chinesehistorythruchineseeyes.pbworks.comchinesehistorythruchineseeyes.pbworks.com/f/1 student docs...

Modernization Lesson 5: The 1949 Revolution

Contents of this fileNotes on implementing the lesson

Document A: On the People’s Democratic Dictatorship (Original)

Document B: Report on the 1954 Constitution (Original)

Document C: The Formation of Agricultural Producers’ Cooperatives (Original)

Document D: How China Proceeds with the Task of Industrialization (Original)

Document E: Report on the First Five-year Plan (Modified)

Document F: The New Socialist Man (Original)

Document G: Lei Feng, Model of the New Socialist Man (Original)

Document H: An Assessment of Mao Zedong (Original)

Sources

Notes on implementing the lesson

Students should complete Contextualization Lessons 1, 2 and 3 and Modernization Lessons 1, 2, 3 and 4 before beginning this lesson. Teachers can review the file “1 Introduction to the Unit” for details on how this lesson fits into the unit “China: The Struggle for Modernization.”

Like all lessons in this unit, this lesson implements the Reading Like a Historian pedagogy developed by the Stanford History Education Group. Teachers should be familiar with the concepts of sourcing, contextualizing, close reading, and corroborating. Further information is available at sheg.stanford.edu/?q=node/45.

The ultimate goal of this lesson is for students to identify the goals of the 1949 Revolution so that by the end of the unit they can trace the evolution of the modernization process between 1860 and 2000.

Two worksheets are provided to guide students through the analysis of the documents below:

Document Analysis Worksheet I, which should be completed separately for Documents A through G, emphasizes sourcing, close reading, and contextualizing. Close reading at this point should focus on comprehension of the information in each document. Students should read critically to identify points where they need additional information to understand the document. They

CHINESE HISTORY THROUGH CHINESE EYES — The Struggle for Modernization: Lesson 5

then practice contextualization by looking for that information in the textbook and the outline of Chinese history provided in the preceding Contextualization lesson.

Document Analysis Worksheet II is designed to compile information from Documents A through G. It emphasizes close reading and corroborating. At this point close reading should focus on information in Documents A through G that reveals the goals of the 1949 Revolution. Such information should be recorded on the chart.

Questions 1 and 2 below the chart on Document Analysis Worksheet II require students to corroborate information from Documents A through G.

Question 3 requires students to read Document H, which is a secondary source that provides a historian’s interpretation of documents similar to those the students have just analyzed. Students should read this professional interpretation only after they have drawn some conclusions of their own by answering Questions 1 and 2.

Answer keys are provided for all worksheets.

To prepare students for the essay at the end of the unit, ask them to compare the leadership, goals, and outcome of the 1949 Revolution with those of the previous efforts to modernize. How has the process evolved from one effort to the next?

See the file “1 Introduction to the Unit” for information on the spelling of Chinese names and other ways in which the student documents have been edited.

The four Reading Like a Historian skills require students to think in ways that are probably new for them in history classes. Teachers should not be discouraged by student resistance to these higher expectations, and teachers should not be surprised if even at the end of the unit students continue to require support and encouragement to practice the skills. However, if teachers and students are diligent about following the procedures outlined in this series of lessons, by the end of the unit they should make substantial progress in internalizing these important historical thinking skills.


Document A: On the People’s Democratic Dictatorship (Original)

All of the experience the Chinese people have accumulated through several decades teaches us to enforce the people’s democratic dictatorship, that is, to deprive the reactionaries of the right to speak and let the people alone have that right.

Who are the people? At the present stage in China, they are the working class, the peasantry, the urban petty bourgeoisie and the national bourgeoisie. These classes, led by the working class and the Communist Party, unite to form their own state and elect their own government; they enforce their dictatorship over the running dogs of imperialism – the landlord class and bureaucratic-bourgeoisie, as well as the representatives of those classes, the Guomindang reactionaries and their accomplices – suppress them, allow them only to behave themselves and not to be unruly, in word or deed. If they speak or act in an unruly way, they will be promptly stopped and punished. Democracy is practiced within the ranks of the people, who enjoy the rights of freedom of speech, assembly, association and so on. The right to vote belongs only to the people, not to the reactionaries. The combination of these two aspects, democracy for the people and dictatorship over the reactionaries, is the people’s democratic dictatorship.

Why must things be done this way? The reason is quite clear to everybody. If things were not done this way, the revolution would fail, the people would suffer, and country would be conquered.

Source: Mao Zedong, Chairman of the Communist Party (1943-1976) and Chairman of the People’s Republic of China (1954-1959); presented in June 1949, three months before the People’s Republic was declared on October 1, 1949.

Document B: Report on the 1954 Constitution (Original)

We all know that China is now in a transition period, building a socialist society. This period is also called in our country the new democratic period, a period during which our economy is characterized by both socialist and capitalist elements. Some people hope that this condition can be permanently maintained … But is there any real possibility of doing this? It is impossible for two conflicting relationships of production under socialism


and capitalism to develop side by side in a country without interfering with each other. China will change either into a socialist state or a capitalist state …

Since 1953 China has already entered the period of planned economic construction with socialism as its goal. … Continuous consolidation and strengthening of the worker-peasant alliance is the basic guarantee of successful leadership by the working class. … In the course of the gradual transition to socialism, the peasants are bound to change, and have, in fact, begun to do so. The change takes the form of gradual transformation of individual peasants leading a precarious life into socialist cooperative farmers. Only when the working class leads the peasantry to advance along the path to cooperation can the peasants’ livelihood be steadily improved and the worker-peasant alliance made closer and firmer. …

In the transition period of our country there are still many different economic sectors. Ownership of the means of production in our country at present falls mainly into the following categories: state ownership, that is, ownership by the whole people; cooperative ownership, that is collective ownership by the working masses; ownership by individual working people; and capitalist ownership. The task of the state is to strive to strengthen and extend the first two categories, that is, the socialist sector of our economy, and to bring about step by step the socialist transformation of the latter two categories, that is the non-socialist sector of our economy. …

The chief transitional form for the socialist transformation of agriculture and handicrafts is the cooperative. … The transitional form for the socialist transformation of capitalist industry and commerce is state capitalism. …

Source: Speech by Liu Shaoqi, who in 1954 was First Vice Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party. Later he became Chairman of the People's Republic of China (the head of state). In 1968, during the Cultural Revolution, he was purged from all party and government posts.


Document C: The Formation of Agricultural Producers’ Cooperatives (Original)

It has become more and more evident that small-scale agricultural production cannot satisfy the demand of the broad peasantry to improve their living conditions, nor can it meet the increasing need of the entire national economy. To further raise the productive forces of agriculture, the most fundamental task of the party in its rural work is to educate the peasants through measures most acceptable and understandable to them and stimulate them to gradually get organized and carry out the socialist reform of agriculture. …

According to the nation’s experiences, the concrete way for the gradual organization of China’s peasants is:

(1) through temporary mutual aid teams which operate as a simple form of collective labor, and year-round mutual aid teams which have certain divisions of labor among their members on the basis of collective labor, and a small amount of property owned in common;

(2) through agricultural cooperatives in which the members pool their land as shares and there is unified management and more property owned in common; and finally

(3) to agricultural cooperatives of a higher form (collective farms) with collective peasant ownership entirely socialist in character.

This is the path laid down by the party for the gradual, step-by-step socialist transformation of agriculture.

Source: A directive from the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, published by the government-run New China News Agency on January 8, 1954.


Document D: How China Proceeds with the Task of Industrialization (Original)

Industrialization has been the goal sought by the Chinese people during the past one hundred years. From the last days of the Manchu dynasty to the early years of the republic, some people had undertaken the establishment of a few factories in the country. But industry as a whole has never been developed in China. … We are now in the midst of a period of important changes, in that period of transition, as described by Lenin, of change “from the stallion of the peasant, the farm hand and poverty, to the stallion of mechanized industry, electrification.” …

What, then, is industrialization? … [1] Industrialization is first reflected in the comparatively greater importance of industry over agriculture in the system of national economy as a whole. … industrialization means that industry must constitute about 70 percent of the national economy as a whole. [2] There must be the development of heavy industry. … [3] Industrialization must begin with the development of heavy industry [not light industry].

Source: Published May 23, 1953, in the People’s Daily, a government newspaper.

Document E: Report on the First Five-year Plan (Modified)

In a socialist or communist planned economy, a five-year plan outlines how the government will direct economic development. China’s first five-year plan covered the years 1953-1957.

Socialist industrialization is the central task of our country during the transition period, and the main link in socialist industrialization is to give priority to the development of heavy industry. Only by building a powerful heavy industry, that is, by establishing modern iron and steel, machine-building, power, fuel, nonferrous metals and basic chemical industries, etc., can we produce various kinds of modern industrial equipment, and make possible the technical reconstruction of heavy industry itself as well as the light industries. Only thus can we supply agriculture with tractors and other modern farm machines and sufficient quantities of fertilizers …


Investments in capital construction will amount to … 55.8 percent of the total outlay for economic construction and cultural and educational development during the five-year period. Of the remaining 44.2 percent …

19.2 percent for transport, posts and telecommunications 7.6 percent for agriculture, water conservancy and forestry

departments 7.2 percent for cultur4al, educational and public health departments 3.7 percent for development of urban public utilities 3.0 percent for trade, banking and stockpiling departments

The actual output of major items in 1952 and the planned output for 1957 compare as follows:

Steel: 3.1 times Electricity: 2.2 times Coal: 1.8 times Generators: 7.7 times Electric motors: 1.6 times Cement: 2.1 times Machine-made paper: 1.8 times Cotton fabric: 1.5 times Machine-processed sugar: 2.8 times

By 1957 the proportion of the value of output of the state, cooperative, and join state-private industries will rise to 87.8 percent of the total value of the country’s industrial output. The proportion of the value of output of private industry will fall to 12.2 percent.

Source: Report delivered by Deputy Vice Premier Li Fuchun on July 5 and 6, 1955.


Document F: The New Socialist Man (Original)

Every Communist engaged in government work should set an example of absolute integrity, of freedom from favoritism in making appointments and of hard work for little remuneration. Every Communist working among the masses should be their friend and not a boss over them, an indefatigable teacher and not a bureaucratic politician. At no time and in no circumstances should a Communist place his personal interests first; he should subordinate them to the interests of the nation and of the masses. Hence selfishness, slacking, corruption, seeking the limelight, and so on, are most contemptible, while selflessness, working with all one’s energy, whole-hearted devotion to public duty, and quiet hard work will command respect.

Source: Communist Party Chairman Mao Zedong describing the New Socialist Man.


Document G: Lei Feng, Model for the New Socialist Man (Original)

Lei Feng was a soldier in the People’s Liberation Army who became a legendary model for the New Socialist Man after his accidental death in 1962. These photos are stills from a film about Lei Feng that were published in “comic book” form.


Source: Originally published by China Film Publisher in Beijing in 1965.


Document H: An Assessment of Mao Zedong (Original)

For China, Mao was Lenin and Stalin combined. He was a great revolutionary, the most successful of the mid-20th century. His greatest achievement was the seizure of power through the creative adaptation of Marxist-Leninist theory to the realities of the situation in China. … He evolved the strategy of organizing the peasantry to encircle the cities and created a successful model of revolution for the Third World. …

A purist at heart, he kept up the momentum of revolution by creating incessant upheaval, exhausting both country and people. Much national energy was spent on mass movement and internecine strife, which impeded national progress. His twenty-seven-year rule brought little improvement in people’s living standard. It thus appears that after the success of revolution in 1949, the genius that was in Mao was largely spent. The ingredients that led him to the seizure of power could not lead him to successfully administer the sprawling state.

Source: Historian Immanuel C. Y. Hsü, writing in The Rise of Modern China (6th ed.), published in 2000 by Oxford University Press (p. 767).


SourcesCentral Committee Decision on Development of Agricultural Production Cooperatives.

(1979). In Mark Seldon (Ed.). The People’s Republic of China: A Documentary History of Revolutionary Change. New York: Monthly Review Press. Pages 338-340. Originally published in 1953.

Document C: Pages 338-339.

Chi, Yun. (1979). China’s Industrialization and the Model of the Soviet Union. In Mark Seldon (Ed.). The People’s Republic of China: A Documentary History of Revolutionary Change. New York: Monthly Review Press. Pages 290-294. Originally published in 1953.

Document D: Pages 290-293.

Frenaye, Frances (Trans.). (1973). The People’s Comic Book. New York: Anchor Press. Earlier published as I Fumetti di Mao. (Endymion Wilkinson, Trans.). Bari, Italy: Editori Laterza.

Document G: Pages 221-222.

Hsü, Immanuel C. Y. (2000). The Rise of Modern China (6th ed.). New York: Oxford University Press.

Document H: Page 767.

Li, Fuchun. (1979). On the First Five-Year Plan. In Mark Seldon (Ed.). The People’s Republic of China: A Documentary History of Revolutionary Change. New York: Monthly Review Press. Pages 294-300. Originally published in 1955.

Document E: Pages 294-298.

Liu, Shaoqi. (1979). Report on the Constitution. In Mark Seldon (Ed.). The People’s Republic of China: A Documentary History of Revolutionary Change. New York: Monthly Review Press. Pages 282-286. Originally published in 1955.

Document B: Pages 282-285.

Mao, Zedong. (1982). On the People’s Democratic Dictatorship. In Harold C. Hinton (Ed.). Government & Politics in Revolutionary China: Selected Documents, 1949-1979. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources Inc. Pages 3-8.

Document A: Page 6.

Whitehead, Raymond L. (1977). Love and Struggle in Mao’s Thought. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books.

Document F: Page 97.
