IGCSE History

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• Introduction to IGCSE
• The Road to Affluence: USA 1917 - 1941 (A9)
  • 1917 - 1929
    • The impact of the First World War
    • Immigration
    • Henry Ford and mass production
    • Farming in the 1920s
    • The Stock Market Boom
  • 1929 - 1941
    • The Wall Street Crash
    • The Depression
    • The policies of Hoover
    • Roosevelt and the New Deal
    • Reactions to the New Deal
• International Relations 1919-1939 (A8)
  • Collective Security
    • The Versailles Settlement
    • The Foundation of the League of Nations
    • Strengths and weaknesses of the League of Nations
    • Successes and failures of the League of Nations
    • Locarno and the Kellogg-Briand Pact
  • Appeasement
    • Manchuria
    • The Disarmament Conference
    • Abyssinia
    • Hitler and the League
    • Appeasement in action
• Revolution in China 1949 - 1996 (A14)
  • 1949 - 1976
    • China under Mao
    • Reform under Liu and Deng
    • The reasons for the Cultural Revolution
    • The impact of the Cultural Revolution
    • China 1971 - 1976
  • 1976 - 1996
    • The defeat of the Gang of Four
    • China under Deng Xiaoping
    • Reforms of the economy
    • The Democracy Movement
    • China in the 1990s
• South-East Asia 1945 - 1900 (A15)
  • Indo-China
    • The end of the French Empire
    • Vietnam 1954 - 1965
    • US involvement in Vietnam
    • The unification of Vietnam
    • Laos and Cambodia
  • South-East Asia
    • The struggle for control of Malaya
    • The creation of Malaysia
    • Singapore
    • Suharto and Indonesia
    • Sukarno and Pancasila
• Conflict and Crisis is the Middle East 1946 - 1996 (A16)
  • Unit overview
  • 1946 - 1967
    • The creation of Israel
    • The impact of the war of 1948 - 1949
    • The Suez Crisis
    • Superpower involvement in the Middle East
    • The Six Day War
  • 1967 - 1996
    • International terrorism
    • The war of Yom Kippur
    • The Palestinian Liberation Organisation
    • Lebanon and the occupied territories
    • Successes and failures from Camp David to Oslo
• The First World War (B4)
  • The Schlieffen Plan
  • Deadlock on the Western Front
  • Gallipoli
  • The Somme and Passchendaele
  • The War at Sea
  • The defeat of Germany
• The USA 1917-1929 (B7)
  • The Roaring Twenties
  • Advertising and consumerism
  • New forms of entertainment
  • Prohibition
  • Gangsterism
  • Hollywood
• China under Mao Zedong 1949 - 1959 (B10)
  • The creation of the Communist State
  • Land Reform
  • Communist society
  • The First Five Year Pan
  • The 100 Flowers
  • The Great Leap Forward
• The Changing Nature of Warfare (C3)
  • Unit overview
  • Warfare at the beginning of the 20th Century
  • Land warfare
  • Sea and aerial warfare
  • Atomic and nuclear weapons
  • Warfare at the end of the 20th Century
• Links

The Communist State

From October 1949 Mao was the undisputed leader of The People’s Republic of China. He was President of China and also Chairman of the CCP. This meant that he controlled the government of China as well as the Chinese Communist Party. Of the two positions, it was the latter that was to be the more important. In China, it was the Communist Party that really mattered. It took all of the decisions, while the government simply enforced them.

China immediately became a one party state. All other parties were suppressed in a series of purges from 1950 to 1952, although a few small groups were allowed to survive. Possible rivals to Mao were dismissed from office. One, Gao Gang, even committed suicide. Anyone who showed any opposition to communism was labelled a counter-revolutionary or an imperialist. This became increasingly common. In fact any one who opposed the Party line, which was Mao’s line, was simply labelled a counter-revolutionary, whether or not this was actually true. To avoid accusations, Chinese increasingly tried to prove their loyalty by accusing others. This produced an atmosphere of suspicion and revenge.

Mao’s immediate aim was to gain control of the cities, where the GMD had been at its strongest. Mao instinctively distrusted city dwellers. He believed that the strength of the Party lay with the peasants in the countryside. Mao set out to destroy any remaining support for the GMD and ordered massacres of suspects. 65,000 people were killed in Guangzhou and 28,000 in Shanghai. All suspect organisations were closed down, including churches, and all religions were attacked. Mao believed that religion would undermine loyalty to the Communist Party, so all traditional Chinese religions, as well as other world religions were attacked. Maoist slogans began to appear on walls all over China for the first time. This became another way of spreading ideas. Posters were put on display to explain Mao’s aims. They rarely actually ‘explained’ anything. They just told people what was going to happen and what they were to do. Mao believed that if he shouted loud enough, people would do as they were told. He was right. In China there had never been a tradition of democracy. The Chinese people were accustomed to being told what to do and followed Mao’s orders almost without question.

In effect, therefore, Mao became a dictator. Even so, Mao realised that he had to offer the Chinese people something in return for their loyalty. In particular, he had to reward the peasants for the support that they had given to the CCP for the last thirty years. He also knew that there was only one thing that the peasants wanted and that was land.

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