Agriculture and Industry 1949-65
- Created by: rakso181
- Created on: 20-05-16 16:08
1950 Agarian Reform Law
- Portrays landlords as ruling class
- Mao wants to rally peasants onto his side
- Needed a claim that he'd successfully adapted Marxism to China
Attacks on landlordism and redistribution of land
- Eradication of landlord class
- Military help to silence hostiles and help Party officials organise Work Teams
- Work teams calculate how much tax people owe depending on their land, label villagers, and create anti-landlord paranoia
- Public humiliation with possessions confiscated and divided amongst other peasants - victims often executed or beaten up by other villagers - shows a peasant-led revolution
- End of 1951 - 10 million landlords lose land and 40% land changes hands
- Death toll between 700K and 3 million
Moves towards agricultural co-operation
- Moves towards collectivisation due to new class of landowners - measured approach taken of about 15 years
- 1951 - groups of about 10 families encouraged into MATs (Mutual Aid Teams) to pool equipment, livestock and labour
- 1952 - successful MATs converted to APCs (Agricultural Producers' Co-operatives) of 40-50 families - keep private ownership
- Many APCs rushed into being made, leaving many in debt from buying equipment
- Mao calls for slowdown in spring 1953 - things stabilise by 1954 but many start selling food and land
- Mao calls the slowdown a 'rash retreat' and renews pressure on APCs
- Rural protest due to grain requisitioning during poor harvest 1954
- Mao calls for 'Stop, Contract and Develop' for next 18 months
Moves towards agricultural co-operation (ctd.)
- July 1955 - Mao calls for all-out collectivisation - 17 million houses July 1955 to 75 million January 1956
- Many new APCs become higher HPCs with 200-300 households - no longer own land/equipment and profits based on work points
Impacts of agricultural co-operation
Politically:
- Carried out quickly
- Party control increased
- Shows Mao's authority
Ideologically:
- Own means of food, land and production
Socially:
- Nobody owns their own land
- Peasants seen as servants of the party rather than allies
Impacts of agricultural co-operation (ctd.)
Economically:
- Low labour productivity
- Low cultivated land per head
- 1st FYP - food production only increases by 3.8% per annum - not enough to feed growing indus. workforce
People's Communes: Reasons
- Continue the revolution - didn't want it to be becalmed by bureaucrats
- Pool larger resources of equip. and labour - higher food yields and more peasants freed for construction projects
- More manpower for water control projects in winter 1957-58
People's Communes: Organisation
- 'Walking on Two Legs'
- Modern economy: farmers - grain - indus. workers - steel
- Expand communes and mobilise workforce for water conservancy projects
- First commune is Sputnik with over 27 collectives and 9K houses
- Internal passport system introduced - unable to move anywhere without one
- 750K collectives into 26K communes with 120 million houses
People's Communes: Communal living
- Same as before only with an added sense of communal identity
- Workers divided into production brigades
- Tractor stations provided
- Become units of local government (public health, education, policing etc.)
- Abandoned 'bourgeois' emotional attatchements for regimented lifestyle - ideals of utopian socialism
- Frees people up from domestic jobs
- Communes planned to expand into cities
People's Communes: Abolition of private farming
- All private property surrendered
- Communist values become the norm
- No motivation to work with everyone receiving the same rewards
- Competition within communes - lack of sleep and stealing of supplies
- Loss of personal freedoms and possessions creating a military dimension
- Men between 15-50 must join the militia
People's Communes: Lysenkoism
- Trofim Lysenko - Ukrainian agricultural scientist who Stalin relied on during the Great Famine of the 30s
- 1958 - made an official policy in China with an 8-point programme
- Potentially dangerous ideas - 1000s peasant homes destroyed for soil fertilisation - pest control results in insect manifestation after culling of birds
People's Communes: The Great Famine (1958-62)
- Mao announces the whole country had been collectivised into 26K communes
Reasons:
- Mao trying to mobilise masses for engineering projects whilst launching the 2nd FYP
- Substistence farmers expected to provide huge surpluses for communes
- Too much acceptance of Lysenkoism
- Technical experts purged in Antis campaigns
- Cadres issue overly enthusiastic reports to please superiors
- Lack of reward and private ownership damages productivity
- Mao prioritises industrialising China over millions of peasant lives
- Could have been prevented if Mao had listened to Peng Duhai at the Lushan Conference
People's Communes: The Great Famine (ctd.)
What happened?
- 30-50 million deaths
- Worse in rural regions - 25% Tibetan pop. wiped out to destroy their identity
- Wives and children sold, prostitution, banditry and some cases of cannibalism
The First Five Year Plan (1952-56)
Why its not immediately introduced:
- Sort out nationalist opposition
- Reward peasants for their revolutionary support with land redistribution
- Reduce inflation rate from 1000%
1st FYP: USSR Financial and technical support
- Despite difficulties between Russia and China, Russia was still an inspiration
- 1951 - inflation rate cut down to 15% through cuts on public spending, increases in tax and replacing the Chinese dollar with the Yuan
- Sino-Soviet treaty 1950 arranges Soviet advisors to come to China - over 10K civilian technicians bring specialist knowledge
- Russia lend China $100 million which China had to pay back with loans and bullion stocks
- Adoption of Lysenkoism
- 'Soviet brutalist'style buildings replace classical Chinese buildings
- Chinese delegates visit Moscow to train in propoganda and governmental organisation
1st FYP: Targets
- Make PRC self-sufficient in food and manufactured goods to protect China from a Capitalist world
- Set from above by economic planners rather than in response to consumer demand
- Resources towards heavy industry
- Fear from 'five antis' brings private ownership to an end in 1956
- People encouraged to invest into patriotic saving schemes - which is directed into indus.
1st FYP: Successes and Failures
Successes:
- More migrate to cities - 57 million 1949 to 100 million 1957
- Urban living standards improve - wages and job security increase
- Most sectors reach targets - annual growth rate at 7%
Failures:
- Figures unreliable
- Soviet guidance higlights shortcomings in workers' skill and literacy
- Competition for resources between private and SOEs - unresolved until end of private ownership 1956
The Second Five Year Plan (1958-62)
Reasons:
- Economic
- Industrialisation depends on a more productive agric. to feed workers
- Conservatives want a 'carrot' approach with consumer goods and higher food prices
- Radical hardliners want a 'stick' approach with food requisition and punishment for slackers - Mao finds this too risky as 70% of the party are peasants
- Political
- Mao wants to show China's independence
- Go from socialism to communism by 'walking on two legs'
- Personal
- Mao's confidence high with rapid collec., his successful provincial tour 1958 and impressive work on water conservancy schemes
- Local cadres want to prove their credentials in light of the anti-rightist campaigns
2nd FYP: Backyard Furnaces
- Autumn 1957 - Mao says steel prod. will x4 over next 4 years
- Dec 1957 - Liu Shaoqui says China will overtake Britain in steel and iron over next 10 years
- 1958 steel target from 6-8 million in May to 10.7 in September
- Mao orders backyard furnace campaign to acheive these targets
- Families urged to build their own - becomes more important than education
- Sep 1958: 14% China's steel from Backyard furnaces - October: 49%
- Spring 1959 - leadership realise only large smelting plants are making quality steel
- Economicaly and ecologically damaging - vast amount of woodland destroyed for fuel
2nd FYP: SOEs and construction projects
SOEs:
- Nationalisation in 1956 - incentives removed to work harder
- 'Iron bowl' - workers enjoy high job security, high wages and medical benefits
- No longer any bargaining for better conditions
Construction projects:
- Water conservancy projects in late 1957 with millions of peasant workers
- Some irrigation schemes are complete disasters - Three Gate Gorge Dam designed to control flow of Yellow River but is rebuilt within a year
- Colossal costs of lives and labour with only some relatively successful
- Increase in salinisation (salt in the soil)
- Expert advice brushed away if it threatens delay
2nd FYP: Successes and Failures
Succeses:
- Increase in output of raw materials - 131 tonnes coal 1957 to 290 tonnes 1959
- 1964 - development of nucelar weapons
Failures:
- Inadequate quality control threatens China's reputation as a trading partner
- Leadership lack basic managerial and technical skills
- Lack of planning makes Mao's lack of scientific/technical knowledge clear
- 1962 - 1/2 heavy indus. goods and 3/4 light indus. goods than 1958
- Slow prod. epecially in manufactured goods
2nd FYP: Lushan Conference (July 1959)
- Assess the Great Leap Forward (2nd FYP) at the end of its first year
- Mao brings Jiang Qing to use her influence on the Shanghai wing of the party
- Only Peng Duhai stands up to Mao - isolated as a trouble maker and sacked
Results:
- Economic - GLF can continue, embarking on a 'second leap' and pushing on agriculture
- Political - Made clear that Mao's only critic could be himself
The Third Five Year Plan (1963-65)
- Liu Shaoqui and Deng Xiaoping put in charge:
- Break up communes
- More realistic targets set
- Relaxation of persecution to help factories reach targets
- Most initiatives drawn up by Chen Yun - Yun was good at presenting facts to Mao by blaming the people who carried his orders out
- Shift back to centralised control
- Financial incentives introduced - agric. prod. back to 1957 level and oil and natural gas prod. rockets
- Mao fears this retreat, calling it dangerous 'revisionism'
- Jan 1962 - Mao calls conference of 7000 cadres to discuss drift from communist principles - Shaoqui criticises Mao for avoiding blame so Mao simply accepts responsibility as Chairman
- Chen, Liu and Deng want enterprise and planning with private trade as a work incentive - Mao wants mass mobilisation to avoid bourgeois class emerging
- Summer 1962 - Mao attacks right of the party, asking if China are taking the 'capitalist or socialist road'
Related discussions on The Student Room
- Free IB History help »
- Edexcel A Level History Paper 2 (9HI0 2A-2H) - 9th June 2023 [Exam Chat] »
- History edexcel communism russia and china »
- History A levels »
- History IGCSE »
- Guide: Which Language Should I Study? »
- DMU - A Rich and Vibrant History of Improving Lives through Education »
- 2022 papers »
- Edexcel A-Level History - Mao's China »
- IRP Follow Up Questions? – AQA A LEVEL Spanish »
Comments
Report
Report
Report
Report
Report
Report
Report
Report
Report
Report
Report
Report
Report
Report
Report
Report
Report