Mao Zedong's Second Five Year Plan in 1958
China is a gigantic country and historians can study and trace their
civilisations as far back as five thousand years ago. The Manchu
emperors had ruled China since 1644. At the end of the nineteenth
century and leading up to the twentieth century the emperor of China,
Guangxu, was dominated by his aunt, the empress Ci xii. For forty
years she ruled for her nephew.
China entered the twentieth century on a wave of reactionary terror,
as the loose affiliation of north-east Chinese Secret Society groups
known as the "Boxers" began a protracted attempt to destroy all
Chinese Christian converts, and the missionaries who preached to them.
Openly encouraged by a number of conservative officials, most of them
from ruling Manchu minority, which had controlled the Chinese
government since the seventeenth century, the Boxers entered Peking in
mid 1900 and laid siege. In the meantime, pro Boxer generals and their
followers in Shanxi and other northern provinces had conducted a
brutal round-up and massacre of missionary families and their
converts. By the terms of the vindictive Treaty Settlement that
followed, several senior pro-Boxer Quing dynasty officials were
executed, pro-Boxer areas were penalised, and the Chinese government
was compelled to promise to pay a colossal £67 000000 for the lives
and property destroyed. The Chinese felt the foreigner had exploited
them and their country. For years therefore that Chinese peasants
lived in dire poverty and under the rule of cruel dictatorship.
In 1908 empress, Ci xi died, her successor was her nephew, a three
year old boy named Pu Yi. His uncle, ...
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...nd afford new
things. People were given more responsibility in the workplace and
were free to make their own decisions. The younger generations were
helped to educate themselves and given a free choice as to what they
wanted to do with their lives. Peoples social life was improved, they
had more time and they were happier. Because of the change in the
economy they had more money to spend. Politically China had changed,
communism was still there but the beliefs had lessened a bit to allow
people to be able to live in the world comfortably, however the main
points are still in focus. The people's army is still running as it
was in Mao's day but it is now much less of a force. China Still had a
long way to go to become a democracy. These changes maybe a long time
coming but at least they escaped Mao's restrictive control.
...ities as a responsible state holder. One of the consequences of the international community questioning China’s military capabilities is that the international community could potentially induce an unproductive arms race with China. If China is to participate in the race, China will have a weakened competitive position in the races of economic and intellectual strength. Secondly, China will lose the ability to use its army as a form of soft power therefore making it harder to believe that China can be a responsible state holder since it will seem like propaganda. In terms of China, the world is in a very exciting position with the promotion of the China’s model an alternative governing system is being offered. However, we need to remain vigilant and aware for just as quickly as China rose, it has the potential to fall as well if it doesn’t play it’s cards right.
“Education must serve proletarian politics and be combined with productive labor. Our educational policy must enable everyone who receives an education to develop morally, intellectually, and physically and to become a worker with both socialist consciousness and culture.” (Mao 63). Throughout the summer that spanned from late 1965 to 1966, tensions and conflicts rose between Mao’s followers and the Chinese Communist Party. The building of tensions that existed in China may have remained docile for decades, had it not been for Mao’s catalytic attempt to remove opposing party members through the schooling system. Mao had already established that the people required a violent sort of activism to turn their attentions away from corrupt leadership, and to promote a sense of unity through rebellion. In addition, the prevailing traditional Yan’an method of schooling had forced a separation between students, essentially dividing them into classes, which brought about an emphasis and awareness to their differing backgrounds and skills. It was through these “two important respects, [that] China’s high school students held a high potential for violent conflict once the floodgates were opened to them” (Unger 110). With these major factors contributing to an impending crisis, Mao set the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution into motion, with the goal of reinforcing communism through the removal of capitalist, traditional, and cultural elements from Chinese society. Mao’s major revolutionary advances were brought about by his changes to the Chinese educational system, and although Mao’s reforms were seemingly sound and made with “good intentions”, it was these changes themselves that ultimately ended in disaster for the nation. Because of M...
Success, as defined by the Oxford English dictionary, is the prosperous achievement of an objective. (Oed.com 1968) Conferring to this definition, the 1949 Chinese revolution was certainly a successful revolution. The communist party of China (CCP) was incredibly successful in its attempt in replacing the bourgeoisie dominated nationalist government – The Kuomintang (KMT) - with a proletariat class lead communist government. However, whether the achievement of such objective proves to be prosperous for China and its peoples requires further analysis. Ever since the establishment of the People’s Republic of China, the legitimacy of the revolution of which it was built upon has perennially been in question. For example, in a 1999 issue of the
In the late 1970s, the USA established full diplomatic relations with China and terminated the mutual defense treaty that the USA and the ROC had signed in 1954. Also, the US opened its markets, and continued to restrict the export to China of technologies having possible military uses. But 1982, Chinese began to distance themselves from the USA to imrove their relations with the Soviet Union. But only a year later, after a substantial loosening of US restrictions on exports to China, the relationship between China and the USA began to improve again.
...ny. In the UN, China has been known for voting against resolutions such as interventions and imposing of sanctions.
“A revolution is not a bed of roses. A revolution is a struggle between the future and the past” (Fidel Castro). People of power can be creative with their utterances. They can say anything to the people that they want to control. In this situation, both countries tested the limits. The political leaders of Cuba and China gained support by attracting specific types of followers, motivation and the utilization of propaganda. These leaders had campaigns targeting specific types of people to help gain power and to get support for their revolutionary ideas. The same mindset was in place when these leaders used propaganda and used their own motivation to get into people’s heads.
(+)Robertson III , Grayson R “The China-MFN Controversy: The Case For Maintaining China's MFN Status Part 1” <a href="http://www.china-net.org/CCF94/ccf9409-3.html">http://www.china-net.org/CCF94/ccf9409-3.html
Dressed in the drab military uniform that symbolized the revolutionary government of Communist China, Mao Zedong's body still looked powerful, like an giant rock in a gushing river. An enormous red flag draped his coffin, like a red sail unfurled on a Chinese junk, illustrating the dualism of traditional China and the present Communist China that typified Mao. 1 A river of people flowed past while he lay in state during the second week of September 1976. Workers, peasants, soldiers and students, united in grief; brought together by Mao, the helmsman of modern China. 2 He had assembled a revolutionary government using traditional Chinese ideals of filial piety, harmony, and order. Mao's cult of personality, party purges, and political policies reflect Mao's esteem of these traditional Chinese ideals and history.
and Chinese1. They also prohibited any travel from the people of China to Manchuria. Another
The Chinese revolution of 1949 Introduction The declaration of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949 by the Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong signified a revolution in China that brought an end to the costliest civil war in Chinese history between the Nationalist Party or Kuomintang (KMT) and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) that had lasted a period of 22 years from 1927 to 1949. The Chinese revolution of 1949 signified the beginning of an era of Communist rule ushered in by the popular Chinese Communist Party at the expense of the Nationalist Party. According to historian Michael Lestz, the Communist victory was an inevitability that was aided by the actions of the preceding Nationalist government (Lestz, 2010). Lestz states that the weakness and administration ineptitude displayed by the Nationalist Party in economic, military and civil affairs created an environment that was conducive for the Communist Party to prosper.
people on to the side of the CCP. The CCP’s victory was also down to
In 1966, Mao mobilized the Chinese youth to initiate the “Cultural Revolution”, a violent process eliminating old Chinese culture, customs, thoughts and habits, purging “counter-revolutionary” party members, and heightening Mao’s personality cult. I will summarize evidence collected from textbooks, official documents, biographies and eyewitness reports about the events between 1959 and 1966. I will describe the failure of the Great Leap Forward, Mao’s resignation as president, his power struggle with Liu Shoaqi and Deng Xiaoping and the propagating of his personality cult. Then I will identify how these events may have given Mao reasons for launching the Cultural Revolution, and whether his motives were of an ideological or selfish nature. After carrying out a Source Evaluation of the “16 Point Directive on the Cultural Revolution” and Jung Chang’s “Mao: The Unknown Story” and analysing my evidence, my essay will answer the question: To what extent were Mao’s motives for starting the Cultural Revolution ideological?
History of China under Mao Zedong The Great Leap Forward programme was introduced in 1958 when Mao saw that a new middle class of "experts" growing up, calling the shots in high places of society. He also wanted to increase the country's production and catalyse industrialisation. Seeing an urgent need to lead China back to "true" Communism, he announced the "Great Leap Forward". The Great Leap Forward programme is said to be an economic failure, as it did not meet its initial aims.
With the end of the Cold War emerged two superpowers: The United States and the Soviet Union. The international system then was considered bipolar, a system where power is distributed in which two states have the majority of military, economic, and cultural influence both internationally and regionally. In this case, spheres of influence developed, meaning Western and democratic states fell under the influence of U.S. while most communist states were under the influence of the Soviet Union. Today, the international system is no longer bipolar, since only one superpower can exist, and indisputably that nation is the United States. However China is encroaching on this title with their rapid growth educationally, economically, and militaristically.
China is one of the main viable candidates as this century’s new world power. Today, it maintains a strong economic stance within the international market, and is expanding at a rapid pace. The United States cannot maintain its position as hegemon for the rest of humanity; just as how ...