MAO’S CHINA 1949-76- HISTORIANS
QUOTES
Korean war
o Philip Short on the death of Mao’s son Anying in the Korean war- ‘the one
remaining human bond capable of invoking in Mao a deep and personal
loyalty was severed’
What was the motivation behind 100 flowers campaign?
o Jung Chang and Jon Halliday - ‘a devious plan’ to ‘set a trap’
o Han Sunyin, supporter of regime in 1976- ‘deliberate strategy by Mao’ to
remove enemies of communism
o Mao himself claimed it was a trap, he had ‘enticed the snakes out of their
caves’
o In 1990, Jonathan Spence argued- Mao launched the campaign out of a sense
of security, feeling triumphant at early successes of regime and secure enough
to be less authoritarian, wanting to ‘instill the idea of flexibility and openness
into govt’
Lee Feigon- the campaign was an effort to ‘change the political
environment’ ‘to stimulate innovation and initiative’
o Philip Short- campaign ‘was not’ a ‘carefully contrived trap from the start’
nor was it a ‘colossal blunder’ as most western scholars argue
instead, Short says Mao ‘misjudged the volume and bitterness of the
criticisms’
Land reform
o Jonathan Fenby- ‘in this reordering of the rural world, peasants whose
families had lived on or below the margin for generations got their revenge on
those who had oppressed them’
o Frank Dikotter- suggests CCP activists sometimes found it difficult to
penetrate prevailing Confucian attitudes and to shift old social structures and
patterns
‘the challenge was that none of these artificial class distinctions
actually corresponded to the social landscape of the village’ ‘where
most farmers often lived in roughly the same conditions’
o Philip Short on agrarian land reform- ‘peasants now wedded to the new
revolutionary order’
Great famine
o Chang and Halliday blame Mao for bringing ‘utter misery’ and ordering grain
requisitioning when ‘he knew perfectly well that the peasants had no food to
hide’
o Jin Xiaoding- blames exaggerated info given to Mao by local party cadres ,
causing him to believe that harvests made high grain requisitioning possible
Jin admits may have been bad judgement but states that ‘bad
judgement is not the same as starving people to death’
Cultural revolution
o ‘Learn from’ campaigns- Historian Patricia Buckley-Ebrey noted ‘tales of
individuals who exemplified extremely virtuous or self-sacrificing behaviour
formed a regular part of moral education’
QUOTES
Korean war
o Philip Short on the death of Mao’s son Anying in the Korean war- ‘the one
remaining human bond capable of invoking in Mao a deep and personal
loyalty was severed’
What was the motivation behind 100 flowers campaign?
o Jung Chang and Jon Halliday - ‘a devious plan’ to ‘set a trap’
o Han Sunyin, supporter of regime in 1976- ‘deliberate strategy by Mao’ to
remove enemies of communism
o Mao himself claimed it was a trap, he had ‘enticed the snakes out of their
caves’
o In 1990, Jonathan Spence argued- Mao launched the campaign out of a sense
of security, feeling triumphant at early successes of regime and secure enough
to be less authoritarian, wanting to ‘instill the idea of flexibility and openness
into govt’
Lee Feigon- the campaign was an effort to ‘change the political
environment’ ‘to stimulate innovation and initiative’
o Philip Short- campaign ‘was not’ a ‘carefully contrived trap from the start’
nor was it a ‘colossal blunder’ as most western scholars argue
instead, Short says Mao ‘misjudged the volume and bitterness of the
criticisms’
Land reform
o Jonathan Fenby- ‘in this reordering of the rural world, peasants whose
families had lived on or below the margin for generations got their revenge on
those who had oppressed them’
o Frank Dikotter- suggests CCP activists sometimes found it difficult to
penetrate prevailing Confucian attitudes and to shift old social structures and
patterns
‘the challenge was that none of these artificial class distinctions
actually corresponded to the social landscape of the village’ ‘where
most farmers often lived in roughly the same conditions’
o Philip Short on agrarian land reform- ‘peasants now wedded to the new
revolutionary order’
Great famine
o Chang and Halliday blame Mao for bringing ‘utter misery’ and ordering grain
requisitioning when ‘he knew perfectly well that the peasants had no food to
hide’
o Jin Xiaoding- blames exaggerated info given to Mao by local party cadres ,
causing him to believe that harvests made high grain requisitioning possible
Jin admits may have been bad judgement but states that ‘bad
judgement is not the same as starving people to death’
Cultural revolution
o ‘Learn from’ campaigns- Historian Patricia Buckley-Ebrey noted ‘tales of
individuals who exemplified extremely virtuous or self-sacrificing behaviour
formed a regular part of moral education’
