When Chairman Mao took control of the Chinese government as leader of the newly established Communist Party, he was most notably commended for helping unite China after years of civil war. After the previous regime left the country nearly bankrupt, Mao faced the challenge of rebuilding China’s economy, and he believed that it could only be accomplished through true Communism, modeled after the Soviet Union. Mao’s vision was highly approved by the people initially as it reinvented the working class and gave more power to peasants, but it was not long before the country would see the detrimental impacts of Chairman Mao’s goals. The Communistic approach to rebuilding China made several changes in the agricultural sector that lead to severe consequences, before the country eventually recognized its problem and identified a solution. The most drastic change that Chairman Mao delivered to the Chinese people was aimed at the peasants and the agricultural industry. With his Communistic agenda in mind, Mao encouraged the country’s peasants to overthrow their landlords and divide the farmland more equally amongst all. The country went from encouraging individual land ownership and capitalism to completely renouncing the idea of large-scale landlords or family farms. While hundreds of thousands of people had been killed in this overtaking process, some peasant families went from farming on three-fourths of an acre to cultivating nearly three acres of farmland. In fact, nearly
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.
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
One example of a change in relashonship between the communists and the peasants in when the wealthy countryside land owners had the feudal system ablohsed. In document 8 it is stated “ the landownership system of feudal exploitation by the landlord class shall be abolished and the system of peasant landownership shall be introduced in order to set free the rural productive forces.” This shows the People’s republic of Chinas desire
Source B is a primary source based on the observations of a Communist correspondent that objectively reported on the success of Mao’s land reform. From the source, we can infer that Mao’s land reform was not well-accepted among the people as they feared the plausible punishments of having successful crop production. . Source B states that “peasants look with a suspicious eye” and they “have no desire to become well-to-do through production efforts”. These descriptions of the peasants’ behaviour and attitude towards Mao’s land reform illustrates how the peasants were wary and distrustful of the government’s motives.
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
In October 1949, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) was established and led by Mao Zedong. China’s new communist leaders turned their backs on China’s traditional output (based on individual and small scale household production) economy and set out to create a massive socialist industrial government inspired by the Soviet Union. This idea introduced a model, which prioritize industrialization known as the “Big Push Model”. China started prioritizing investments into the heavy industry, which would reshape the Chinese economy and create a Command economy. Mao’s economic policies seemed be working in the
Mao’s strength and superior methods allowed to him to exploit the weaknesses of the GMD government. Mao believed that a permanent, two-stage revolution derived from the peasants was a key aspect. Thus the support of the peasants was crucial success to any political party and Mao’s strategy for winning their support was discipline and land reform. He believed rent reduction must be the result of mass struggle, not a favour from the government and the policy of
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.
It is clear that Mao’s initial goal was to gain power in China, which is demonstrated by his determination to overthrow Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang (KMT) via his idiosyncratic version of communist revolution. In order to do so, Mao utilised methods he deemed most suitable for the communists and, more broadly, Chinese society. For example, unlike his Marxist predecessors, Mao believed that peasants, not urban workers, were the key to rebellion in China. Subsequently, in 1926, he organised peasant unions
More murderous than Hitler, more powerful than Stalin, in the battle of the Communist leaders Mao Zedong trumps all. Born into a comfortable peasant family, Mao would rise up to become China’s great leader. After leading the communists away from Kuomintang rule, he set out to modernize China, but the results of this audacious move were horrific. He rebounded from his failures time and again, and used his influence to eliminate his enemies and to purge China of its old ways. Mao saw a brighter future for China, but it was not within his grasp; his Cultural Revolution was not as successful as he had wanted it to be. Liberator, oppressor, revolutionary, Mao Zedong was the greatest emancipator in China’s history, as his reforms
In 1949, Mao Zedong declared the People’s Republic of China after the communists won the civil war against the nationalists, promising a fresh start, however China was a broken country following the Japanese and Civil Wars, which meant the new government inherited severe problems, the worst of which include hyperinflation, complete lack of industry, heavy food shortages, which was exacerbated by steep population increases. During the first eight years of power, Mao’s regime tackled the economy remarkably, stemming inflation and introducing the first 5-year plan. Furthermore political control began to take form – although the methods of control were debatably unethical – and social initiatives were taken to improve, among other things,
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.
In the past 35 years, China has experienced significant transformation and modernization of its democracy and governance. This modernization process was brought by the death of Mao Zedong, the founding father of the People’s Republic of China and the Chairman of the country’s Communist Party since 1943. Prior to his death, Chairman Mao had started a Cultural Revolution in 1966 in attempts to revive socialism in the country and eliminate capitalistic corruption and bureaucratic inflexibility. The initiation of the Cultural Revolution was preceded by several political and social campaigns that urged Mao to propel the country towards the much anticipated socialism, which was regarded as a promised paradise. Following Mao’s death, China has experienced considerable transformation due to socialism, which has in turn resulted in modernization of the Chinese government and democracy. The other changes brought by socialism include economic transformation to an extent that the country is a major economy in today’s world.
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).