IGCSE History

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• Conflict and Crisis is the Middle East 1946 - 1996 (A16)
  • Unit overview
  • 1946 - 1967
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• The USA 1917-1929 (B7)
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• China under Mao Zedong 1949 - 1959 (B10)
  • The creation of the Communist State
  • Land Reform
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  • The First Five Year Pan
  • The 100 Flowers
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• The Changing Nature of Warfare (C3)
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  • Warfare at the beginning of the 20th Century
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The first five year plan

At the same time as the attack on landlords, the CCP also brought the Chinese economy under control. By the early 1950s the economy faced severe problems. During the years of GMD domination, corruption had led to inflation and a devalued currency. This weakened central control. The military campaigns of the 1930s and 1940s had resulted in massive expenditure and debt. Somehow these had to be tackled. The Chinese population was also beginning to increase rapidly, in particular in the cities. From 1949 to 1957 the number of people living in Chinese cities increased from 57 millions to 100 millions. These posed the most serious problems. Not only was there the question of making sure that the cities were under effective CCP control, but these massive increases meant that food production had to increase because city dwellers could not feed themselves.

Mao set about tackling these problems. By 1952, inflation was down from 1000% to 15%. A new currency, the yuan, had been introduced, which stabilised public finances and restored confidence. Public expenditure had been reduced and taxes on city dwellers had been increased. Mao was assisted by plans that had been set up by Chiang before his flight to Taiwan. The GMD had already created a National Resources Committee and 200,000 of its workers had stayed in China. This was the background for the First Five Plan. Without the aid of the infrastructure set up by the GMD, Mao would have found his task much more difficult.

Despite all of the efforts of the GMD and the CCP, China had remained a mainly agricultural country with few industries. Mao’s solution was a period of rapid industrial expansion similar to that the Stalin had set up in the 1930s in the Soviet Union. The First Five Year Plan was aimed at rapid industrial growth, which would enable China to develop quickly. The main areas of concentration were coal, steel and petro-chemicals.

In almost all respects the First Five Year Plan was a success. Economic growth ran at 9% per annum during the five years. Most targets were achieved, with the notable exceptions of oil and merchant ships. National expenditure rose from 6,810 million yuan in 1952 to 29,020 million yuan in 1957. However, most investment was concentrated in 150 large projects, which meant that much of Chinese industry was left untouched.

Significantly, however, the success of the First Five Year Plan was to some extent due to the presence of 10,000 advisers from Soviet Russia. These had been sent by Stalin and remained after his death in 1953. These were almost the last examples of Soviet influence in China. Mao believed that Chinese communism should be based on agricultural communes and not on the urban workers, as Marx and Lenin had stated. In addition, Mao had a deep suspicion of ‘technology experts and scientists’ and believed that the Chinese people could triumph because of their sheer numerical strength. Mao’s determination to put these ideas into practice and to reject other alternatives for modernisation was to prove disastrous in the later 1950s and 1960s.

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