Agriculture and industry 1949-65 Flashcards
How did Mao remove landlords and redistribute land to the peasants?
The 1950 Agrarian Reform Law laid down the framework for the exchange in land, detailing how the peasantry wouldn’t be exploited by the ‘landlord class’ as a first step towards industrialisation.
The PLA removed anyone against the land reforms.
How much land everyone owned and how much tax they should pay as a result. Depending on the amount of land they owned they were labelled and anyone labelled as ‘landlords’ would be publicly shamed and accused of exploitation and would usually be found guilty. Their land would be divided amongst other villages.
1951, 10 million landlords had land taken and 40% of land changed hands, deaths officially at 700 thousand -but historians put the figures as high as 3 million.
How did Mao move towards collectivisation?
1951, groups of ten families were encouraged to form mutual aid teams (MATs) where they could have access to labour, animals and equipment while still having access to private ownership. villagers who stayed outside of these groups risked persecution and lack of resources.
1952, successful MATs were encouraged to form Agricultural Producers Co-operatives (APCs) of 50 families. The same as the MATs the promise of resources being pooled together more efficiently, people with large landholdings could rent some to the APC and keep some of the land for personal use which was strong incentive for rich families.
Due to focusing on the rapid forming of APCs some were going into debt as they had to borrow money to afford farming equipment prompting Mao to call a halt in forming APCs in 1953
After things stabilised peasants began buying and selling their own crops which infuriated Mao which called for a refocus on forming APCs
Later in 1954 the harvest was poor so Mao commissioned food from the countryside which lead to so much unrest Mao called for an 18 month halt in forming APCs in 1955.
In 6 months Mao went for full scale collectivisation. The number of households in APCs in 1955 was 17 million and only 14% of rural households were in collectives and in 1956 it rose to 75 million, only 3 percent of farmers were individuals.
Higher Producers Co-operatives were formed consisting of 200-300 households. They no longer owned land or equipment and annual salary was split depending on how many work points were earned.
How successful was collectivisation?
Mao owned 90% of the land peasants worked on.
The speed at which it had been carried out was a credit to Mao
The control Mao had over the party greatly increased as a result
The peasants had now become servants rather than loyal allies.
Lack of state investment in agriculture
Food production only improved every year by 3.8%
Made Mao dangerously overconfident.
Peasants had no motivation to work.
What were the reasons for Mao launching the communes?
Mao had been made over-confident by the speed of the success of the collectivisation.
Bigger groups meant larger pools of resources and yields.
Cadres claimed APCs wanted to merge in Henan so they could share their resources. Meaning Mao thought he had the backing of the peasantry to launch the communes.
Mao wanted further change to keep the pace of the revolution as the bureaucrats wanted less change.
How were the communes organised?
The great leap forward detailed how China was to walk on two legs meaning industrially and agriculturally and how China would surpass Britain economically in just 7 years. Steel and production were equally prioritised.
China would become economically decentralised so local communes could make decisions without being restricted by government policy.
The first commune was in Henan called Sputnik combined over 9000 households.
750,000 collectives were merged into 26000 communes which was about 1.2 million households.
What was life like on the communes?
Men and women separated but could arrange conjugal visits.
Everyone ate and slept together.
Included childcare and happiness homes for the elderly.
Why was the abolition of private farming a bad thing?
Due to peasants having all their possessions being taken and the point system being abolished peasants had nothing to work towards and food production slowed.
Team leaders were employed to keep morale and productivity up but these soon failed.
What is Lysenkoism and why did it fail?
Lysenkoism was a way of farming inspired by a Ukrainian man named Lysenko, Mao drafted an 8 point programme modelled after this even though Stalin discredited this system.
The pest control system focused on killing birds so they didn’t eat the seeds, this lead to a growth in the bug population which ate all the crops.
Thousands of peasants had homes destroyed because they had their homes ploughed into the grounds the animal dung used to make them helped grow the crops.
What was the great famine?
1958-62
In 1958, a meeting was held where Mao put the harvest yield as high as 430 million but the party knew this was impossibly high and revised the figure down to 375 million tons when in reality the figure was at 200 million tons.
