To what extend do you consider Mao's domestic policies more successful than his foreign policies?

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Colleen Grassnick                                                                        01.06.03

Mr. Mimmack

Essay Question: To what extend do you consider Mao’s domestic policies more successful than his foreign policies?

        Between the years 1949 and 1976 China was in a faze of changes, which varied in good and bad, the way roller coasters vary in ups and downs. Mao Zedong was the Chairman during those years whom one could make responsible for numerous successes and failures in China. His domestic and foreign policies were the causes of millions of deaths, economic highs and lows, unhappy peasants and many more factors which harmed and helped China to build up and backwards after feudalism had been removed from China. The Five Year Plan, which was a duplicate of the plan that Russia used to overcome the countries misery, took place between 1952 and 1956 and was a success for entire China. The Hundred Flowers Campaign, which Mao started in 1957, is known to be one of his greatest failures and resulted in chaos, along with the collectivisation plan in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s and the Great Leap Forward Mao failed to help his country. As he supported the Korean War in the 1950’s Chinas budget decreased my thousand of millions of Yuan. This foreign policy was a disaster for China and even though several domestic policies were introduced, none of them could really keep China and it’s masses in population contend.

        Due to the support China had provided Korea with many more people died. If Korean had not been supported by Chinas budget, then one could argue that not as many people would have been killed the Korean War. Maybe the number of deaths could have been reduced to half a million or so, one can only speculate, yet it is clear that this foreign policy did not do any good, but much more harm. It did not only destroy human lives, it also harassed the Chinese budget and as a result made China very weak.

PRC Expenditure in Percentages of Total Budget:

As is shown on the table in 1950 the percent of money which was taken away from the budget is 41,5 %. This is almost half of the entire Chinese budget. Most of this money supported the Korean War and helped Korean to defend itself. By 1957 this percentile had gone down, but all most every other one went up. For an example 51,4 % of the Chinese budget was being used to support the economic development. This is a vast amount of money needed to support the economic development of a country. Even though this foreign policy supported Korean, it was and opposition for the donator, China.

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        The Five Year Plan can be viewed purely as a success. Mao was impressed with what Lenin had accomplished with it and decided to do the same. Mao and the PRC, People Republic of China, build up the same Five Year Plan as Russia and succeeded. The National Resources Committee, NRC, had already taken care of several industrial ideas, which Mao had, and they were also the ones who had total control over the industrial investment sections. During the Five Year Plan a significant amount of migration took place. Families moved from the countryside into the large cities to find ...

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