In 1952 Mao set out the general line of policy
to be followed. China was in a period of transi-
tion, from the foundation of what was now
called the People’s Republic to the socialist trans-
formation of agriculture, industry and handi-
crafts, to be accomplished ‘step by step over a
fairly long period of time’. The priorities were to
increase production, to raise standards of living,
and to strengthen China’s defences. Liu Shaoqui
announced at the Eighth Party Congress in 1956
that the transition to socialism had been largely
accomplished and would be completed over the
next decade.
During the early years of Mao’s rule China
conducted itself aggressively on the international
stage. In 1950–1, it claimed sovereignty over
Tibet, overcoming local resistance with great bru-
tality. The US developed an implacable hostility to
China and maintained its support for Chiang Kai-
shek in Taiwan. The outbreak of the Korean War
opened another front, when Mao, overriding his
more cautious advisers, decided on China’s inter-
vention in November 1950. Isolated from the
West, China had no alternative but to align itself
with the Soviet Union. The Korean War imposed
huge strains and sacrifices on China, and until the
armistice was signed at Panmunjon in July 1953,
Mao had to restrain his revolutionary drive.
When planning began in 1953 to increase
China’s industrial base, the Soviet model was
adopted. The Russians provided assistance and
sent 10,000 engineers to work with the Chinese
while three times that number of Chinese were
accepted for training in the Soviet Union. Plants,
machinery and technical designs all came from
Russia. The emphasis was on the expansion of
energy supplies and heavy industry – iron and
steel mills, electricity power stations, machine-
tool factories. In all, 156 projects were sponsored
by the Soviet Union. Without this help China’s
modernisation of industry would have been far
slower. America’s Marshall Aid to Europe likewise
accelerated the recovery and prosperity of
Western Europe, but it came in the form of loans
and grants that enabled the Europeans to import
from the US what they needed. Soviet aid came
in the form of people, training and technology,
but the Chinese had to pay for them. The Soviet
Union needed capital for its own reconstruction
and its loans to China were small. But the joint
Soviet–Chinese companies that had been estab-
lished were not a success. Mao insisted on com-
plete Chinese sovereignty and they were dissolved
in 1954 after Stalin’s death.
Just as the First Five-Year Plan was getting
under way, Mao bypassed the central party lead-
ership and in 1955 began his long campaign to
transform China’s independent landowning peas-
antry into collectivised socialist workers on the
land. Despite vicissitudes, Mao never abandoned
that aim and had substantially achieved it by the
time of his death. But the cost to China was huge.
The famines that followed alone caused some 20
million deaths.
Mao’s plans for collectivisation illustrate his
determination to build socialism with Chinese
characteristics. The peasant continued to own his
home and, in less radical phases, small plots – but
the rest of the land and all the labour were col-
lectivised in three tiers. The bottom tier was
called the production team, perhaps a village of
thirty or forty families. Everything was pooled and
the earnings of the team shared out between
them. A larger collectivised unit was the produc-
tion brigade, made up of several production
teams. Production brigades together formed the
collectives. Whether earnings would be accounted
for and distributed at the production team,
brigade or collective level depended on Mao’s
decree and varied with different phases of more
or less radical policies.
The better-off ‘middle peasants’ were reluctant
to cooperate with the poorer, and the production
of rice and soya beans, staple Chinese foods,
scarcely kept pace with the country’s growing
population. For a short period the party blamed
the poor results not on Mao but on the over-hasty
setting up of the large cooperatives. Following the
Soviet model, the party leaders concluded, had led
to a lopsided development of heavy industry at the
expense of light industry and agriculture. From
1956 until early 1957 was a period of relaxation
and consolidation. The emphasis at the Eighth
Congress of the Communist Party in September
1956 was shifted from building socialism, which it
was claimed had been more or less accomplished,
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CONTINUOUS REVOLUTION 609
