During this piece of coursework I shall look at how China has changed since the C.C.P (Chinese Communist Party) took power in 1949. I shall look at the differences and similarities between Mao and Dung's social economic and political policies.

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China coursework piece 1

During this piece of coursework I shall look at how China has changed since the C.C.P (Chinese Communist Party) took power in 1949. I shall look at the differences and similarities between Mao and Dung's social economic and political policies.

In 1949 Mao won the civil war against the Guomintang and declared China communist. Many problems faced the C.C.P. the Guomintang had taken all of China's gold reserves with them to Taiwan the civil war had left the country crippled with schools and factories destroyed and the nation had been divided up amongst warriors. Mao realised that one of his key aims must be to unite the country and utilise its vast population to boost economic productivity. Mao aimed to achieve this with several campaigns. The first of these was the agrarian reform. Mao took the land off the rich landlords and gave it to the peasants. He also introduced the speak bitterness campaigns these were meetings where peasants would denounce theie land owners. However in a trend that we see repeated on many occasions during the C.C.P time In power the people go too far and the meetings turn violent often ending with the landlords execution . Over 2 million landowners were estimated to have been killed at these meetings. However what Mao began to realise was that the peasants simply did not have the recourses necessary for independent ownership so the C.C.P decided to form Co-operatives these involved 15 to 20 peasants pooling there recourses and working together on the land so although the peasants still technically owned the land they had little say in what happened there. The land was been run on their behalf by the C.C.P. Mao's plane also included boosting the production of steel coal and machinery he aimed to do this with the five year plan's factories all over china would be set targets to achieve which they must achieve during each five year plan the idea was that all of china's workforce would focus on one thing so in the first five year plan it was steel and the production of steel would increase. However these plans failed manly because workers were all paid an equal amount regardless of how much work they did so there was little incentive to work hard therefore many people decided to simply not bother. This was also not helped when at the end of the five year plan factory workers worried about possible punishments from the C.C.P for not reaching targets lied about overall production.This meant it took the C.C.P a long time to spot the problems. When they finally scrapped the plans Mao introduced the great leap forward the idea was to overtake Britain within ten years and America in 20. The great leap forward meant more moving around for peasants they were now formed into Communes. These were vast farms with thousands of families some times working on them food halls and nurseries and homes of happiness were set up to allow both parents to work without looking after the old the ill the young or cooking this allowed every body to work full time. Mao also introduced the backyard steel campaign in a attempt to increase the production of steel the idea was that people would make steel after work in small furnaces on each of there streets the plan was a disaster most of the steel made was impure and useless they had also torn up railway lines to melt down to make the steel meaning any of the steel that was useful was stuck there. Eventually the great leap forward hit a major snag the people once again had over exaggerated production this proved to be very costly on the farms. In an attempt to show the people how well the C.C.P were doing they gave out food like mad they were making plenty however that year China had some of the worst weather ever. Many crops were destroyed and twenty million people starved to death.This spelt the end for the great leap forward
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After Mao's death Deng took power in China. Deng unlike Mao was a moderate communist and could see China's problems caused by the great the great leap forward he realised the need for western ideas. This meant that the party were no longer really sure whether they were communist or not a quote to back this up would be "Not even the party sounds very convinced by communism any more. At the last party congress in 1997 members approved a written statement that achieving communism might take several tens of generations". He allowed western companies to set up ...

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