Weekly Blog #3: Mao's leadership in the People's Republic of China

Ironically, a card issued to promote celebration of the Great Leap Forward

In this short week, we managed to cover the overview of the People’s Republic of China. We were given a short lecture on the rise of the PRC and we watched a movie called To Live by Zhang Yimou, a film about the purpose of living that was banned in China. We also had a discussion on the different problems that Mao faces after the CCP took over China and whether capitalism or communism is better.

  

After the Communist Party of China took over China, Mao had to face many different problems which included foreign, domestic, and economic problems. Some foreign problems included the competition of capitalism in USA versus communism in China. Capitalism enabled people who owned private enterprises to become richer while the poor stays poor; this economic system encourages people to become individualistic. It promotes class distinction as the gap between the poor and the rich became wider resulting in a domestic problem. Meanwhile, communism enables everyone to profit equally, for example a doctor and a farmer earning the same income. Communism promotes an egalitarian society where there
 is a classless society. Since Mao was an effective leader that had control of China, communism was able to serve as the economic system. Peasants were able to live better lives compared to the past as land has been distributed to them.

Following the Soviet Union as a model, Mao started the Five Year Plan which emphasized building industries that produce steel, machine tools, and trucks that could be used later to help further economic development. This plan became very successful as the equipment produced was shared and land was given to peasants. He decided to proceed on to the second Five Year Plan, which is the Great Leap Forward. The goal of this plan was to mobilize the Chinese people for rapid industrialization. During this period, the party established major local governmental units called communes that are in charge of collecting taxes, economic development, education, etc. The plan was unsuccessful as it turned out to be a gigantic step backward. Mao’s decisions to do things were too rapid, and because of mismanagement, agriculture production fell. To make things worse, crop estimates determine the taxes that farmers have to pay. Farmers were l

Life during the Great Leap Forward Famine

eft with little grain due to the taxes the government gave them. The poor weather added on to this problem resulting in the worst famine that China has ever had. It was very sad to know how many people had died from this famine—estimation of over 15 million deaths.