To What Extent Did China Change for the Better in the Years 49-57?

This boost in confidence influenced Mao Zedong to continue his leadership and interest in communism and politics. He soon founded the People’s Republic of China, and announced the creation of a “people’s democratic dictatorship”. He thought that socialism would eventually triumph over all other ideologies, and his plans and vivid ideas for China reflect how creative but realistic he is as a leader, and this benefited China throughout the Cold War. Some examples of ambitious plans that carried through include the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, where Zedong encouraged change in order to further improve and benefit the country as a whole. Although the Great Leap Forward resulted in a famine and the death of 40 million people, Mao made a comeback with the Cultural Revolution. He wanted to transform China in order to be able to compete with other industrialized nations, and this shows Zedong’s competitive yet committed nature as a

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

In 1919, Mao Zedong helped to establish the city of Changsha by attracting a variety of organizations. One organization was to bring the students, the merchants and the workers together in demonstrations aimed at making the government to oppose Japan. Mao Zedong’s five Year Plan was an attempt by him to boost China’s industry and become more powerful. When Zedong came to power, China was way behind the industrial nations of the planet. “He set ambitious goals for the production of iron and steel, coal, cement, and electrical power. Thousands of factories were to be built and an army of workers was mobilized to staff them.” (80). His plan worked in most cases, but also killed millions of peasants in the process. Chairman Mao also had another plan. This one was said to transform the way hundreds of millions of peasants lived and worked. Mr. Zedong urged all the peasants to give up farming and join cooperatives. Cooperatives were large farms that Zedong believed produce crops more efficiently than private farms. His slogan for this was “More, Better, Faster,” . This plan was one of his many plans that actually worked, at least for a

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.

The Soviet-inspired first Five Year Plan led by Mao was generally considered to be somewhat of a success in developing China. It ran from 1953 through to 1957, and made major increases in the production of steel and coal, though agricultural output struggled. The plan enhanced quality of life for Chinese citizens, such as the life expectancy increasing from 36 years to 57 years and urban populations boomed. Centralized governmental control over citizens also expanded however. Private ownership was essentially impossible and as such the state managed a monopoly on grain which caused dissatisfaction among rural areas. Agricultural collectivization grew significantly and farmers struggled to produce enough. Despite these drawbacks however, the first Five Year Plan produced good results. Yet Mao was not yet satisfied – still seeking more industrial growth and modernization in China – and soon came up with a second plan he named the Great Leap

If anything, the 1949 Chinese Revolution entered China into an era of never-ending revolution, violent and nonviolent. Two more “revolutions” occur after 1949: the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. Mao believed that China’s socialist transformation was occurring too slowly. He believed China needed to leapfrog into a modern economy and a socialist utopia. In order for this to occur, there needed to be sweeping change within Chinese society. The hallmark of the Great Leap Forward were the People’s Communes. The greatest example of this era of revolution is the Cultural Revolution. At the start of the Cultural Revolution in 1966, Mao instructed young Red Guards to destroy the Four Olds: old customs, old culture, old habits, and old ideas (Osnos, 285). The Cultural Revolution was revolution in its purest form. Mao intended to transform China into a completely modern, socialist state through the Cultural Revolution. There needed to be a sudden, extreme, or complete change in the way people live, work,

4.1 Cultural Revolution gained public supports though some scholars described it as “Ten-year disaster”. It did really badly affected people’s livelihood at that time. Indeed, it has aroused many scholars’ interest to study the general public’s enthusiasm for this massive movement. In order to transform China into a pure communist state, massive propaganda work has implemented to promote Chinese political philosophy. During the “First Five Year Plan”, the “Campaign on Education of Illiteracy” was launched to infused people with communist ideology. People who are the lower class of society like peasants, students and workers were the most targeted group because they occupied a larger proportion of population at that time. Mao manipulated people’s mindset by instilled people with communist value and ideals. (Guo,2013) People were easily controlled and influenced at that time for having not much education and more importantly communism was promoted as

In order to fully understand the effects of Mao in power, we must first understand those in power before him. Before Mao and his Chinese revolution to the end of the Chinese civil war in 1949, China’s leading party was the Chinese Nationalist Party (also known as KMT). In 1912, Yuan Shikai became president of the KMT and soon began to ignore the parliament and make his own decisions. This, inadvertently, started the degradation of the KMT and the result was widespread corruption. This resulted in exploitation of the working class (around 90% of the population), and prioritised the middle and higher class, completely disregarding the welfare of the workers and peasants who powered the nation. Poor management in rural areas and heavy tax resulted

The Great Leap Forward (i.e the Five Year Plan) was a way for Mao to change China from a farming country into an industrialized one through collectivisation. This was when peasants were forced into communes and were forced them to learn farming methods. This plan was a huge failure on Mao’s part and it caused around forty-three million deaths as well as a man made famine. Liu was now the president of the Chinese Communist Party, but Mao didn’t just leave the CCP after giving up his presidential title. He ended up taking a chair position. Mao gave responsibility for the economy to President Liu and Deng, who was now CCP General Secretary. After the responsibility was handed over Mao left the political scene. Liu and Deng both accepted that Mao's reforms had gone too far in a very short amount of time. To combat the famine that was occurring Liu and Deng brought in Chen Yu, who was a Chinese expert in agriculture. Chen recommended that free markets should be allowed to help the famine. This would allow farmers to sell their products and make some profits as well as increase production. Land was also restored to the peasants and this would allow increases of food being produced. Liu also became deputy chairman as well as president, but in 1966 however, things took a turn for the worst for

Mao Zedong was a communist revolutionary and leader of the People’s Republic of China from 1949 to 1959. He also led the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) until his death in 1976. Known as the ‘Founding Father’ of China, he held a critical role in transforming the country from a poor, populous country into a developing industrial superpower. During the duration of Mao’s rein from 1949-1978, Mao introduced the second Five Year Plan known as the Great Leap Forward in 1958, implemented to transform China into a modern, nation state through economical and industrial development. Subsequently in 1966, he aimed to unify the country by eliminating traditional capitalist elements present in the Chinese society through the Cultural Revolution. However,

In Oct 01, 1949, Mao Zedong published to the world about the creation of the People's Republic of China (“ Mao Zedong proclaim People's Republic of China., …) Mao was the great contributor to united China, brought China out of the oppression of foreign country. From the Opium Wars in between the nineteenth century, Mao Zedong never stopped follow his goal by opened many campaign, and movement that help to develop the modernization of China. Mao was judge about his wrong policies conducted to make the Great Chinese Famine happened between 1959 to 1961 by the campaign of the Anti Right Campaign, the Great Leap Forward happened in 1958 to 1959. Those events were contributed to make the Great Chinese Famine happened, and

Death of Mao created a political power vacuum, which ended with Deng Xiaoping coming to power in 1978 who helped move China towards a capitalist model with the adoption of “Four modernization” economic policy. This led to China opening its door to western economies for the first time to modernize its steel and chemical industries.

As a part of his campaign, Mao Zedong declared that he would “catch up and surpass the most powerful capitalist countries” during a speech at the CCP National congress on March 21,1955. To do this, he aimed to accomplish the complete construction of a society heavy based on the ideologies of socialism by 1960. Then after socialism was accomplished, the CCP would gradually transition to communism from 1960-1963(Shen & Xia, 2011). To achieve this, the many factors of society needed to be merged into one. These factors include land ownership, commerce and trade, industries, agriculture, and education which all needed to be combined into large communes. The notion of splitting land ownership was a significant move towards a more socialist society. Land reform took land ownership away from

Deng Xiaoping lead Mao’s Anti-Rightist campaign so it is he, rather than Mao who is responsible for those hardships and deaths. The Great Leap Forward 1958-61 was “to achieve greater, faster, better and more economic results” but in the end it caused the greatest amount of damage to “china’s greatest asset – it’s population.” Its aim was to catch up with Britain in 15 years but instead it lead to industrial failure, crop failures, famine and a marred truth. The introduction of communes were used to accelerate production and as seen in ‘Mao – A life’ peasants didn’t like the militarisation of their lives, thus causing a division. Mao’s ignorance in economy and steel production was evident in both his “completely wasted” backyard furnaces, in which he aimed to produce steel out of any metals and through the people’s lack of incentive to work due to the iron rice bowl, (guaranteed employment and wages).

The People’s Republic of China was established on October 1, 1949. From that point on, Mao focused on making China the number one country on earth—first in all categories of production and exports. The ultimate goal of communism was for everyone to be equal, doing the same amount of work for the same wage, and living in the same type of housing units, eating the same kind of food. Through this, communism was believed to cultivate both a utopia and a strong work force. With this in mind, Mao implemented the Great Leap Forward in 1958. This economic and social reform was supposed to overhaul Chinese society through rapid industrialization and