Mao, the Chinese State, and its Foreign Relations

1
Mao, the Chinese State, and its Foreign Relations

• The 1950s and the Historiographichal Debate

2
The Themes and Debate

• The CCP in power and its choices
• Emphasis on productive relations (ownership),
  proletarian superstructure v. productivity,
• Class struggle through mass movements v. law and
  order through bureaucracy,
• Maoist theory of two line struggle and its
  impact in the West,
• The post-Mao revision Maos leadership before
  1957-8 was correct, but became erroneous
  afterwards,
• Why and how?

3
The CCPs Political, Social, and Economic
Engineering in the Cities

• The Suppressing Counter-revolutionaries Campaign,
  10/1950 necessity for regime consolidation in
  the face of Korean War?
• The Three-Anti Campaign 11/50-4/51, a rehearsal
  for future disasters?
• The Campaign of Socialist Transformation of
  Capitalist Enterprises to eliminate private
  ownership through state buyout,
• The 1st Five-Year Plan, 1953-57. Was it a success
  story?

4
The CCPs Socio-economic Engineering in the
Countryside

• The Land Reform Campaign 40 land seized, 60
  population got land, 1 million killed,
• The Collectivization Campaign (1950-57)
• The concerns over food supply recurrence of
  landlord class,
• The original plan of 15 years, starting with
  agricultural coops pooling resources in a
  village,
• The mandatory state-purchasing system, a way of
  taxation,
• Maos push for speeding up to eliminate family
  control over land and production leading to the
  Peoples Communes in 1958, the beginning of the
  three-year disaster,

5
Proletarian Dictatorship A Totalitarian State
with One-man in Control

• The CCP mandate to rule in the name of people
  and the moral equation the will of the people
  represented by proletarian class, by the Party,
  by Mao Populism? Volunteerism? Or
  Totalitarianism?
• The Party-state control over public media, arts,
  education, etc. Was there a persuasion- coercion
  equation?
• The Anti-Hu Feng Campaign (1955)
• The Hundred-Flower Campaign turned into the
  Anti-Rightists Campaign (1957), preparing the
  ground for the Great Leap Forward,

6
The Great Leap Forward, 1958-1960

• Chinas economic problems in the 1950s
• The need for initial capital accumulation for
  development of heavy military-industry
  exploiting agricultural sector, 90 of the
  population,
• Chinas per capita agricultural productivity in
  the 1950s ½ of the Soviet level in the 1930s,

7
Two Different Solutions in the CCP

• Chen Yun let peasants recover grow through
  material incentives, with good price for their
  products and plenty consumer goods. The focus
  would be on market, know-hows, gradualism,
  bureaucracy
• Mao using revolution to facilitate production
  through mass movement and bigger collectives
  the Peoples Communes

8
The Lushan Conference, summer 1959

• Maos dominance causing disaster
• Maos push to speed up collectivization in 1955
  Zhou Enlais Anti-rush-advancement, Zhou was
  forced into self-criticism,
• Facing disastrous failure, Peng Dehuai wrote Mao
  privately at Lushan, calling GLF petty bourgeois
  adventure, he was sacked,
• GLF continued into 1960, 30 million death of
  starvation,

9
Chinas Relations with the Superpowers in the
1950

• The Korean War decisions,
• The 1st Taiwan Strait Crisis (1954-55) and the
  2nd one (1958)
• The causes of the Sino-Soviet conflict,
• What is the role of personality in policy process?