China since 1949: The communists in control

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1949 was the turning point because Mao Zedong’s communist forces defeated the Kuomintang and took control of China. The new government then began rebuilding a country damaged by civil war and war with…

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China was devastated by war, with damaged railways, roads, canals and dykes, chronic food shortages, backward industry, inefficient agriculture and runaway inflation. The country also had a huge popul…

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The 1950 constitution created a strong central system under Communist Party control. It included the National People's Congress, the State Council and the Chairman of the Republic, but real power stay…

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Communes were large units bigger than collective farms, containing up to 75,000 people. They combined farming, local government and small-scale industry, and were meant to mobilize labour and increase…

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Land was first taken from large landowners and redistributed to peasants, and by 1956 about 95 per cent of surviving peasants were in collective farms. This shifted Chinese agriculture from small priv…

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Jack Gray argued in 1970 that land redistribution was carried out with attention to legality and minimum violence. This shows the official-style optimistic view of the reform, though later archival ev…

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It described extreme brutality, including people being buried alive, executed, cut to pieces, strangled or mangled to death, and bodies hung from trees or doors. It shows that land reform involved sev…

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The Hundred Flowers Campaign was a 1957 campaign in which Mao encouraged open criticism with the call, 'Let a hundred flowers bloom and a hundred schools of thought contend'. Criticism soon went too f…