Oliver Kinsley History Test How did industry and agriculture change? One the first ways the whole system of the agriculture and industry changed for china was due to the fact that Mao initiated the Land Reforms in the year of 1944. This consisted of the peasants regaining their land back from the landlords and the once favored landlords (in the time of the KM) were humiliated publicly and removed from their positions.
This changed the whole system due to the fact that the unlike before peasants were encouraged to denounced and discriminated against heir landlords, something that was forbidden prior to the land reforms. Furthermore peasants had gone from prisoners of the land to liberated people. Due to the change of the system (include new speak bitterness campaigns and people courts) the people felt more powerful and therefore were proactive about getting rid go the landlords. This resulted in three quarter of the landlords being executed by 1952.
The economic change caused there to be change to industry and agriculture. The link between this and my previous point is change to the system I. E. The way the country is run as a whole. The ICP brought in a number of new steps to tackle the economic problems China was faced with, these steps were put unlace to promote the growth of industry and agriculture. One of these steps included the state taking over all of the heavy industry and railways to try and make it more effective. In 1951 the Peoples Bank opening to replace many of the private banks.
This caused there to be a rapid fall in the inflation rates of the country. The rates had dropped form 1000% to 15%. This affected industry and agriculture due to the fact that the products of industry and labor I. E. Ropes or working hours were set at a fixed and very low price, to try and get the economy going again. This therefore caused people to get a lot less for their products compared to previous years. People were becoming less wealthy everyday due to theses price restrictions. Another effect on agriculture was as follows.
Due to the fact that China was not producing enough food for various reasons I. E. Bad weather they had to feed the people. This caused there to be a law passed that 2% or more of the harvest was to be given to the government to help solve the problem of lack of food. This was down at a very low price and often the rammers made a loss on their crop. This caused the peasants to sink into poverty (money wise) even further. Moreover due to the fact that the government was relatively new they did not have large amounts of starting capital.
This therefore meant that they had to tax the peasants large amounts to try and raise the money. All the factors put together caused the peasants to become so poor they could not support themselves no matter how hard they worked. Year plan. The link between this and my previous point was trying to get the agricultural and industrial economy going by increasing efficiency. This five year plan was brought in in 1953 and finished in 1957. The plan mainly focused on agricultural and industrial change. The areas that the plan concentrated on was coal and steel.
The main reason why the five year plan was initiated was due to the fact that Mao wanted to boost the efficiency of the county was a whole (this is the link with my previous point) An example of the change was over 700 new power plants were built in central China. This meant that China was becoming an industrialized country and therefore had the ability to become more and more powerful the more industrialist t became. China wanted to become a main player at the geopolitical table and via industrialization. Another effect of the plan was to boost production at a rapid pace.
For example coal production increased from 63. 5 million tones in 1952 to 124 million tones in 1957. Plus the economy grew by over 9%, this caused China to become even more powerful. Due to the fact that the peasants were not a very effective workforce the government had to do something about it. This therefore caused there to be huge change in agriculture due to the fact that the peasants are now forced’ to work soother as a-pose to working as individuals as they had previously done in the past. China initiated the larger Cooperatives.
These consisted of over 200-500 families working together to ensure huge amounts of crop were produced. By 1956 most areas of China were subjected to Cooperatives. This changed the whole financial system that China was run on. For example the government did not pay rent to peasants for using their land and they were only paid for their products not of their labor I. E. If there was a bad harvest they got nothing. This as very different to previous years. But there are some positive changes. Due to the fact large amounts of people are working together they were given better equipment and Five stock.
It was not Just farming elite that was changed but also family life. Family now came second and it was now the responsibility for everyone to look after everyone’s children. Overall the land reforms and Cooperatives caused the peasants to be even less well off and more restricted as everything was now saw controlled. The next change that took place was the Great Leap Forward. This took place in 1958. The link between this and my previous point is state controlled enterprise. Mao ecocide to initiate the GOLF due to the fact that he thought sate controlled enterprise would help the industry and agriculture.
He used the GOLF as an opportunity to use propaganda to improve production. This was done by loudspeakers placed on the edges of fields and roads. Effectively people lives were now controlled fully by the star even their minds were at liberty to the star a big change. There are huge changes to industry due to the GOLF. One of these examples was that new higher and unreachable targets are stated for the predication of steel. This caused there to be another big change. Over 11 million tones of steel was produced due to over 600,000 back yards steel furnaces being produced.
This had very bad consequences. Due to the fact that the people put all their metal supplies into the furnace they were left with nothing. This would have been okay if the steel was fit for use as the could have made new pots, pans and beds etc. The steel however was not fit for use and to the fact that onto of being poor and prisoners of of the land once again they literally owned nothing. To conclude industry and agriculture changed due to the fact that it became more and more communist as time when on.
From land being given back to the peasants, to small cooperatives turning into cooperatives congaing 500 people where everyone was every child’s mother, to finally state controlled industry with propaganda being echoed on every street corner. The people went to free peasants to prisoners once again. Dare I say it in the end due to all these changes they are back where they started in the fit place. So to conclude there were changed but in the end nothing changed. They are still poor and prisoner of the land no different to the time of the land lords. Infant they were most probably worse off.
