Communist China

Authors Avatar

Aditi

Communist China

After a bitter struggle in China, between the nationalists and the communists from 1927 and 1949, Mao Zedong (the communist leader) declared the People's Republic of China on October 1st.

Mao faced two main problems: the unification of China and the centralization of government and to solve both of these problems, he made a kind of New Democracy or "Democratic Dictatorship." Under this Democratic Dictatorship, all the four classes of society would be represented (therefore a democracy), but the government would harshly deal with rebellions and riots (dictatorship). From 1949 to 1954, Mao made an aggressive campaign against all his political opponents around the country. Mao claimed that he had executed some 800,000 individuals whom he said were "class enemies," but Western historians say it is several times that amount. He set up forced-labour camps, several prisons, and massive "re-education" and "self-criticism" programs so that any counter-revolutionary political ideas would be removed from people’s minds.


   At the same time, Mao managed to unify the country—a goal that had been unrealized all throughout the first half of the twentieth century. The real reason for Mao's rapid unification of China was the Korean War. When the Chinese Communist revolution spread to Korea, the government there split into two parts, one in the north near China and one in the south. When the United States entered the war and threatened to attack China's industrial base in Manchuria, Mao ordered the Chinese to unite and push back this new imperial threat. The Chinese attacked and drove the American forces south and continued fighting the Americans to a draw. This victory against the Americans did more than anything else to give a good impression of the Communist government in the eyes of the Chinese.

Join now!

Economic Policies

China in 1949 was in a bad economic position. The economy had been disrupted by eight years of bloody fighting with the Japanese and then four years of civil war. Inflation made the currency useless and industrial output reduced by 75% since 1937. In order to stabilize the economy, the People's Republic introduced a new currency, controlled it strictly, and set all wages by the price of five staple products: rice, coal, flour, oil, and cotton. As the prices of these commodities changed, wages would correspondingly increase and decrease. So while wages constantly changed from week to week, ...

This is a preview of the whole essay