Radical Experiments: the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution

1
Radical Experiments the Great Leap Forward and
Cultural Revolution

• Modern China
• April 15, 2003

2
Collectivization

• General issues
• Persuasion vs. coercion
• Targeted groups at each step
• Mutual-aid Teams
• 5-10 households.
• Pooled labor and resources but individual
  ownership.
• By the end of 1952, 40 of rural families.

3
Agricultural Producers Cooperatives

• From 1953. Common ownership of land.
• Lower-stage producers cooperatives.
• 30-50 families.
• Credit for tools livestock.
• By 1955, 2/3 of peasant families participating.
• Higher-stage producers cooperatives.
• 100-300 families.
• Communal ownership of tools livestock.
• Work points.

4
Communes

• Final step, beginning summer 1958 as part of
  Great Leap Forward.
• Use of coercion.
• Communes enlarged to 4,000 households (up to
  10,000).
• By August-September, 26,000 communes 99 of
  rural population.
• Collectivization of all aspects of economic
  social life
• Communal kitchens, dining halls, nurseries, etc.
• Stress on productive role of wome

5
Great Leap Forward (GLF)

• Crash program for agricultural and rural
  industrial development. Above and beyond the 2nd
  Five Year Plan.
• Key activities
• Irrigation projects.
• Small industries such as back yard furnaces.
• Great apparent success the first year

6
GLF disasters

• Irrigation projects often silted up iron
  unusable.
• Huge size of communes leading to low morale.
• 3 bad harvests in a row (1959-61) leading to
  massive starvation as many as 20 million died.
• Withdrawal of all Soviet advisors (1960)
  Sino-Soviet rift.

7
Retrenchment

• Economic development but with more modest goals.
• Communes not abolished but curtailed
• Production brigades the central units most with
  fewer than 50 families.
• Families allowed private plots most pigs
  vegetables raised in them.

8
Political fallout

• Liu Shaoqi as head of state
• Mao still CCP Chair and head, Mil. Affairs
  Comm.
• Criticism by Peng Dehuai (Defense Minister) in
  1959 over GLF Peng dismissed.
• Sino-Soviet split other causes including Soviet
  de-Stalinization peaceful coexistence, but GLF
  exacerbated it and the Split worsened the
  post-GLF difficulties

9
Cultural Revolution

• 1965 (Nov. 10) Wen hui bao article by Yao
  Wenyuan in Shanghai.
• Attacked the play Dismissal of Hai Rui by Wu Han.
• Viewed as a defense of Peng De Huai
• 1966 (Feb./Mar.) Beijing power struggle.
• Mao out of the city and communications cut off.
• Fall of Luo Ruiqing (head of PLA) and soon of
  Peng Zhen (mayor of Beijing).
• Later followed by fall of Liu Shaoqi.
• Call for Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.
• Mao and radical followers in Shanghai (including
  his wife Jiang Qing)

10

• 1966 (May) call for student Red Guard units.
• Huge rallies in Tiananmen Square.
• Schools closed (2-3 years).
• 1966 (July) Maos swim in the Yangzi.
• 1966-67 (winter) worker involvement.
• Red Guards at the zenith of their power in
  January 1967.
• Destruction of traditional culture and attempts
  to seize power from the Party.

11

• 1967 (January) PLA intervention.
• Lin Biao as heir apparent.
• 1967 (July) Wuhan incident.
• Country on the verge of civil war.
• Tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands involved.
• 1968 Further mass movement but call for
  disbanding of Red Guards in August. Power held
  by party-worker-solder triumvirates.
• 1971 death of Lin Biao failed coup.
• Criticize Lin Biao criticize Confucius
  campaign.

12
Long-term CR policies (through 1976)

• Centrality of culture
• Control of media, propaganda.
• Site of political struggle. Attacks on
  traditional culture.
• Education
• Disruptions of teacher/student relations.
  Constant challenge of authority
• Students to the countryside program (Xiafang or
  xiaxiang).
• Political criteria for advancing.
• Emphasis on radical egalitarian policies in
  factories and countrysi

13
Significance of the GLF, CR

• As Marxist heresy
• GLF rather than slow process of
  industrialization with socialism in the future,
  primacy of will in bringing about socialism in
  this generation.
• CR attack on Party unthinkable under Lenin or
  Stalin. Marxism viewed Party as embodiment of
  proletariat. Chinese radicals saw it
  backsliding.
• In both cases need to maintain revolutionary
  spirit.

14
Comparisons with Confucian political culture

• Differences
• Social hierarchy vs. radical equality.
• Centrality of family/lineage vs.
  community/nation.
• Similarities
• Insignificance of the individual compared to the
  group.
• Belief that people can be educated, that their
  thought and outlook can be reformed. Owes more
  to Confucianism than Marxism, but essential to
  efforts by the Communists to transform society.