Social and cultural changes

• Education - weaknesses of reform 1949-58

  
  

  • 'Down to the countryside' campaign, 17 million youth missed schooling
  • Less than 1% had degrees after Mao
  • Only 26% had been schooled between 12-16
  • curriculum was politicised
• Jiang Qing's political power

  
  

  • She created the Central Cultural revolution Group, which rivalled the Politburo
  • The CCRG had a central case examination group that investigated party leaders to help the purging of Mao's political enemies
• Culture - censorship of the theatre

  
  

  • All foreign work was banned
  • "make it revolutionary or ban it" - Jiang Qing
  • Told all officials from the Ministry of Culture that the food they ate 'came from the farmers' so they should 'serve the farmers in your plays and operas'
  • In an audition she told someone to not dismount off a horse by sliding as it looks weak, said a revolution hero would spring over the horse's head
  • Checked all theatre performances for evidence of revisionist content
  • led to only 8 performances being on
• Culture - 'barren land'

  
  

  • Prevented the creation of new works of art
  • Good artists, painters and musicians too afraid to be genuinely creative
  • People stopped attending or listening to art related events
• Religion - Confucianism and ancestor worship

  
  

  • marked as 'old culture' wit no relevance in the new china
  • public ceremonies honouring him were ended in 1949
  • temples and shrines became museum pieces
  • One philosopher argued that it was compatible with communism
  • hard to tell if long standing beliefs were destroyed
• Religion - Islam

  
  

  • in Xiajing, islam was big part of the culture, threatened communist rule
  • mosques turned into halls for struggle meetings
  • muslim schools turned into barns for live stock
  • 1000 rebels killed in an uprising
  • islamic association of china set up to give them a say
  • due to uprisings, cadres ordered to be more respectful
• Religion - Christianity

  
  

  • believed that it was representative of western imperialist ideas
  • churches were closed and converted to other uses
  • leaders that resisted sent to labour camps
  • RG destroyed churches
  • catholics were surveillanced and threatened
  • churches shut down and many Christians converted
  • congregations at patriotic churches were smaller then ones with the pope
• Women - 1950 New Marriage Law

  
  

  • Free-will was required
  • Between 1946-49, 18.6% of brides were aged 16-17, but by 1958-65, had gone down to 2.4%
  • By 1978, 45% of primary school children were girls
  • In 1949, the PLA enlisted unmarried, educated female students aged 18-19
• Religion - Buddhism

  
  

  • lamas were seen as rivals to communist rule
  • monks denounced as 'parasites' and were sent home and ordered to work
  • temples converted into barracks, schools, prisons and hospitals
  • members made to reform
  • peasants still turned to religion for comfort
  • dalai lama escaped china
• Education - strengths of reform 1949-58

  
  

  • In 1955 the PRC standardised the phonetic alphabet Pin Yin.
  • Literacy rates tripled.
  • Many children became educated in western languages.
  • 1949-57, primary school students increased from 26 million to 64 million
• Jiang Qing's limited political power

  
  

  • Final decisions were always Mao's, despite age or health
  • "I was chairman Mao's dog, whoever chairman Mao asked me to bite, I bit"
• Culture - traditional culture quickly returned

  
  

  • Old ideas such as ancestor worship were not destroyed
  • These changes occurred mostly in urban areas, peasants were unaffected as the government didn't want to disrupt agricultural production
• Women - in the commune

  
  

  • Women forced to work through pregnancies, led to miscarriages.
  • In a commune in Guangzhou, 2 party secretaries forced themselves on 34 women.
  • When food was low they were neglected on the basis of the idea that men needed more energy to go out and look for more food.
  • Work point were based on physical strength, meaning men could earn 10 but women could only earn 8.
• Education - failures of reform

  
  

  • Favoured children of party officials
  • Universities still only served urban students and neglected rural ones
  • Literacy programmes in rural areas were left to barley educated cadres to teach
  • Winter schools were not effective in creating literacy since many peasants forgot what they had learned from one winter to the next
• Education - collapse after 1966

  
  

  • Failure of educational programmes convinced Mao that capitalist roaders had taken over the party.
  • in 1964, he complained that the 12 year education system was too long, examinations were too rigid and that students were not prepared for manual labour.
  • As part of the Socialist Education Campaign (later set the stage for Cultural Revolution) Marxist-Leninist theory and class struggle become the focus in education.
• Healthcare - the barefoot doctors

  
  

  • Doctors had been greater impacted by antis campaigns and had been either killed, imprisoned or fled China.
  • Mao's answer was to send young people to be distributed to poor villages as 'barefoot doctors'.
  • They only got 6 months training.
  • Could only provide rudimentary healthcare as many village clinics lacked equipment and supplies.
  • By 1973, over a million new doctors had been trained.
  • Had a positive impact as some healthcare is still better than no healthcare.
• Women - problems of 1950 New Marriage Law

  • 1.4 million divorce petitions filed in 1953, led to many men feeling like they had lost their financial investments
  • Widespread violence broke out as armed mobs attempted to violently reclaim divorced wives
  • Snubbed husbands attacked wives during divorce court proceedings
  • One man shackled his wife's ankles and forced her to cut firewood and dig for food, took 6 weeks for people to realise she was gone and she was released
• Women - cadres response to New Marriage Law

  • Some feared free choice in marriage would 'throw all under Heaven into turmoil'
  • Some feared only rich men would be able to find wives
  • Many refused to enforce the law in local areas, instead siding with population as they feared resistance and unrest
• Women - Muslim response to New Marriage Law

  • Felt it challenged their long-held customs
  • In non Han-Chinese areas like Xinjiang, rural women continued to live the same
  • So much opposition that in 1953, the Party launched a second campaign to further promote it
• Women - kindergartens on the communes

  • Mothers and kids would be separated for weeks at a time
  • Kindergartens were in ramshackle buildings as funding was prioritising economic production
  • In Daxing country, kids slept and ate on the floor
  • Staffed by elderly women or very young women as they weren't mobilised
  • In a Beijing kindergarten attached to a cotton factory, 90% pf kids got sick
  • In Shanghai nappies remained unchanged all day
• Women - communal canteens

  • Intended to release women of house chore role
  • Poor quality and time consumption only increased hardship
  • Food distributed according to amount of physical work accomplished, meaning men got more
  • When food was low, men were prioritised on the basis that they needed the strength to go out and provide
• Women - commune work point system

  • Men received up to 10 point while women limited to 8
  • Provided a disincentive for women to provide their labour to the collective economy
  • Enforced traditional gender roles as it made more sense for them to devote their efforts to domestic chores
• Women - abuse on the communes

  • Pregnant women forced to work, led to miscarriages
  • On one commune, pregnant women who refused to work were forced to undress and break ice in the winter
  • In a Guangzhou commune, 2 party secretaries forced themselves onto 34 women
  • In a northern commune, one cadre raped all 27 unmarried women in a village
  • In Hunan, local factory bosses forced women to work naked
  • In Zhejiang, women accused of crimes were forced to parade through the village naked
• Women - The Women's Association

  • Created to encourage political activism and to mobilise the people
  • 40,000 staff in 83 cities
  • Published books, pamphlets and newspapers proclaiming the accomplishing of the party and encouraging women to help
  • Official membership of 76 million
  • Set up ploughing lessons and literacy classes for political studies
  • Financial support for women who weaved uniforms and shoes for PLA, but this did reinforce traditional gender norms
  • Campaigns against prostitution
• Women - during the Cultural Revolution

  • Wore sane Maoist uniform as men
  • Women led Red Guards in their violent denunciations
  • Women made up 16-21% of party cadres between 1970 - 1974
  • Seen as revolutionary heroes in ballets like 'Red Detachment of Women' that described female soldiers fighting against Nationalists in the Civil War
• Women - educational opportunities

  • Only 39% of rural girls completed primary between 1929 - 1949
  • Increased to 100% for those starting after 1959
  • By 1978, 45% of primary school kids were girls
• Women - traditional views in the military

  • 1949 PLA started enlisting unmarried, educated female students aged 18 - 19, to be sent to the border region of Xinjiang to become wives for the soldiers there
  • PLA worried male soldiers would find frontiers too difficult without companionship
  • Banned from marrying non-Han women - "We want them to come and be good workers, good wives and good mothers"
• Women - job opportunities

  • Feb 1951 advertisement in 'New Hunan Daily' aimed to recruit professional, skilled female students to form a work team to go to Xiangjiang to exploit oil and gas reserves
  • Offered paid study in USSR, teachings of advanced tech or becoming an actress in PLA entertainment troupes
  • PLA promised that middle school graduates would be appointed as platoon leaders and college graduates would become company commanders
• Education - before reform

  • 30% of all males and 1% of females over 7 could read a simple letter
  • 45.2% of males and 2.2% of females received any schooling
  • Males attended an average of 4 years, females attended for 2
• Education - subjects

  • Subjects required for the modern economy like arithmetic and science weren't included
  • Modern style schools with western curricula were sparse and only in cities
  • 59% studied humanities like law, politics or liberal arts
  • 11.5% studied engineering
  • 10% studied natural science
  • 3% studied agriculture
• Education - improving literacy

  • 1949 - 1957 primary school students increased from 26 million to 64 million
  • In rural areas, Min-pan 'run by the people' primary schools introduced
  • Winter schools provided short courses for adult peasants, party claimed 42 million attended in the winter of 1951 - 1952
  • However, Higher Education Minister admitted 78% of the population remained illiterate
• Education - higher education

  • Uni enrolments quadrupled from 117,000 to 441,000
  • Higher education modelled by USSR, like the establishment of a separate Ministry of Education in November 1952 to prescribe teaching
  • 1952 - 1958, 600 Russians taught in Chinese colleges and unis
  • By 1959, 38,000 Chinese students had been trained in Russian unis
  • However copying USSR was taken to the extreme as students took exams seated at cloth-covered tables with vases of flowers simply because 'that was the way the Russians did it'
• Education - Pinyin

  • China's diverse cultures and languages damaged communication
  • Introduced in 1955
  • Letters based on the Latin alphabet
  • Instead of symbols, the letters meant that words in Mandarin could be pronounced phonetically
  • Still used today
• Education - impact of GLF

  • Education Minister was forced to admit that 'schools had cut too many classes for the sake of their productive labour activities'
  • May 1959 schools limited to teaching manual labour skills
  • Rural students taught agricultural techniques, urban elite students taught higher education
• Education - impact of Cultural Revolution

  • Schools abandoned as students travelled to Beijing to attend Mao's 8 mass rallies
  • Students forced teachers into aeroplane position at struggle meetings
  • Zhang Tiesheng submitted a blank exam paper for his college admissions test because he declared he was too busy working 18 hour days on a commune
  • This can be seen as Mao's vision for a more practical education system being a success, as Zhang called out the class difference in educational achievement
  • 'Mountains and villages' students return to education to study the peasant way of life
• Culture - revolutionary opera

  • Removed 'feudal' characters like emperors, ministers, scholars and maidens and replaced them with heroic peasants, workers and soldiers
  • Audiences grew tired of simplistic storylines and obvious propaganda
  • 'Red Detachment of Women' and 'Taking Tiger Gorge'
  • Jiang sent dancers to live with army to better portray realities of military life