first four years of communist rule some three-
quarters of a million enemies, principally landown-
ers, were summarily executed. Four-fifths of
China’s population lived in the countryside, so
Mao was making sure that they would view the
revolution favourably: this was the first step
towards their mass indoctrination. To this end
Mao allowed the landlords’ holdings to be divided
up among the peasants – a step backwards from
his ideal of a socialised peasantry.
The redistribution of land after 1950 gave the
peasants what they most hungered after. Their
tiny holdings, although still meagre, were on
average doubled or trebled in size. The richer
peasants, the so-called ‘middle peasants’, bene-
fited the most. The extortion of taxes was abol-
ished and a more just system introduced. Before
the road to communism could be taken, China’s
industrial strength had to be built up and greater
yields obtained from the land. The Chinese head
of state, Liu Shaoqui, declared these to be the
country’s basic policy aims; Mao, chairman of the
party and the undisputed overall leader of China,
was prepared until the mid-1950s to bide his time
before driving the revolution on. From 1949 to
1955 the party preached harmony (except for its
hostility towards feudal landlords and agents of
Chiang Kai-shek). In the cities private enterprise
and ownership were allowed to persist in a mixed
economy, while in the vast rural areas socialist
schemes were brought in gradually and were
always voluntary. The peasant owned his land, but
‘mutual aid teams’ introduced shared labour and
shared use of animals and equipment, and a
number of cooperatives were formed. The most
urgent task in 1949 was reconstruction. For this
the professionals, the engineers, the businessmen
and the owners of factories in the newly liberated
areas were for the time being indispensable, and
they were provided with the class label of
‘national bourgeoisie’.
Mao’s China in 1949 proclaimed not a com-
munist republic but the People’s Democratic
Dictatorship. Democratic did not mean that the
proletariat would be supreme in the state; rather,
it meant that the four classes of peasants, workers,
petty bourgeoisie and the national bourgeoisie
would work together under the leadership of the
party to bring about China’s recovery. How long
this apparent harmony would be allowed to con-
tinue only Mao knew. While he presided over an
apparently cohesive central party committee,
allowing his principal lieutenants wide-ranging
debate over different policy options and acting as
chairman, receiving advice from different quar-
ters, his deeper purpose was revealed by his inces-
sant discovery of new contradictions, his stirring
up of new conflicts. In 1951 he launched a cam-
paign against the ‘three evils’ of corruption, waste
and bureaucracy among the local communist
cadres, its purpose being to increase central
control and keep local party officials on their toes.
The following year was added a campaign against
the ‘five evils’; this time the masses were aroused
against the ‘bourgeoisie’ in a struggle to eradicate
bribery of government officials, tax evasion, theft
of state property, cheating on government con-
tracts and speculation. In this way private indus-
trial and commercial enterprises were constantly
threatened. Mao’s revolution fed on fear, intimi-
dation and denunciation – three genuine evils of
the system.
Nevertheless, the first years of communist rule
also brought about genuine improvements for
most of the Chinese people. The cessation of
fighting and destruction was the greatest and most
immediate. There was also a measure of mass ide-
alism, as the people acted together to improve
conditions. This was most noticeable in the cities,
where neighbourhood groups organised by party
officials tackled the sanitation systems and spread
poison to get rid of the rats, carriers of disease.
Life on the land and in the factories was made
more congenial. One measure of success was a
dramatic fall in the mortality rate. After the
ruinous inflation of the Kuomintang years, prices
had become stable. Living standards, especially of
the poorest peasants, had risen. In the cities
unemployment was halved, attendance at school
and college nearly doubled; cholera and plagues
had been brought under control. The gross
output of industry was one and a half times greater
in 1952 than it had been in 1949; agricultural
output, on which the country depended, was up
by half. Roads and railway lines were constructed.
These were the considerable accomplishments.