History of the People's Republic of China (1949–1976)

The history of the People's Republic of China is often divided distinctly by historians into the "Mao era" and the "post-Mao era". The Mao era lasted from the founding of the People's Republic on October 1, 1949 to Deng Xiaoping's grip onto power and policy reversal at the Third Plenum of the 11th Party Congress on December 22, 1978. The following article focuses on Mao's social movements from the early 1950s on, including Land Reform, the Great Leap Forward, and the Cultural Revolution, and evaluates Mao's legacy as a whole.

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 mass executions of landowners, instituted collectivisation and implemented the Laogai camp system. Execution and harsh conditions in labor camps resulted in millions of deaths under Mao.

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.

As the economy was only beginning to show signs of recovery, the newly born People's Republic was drawn into its first international conflict. On June 25, 1950, Kim Il-sung's North Korean forces crossed the 38th parallel, invaded into 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 US, and so 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.

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