HIST103: World History (1600–Present)

In October 1949, after the retreat of the Kuomintang to Taiwan, the Chinese Communist Party proclaimed the establishment of the People's Republic of China. Immediately, landlords and more wealthy peasants had their land holdings forcibly redistributed to poorer peasants. Within the Party, there was a major debate about redistribution. A moderate faction within the party and Politburo member Liu Shaoqi argued that change should be gradual and any collectivization of the peasantry should await industrialization, which could provide the agricultural machinery for mechanized farming.

A more radical faction led by Mao Zedong argued that the best way to finance industrialization was for the government to take control of agriculture, thereby establishing a monopoly over grain distribution and supply. This would allow the State to buy at a low price and sell much higher, thus raising the capital necessary for the industrialization of the country. Realizing that this policy would be unpopular with the peasants, the plan called for peasants to be brought under Party control by the establishment of agricultural collectives, which would also facilitate the sharing of tools and draft animals.

This policy was gradually pushed through between 1949 and 1958, first by establishing "mutual aid teams" of 5-15 households, then in 1953 "elementary agricultural cooperatives" of 20-40 households, then from 1956 in "higher co-operatives" of 100-300 families. These reforms (sometimes now referred to as The Little Leap Forward) were generally unpopular with the peasants. They were usually implemented by summoning them to meetings and making them stay there for days and sometimes weeks until they "voluntarily" agreed to join the collective.

Besides these economic changes, the party implemented major social changes in the countryside, including the banishing of all religious and mystic institutions and ceremonies and replacing them with political meetings and propaganda sessions. Attempts were made to enhance rural education and the status of women (allowing females to initiate divorce if they desired) and ending foot-binding child marriage and opium addiction. Internal passports were introduced in 1956, forbidding travel without appropriate authorization. The highest priority was given to the urban proletariat for whom a welfare state was created.

The first phase of collectivization was not a great success, and there was widespread famine in 1956, though the Party's propaganda machine announced progressively higher harvests. Moderates within the Party, including Zhou Enlai, argued for a reversal of collectivization. The position of the moderates was strengthened by Khrushchev's 1956 Secret speech at the 20th Congress, which uncovered Stalin's crimes and highlighted the failure of his agricultural policies, including collectivization in the USSR.

In 1957, Mao responded to the tensions in the Party by promoting free speech and criticism under the 100 Flowers Campaign. In retrospect, some have come to argue that this was a ploy to allow critics of the regime, primarily intellectuals but also low-ranking members of the party critical of the agricultural policies, to identify themselves.^[2]

Some claim that Mao simply swung to the side of the hard-liners once his policies gained strong opposition. However, given such statements, his history of cynical and ruthless attacks on critics and rivals, and his notoriously thin skin, this seems unlikely. Once he had done so, at least half a million were purged under the anti-Rightist campaign organized by Deng Xiaoping. This effectively silenced any opposition from within the Party or from agricultural experts to the changes that would be implemented under the Great Leap Forward.

By the completion of the first Five Year Economic Plan in 1957, Mao had come to doubt that the path to socialism that had been taken by the Soviet Union was appropriate for China. He was critical of Khrushchev's reversal of Stalinist policies and alarmed by the uprisings that had taken place in East Germany, Poland, and Hungary and the perception that the USSR was seeking "peaceful coexistence" with the West. Mao had become convinced that China should follow its own path to Communism.