History of the People's Republic of China from 1949 to 1957

The history of the People's Republic of China from 1949 to 1957 is the time of the consolidation of Maoist rule and the reconstruction after more than 100 years of foreign rule, state disintegration and civil war.

The period 1949–1952

Party leader Mao Zedong proclaims the People's Republic of China

When the People's Republic of China was established, China , devastated by a century of foreign invasion and civil war, was one of the poorest countries in the world, with famine and a life expectancy of 35 years. Since the fall of the emperor in 1911, there was no longer any central power and the provinces were ruled by warlords, large landowners or even bandits who had recruited their own “army” from starving unemployed people. The main problem was pointed out by the American Secretary of State Dean Achinson, who wrote in his famous letter of July 30, 1949 to President Truman: “In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the Chinese population doubled, which puts unbearable pressure on the country. The most important task of any Chinese government is to feed this population. So far each has been unsuccessful. "

After the establishment of the new state, a new political and economic order was established and China experienced a stability that has not existed since the Opium Wars . The fear of a renewed break-up of China and the resulting often exaggerated fight against alleged dissenters and counter-revolutionaries remained a constant in Chinese politics.

Land reform was a key policy issue as 85% of the population were farmers. The peasants were called by the government to divide the land of the big landowners among themselves. The class of landowners was eliminated, many of them killed. The income differences between the farmers were leveled. A quasi- classless society was created in the countryside .

Initially, the party was dependent on the help of the bourgeoisie. Mao therefore proclaimed long-term cooperation with the bourgeois parties in the spring of 1949 and described this cooperation as a “democratic dictatorship”. In addition to the Communist Party, 8 other parties were allowed to help integrate the various population groups into the new state, and an "Alliance of the proletarians , middle peasants, petty bourgeoisie and the national bourgeoisie " was proclaimed in the People's Republic of China. Middle peasants were peasants with 15 to 25 ares of land, the national bourgeoisie included the smaller entrepreneurs. However, only the Communist Party had political power , which reserved the right to represent the workers and peasants.

After the state was consolidated, the Chinese communists set about re-educating the people . In view of the country's economic backwardness, they wanted to create an as yet non-existent “proletarian consciousness” in the population through appropriate training.

China needed its educated elites, its experts, to help build the country, especially because there were so few. The majority of the population were illiterate. But ideologically the intellectuals and experts were subordinate to the peasants and ordinary workers and clearly disadvantaged by the communist government. Mao was suspicious of the intellectuals and he said of them: "Even if the peasants' hands are black and their feet are stained with cow dung, they are still cleaner than the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois intellectuals."

Consolidation and first decisions

When the People's Republic was founded, the Chinese Communist Party faced a mountain of problems. Agriculture was battered, the irrigation system damaged by blowing up the river dikes, transport and industry only partially functional. In some cities the food supply had collapsed due to speculation and corruption , and people starved to death on the streets. In this phase an organization was needed that tackled the most urgent problems with firm grip and discipline. The CCP and the People's Liberation Army were ideally placed to do this at this point. The communists, who had had little contact with China's cities for 20 years, went to work in a way that demanded respect and, in some cases, admiration from the city dwellers. The rubble was still being cleared away, and society was to be turned inside out later.

The new style was already evident from the fact that the troops did not claim any living space from the population. As in the war, the soldiers camped outdoors, ensured that order was restored to the cities and helped repair the war damage. The beggars were accommodated and the food distribution organized. The new gentlemen were fortunate that the KMD ( Kuomintang ) had left behind large stores of food. In addition, 1 million tons of grain were transported from Manchuria to eastern China. All of this while the civil war was still going on. When the People's Republic was founded, 2 million KMD soldiers were still standing on the soil of mainland China.

The nationalization of larger companies was initiated immediately after the establishment of the state. Takeover committees occupied the plants and plant management committees were formed. They consisted of a director, a deputy and guardians of the Communist Party. The small businesses were exempt from nationalization. Mao proclaimed the National Alliance of the Proletarians, Middle Peasants, Petty Bourgeois and National Bourgeoisie.

By mid-1950 the most pressing problems were under control. The communist leadership could begin to reshape society in their favor. The first years of the People's Republic were overshadowed by the Korean War. It lasted from June 1950 to July 1953, cost the lives of one million Chinese soldiers and exacerbated the domestic political climate. The communists viewed the advance of the American army as far as the Chinese border as an existential threat to the newly founded People's Republic.

Destruction of the previous social order

Campaigns as an element of the change process

With the aim of smashing the old feudal order and creating a new society with changed people, precisely organized mass campaigns were carried out from mid-1950. The mass campaigns were intended to change the consciousness of the masses. Each campaign was carefully controlled by the Communist Party, who specified the implementation of the four elements of a campaign (preparation, mobilization of the environment, implementation and summary of results), including the duration.

If a campaign was directed against a certain class of the population, such as the former landowners or representatives of the old state, the number of victims to be identified and their treatment were determined in advance. The victims of a campaign had their part to play, individual guilt was not so important. A victim did not have to defend himself, but rather to be contrite and guilty, otherwise he immediately felt "the anger of the masses". Also, no family member or friend was allowed to question the deep “guilt” of the victim or perhaps show compassion or understanding and thus disrupt the course of the campaign. The condemnation of the victim was to be carried out by asking the masses present and was usually a death sentence. Six major campaigns were carried out from 1949 to 1952.

The campaigns

Land reform

By far the most drastic mass campaign was the land reform . In densely populated China, the per capita arable land had decreased to a minimum due to the increase in population, and the land was unevenly distributed. There were landowners who lived from leasing their land, there were rich farmers who worked their own land, but there were also poor farmers and completely landless. The poor peasants and the landless were totally dependent on the landowners. Without leasing their land there was no survival. China-wide statistics on land distribution vary widely. An example of land distribution in Chinese villages was presented by CKYang in 1948 using the village of Nanjing in Guangdong.

The village of Nanjing consisted of 230 families and was divided as follows: 5 landowners with an average of 2 ha of land each, 25 rich farmers with 30–70 ares each, 70 middle peasants with 20–30 ares, 100 poor farmers with 5–15 ares, 20 families had no real estate at all. 70% of the village's arable land has been leased to the landowners and 30% has been worked by the owners themselves.

The result of this list is: The yield of the middle farmers was in normal years just above the nutritional minimum, the yield of the poor farmers was not, they were dependent on being able to lease land from the landowners. However, the lease fee for a medium quality rice field was 40%. There was also 7% tax and 7% for seeds and fertilizers. It was key to the communist victory that the peasants believed that if the communists won, the land would be redistributed.

A land reform law was passed on June 30, 1950. The landowners, d. H. People who leased their land are to be expropriated and the land is to be distributed uniformly and equally to the previously landless and poor farmers. The rich and middle peasants were allowed to keep their land. A total of 300 million formerly landless or poor farmers were allotted 700 million mu (1 mu = 6.6 acres) of land.

The landowners defined by the Land Reform Act were soon exposed to the fatal danger of show trials. Working groups from the district party committees came to the country to incite the farmers and use them to prepare show trials against the landowners. The old landed gentry, the former large landowners, were no longer reached during these show trials . They had gotten to safety a long time beforehand. Only the small fish remained on the land that could not make their own way.

The show trials, which were always fatal for the accused, not only served to wipe out the class of landowners, the farmers were supposed to take part in the trial against the landowner and thereby develop their own self-confidence and class consciousness . You should see how the balance of power had reversed.

The process usually began with an indictment in which the “local emperor” was brought before the assembled peasantry and charged with the worst crimes. Subsequently, the villagers were asked to step forward one by one and shout his crimes in the face of the accused. Up to now, no farmer had dared to face the landlord openly, but the well-rehearsed drama took its course. Slowly the anger boiled up among the farmers, and the “screaming in the face” increased to “slapping in the face”. When the anger of the previous have-nots really boiled, the moment came when the tribunal judge asked the crowd for a "fair verdict". It could really only be the death sentence.

Several million people were executed during the land reform campaign from June 1950 to late 1952. But even the survivors couldn't shake the stigma of their origins. As “blacks” they were and remained pariahs of society. It was not until 1978 that the registration of landowners with the security authorities was canceled.

Campaign against the "counter-revolutionaries"

What the campaign against the landowners in the countryside was, so was the campaign against the “counter-revolutionaries” in the cities. The campaign started in the fall of 1950. The term “counter-revolutionary” remained very vague, it meant undermining the state, and could be used against anyone who was disliked. The main target group was the political as well as the administrative class in the former Kuomintang state , but anyone who had had any connections with people from this class was also at risk. As is usually the case with the campaigns, there were no procedural rules, and so any suspect could be led to "riot meetings" held in front of a large crowd, sometimes in sports stadiums. The defendants were brought to the stadium tied up, insulted by a prosecutor and charged with the most horrific crimes, and then sentenced to death by the “mass vote”. There is no official information about those killed, but it is estimated to be more than a million.

Marriage reform

The previous marriage law had been determined by the rule of man over woman and that of old age over youth. The marriage was viewed as a sales contract. At the time of the marriage, the wife passed on to the groom's family in return for a handsome gift to the husband. The husband's cohabitation was allowed, a widow was not allowed to remarry. The marriage reform promoted equality between men and women and the emancipation of women.

Anti-americanism

This campaign started during the Korean War and was officially called "Campaign to Resist America and Help Korea". This campaign went against Western influences. Churches and religious communities were particularly targeted. Protestant and Catholic church representatives were persecuted, sent to re-education camps, and many killed. Foreign personnel were expelled from the country. The Catholics were required to publicly renounce the Pope. The churches were subordinated to the "Patriotic Three-Self Movement". From now on they had to be independent from abroad in three respects, namely organizationally, financially and in teaching.

Three and five anti campaign

The movement against the three evils of corruption, waste and bureaucratism was directed against functionaries in its own ranks. It turned out that the communist functionaries, who after the seizure of power set an example in discipline and selfless commitment, quickly assimilated the earlier administration. They basked in their power, became arrogant towards the population, and many were deeply immersed in corruption and nepotism . The originally quite rigorous objectives of the campaign were quickly weakened and 5% of the cadres were removed from the administration. Despite this campaign, the functionaries developed a new class, separated from the rest of the population.

The Five Anti-Movement of Evils - Bribery, tax evasion, misappropriation of state property, fraud and betrayal of state secrets - began in March 1952. The target group of this movement were the remaining small entrepreneurs, artisans and merchants. The campaign was part of the policy of socializing the entire economy. The businessmen should be made ready to sell their companies to the state. Of the 160,000 merchants in Shanghai, 500 were sentenced to death and 30,000 to prison terms.

Thought reform

On November 17, 1951, the resolution to “reform thinking” was passed, which aimed at intellectuals. An intellectual was understood to mean any “brain worker” with appropriate training. The intellectuals were suspected of being skeptical of the new state, and this distance should be re-educated. The re-education took place in standard courses, to which six to ten people belonged and which took place in three phases: first the community came together under the guidance of an experienced communist and study of communism, then a change from ideological to personal, the individual should confess what he / she was I've done wrong and thought wrong so far. In the third phase, what has been learned should be summarized again and a commitment to the new common cause formulated.

The Korean War

Economic balance

The economic balance from 1949 to 1952 was good. The combined output of industry and agriculture had increased from 46.6 billion yuan to 82.7 billion yuan in 1952 prices. The consolidation of the economy after the war was successful and a social system was established. The peasants and workers, who were mostly poor and disrespected before the founding of the People's Republic, particularly benefited from the development. The income, that was essentially the food allocations, the workers often exceeded that of the intellectuals. Larger public health organizations have been set up in both the city and the countryside. In 1951, unemployment, pension, sickness, disability and occupational accident insurance as well as maternity protection were introduced for workers and employees in state-owned companies. However, the rural areas were excluded. There, social security was organized in its own cooperative structures.

The period 1953–1957

The first five-year plan

Opening of the railway line to Chengyu

For the period from 1953 to 1957 the first five-year plan was drawn up and successfully implemented. The national product grew annually by 8 to 9%.

From 1951, the first five-year plan was preceded by a discussion about the general line for the transition period. The aim was to adapt the Maoists' previous principle of “stormy mass movements” to the now consolidated situation. For the new five-year plan, a step-by-step strategy of restructuring agriculture, industry, trade and handicrafts under strict party control and within a 15-year transition period until 1967 was defined. It was a clear departure from Mao's strategy of calling the masses to campaign. Mao increasingly criticized the growth of the bureaucracy and the establishment of an extensive apparatus of functionaries and specialists, some of which presented itself as a new, isolated ruling class.

In the first five-year plan, following the Soviet pattern, the emphasis was on heavy industry , while agriculture had to pay for the development of industry. The five-year plan was successful, thanks in part to Soviet help. The Soviet aid, however, had to be paid for in agricultural exports, which led to supply bottlenecks in their own country.

The “buying out” of the national bourgeoisie

When the People's Republic was founded, small business owners were assured of the protection of their property, but harassment began in the early 1950s . The harassment could be of an economic nature, such as discrimination in the allocation of raw materials or the setting of high taxes, but it was also psychological reprisals . In 1951 and 1952, the two campaigns “Movement of the three anti” and the “movement of the five anti” were carried out. Officially, they were campaigns against the emerging corruption, but they were also directed against entrepreneurs. The three offenses that every entrepreneur was suspected of in the "Movement of the Three Anti" were corruption, waste and bureaucracy . The crimes of the "Movement of the Five Anti" were bribery of officials , tax evasion , theft of state property , fraud in state contracts, illegal appropriation of state economic information for the purpose of speculation . Since the beginning of the People's Republic, so many laws and regulations had been passed against private entrepreneurs that it was not difficult to find a rule violation in each individual. An unlucky entrepreneur could easily be dragged before a desolate “people's court” with a very uncertain outcome.

In 1954, entrepreneurs realized that they had no future as entrepreneurs in China, and so they usually accepted the government's offer to sell their company to the state and run the company as managing directors. Officially, the entrepreneurs were paid 10% of the value of the company on handover for ten years, but the company was usually assessed below its real value. In 1955, the state monopolized the trade in consumer goods such as grain, cotton, cooking oil and meat .

Collectivization of agriculture

The government wanted to improve agricultural productivity through land reforms, including full collectivization in the late 1950s. An average farmer with 15 ares of land could not buy a machine and it would never have been used to capacity. The first land reform began in 1952. It encouraged farmers to form groups of six to nine households. The groups put their devices together. The second phase began in 1954 and was later called "low collectivization". It was often desired that all households in a village should join together. Joining such a collective was officially voluntary and, at least in theory, it was also possible to leave. The respective income was calculated according to the land and equipment brought in, as well as according to the work performed, a further step towards equalizing income between poor and rich farmers. During this time, the crop yields increased, the government viewed this as a success of collectivization, the investments possible collectively paid off. During the "low collectivization" period, the farmers had to sell a certain amount of grain to the government, the rest of the grain could be sold on the open market . About 5% of the agricultural area was freely available to the farmers. A not inconsiderable part of the agricultural production came from these areas.

Literacy and writing reform campaign

In October 1955, the script reform program was passed. 2200 characters were simplified, a national standard language based on the Beijing dialect and a Chinese phonetic transcription based on the Latin characters ( pinyin ) were introduced. Pinyin has been officially binding for all Chinese publications since 1979 .

Relationship with the intellectuals

Mao visits the Sun Yat-Sen mausoleum

When the People's Republic was founded, the level of education was very low, only a small minority could read and write, and anyone with a good education was considered an “intellectual”. The delimitation was always very imprecise. Mao himself spoke of four to five million intellectuals. The relationship between Mao and the intellectuals was mixed. While Mao had no doubt about the loyalty of the peasants to the communist leadership, he distrusted the intellectuals. On the one hand it was accepted that the intellectuals, especially the experts, were needed for the development of China, on the other hand they were distrusted and viewed as a possible threat to the unity and stability of the new state. Mao was convinced that everyone had to say the same thing in the political arena, otherwise the state threatened to break up and the intellectuals displayed an independence of thought that Mao considered dangerous. This mistrust was reinforced by the role played by intellectuals in the unrest in Hungary in 1956. In addition, unlike the peasants, the intellectuals were more aloof from the revolution. Mao saw the intellectuals as part of the "national bourgeoisie". Mao had respect for "the spirit" and he believed in the learning of Marxism / Leninism by the intellectuals, but this meant that the intellectuals had to take part in re-education courses. In many courses, each individual should report on their learning successes and previous bourgeois thinking errors, with the assurance that they will continue to work intensively on themselves in order to become a new person. Overall, the intellectuals in the state were viewed as subordinate to the workers and peasants. For example, a surgeon was given less food than manual workers. From 1952 the campaigns of thought reform against the intellectuals ebbed, because it became clear that many experts were very cautious about their work. From the mid-1950s onwards an effort to gain trust and the state-supporting cooperation of the intellectual class began. In 1956, the party's relationship with the intellectuals relaxed. In January, Prime Minister Zhou Enlai promised intellectuals better living conditions and less use of political training. Zhou also pushed some of the "certain distance" between the intellectuals and the party to the functionaries. The party should also open up to the intellectuals. So far, the non-communist parties were responsible for the intellectuals. With the campaigns of the 100 flowers and the fight against the “deviants”, the relationship tightened again.

The officials in the new China

In the new China, the functionaries were expected to be particularly committed, and the discipline learned during the war still paid off. Most of the functionaries initially had little personal property, lived at their workplaces and only came home on weekends.

On the other hand, when the People's Republic was founded, there were far too few experienced officials on the communist side, and most of them were only experienced in rural matters. The communists, who had conquered the cities from the village, largely lacked the functionaries for both urban and industrial administration. In this situation the party put aside all ideological reservations and retained the great majority of middle and lower salaried employees in their offices, just as the majority of entrepreneurs initially retained their businesses.

The new China soon had the problem of the rising corruption and nepotism among the officials. That is why the "Three Anti-Campaign" was carried out in 1951, but the problem remained. Roped parties developed into powerful “party machines” that easily manipulated campaigns against “bureaucratic deformations” and corruption and misused them to chill unpopular cadres and critics.

Since the Chinese economy leaned on the Soviet model of “democratic centralism” with its first five-year plan, the need for officials with strict professional training continued to grow. Performance was important for production and economic development. Specialists, technicians and managers were needed; political views became secondary.

To make matters worse, due to the centrally planned economy, a huge party and cadre apparatus was established that overran all forms of economic and social life. In 1956, at the 8th Congress, Zhou Enlai spoke of an apparatus that had assumed "mammoth forms".

In 1954, 25 categorization classes were introduced for civil servants. Not only was the salary different from level to level, the various levels entitle to different privileges. Housing, travel options, access to information and opportunities for entertainment were tied to the respective groupings. Separate residential areas were created for the leading class of functionaries, and the children were educated in their own schools. Luxury was very limited compared to before the founding of the People's Republic, but the isolation of functionaries and their families became a problem. The party cadres were economically successful, but they developed into a new, detached ruling class. The dispute between those who accepted this development as a necessary evil for the rapid development of the country, and the Maoists, who pointed out that so far all Chinese peasant uprisings had broken with the country's long bureaucratic tradition and that the People's Republic was in danger, Losing all socialist and democratic achievements again was a constant theme in Chinese politics from the stabilization of the state in the mid-1950s.

Mass campaigns to monitor officials

Special mass campaigns were carried out to monitor the officials and employees of the state. Working groups were formed for this purpose. The groups were structured hierarchically. The top levels were made up of government workers in Beijing under the direction of a senior party official. These were sent to the provinces to control and monitor the leading officials and employees there. The officers and clerks successfully monitored formed new groups to monitor the clerks and clerks on the next shift. In this way, everyone affected by the campaign was monitored down to the lowest administrative levels. Appeals against the judgments of the work teams were not possible. The monitoring by the work teams was a highly efficient method of curbing corruption and nepotism, as well as enforcing compliance with the respective political line. Since the population was called upon to make allegations anonymously, note boxes were set up especially for this purpose, but informers were widespread. Any of the groups examined could become the victim of a purely personal campaign of revenge, no one was safe anymore. Major campaigns to track down political “opponents” were the campaign against “hidden counter-revolutionaries” (1954) and the right-wing deviator campaign (1957). For the vast majority of the population, however, the campaigns had little impact. The farmers and workers hardly heard of these campaigns.

The Hundred Flower Campaign

For intellectuals, the general mood in 1956 was more relaxed than ever since the founding of the People's Republic. China entered a new phase of development, the so-called "post-construction phase". This required the active support of the educated circles. On May 2, 1956, the party's propaganda chief Lu Tingyi quoted Mao as follows: “We say to artists and writers: Let a hundred flowers bloom. We say to the scientists: Let a hundred schools compete with each other ”. On February 27, 1957, Mao gave a speech in which he himself called for frank criticism of the party's actions. Mao said: “The Marxists must not fear criticism from any side. In contrast, in the fight with criticism ... they have to steel themselves, improve and conquer new positions. ”Despite this invitation, hardly anyone dared to criticize. On May 1, 1957, the "alignment movement" was formally announced and once again encouraged to take a bold stance, but then criticism of the party and administration swelled, a criticism that in part called into question the entire system of the CCP's sole rule. The extent and severity of the criticism came as a great surprise to everyone, including the Chinese who were critical of the regime. Mao also seems to have believed in the spring that the endless trainings of thought reform had been successful and that there would only be limited criticism.

The Right Deviator Campaign

Relocation of the anti-right campaign

On June 8, 1957, the party newspaper Renmin Ribao published an instruction from the Central Committee to fight the enemies of the state, and a boom began against those who had previously made critical comments. Tens of thousands who openly criticized were held up to their criticism. Students who took part in the criticism had their summer vacation canceled. They had to study “socialism” every day, with self-criticism and accusations of classmates. 550,000 people were convicted of deviating from the law. The party's relationship with the intellectuals became frosty.

As in previous campaigns, the "combat meetings" began again, at which the victims were presented in public and had to be insulted. There were six tiered penalties. Prison, release, temporary posting to work with the farmers, cut wages, physical labor in one's own environment and official branding as "deviants from the law". The attribute "legal deviator" was officially registered with the authorities like the attributes "landowner", "rich farmer" or "bad element" and only deleted again in 1978. It was expected not to have any contact with people with such attributes attached. The action taken against those who followed the invitation to criticize was explained by Mao by saying that the invitation to criticize only served to lure the opponents of socialism out of their hiding places. The main reason was different. The Hundred Flowers Movement was dominated by a dispute about direction that was fought behind the scenes. Mao wanted “the people” to clear up undesirable developments in the party and administration, hence the call for public criticism, while politicians like Liu Shaoqi wanted criticism and the correction of grievances only within and through the party. The escalating criticism put Mao on the defensive with his ideas and his opponents restored the “authority” of the party by cracking down on the party's critics. There was a similar dispute about correcting grievances ten years later - the Cultural Revolution was proclaimed.

The Soviet model has reached its limits

Economic development during the first five-year plan was very positive with annual economic growth of 15%, but problems arose. In order to develop the economy, the Soviet model of economic development was initially relied on, which meant a planned economy with strict centralization and an orientation towards large-scale technical enterprises in the cities. The focus of investments was on the production of capital goods. The ratio of investments in capital goods to those in consumer goods was around 8 to 1. One of the downsides was an escalation of bureaucracy and the prevention of flexibility at the base and in the mid-level. In addition, economic development was expensive. It was financed in part by loans from the Soviet Union, but for the most part by taxes imposed on the farmers. The farmers had to finance the economic development. The Chinese model of rapid modernization and industrialization was therefore dependent on the creation of an efficient agriculture. But precisely this was a weak point and little had changed in the country since the landowners were expropriated and the land was distributed to the farmers. The land was extremely parceled out, a farming family owned on average about a third of a hectare of land and was worked entirely by hand, much more than was not harvested for their own use. There was no money for machines and they would not have been profitable either. Nevertheless, the amount that could be skimmed off by the state remained small and the farmers remained poor.

The 1954 harvest was poor and in the spring of 1955 there were peasant riots in some parts of the country. The question of how economic development should be driven became urgent. China had expensive heavy industry that could hardly be afforded without Soviet support, while the peasants were disconnected from economic development.

In 1956, food ran out and rations had to be cut. The problem of improving the living conditions of the peasants, who rightly felt they were disadvantaged compared to the urban workers, and of increasing grain production became more and more pressing. At the same time, the storm of criticism in the context of the Hundred Flowers Movement had shown an unexpectedly strong bourgeois rejection of the party. Relying on liberal markets and rich farmers no longer seemed like a real option. Mao's program of rapid collectivization to increase production now appeared to be the only viable option. On the eve of the Great Leap, it was clear to most of the leading politicians that the Soviet model did not suit Chinese conditions. Over-investment in heavy industry had weakened the basic agricultural sector. In addition, there were uprisings in Eastern Europe, the Soviet government had to support the governments there and reduced support for China. Mao seemed to have a solution to China's pressing problems, while the representatives of the centralized Soviet model lost their arguments.

Interim balance

After a hundred years of disintegration, war and heteronomy (calculated since the first opium war ), China was united again, stable and the Chinese were once again in control of their own country. The worst losers were the former landowners in the country, of whom over a million were executed and the remainder remained as "black" people with inferior rights. The ruling class of the old state in the cities was no better. They were convicted and killed en masse in show trials. The intellectuals, that is to say, the educated class, were after the workers and peasants and were disadvantaged. The former small business owners had been made clear, often quite rudely, that the time of private ownership was running out and their companies were being bought up. After all, they still got money for it, and life as managing director of their previous company wasn't bad either. Overall, industrial production increased significantly. The following table shows the development for the basic goods steel, electricity and cement.

	1950	1952	1957
Production of basic economic goods
Steel in million t	0.8	1.4	5.4
Electricity in billions of Kwst	3.8	7.3	19.3
Cement in million t	1.4	2.9	6.9

The workers and smallholders benefited from the new state, and that was over 90% of the population. They were the preferred class in the new socialist state, the others should orientate themselves on them. The landowners had been expropriated, production had increased, hunger suppressed, social legislation was implemented, and the peasants and workers only heard marginally of the political campaigns from which the intellectuals had to suffer. Nevertheless, the population still lived on the edge of the subsistence level and the question of further economic development was unresolved. Furthermore, the women were the winners, for whose equality, previously unthinkable in China, the state campaigned.

The "big jump" is being prepared

In 1957, Mao's group prevailed to focus more on mass campaigns again in the next five-year plan. Instead of taking many small steps, China should use the “power of the masses” to take a leap forward in development. As an important step towards this, steel production was to be doubled from 5.35 million tons in 1957 to 10.7 million tons in 1958. The farmers should help with the expansion of steel production as well as with many infrastructure projects. The tragedy of the " great leap forward " began.

The battle of the two lines

Different views on the class struggle

After the stabilization of the People's Republic and the buying out of the entrepreneurs, two perspectives for the further development of China emerged.

Some, with Liu Shaoqi as the best-known representative, considered the socialist restructuring to be essentially complete. In 1956 over 95% of peasants and over 90% of artisans were integrated into cooperatives, industry was almost complete and 85% of trade was nationalized. The bourgeoisie had disappeared and with it the time of the class struggle was over. In the future, the focus should be on the further economic development of the new state in order to build prosperity and security for the population. Liu Shaoqi said on the subject in late 1954: “We have now essentially completed the various social reform programs. We are now entering the phase of the planned economic development. ”Since the primacy in the future should therefore be on the development of economic production, it is not the politically correct class fighter that is needed, but the specialist, the expert who solves technical problems, his political one Opinion is not important. The education system must adapt to these requirements. What is needed are technical colleges in which the experts are trained, also through hard selection. The leadership in this development process has the Communist Party, which has to ensure stability. Errors within the Communist Party, such as the evil of corruption, can only be combated through party bodies.

Mao's group saw things very differently. From this point of view, the former ruling class was disempowered, but Mao saw that Communist Party officials were increasingly establishing themselves as a ruling class detached from the people, as a new ruling class. Not surprisingly for Mao, because he is convinced that after the overthrow of a ruling class, a class society is by no means transformed into a classless society. If nothing is done about it, a new ruling class will develop in place of the old one. Hence his demand that the class struggle should not be let up in the new China either. Economic development should not be carried out at the expense of the struggle against the newly developing, detached, ruling class. His sentence comes from 1975: “And you wonder where the bourgeoisie is located. She sits in the middle of the Communist Party! ”Unlike the group around Liu, Mao did not believe that the Communist Party itself could solve these problems. Only if the popular masses controlled the functionaries, if grassroots democracy were practiced, could the development of a new, detached, new ruling class be prevented and society slowly develop into a classless society. With this view, a politically wrong-minded professional is a problem for society.

These questions about the development of the economy and the struggle against the development of a new class society were a constant topic in China until the mid-1970s. At the time of the first five-year plan (1953–1957) Mao was in the minority with his demand for further class struggle, at the beginning of the Great Leap, the time of the Three Red Banners (1957–1958), Mao was able to prevail.

Stabilization of the new state

In 1949 the communists took over one of the poorest countries in the world, surprisingly to themselves at this early stage. Fragmented, overpopulated, for a long time without a functioning administration, famine in large parts of the population and a life expectancy of 35 years. First of all, a political stabilization was required, which the party in the country could trust itself. Alongside this, however, the CCP also had to do everything possible to get the city's economy, which has been badly hit by war, civil war, corruption and inflation, back on its feet as quickly as possible. However, the communists could not do this alone. For the last 20 years they had been active mainly outside the cities, their members came from the countryside and were mostly illiterate. In this situation, Mao in particular, more than Liu and Deng, made himself the advocate of a policy that put reconstruction first and included the previous carriers of urban production and the city administration.

The large mass of middle and lower urban employees, even Kuomintang members who were not too politically conspicuous, were able to keep their jobs after short political retraining courses. While previously earned guerrilla fighters were sent back to their villages for land reform, experts in the cities returned to the offices. At the same time, from October 1949 to September 1952, over three million new administrative cadres were trained who felt little committed to the socialist class struggle.

This trend was intensified when, with reference to the Soviet Union within the framework of the first five-year plan (from 1953), a large number of Russian specialists. The decisive elements were now hierarchization, functionalization and specialization. There was no longer any room for a Mao mass line.

This pragmatic management and economic policy resulted in rapid economic reconstruction. After the economy was almost paralyzed by galloping inflation in 1949, the gross national product of 1933 was already exceeded by 20% in 1953. Between 1952 and 1957 there was an annual growth in industry (not in agriculture) of 15%.

While Zhou Enlai, Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping presented a very positive balance at the eighth party congress in September 1956, Mao was much less satisfied with what had been achieved.

Mao saw in the new cadres, instead of the "vanguard" of the workers brought forward by the Soviets, a newly formed ruling class that separated itself from the people and developed into a new ruling class. Instead of serving the masses with the masses, they generously served themselves. Since 1950, rope teams, well-rehearsed party machines, have been formed that rigorously stifled all criticism, even from old Maoist basic cadres. Campaigns, which were originally intended to break undemocratic behavior in good time and to make the voices of the people heard, were misused to clean up unpopular cadres in " fighting sessions " manipulated by the bosses . The strictly subject-oriented school system with difficult entrance exams, which as a rule only specially promoted pupils from the urban middle class and higher cadres could pass, served the new upper class, which was thus able to seal itself off for the next generation.

From the development of the People's Republic in the early years, Mao referred to the danger of the formation of a new ruling exploiting class that might rule the new state for the people, but to the exclusion of the people, but found only a very limited majority for his in the Communist party leadership Position.

The Search for the Chinese Economic Model (1954/55)

While the party was generally satisfied with economic growth, one downside was well known. Agriculture was worrying.

It was generally clear that the economic development in the cities had to be financed by agriculture. Cities could only build up their industries through the cheap purchase of agricultural products by the state. The farmers had to hand over products to the state without getting much in return from the city.

One problem was the severe fragmentation of agriculture. A farming family had an average of around 30 acres of arable land. Mechanization was not worthwhile for this, and the farmer could not afford fertilization or plant protection either. Everything was done by hand and the yield was too low for the state requirements. The skimmable mass was small.

From 1954 the voluntary transition to agricultural production cooperatives was propagated. Each farmer remained his own master, but tools were to be shared. The transition went relatively smoothly, as the communists, as agrarian revolutionaries, knew life in the village well and large parts of the impoverished Chinese peasantry saw collectivization as an opportunity rather than a danger. The practical experiments showed that an LPG yielded between 10 and 20% more income than when cultivated by small businesses. The mass that could be skimmed off by the state for rebuilding remained small, despite the considerable tax burden on the farmers. In 1954 and 1955 there were poor harvests due to the weather. It began to rumble among the peasantry, locally there were peasant uprisings.

The party was faced with the question: should it continue to pursue industrial development in a centralized manner, following the Soviet model, or should it try to decentralize development and, with the support of the majority of the peasants, carry industrial development out into the country.

In the case of centralized development, development would initially have required more capital. It was seen as a possibility that through a “rich peasant policy” the party could create opportunities for production in the countryside to be increased by the enterprising peasants expanding their holdings at the expense of the less able. The new rich farmers, with larger farms and better equipped, would have been able to generate more income. At the beginning of the 1960s, this path was followed. Mao firmly opposed this proposal. The proposal would have meant that the Communist Party would have given the strong and successful government massive support to amass a fortune at the expense of the general public. What kind of alternative to capitalism is that?

The discussion about a “rich peasant policy” determined the political controversy in 1954 and 1955 with increasing intensity. In July 1955 Mao warned that in recent years there had been constant growth of capitalist elements in the village and that there was a serious danger a capitalist restoration existed while in May 1955 the members of the department for rural work in the Central Committee campaigned for a slowdown of collectivization.

The struggle for the development of agriculture

Mass line or rich-peasant policy (1955)

At the beginning of 1955, those who, like Peng Chen, advocated a moderate rich-peasant policy were still in the majority in the party leadership, but at the end of 1955 Mao pushed through that a different path was followed. The local cadres, who witnessed the misery in the countryside, supported Mao's proposals to address the problems in the villages. The production in agriculture should be increased by farmers joining forces and thereby increasing the size of the farm. Released workers should then migrate to small and medium-sized industries and local businesses. Instead of central, high-tech and capital-intensive production facilities in the big cities, with all their bureaucracy, in fact most of what the farmers needed could be produced in local production facilities or production facilities in the surrounding medium-sized cities. Certainly not as efficient, maybe not of the same quality, but at least. In the next step, these local businesses could then be expanded in order to further advance the industrialization of China by mobilizing the rural population.

The number of LPGs grew from July 1955 to December 1955 from 17 to 70 million. This success was only possible because the vast majority of the provincial and district secretaries had supported Maoist policies and opposed the technocrats at Beijing headquarters.

The "Socialist Awakening in the Hinterland" (January, 1956)

In the mid-1950s, China was in a state of upheaval, with political directions often changing every few months. In January 1956, a radical change in the villages was announced with the “socialist awakening in the hinterland”. Not only was the number of LPGs to be increased from 70 to 140 million by October 1956, Mao also wanted to implement a new economic and social policy based on the “mass factor”. The city should be brought to the village. He tried to counter the resistance of the Beijing bureaucracy with a simultaneous campaign against “right-wing conservatism”.

Already in spring there were increasing reports that overzealous local executives had not discussed planning dates with each other, with the result that the transport system was idling and raw materials were wasted. In June 1956, Finance Minister Li Hsienien gave a speech that was a single charge against Mao. In agriculture, excessive investments have been made at the expense of living standards, and quantity has come to the fore at the expense of quality and economy. To make matters worse for Mao, the 1955 harvest was bad and the party did not want to experiment in agriculture right now.

At the meeting of the NPK on June 18, 1956, against Mao's resistance, a plan was decided that was still based on the heavy industrial Soviet model. The ratio of investments in the heavy to consumer goods industry was only reduced from 8: 1 to 7: 1 and at the Seventh Plenum of the Central Committee, which met at the beginning of September, Mao's "socialist awakening" was with his "economic adventurism" and his "radical agricultural policy "already no longer an issue. The Beijing technocrats had prevailed again.

The centralists prevail again (8th Party Congress, Sept. 1956)

At the eighth party congress in September 1956, the "socialist awakening in the hinterland" was buried again. It was not against Mao's will that the cult around him was reduced in favor of strengthening the institutions. Mao also wanted the party to prepare for the time after him. The Mao Zedong ideas were deleted from the party statute and the Politburo was divided into a "first line" and a "second line", with Mao officially only being in the "second line". Mao wanted to withdraw a little from daily politics. The immense strengthening of the party's secretariat also made sense, especially since the party's new general secretary, Deng Xiaoping, was a loyal follower of Mao.

What had to be depressing for Mao, however, was how far the party congress had deviated from its own ideas. The political resolution said: "On the question of the socialist transformation of the country the decisive victory has already been won. This means that the contradiction between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie has essentially been resolved and the millennia-old history of class exploitation in China is coming to an end. Essentially, we have succeeded in establishing the socialist system in China. "

This was now contrary to the ideas of Mao, who emphasized that only through ever new class struggle could it be avoided that China would fall back into the well-known form of elite rule. The bureaucratic optimism at the Eighth Party Congress contrasted with Mao's historical pessimism, which believed in the tenacious vitality of the established bourgeois thought patterns. Hence Mao's later statement that a new cultural revolution is needed every ten years.

Mao's reform campaign fails (1956/1957)

From May 1956, Mao tried, parallel to economic decentralization, a liberalization in the intellectual area, the later 100-flower movement. The centralists of the party leadership, e.g. B. the head of the Beijing party organization Peng Chen, however, tried to make Mao's proposals as little public as possible. As recently as April 1957, Mao complained: "It would be the job of the party press to represent the party's political line. It was a mistake that the conference was hushed up on propaganda work. ..... Why is the party's political line?" kept a secret? Something is very rotten! "

The reform campaign developed into the Hundred Flower Movement, which was then rigorously blocked by the Beijing centralists with the right deviator campaign. ( see: The period from 1953–1957: The Hundred Flowers Campaign )

China after the Hundred Flower Campaign (July 1957)

The Tsingtao Conference in July 1957 is seen as the first step in the great leap forward. From the end of 1956 the economic situation tightened. In the cities, food became scarce and the rations for textiles and rice had to be reduced. Liu Shoaqi also went on a six-week inspection tour through China in April / May and convinced himself of the tense economic and social situation.

Mao now argued that, as the events of the Hundred Flowers had shown, the gap between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie had deepened rather than narrowed. It is imperative to strengthen the socialist consciousness of the peasantry and to counter the creeping advance of capitalist elements. The best and most economical way to achieve this is by intensifying agricultural collectivization, which is inevitable to increase production. The centralists in the party apparatus were unable to make any convincing proposals against this and were back on the defensive.

A decision on this has not yet been made at the conference.

A quick collectivization is decided (Sept. / Oct. 1957)

At the third plenum of the Central Committee from September 20 to October 9, 1957, a rapid collectivization of agriculture was decided. The most important reason for the decision, which was made after long and bitter discussions, was the persistently bad situation in agriculture. With only 1% growth in grain production, the harvest fell far short of expectations and did not even offset the population growth. Further cuts in urban food rations were inevitable.

The reason for the disappointing harvest results was seen less in the bad weather than in the fact, reported by many cadre reports, that many of the rich farmers withheld parts of their crops in order to sell them at better prices in the free local markets. The majority of the delegates in Beijing came to the conclusion that only accelerated collectivization could prevent the country from slowly escaping state control, as in the Soviet Union in the 1920s. In this case, the supply of the cities could no longer have been guaranteed, not to mention the modernization and industrialization of the country.

The third plenum had to resolve two things in parallel. First, it had to be ensured that the farmers actually sold their products to the state at the low state purchase prices and, secondly, the living conditions of the farmers had to be improved. The meanwhile general resistance of the farmers against the state was mainly due to the fact that the farmers felt themselves to be massively disadvantaged compared to the urban population, and rightly so. One thing that Mao, who always felt personally responsible for the cause of the peasants, burned under the nails.

The proposal of a "rich peasant policy" was discredited after the unexpected strength of the allegations against the socialist state by the intellectuals during the Hundred Flower Movement. It was now considered a most dangerous undertaking to rely on a layer of wealthy peasants in the future. It was obvious that the new class of rich peasants could have developed into an anti-socialist bulwark in the country.

Since the previous chief planners Chen Yün and Li Hsienien were unable to provide a convincing answer to the questions that were now burning, Mao's alternative remained: the rapid collectivization of the country to increase production in agriculture.

China's Problems Before the Great Leap (Fall 1957)

( See: The period from 1953–1957: interim balance sheet )

In the fall of 1957, the People's Republic faced serious problems. With enormous investments in heavy industry, with Soviet help, it had built up an industry that was as high-tech as it was capital-intensive, based on the Soviet model, which China could not actually afford. The weakness of Chinese industry was now particularly evident as the Soviet Union cut back its support to bolster its Eastern European brother states. On the other hand, the basic agricultural sector, in which the vast majority of the population worked, was in need. The small farmers could not afford fertilizers and pesticides, the harvests were small, the mechanization was not progressing and the revolt of the population against the preference of the urban population became more and more evident. It was only through a rigorous reporting process that it was possible to keep the rural population out of the cities.

In this situation, the Mao party followed, who first wanted to use his "mass line" to increase yields in agriculture and set people free in the countryside through productivity gains. The companies in the cities should be obliged to help set up smaller, labor-intensive but capital-saving companies in the countryside, and so bring industry to the countryside. The farmers and not foreign capital should be the basis of future economic development. Mao had pushed through his vision of the new China in the party leadership and declared that he would not run for president in the next year. He will now place it in younger hands. None of those involved had any idea what China was expecting in the next few years.

literature

Oskar Weggel : History of China in the 20th Century (= Kröner's pocket edition . Volume 414). Kröner, Stuttgart 1989, ISBN 3-520-41401-5 .
Klaus Mehnert: Beijing and Moscow . German publishing company, 1962
Rainer Hoffmann: The battle between two lines . Ernst Klett Verlag, Stuttgart 1978

Individual evidence

Commons : History of People's Republic of China - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

↑ Joseph Ball: Did Mao really kill millions in the Great Lead Forward? Monthly review, September 2006

^ Rainer Hoffmann: Battle of two lines, page 12, Ernst Klett Verlag, Stuttgart 1978

^ Oskar Weggel: History of China in the 20th Century, p. 161, Alfred Kröner Verlag, 1989

^ Theo Sommer: Raid at dawn, Die Zeit 26/2000

↑ For better times Der Spiegel, 50/1950

↑ ^a ^b Khaled M. Kayali: Political integration of the chinese communist party elite 1952-1966 December, 1970 ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / etd.lib.ttu.edu
^ Rainer Hoffmann: Battle of two lines, Ernst Klett Verlag, Stuttgart 1978

[1] Joseph Ball: Did Mao really kill millions in the Great Lead Forward? Monthly review, September 2006

[2] Rainer Hoffmann: Battle of two lines, page 12, Ernst Klett Verlag, Stuttgart 1978

[3] Oskar Weggel: History of China in the 20th Century, p. 161, Alfred Kröner Verlag, 1989

[4] Theo Sommer: Raid at dawn, Die Zeit 26/2000

[5] For better times Der Spiegel, 50/1950