Mao’s China questions and answers

The land and the violence did different work, and their effects reinforced each other. About 300 million peasants received fields, tools and grain. Many remembered fanshen, “turning over”, as the first time they had owned anything; Hinton’s villagers had good material reasons to defend the new order. At struggle meetings people also accused, voted and sometimes killed. Those who took part could fear what would happen if the old elite returned, making complicity a source of loyalty alongside gratitude. Dikötter emphasizes terror, while DeMare and earlier writers give greater weight to material gains. The uncertain estimate of one to two million deaths cannot decide that disagreement by itself. Consider what happened next: within five years peasants lost their land to collectives, yet resistance was mostly quiet, taking forms such as slaughtering livestock or leaving cooperatives, without open revolt in the Han heartland. That suggests that fear and dependence mattered as much as ownership to the lasting bond. A revolutionary state can secure loyalty by making its supporters share responsibility for its acts.

READ CHAPTER 1 — Mao’s consolidation and land reform →

The war strengthened the regime’s authority, but its costs fell heavily on China and its people. About 200,000 to 400,000 Chinese soldiers died, much of the budget went to the war, Soviet weapons had to be paid for, and the American fleet put Taiwan out of reach. Soldiers and families bore the cost of a decision that some historians emphasize was a gamble. At home, however, the Party could present campaigns against counter-revolutionaries, corrupt officials and businessmen as patriotic defense. Donations and recruits came from every province, while a peasant army’s stand against the United States gave the state prestige no Chinese government had enjoyed since the Opium Wars. Chen Jian argues that Mao had sought domestic mobilization from the outset. By the measure of state power, China emerged harder, more unified and more feared; its society emerged poorer, more isolated and more afraid. War can strengthen a new authoritarian regime by making dissent appear to be treason.

READ CHAPTER 2 — Korean War and Mao’s mass campaigns →

The constitution and the exercise of power suggest different answers. The PRC’s 1954 constitution recognized minority nationalities; autonomous regions included local officials, and minority languages received support in schools and publishing. By its law and self-description it was a multi-national state. But Han Party secretaries and the army made decisions in Lhasa and Urumqi, settlement changed Xinjiang’s population, and aircraft and artillery met Tibetan resistance to campaigns in 1956–59. Those relationships resemble imperial rule. Goldstein emphasizes Beijing’s caution in Tibet proper until 1959; Shakya and other historians stress that caution prevailed where Chinese control was weakest. Like the Soviet Union, the PRC claimed to end empire while retaining its borders and methods. The name a constitution gives a state and the way its center governs its peoples can point in different directions.

READ CHAPTER 3 — Tibet and Xinjiang under Mao →

Measured against its industrial targets, the Plan succeeded. Steel output quadrupled, coal production doubled, and industrial output grew by around 18 percent a year, a pace few poor countries have matched. China acquired industries it had never had, while city workers received steady jobs, housing and welfare through their work units. The gains depended on a different experience in the countryside. Peasants sold grain at state-set prices, surrendered land to cooperatives only a few years after receiving it, and were tied to their villages by household registration. Their contribution financed the cities, while agricultural output grew only a little faster than population and left little margin for error. Naughton credits the achievements but stresses the imbalance; Meisner also identifies a bureaucratic elite that Mao later turned against. The Plan served the state and urban workers while imposing sacrifices on the peasant majority. Growth figures show the achievement, but they cannot by themselves tell us who paid for it.

READ CHAPTER 4 — China’s First Five-Year Plan →

The evidence favors a genuine gamble that Mao later presented as a trap. His February 1957 speech called for discussion of disagreements; the international crisis of 1956 made reform urgent; and rectification began with real criticism of officials. These facts fit an attempt to help the Party correct itself. There is evidence for the other reading. Mao later called the episode an “open plot”, and his internal article of 15 May shows him watching critics and preparing a response before the counterattack. MacFarquhar sees a change of course in that article; Chang and Halliday see the original plan unfolding. Teiwes also stresses divisions among other leaders. The documents cannot disclose Mao’s private intentions in March 1957, so the judgment remains uncertain. For those punished, the practical result was clear: an invitation to speak had supplied evidence against them, and the next invitation would be harder to answer honestly.

READ CHAPTER 5 — Hundred Flowers Campaign →

Mao bears primary responsibility for the decisions that launched and sustained the Leap. He devised its central ideas, attacked cautious colleagues in January 1958, and promoted the communes and steel target. At Lushan he purged Peng Dehuai and revived the campaign while a correction was under way. Teiwes and Sun conclude that no other leader could have started or stopped it. The policy nevertheless required many participants. Wu Zhipu in Henan and Li Jingquan in Sichuan competed to exceed targets; county officials invented harvests; colleagues in Beijing remained silent about their doubts. Andrew Walder and other historians therefore stress the party-state’s incentives: a system rewarding zeal and punishing honesty would have produced inflated claims under any leader conducting such a campaign. That system helps explain why Mao’s decisions went unchallenged, while his choices remain the primary responsibility.

READ CHAPTER 6 — Great Leap Forward →

The policies were deliberate. Leaders set quotas on inflated harvests, abolished private food, purged Peng Dehuai and revived the Leap after Lushan. They protected cities, continued grain exports and refused foreign aid. The provincial variation on the map strongly suggests that local choices mattered far more than weather. A further question is whether leaders intended people to die. Dikötter argues that Mao knew of mass deaths and continued, making the famine a mass killing. Wemheuer, Ó Gráda and others see leaders accepting rural deaths as the price of their priorities without seeking them: a famine of ideology and willful blindness. Evidence of Mao’s private knowledge in 1959–60 is incomplete and disputed. The distinction is essential: deliberate policies caused the deaths, while an intention to kill is not proven. A system that punishes bad news can kill on a vast scale even when no leader wants that result.

READ CHAPTER 7 — Great Chinese Famine →

The measures that restored food production also changed the balance of authority. Private plots, markets, smaller accounting units and household contracting helped recovery by 1965, strengthening Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping. Mao saw each as a step toward capitalism. He remained Party chairman, retained the army’s loyalty through Lin Biao and could define what counted as socialist. Historians differ over his motives. MacFarquhar and others emphasize power and fear: Mao thought colleagues would denounce him after his death as Khrushchev had denounced Stalin. Meisner and Walder place greater weight on conviction, arguing that Mao genuinely believed bureaucrats and incentives were creating a privileged class. These explanations can fit together, since Mao saw his own authority and the revolution as one. In 1966 the recovery became evidence against its managers. A leader who retains control of the army and ideology can reverse even a successful reform led by others.

READ CHAPTER 8 — Recovery after the Great Leap →

Mao supplied the initiative from above: he chose targets, licensed the Red Guards, called for power seizures and decided when to end the movement. But the people who responded had purposes of their own. Students resented privilege, temporary workers faced insecurity, families bore class labels and officials settled scores. Perry and Li Xun and Yiching Wu show rebels pursuing real grievances. MacFarquhar and Schoenhals emphasize the leader; social historians explain the society that responded to him. The ending matters as well. Walder finds that authorities, militias and army-backed committees caused most deaths in 1968–71, while rebel battles killed fewer. Mao opened the door to rebellion and decided when to close it, but millions of local choices shaped what happened between. The episode shows how an authoritarian leader can mobilize popular anger and how quickly the state can reclaim it.

READ CHAPTER 9 — Cultural Revolution →

The movement met its immediate political aims. Within two years millions had left the cities, dispersing the Red Guards, ending urban factional fighting and reducing unemployment. Mao also wanted young people to learn revolutionary values from peasants and narrow the gap between town and country. Here the result was much less favorable. Many peasants resented the newcomers, while most young people wanted to return home. Bonnin’s research shows the divide reinforced: their greatest wish was to recover the urban residence permits the state had taken away. Experience and memory varied with the place and the person. Some former sent-down youth found resilience and knowledge of rural poverty in those years. Strikes and protests ended the movement in 1978–79. Coercive social engineering had achieved short-term political goals while producing the opposite of the society it promised.

READ CHAPTER 10 — Down to the Countryside Movement →

The Soviet threat made the opening compelling. By 1969 Moscow had invaded Czechoslovakia under a doctrine that could be applied to China, massed dozens of divisions on the border, fought at Zhenbao and Tielieketi, and sounded out Washington about a nuclear strike. Mao’s four marshals advised using the United States as a counterweight. Nixon had his own reasons to respond: he wanted leverage over Moscow and help leaving Vietnam. Domestic politics also mattered. After Lin Biao died in 1971, Mao relied more on Zhou Enlai, who favored an opening; the visit restored prestige damaged by the Cultural Revolution. Mao presented the move in revolutionary terms, as exploiting contradictions among enemies, as he had during the Second World War. Lüthi and Radchenko stress this accommodation of realpolitik within revolutionary language. For authoritarian regimes, survival usually takes precedence when it conflicts with ideology, which can then be reinterpreted.

READ CHAPTER 11 — Sino-Soviet split and Nixon in China →

The achievements are substantial. Mao’s rule left a country unified after a century of division, heavy industry and nuclear weapons, widespread literacy, life expectancy raised by roughly twenty-five years, and a state strong enough to support growth after 1978. The cost was also immense. Campaigns and famine killed about 17 million to 50 million people, most in a famine caused by policy, and persecuted tens of millions more. Dikötter and Chang and Halliday put the cost first; Meisner and Short give achievements more weight. Walder’s account of the party-state and Drèze and Sen’s comparison with India direct attention to the system that produced both gains and deaths. That matters for the judgment. Neither achievement nor death can simply be offered as the price of the other. Many later achievements, from rural health to industry, were attained elsewhere without famine. The regime had real capacity, but lacked the accountability needed to correct its decisions. Power without correction magnified both success and error.

READ CHAPTER 12 — Death and legacy of Mao Zedong →