Social studies 19.3

• The civil war started

  1945
• Mao and his communist forces


  Fought to overthrow Jeishi's Nationalists
• Mao's victory was largely due to the huge peasant population in China, which had long suffered from brutal landlords and taxes
• The communists promised to redistribute land to peasants and end the oppressive rule of landlords
• Women also supported Mao since they rejected the old inequalities of Chinese society
• Mao's army outfought Jiang's armies with guerilla tactics. They had perfected fighting the Japanese
• Jiang failed to end widespread economic hardship; this made many Chinese resent the corruption in Jiang's government and the reliance on support from Western powers that had long dominated China
• Communism's main goal in China was to turn a peasant society into a modern industrial nation
• Communist ideology, inherited from the dynastic period, guided the government's efforts to reshape China's economy and society
• To build socialism


  • Nationalized businesses
  • Increase coal and steel output
  • Develop heavy industry
• Collectivization


  • Distributed land to peasants
• To increase literacy: Chinese Characters were simplified to make reading and writing easier, and schools were open to both young and old
• To improve health: Sent healthcare workers to remote rural areas
• Under China's new constitution, women won equality under the law
• 4 Pillars of remaking Chinese life


  • To build socialism
  • Collectivization, Distribute land to peasants
  • Improve healthcare
  • Increase literacy
• Mao built a one-party, communist totalitarian state
• Communist ideology replaced Confucian beliefs and traditional religions; Buddhists, Christians, and others faced persecution and death
• The government dealt with corruption, crime, landlords, and business classes. In their place, peasants and workers were honored as the builders of the new China
• Communist leaders committed politically motivated mass murder of landlords, and middle-class property owners, with torture, public humiliation, and death. They were also sent to brutal conditions
• 1958-1960: policy of great leap forward
• Purpose: It was designed to increase farm and industrial output. To make agriculture more efficient, he created communes composed of several villages, acres of land, and up to 20,000 people
• Rural communes created "backyard" industries to produce steel and other products
• This became a disaster because backyard industries turned out useless goods, slowed food output, and bad weather added to the problems and led to a terrible famine
• 55 million Chinese were starved to death
• 1966: Mao launched a new program called the Cultural Revolution
• His purpose was to purge China of non-revolutionary tendencies
• He urged young Chinese to experience revolution firsthand, as his generation had
• The Little Red Book was used by teenage Red Guards as quotations from Chairman Mao
• They attacked people they considered non-revolutionary
• Those people were attacked and publicly humiliated
• Schools and factories closed, and skilled workers were forced into labor camps
• As the economy stalled and unrest rose, Mao finally had the army restore order
• The communist victory in China dominated the Cold War in the years after 1949
• The US supported Jieshi
• After Jieshhi went to Taiwan, the US kept on supporting the nationalist gov
• The two communist giants were uneasy allies (China and the Soviet Union)
• Chinese communism differed from Soviet communism
• Stalin sent economic and technical experts to help China modernize
• A key difference between Stalin and Mao is the role of the peasantry; Mao believed that peasants were the major force behind the communist revolution, while the Soviets trusted in a "revolutionary elite" of urban intellectuals and workers
• 1959: border clashes and ideological disputes led the Soviets to withdraw all aid and advisors from China and end their alliance