ABSTRACT
This chapter covers the period from the establishment of the People’s Republic of China through the new regime’s first 5-year plan of socialist economic development. In begins by surveying how the CCP consolidated its power via a combination of social reform, especially the agrarian reform that destroyed the landlord class, and repression. It then turns to the First Five-Year Plan, during which the CCP established a socialist economy by collectivizing agriculture and building a state-controlled industrial sector. The successes and shortcomings of this plan are covered. This chapter also analyzes the beginning of the tension between the PRC and the Soviet Union, the Hundred Flowers Campaign and the repression that followed, and Mao’s dissatisfaction with the course of China’s development, which increasingly did not conform to his vision of how to build socialism. Mao’s concerns, and his disagreements with Liu Shaoqi dated from the early days of collectivization; those disagreements also are covered in this chapter.
