Whereas the previous governments of China had ignored the peasants, the Communist Party was built around them, and their support was the main target of the new government. Most of the Communist reforms targeted the peasants and sought to improve their dire situation.
The first changes came with the abolition of the hated landlord system and the Land Reform Act in 1950, which for the peasants meant that they were no longer the bottom rung of Chinese society, as they always had been. The way that the peasants worked completely changed. Instead of being ordered around by landlords, they now had their own land, and were organised into co-operatives, in which farmers pooled their resources and split their income with others solely on the basis of labour. Their work was also made much easier with the arrival of new machinery.
In 1958, Mao Tse-tung, the leader of the CCP government announced the “Great Leap Forward”. Overnight fertile rice fields were plowed under and construction work began on steel foundries. Of course, the former farmers had no idea how to actually construct a working foundry or what to do with it once built. What was once fertile land was now being wasted. Highly productive individual farms were abolished and replaced by a system of communes in which land was not owned by any single family but by a community. The result was that decisions for planting and harvesting became committee decisions.
By 1961, China was on the brink of economic ruin and internal collapse. As a result of the loss of fertile farm land and poor management of what farmland remained, the annual harvest declined. The result for the peasants was widespread famine – and seemingly a return to their previous dire food situation.
However despite this failure by Mao, the peasants were still substantially better off than they had been before the 1949. Now they had better living conditions and public healthcare. Because the country was no longer at war, there was now a united government which had a clear ideology. The situation for women improved, especially during the 1950s. Mao issued the Marriage Act protecting their rights. Further, the situation did improve and by 1962, the economy was showing good signs of recovery from the Great Leap Forward and agricultural produce had increased dramatically.
However, the peasants were also subject to a lot of coersion and propaganda by the Communist government. Apart from the Hundred Flowers Campaign, in which they were encouraged to put forward constructive criticism towards the government, their freedom of thought and expression was severely controlled. Even the Hundred Flowers Campaign was reversed, and those who responded to its calls to express their displeasure with the regime were punished.
The lives of the peasants did change dramatically between 1949 and 1965, and were to change even more later on. However not all of these changes were positive, although their situation was on the whole hugely improved and their status in Chinese society rose greatly.
