Notes for World History
Why did Mao and the communists gain support?
- The inefficiency and corruption of the KMT in govt.
- There was little improvement in the factory conditions.
- There was no improvement in the peasant poverty.
- Chiang’s ‘New Life Movement’ in which he advocated a return to the traditional values of Confucianism, was controversial.
- The KMT put up no effective resistance to the Japanese invasion of China
- KMT’s policy of paying for the wars by printing extra money resulted in galloping inflation which caused hardship for the masses and ruined middle class.
- KMT’s armies were poorly paid; the troops gradually began to desert to the communists.
- The communists continued to gain support by their land policy, which varied according to the needs of particular areas.
- Communist armies were well disciplined and communist administration was honest and fair.
How successful was Mao in dealing with China’s problems? (1)
China faced various problems in 1949 when Mao came to power. The country was devastated after the long civil war and the war with Japan; industry was backward, agriculture was inefficient , inflation seemed out of control.
Reforms brought about by Mao were as follows:
- Constitution: A new constitution was adopted which provided China with a strong central govt for the first time.
- Agriculture changes: Agricultural changes transformed China from a country of small, inefficient private farms into one of large co-operative farms like those in Russia.
- Industrial changes: Industrial changes began with the govt nationalising most businesses. A Five Year Plan was formulated mainly for the development of heavy industry.
- Hundred Flowers campaign: The Hundred Flowers campaign which involved discussion between party cadres and experts or intellectuals to improve relations between them as party cadres believed that new class of experts such as technicians and engineers threatened their authority.
How successful was Mao in dealing with China’s problems? (2)
The Great Leap Forward:
- Mao felt that something new and different was needed to meet China’s special problems-something not based on Russian experience.
- The Great Leap Forward involved further important developments in both industry and agriculture, in order to increase output and to adapt industry to Chinese conditions.
The most important features of the Great Leap Forward were:
- The introduction of communes: These were units larger than collective farms divided into work teams with an elected council. They ran their own collective farms and factories, carried out most of the functions of local govt within the commune and undertook special local projects. Each family received a share of the profits and also had a small private plot of land.
- A complete change of emphasis on in industry: Instead of aiming for large-scale works of the type seen in the USSR and the West, much small factories were set up in the countryside to provide machinery for agriculture.
- At first it looked as though the Great Leap might be a failure: there was some opposition to the communes, a series of bad harvests and the withdrawal of all Russian aid. All this, coupled with the lack of experience among the cadres caused hardships leading to millions of premature deaths.
- However in the long term the importance of the Great Leap became clear. By the 1970s, both agricultural and industrial production had increased substantially. The communes proved to be a successful innovation which were much more than merely collective farms as they were an efficient unit of local govt. The crucial decision had been taken that China would remain predominantly an agricultural country with small-scale industry scattered around the countryside. The labour intensive economy allowed China to avoid the growing unemployment problem of the highly industrialised western nations. There were also improvement in the position of women in society.
How successful was Mao in dealing with China’s problems? (3)
The Cultural Revolution
- This was Mao’s attempt to keep the revolution and the Great Leap on a pure Marxist-Leninist course, and to hit back at what he considered to be an over-bureaucratic party leadership under his deputy.
- In the early 1960s, when the success of the Great Leap was by no means certain, opposition to Mao grew from the right wing members of the Party.
- From 1963 to 1966, there was a great public debate between the rightists and the Maoists about which course to follow.
- Mao launched desperate campaign to ‘save’ the revolution. In his Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, as he called it, Mao appealed to the masses. His supporters, the Red Guard who were mostly students, toured the country arguing Mao’s case.
- In some areas schools and factories were closed down and young people were urged to move into the countryside and work on farms.
- Unfortunately, the cultural revolution brought chaos and something close to civil war. Teachers, professionals, officials , common people, all were disgraced, attacked and ruined by the Red Guards.
- By 1967, the extremist among the Red Guards were out of control and Mao had to call in army to restore order.
- In 1969, the Cultural Revolution finally ended.
- The cultural Revolution caused great disruption, ruined millions of lives and held up China’s economic development by ten years.
Tiananmen Square, 1989
- The economic reforms in China ran into problems during 1988 and 1989. Inflation went quite up, and wages lagged.
- In May 1989, nearly a million Chinese, mostly young students, crowded into central Beijing at the Tiananmen Square to protest for political reform, greater democracy and call for the resignations of Chinese Communist Party leaders.
- For nearly three weeks, the protesters kept up daily vigils, and marched and chanted.
- However, Chinese troops and security police stormed through Tiananmen Square, firing indiscriminately into the crowds of protesters.
- Thousands of the protesters had been killed and as many as 10,000 were arrested.
- The savagery of the Chinese government’s attack shocked both its allies and Cold War enemies.
- The U.S. Congress voted to impose economic sanctions against China in response to the brutal violation of human rights.
- However, the Chinese govt was convinced that they had taken the right decision. They felt that one-party control was needed to supervise the transition to a ‘socialist market economy’ and hence students’ demands of democracy needed to be ignored.
- Later, events in USSR seemed to prove them right when Gorbachev tried to introduce political and economic reforms at the same time and failed; the Communist Party lost control and USSR broke up into 15 separate states. Thus, China was able to preserve Communism at the time when it was being swept away in eastern Europe.
