MAO AND CHINA Prescribed Subject 2 - The emergence and development of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), 1946 TO 1964 This prescribed subject addresses internal issues in China between 1946 and 1964 and pays particular attention to the role of Mao Zedong (Mao Tse-tung) in the emergence and development of the People’s Republic of China.  Areas on which source-based question(s) will focus:  ·        The Chinese Civil War ·        Political unification, consolidation of power, economic reconstruction, social reform ·        The first Five Year Plan ·        Mass campaigns: 3 and 5 Antis, Hundred Flowers Campaign ·        The Great Leap Forward:

The War Lord Era in China 1916-1928 War Lords Li Yuanbong Zhang Zuolin Yan Xishan Feng Yuxiang Military Cliques who fought for control of Beijing, and to be recognised as the official government of China . The effects were disastrous, particularly on the peasants who were raped and pillaged and forced to pay taxes up to 30 years in advance, for their “protection and safety”.

Chinese Civil War China joined the allies in the Great War hoping to regain at least the territories run by the Germans but the treaty of Versailles awarded them to the Japanese. On May 4th 1919 demonstrations broke out in many Chinese cities and people of all classes protested and joined parties like the Guo Min Dang (GMD) also known as the Kuomintang (KMT), a newly formed communist party. They united in 1922 to end warlord rule and western domination of China. Despairing of the imperial powers they turned to Communist Russia for help. They realised the need for an efficient army of their own, if China was ever going to be free and strong.

May 4th Protests

Chinese Civil War Following the Russian revolution the GMD turned to Russia for help after the western powers did not recognize the GMD. The Comintern sent Mikhail Borodin (left) to organise the new Chinese Communist Party and to assist the GMD to unite and overthrow the warlords. Soviet advisers also helped the Nationalists set up a political institute to train propagandists in mass mobilization techniques, and in 1923 Chiang Kai-shek was sent to Moscow for several months' military and political study.

Chinese Civil War They organised a military academy outside Guangzhou at Whampoa to train officers to create an effective army.

Chinese Civil War Sun Yat sen seen here on a fundraising tour in the USA

Unfortunately Sun died in 1925 before his plans could come to fruition Unfortunately Sun died in 1925 before his plans could come to fruition. His funeral train is seen with his picture on the front.

Dr. Sun Yat-sen 1866-1925 Founder of the Kuomintang THE CHINESE CIVIL WAR Dr. Sun Yat-sen 1866-1925 Founder of the Kuomintang

Kuomintang (KMT), Chinese and Taiwanese political party under the nominal leadership of Sun Yat-sen, to succeed the Warlord era. The original Kuomintang program called for parliamentary democracy and moderate socialism.

Chinese Civil War His brother in law and leader of the new army Chiang Kai Shek quickly took command and established himself as leader moving against the War Lords in the successful Great Northern Expedition.

Chinese Civil War The success of the Northern Expedition surprised everyone as many of the Warlords were defeated some made peace with the GMD. The march to Shanghai became a triumphal parade but left Chiang with a problem. He did not want to share power with his Communist allies (Soviet Union), preferring the capitalist way of development which would ensure close ties with the USA. He decided therefore to end the United Front which had been so successful in defeating the Warlords and to eliminate his communist allies. A bloody purge (Night of the Long Knives) of the communists followed in Shanghai and in Guangzhou. The massacre was successful and left Chiang free to march on Beijing and establish himself as China’s first strong ruler since 1911. He would be in a position to carry out Sun Yat sen’s programme of modernisation of a united country.

Chinese Civil War China soon came to know him as the ruler of the country. He liked to be called the Generalissimo. He was able to modernise China as the electric cables for street cars shown in this picture demonstrate. Generally cities, particularly Shanghai, made great progress, even in the harsh economic climate of the 1930’s Great Depression.

Chinese young men learning to type.

Western Medicine became popular

Even Pu Yi the former boy emperor adopted Western ways

The cheongsam (body hugging dress for women) became very fashionable as foot binding was finally eradicated as a custom.

Some people became very rich…….. Whilst others remained desperately poor.

Kuomintang In 1926, Kuomintang general Chaing Kai–shek launched the Northern Expedition, advancing north from Guangzhou against the Beijing government. After halting temporarily in 1927, when the Communists were purged and the civil war between the two factions began, Kuomintang forces finally captured Beijing in 1928.

Chinese Civil War Some communists escaped the purges like Mao and Zhou and took communism to the country side, starting the civil wars again.

Chinese Civil War The Encirclement Campaigns by the Nationalists drove the communists to escape in the Long March. Mao is seen here with his second wife who accompanied him on the march.

The Long March

Victorious Japanese Troops at Shanghai Chinese Civil War With the outbreak of WWII the Japanese posed an even bigger threat, taking Manchuria and putting Pu Yi on the throne as a puppet. After 1937 they invaded and conquered the rich coastal plains and cities of China in a brilliantly successful but brutal campaign, culminating in the massacre at Nanjing where 300,000 civilians were slaughtered in an orgy of rape, pillage and execution. It then became Chiang Kai Shek’s turn to flee to the interior of China and resist as best he could in Chung king until the Americans arrived with help. Victorious Japanese Troops at Shanghai

Chinese Civil War Chinese refugees flee to the interior

Chiang Kai Shek with General “vinegar Joe” Stillwell By 1941 the world was at war and China found a great ally in America who sent men and huge quantities of supplies. America also tried to bring the ever distrustful Nationalists and Communists together. Chiang Kai Shek with General “vinegar Joe” Stillwell

Reluctant and distrustful allies, Chiang and Mao

The Americans tried hard to persuade the Communists to work with Chiang.

Chinese Civil War But with the Japanese defeated, the Civil War (1946-49) began again. Here a suspected communist is lead off to execution.

Chinese Civil War The Communists had the best leaders, the best general Zhu De and the best tactics. America became disillusioned with the corruption of Chiang’s regime and withdrew support. Popular support for the communists among the peasants proved decisive and Chiang fled to Taiwan to set up his Republic of China.

Chinese Civil War The People’s Republic of China is declared. The Chinese have their first strong government for over a century.

Chinese Civil War It’s time for the Foreign Devils to go home. They had started the turmoil and the fall of the Empire a 100 years before after the first Opium War. Here they are seen escaping Shanghai as refugees from the advancing Red Army, the People’s Liberation Army. There would be no more unequal treaties.

Mao Tse-tung (Mao Zedong) 1893-1976 Leader of the PRC THE CHINESE CIVIL WAR Mao Tse-tung (Mao Zedong) 1893-1976 Leader of the PRC

Marx, Lenin & Mao Mao takes Marx’s theory and instead of workers rising up, Mao uses the peasants to start his revolution.

3 ANTI (Antis) CAMPAIGN 1951-52 The “three-anti” (san fan) campaign was largely aimed at removing corrupt cadres(officials) and targeted corruption, waste, and “bureaucratism” among officials. The CCP leadership was concerned about this given the large number of GMD officials who had kept their posts following the establishment of the PRC. About 10% of officials were sacked and others were heavily fined but their treatment was mild compared to the Campaign Against Counter-revolutionaries in which perhaps 750,000 people were executed

5 Anti (Antis) Campaign 1951-52 The wu fan or “five-antis” campaign, which targeted bribery, tax evasion, fraud, theft of government property and of economic secrets, was used to reduce the independence of the “national” bourgeoisie. They were now subjected to tighter government supervision. 75% of all businesses were fined as a result of the “five antis” campaign. In the early 1950s, the three-anti/five-anti campaigns brought an end to private ownership of land, and further purged many people the CPC deemed to be landlords and capitalists.

China and the First Five Year Plan 1953 The Five Year Plan was an attempt by China to boost her industry and set her on the path to become a world class power. When Mao came to power in 1949, China was many years behind the industrial nations of the world. Mao wanted this to change. On an international level, Mao’s China had the same status as Stalin’s Russia. Communism was feared throughout the western world and here was the world’s most populated nation turning to communism. The only country who would want a treaty with China was the Soviet Union. In December 1949, Mao met Stalin in Moscow. They signed the Treaty of Friendship, Alliance and Mutual Assistance. This treaty gave China money and technical assistance to modernize her industry. Though the money received from Russia was minimal ($300 million over five years), Russia did provide 10,000 engineers to boost China’s industry and therefore her economy. Influenced by the Russian engineers, and also by the success of Stalin’s Five Year Plans, China introduced her own Five Year Plan in 1953. Heavy industry was targeted as being in need of major reform. The Five Year Plan attempted to tackle steel, coal and iron production. As in the Russian model, each factory or mine was given a target to achieve. Failure to meet a target was the equivalent of failing your people.

Five Year Totals

Hundred Flowers Campaign “Let a hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred schools of thought contend.” Campaign aimed solely at local bureaucracies for non-communist-affiliated officials to speak out about the policies and the existing problems within the central government in a manner previously considered illegal. Mao encouraged China's intellectuals to criticize the Communist Party.

Anti-Rightist Campaign Anti-Rightist Campaign (1957+) Period of retaliation against those who criticized the Communist Party during the Hundred Flowers campaign. During this time Mao instigated his most radical political campaign, the Cultural Revolution, that brought the nation to the brink of civil war.

Great Leap Forward The Great Leap Forward took place in 1958. The Great Leap Forward was Mao’s attempt to modernize China’s economy so that by 1988, China would have an economy that rivaled America.

Great Leap Forward Mao had toured China and concluded that the Chinese people were capable of anything and the two primary tasks that he felt they should target was industry and agriculture. Mao announced a second Five Year Plan to last from 1958 to 1963. This plan was called the Great Leap Forward. The Great Leap Forward planned to develop agriculture and industry. Mao believed that both had to grow to allow the other to grow. Industry could only prosper if the work force was well fed, while the agricultural workers needed industry to produce the modern tools needed for modernization. To allow for this, China was reformed into a series of communes. The geographical size of a commune varied but most contained about 5000 families. People in a commune gave up their ownership of tools, animals etc so that everything was owned by the commune. People now worked for the commune and not for themselves. The life of an individual was controlled by the commune. Schools and nurseries were provided by the communes so that all adults could work. Health care was provided and the elderly were moved into "houses of happiness" so that they could be looked after and also so that families could work and not have to worry about leaving their elderly relatives at home.

Great Leap Forward The commune provided all that was needed – including entertainment. Soldiers worked alongside people. The population in a commune was sub-divided. Twelve families formed a work team. Twelve work terms formed a brigade. Each sub-division was given specific work to do. Party members oversaw the work of a commune to ensure that decisions followed the correct party line. By the end of 1958, 700 million people had been placed into 26,578 communes. The speed with which this was achieved was astounding. However, the government did all that it could to whip up enthusiasm for the communes. Propaganda was everywhere – including in the fields where the workers could listen to political speeches as they worked as the communes provided public address systems. Everybody involved in communes was urged not only to meet set targets but to beat them. If the communes lacked machinery, the workers used their bare hands. Major constructions were built in record time – though the quality of some was dubious. The Great Leap Forward also encouraged communes to set up "back-yard" production plants. The most famous were 600,000backyard furnaces which produced steel for the communes. When all of these furnaces were working, they added a considerable amount of steel to China’s annual total – 11 million tones. The figures for steel, coal, chemicals, timber, cement etc all showed huge rises though the figures started at in 1958 were low. Grain and cotton production also showed major increases in production. Mao had introduced the Great Leap Forward with the phrase "it is possible to accomplish any task whatsoever." By the end of 1958, it seemed as if his claim was true.

The consequences of the Great Leap Forward However, in 1959, things started to go wrong. Political decisions/beliefs took precedence over commonsense and communes faced the task of doing things which they were incapable of achieving. Party officials would order the impossible and commune leaders, who knew what their commune was capable of doing or not, could be charged with being a "bourgeois reactionary" if he complained. Such a charge would lead to prison Quickly produced farm machinery produced in factories fell to pieces when used. Many thousands of workers were injured after working long hours and falling asleep at their jobs. Steel produced by the backyard furnaces was frequently too weak to be of any use and could not be used in construction – it’s original purpose. Buildings constructed by this substandard steel did not last long. Also the backyard production method had taken many workers away from their fields – so desperately needed food was not being harvested. Ironically, one of the key factors in food production in China was the weather and 1958 had particularly good weather for growing food. Party leaders claimed that the harvest for 1958 was a record 260 million tons – which was not true.

The consequences of the Great Leap Forward The excellent growing weather of 1958 was followed by a very poor growing year in 1959. Some parts of China were hit by floods. In other growing areas, drought was a major problem. The harvest for 1959 was 170 million tons of grain – well below what China needed at the most basic level. In parts of China, starvation occurred. Famine similar to Stalin and the Ukraine Hunger Famine. 1960 had even worse weather than 1959. The harvest of 1960 was 144 million tons. 9 million people are thought to have starved to death in 1960 alone; many millions were left desperately ill as a result of a lack of food. The government had to introduce rationing. This put people on the most minimal of food and between 1959 and 1962, it is thought that 20 million people died of starvation or diseases related to starvation. The backyard furnaces also used too much coal and China’s rail system, which depended on coal driven trains, suffered accordingly. By 1959, it was obvious that the Great Leap Forward had been a failure and even Mao admitted this. He called on the Communist Party to take him to task over his failures but also asked his own party members to look at themselves and their performance.

The consequences of the Great Leap Forward Some party members put the blame of the failure of the Great Leap Forward on Mao. He was popular with the people but he still had to resign from his position as Head of State (though he remained in the powerful Party Chairman position). The day-to-day running of China was left to three moderates: Liu Shaoqi, Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiaoping. In late 1960, they abandoned the Great Leap Forward. Private ownership of land was reinstated and communes were cut down to a manageable size. Peasants also had the incentive to produce as much spare food as was possible as they could sell any spare that they had a market. These three moderates had restricted Mao’s power but his standing among the ordinary Chinese people was still high as he was seen as the leader of the revolution. He was to use this popularity with the people to resurrect his authority at the expense of the moderates. This was in the so-called Cultural Revolution.

1957 Great Leap Forward Mao orders a return to the countryside and the creation of small rural factories in a push to drive through industrialization more quickly. Between l958-61, rural communes were encouraged to produce industrial products like steel and iron to the neglect of agricultural production. The result was widespread famine, with per capita grain consumption falling by 22% and millions of deaths.

Cultural Revolution The failure of the Great Leap Forward (1958-62) weakened Mao's position considerably in the Communist Party as factions began to form against him. His sense that the party was shunting him aside probably lies behind his call for a Great Revolution to Create a Proletarian Culture, or Cultural Revolution for short. But Mao also genuinely feared that China was slipping in an egalitarian direction and he would not stand by while a new elite took over the party and subverted the revolution.  Under Mao everything was owned by the state – people eat in canteens owned by the state, houses owned by the state, and people work for the state. To Mao the revolution had to be a permanent process, constantly kept alive through unending class struggle. Hidden enemies in the party and intellectual circles had to be identified and removed. Conceived of as a "revolution to touch people’s souls," the aim of the Cultural Revolution was to attack the Four Olds-- old ideas, old culture, old customs, and old habits--in order to bring the areas of education, art and literature in line with Communist ideology. Anything that was suspected of being feudal or bourgeois was to be destroyed. The “Cultural Revolution” was aimed at smashing the Chinese Communist Party, and re-building an administration owing allegiance to Mao alone.

Madam Mao & Cultural Revolution Jiang Qing Madam Mao Her field was culture and her background was an actress from Shanghai. Advisor of the Arts to the Army. Attacks against artists who are capitalists. All western art is prohibited. Revolutionary culture is good. Madam Mao produces propaganda for Chairman Mao through art & film, this acts as a pretext to the cultural revolution.

Madam Mao Propaganda Poster Art

Cultural Revolution Jiang Qing, Mao's wife, dominated cultural productions during this period. The ideas she espoused through eight "Model Operas" were applied to all areas of the arts. These operas were performed continuously, and attendance was mandatory.  Proletarian heroes and heroines were the main characters in each. To the right is an advertisement for the opera, "The Red Women's Army," a story about women from south China being organized to fight for a new and equal China. Note the use of ballet shoes and postures.  Jiang Qing emphasized "Three Stresses" as the guiding principle behind these operas.   Based on the way that the figures are arranged, can you guess to what the "Three Stresses" refers?

Answer During the Cultural Revolution, millions of educated youths were sent to rural areas to work in the countryside and learn from the peasantry. Mao believed that this would ultimately create a new society where there was no gap between urban and rural, laborers and intellectuals

Cultural Revolution What are some of the groups represented by the figures in the poster to the left? Can you guess what is happening in this scene?

Cultural Revolution One of Mao's famous quotes was "Women hold up half the sky."   How has the artist differentiated between men and women in this poster? 

Little Red Book The force at the core leading our cause forward is the Chinese Communist Party. The theoretical basis guiding our thinking is Marxism-Leninism. Opening address at the First Session of the First National People's Congress of the People's Republic of China (September 15, 1954). Without preparedness, superiority is not real superiority and there can be no initiative either. Having grasped this point, a force that is inferior but prepared can often defeat a superior enemy by surprise attack. "On Protracted War" (May 1938), Selected Works, Vol. II, pp. 165-66. Thousands upon thousands of martyrs have heroically laid down their lives for the people; let us hold their banner high and march ahead along the path crimson with their blood! "On Coalition Government" (April 24, 1945), Selected Works, Vol. III, p. 318. The world is yours, as well as ours, but in the last analysis, it is yours. You young people, full of vigor and vitality, are in the bloom of life, like the sun at eight or nine in the morning. Our hope is placed on you. The world belongs to you. China's future belongs to you. Talk at a meeting with Chinese students and trainees in Moscow (November 17, 1957).

Cultural Revolution In June 1966 middle schools and universities throughout the country closed down as students devoted all their time to Red Guard activities. Millions of these young students were encouraged to attack "counterrevolutionaries (teachers school leaders, and parents) " and criticize those in the party who appeared to have deviated from Maoist thought. Left is a painting of a young "Red Guard" participating in the campaign. The big characters on the board read "Field for Criticism."  The head of Mao Zedong appears in the upper left corner. Why do you think the artist chose to include Mao's image in this poster? 

Lin Biao Was a Chinese Communist military leader who was instrumental in the communist victory in the Chinese Civil War, especially in Northeastern China Was the General who led the People's Liberation Army into Beijing in 1949. He abstained from becoming a major player in politics until he rose to prominence during the Cultural Revolution, climbing as high as second-in-charge and Mao Zedong's designated and constitutional successor and comrade-in-arms. He died in a plane crash in September 1971 in Mongolia after what appeared to be a failed coup to oust Mao. After his death, he was officially condemned as a traitor, and is still recognized as one of the two "major Counter-revolutionary parties" during the Cultural Revolution– the other being Jiang Qing.

Struggle Sessions (Purges) Red Guard denounce teachers, parents, school leaders in public facing hundreds of people for crimes against Mao and the Revolution. This was a unique method used by the Communist Party of China in the Mao era to shape public opinion and to humiliate, persecute, and/or execute political rivals, so-called class enemies .

Cultural Revolution Mao deliberately set out to create a cult for himself (SPS) Single Party State, and to purge the Chinese Communist Party of anyone who did not fully support Mao. His main selling point was a desire to create a China which had peasants, workers and educated people working together – no-one was better than anyone else and all working for the good of China – a classless society