136 China in World History
agricultural produce based on a work-point system administered by the
village head, who was now a representative of the Communist Party.
The state bought the rest of the produce at whatever price it set.
One of the fi rst acts of the new government in 1950 was to issue its
New Marriage Law, which forbade arranged marriages and awarded
women the rights to divorce and to inherit property. Equally momen-
tous was the move of the Chinese Communist Party to promote the
legitimacy of women working outside the home and to facilitate that
work by providing child care. Even in the early twentieth century, to
be employed outside the home was seen by many as shameful for a
woman. With their own incomes, women gained more infl uence over
family decisions and more independence than ever before.
In the early 1950s, the Communist Party also took control of the
urban economy, with less violence than in the countryside but with
equal thoroughness. Former capitalists who cooperated with the Party
were allowed to remain as state-employed managers of the enterprises
they once owned. Many capitalists and Nationalist Party members fl ed
to Taiwan or the British colony of Hong Kong, escaping persecution
and leaving their factories and properties behind. Private commerce and
private enterprise were effectively outlawed.
Party chairman Mao and state premier Zhou Enlai traveled to Mos-
cow in early 1950 to negotiate a treaty of friendship and to secure Soviet
aid in China’s modernization. As a result, 20,000 Chinese young people
went to the Soviet Union for training, and the Soviets sent 10,000 sci-
entists and engineers to China to give technical aid and advice in the
building of new roads, dams, bridges, and factories.
The United States realized the Communist revolution in China rep-
resented a stunning defeat for American foreign policy, but the Tru-
man administration concluded by the late 1940s that Chiang Kai-shek
had completely lost the support of the Chinese people and no longer
deserved American aid. In 1950, as Communist military forces were
preparing to invade Taiwan and fi nish the civil war once and for all,
the U.S. government was reconciled to watching the last chapter of the
Chinese civil war from the sidelines. The Korean War abruptly changed
all that.
After Japan’s surrender in 1945, Korea, which had been a Japa-
nese colony since 1910, had been divided and occupied by Soviet forces
north and American forces south of the 38th parallel. Near the end of
World War II, the United States had agreed to this in order to enlist
Soviet help to hasten the defeat of Japan. Kim Il-sung, the Communist
leader of North Korea, was determined not to tolerate a permanently