The Great Leap Forward was a Setback for China Essay

China has changed in certain ways and remained the same in others from the early Golden Ages to the late 1900s. China has experienced a series of cultural and political transformations, shaping the lives of many Chinese citizens. Culturally, the country’s art and literature hardly changed for almost eight hundred years. Along with their culture, China remained politically the same from the beginning of the Golden Ages all the way until the 1800s. On the other hand, China’s government and society were restructured after new leaders took over. From a monarch to total communism, China’s society had a multitude of new ideas and policies they had to adapt to.

Through out all of history we have seen so many heroes and villains all over the world. But one place in particular was in China, with a leader who goes by the name of Mao Zedong. Mao Zedong was a well-known communist leader in china who actually lead the Chinese Communist Party. He is one of the most important people/historical figures in history. At first he was helping China at the beginning of his ruling, nut then his actions had cause China to completely fall and breakout into violence and complete chaos!! Changing the views of his people because whatever good he had done did not matter anymore from his great down fall. During his ruling though some believed that Mao

The begins of Mao’s Cultural Revolution begins with the Hundred Flowers Campaign which took place during 1956-1957, the government embarks on this campaign with the hope that the tension between government and scholars can end, but this approach does not work and backfires. The next event which takes place in the Anti-Rights Campaign (1957-1958), this campaign disciplines those who spoke out during the Hundred flowers Campaign, a significant amount of people lots many jobs due to this and are sent away by government. This leads into the Great Leap Forward (1958-1959), this just happens to be one of Mao’s more intense programs of economic reform, in this program Mao’s main attempt was to modernize China’s economy, the consequence of this resulted in Mao’s having a temporary loss of power. He believed that all he needed to develop was agriculture and industry and believed that both

Mao ZeDong is one of the greatest leaders in the history of New China. The influence of Mao’s theory is profound and lasting. He is a great thinker, poet, and a highly intelligent military strategist. Under his leadership and the actions he performed during The Long March, Chinese Civil War then defeating the Kuomintang Party to built the New China are the main epic episodes. Mao ZeDong's extravagant actions made two of the many changes to China. They are the shift from a capitalist system to a socialist system and the achievement of China's independence against Japanese imperialism (Somo, 2013a). The influence of Mao’s theory has been widespread to the world up until this day. Especially, in the countries of the third world have

Mao came into power the same as any other leader would in a dynasty, and that was by overthrowing the previous leader. When Mao came into power, he began implementing new reforms and spread propaganda to gain support and prevent a rebellion. What he did differently than in past dynasties was he targeted the working middle class to prevent a revolt against him. He oppressed people and targeted individuals labeled enemies, isolating them in reeducation. In Mao’s movements to change Chinese culture and thought, early reforms, transition to collective farming, the Great leap Forward, and the Cultural Revolution, he did all of the corrupt things that the leader of a dynasty would do. He tried to force people to follow his way of thinking and he isolated those who were dangerous to him and would be able to take his power. Mao was power hungry and he impoverished the proletariat, just like all other dynastic leaders. However, he was smart enough to recognize how he could have complete control, strip people of their civil rights, and still stay in

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.

On October 1st 1949, Mao Zedong proclaims the foundation of the People Republic of China on Great of Heavenly Peace (Tiananmen) in Beijing (Source from: Lecture notes). In January 1958, Mao started a variety of economic, agricultural and cultural reforms. One of the many reforms started by Mao Zedong launched "The Great Leap forward". This began in 1958 to help change China. Mao proposed the land reform and suggested to develop city. The reform makes women, industry workers and peasant became winners. However, Peasant also got land and change to owner. As far as women’s literacy is concerned. There are not women in class when Mao did not launch reforms. After that, women can go to school have a class. The plan was to originally keep China communist, and increase production of agriculture. Mao Zedong put much emphasis on economic growth, which was very important to China.

During Mao’s time, he strongly stressed his principles of the “Great Leap Forward” and the “Cultural Revolution”. However, due to these philosophies, China’s economic and social foundations crumbled and was severely damaged. The country was severely poor and economic production slowed. After Mao passed away, Deng Xiaoping emerged as Mao’s successor. He launched comprehensive economic reforms. These reforms aimed to decrease the role of the state in the economy and gradually introduce private forms of production in agriculture and industry. Because of these reforms, production increased by leaps and bounds and poverty was reduced dramatically. However, there was a problem that was arising. There was a lot of corruption and nepotism that was beginning to take over the economy. The gap between the wealthy and poor was growing and people began to see it as unfair.

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

China has been a communist country since the communist revolution took place in 1949, since then China has been ruled by the dictator Mao Tse-Tung. However the Chinese dictator died in September 1976, he was hailed abroad as one of the worlds’ great leaders. Certainly one of the more impressive aspects of the Chinese communist government, has been the willingness of the people to protest against it (3, pg. 4).

Over the course of Mao’s leadership from 1949 until his death in 1976 we can see the significance of his leadership and what made him a good and bad leader. Mao had made some very good decisions to help certain groups but also made some very bad decisions that paid the price, in some cases killing millions. Due to the social and economic changes that then followed by a significant increase in the population and weak leadership that led to rebellions from 1911 that saw the end of 3500years of rule by the Chinese imperial dynasties. The social and economic chaos then led to the formation of two political parties. The CCP, led by Mao Zedong and the GMD led by Chiang Kai Shek. Mao and his party defeated the GMD in 1949 bringing Mao into power. Mao’s main goal was to turn China into a pure communist country. Over the course of Mao’s leadership he did this by making significant social, economic and political changes to the Chinese way of life. However due to his poor leadership and the faults that he made it caused people to oppose him and get in the way of his goal. That is why in 1966 Mao decided to assert his beliefs through a series of decisions, which came to be known as the Cultural Revolution. The Cultural Revolution was a hard time for many people throughout China as Mao enforced many things upon them to achieve his aim of removing capitalism. Mao used the youth of China to be that

The Communist fervor that gripped mainland China under Mao Zedong’s rule had lasting effects on the economy and culture. In particular, the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution devastated rural and peasant populations, leading to fatal consequences for a large portion of the chinese demographic. The Great Leap Forward was an attempt at socializing the chinese economy almost ten years after the People's Republic of China was established in 1949. Property and businesses were stripped from private owners by the government and given to community leaders to run with the help of community members. Unfortunately, revolutionary passion blinded community leaders and the government. The former over reported food production while the latter continued to support a failing economic structure and policy. This lead to the Great Chinese Famine, and a decline in economic productivity and revolutionary zeal. The Great Cultural Revolution was meant to reinvigorate the revolutionary spirit. Launched several years after the failure of the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution targeted the youth. A successful propaganda campaign mobilized groups of mostly disadvantaged youth (red guards) and the working class to purge those antithetical to the movement. Millions were killed in the resulting class warfare which targeted capitalists, rightists, and landlords. The effects of these influential events are still explored in modern chinese cinema many years after their occurrence. An

This constituted China's Great Leap Forward, an attempt by Mao and the State to unify the nation under a common goal in order to overthrow Great Britain and other European giants in agricultural production. Entire communities toiled vigorously in order to drastically increase China's production output and demonstrate the nation's growing prowess against the powers of the West. The Great Leap Forward, despite its disastrous failure which cost over 2 million lives, was a clear denouncement of individual freedom, instead raising the status of communities and 'awarding' collective freedom.

Demonized by Western media, accepted as a necessary evil by China, Mao Zedong is considered one of the world’s most controversial and complex figures in Chinese history. His leadership highlights the beginning and end of a tumultuous time for China, and continues to affect governance and society to this day. Mao is, in large part, responsible for the death of millions Chinese citizens during the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution, and while his leadership had a tremendous amount of casualties, the programs he initiated and helped implement ultimately united China after a century of humiliation and pave way for today’s China. First I will explain the changes in place when Mao first came into power, touching upon institutional

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).