MAO ZEDONG IN POWER (1949 – 1976): DOMESTIC POLICIES AND THEIR IMPACT

MARRIAGE REFORM LAW•Both gender were in equal position•Both had to agree to get married•Arrange marriage eliminated•People were able to get divorced•People were allowed to choose their spouse•Female could not be sold into prostitution•Female babies could not be disposedhttp://books.google.com.ec/books?hl=es&lr=&id=X5-aAAAAIAAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA1&dq=marriage+reform+in+china+sources&ots=yHlUhrFoGk&sig=AAvMbI7sGwU_SALJz4hu0UUqpZk#v=onepage&q=marriage%20reform%20in%20china%20sources&f=false

•Women were allowed to own property and land

AGRARIAN REFORM LAW•Mao turned to agriculture in June 1950, this aimed at a redistribution of all the land in China. (page 160 source D)

Peasants associations, usually led by the poorest peasants turned against their former landlords in a series of struggle meetings.

AGRARIAN REFORM LAW

•Landlords were forced to accept the crimes committed against the peasantry. (page 160 source E)

•The meetings ran out of control and old disputes were resolved, many landlords were beaten to death or they committed suicide.•The number of deaths in unknown, but some historians estimate more than 5 million landlords perished.•Mao fulfilled his promise of giving land to the poor peasants.•700 million mou (1 mou=666m2) were distributed among 300 million peasants.

KOREAN WAR

•The Korean War (25 June 1950 – 27 July 1953) was a war between the Republic of Korea and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. •It was primarily the result of the political division of Korea by an agreement of the victorious Allies at the conclusion of the Pacific War at the end of World War II. •The Korean Peninsula was ruled by the Empire of Japan from 1910 until the end of World War II. •Following the surrender of the Empire of Japan in September 1945, American administrators divided the peninsula along the 38th parallel, with U.S. military forces occupying the southern half and Soviet military forces occupying the northern half.

•China was involved in the Korean war and the funds that were essential to China’s modernization had to be diverted into military expenditure.•The Korean war gave Mao several advantages:

- It brought the new state together as people united against foreign encroachment.- Mao and China’s reputation globally increased.- It gave Mao an excuse to take action against who opposed him.- Mao could apply rectification campaigns against the “evils” of corruption, waste and bureaucracy inefficiency.

ANTIS MOVEMENTSThree antis 1951 (sanfen)Directed against party members, government officials and business owners.Five antis 1953 (wufan)Directed against government contracts, stealing state economic info, tax evasion, theft of state property and bribery.

Results- Employees in private business were encouraged to denounce their bosses.- It was focused on the bourgeoisie and capitalists.- Business were categorized according to the seriousness of their crimes.

- The state revenue increased and inflation decrease.- The government brought under control another section of the Chinese society.

- By the beginning of 1953, the agricultural revolution had taken place, counter-revolutionaries had been brought under control and opposition had been crushed. Mao was ready for the next step.

THE FIRST FIVE YEAR PLAN

- Despite the changes made under the Agrarian reform law, the structure of the Chinese agriculture divided into large numbers of peasants-owned plots, was not appropriate for the modern economic development of the nation.

-Mao had studied Stalin’s five year plan (collectivization and industrialization), so he decided to implement the same sort of programs in China.- Mao’s main intention was to industrialize as fast as possible, and for this to work Soviet technical and financial support was necessary.- The PRC took a series of high-interest loans to finance the industrial program, Mao wanted to double the amount of industrial output and complete and socialist transformation.- The results were impressive, most of the targets were achieved by 1956, but at some cost to the people.- Private business and commercial enterprises were nationalized.- 58.2 percent was invested in industrial development, only 7.6 went to agriculture, which had crucial effect on productivity.

- The Land reform would take place in three phases.

FIRST PHASE: - Introduction of “mutual help teams” between 3 and 30 people. Small groups of peasants would work together on a small area of land, tools, labor and material would be jointly owned and worked.- Class division began to appear among peasants.- The harvest of 1953 and 1954 were not good and productivity was low.- By the end of 1954, the CPC decided to go on the second phase.

SECOND PHASE:- The second stage was the merging of the “mutual aid teams” into larger cooperatives, working on the same principles, the ownership was still retained, but land would be pooled as well.

- Mao reiterated the importance of the peasantry, he saw the peasants as leading China forward toward socialism.-But there was opposition to these policies in some quarters.- The Central Committee was fully aware of the effects that Stalin’s dekulakization policies had had upon the Soviet Union.

- slaughter of animals- famine- the loss of so many lives

- Mao was determined to go ahead, he believed that with the peasants leading the way forward, the CPC was becoming too reactionary.- Mao forged ahead with the small-scale cooperatives. Any resistance to the new program was overcome by the state assisting the better-off peasants .

-Families were paid for the amount of resources they had contributed to the cooperative, the more a family owned, the more it received from the collective’s profits.

THIRD PHASE:-It started in 1956, with the intention of creating soviet-style collective farms in which the land was owned by the state and private ownership was completely eliminated.- There was some minimal opposition as some peasant emigrated to the cities.- A major change from the system of small-scale cooperatives to the larger-scale cooperatives was the amount of money that a peasant would receive was to be determined by the amount of labor contributed to the collective.

-By the end of 1956 the shift was well under way, and the smaller cooperatives began to shrink in number as the larger cooperatives gained.- The “mutual-aid teams” became less important in rural life.- By the end of 1957 about 700.000 cooperatives farms had been created each containing up to 300 families (600 – 700 people).

NEW CHINESE CONSTITUTION

-While the first five year plan was under way, Mao decided to introduce the new Chinese Constitution in 1954, which formally centralized state control and replaced the Organic Law of 1949.

The idea for Five Year Plans was borrowed from Stalin’s Russia. It involved the ideas of:

NATIONALISATION -

CENTRAL PLANNING -

TARGETS / QUOTAS -

INCENTIVES -

Private businesses and industries are taken over and run by the national government – state control.

All decisions about the economy are decided by the central [national] government.

To increase output the government sets production ‘targets’ which have to be met within a 5 year time span.

To encourage workers [and supervisors] to work harder to reach the targets set, ‘incentives’ are offered e.g.. bigger food ration, better apartment, better schooling for their children.

Production figures before the start of the 1st Five Year Plan.

Expected production figures at end of 1st Five Year Plan.

Compare 1957 figures with 1952 figures.

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Were these failures?