Study Guide: 1949 thru Cultural Revolution
The Communist State
The Common Programme – what kind of society did the CCP want to establish?
1. People's Democratic Dictatorship: Democracy for most, Dictatorship for “reactionaries” - anyone opposed to the Party
2. Transform land ownership to peasant land ownership
3. People shall have freedoms of:
a. Thought, Speech, Publication
b. Assembly, Holding Processions and Demonstrations
c. Religious Belief
But is the above really true? Freedom of thought, speech, etc. for WHO?
4. Women shall have equal rights with men
5. Shall punish Guomindang counter-revolutionaries and war criminals
6. Feudal landlords, capitalists, and reactionaries shall have no political rights
Early Years of the PRC
Pay attention to the rights given to women & peasants
1. Marriage Laws - outlawed arranged marriages, child brides, infanticide, bigamy
a. Getting rid of ‘old’ social customs
b. joint ownership of property
c. divorce by mutual agreement introduced
2. Agrarian Reform Law
a. Land redistributed (taken from those who had more than they needed)
b. mass rallies held for Poor/ peasents to vent against wealthy/ landlords (Called the “Speak Bitterness” campaigns),
3. Thought Reform Movement: Trial of public “enemies”/”reactionaries”
a. About 1 Million “reactionaries” were executed
b. Had to study of Mao's writings,
c. Counterrevolutionaries or class enemies were sent to labor camps to be “re-educated”
First 5 Year Plan (1953-57)
1. Goal: For economic development, priority to heavy industry (steel, coal, machinery, etc.); Also plan to raise agricultural output
2. Methods: Turned individual farms into cooperatives
a. Families/ villages encouraged to pool land and labour, could produce and keep some profits (capitalist?)
b. Higher-stage: Peasants now encouraged to join “higher-stage cooperatives”; 200-300 families (usually a group of villages); families were NOT paid rent - received only wages; had to give up title to their land, equipment and animals
3. Results:
a. Most peasant farms were too small to be efficient
b. by 1956, 95% of peasants had joined higher-stage cooperatives and were landless
c. Placed China under heavy strain
d. Cities grew by 40 million, overcrowding, food shortages, housing problems
100 Flowers Blooming (1956)
Mao encouraged people to voice constructive criticisms, keep party strong through criticism
People began criticizing the Party and Mao
After 14 months Mao said those who spoke out were rightists/ reactionaries and cracked down on those who spoke out
Many who had spoken out were arrested, lost jobs, were sent to camps for “thought reform”
The Great Leap Forward: The Second 5 Year Plan (58-63) - the Great Leap Forward
1. Economic Goal was to become an industrialized nation, aimed at agriculture, heavy industry, and light industry;
2. Agricultural and Social Goal: The key was to reorganize the Chinese people into “communes”: The communes would combine - agriculture, industry, commerce, education, military affairs, Communal eating halls, Nurseries, “Houses of Happiness” for old people, Controlled almost every aspect of a person's life
a. By 1958 90% of Chinese were living in communes
b. Propaganda was everywhere - to encourage production
c. Small commune factories were set up to make cement, steel, fertilizer
d. 600,000 backyard steel furnaces were set up where peasants created their own steel out of scrap metal (pots, pans, etc)
Three Bitter Years (59-61): Chaos on a Grand Scale in Communes
1. Why did the Great Leap Forward fail?
a. Old and overworked machines fell apart under the pressure of increased production demands
b. Much of the ‘backyard’ steel produced was worthless and wasted
c. So many people were working in steel production that there weren't enough people to work the fields
d. Bad weather (floods in some parts; drought in others)
2. Farming Crisis: Why did so many people starve between 1960-1963?
a. Over-reporting of production: Communes wanted to impress with meeting/exceeding production goals. So the State took food based on false reports of
b. The weather in China in 1959 was bad (flood and draught) and the harvest was small
c. Soon people were hungry and starving, about 9 million people died of starvation in 1960
d. Between 1959 and 1962 about 20 million Chinese died of starvation and related diseases
e. **No one dared to criticize Mao or his programs. More than anything the Great Leap Forward was a failure of policy
3. The Rise of the Moderates: How did the Chinese Communist Party respond to the crisis?
a. Some party leaders blamed Mao for the 3 bitter years, He was persuaded to step down as Head of State, but remained as Party Chairman
b. The routine daily work of government passed to a group of more moderate leadership
i. Liu Shaoqi - Head of State
ii. Zhou Enlai - Prime Minister
iii. Deng Xiaoping - Party Secretary
c. The moderates abandoned the Great Leap Forward
d. Peasants were given their own private plots of land again, and were allowed to sell their goods (seems “capitalist” according to Mao)
e. However, Mao still had great influence, and would use it to get rid of the moderates in 1966, Cultural Revolution
The Cultural Revolution
1. Which road to follow: Moderates (Liu) or Radical (Mao)?
a. Disagreements between Communist leadership factions between 1962-66
i. Moderates - wanted to introduce more incentives (private plots, wages, etc.). Concerned with results of policy
ii. Radicals—Return to the Five Year Plans; Mao opposed the Moderates - thought they were taking the capitalist road. Ideology and communist ideals most important
b. Support for Mao—All soldiers got the book “Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong” - The Little Red Book
2. In 1966 Mao launched “The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution”
3. The Red Guards: Young students were encouraged to leave schools & join the revolution
4. Goals of the Red Guards:
a. Their goal was to get rid of all “capitalist” and “bourgeois” influences in schools
b. Mao/ Red Guard wanted to “purge” the Communist Party, and get rid of any people who they believed were not radical/ loyal enough to Mao
c. Mao/Red Guard began the “Four Olds” - against old ideas, old culture, old customs, old habits
5. Methods:
a. Posters, huge parades, violence
b. Shaved heads of girls with western hairstyles, Ripped off western styled clothes, Smashed shop windows of stores with western goods
c. Burned bookshops and libraries, Closed museums and art galleries, churches, temples, theaters
d. They basically ran wild and law and order had broken down in parts of China by 1967
6. Ultimately things got so out of hand (Red Guard’s fighting each other over who was ‘more revolutionary’) that Mao had to use the People’s Liberation Army to disband the Red Guard Units
7. Results:
a. It is thought that the Red Guard killed about 400,000 people, Many others were beaten, humiliated, tortured and imprisoned
b. Red Guard students/ members were eventually encouraged to go to the country to ‘learn from the peasants’, set up Revolutionary Committees - peasants, soldiers, Red Guards
c. Problems: Disruption of education and literacy, Industrial output fell drastically, farming was severely disrupted, it was chaos on a “grand scale”
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