Social and cultural changes, 1949–76 Flashcards
(47 cards)
1
Q
What were the traditional attitudes towards women in China?
A
- Women held a low status in Chinese society. Many were forced into arranged marriages. Women were not independent and not equal partners in marriage. Those married into more wealthy families might have to share their husbands with *concubines.
2
Q
What was the practice of foot binding?
A
- A girl would often have her feet bound at the age of six. Her toes were turned under her feet and held there by tightly wound bandages. This prevented feet from growing normally and the bone structure would become deformed.
- The small feet and the swaying gait that this induced was revered as beautiful and sexually appealing.
3
Q
What were the traditional attitudes towards marriage in China?
A
- A girl baby was often not valued as highly as her more privileged brothers. This was in part because a daughter would often be married out of the family in her early teens.
- This loss was increased by the practice of giving away a dowry with the bride for the benefit of the bridegroom’s family.
- Desperate families sometimes even resorted to infanticide to escape the burden of raising a girl.
4
Q
What were the educational opportunities of women in traditional China?
A
- There was no incentive to send them to school because they would soon be leaving home and the parents would experience no economic benefit from their education.
- One survey of rural China in the 1930s suggested that only 1 per cent of females over the age of seven had acquired a level of literacy required to read a simple letter, in comparison to 30 per cent for males.
5
Q
What was the New Marriage Law 1950 and how effective was it?
A
- For the first time women received legal equality: they could hold property and seek divorce.
- The paying of dowries or bride-prices was forbidden, as was child marriage: women had to be 18 years old before they could marry.
- Marriages could not result from coercion: free-will was required.
- Statistics show that between 1946 and 1949, in 18.6 per cent of marriages the bride was aged 16 to 17. By 1958–65 this had dropped to 2.4 per cent.
6
Q
What problems were there with the New Marriage law?
A
- Men who had paid a bride-price expected to be able to reap an economic reward from their marriage and they were extremely upset. The law led to rocketing divorce rates, with 1.4 million petitions filed in 1953.
- Widespread violence broke out as armed mobs attempted to violently reclaim divorced wives. Snubbed husbands attacked wives during divorce court proceedings.
- Many cadres were ambivalent or hostile to the new law. Some feared that free choice in marriage would ‘throw all under Heaven into turmoil’ while others feared that only rich men would be able to find wives.
7
Q
What attitudes did Muslim areas have to gender equality in China?
A
Traditional Muslim communities greatly resented the challenge to their long-held customs. In non-Han Chinese areas such as Xinjiang, far from Beijing, life for women in many rural communities continued largely unchallenged and unchanged.
8
Q
What role did Kindergartens play in liberising women in China?
A
- Mothers became distressed as, once they left their children at the communal kindergarten, they could be separated for weeks at a time.
- With priorities given to economically productive activity, the kindergartens were often housed in ramshackle buildings.
- Overwhelmed by the numbers of children suddenly under their supervision, standards of care were appalling. Diarrhoea, measles, chicken pox and worms spread quickly. In one kindergarten attached to a cotton factory in Beijing, 90 per cent of children got sick.
- By the end of the Great Leap Forward, the kindergartens had collapsed forcing exhausted women, to try to care for their children as well as work and forage for food in order to survive.
9
Q
What role did communal canteens play in liberising women in China?
A
- The communal canteens were meant to release women from responsibility for feeding the family, but the poor quality of food and the length of time it took to get across the commune to get food actually increased women’s hardship. With food allocated on the basis of the amount of physical labour performed, women were likely to receive less than men.
- When food ran low, it was often the women who were neglected on the grounds that men needed to have strength to go out and search for food for the family.
10
Q
Why did the work points sytem create more hardships for women in China?
A
- Despite public commitment to equal pay for equal work, women still received less ‘work points’ than men, regardless of their productivity or skill. This was because the realities of physical strength meant that while men could receive up to ten points, women were often limited to a maximum of eight.
11
Q
Why did abuse and discrimination create more hardships for women in China?
A
- Cadres took advantage of their position. In one commune pregnant mothers who refused to work were forced to undress and break ice in the middle of winter.
- Sexual abuse was also rife. As families disintegrated during the Great Leap Forward, women were separated from husbands and became victims of the advances from cadres.
- In one commune near Guangzhou, two Party secretaries of a commune forced themselves upon 34 women.
- As the famine spread, many women were forced into prostitution, trading sex for food.
12
Q
What was the Women’s Association?
A
- The communists created mass organisations like the Women’s Association to encourage political activism and mobilise the population behind the regime.
- It had 40,000 staff in 83 cities, and a publishing arm that produced books, pamphlets and newspapers proclaiming the accomplishments of the Party.
- With an official membership of 76 million, it encouraged political activism.
- The Women’s Association set up ploughing lessons for women, organised classes to improve literacy and for the study of political ideas. Financial support was provided to help women weave uniforms or make shoes for the PLA.
13
Q
What was the involvement of women in the Cultural Revolution?
A
Women were certainly politicised to the same extent as their male counterparts during the Cultural Revolution. Men and women wore the same Maoist uniform, representing a form of escape from gender expectations. Many women and girls led Red Guards in their violent denunciations.
14
Q
What changes were made for the education of women by the CCP?
A
- The communist state also succeeded in encouraging more families to send their daughters to school. By 1978, 45 per cent of primary school children were girls.
15
Q
What changes were made for the employement of women by the CCP?
A
- In February 1951 an advertisement in the New Hunan Daily aimed to recruit professionals, skilled workers and female students to form a female work team to go to Xinjiang to exploit its valuable natural resources like oil and gas reserves.
- The advertisement was answered enthusiastically. It offered the opportunity for rural women to escape the grinding poverty of their lives. The opportunity also held real appeal for educated women.
16
Q
What were the problems of changing traditional views towards women?
A
- Many women understood that land ownership was the key to real equality. The collectivisation of land ended this possibility. After waiting so long to be able to hold property, all land ownership was banned.
- For all the campaigns and propaganda, it was clear that women still held the less influential jobs and still were expected to undertake most of the household and childcare chores.
- Divorcees often struggled, cut off from family support. With the focus on increasing the population to make China a strong nation, modern contraception methods were rare.
17
Q
What was education like in China before the reforms?
A
- Only 30 per cent of all males over seven years of age, and just 1 per cent of all females over the same age, could read a simple letter.
- 45.2 per cent of males and only 2.2 per cent of females had received any schooling.
- Males attended on average four years of schooling; those females who did receive schooling attended for three years.
- Two-thirds received education of a traditional style, learning fundamental Confucian concepts of morality and filial piety.
18
Q
What subjects were taught in traditional Chinese education?
A
- Practical subjects required by a modern economy such as arithmetic and science were not included.
- The system remained elitist: the best kindergartens and primary schools were located in the cities in wealthier neighbourhoods, charged prohibitive tuition fees and set entrance examinations that reduced access.
- Within higher education humanities studies dominated: over 59 per cent of students enrolled on full-time degree programmes studied law, politics or the liberal arts. Just 10 per cent studied natural science, 11.5 per cent engineering and only 3 per cent agriculture.
19
Q
What was Rote learning?
A
- Pedagogy was based on rote learning from books, which Mao had been openly dismissive of. In 1917, seven of Mao’s fellow students had died, apparently of overwork and excessive study.
20
Q
How did educational reform aim to improve literacy?
A
- Between 1949 and 1957 the number of primary school students increased from approximately 26 million to 64 million. In rural areas the min-pan ‘run by the people’ primary schools, financially supported and managed by the local village, were key to improving access
- The Party claimed that 42 million peasants attended in the winter of 1951–52. For all these changes, the Higher Education Minister admitted that 78 per cent of the population remained illiterate and that only 52 per cent of school age children were attending primary schools.
21
Q
How did educational reform aim to change higher education?
A
- University enrolments almost quadrupled from 117,000 to 441,000.
- Between 1952 and 1958, 600 Russians taught in Chinese colleges and universities and, by 1959, 38,000 Chinese students had been trained in Russian universities, including teachers, students and workers.
- Instead of the liberal arts, the focus was upon training more students to undertake specialised technical jobs necessary for the running of a modern economy.
22
Q
How did the introduction of Pinyin aim to improve education?
A
- Different groups and areas of China had very different languages and there was no standardised written alphabet. This was very complex: each word had a different symbol that had to be learned.
- In 1955 the government introduced a new written language with letters based on the Latin alphabet. Instead of symbols, the letters meant that words in Mandarin, the main language, could be pronounced phonetically.
23
Q
What were the failures to reform with education in China between 1949–58?
A
- The formal academic requirements needed for admission to middle schools and universities favoured both the children of the old bourgeoisie and the new privileged class: children of Party officials.
- Universities still serviced mainly urban students and many rural children still did not receive an education.
- Although literacy programmes were introduced in many villages, the teaching was left to barely educated cadres, many of whom possessed only a rudimentary elementary level of education themselves.
24
Q
How did the Great Leap Forward change educational reform?
A
- Manual labour was introduced into the curriculum to prepare students to help expand China’s economic power. The Ministry of Higher Education was abolished.
- Mao promoted a ‘half work half study’ curriculum that rejected the traditional rote-learning techniques. Instead, new agricultural middle schools ran vocational courses on agricultural techniques along with basic maths and languages in order to prepare peasants to be able to operate local rural industries
25
How did the Great Leap Forward impact education?
- Many potential students had not been able to attend school because they were needed to work on the **backyard furnaces**.
- A **two-track** educational system was developed. In rural areas children advanced from primary school to ‘agricultural middle schools’ for vocational training in agricultural techniques.
- In contrast, in the cities an **elite school system** was developed at all levels of the full-time education system from kindergarten to university.
- The old elitism had returned. The children of cadres took the places at the best schools’ learning the same intellectual interests and developing the same career aspirations as the **capitalist class** the CCP had been trying to destroy.
26
Why did education collapse after 1966?
- In early 1964 Mao complained that the twelve-year education system was too long, examinations were too rigid and that students were not prepared for manual labour.
- As a part of the **Socialist Education Campaign** that later set the stage for the Cultural Revolution, **politics and class background** returned as a ground for admission to senior middle school and college.
- Education focused on Marxist-Leninist theory and class struggle.
27
How did the Cultural Revolution change educational reform?
- Schools and universities were closed as the Red Guards abandoned their education to travel to Beijing to attend the eight massive rallies led by Mao.
- Whipped into a frenzy, the young people denounced and attacked their teachers. Radical students intimidated their teachers at **struggle meetings**, forcing them to kneel for hours.
- Abandoning their schooling to partake in ‘revolutionary struggle’ provided them with the opportunity to prove their ideological commitment.
- **This violence completely shattered China’s school system**.
28
How did the Cultural Revolution impact education?
- At the end of the Cultural Revolution many young people were not sent back to school, but rather into the countryside as part of the **‘up to the mountains and down to the villages’ campaign**. There they would learn the value of hard labour, living among the peasants.
- They were sent in part because Mao wanted to force intellectuals to experience the harshness of rural life. It was also a convenient way to alleviate urban overcrowding. Finally seeing first-hand the realities of rural poverty, many became **disillusioned with the regime and less trusting of its rulers**.
- Uneducated and abandoned to a life of rural poverty, they became known as China’s **‘lost generation’**.
29
How effective were the early health policies of the Party?
To improve the situation without spending money the Party decided that the priority was in the prevention of disease.
- Cadres were trained to show the peasants how to prevent the spread of disease through improved sanitation and public hygiene. Patriotic Health Campaigns sent teams of Party workers into the countryside to **educate illiterate peasants**.
- The campaigns were effective. Smallpox, cholera, typhus, typhoid fever, plague and leprosy were practically eliminated. Cases of tuberculosis and parasitic diseases were **greatly reduced**.
- **Terror campaigns** against drug suppliers and criminal gangs had the effect of greatly lowering the numbers of drug addicts.
30
How did medical facilities begin improving in China?
- During the Great Leap Forward communes established **medical clinics**.
- State investment built over **800 Western-type hospitals**.
- The number of doctors trained in modern techniques rose from 40,000 in 1949 to **150,000** in 1965.
- By the 1960s medical schools were graduating **25,000 new doctors per year**.
- In 1949 life expectancy was 36 years; by 1957 it was **57 years**.
31
What were barefoot doctors?
- Many villages sent young people to receive medical training to become ‘barefoot doctors’.
- These ‘doctors’ were trained intensively for just six months. They could provide only rudimentary healthcare and the village clinic had little equipment and low supplies of medicine.
32
What impact did the barefoot doctors have on healthcare?
- Their training might not have been extensive, but it was adequate to treat the common problems that the peasants experienced.
- Simply put, doctors with rudimentary training were better than no doctors at all.
- They played an important part in challenging traditional practices and spreading modern medical knowledge and basic care to rural areas. In total, by 1973 **over a million new doctors** had been trained.
33
What impact did Jiang Qing have on the culture of China?
- Mao named her as a so-called ‘Cultural Tsarina’ and chose her to personally oversee the purification of ‘revisionist, capitalist and feudalist’ influences in Chinese culture during the Cultural Revolution.
34
How did Jiang Qing impose censorship of cultural theatre?
- Vetting all theatre performances for evidence of revisionist content. As a result nearly all foreign works were banned.
- Personally involved, shevisited theatres to oversee and interfere with auditions, loudly contradicting the instructions of the directors with almost comic results.
35
How did Jiang Qing try and change cultural opera?
- She damned the storylines as **bourgeois and feudal**, full of superstitions such as ‘cow ghosts and snake spirits’. Instead, communist writers should write new works removing ‘feudal’ characters and replacing them with heroic peasants, workers and revolutionary soldiers.
- Only **eight official revolutionary ‘performances’ were allowed**. Although popular at first, audiences soon tired of the simplistic storylines and overbearing revolutionary propaganda.
- The artistic results were not comedic. Cowed by terror and fear of denunciation, writers, painters and musicians either **towed the Party line or stopped producing**.
36
What was religion like in 1949?
- In 1949 religious faith was a mainstay of many people’s lives. Ceremonies to honour **Confucius and festivals at New Year and Ch’ing Ming**, when families tended the graves of their ancestors and gave offerings to the gods, were widely observed.
- Protestant and Catholic Christianity was spread across China by missionaries sent from the Western nations to save the souls of the unbelieving Asian peoples. There were **3 million Catholics and 1 million Protestants in China** before 1949.
- In isolated Xinjiang, far from the influence of Beijing, Islam was a defining characteristic of society and culture, controlling schools and defining attitudes to women. **Muslim leaders held great power there**.
37
How was Confucianism treated under the Communist regime?
- All public ceremonies honouring him were ended in 1949. At first temples and shrines dedicated to him were not destroyed; they simply became **museum pieces**.
- The **temple at Confucius’** birthplace was attacked. By this time being associated with Confucianism was **politically dangerous**.
- One reason given for purging Liu Shaoqi was that he had preached **Confucian ideas**.
- When the Gang of Four radicals wanted to attack their enemies, they launched the **‘criticise Confucius campaign’** which tried to tie his ‘feudal’ thought to the policies of the pragmatists in the Party like Deng Xiaoping.
38
How was ancestor worship treated under the Communist regime?
- The communists first discouraged and then condemned these traditions, encouraging instead new practices and attitudes.
- Workers journeying home to pay respects to their ancestors were urged not to take home what were damned as ‘superstitious articles’ such as joss sticks or red paper for envelopes.
- They were told to stop honouring the Kitchen God because, in the traditional ceremonies, common people always made their sacrifices last – a **symbol of feudal oppression**.
39
How did the Party aim to replace old traditions?
- Instead of these old traditions, workers in one Shanghai dock suggested that they erect a portrait of Chairman Mao, with banners reading **‘Long live the People’s Government!’**
- The Party encouraged people to buy pictures with slogans such as ‘We and Chairman Mao are of one heart.’ Religious shrines in peasant houses were destroyed and replaced by pictures of Mao.
- By 1966, the **Qingming festival** had become National Memorial Day and was focused on commemorating those who had died during liberation.
40
How successful was the regime in destroying old
attitudes?
- It is impossible to know how effective the communists were at discouraging old traditions. Certainly many temples, shrines and religious statues were destroyed but this did not necessarily equate to the **destruction of long-held beliefs**.
- It was reported that even some cadres were carrying around holy symbols to ward off ghosts. This evidence suggests that, for all the regime’s efforts, the Chinese people did not entirely **abandon their old beliefs**.
41
What was the Party's early religious policy?
- The CCP initially tried to win over and control the leaders of the major religions. They hoped that they could convince religious leaders to work with the regime.
- Although the regime promised co-operation, this was an attempt to gain the support of sympathetic leaders who could then convince members of the religious groups to cut off their ties with the outside world and **support the purging of non-communists**.
42
How was the Protestant Church treated under the Communist regime?
They argued that the Protestant Church should be organised according to the **‘Three-Self’ principle**:
● self-ruling
● self-supporting
● self-propagating.
- In reality the ‘Three Selfs’ meant c**omplete obedience to the government**. While the principle appeared to suggest a level of autonomy from the regime, in practice it meant that Protestant Churches were pressurised to cut all ties with foreign organisations and leaders.
- In 1949 there had been more than **3000 Protestant** missionaries in China; by April 1952 there were fewer than **100 left**.
43
How was the Catholic Church treated under the Communist regime?
The Vatican refused to accept that the ‘Patriotic Church’ was truly Catholic. Accusations were created to rally public sentiment against Catholicism:
- Catholic schools were attacked as centres of **‘cultural aggression’** for providing support for the espionage carried out on behalf of the United States Army.
- Catholic hospitals were charged with using patients as **human guinea pigs** to try out new medicines.
- Catholics were subject to surveillance, threatened and forced to attend study meetings and write self-criticism. The wearing of religious symbols such as rosaries or crucifixes was **banned** in some provinces.
44
How was Islam treated under the Communist regime?
- Mosques were seized and converted into meeting halls for struggle meetings. Muslim schools were converted into barns for livestock.
- Followers of Islam fought back with force. In one battle over a thousand people were killed in Gansu. Armed rebellions against Chinese domination were common.
- In response, the regime ordered that cadres be more respectful of Islamic customs. The **Islamic Association of China** was set up by the regime officially to encourage co-operation between Muslims and the regime and to protect the traditions of Islam.
45
What happened in the CR in Xinjiang with the Muslim population?
- During the Cultural Revolution, Muslims were targeted. Attacks on mosques were renewed with many turned into stables or slaughterhouses. Religious leaders were tortured and given menial jobs like cleaning sewers. They were forced to write self-denunciations and swear loyalty to the regime.
- Uighurs learned to recite the greeting **‘Long Live Chairman Mao’** in Chinese in order to avoid punishment. Traditional dress was abandoned in favour of the drab workers’ overalls that became known as ‘Mao suits’.
46
How was Buddhism treated under the Communist regime?
- As soon as the communists took power monks, denounced as **‘parasites’** by the regime, were sent back to their homes and ordered to work. Some were forcibly enlisted in military academies. Others were denounced as **counter-revolutionaries and killed at struggle** meetings.
- The most important Buddhist community was in Tibet. The Great Leap Forward heralded a renewed attack on Buddhist monks. In 1959 the **Dalai Lama** was ordered to report to communist officials. Fearing that he would be imprisoned, the Tibetan people helped smuggle him out to safety in India.
47
What happened in the CR with Buddhism?
Buddhism was denounced as one of the ‘Four Olds’ during the Cultural Revolution. Monasteries were burned, religious relics destroyed and monks beaten or arrested and sent to the laogai for ‘labour reform’. By the end of the Cultural Revolution, few temples or shrines remained.
