
11
Q
What was the role of Jiang Qing in imposing new culture?
A
- Traditional stories had to be updated, and artists that didn’t serve the revolution could be sent to labour camps.
- Jiang allowed piano music and oil paintings because they suited her personal taste, although they were classed as bourgeois.
- All works had to satisfy Jiang’s criteria of cultural purity before it was published, which resulted in creativity being stifled.
- Jiang commissioned a set of 8 opera ballets (from 1966-73) that symbolised triumph of workers over their oppressors. They were the only form of theatrical entertainment available.
–> The film of ‘Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy’ received 7.3bn viewings by 1974.
–> These works were played before Nixon in 1972. - Paintings received special attention: peasant women in Huxian were trained during the GLF, and sent to exhibit their work in Paris in 1975.
- The quality and quantity of artistic output fell, and literature almost disappeared, with only 124 novels being published in the period of Jiang’s control.
12
Q
How was Buddhism targeted?
A
- Lamaism (Tibetan Buddhism) was banned, and Mandarin replaced the Tibetan language.
- The PLA suppressed Tibetan resistance in 1959 by arresting protestors and executing leaders.
- Buddhist priests and nuns were beaten, and monasteries were turned into army barracks or administrative buildings.
- The Famine caused the death of 25% of the Tibetan population, and it was possible that by restructuring the farming system, the Chinese government was deliberately extending the famine into Tibet.
- During the CR 6,000 monasteries were destroyed in Tibet and thousands were killed by Red Guards.
13
Q
How was Confucianism targeted?
A
- Communist propaganda denounced Confucian values as representing all that was bad about China’s past.
- During the CR, Beijing students ransacked monuments in Confucius’ hometown of Qufu. ‘Confucius and Co.’ became a common label to place on undesirable elements of Chinese culture.
- Jiang Qing portrayed Lin Biao as the contemporary version of Confucius after his death.
- Some Confucian values surrounding the family and social harmony were too deeply ingrained to be completely eradicated.
14
Q
How was Christianity targeted?
A
- Many church buildings were closed down and their property confiscated, and propaganda attacked the behaviour of the church.
- ‘Patriotic churches’ were allowed to continue instead of completely eradicating Christianity. In these churches, the state appointed clergy and dictated doctrine.
- The Protestant Church came under the authority of the Three Self Patriotic Movement in 1953, and the Vatican condemned the initiative.
- During the CR, there were waves of arrests on clergy and a ban on public worship.
15
Q
How was Islam targeted?
A
- Xinjiang received special attention from the PLA in the reunification campaigns as it was close to powerful Muslim states and the USSR.
- During the CR, many mosques were vandalised, with Muslim leaders frequently humiliated and subject to struggle sessions.
16
Q
How was ancestor worship targeted?
A
- In public, the Communists condemned it as a superstition that was no longer acceptable, as part of a wider policy to reduce the importance of family.
- Communes made it easier to control ancestor worship, but it was never eradicated as it was too deeply ingrained and communes were dismantled in the 1960s.
