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Mao’s China
1949-1976
China after 1911
 The Revolution of 1911 was intended to create a modern
republican form of government in China.
 Instead, the country broke up into warlord-dominated
regions with increasing poverty and violence.
 The Kuomintang (Nationalist) Party led the revolution, but
controlled few areas.
Kuomintang Party
 Sun Yat-sen was the main leader of the 1911 Revolution
and the Nationalist Party (KMT).
 He died in 1925 and was succeeded as leader by Chiang
Kai-shek.
 Chiang cooperated with the Communists for a time, but
then massacred them in 1927.
The Peasant Revolution
 Mao was a leader of the Chinese Communist Party since its
founding in 1921.
 While most Chinese Communists believed that urban
workers were the group that would be the most important
supporters of the revolution, Mao decided that peasants
had more revolutionary potential.
Land Reform
 Mao discovered even in the 1920s
that the Communists could win the
support of the peasants by taking
away land from the rich and sharing
this with the poor.
 Mao learned how to get the vast
majority of peasants on his side by
concentrating the confiscations on
a small minority of wealthy
farmers.
The Long March
 Mao led a Communist area in Jiangxi Province in 1934, but
attacks by the Kuomintang (Nationalist Party) government
army forced them to undergo the “Long March” lasting
over a year and covering 3700 miles to a new, safer area to
the north in Shanxi Province.
World War II
 At the end of the Second World War, the
Russians moved into Manchuria against the
Japanese and were able to share some
weapons with the Chinese Communists.
 Stalin urged Mao to ally with Chiang Kai-shek
rather than to fight him.
Communist Victory, 1949
 Due to corruption and inefficiency
among the KMT leadership, the
Communists took power in
mainland China in October, 1949.
 The KMT leaders retreated to the
island of Taiwan.
 Now Mao was in charge of the
whole country.
The Former Elite
 Hundreds of thousands of members of
the former elite were put to death in
the mass trials of 1949-1951.
 Their land was then distributed among
the poorer peasants.
 This was the most important
revolutionary act in the rural villages of
China.
Industrialization
 Between 1949 and 1960, China
followed the Russian strategy of
industrialization.
 They built large factories in the cities.
 Many Russian engineers came to
China to assist in this effort.
 Many of the largest factories in China
today were built during this period.
Great Leap Forward, 1958-60
 In 1958, Mao decided that the Russian
strategy of industrial development was not
suitable for China.
 This urban, large-factory system was not
having enough of an impact on the mass of
the population in the countryside.
 Mao decided to opt for a unique Chinese
method of industrialization.
Great Leap Forward
 The most mocked aspect of the Great Leap Forward was
the backyard steel furnaces.
 Mao thought that peasants could learn to make steel on a
broadly decentralized basis.
 Most areas of China, however, lacked the ore and fuel for
this.
Great Leap Forward
 Millions of peasants were pulled
away from their agricultural tasks in
order to engage in industrialization
or water conservancy projects.
 This lack of attention to the crops
added to the problem of a serious
drought and up to 30 million people
died in China during this period.
Great Leap Forward
 Small villages were done away
with, and the peasants were
moved to larger towns.
 Mao attempted to have the
peasants live in dormitories – with
the separation of husbands and
wives.
 Communal kitchens and nurseries
were established.
 These measures failed.
Sino-Soviet Dispute, 1960
 From 1960 onward, China and Russia had a great
ideological quarrel.
 Mao asserted that the world was in a revolutionary
situation.
 Mao expected revolution to come from the poor peasants
of Asia, Africa and Latin America.
Sino-Soviet Dispute
 The Soviet Union was led in 1960
by Nikita Khrushchev and he
insisted on the need for “peaceful
coexistence” with the West.
 Khrushchev was against promoting
revolution in Third World countries
as China wished to do.
The Cultural Revolution
 Between 1961 and 1963, conditions were relatively quiet in
China, but in 1964 Mao began pushing a new crusade to
transform the culture to make the country more purely
communist.
 Believing that current Communist leaders were taking the
party, and China itself, in the wrong direction, Mao called on
the nation’s youth to purge the “impure” elements of
Chinese society and revive the revolutionary spirit that had
led to victory in the civil war 20 decades earlier and the
formation of the People’s Republic of China.
 Mao attacked traditional Confucian and Buddhist elements
in Chinese culture.
Cultural Revolution
 Any Communist leaders who were not strongly for equality
were condemned in this movement.
 The Cultural Revolution started among students, but it
began to affect other sectors of society.
Cultural Revolution
 Eventually, the military stepped in and sent the students
off to work as peasants.
Assessing Mao
 Most people both in China and the West consider Mao’s
leadership atrocious – particularly the Great Leap Forward
and the Cultural Revolution.
Assessing Mao
 In spite of the deaths during
the Great Leap Forward and
the social and economic
disruption of the Cultural
Revolution, the two
movements helped to
modernize China both in its
rural economy and in its
ideology.
After Mao
 From 1975 to 1997, China was
led by Deng Xiaoping who
welcomed economic reforms in
the direction of capitalism.
 Peasants were allowed to farm
on their own and to leave the
collective farms.
 Local governments were
permitted to establish township
and village enterprises (TVEs)
that functioned like capitalist
firms.
Deng Xiaoping