Mao Zedong Of The Soviet Union

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

The Great Leap Forward is a Maoist approach to ruling China; it is distinct from the soviet model. After the hundred flowers Mao started to take criticism negatively and created an “Anti rightest campaign” that targeted intellectuals and anyone with an independent mind. Mao’s Anti rightest campaign allowed him to continue on with GLF plan without any constraints from the party. The Great Leap forward can be seen as a simple intensification of the Big push strategy; there were massive increases in the rate at which resources were transferred from agriculture to industry. Mao implemented the idea of “communes” in the countryside. A commune was a large-scale combination of governmental and economic functions. It was used to mobilize labor for construction projects, provide social series and develop rural small-scale industries. Mao rejected material incentives and monetary rewards, bonuses were eliminated and free markets were shut down. In 1958, there was a spectacular autumn harvest (grain); Leaders were blinded because of growth in industries. Agricultural workers were moved to rural factories and Agricultural workers were told to reduce the acreage

Another goal of the revolution was to promote industrialization in the rural areas of China and to narrow the economic gap between the urban and rural people. Because of this many peasants became industrial workers and improved their standard of living. Also, as the Cultural Revolution continued ordinary farmers were empowered and were given more control of the affairs of production teams. The farmers started many committees whose members were democratically elected. With the impute from the elected leaders of these committees production improved.

As many other countries around the world China has its long history of a struggle for equality and prosperity against tyrants and dictatorships. The establishment of People’s Republic of China in 1949 seemed to have put an end to that struggle for a better life. “The Chinese people have stood up!” declared Mao Tse-tung, the chairman of China’s Communist Party (CPP) – a leading political force in the country for the time. The people were defined as a coalition of four social classes: the workers, the peasants, the petite bourgeoisie and the national-capitalists. The four classes were to be led buy the CPP, as the leader of the working class.

Firstly, basing on his investigation, the report strengthened Mao’s understanding about Chinese revolution and peasants. Secondly, at that time, the report would promote the development of nationwide peasant movements in China. Therefore, the report was greatly helpful in developing new ways of revolutionary for Chinese communist party leaders.

Most importantly, the reestablishment of the hukou system in the early sixties, preceding the failure of Mao’s Great Leap Forward plan, affected factories in China heavily. By law, every worker in the city needed a hukou, an urban residence permit, in order to be allowed to work. This created a huge conflict between China’s urban and rural citizens as it was made extremely difficult for people from rural areas to get hukous, which of course everyone wanted (Naughton, pg. 118). Because of this, the urban and rural areas started to develop in very different ways since city folk had primary access to food, even during the nationwide famine. However, even with the societal uproar, the Chinese government did not make

Between the deadly outcomes of the great leap forward and the unwanted effects of the cultural revolution, it was clear to see why Mao was a problem. In 1958 China underwent a massive plan that was executed by Mao to increase the industrialization of steele and other products so that they could make an “effort to catch up with the economy of the Western world”(Arifa, Akbar 1). Overall this plan seemed good on paper but when the government started to enforce the plan they slowly began to see what was happening. The government put people in communes and forced them to give up their

In late 1924, Mao returned to Shaoshan to recuperate from an illness. During this time, he noticed the increasing restlessness of the peasants. Some of the peasantry had even gone so far as to seize land from wealthy landowners and to form communes. Mao realized that the great numbers of China’s peasantry could be utilized to launch a revolution. In secret, Mao began teaching peasants the communist literature.

The years of 1953 to 1957 marked a period of experimentation within the domestic Chinese economy. Following the successful redistribution of land between 1949 to 1952, the Chinese government created the ambitious First Five Year Plan (FFYP), aimed towards the fast industrialisation of heavy and light industry. The Plan followed closely the Soviet model of industrialisation, translating it into the Chinese context, and having the advantage of hindsight and experience to avoid some of the “grosser Soviet mistakes” (Central Intelligence Agency, pp 2). China had long been an agrarian country, with agricultural output accounting for about half of the countries total GNP. There existed a strong reliance on agricultural production as a foundational support for the economy (Uhally 1988, pp82-83). It was as a result that the plan was contingent on the centralised procurement and distribution of agricultural output, chiefly grains, to finance investment in the production of capital goods. Within the plan, the proportion of the state budget devoted to agriculture was set at a low 6.2 percent. Yet the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) nursed some grandiose ambitions for agricultural production and socialisation. In doing so, they would have to first solve the contradictions that were evident in the ownership of land by peasants after the redistribution. Under a fully socialist state, such a system of private enterprise was not feasible, as mentioned in the First Five Year Plan:

Mao’s rise to power was an interesting journey, because of his very humble beginnings. He was Born on December 26, 1893 into a peasant family in Shaoshan in the Hunan province of central China. From a young age, Mao showed a great intelligence and a desire for knowledge. He attended a local primary school at the age of eight, but received little education. To satisfy his appetite for learning Mao was an avid reader. By the time, he thirteen he was working the fields alongside his father, a grain farmer. Mao rejected the life his father had planned for him. Mao’s great ambitions caused conflicts between him and his father. When he turned eighteen Mao left home for Changsha, the province capital, to enrolled in a secondary school. During this time, in 1911, revolution was growing against the monarchy. Mao joined the Revolutionary army and the nationalist party. In 1912, the monarchy was overthrown and the Republic of china was founded. Mao was caught up in the movement and the excitement of political and change sweeping the country. He reveled in the bright new future he saw for himself and his country (Schram, 1983).

The reform of agriculture was required when the Chinese leaders finished experimenting with the commune system and central economic planning. They became aware of its many down falls and so they began to concentrate on a more market-oriented economy. One of the main shortcomings of the commune system was that farm workers had no incentive to work hard because they were not rewarded for their efforts. The farmers knew how to run the farms efficiently, but their hands were tied under the commune system by the central government.

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.

Prior to the opening up and reform in China, land tenure was largely controlled by the state as a result of Chairman Mao Zedong vision of a soviet styled industrialized socialist republic. It was during his leadership era in China that land was forcefully taken from landowners in various provinces and reclaimed for agricultural purposes. This move was basically undertaken to fulfill Mao Zedong vision of extracting profit from surplus agricultural production. Not only did Mao Zedong reclaim land from its owners but he also organized farmers into communes and made them work to achieve his objectives. This was one of the most difficult eras for the Chinese people as communism began to shape their lives and way of thinking. (Yanefski 2013)

In reviewing the astonishing outcome of the economic reforms begun during the late 1970s, it is essential to recall their modest scope. The initial reforms included three components. China's reform leaders allowed impoverished localities to experiment with household farming. This innovation spread like wildfire, evidently because most Chinese farmers welcomed the chance to escape from collective agriculture. By the time China's leaders formally ratified the "household responsibility system," local initiative had transformed the vast majority of Chinese farmers into tenants who now leased plots from local collectives.

In 1949 a powerful communist leader by the name of Mao Zedong came to power based on his idea for a, “Great Leap Forward.” This idea was meant to bring China’s economy into the twentieth century. He had assembled a revolutionary government using traditional Chinese ideals of filial piety, harmony, and order. Mao's cult of personality, party purges, and political policies reflect Mao's esteem of these traditional Chinese ideals and history. However, the product of this revolution created a massive national shortage in vital materials and initiated a wide scale famine to China’s people (Gabriel).