China: The Asian Civilization - The Wise World Traveler: Becoming a Part of All that You Meet - page 248

THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CHINA: EARLY YEARS
China's new regime was modeled on Soviet Russia: the Communist Party as master of the
state; a hierarchy of rulers with ultimate power in the hands of the Party Chairman (ini-
tially, Chairman Mao); the Politburo as the topmost bureaucracy; a rubber stamp People's
Congress; secrecy surrounding officialdom; and suppression of dissent. In historic irony,
the Communists had replicated Imperial China: all power at the top of a vast pyramid that
rested on a base of illiterate peasants.
The new regime began to nationalize all commercial enterprises and all agricultural
production. A tight and far-reaching system of social control was achieved by organizing
all adults into local work units (the danwei system). Controlled by local Party officials but
answerable to those above, the danwei assigned living units and work. It gave or with-
held approval on matters large and small: education of the young, travel requests, mar-
riage arrangements, and permission to change residence. Those denounced as enemies of
the people were humiliated in public “struggle sessions,” forced to confess to misdeeds
and “bad” thoughts. Former landlords, former officials, and “social parasites” (i.e., wealthy
families, classical scholars) were “reeducated”—reeducated by hard work in agricultural
communes, experiencing firsthand the foundations of China's traditional agriculture: the
hoe, wheelbarrow, and the use of human excrement for fertilizer. [223]
Chairman Mao Reigns
Obey Orders…Do not
take a single needle or thread
from the masses…Speak politely…
— Chairman Mao, The Little Red Book
After a decade as supreme ruler, Mao became impatient with China's economic pro-
gress: its rural poverty, its decrepit factories, and its failure to outshine the Soviet Union.
The Great Leap Forward (1958-62) was an attempt to catapult industry upward by forcing
the rural population to work harder in fields and factories. Farms were collectivized and
crop quotas assigned. Communal kitchens were set up to free women for industrial pro-
duction, most of which was small scale. Farmers melted down pots and pans to make steel
in backyard furnaces. To meet quotas, machinery was operated without taking time for re-
pairs, and replacement parts were almost nonexistent. Collectivizing agriculture and shunt-
ing workers from farms to factories resulted in crop failure on so wide a scale that as many
as twenty (perhaps thirty) million died of starvation. Unwilling to take responsibility for
the disaster, the government blamed it on bad weather. Rulership, said an old proverb, is
like the weather. It comes from above.
The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) lasted longer than the Great
Leap, and its consequences were more disastrous. Mao's purposes were multiple: to