Change Under Mao Flashcards
Agrarian Reform Law (1950)
◼ The property of large landlords was taken away from them and given to the peasants.
◼ The property of enemies of the state, for example, Chiang Kai-shek and foreign nationals, was confiscated.
- Villages held ‘struggle meetings’ where they denounced rich landlords and violence followed - a million landlords were executed, thousands were beaten up and thousands more sent to special camps, where they were ‘re-educated’ to accept communist ideas.
- Thus, the Agrarian Reform Law brought about the destruction of the old elite and won over to communism vast numbers of peasants who benefited from the removal of the landlords.
The Great Famine (1958-62) & Reasons for It
The result of forced collectivisation was a disaster. 50 million deaths in China. In Tibet, over 1 million people died: a quarter of the population. Reasons for Famine:
- No incentives
- The Four Noes Campaign (sparrows, flies, mosquitoes and rats) = without any birds, the insects and caterpillars multiplied and ate even more crops and grain.
- poor scientific claims of Soviet scientists said they had developed methods that would increase the crop by up to 16 times (peasants who tried to use traditional farming methods or the right type of soil were denounced by communist officials as enemies of the state)
- communist officials did not dare speak out about the failure of production, and in order to impress Mao they lied about production.
- drought in the north which reduced the harvest and flooding in the south which damaged the crops.
The First Five Year Plan (1952-57)
- announced December 1952 (ambitious targets)
- focus on the rapid expansion of heavy industry, coal, iron and steel and petroleum
- a road and rail bridge across the Yangzi River at Nanjing was build
- The urban population were willing to work hard to achieve the goals and China was a land rich with natural resources that could be exploited - successful
- however, officials were strongly motivated to overestimate the production figures
- Coal production x2, Electric power production x3 Steel production x4
- rapid improvement in industrial production showed that the communist system was better
The Great Leap Forward (1958-62)
- announced to the Eighth Party Congress in May 1958 by Liu Shaoqi - ‘walking on two legs’
- Mao was enthusiastic: announced that China would overtake Britain as an industrial power in less than 15 years.
- BECAUSE…Mao was convinced that communism was better than capitalism (Soviet Union first country to launch a satellite into space), believed collectivisation would produce sufficient food to feed the expanding industrial workforce and have enough left over to sell abroad and buy machinery, wanted to reduce China’s dependence on the Soviet Union and continue industrialisation of first 5 year plan
- backyard furnaces: 600,000
Effects of The Great Leap Forward
- In 1958, 11 million tonnes of steel were produced, and there were huge rises in the production of coal, wood, cement and fertiliser in that year.
- However, overall the Great Leap Forward was a terrible failure.
> Collectivisation failed and 50 million died in the famine.
> The steel produced in the backyard furnaces was of poor quality
> Production in businesses decreased, as without the profit motive there was no reason to work hard.
Mutual Aid Teams and APCs
- Once the landlord class had been removed, the peasants were encouraged to share their equipment, animals and work in mutual aid teams consisting of <10 households - the land was still owned individually by the peasants. By the end of 1952, about 40 per cent of peasants belonged to mutual aid teams.
- Agricultural Producers Co-operatives (APCs): land still owned by the peasants but needed to be managed centrally because an APC was a large unit that included the animals, equipment and labour of 3–5 mutual aid teams (30–50 households) - believed to be the most effective way of increasing production of food
- The APCs created a demand for machinery, which boosted industry as well as allowing much greater production of food in the countryside.
The introduction of Collectives or Communes
- richer peasants took the opportunity to buy up large sections of the land and hired labour to work on it: capitalism undermined the purpose of the APCs and led to interference by communist officials, who began to force peasants into APCs = peasant resistance similar to that in the Soviet Union in the 1930s.
- Richer peasants killed their animals and burned their crops rather than hand them over to the APC. In January 1955, Mao called for a temporary halt to the APCs. However, by the summer he decided that the party needed to push ahead with APCs and move to the next stage with the introduction of collectives or communes.
- Collectives were farms made up of 2,000–3,000 households. All the land, animals and equipment belonged to the collective and there was no private ownership
- Mao believed that the peasants were harming his effort to industrialise China by overeating instead of sending their extra food to the towns.
- By the end of 1958, about 700 million people had been placed in the collective farms. These farms were run by more than 26,000 communes that were established across China.
Changes for Women - Marriage
The 1950 Marriage Law stated that:
- arranged marriage and the payment of a dowry was banned BUT…use of matchmakers to arrange marriages continued & rural marriages continued with the exchange of gift
- the minimum age of marriage was raised to 18 years for women and 20 years for men SO…average age of marriage rose in the 1950s
- keeping concubines was forbidden
- both men and women had equal rights to request a divorce
- men and women in arranged marriages were entitled to divorce their partner BUT…women who divorced their husbands were treated as outcasts
- women were given property rights to own, buy and sell property BUT…Women’s property rights did not last long; private property was outlawed in the campaign for collectivisation.
- infanticide was forbidden SO… cases of infanticide were reduced.
BUT… Peasants opposed the Marriage Law, especially in the western areas where there was a large Muslim population. UNFORTUNATELY…when the famine began, men sold their wives for food
Life for women before Mao
- properties first of their fathers, then of their husbands, and widows were even under the control of their eldest sons.
- The birth of a son was celebrated, but a daughter was regarded as a costly expense.
- Girls received little, if any, education and many were pushed by their fathers into an arranged marriage when they were teenagers.
- Potential husbands expected to be paid a dowry once the marriage had happened.
- women could not own property, the constitution did not allow them to vote, and while their husbands could divorce them, wives did not have the right to divorce their husbands.
- Rich and powerful men often kept women as concubines.
Changes for Women - Family
In 1953, the CCP:
- introduced policies promoting birth control SO…In 1954, China’s biggest pharmaceutical company began producing contraceptives BUT…there was resistance to birth control in rural areas.
- began training midwives to adopt procedures that made childbirth safer SO…less females died in childbirth due to procedures such as sterilisation of medical equipment.
Changes for Women - Economic
- collectivisation promised to reduce the many tasks for women who were managing the home by providing mess halls for communal eating = women could play a greater role in the economic life of the country.
FORTUNATELY…Literacy levels among women rose & the proportion of women in the workforce rose from 8 per cent in 1949 to 29 per cent by the mid-1960s.
Changes for Women - Poilitical
- CCP was also eager to get women involved in the political life of the country
- In the Electoral Law of 1953, women were given equal voting rights.
- The All China Women’s Federation, established in 1949 to promote policies towards women, sent officials into rural areas to encourage women to participate in politics at local levels by joining committees and party groups.
◼ In 1949, 69 women were elected to the Central People’s Political Consultative Committee, accounting for just 10 per cent of its membership.
◼ In the 1953 election to the National People’s Congress, 12 per cent of the deputies elected were women.
◼ Women’s participation in politics was opposed by men but there was some acceptance that women could hold minor roles.
◼ The first Minister of Health and the first Minister of Justice in the PRC were both women.
◼ Between 1949 and 1962, women’s participation in politics increased, with women being elected to neighbourhood committees and co-operatives.
Politics under Mao
IN THEORY… China was a democratic country: ◼Every adult had the right to vote. ◼ Elections were held across the country in the towns and villages. ◼It was claimed that power was in the hands of the people. ◼
ACTUALLY…
- the Communist Party was the only political party allowed
- Government was carried out by the Politburo, an organisation of leading members of the CCP, which was controlled by Mao.
- Mao was suspicious of any criticism = it was unlikely that anyone with opposing ideas would be elected or given a position in government.
Mao Zedong Thought
The political system based upon Mao Zedong’s beliefs, which included…
- class struggle
- need for continuing revolution to prevent counter-revolutionary ideas entering China and threatening the revolution
- mass organisation of the ordinary people to drive the revolution.
- China should not be controlled by the Soviet Union
- ‘self-reliance’ to show China was an independent communist country
Thought Reform AND The Antis Campaigns
- GMD sent to re-education camps
- people required to be registered in a region / obliged to obtain permission to move around
- Mao was STILL deeply suspicious of intellectuals whose views were different to his (especially of those who had been educated abroad) , party members and businessmen (of supporting capitalism)
- September 1951 the CCP launched a Thought Reform Campaign = forcing intellectuals in universities to confess to the errors in their thinking and to attend study sessions to re-educate them in Mao Zedong Thought.
> THE THREE ANTIS CAMPAIGN, 1951, Party members and bureaucrats, To combat: corruption, waste, inefficiency.
THE FIVE ANTIS CAMPAIGN, 1952, Businessmen, To bring an end to: bribery, avoiding paying taxes, theft of state property, fraud, industrial sabotage.
