How did mao change the face of
How did mao change the face ofHow far did Mao Ze Dong change the face of China?
As China emerged from a half century of revolution as the world's most populous nation and launched itself on a path of economic development and social
change, Mao Zedong, its principal revolutionary thinker and for many years its unchallenged leader, occupied a critical place in the story of the country's resurgence. To be sure, he did not play a dominant role throughout the whole struggle. In the early years of the Chinese Socialist Party, he was a secondary figure, though by no means a negligible one, and even after the 1940s (except perhaps during the Cultural Revolution) the crucial decisions were not his alone. Nevertheless, looking at the whole period from the foundation of the Chinese Socialist Party in 1921 to Mao's death in 1976, one can fairly regard Mao Zedong as the principal architect of the new China.
Recovery from War 1949-52
In 1949 China's economy was suffering from the debilitating effects of decades of warfare. Many mines and factories had been damaged or destroyed. At the end of the war with Japan in 1945, Soviet troops had dismantled about half the machinery in the major industrial areas of the northeast and shipped it to the Soviet Union. Transportation, communication, and power systems had been destroyed or had deteriorated because of lack of maintenance. Agriculture was disrupted, and food production was some 30 percent below its highest pre-war level. Further, economic deficites were compounded by one of the most virulent inflations in world history.
The main aim the government under the leadership of Mao was to restore the economy to normal working order. The administration moved quickly to repair
transportation and communication links and revive the flow of economic activity. The banking system was nationalized and centralized under the People's Bank of
China. To bring inflation under control by 1951, the government unified the monetary system, tightened credit, restricted government budgets at all levels and put them under central control, and guaranteed the value of the currency. Commerce was stimulated and partially regulated by the establishment of state trading companies (commercial departments), which competed with private traders in purchasing goods from producers and selling them to consumers or enterprises. Transformation of ownership in industry proceeded slowly. About a third of the country's enterprises had been under state control while the Guomindang government was in power (1927-49), as was much of the modernized transportation sector. The Chinese Communist Party immediately made these units state-owned enterprises upon taking power in 1949.
In agriculture a major change in landownership was carried out. Under a nationwide land reform program, titles to about 45 percent of the arable land were
redistributed from landlords and more prosperous farmers to the 60 to 70 percent of farm families that previously owned little or no land. Most of...
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