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Mao’s China, 1949–76

The communes and their organisation

  • 3 things to know
  • Paper 2

Overview

Recall questions on communal living and the abolition of private plots, Lysenkoism and the Four Pests, the scale of the famine, and why there was no relief.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

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Process

Why did the communes end in famine?

Key term

What large rural units were created in 1958?

Numbers

Which was the first people's commune in China?

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

  1. 1

    What large rural units were created in 1958?

    Model answer

    The People's Communes.

  2. 2

    What pseudo-science damaged Chinese agriculture?

    Model answer

    Lysenkoism.

  3. 3

    Which was the first people's commune in China?

    Model answer

    The Chayashan Sputnik commune in Henan, formed in April 1958, which served as a model for the communes the party endorsed nationally at Beidaihe that August.

  4. 4

    What did communal living involve?

    Model answer

    Communal kitchens, nurseries and dormitories, with private plots, private cooking and often private possessions abolished.

  5. 5

    Why did the abolition of private plots matter?

    Model answer

    Private plots had supplied much of the peasants' vegetables and meat, so their loss removed both incentive and a vital margin of subsistence.

  6. 6

    How were the people's communes subdivided?

    Model answer

    Into production brigades, roughly the size of the old villages, and below them production teams, which became the basic unit of accounting from 1962.

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