History of China (1949–1976)

The First Plenary Session of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) opened in Beijing on September 21, 1949. It consisted of 662 delegates from diverse backgrounds, including the CPC, various democratic parties, people's organizations, the People's Liberation Army, different ethnic groups, and overseas Chinese. In his opening speech, Mao Zedong famously proclaimed that "the Chinese people, comprising one-quarter of humanity, have now stood up." The conference also made several historic decisions regarding the symbols of the new republic: it designated Beijing as the capital, adopted the Gregorian calendar, selected the Five-Star Red Flag as the national flag and "March of the Volunteers" as the provisional national anthem. A military parade took place during the foundation ceremony. ==Early 1950s: Social revolution==

The People's Republic of China was founded on a land that was ravaged by a century of foreign invasion and civil wars. Both urban and rural communities, as well as both agriculture and industry, experienced significant growth between 1949 and 1959. Mao's government carried out land reform, instituted collectivisation and implemented the laogai camp system. In 1949, Mao Zedong declared that the nation would "lean to one side", meaning that the Soviet Union and the communist bloc would be its principal allies. Three months after the PRC was established in October 1949, Mao and his delegation traveled to Moscow. They were not received warmly by Stalin, who doubted if they really were Marxist-Leninists and not simply a group of Chinese nationalists. He had also recognized Chiang Kai-Shek's government, and furthermore distrusted any communist movement that was not under his direct control. After a meeting with Mao, the Soviet leader remarked "What sort of a man is Mao? He seems to have some idea of revolution involving the peasants, but not the workers." Eventually, a frustrated Mao was ready to go home, but Zhou Enlai refused to leave without a formal agreement. Thus, the Sino-Soviet Treaty of Mutual Friendship was signed and the Chinese at last departed in February 1950. Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries According to Chinese historians, between January and October 1950, there were over 800 counter-revolutionary riots nationwide, and that more than 40,000 political activists and masses of cadres were killed as a result. The government alleged that in Guangxi Province alone, counter-revolutionaries burned and destroyed more than 25,000 buildings and robbed over 200,000 head of cattle. In July and October 1950, instructions were issued to emphasize the policy of "Combining Suppression with Leniency" (镇压与宽大相结合). This strategy followed the principle: "The chief criminals must be punished, those who were coerced shall go unpunished, and those who perform meritorious service shall be rewarded". On February 21, 1951, the government officially promulgated the "Regulations of the People's Republic of China on the Punishment of Counter-revolutionaries. The campaign focused primarily on eliminating underground KMT agents, and also on eliminating secret societies, criminal gangs, and religious sects. By the time the large-scale movement concluded in late 1951, the authorities had solved over 600 major spy cases and brought to justice the executioners responsible for the deaths of famous revolutionaries like Li Dazhao and Zhao Yiman. Economic and social reforms At the time of the PRC's founding in 1949, land reform had not yet been carried out in areas comprising about two-thirds of the national territory, home to a rural population of approximately 290 million people. Poor peasants and farm laborers, who accounted for over 57% of rural households, owned only about 14% of the arable land. Approximately 300 million peasants who had little or no land received about 700 million mu (approx. 47 million hectares) of land, along with other means of production such as draft animals and tools confiscated from landlords. "people's court" in Fogang County, Guangdong Province on July 23, 1952 The state confiscated enterprises owned by the "four big families" (Chiang, Soong, Kung, and Chen). By 1952, the state economy controlled vital sectors, including 80% of heavy industry (power, coal, steel), 100% of railways, and the entire banking system. By 1952, China's state-owned enterprises accounted for more than 40% of industrial production. By 1952 price stability had been established, commerce had been restored, and industry and agriculture had regained their previous peak levels of production. By 1953, China had rapidly recovered its economy. The new Marriage Law was passed on April 13, 1950, being the first basic law enacted by the People's Republic of China. It strictly prohibited arranged or forced marriages, the superiority of men over women, and the neglect of children's interests. Nationwide, more than 8,400 brothels were shutdown. The Thought Reform Movement began in September 1951, following a speech by premier Zhou Enlai calling for intellectuals to reform their thought. The ''People's Daily'' called for teachers and college staff to "arm oneself with the thought of Marxism–Leninism" and to "throw away the vulgar perspectives of individualism and liberalism, and the cultural thought of European-American reactionary bourgeoisie". Mao Zedong officially endorsed the movement in October 1951, stating that "ideological remolding, especially of all types of intellectuals, is one of the important conditions for our country to realize democratic reform and industrialization". By the end of 1952, the movement had spread from Beijing and Tianjin to the entire country, involving the fields of culture, art, and science. Intellectuals were organized into various forms of study activities to learn political theories and the new state's policies, they were also required to examine their past actions and thoughts publicly, admitting to "incorrect" class stances or "bourgeois" tendencies. emerging from the broader "Increase Production and Practice Economy" movement that had been initiated to support the national effort in the Korean War. As the government pushed for austerity, they discovered widespread malpractice within the state apparatus. This campaign specifically targeted members of the Communist Party, government officials, and workers in state factories. Its primary goals were to oppose corruption (贪污), waste (浪费), and bureaucracy (官僚主义). By the time the movement concluded in October 1952, approximately 1.2 million people had been investigated, and over 100,000 were disciplined for varying degrees of corruption. Building directly on the revelations of the Three-Anti campaign, the government launched the Five-Anti campaign in January 1952. Investigations into corrupt officials had frequently exposed illegal dealings with private business owners, prompting a need to regulate the "national bourgeoisie". This second movement targeted private industrial and commercial sectors to eliminate five specific "poisons": bribery (行贿), tax evasion (偷税漏税), theft of state property (盗骗国家财产), cheating on government contracts (偷工减料), and the theft of state economic information (盗窃国家经济情报). The government mobilized the working class to supervise their employers, uniting with law-abiding capitalists while isolating and punishing the "law-breaking" elements who had exploited the state's resources during the war effort. New Democracy After 1949, China operated under the "Common Program," which established New Democracy as the political basis for building the country. The New Democratic economy was characterized by the simultaneous coexistence of five economic sectors: the state-owned economy (socialist nature), the cooperative economy (semi-socialist nature), the private capitalist economy, the individual economy (peasants and handicraftsmen), and the state-capitalist economy. Despite the initial plan to maintain New Democracy for the long term, Mao Zedong changed his mind starting in the autumn of 1952. Mao feared that a prolonged New Democratic system would allow the private capitalist economy and the "spontaneous tendencies" of peasants toward capitalism to grow too strong, making later socialist transformation more difficult. As a result, he decided to begin the transition to socialism immediately rather than waiting 10–15 years. In mid-1955, a divergence of opinion emerged within the CCP regarding whether to slow down or accelerate the pace of cooperativization, ultimately resulting in the implementation of Mao Zedong's policy of acceleration. Consequently, the third stage, covering the second half of 1955 to the end of 1956, marked the period of the most rapid advancement. By the end of 1956, having progressed through the three levels of "Mutual Aid Teams," "Elementary Cooperatives," and "Advanced Cooperatives," the socialist transformation of agriculture was basically completed, with 96.3% of peasant households nationwide having joined cooperatives. The socialist transformation of handicrafts began in November 1953 and concluded at the end of 1956, with more than 90% of handicraft workers nationwide joining cooperatives. He argued that China had only two choices: to lean either toward the side of imperialism or toward the side of socialism, and that there was no "third road." The Soviet Union was the first nation to recognize the PRC on October 2, 1949, and this partnership was solidified on February 14, 1950, with the signing of the Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship, Alliance, and Mutual Assistance during Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai's visit to Moscow. This treaty provided China with a security guarantee and a $300 million loan to support economic recovery and industrialization. It also included agreements for the Soviet Union to transfer its rights over the Changchun Railway and the naval base at Lüshun back to China. Simultaneously, China established diplomatic relations with other communist nations and several neutral countries, including India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Burma, Sweden, and Switzerland. ==Korean War==

China's role in the Korean war has been evaluated by each participant in sharply different ways. Soon after its founding, the newly born People's Republic of China was drawn into its first international conflict. On June 25, 1950, Kim Il Sung's North Korean forces crossed the 38th parallel, invaded South Korea, and eventually advanced as far as the Pusan Perimeter in south-east Korea. United Nations forces entered the war on side of the South, and American General Douglas MacArthur, having forced a Communist retreat, proposed to end the war by Christmas 1950. The Soviet Union and China saw a UN (and consequently, American) victory as a major political victory to the United States, a prospect seen as dangerous in the beginnings of the Cold War. However, Stalin had no desire to go to war with the United States, and left China the responsibility of saving the regime in Pyongyang. Up to this time, the Truman Administration was thoroughly disgusted with the corruption of Chiang Kai-shek's government and considered simply recognizing the PRC. On June 27, the US 7th Fleet was sent to the Taiwan Straits both to prevent a Communist invasion of the island and to prevent an attempted reconquest of the mainland. China meanwhile warned that it would not accept a US-backed Korea on its border. After the UN forces liberated Seoul in September, Beijing countered by saying that ROK troops could cross into North Korea, but not American ones. MacArthur ignored this, believing that the South Korean army was too weak to attack on its own. After Pyongyang fell in October, the UN troops approached the strategically sensitive Yalu River area. China responded by sending waves of troops south, in what became known as the People's Volunteers in order to disassociate them from the PLA. The Chinese army was poorly equipped but contained many veterans of the civil war and the conflict with Japan. In addition, it possessed huge reserves of manpower. The United States was on its way to the height of military power, and historians contend that Mao's participation in the war asserted China as a new power to not be taken lightly. Known as the Resist America, Aid Korea Campaign in China, the first major offensive of the Chinese forces was pushed back in October, but by Christmas 1950, the "People's Volunteer Army" under the command of Gen. Peng Dehuai had forced the United Nations to retreat back to the 38th Parallel. However, the war was very costly to the Chinese side, as more than just "volunteers" were mobilised, and because of the lack of experience in modern warfare and the lack of modern military technology, China's casualties vastly outnumbered that of the United Nations. On April 11, 1951, a U.S. Seventh Fleet destroyer approached close to the port of Swatow (Shantou), on the southeast coast of China, provoking China to send an armada of more than forty armed powered junks to confront and surround the destroyer for nearly five hours before the destroyer departed the area without either side widening the conflict by initiating hostile fire. Declining a UN armistice, the two sides fought intermittently on both sides of the 38th Parallel until the armistice was signed on July 27, 1953. The Korean War ended any possibility of normalised relations with the United States for years. Meanwhile, Chinese forces invaded and annexed Tibet in October 1950. Tibet had been nominally subject to the Chinese emperors in past centuries, but declared its independence in 1912. Under Mao's direction, China built its first atomic bomb in its nuclear program, Project 596, testing it on October 16, 1964, at Lop Nor; it was the fifth country to conduct a successful nuclear test. ==1953–1957==

The Korean War had been enormously costly to China, especially coming on the heels of the civil war, and it delayed postwar reconstruction. According to Hua-yu Li, writing in Mao and the Economic Stalinization of China, 1948–1953 in 1953, Mao, misled by glowing reports in History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolshevik): Short Course, authorized by Stalin of social and economic progress in the Soviet Union, abandoned the liberal economic programs of "New Democracy" and instituted the "general line for socialist transition", a program to build socialism based on Soviet models. He was reportedly moved in part by personal and national rivalry with Stalin and the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union provided considerable economic aid and training during the 1950s. Many Chinese students were sent to study in Moscow. Factories and other infrastructure projects were all based on Soviet designs, for China was an agrarian country with little established industry. In 1953, Mao Zedong told the Indonesian ambassador that they had little to export except agricultural products. Several jointly owned Sino-Soviet corporations were established, but Mao considered these to impinge on Chinese sovereignty and in 1954 they were quietly dissolved. Economically, the country followed up on the Soviet model of five-year plans with its own first five-year plan from 1953 to 1957. The country went through a transformation whereby means of production were transferred from private to public entities, and through nationalization of industry in 1955, the state controlled the economy in a similar fashion to the economy of the Soviet Union. By 1956, Mao was becoming bored with the day-to-day running of the state and also worried about growing red tape and bureaucracy. The 8th CCP Congress that year declared that socialism had more-or-less been established and so the next few years would be devoted to rest and consolidation. In February 1957, Mao gave one of his most famous addresses in which he said, "Let a hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred schools of thought contend." The Hundred Flowers Campaign was promoted by the CCP as a way of furthering socialist ideology through open debate, but many took it as an invitation to express open disdain for the CCP. Many began to voice their opposition to the Party-State's rule. Thoroughly shocked, Mao put an end to this and then launched the Anti-Rightist Campaign. Scores of intellectuals and common workers were purged, jailed, or disappeared. Many were not "rehabilitated" until the 1970s. First five-year plan Having restored a viable economic base, the leadership under Chairman Mao Zedong, Premier Zhou Enlai, and other revolutionary veterans sought to implement what they termed a socialist transformation of China. The First Five-Year Plan was deeply influenced by Soviet methodologies and assistance from Soviet planners. At the heart of the plan were the "156 key projects" assisted by the Soviet Union, which provided both technical designs and equipment. To implement these projects, the Soviet Union sent more than 3,000 technical experts to provide direct guidance on everything from geological surveys and design to machinery installation and plant operation. Gao had spoken to several other cadres about the matter including Chen Yun and Deng Xiaoping, who saw Gao's plan as an effort to overthrow Liu Shaoqi entirely. When Gao Gang's lobbying activities were reported to Mao by Chen Yun and Deng Xiaoping, Mao recognized the threat to CCP unity. Despite having shared policy views with Gao, Mao chose to prioritize the unity of the CCP and sided with Liu Shaoqi. The 4th Plenary Session of the 7th CCP Central Committee (February 1954) passed the "Resolution on Strengthening Party Unity," which officially condemned the actions of Gao and Rao, though they were not named in the public communique. Feeling wronged, Gao Gang committed suicide in August 1954 after failed attempts to clear his name. In 1955, the National Party Congress officially concluded the existence of the "Gao-Rao Anti-Party Alliance" and expelled both from the CCP. Mao Zedong personally spent a significant amount of time in Hangzhou presiding over the drafting of this Constitution based on two core principles: Socialism and People's Democracy. On December 1, 1952, the CCP Central Committee issued the "Notice on Convening a National Party Conference," which deemed that the conditions for convening the National People's Congress and formulating a constitution were already met, signaling the preparation for constitution-making. On December 24, 1952, at the 43rd meeting of the Standing Committee of the First National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), Zhou Enlai, representing the CCP, proposed the drafting of a constitution; the CPPCC adopted this proposal. More than 150 million citizens participated in discussing the draft Constitution over a period of three months, providing over 1.18 million suggestions for modification and supplementation. Subsequently, on September 20, 1954, at the first session of the First National People's Congress, delegates cast a total of 1,197 votes, all of which were affirmative, unanimously adopting the "Constitution of the People's Republic of China". By March 1953, 47 autonomous areas at or above the county level had been established nationwide. In addition to the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, preparations were underway to establish provincial-level autonomous regions such as Xinjiang and Ningxia, alongside the formation of the Preparatory Committee for the Tibet Autonomous Region in March 1955. By September 1956, two provincial-level autonomous regions (Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang), 27 autonomous prefectures, and 43 autonomous counties had been established nationwide. The state also prioritized investment in the construction of arterial railways and highways, such as the Sikang-Tibet and Qinghai-Tibet routes. Regarding social reforms in ethnic minority areas, the Party Central Committee emphasized a "cautious and steady" approach, allowing for more peaceful and moderate measures compared to Han-populated areas. The nature of the ruling apparatus underwent a profound transformation, shifting from a coalition of democratic classes to a Proletarian Dictatorship. Concurrently, the CCP's leadership mechanism was adjusted toward centralized power through the abolition of intermediate levels such as the Party Group of the Government Administration Council, allowing the CCP Central Committee to provide more direct and close guidance to government departments. Notably, state control did not stop at the political superstructure but extended widely across society through a sophisticated management system designed to build a "Totalistic Society," where the state controlled nearly all scarce resources. This system operated based on key pillars such as the Danwei (Unit) system, which bound the lives of workers and staff to their workplace; the Hukou (Household Registration) system to control population movement and link individuals to the state food distribution system; and a confidential personnel dossier system to strictly manage each individual's political history. The core of this strategic adjustment was Zhou Enlai's initial proposal of the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence in late 1953 during negotiations with India regarding Tibet; these principles included mutual respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity, mutual non-aggression, non-interference in each other's internal affairs, equality and mutual benefit, and peaceful coexistence. These principles were subsequently reaffirmed in joint statements with India and Burma in 1954. The 1954 Geneva Conference marked the first time the People's Republic of China participated as one of the five major powers, where the Chinese delegation implemented a flexible strategy to promote an armistice agreement in Indochina, thereby isolating the pro-war faction of the US and securing the southern border. At the Bandung Conference in 1955, despite facing an assassination plot involving the bombing of the "Kashmir Princess" aircraft, Zhou Enlai turned the tide with the guiding principle of "seeking common ground while reserving differences." (qiu tong cun yi) This approach successfully eased tensions and gained the trust of many neutral and pro-Western nations. Furthermore, China began promoting civil relations with Japan under the motto "people-to-people diplomacy leading the way to promote official relations," while also striving to improve ties with Western nations such as the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. China maintained that the liberation of Taiwan was an internal affair. When the crisis in Poland broke out in 1956, China supported Poland's demand for autonomy and opposed the Soviet Union's intention to use military measures to intervene in the country's internal affairs. Unlike Poland, the event in Hungary shifted from political demands to an uprising against the regime. Initially, China maintained a cautious attitude; however, upon recognizing the risk of Hungary breaking away from the socialist camp, they changed their stance and decisively urged the Soviet Union to deploy troops to suppress the uprising in order to safeguard the socialist system. Military development was the first time in PLA history that the Army, Navy, and Air Force conducted a joint coordinated operation. The "Military Service Law" was officially passed by the National People's Congress in July 1955, replacing the previous volunteer-based service model. On January 1, 1955, the PLA officially adopted a formal wage structure, replacing the decades-old "provision system" (供给制), where the state had simply provided soldiers with basic necessities. The PLA established over 100 military colleges by 1953, including the Military Academy in Nanjing headed by Liu Bocheng. The modernization relied heavily on Soviet assistance. Between 1951 and 1954, the USSR provided equipment for 60 Chinese infantry divisions, along with thousands of aircraft (including MiG-15 fighters) and naval vessels. Parallel to simplification, there were also initiatives aimed at eliminating the use of characters entirely and replacing them with pinyin as an official Chinese alphabet, but this possibility was abandoned, confirmed by a speech given by Zhou Enlai in 1958. In tandem with written reforms, the government sought to unify the nation's diverse dialects by promoting putonghua (common speech). Following a State Council directive in February 1956, a massive pedagogical effort was launched to train educators; by the end of 1957, over 720,000 language teachers had been trained in the standardized dialect, and more than 2 million people had engaged with Putonghua lessons through national radio broadcasts. To support both literacy and standardized pronunciation, the Hanyu Pinyin Scheme was drafted in late 1957 and formally approved by the National People's Congress in 1958. Pinyin was then introduced to primary schools as a way to teach Standard Chinese pronunciation and used to improve the literacy rate among adults. Hundred Flowers campaign The "Hundred Flowers" policy was initially introduced in early 1956 as part of a broader effort to mobilize China's intellectual elite for the "march toward science". The original intent was to foster a more relaxed environment for scientific research and artistic creativity by reducing dogmatic adherence to Soviet models. This policy gained momentum after Khrushchev's secret speech criticizing Stalin at the XX Congress of the CPSU. Mao famously described the critique of Stalin as "opening the lid" (揭了盖子), which he saw as a positive step toward breaking the "superstition" of Soviet infallibility. Following the 1956 crises in Poland and Hungary, the policy underwent a significant strategic shift. Mao became concerned that if the Party did not address internal social frustrations, a "Hungarian-style" uprising could occur in China. He transformed the "Hundred Flowers" from a cultural policy into a political one, launching the "Da Ming Da Fang" (Great Contending and Great Blooming). He explicitly invited non-Party members and intellectuals to criticize the Party's "three evils": bureaucracy, sectarianism, and subjectivism. Sensing a threat to his authority and the stability of the regime, Mao pivoted toward a strategy he later called "drawing the snakes out of their caves", and the Hundred Flowers movement was shut down in favor of the Anti-Rightist Movement by mid-1957. Anti-Rightist campaign As the "Da Ming Da Fang" movement progressed in the spring of 1957, the level of criticism surpassed what the CCP leadership had anticipated. Consequently, Mao Zedong decided to break his promise and launch a counterattack. In 1957, the CCP began its retaliatory actions, which later became known as the "Anti-Rightist Movement". Those labeled as "Rightists" faced severe consequences, including public humiliation, loss of employment, imprisonment, or being sent to re-education through labor (laogai) in remote rural areas. A number of people were executed. This campaign completely extinguished the atmosphere of free thought, forced intellectuals into a state of submission, and pushed China back toward an era of radical class struggle. ==Great Leap Forward==

Mao's social and cultural programs, including collectivization, were most popular in the early 1950s. However, China's strained relations with new Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev and newfound contradictions between the Chinese and Soviet schools of communism seeded a novel and radical drive to reform China's economic system in its entirety. This split developed after Stalin's death in 1953 when new Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev denounced him. The "secret speech" in 1956 stunned the communist world. China rejected de-Stalinization and in fact displayed large Stalin portraits at the May Day celebrations that year. Mao declared that despite some faults, Stalin had basically been a good, well-meaning Marxist. He felt that the Soviets were not treating China as an equal partner. Cultural differences also contributed to friction between the two communist giants. Khrushchev's idea of peaceful competition with the United States rather than overt hostility did not resonate well with Beijing. Mao said that "Do you think the capitalists will put down their butcher knife and become Buddhas?" Khrushchev's 1958 suggestion of a joint Sino-Soviet fleet to counter the US 7th Fleet was angrily rejected by Mao Zedong, who told the Soviet ambassador "If you want to talk about joint cooperation, fine. We can practice joint cooperation in government, military, cultural, and economic matters and you can leave us with a guerrilla force." When the Soviet premier himself visited China the following year, Mao again asked him to explain what a joint fleet was. He stated that the Soviets were not welcome to put any troops on Chinese soil in peacetime and added "Listen carefully. We have worked long and hard to drive out the Americans, the British, the Japanese, and others. Never again will we allow foreigners to use our territory for their purposes." Khrushchev also thought that the Chinese were too soft on the Dalai Lama (Tibet's spiritual leader) and failed to support them in a border dispute with India, saying that the territory in question was "just a frozen waste where nobody lives." Leading into the Great Leap Forward, China experienced a population boom that strained its food supply, despite rising agricultural yields. Increased yields could not keep pace a population that benefitted from a major decrease in mortality (due to successful public health campaigns and the end of war) and high fertility rate.The Chinese government recognized the country's dilemma of feeding its rapidly growing population without the means to make significant capital improvements in agriculture. Viewing human labor as an underutilized factor of production, the government intensified the mobilization of masses of people to increase labor inputs in agriculture. Under Mao's leadership, China broke with the Soviet model and announced a new economic program, the "Great Leap Forward", in 1958, aimed at rapidly raising industrial and agricultural production. Specific to industrial production, Mao announced the goal of surpassing the steel production output of Great Britain by 1968. Giant cooperatives, otherwise known as people's communes, were formed. Within a year almost all Chinese villages had been reformed into working communes of several thousand people in size, where people would live and work together as envisioned by an ideal communist society. Rather than build steel mills, small "backyard furnaces" would be used. The results, however, were disastrous. Normal market mechanisms were disrupted, agricultural production fell behind, and people exhausted themselves producing shoddy, unsellable goods. Because of the reliance on the government providing and distributing food and resources and their rapid depletion due to poor planning, starvation appeared even in fertile agricultural areas. From 1960 to 1961, the combination of poor planning during the Great Leap Forward, political movements incited by the government, as well as unusual weather patterns and natural disasters resulted in widespread famine and many deaths. A significant number of the deaths were not from famine but were killed or overworked by the authorities. According to various sources, the resulting death toll was likely between 20 and 40 million. The steel produced in backyard furnaces at low temperatures proved to be useless. Finally, the peasants hated the lack of privacy and the militarization of their lives. One of the loudest opponents of the GLF was Defense Minister Peng Dehuai. Peng was a believer in orthodox Soviet-style economic planning and totally against experimentations. Several years earlier, he had been instrumental in trying to develop the PLA into a well-equipped, professional fighting force, as opposed to Mao's belief that soldiers who were revolutionary enough could overcome any obstacle. The army had had no ranks during the civil war and Korea. This system worked rather poorly in those conflicts, and so a rank system (modeled after the Soviet one) was implemented in 1954. While taking a trip through the countryside, Peng was horrified at the wreckage of the Great Leap Forward. Everywhere fields were dotted with abandoned communes, ruined crops, and lumps of useless pig iron. Afterwards, he accused Mao of being responsible for this disaster and was in turn denounced as a rightist and removed from office. Peng then lived retired in disgrace for the next several years until he was arrested and beaten by Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution. He survived the torture, but sustained permanent injuries and died in 1974. After Mao's death, Peng was posthumously rehabilitated with full honors. The already strained Sino-Soviet relationship deteriorated sharply in 1959, when the Soviets started to restrict the flow of scientific and technological information to China. The dispute escalated, and the Soviets withdrew all of their personnel from China by August 1960, leaving many construction projects dormant. In the same year, the Soviets and the Chinese began to have disputes openly in international forums. The relationship between the two powers reached a low point in 1969 with the Sino-Soviet border conflict, when Soviet and Chinese troops met in combat on the Manchurian border. ==Third Front==

After the failure of the Great Leap Forward, China's leadership slowed the pace of industrialization. It invested more on in China's coastal regions and focused on the production of consumer goods. The Third Front distributed physical and human capital around the country, ultimately decreased regional disparities and created favorable conditions for later market development. ==Cultural Revolution==

in September 1967 targeting Xi Zhongxun, the father of Xi Jinping, who had been labeled an "anti-party element. ==Urban–rural divide==

The urban–rural divide was the most important division in Maoist China when it came to the distribution of food, clothing, housing and health care. Rural status carried no entitlement to a state ration card, wages or social security. As a result, Maoist China is sometimes described as a dual society. ==Mao Zedong's legacy==

The history of the People's Republic from 1949 to 1976 is accorded the name "Mao era"-China. A proper evaluation of the period is, in essence, an evaluation of Mao's legacy. Since Mao's death there has been generated a great deal of controversy about him amongst both historians and political analysts. Mao's poor management of the food supply and overemphasis on village industry is often blamed for the millions of deaths by famine during the "Mao era". However, there were also positive changes as a result from his management. Before 1949, for instance, the illiteracy rate in mainland China was 80%, and life expectancy was a meager 35 years. At his death, illiteracy had declined to less than 7%, and average life expectancy had increased by 30 years. In addition, China's population which had remained constant at 400,000,000 from the Opium War to the end of the Civil War, mushroomed more than 700,000,000 as of Mao's death. Under Mao's regime, some argue that China ended its "Century of Humiliation" and resumed its status as a major power on the international stage. Mao also industrialized China to a considerable extent and ensured China's sovereignty during his rule. In addition, Mao tried to abolish Confucianist and feudal norms. File:Birth rate in China.svg|Birth and death rate in China File:China population growth.svg|China's population growth File: Life expectancy by world region since 1770, OWID.svg|Life expectancy by world region China's economy in 1976 was three times its 1949 size (but the size of the Chinese economy in 1949 was one-tenth of the size of the economy in 1936), and whilst Mao-era China acquired some of the attributes of a superpower such as: nuclear weapons and a space programme; the nation was still quite poor and backwards compared to the Soviet Union, the United States, Japan, or Western Europe. Fairly significant economic growth in 1962–1966 was wiped out by the Cultural Revolution. Other critics of Mao fault him for not encouraging birth control and for creating an unnecessary demographic bump by encouraging the masses, "The more people, the more power", which later Chinese leaders forcibly responded to with the controversial one-child policy. The ideology surrounding Mao's interpretation of Marxism–Leninism, also known as Maoism, was codified into China's Constitution as a guiding ideology. Internationally, it has influenced many communists around the world, including third world revolutionary movements such as Cambodia's Khmer Rouge, Peru's Shining Path and the revolutionary movement in Nepal. In practice, Mao Zedong Thought is defunct inside China aside from anecdotes about the CCP's legitimacy and China's revolutionary origins. Of those that remain, some regard the Deng Xiaoping reforms to be a betrayal of Mao's legacy. ==See also==