Mao’s China quiz: 8 questions

The Party envisaged a long transition while it rebuilt the state. Private firms and rich peasants would be tolerated during that period. Within three years, however, the Five-Anti campaign had broken the businessmen whom the Common Program had courted.

Five-Anti was accompanied by the Three-Anti campaign, which targeted officials. The two campaigns made suspects of businessmen whom the 1949 coalition had courted; within a year, private firms depended on the state.

Kham lay within the Chinese province of Sichuan, where the Han campaigns applied in full. The American CIA did train Khampa fighters, but that began in 1957, after the revolt had already started.

The state bought grain cheaply from the countryside, feeding the cities and paying for industry. The monopoly also gave planners a reason to favor collectives: a few hundred thousand co-operatives were easier to tax than more than a hundred million households.

To meet the new target, some 90 million people were sent to backyard furnaces during the harvest season. Much of the iron they produced was useless, while crops stood uncollected in the fields.

Liu was repeating a saying he had heard from Hunan peasants. It was the frankest verdict any leader gave, and Mao did not forget it. Liu was purged during the Cultural Revolution and died in custody in 1969.

Though the committees combined three groups, the army dominated them in practice. They used force to end factional fighting and then purged the defeated factions. Order returned, but at a high price.

The formula allowed the Party to condemn the Cultural Revolution and retain Mao as its founder. Deng Xiaoping often repeated Mao’s own formula of seven parts achievement, three parts error. Most historians outside China give the famine far greater weight.