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Mao’s China, 1945–76

Economic reform, 1962–65

  • 3 things to know
  • Paper 3

Overview

Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping in charge, the return of private plots and markets, the black cat remark, grain recovery by 1965, factory bonuses and managers, smaller communes and Mao's suspicion of it all.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

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Numbers

Who led the recovery after the Great Leap Forward, and how did the countryside recover by 1965?

Numbers

Who took charge of economic policy after Mao stepped back in the early 1960s?

Key term

Why did Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping bring back private farming?

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

  1. 1

    Who took charge of economic policy after Mao stepped back in the early 1960s?

    Model answer

    Liu Shaoqi, who had become head of state in 1959, and Deng Xiaoping, the party's general secretary.

  2. 2

    Why did Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping bring back private farming?

    Model answer

    The famine had shown that the communes could not feed the country, and peasants worked far harder on land whose produce they kept.

  3. 3

    What were peasants allowed to do again from 1962?

    Model answer

    Farm a small private plot, keep pigs and poultry, and sell what they grew on it in reopened country markets.

  4. 4

    Which remark of Deng Xiaoping's summed up his approach to farming policy?

    Model answer

    That it does not matter whether a cat is black or white so long as it catches mice — results mattered more than ideology.

  5. 5

    How did the countryside recover by 1965?

    Model answer

    Grain output climbed back above the level of the mid-1950s and the food shortages in the cities ended.

  6. 6

    Why was reform of industry needed after 1962?

    Model answer

    Factory output had slumped during the famine years, and the cities needed jobs, food and materials to get working again.

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