Microsoft Word

The History Of China The Great Leap Forward And Culture Revolution
Student’s Name: Ziyi Xu
Tutor’s Name: Ellie Ristic
Submission Date: 25 Nov, 2014
Word count: 618 words

Since 1949, Mao created People Republic of China, he became a leader in almost 27 years. The establishment of new China marks the opening of a new age.
With the establishment of People's Republic of China, Mao Zedong outlining general goals and main course for transforming China from agricultural country to industrial, and from new-democratic society to socialist. In the main time Mao also set up foreign relationships with other country. The reason why Mao was doing this is because to reached the goal of Chinese's First Five-Year Plan, which was to strive for a high rate of economic growth and emphasize development in heavy industry and technology rather than agriculture.
It is worth mentioning is the Second Five-Year Plan, which was from 1956 to 1966. In this period, Mao realized the Soviet model of industrial development was not working in China, therefore he outlined the Second five-year plan (1958-1962). Unlike the First five-year plan, Mao decided not only focus on heavy industry but also light industry, like consumer goods and agriculture output etc. Mao was leading a campaign to rapidly increased China's industrial output by encourage the country's vast rural peasantry. This campaign was called the Great Leap Forward. This campaign was to achieve rapid increases in China's industrial production, Mao hoped to used human-power to " surpass England and catch up to the United States", but the expectation was too high and broke the balance of the economy. The Great Leap Forward set up a counsel production goal, and the harvests was vastly exaggerated. Mao encouraged people to make their own pots, pans and farm implements into usable steel which was wrong and worthless. This caused a massive environment damage in China. The land damage cause from the backyard steel production plan, and could not get a good agricultural output. But the local government leader wanted to curry favor with the Communist leadership, they fake their number in a impractical way. Therefore government take most of the food to serve the cities' share and leave the farmers with nothing to eat. People who live in the countryside began to starve. Living under the disastrous economic policy, a lot of people died in the countryside. This called Great Chinese Famine.
After suffer from Great Leap Forward and Great Chinese Famine, Mao decide the Third five-year plan should get people the basic things they needed like clothing and foods. In the last ten years Mao hold the power of the government, he made the biggest mistake in his life. With the age increased, his conscious mind has slowed down, he made a development strategy which can make the economic backset 10 years. Mao toke his wife Jiang Qing's advice set a revolution against bourgeois culture - a cultural revolution. The Red Guards was composed of a mount of young people, workers and soldiers. They wanted to get off the Four olds, old customs, old culture, old habits and old ideas. They made Buddhist temples, churches and mosques razed to the ground or converted to other uses. They burned Confucian writings, religious statues and other artwork. Any object associated with China's pre-revolutionary past was liable to be destroyed. This revolution made the already weakened China's economy more badly, and bring harsh effects to China. Because of this revolution the school was all closed, the person did not have a higher education, and even worse they destroyed country's great and ancient culture.
In summary, During Mao's stage, although people been through a very difficult time like the Great Leap Forward and Culture Revolution which are unsuccessful strategies, people still think Mao is a great leader. Because he liberated China, help people out of the suffered from the war and hunger.