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China 1950–1981: The People and the State

The Communist state and the Chinese people

  • 3 things to know
  • Paper 1

Overview

The Party's overriding aim, cadres and mass campaigns, the hukou, landlords and business owners, the burden on women, the young, religious minorities, popular support and quiet resistance, and the problems of the sources.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

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Key term

Which two instruments carried Party policy down into every village and city street?

Key term

Why did the Party govern China through campaigns rather than through officials and laws alone?

Numbers

Which policy showed most starkly that Communist economic targets came before human life?

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

  1. 1

    What was the overriding aim of Communist policy in China after 1950?

    Model answer

    To build a strong, modern socialist country under the complete control of the Party, remaking the beliefs of the people as well as the economy.

  2. 2

    Which two instruments carried Party policy down into every village and city street?

    Model answer

    The local cadre, who supervised the commune or work unit, and the mass campaign, which drove a whole population at one target for a set period.

  3. 3

    Why did the Party govern China through campaigns rather than through officials and laws alone?

    Model answer

    Campaigns mobilised millions cheaply, forced everyone to take a public side, and let the leadership go over the head of a bureaucracy it did not trust.

  4. 4

    Which policy showed most starkly that Communist economic targets came before human life?

    Model answer

    The Great Leap Forward, whose grain quotas went on being collected while millions of peasants starved between 1959 and 1962.

  5. 5

    How did the household registration system, the hukou, serve the state after 1958?

    Model answer

    It tied a family to the place where it was registered, so peasants could not move to the cities and labour stayed where the plan wanted it.

  6. 6

    Which class did the Communist state destroy first, and by what means?

    Model answer

    The landlords, whose estates were seized in the early 1950s and who were denounced at village meetings, imprisoned or executed.

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AFactories switched from consumer goods to weapons.
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