China Under MaoEssential Question: How did life in China change under Mao’s rule?

Mao set about building a Communist China. His first concern was rebuilding a country that had been torn apart by years of civil war.

•Communist ideas shaped the new government.

•Mao changed China’s political and economic systems.

•His government discouraged the practice of religion.

•The government also seized the property of rural landowners and redistributed it among peasants.

•By 1957, China’s small industrial output had doubled.

•Early efforts to build the economy were successful.

•Improved economy and reduced poverty

China Modeled on Soviet Union• The Soviet Union provided financial support and aid in

China’s first years.• China modeled many of its new political, economic, military

policies on the Soviet system.• In the 1950s, territorial disputes and differences in ideology

pushed China away from its Soviet ally.

The Great Leap Forward• In 1958, in the break from Soviet-style economic planning,

Mao announced a program designed to increase China’s industrial and agricultural output.

• The Great Leap Forward created thousands of communes, collectively owned farms, of about 20,000 people each.

• Each commune was to produce food and have own small-scale industry

The Great Leap Forward

Planning Disaster• The plan was a disaster; small commune factories failed to produce the quantity and quality of goods China needed.

• A combination of poor weather and farmers’ neglect led to sharp drops in agricultural production.

• Famine spread through rural China; tens of millions starved to death between 1959 and 1961.

China Virtually Isolated• Failure of the Great Leap

Forward led to criticism of Mao.

• Soviet criticism and the withdrawal of Soviet industrial aid widened the rift between the two Communist nations.

• By the early 1960s, relations had broken down completely; China was virtually isolated in the world community.

The Cultural RevolutionNew Movement• In the mid-1960s, Mao tried to regain power and prestige lost after Great Leap

Forward.• He initiated a new movement called the Cultural Revolution, which sought to

rid China of old ways and create a society where peasants, physical labor were the ideal.

Red Guards• The campaign meant eliminating intellectuals who Mao feared wanted to end

communism and bring back China’s old ways.• Mao shut down schools, encouraged militant students, called the Red Guards,

to carry out work of Cultural Revolution by criticizing intellectuals and values.

Destruction of Society• Mao lost control; The Red Guards murdered hundreds of thousands of

people; by late 1960s, China was on the verge of civil war before Mao regained control.

• The Cultural Revolution reestablished Mao’s dominance, caused terrible destruction; civil authority collapsed and economic activity fell off sharply.