Unit 4

• Status of women before 1949

  • Many baby girls victims of infanticide
  • Arranged marriage common and many wives had to share their husband with a concubine
  • Subjected to the 3 obedience's: subservient to their father, husband and son
  • Not provided with educational opportunities - 1930s - only 1% of females over 7 had basic literacy skills
• New Marriage Law

  • 1950
  • Mao attacked the 'rottenness of the marriage system' damning arranged marriage as 'indirect rape'
  • Concubinage and arranged marriages were banned
  • Husband and wife has equal status in the home
  • Wife could inherit her husbands property
  • Divorce was made easier - led to an increased divorce rate and husbands lost the perceived financial investment of a wife
• Collectivisation/Communes - Women

  • Women forced to work on land whilst also performing domestic chores
  • Mothers left children at communal kindergartens - the conditions were dirty and staff were poorly trained (disease and death commonplace)
  • During famine, communes provided little food for women - women traded sex for food
  • Sexual abuse commonplace
  • Expectant mothers endured harsh, physical labour which often led to miscarriages
  • In Guangzhou 2 Party secretaries forced themselves on 34 women
• Foot binding

  • Many women physically crippled
  • Feet bound by age of 6 with their toes turned under feet and held tightly by bandages
  • Designed to stunt their growth as small feet was viewed as sexually appealing
• The Women's Association

  • Dedicated to encouraging political activism amongst women
  • Official membership of 76 million
  • Campaigned against prostitution and domestic violence
  • Encouraged women to denounce and confront men who had beaten their wives
• Changes to education - Women

  • 1929-49 - only 38% completed primary education
  • 1959 onwards the rate was 100%
  • 1978- 45% primary school children were girls
• Changes to military - Women

  • Communist regime created new military academies to train a modern family - PLA provided an opportunity for women
  • They could escape rural poverty and be promoted to officer rank
• Changes to the status of women

  • Many took to escaping unhappy marriages through divorce
  • Greater self-confidence - willingness to declare their grievances at the 'speak bitterness' meetings organised to denounce the regimes enemies
  • Women became politicised during the CR - wearing of Maoist uniform created a sense of equality. Women were able to travel across China and be given important leadership roles in the Red Guards
  • Ballets like the 'Red Detachment of Women' glorified women as heroes fighting in the Chines Civil War
• Education in rural China 1949

  • Only 2.2% received any schooling
  • Males attended avg of 4 years of schooling
  • 80% of population were illiterate
  • Educated children mainly received an education based on Confucian concepts
  • Elitist system
• Improvement of literacy levels

  • National primary school system introduced
  • Primary school children increased to 64 million in 1957 (was only 26 million in 1949)
  • Winter schools - short courses for adult peasants
  • The Party claimed that 42 million attended 1951/52
• Pinyin

  • The Chinese language was difficult using ideograms and pictures to represent words
  • New form of written language to simplify the highly complex characters
  • Became the official language of China
• Educational reform - Failures

  • Remained elitist
  • Key schools established - students had to pass an entrance exam despite the promises of greater equal opportunity for all
  • Under funded
  • 1952 - only 6.4% of budget spent of culture and education
  • Winter schools ineffective - many peasants forgot what they'd learnt from one winter to the next. In the GLF many couldn't attend as working on backyard furnaces
• Collapse of education 1966

  • During CR schools and universities closed (up to 130 million received no education)
  • Many joined RGs attending rallies and struggle meetings to denounce 'demons and monsters'
  • Teachers were often victims of revolutionary violence (many killed and books were destroyed)
  • After the RGS were disbanded many did not return to school
• Healthcare in rural China

  • Many peasants had never seen a trained doctor and preferred to rely on ancient herbal cures to heal illnesses
  • Many peasants living on the verge of starvation, their immune systems were unable to fight the epidemic diseases
• Barefoot doctors

  • Paramedics sent to rural areas to provide basic care to peasants
  • They were trained intensely for 6 months (cheap to train)
  • They had little equipment and low supplies of medicine
  • 1973 - over 1 million doctors trained
• Healthcare reform - Successes

  • CCP launched Patriotic Health Movements - sent Party cadres into the countryside to educate peasants how to prevent illness
  • Posters taught illiterate peasants how to catch rats and mosquitoes or dig wells to collect drinking water
  • Life expectancy rose and infant mortality fell
  • Anti drug campaigns reduce the sale and use of opium
• Healthcare reform - Failures ~

  • Uneven health provision between rural and urban China (Western hospitals centered in cities)
  • During GLF - communes established medical clinics but the famine neglected health benefits
  • Doctors attacked in the Antis campaigns of the 1950s and sent to the Laogai
  • Doctors denounced during the CR
• Attacks on traditional culture

  • Reunification campaigns had a devastating effect on culture in Tibet and Xinjiang
  • Confucianism and ancestor worship condemned as backwards superstitions
  • Agit prop groups toured China trying to convince people to abandon old traditions and follow Communism
• 'Four Olds' campaign

  • Launched August 1966
  • Destroy old ideas, customs, habits and culture
  • Religious artifacts and temples destroyed and philosophical books burnt
  • Religious shrines replaced with pictures of Mao
  • Street names that derived from folk traditions renamed ('Fortune and Longevity Road')
• Jiang Qing

  • Ambition was to destroy traditional Chinese culture and replace with revolutionary Communism
  • Imposed censorship of music, theater and art. Banning of performances that encouraged old fashioned 'feudal' ideas such as romance and wealth
  • Her previous career as an actress meant she believed that she was qualified to rewrite performances
  • Role as 'Cultural Tsar' gave her huger power and influence during the CR
  • 1969 - joined the Politburo
  • Used the CR to intimidate or purge enemies who knew of her past
• Why was Jiang Qing hated?

  • Her violent fervour when attacking enemies
  • She claimed she was Chairman Mao's dog - 'Whoever Mao asked me to bite, I bit'
  • Attacking rivals from acting past and associates who knew about her bourgeois past
• Attack on the arts

  • performances of foreign works banned
  • Directors and writers fired or blacklisted . Some were attacked by RGs and others committed suicide
  • New plays and opera glorified Communism
  • Slogan was 'Make it revolutionary or ban it'
  • Only 8 new plays or operas were allowed to be watched
  • 'Red Detachment of a woman' - ballet turned into movies (peasant escaping an evil landlord)
  • Propaganda teams travelled to villages with projectors
• Complaint to restrictions of the arts

  • A biographer of Jiang Qing wrote 'turned the minds of the audience to 'mashed potatoes'''
  • '800 million people watching 8 shows'
  • Deng Xiaoping complained 'People want to go to the theater to relax'
• Attacks on Buddhism

  • PLA launching of reunification campaigns of the 1950s. Buddhists monasteries were attacked and monks were sent to the laogai ('reform through labour) to be 'rerformed'
  • Tibet boarders India which is an ally of the West
  • Temples were taken over and converted
• Attacks on Confucianism

  • Confucius promoted family and kinship values as well as respect for others and ancestor worship
  • He was condemned by the CCP in 1949
  • Annual ceremonies which commemorated Confucius were banned
  • During CR RGs destroyed many memorials. He was made a symbol of backwards ideas
  • 1973 - campaign launched comparing Confucius to Lin Biao
• New Year Festival

  • Tradition of giving children red envelopes of money - was viewed as bourgeois
  • Qing Ming festival replaced by new Communist festival - National Memorial DAY
  • People urged to honour the fallen Communist heroes who dies in the Civil War
• Attack on Christianity

  • Protestant and Catholic Churches targeted as they were believed to be representative of Western imperialist ideas
  • Communists created 'Patriotic Church Movements' to organise religion for the benefit of the Chinese people (actually to impose control over the Churches, they hung portraits of Mao in Church)
  • Schools and hospitals run by Churches were taken over by the government
  • Scared Heart Home for children compared to Nazi camp + said they sold kids for slavery
  • Communists claimed Catholic hospitals were using patients as 'human guinea pigs' to test out new medicines