History of the People's Republic of China

From a political point of view, the People's Republic of China had, for several decades, been known as the political entity that is often synonymous with Mainland China. Historically, the same name but implies the most recent of historical eras in Chinese history that was preceded by thousands of years of imperial dynasties and the Republic. The era officially began on China proper on October 1st, 1949, when, after a near complete victory in the Chinese Civil War, Mao Zedong proclaimed the People's Republic of China on top of Tiananmen. The era is what is now known as the History of the People's Republic of China. This span of history thus lasts between 1949 and the present, and included decades of political struggle, economic and social reform, as well as many movements that left a permanent mark both inside China and on a much larger, international scale.

The Mao era

Social Reformation

The new government assumed control of a people exhausted by two generations of war and social conflict and an economy ravaged by high inflation and disrupted transportation links. A new political and economic order modeled on the Soviet example was quickly installed. The Soviet Union and the PRC signed a mutual defense treaty on February 14, 1950.

In the early 1950s, the PRC undertook a massive economic and social reconstruction. The new leaders gained popular support by curbing inflation, restoring the economy, and rebuilding many war-damaged industrial installations. The Communist Party of China's (CPC) authority reached into almost every phase of Chinese life. Party control was assured by large, politically loyal security and military forces; a government apparatus responsive to party direction; and ranks of party members in labor, women's, and other mass organizations.

The Korean War

As the economy was only beginning to show signs of recovery, the newly born People's Republic had drawn itself into its first international conflict. On June 25, 1950, Kim Il-sung's DPRK Forces crossed the 38th Parallel into South Korea, and eventually advanced as far as the Pusan Triangle. United Nations forces entered the war on side of the South, and American General Douglas MacArthur had proposed to finish the war by Christmas 1950. The Soviet Union and China saw a UN victory as a major advantage to the United States politically. The Soviet Union, however, did not want direct confrontation, and Mao had decided to intervene. As a stretegic military move, On June 27, 1950, the United States placed its 7th fleet in the Taiwan Strait, protecting the nationalist forces that remained in Taiwan. On October 25, 1950, the "Chinese Volunteer Army" crossed the Yalu River in the first warning offensive, and was on an all-out attack by late November. Meanwhile, in Beijing, many top CPC leaders, including Defence Minister Lin Biao, had disagreed with China's participation in the war.

The Korean War was the PRC's first international conflict, and would eventually prove costly. The United States was on its way to the height of military power. The first major offensive of the Chinese forces were pushed back in October, but by Christmas 1950, the "Volunteer Army" under the command of Gen. Peng Dehuai had advanced to the 38th Parallel, forcing the fastest retreat in US military history. Declining a UN armistice, the two sides fought back and forth the 38th Parallel until the armistice was signed on June 26, 1953.

"Great Leap Forward"

In 1958 Mao broke with the Soviet model and announced a new economic program, the "Great Leap Forward," aimed at rapidly raising industrial and agricultural production. Giant cooperatives (communes) were formed, and "backyard factories" dotted the Chinese landscape. The results were disastrous. Normal market mechanisms were disrupted, agricultural production fell behind, and Mainland China's people exhausted themselves producing what turned out to be shoddy, unsellable goods. Within a year, starvation appeared even in fertile agricultural areas. From 1960 to 1961, the combination of poor planning during the Great Leap Forward and bad weather resulted in famine.

The already strained Sino-Soviet relationship deteriorated sharply in 1959, when the Soviets started to restrict the flow of scientific and technological information to China. The dispute escalated, and the Soviets withdrew all of their personnel from China in August 1960. In the same year, the Soviets and the Chinese began to have disputes openly in international forums. The relationship between the two powers reached a low point in 1969 with the Sino-Soviet border conflict, when Soviet and Chinese troops met in combat on the Manchurian border.

Cultural Revolution

In the early 1960s, President Liu Shaoqi and Party General Secretary Deng Xiaoping took over direction of the party and adopted pragmatic economic policies at odds with Mao's communitarian vision. Dissatisfied with mainland China's new direction and his own reduced authority, Party Chairman Mao launched a massive political attack on Liu, Deng, and other pragmatists in the spring of 1966. The new movement, the "Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution," was unprecedented in Communist history. For the first time, a section of the Chinese communist leadership sought to rally popular opposition against another leadership group. Mainland China was set on a course of political and social anarchy, which lasted the better part of a decade.

Mao's own Big Character Poster named "Target the Headquarters" was in essence a document warranting the seclusion of then State President Liu Shaoqi, who died in prison in 1969. Deng Xiaoping was sent down to work in a southern car engines factory. Mao and his "closest comrade in arms," National Defense Minister Lin Biao, who basically became Mao's designated heir apparent, charged Liu, Deng, and other top party leaders with dragging the country back toward capitalism. Radical youth organizations, called Red Guards, attacked party and state organizations at all levels, seeking out leaders who would not bend to the radical wind. In reaction to this turmoil, some local People's Liberation Army (PLA) commanders and other officials maneuvered to outwardly back Mao and the radicals while actually taking steps to rein in local radical activity.

In the period between 1966 and 1968, while having a large cult of personality put in place, Mao had asked the "destruction of the Four Olds". Religious and educational institutions were big targets. Nuns, priests, monks, authors, professors, and artists were beaten or forced to kill themselves. The Chinese railway system was in total disarray. The authority of Red Guards surpassed that of local police authorities, and at times randomly beat people who were considered "counterrevolutionary". The University Entrance Examinations came to a complete halt, and most high schools closed. Lin Biao and others had used the turmoil in these areas to raise Mao to semi-godlike status in the country. For the first time since the Puyi Abdication had people come to hail Mao as to "Long Live for Ten Thousand Years", which ironically is an old, feudal tradition. Mao then had Lin's name printed into the Constitution as Mao's designed successor.

Lin Biao and the Gang of Four

Gradually, Red Guard and other radical activity subsided, and the Chinese political situation stabilized along complex factional lines. Lin Biao, who had ailing health and control over the military, attempted a military coup in September 1971. The coup was aimed at the assasination of Mao while traveling on his train. Operating out of the headquarters in Shanghai, Lin Biao learned of his failure after Mao's diversion of routes. Lin then escaped with his whole family on a military jet, and was on his way to the Soviet Union, before crashing in Ondurhan in Mongolia in October. Lin's death was tightly put under wraps by the Central Government, as discussions began about China's political future. Lin's supporters made their ways out of the country, mostly to Hong Kong.

In the aftermath of the Lin Biao incident, many officials criticized and dismissed during 1966-1969 were reinstated. Chief among these was Deng Xiaoping, who reemerged in 1973 and was confirmed in 1975 in the concurrent posts of Politburo Standing Committee member, PLA Chief of Staff, and Vice Premier. Mao had wanted to use this period as a time to rethink his successor. He eventually decided on Wang Hongwen, a native of Shanghai and close associate of his wife Jiang Qing, and moved him from a municipal position all the way to the Central Government.

The ideological struggle between more pragmatic, veteran party officials and the radicals re-emerged with a vengeance in late 1975. Jiang Qing, Wang Hongwen, and two other close Cultural Revolution associates (later dubbed the "Gang of Four") launched a media campaign against Deng. In January 1976, Premier Zhou Enlai, a popular political figure, died of cancer. On April 5, Beijing citizens staged a spontaneous demonstration in Tiananmen Square in Zhou's memory, with strong political overtones in support of Deng and against the Gang of Four. The authorities forcibly suppressed the demonstration, and killed at least 800, though the actual death toll may be as high as 7000. Deng was blamed for the disorder and stripped of all official positions, although he retained his party membership. This demonstration and its suppression is generally known as the Tiananmen Incident.

Mao's Legacy

The large number of deaths during the period of consolidation of power after victory in the Chinese Civil War paled in comparison to the number of deaths caused by famine, anarchy, war, and foreign invasion in the years before the Communists took power.

Supporters of Mao point out that before 1949, for instance, the illiteracy rate in Mainland China was 80 percent, and life expectancy was a meager 35 years. At his death, illiteracy had declined to less than seven per cent, and average life expectancy had increased to more than 70 years. In addition, China's population which had remained constant at 400 million from the Opium War to the end of the Civil War, mushroomed to 700 million as of Mao's death. Under Mao's regime, China ended its "Century of Humiliation" and resumed its status as a major power. Mao also industrialized China to a considerable extent and ensured China's sovereignty during his reign.

Skeptics will observe that similar gains in life expectancy occurred in the East Asian Tigers (most notably Taiwan) which was ruled by Mao's opponents, the Kuomintang. Some of the gains may have simply been the result of a country no longer at war, so even an incompetent regime could achieve such improvements. Furthermore, the experiences of the Tigers and the Deng Xiaoping reforms suggest that Mao's economic policy led to far poorer economic outcomes than a more decentralized approach. Other critics of Mao fault him for not encouraging birth control and for creating a demographic bump which later Chinese leaders responded to with the one child policy. The one-child limit usually pertains to overpopulated urban areas. In rural areas restrictions are usually more lenient.

The immediate cause of the post-Mao birth control policy was the demographic bump of people born in the 1950s and 1960s. In 1949 the population of the PRC was about 400 million. In 1970, the population was 700 million. This was largely due to Mao's encouragement of "the more people, the more power" to families. In the late 1970s, the Chinese leadership was alarmed by the fact that the "demographic bump" would soon begin entering childbearing years, and so it was decided to encourage family planning for this generation.

Since the mid-1990s there has been considerable relaxation in family planning policies in the People's Republic of China, largely due to the fact that the "demographic bump" of people born in the 1960s is now moving out of fertility age.

The People's Republic of China, unlike virtually any other Third World nation, no longer has to fear the prospects of over-population, malnutrition, and famine in spite of the doubling of life expectancy during the Mao years. With population growth stabilized, mainland China is sustaining one of the world's highest rates of per capita economic growth in the world.

The ideology surrounding Mao's interpretation of Marxism-Leninism, also known as Maoism, has influenced many communists around the world, including third world revolutionary movements such as Cambodia's Khmer Rouge, Peru's Shining Path and the revolutionary movement in Nepal. Ironically, the PRC has moved sharply away from Maoism since his death, and most of Mao's followers regard the Deng Xiaoping reforms to be a betrayal of Mao's legacy.

Power struggles after Mao's death

"The Great Helmsman" was one of the many titles and styles Mao Zedong had gained as a result of the Cultural Revolution. His existence was more than symbolic, and therefore so would be his death. The founder of the People's Republic of China died on September 9, 1976 in Beijing, some say to complications of Parkinson's Disease. For more than a week, all walks of life in the country had seemed to pause and become involved only in a state of mourning. Having been the head of the Communist Party of China for more than forty years, and the head of state for the newly born People's Republic for twenty-seven, Mao had attempted to train three successors, Liu Shaoqi, Lin Biao, and Wang Hongwen, two of which he himself outlived. Like the former two, Mao also had suspicion in Wang, and in his older years, tended to trust no one. Wang's association with the Gang of Four further caused distrust.

Hua Guofeng, then Minister of Public Security, having succeeded Zhou Enlai in January as Premier, had now taken on the offices as head of both the CPC and the military. Hua's justification was believed to have come from a note of Mao's handwriting that said "When you do things, I'm at ease". Compared to the three successors designated before him, Hua had the shortest time as heir apparent, and would have a very brief time as the No.1 figure in China as well. His term in office was dominated by power struggle between three factions, being the Gang of Four, himself, and Deng Xiaoping. In October, with advice and from former Minister of Defence Ye Jianying, a conspiracy of generals and party elders moved to remove the Gang of Four from any position of power. Jiang Qing and her partners were accused of various crimes, including counterrevolutionary activity, and was to be tried in the coming years. Eventually they would each be either given a long term in jail, or in Jiang Qing's case, sentenced to life in prison.

ja:中華人民共和国歴史 pt:História da República Popular da China fi:Kiinan kansantasavallan historia

sv:Folkrepubliken Kinas historia