China Paper 2 (Part 2)

5. Evaluate the domestic policies of Mao.

Economic:

• Collectivization
• 5 Year Plan/Great Leap Forward

Social:

• Hundred Flowers
• Cultural Revolution

The domestic policies of China were changed dramatically under Mao Zedong after his rise to power in 1949. Some of the most notable of these changes were caused by new economic policies, such as collectivization and the use of "Five Year Plans," both of these being methods that had been used earlier in history by the leaders of Soviet Russia in order to improve their economy. Other important domestic policies included Mao's "Hundred Flowers" policy and the Cultural Revolution, methods used by Mao seemingly for the purpose of purifying China's Communist Party and keeping its leader in power.

Mao seems to have borrowed much of his economic policy from the USSR. When Mao established the People's Republic of China in 1949 after the Chinese Civil War, one of his highest domestic priorities was to collectivize the nation's agriculture. This meant that, rather than peasants owning smaller, individual farms, large groups of peasants would join together to share a much larger collectivized farm to work on. In order to carry out this type of land reform, Mao had to take the land needed for collectivized farms from wealthy landowners. This was done largely through class warfare, in which Mao used propaganda to encourage the country's less wealthy peasants to rise against landowners and take their farms, often violently. It is important for historians to note that this was very similar to Stalin's Great Terror, in which Stalin attempted to collectivize Russia's agriculture by turning the lower class against the more powerful farmers and landowners known as kulaks, so that collective farms, or kolkhozy, could be formed. The actual process of collectivization was very successful under Mao's leadership, but it is unclear how effective the policy was economically, due to the large amount of propaganda surrounding the topic. Regardless of this, collectivization was clearly unable to succeed when faced with the famines that occurred from 1958 to 1961, which are sometimes referred to as "the Bitter Years."

Another domestic policy adopted by Mao was the use of Five Year Plans, also used by Russia. The idea of this policy was to set a number of specific economic goals to be achieved within a period of five years. One of these plans, which Mao called the Great Leap Forward, began in 1958 with the ending year being 1963. In this time, Mao set goals for China's industry and agriculture that many historians today see as unrealistic. The reasoning behind Mao's apparent confidence in this plan was that China's vast population alone would be enough to turn the nation into a modern industrial state, removing the need for experts in this matter. In reality, however, this was plan was clearly flawed, and as a result it was devastating to China's economy, as well as its people. There was a particularly emphasized focus on steel production, which was set as a priority even over the production of food. Peasants, unwilling to disobey Mao for fear of being labeled "rightists" or "reactionaries," were force to work hard for long periods of time doing their best to produce steel. However, due to the lack of experts working on this, the steel was produced inefficiently. Meanwhile, the country's agricultural situation was constantly worsening. Because peasants were exhausted by their work on improving China's industry, there were very few people left able to work on the fields. For this reason, many people today cite the Great Leap Forward as the cause of the famines that occurred during the Bitter Years.

• Hundred Flowers: Mao encouraged the people to speak their minds about China, but labeled them as reactionaries and arrested them when they spoke against him, the government, or communism.
• Cultural Revolution: Mao encouraged certain groups, such as China's youth and students, to start a revolution against teachers and certain government leaders who he felt were turning to capitalism. It could be said that this was an attempt by Mao to maintain his own power.