Engage 2nd Semester Final

Wanna study China’s most loved dictator? Well we got just the thing for you! enjoy

In 1931, Japan saw how weak China was becoming due to the civil war that was going on between the North (led by Mao Zedong) and the South (led by Jiang Jieshi). So they invaded Manchuria (a norther, industrialized, part of China). By 1938, Japan controlled a large portion of China. This help unit the North and the South for a little while because, Jiang Jieshi requested that all military power should first be used against the Japanese. With the China fighting as a whole, they defeated Japan together, but then went back to fighting each other. 

From 1946 to 1949, China was at war again (the whole north and south thing). At the end, Spring of 1949, the Nationalists (the South led lil JJ (Jiang Jieshi)) were defeated. 😔

In October 1949, Mao Zedong gained full control of China; and China became known as People’s Republic of China. Meanwhile, after the defeat, Jiang Jieshi fled to Taiwan, then known as Nationalist China. The United States were against Communist ideas, so they helped Jiang Jieshi set up the Nationalist government on the small island.  

In early 1950, the Chinese Communist Party and the Soviet Union signed a treaty of friendship. However, due to both countries striving to be the best in the world, the friendship ended before 1951.   

After Mao became leader, he wanted to shape the Chinese to become Marxist socialists. At that time, China’s population was around 550 million people. 10% of them owned 70% of the land. So Mao took all land from landowners and killed those who refused to give up their land. Then he divided the land up and gave all peasants a piece of China. Later on, the government forced peasants to join lands and birth the collective farms. With the collective farms, Mao released his five-year plan which by 1957 helped China to have a rapid increase of production of coal, cement, steel, and electricity. 

In the early 1958, Mao Zedong proclaimed the “Great Leap Forward” as a follow up of how successful his five year plan was. By the end of 1958, many fifteen thousand acres of land became around twenty-six thousand collective farms (communes). In each communes contained over twenty-five thousand people peasants. The area was so compacted there was no privacy. Peasants ate, slept, and worked in farms all together. This plan was a major fail,with it leading to a great famine (no food for everybody), and it finally ended in 1961.

Due to the fail of the “Great Leap Forward”, no one followed Mao’s strict socialist ideas anymore. Farmers would live in their own home and sell crops, and factory workers would fight for promotion to get more money. In 1966 Mao decided to revive the revolution by having China’s young people to help him. What this means is that he told all highschool and college students (all who doesn’t remember the famine cuz they only drank milk) to “learn revolution by making revolution.” The students then left their classrooms and formed militia units called Red Guards. What they did was brainwashing all to think that being a peasant was equivalent to be being a hero; and that being intelligent, artistic, and such was devilish. To force people to be dumb, the Red Guards shutdowns schools. Whoever they thought was smart, had to work extra hard in the farm to be dumbified. By 1968, there was a shortage of food, and many factories closed up. Mao himself said this had to stop, so Zhou Enlai, one of the Chinese communist founders from 1949, took over.

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