In light of the economic changes that had occurred from the Maoist period (1949-1976) to the post-Maoist period (1978-2011) of China, the system of economic distribution of China under Mao Zedong’s and Deng Xiaoping’s leadership created a notable contrast of the standards of living for Chinese citizens. Mao Zedong’s establishment of collectively owned lands and state entitlement in the 1950s to 1970s put an end to private ownership and created a system whereby the earnings of Chinese citizens were paid per capita basis, reducing income differences. Upon the death of Mao Zedong and his system, Deng Xiaoping’s establishment of the privatization of lands and economic liberalization under his “Four Modernizations” reform goal created a system …show more content…
Chen Huiqin described how peasants like herself were initially obtaining more money than they were under Mao Zedong’s leadership by working under the piecework reward system and family responsibility system that allowed land and other resources to be contracted to individual families. In addition to this newly instated private acquisition of resources, small-scale township and village enterprises (TVE’s) were established by farmers who invested in or established food processing organizations. The new system of resource privatization and business organization growth also caused local businesses, such as Chen Huiqin’s warping business, to decline due to peasants managing to make more money working in factories while creating similar products at a cheaper price. The post-Maoist period even included opportunities for Chinese citizens to pursue their own business goals and leave their “iron rice bowl” careers that had previously constricted Chinese citizens to a singular lifestyle, such as the case with Chen Huiqin’s son, Shebao, and his decision to start a business after quitting his job. The financial system reflected Post-Maoist ideals of economic development, Chinese modernization, and market capitalism that was supported under Deng Xiaoping’s
Farmers had to grow crops but also had to work to produce steel and iron in addition to infrastructure projects. This policy led to deaths of millions of Chinese peasants and what came to be known as the biggest famine in history. This was a huge failure for Mao, and threw off his position as leader.
Although, China is a great economical world power today, it is not due to The Great Leap Forward. The Great Leap Forward was a giant step backward and is considered the worst famine in human history with an “estimated 30 million people perished between 1959 and 1962”. The overwhelming desire to industrialize backfired, but became the beginning of human rights abuse caused by harsh labor conditions. In order to fund industrial programs, “the Party would use profits from the agricultural sector, therefore the first priority was to increase agricultural output. That in turn, meant full-fledged mechanization.” To achieve full-fledged mechanization, thousands of male peasants were transferred to industrial work. They left the farm work for the women and the children. For example, in 1958 “the [Henan] province allocated 1.604 billion yuan to construction projects” and Wu Zhipu, the Chinese Communist Party governor of Henan, “crowed that ‘by the end of August, the province will have built or expanded 378,000 factories and mines of all kinds,’” which proved to be true when “workers employed in the province’s state-owned enterprises more than doubled in number from 1957.” These workers were not only starved due to the mass starvation, but ridiculed with harsh government policies. “Anyone who aroused the wrath of a leader could be
Pol Pot and Mao Zedong committed horrendous acts of genocide. Both are leaders of their country and are merciless when it comes to gaining, and or controlling power. Pol Pot was a leader of the Khmer Rouge and committed the Cambodia genocide. Mao Zedong was the leader of China and he committed the Great Chinese Famine. Both countries were communist; Cambodia became a communist country after it was taken over by the Khmer Rouge. Both Pol Pot and Mao Zedong were fearless leaders who would give the order to commit violence.
The Chinese communist party had a great influence on the peasants, this sparked a sense of nationalism between the two classes this is shown in documents 1 and 2. Mao Zedong stated in document 1 that “peasants will rise like a mighty storm” and that “they will smash all chains that bind them and rush forward along the road to liberation”. Here Zedong’s tone is intimidating and determined. Zedong shows confidence in the peasants and their abilities
Deng Xiaoping began market-orientated reforms and opened the economy. The incomes of the poorer residents of china are on the increase, however the wealthier residents are still getting wealthier and much faster. Income inequality has risen at a faster pace than that of the United States according to the Gini coefficient. The income inequality is rapidly growing and is still at a very high level.
This document shows how living conditions and independence did not improve for landowners. Landowners only lost their land and homes. It wasn’t fair how low classes were able to make more money when landowners couldn’t have better living conditions. Document 9 by an unknown person who was an economist made a line graph for people interested in China’s GDP to see how China’s GDP was at that time. This line graph shows how the quality of people’s life wasn’t improving because there wasn’t any jobs for them. The economy was very weak since there wasn’t enough jobs. Factories didn’t improve either they stayed the same because of the value of the materials. People couldn’t afford things because since there wasn’t jobs they didn’t have enough money to be able to buy things. The Communist China notes talks about the Great Leap Forward. The Great Leap Forward began from 1958 and ended in 1960. During 1959 through 1961 about 50 million people died of starvation. Mao forced people to work and it
In 1949 Mao Zedong and his communist revolutionaries had won control of China after a civil war that had lasted more than 20 years. Mao’s revolution was based on a society where the workers control the government. During this time China was a substandard country due to the years of war, disease, and natural disaster. To help make china stronger Mao called for couples to have more babies because babies equal more workers and more work leads to a stronger China. To help economically, people were forced to abandon farming and help aid an industrial China, thus known as The Great Leap Forward. With the replacing of farms, China was reconciled to food shortages, which then led to the killing of an estimated 30 million people. Therefore mao turned
Many factors such as, growing liberalization, economic disparities, and inflations. led to the protests. During Mao Ze Dong's leadership, the Chinese government collectivized industries and agriculture. After his death, his successor Deng Xiao Ping implemented the Gai Ge Kai Fang policy, de-collectivizing industries and agriculture. (Huenemann 2017) This policy also allowed citizens greater freedom. Some academics even received encouragement from the government to take an active political stance. (The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica) Following the privatization of agriculture and industries, China experienced great economic growth. Unfortunately, this also caused the rate of corruption, and economic disparities to surge. China also experienced price inflations as it
In 1949 china was under the expression of a communist state. The regime of china was set up in similarity to the regime of Vladimir Lenin in the Soviet Union. Mao Zedong was part of the communist party. He followed the vision of Karl Marx, by envisioning a society under his regime that all shared equal prosperity and communism. In order to bring this vision to reality, he wanted to eliminate all capitalism and its emphasis on property rights, profits, and free-market competition. In the 1950’s in the rural of china, Mao banned free markets, which involved peasants selling farm products. However the trade of capitalism still existed through the private enterprise of remnants. Mao was dissatisfied with the outcomes towards an economy of Marxism. So he strived for a stronger approach by coming up with the Great Leap Forward. However, after the intense economic development that china had suffered from the great leap forward, it left millions of individuals throughout china suffering from the masses and deaths from the collapse of the food system. Because of the major consequences that were suffered from this approach it was unable to be left unnoticed. So, in 1960 after Moa Zedong declined all responsibility towards the disaster from the Great Leap Forward, Lui Shao-chi and Deng Xiaoping were left to rectify and administer the crisis. However, their attempt to repair the economic damages towards china, only led to the reverse of Mao’s earlier policies. That were
China's transition from the leadership under the iron fist of Mao Zedong to the more liberal Deng Xiao Ping gave the People's Republic a gradual increase in economic freedom while maintaining political stability. During Mao's regime, the country focused on bolstering and serving the community, while subsequently encumbering individual growth and prosperity. Deng advocated a more capitalist economic ideology, which established China as an economic force in the global community while endowing its citizens with more liberties and luxuries than previously granted.
Deng Xiaoping was known as the second communist leader of China. He politically was communist, but economically capitalist. He turned a war torn china into one of the most prosperous nations in only 35 years. He led China in the midst of social and institutional woes, and built it to the China we know today. He was leader of China from 1978-1989. Deng Xiaoping was part of the government and got involved in the Marxist revolution. His fellow members thought that he and a couple of others were not Marxists at all and instead a nationalist. He was removed from office and imprisoned during the Cultural Revolution. From 1966 to 1976 he was imprisoned and eventually released.
Imagine a place where everyone is entitled to a free car, a free house, and free healthcare. The Communist utopia is as if put at work in the paradise of Huaxi Village, a township in Jiangsu around 80 miles away from China’s economic powerhouse, Shanghai. When China effectively embraced a semi-capitalist approach in the 1980s, Huaxi was an agrarian hovel, reachable only by dirt roads. Wu Renbao, the transformative village party secretary, seized on the new market freedoms to shift the Huaxi economy from primarily farming to manufacturing and trade. Yet, privatization was not selected: the residents would pour their money into a collective pot and share in the take from whatever new profit they gained. Originally a TVE, the Huaxi Group
The goals of Deng Xiaoping’s economic reform were the ‘Four Modernizations’. This Four Modernization refers to the reform of agriculture, industry, national defense, and science technology. These reforms were to solve the problems of motivating workers and farmers to produce a larger surplus and to eliminate economic imbalances that were common in command economies.
In accordance to this, China went on a construction binge. Whole factories were purchased from abroad while others were built with local resources. By 1978, the frenzy for new projects reached a level that reminded some people of the Great Leap Forward. In an effort to promote agricultural production, the government released many of the restrictions on the 'spontaneous capitalist tendencies' of the peasantry. (173) In the late 1980's, the government decided to expand the scope of private marketing. The next step was to increase the amount land assigned to the peasants. The peasants were now not responsible to the government for the use they made to the private plots. They simply could grow what they wished, for the sale to the government or to private markets. This led to furious rebuilding and inflow of foreign investments. All this enabled China to remake itself into Asian's hub of finance, trade and culture.
Mao built communes throughout areas of china which contained on average five-thousand families. These turned out to be well controlled communities where the residents gave up all ownership of possessions, land, etc. The elderly and young children were looked after so healthy family members could work and not have to worry about them. Mao in May of 1958 launched another plan: the Great Leap Forward. This was Mao's economic plan to transform China into an industrial nation in two years. The plan was to decentralize agriculture and create communes which would promote heavy industry and agricultural production. The Great Leap Forward seemed to symbolize Mao's embrace of technology and industry. In 1958 700 million people had been placed in to 26, 785 communes. Small villages would set rice quotas and economic priorities and work as a group, sharing resources for the harvest. Communes can be seen as based on the Confucian idea of obligation. Traditionally, Confucianism obligated a child to respect a parent. Communes, according to Mao would replace that obligation to parents, with an obligation to Communism. The government worked tirelessly to keep workers motivated by vast propaganda tools. Devices such as, political speeches played in the fields, or goal setting was common. Also back-yard steel smelting furnaces were used which unfortunately produced poor qualities of steel, and over-consumed coal which led to a massive shortage.