Title: Introduction to Chinese Cultural History / Slides / 6. PRC to 1966

Front: How are the early years of the PRC called and when were they?
Back: The Early Years (aka ”The Seventeen Years”) were in 1949-1966.

Front: What's a broad timeline of the early PRC years?
Back: - 1949 “The year of Liberation”; “New China”
- 1950–1952 Land Reform
- 1953–1957 First Five Year Plan
- 1956–1957 Hundred Flowers Campaign
- 1957 Anti-Rightist Movement
- 1958–1960 Great Leap Forward
- 1960 Sino-Soviet Split
- 1963–1965 Socialist Education Movement
- 1966 Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution begins

Front: What were some early changes in the PRC?
Back: - Abolition of time-zones established in Republican era > Beijing time
- New national currency: People’s Currency (renminbi) ⼈⺠币 (RMB). Basic unit: yuan (10 jiao, 100 fen)
- New system of government (Soviet model): dual “party-state” leadership: party bureaucracy (general secretary) + state bureaucracy (president/chairman). CCP also controls the Army (PLA)
- New rural organisations, e.g.: peasants associations
- Class division of the population

Front: In the early PRC years, what changed in terms of economy and welfare?
Back: - Collectivization of agriculture (land reform; tugai)
- Nationalization and state ownership of industries, banking system, commercial enterprises
- “work unit” (danwei) system
- “iron rice bowl” (tie fan wan): job security, wages, welfare, food, education

Front: What's the deal with religion in the early PRC?
Back: - 5 official religions recognized by CCP: Buddhism, Daoism, Islam, Protestantism, Catholicism
- Regulated by the state, had to be approved by the Religious Affairs Bureau and undertake reform against “feudal” elements
- Popular religion (ancestors worship, local cults, festivals) declared “feudal superstitions”, but no crackdown in early PRC, especially in minority ethnic groups (Tibet, Mongolia, Xinjiang)
- stronger repression starts late 1950s, e.g. confiscation of temple land and graveyards

Front: Name and describe the political campaign 1950–1951.
Back: 1950–1951 had the Campaign to Suppress Counter-revolutionaries (zhenfan/zhenya fangeming yundong):
- Hundreds of thousands of executions and over 2 million arrests
- Theatrical mass trials according to conventions of folk operas, where accused appeared as villains
- Targets: KMT members and agents, Japanese collaborators, bandits, religious leaders of millenarian societies

Front: Describe the Land Reform.
Back: Land Reform (tugai):
- China in 1949: 89% rural population (total population: 583 million),
- 1950 Agrarian Reform Law sanctions the nationwide implementation of land reform,
- confiscation of land from landlords, rich peasants, and capitalists,
- redistribution of land,
- collectivization of agriculture: cooperatives (200-300 households),
- 1954-1958: larger cooperatives called the People’s Communes (7000+ households).

Front: What is speaking bitterness?
Back: Practice of “speaking bitterness” (suku; denunciation of abuse, exploitation) and exposure of physical marks of “bitterness”, i.e. scars and bruises
E.g. The Red Detachment of Women (Xie Jin, 1960), set during land reform on Hainan Island.

Front: In the early PRC, describe the relationship to the Soviet Union.
Back: China and the Soviet Union:
- 1950 Sino-Soviet Friendship Treaty
- Sino-Soviet Friendship Association, large membership
- Economic aid
- “Soviet experts” (advisors) to China
- Institutional model for economy and culture
- Soviet culture (films, literature, theatre, art), translations, language classes
- First Five Year Plan 1953-57: Soviet model, emphasis on heavy industry (iron, steel, machinery, roads, infrastructure) and central planning

Front: In the early PRC, when was a Marriage Law instated and what was regulated?
Back: 1950 Marriage Law:
- Banning of foot-binding, concubinage, polygamy, matchmaking, arranged/forced marriages, under-age marriages (establishment of age of consent, 20 for men; 18 for women)
- Right to divorce
- Matchmakers still strong in the countryside; free love and marriage worked in the cities
- "the Marriage Law inserted the authority of the new state into the heart of family and community decision-making” (Smith)

Front: Women in the PRC: what changed?
Back: - Improvement of legal, economic, educational, and social status
- Increase in female employment
- Improvement in healthcare for women and children, reduction of maternal and infant mortality
- but no population control; promotion of contraception only in the 1960s
- Moral puritanism and socialist rhetoric of gender equality:
- “what men can do, women can too”
- “women hold up half the sky”
- “iron girl” model
- But no women in CCP Politburo (afterwards: limited inclusion) (2022 CCP congress, no women in Politburo for 1st time in 25 years)
- Women in lower-skilled, lower paid jobs
- Domestic labour still a woman’s domain

Front: What films are "Red Classics" with strong fremale heroines?
Back: - Five Golden Flowers (1959)
- Third Sister Liu (1960)
- Li Shuangshuang (1962)
- Stage Sisters (1964)
New films with strong female heroines who dare to criticize their husbands (protected by Marriage Law!), e.g. Li Shuangshuang: protagonist denounces village men (incl. husband) for corruption (“model socialist woman”)
Link woman/nation continues: films featuring female heroines who “convert” to the revolution, usually guided by a man (=CCP). Stage Sisters: rare case of woman not being led by man in becoming model socialist citizen

Front: Describe Education in the Early PRC.
Back: - 8 out of 10 people considered illiterate (less than 1500 characters) in 1949
- Improvement in education and creation of new public schools
- simplification of writing system and introduction of pinyin romanisation
- “politicization of literacy teaching” (Smith) through slogans, propaganda, study groups

Front: Describe Early PRC Cultural Reform.
Back: - Mao’s 1942 Yan’an Talks as official guidance for art and literature: production of art and culture that served the masses (workers-peasants-soldiers; gong nong bing)
- Link mass culture-nation-building
- Ban on “feudal” and “capitalist” culture, i.e. “old society entertainers” and commercial entertainment industry of pre-1949 era, dance halls, amusement parks
- Emphasis on folk culture (folk songs, regional operas) and visual culture (theatre, films, posters, woodcuts, cartoons, picture storybooks) to disseminate new ideology
- Mobilization of artists, writers, filmmakers to propagate new CCP ideology and policies
- Use of mobile film projection teams and itinerant performing arts troupes (dissemination)

Front: What are new cultural institutions in the early PRC?
Back: - Chinese Writer’s Association/Union (Zhongguo zuojia xiehui), controlled by CCP, membership necessary to publish
- Ministry of Culture (Wenhuabu)
- CCP Propaganda Department (now: Publicity Department; Zhongxuanbu; abbreviation of Zhongyang xuanchuan bu)
- Nationalization of publishing and distribution system
- new national network of Xinhua (“New China”) bookstores in control of distribution
- New newspapers, journals, magazines:
  - People’s Daily (Renmin ribao)
  - Literature and Arts (Wenyi bao)
  - People’s Literature (Renmin wenxue)

Front: What did May Fourth intellectuals do after the founding of the PRC?
Back: Most intellectuals of May Fourth / leftist Shanghai background chose to remain in China
- Their background (bourgeois, wealthy) raised suspicion in the CCP but the CCP also needed them
- Many were subjected to “thought reform” (sixiang gaizao) and were taught Marxism-Leninism in the early 1950s
3 main groups/choices/directions (Perry Link, The Uses of Literature):
1. Those who stopped writing
2. Those who turned to translation
3. Those who attempted to write according to new orthodoxy of socialist realism

Front: What is Socialist Realism?
Back: Socialist Realism (shehuizhuyi xianshi zhuyi):
- Official theory of literary and artistic creation in the Soviet Union since the 1930s
- 1953 officially adoption in the PRC with inclusion of the term in revised version of Mao’s Talks at the Yan’an Forum on Literature and Art
  - Didacticism, instructional purpose
  - Literature and art instrumental and subordinate to politics and ideology
  - No negative aspects of society; emphasis on positive and optimistic outlook and improvements brought by CCP
  - Dominance of Marxist, class-based interpretative frameworks
- Redefined in late-50s China as “combination of revolutionary realism and revolutionary romanticism” (2RR)

Front: What are representative literary works of socialist realism?
Back: Fiction:
- Ding Ling: The Sun Shines Over the Sanggan River, 1951
- Zhao Shuli: Sanliwan, 1955
- Yang Mo: Song of Youth, 1958
Drama:
- Lao She: Dragon Beard Ditch (1951)
- Lao She: Teahouse (1957)

Front: There was a political campaign starting out in 1956: how is it called, and how is the follow-up campaign called?
Back: The campaign was the 1956–1957 Hundred Flowers Campaign (baihua yundong) and the follow-up was the Anti-Rightist Campaign (fanyou yundong).

Front: What is the Hundred Flowers Campaign?
Back: - 1956: Mao invites criticism of the CCP: “Let a hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred schools contend”
- (Baihua qifang, baijia zhengming)
- Complaints about hierarchies and privileges, lack of freedom in literary expression, thought reform
- “Who runs the country…the Party or the government?”
- “Which is superior, the Party or the law?”
- Return to May-Fourth-style critical realism
- Taken aback, Mao speaks of “contradictions between ourselves and the internal enemy”

Front: What's the Anti-Rightist Campaign?
Back: The response to the criticism uttered in the Hundred Flowers campaign:
- 1957: Launches Anti-Rightist Campaign
- against “bourgeois liberalism”
- violent, mass-scale persecution of over 1 million “rightists” and “dissidents” (artists, writers, CCP members),
- hard labour, re-education camps in remote areas,
- Ding Ling (Stalin Prize for literature), chicken farm, rehabilitated 22 years later,
- Hu Feng: 22 years in prison and labour camp,
- Zhang Xianliang: labour camp memoir Grass Soup.

Front: Who is Lao She?
Back: Lao She (1899–1966):
- Pseudonym of Shu Qingchun, Manchu family, father died in Boxer Rebellion
- Prolific author of novels (Mr Ma and Son, Cat Country, Camel Xiangzi/Rickshaw Boy), short stories, plays (Dragon Beard Ditch, Teahouse), essays
- Lived and worked in London (1924–29) and Singapore (1929–30); period in the US (1946–1949)

Front: What's Teahouse?
Back: A play by Lao She:
- Published in 1957 during the Hundred Flowers Campaign
- Staged in Beijing in 1958 between end of Anti-Rightist Campaign (director Jiao Juyin was a target) and beginning of Great Leap Forward
- “Beijing-style” realism
- History of modern China through story of a Beijing teahouse
- ”Burying the old eras”
- But falls short of celebrating ”New China”
- Evidence of complexity of literary field despite censorship and official prescription of socialist realism
- Changes in 1958 and again in 1963 due to rapidly changing politics

Front: When and how did Lao She die?
Back: 1966: driven to suicide by persecution, beating, and public humiliation (“bloody August”)

Front: When was the Great Leap Forward?
Back: 1958–1960: The Great Leap Forward (da yuejin)

Front: What was the Great Leap Forward?
Back: - A campaign to double agricultural and industrial production.
- Focus on heavy industry and land reclamation projects.

Front: What are two political slogans used during the Great Leap Forward?
Back: - “Walking on two legs”
- “Surpass Britain and catch up with the USA”

Front: What were political measures during the Great Leap Forward?
Back: - Establishment of People’s Communes (renmin gongshe):
  - 7,200+ households
  - communal working and living
  - commune schools (applied learning)
- Backyard furnaces
- The "Four Pests" Campaign

Front: How did People's Communes, Backyard Furnaces and the Four Pests Campaign go?
Back: Terribly:
- waste of metal: useless, sub-standard iron from backyard furnaces
- waste of grains in the communes
- unrealistic production quotas > falsification of data, local cadres’ confiscation of grains from (starving) farmers
- deforestation, overplanting, ecological imbalance and failing of harvests because of elimination of “four pests”

Front: Despite the unsuccessful campaigns in the Great Leap Forward, what further worsened the situation?
Back: - withdrawal of Soviet aid and experts in 1959-60 due to Sino-Soviet Split (1960)
- natural disasters

Front: With the political campaigns of the Great Leap forward, how did the situation develop further?
Back: • 1958: beginning of rural famine, not reported
• Defence Minister Peng Dehuai (PLA general, Long March veteran) warns of “winds of exaggeration”, criticism suppressed
• July 1959: Lushan Plenum: Mao labels Peng Dehuai as “counter-revolutionary” (house arrest); Lin Biao (1907–1971) as new Defence Minister
• 1959-1961: The Great Chinese Famine (san nian da jihuang)
• Reports of cannibalism, at least 30 million dead (over 50 million?), deadliest famine in history, esp. Anhui, Chongqing, Sichuan
• Famine also in Tibet, 1959 Tibetan Uprising, Dalai Lama forced to flee to India
• 1961–1964: Mao’s withdrawal from active policymaking and new pragmatic leadership: Liu Shaoqi (President) and Deng Xiaoping

Front: How did Liu Shaoqi explain the famine years?
Back: “three parts natural disasters, seven parts man-made catastrophe”

Front: What's the name of the red book and where was it first distributed?
Back: Quotations of Chairman Mao is first distributed in the PLA and later becomes a big thing in the personality cult.