China Consolidation of Power-Lawrence

    Cards (201)

    • Mao's promises to potential opposition groups
      • Peasants were told land would be redistributed
      • Workers promised higher living standards
      • Minorities offered autonomy
      • Intellectuals were to be allowed freedom
      • Businessmen told private ownership would continue
    • The CPPCC conference that set tone for early yrs included members of the Democratic League
    • Aim: to give the impression that politics would be inclusive
    • Mao's initial priority – mopping up remaining areas of GMD military resistance in the south
    • Mao sent the PLA into the GMD heartland of Guangdong province + outlying provinces of the far west
    • Once CCP hold on power was more secure, pace of change speeded up
    • Mao intervened in the Korean War
    • Mao launched an internal wave of terror against enemies of the Party
    • By the time the terror ended later in 1951, it cost at least 1 or possibly 2m lives
    • Even sympathisers with the rev compelled to educate themselves – quote correct slogans
    • A network of forced labour camps laogai were established – awaited many who failed to do this
    • Over 1m government servants sacked in the 'three antis' movement (1951)
    • 1952 – the business community was attacked in the 'five antis' movement
    • 1955 – drive to collectivise agriculture = end of peasant ownership of land
    • 1956 – private ownership of businesses was nationalised
    • 1957 – turn of intellectuals to suffer in the Hundred Flowers Campaign
    • Mao intended to establish control of the peripheral regions of China – Reunification Campaigns
    • CCP hoped to make invasions seem legitimate by trying to convince others that regions had once been part of China
    • Xinjiang's large Muslim population = the region had more in common with Muslim areas in the USSR
    • Mao feared USSR might take advantage of chaos caused during Civil War to seize the province
    • Tibet led by Buddhist Dalai Lama – rival leader to Mao
    • Guangdong province – traditionally been pro-nationalist stronghold (GMD)
    • An estimated 28,000 people were executed during the 'Supress the Counter Revolutionaries' campaign
    • Nationalist leaders invited to the Political Consultative Conference (1949) - their plane crashed killing all on board
    • Rumours spread that Mao had murdered them – never proved
    • PLA led by Peng Dehuai cleared resistance - by March 1950 secured territory migration of Han Chinese
    • Han Chinese sent to populate Xinjiang, develop mining and industry
    • Govt organised settlers into PLA co-ordinated militia – the 'Production and Construction Corps'
    • Mao claimed he had sent PLA into Tibet to 'liberate it from imperialist oppression'
    • Tibetans regarded themselves as racially and culturally different from the Chinese
    • November 1950 - PLA forces entered Tibetan capital Lhasa
    • Dalai Lama had no choice but to sign a 17 Point Agreement on Peaceful Liberation of Tibet
    • Chinese imposed policed aimed at wiping out traces of Tibetan identity
    • November 1952, Mao declared intention to raise Tibetan population from 3m to 10m
    • Mao aimed to promote migration of the dominant Han Chinese ethnic group into Tibet
    • Publicly Tibetan leaders no choice but to offer thanks to Mao for having done 'so much for Tibet'
    • 1959: Tibetans rebelled – they were brutally supressed by PLA
    • The Dalai Lama fled into exile in India
    • The nationalist GMD established a rival nation in Taiwan called the Republic of China (ROC)
    • Chiang kai shek's new nation claimed to be the 'official' China
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