Establishing the New Democracy: 1949-65

The People’s Republic of China was proclaimed in 1949, and the new government rested on a principle called the ‘New Democracy’. This was a deliberate departure from the Soviet model: instead of the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ — a term Marx used to mean that the working class would replace the repressive government of the propertied class with a revolutionary government, not a dictatorship in the ordinary sense — China’s new state was built as an alliance of all social classes. The idea was that no single class would dominate; workers, peasants, the petty bourgeoisie and the national bourgeoisie would all have a place in the new order.

In practice, this meant a mixed economy for a while. Critical areas of the economy were brought under government control, while private enterprise and private ownership of land were gradually wound down. This phase was never meant to be permanent. It ran until 1953, when the government announced that it would move to a programme of socialist transformation — a clear signal that the New Democracy was a transitional stage, not the destination.

The most dramatic push came in 1958 with the Great Leap Forward, a policy designed to galvanise the country into rapid industrialisation. The campaign’s most famous feature was the call for people to set up steel furnaces in their own backyards, so that every household could contribute to industrial output. In the countryside, the government created people’s communes, in which land was collectively owned and cultivated. The scale was enormous: by 1958 there were 26,000 communes covering 98 per cent of the farm population.

Mao Zedong’s role in all this was central. He was able to mobilise the masses to pursue the goals the Party set, and his deeper concern was the creation of a ‘socialist man’ — a new kind of person defined by five loves: love of fatherland, love of people, love of labour, love of science, and love of public property. To channel popular energy, mass organisations were set up for different sections of society. The All-China Democratic Women’s Federation, for instance, had 76 million members, and the All-China Students Federation had 3.29 million members. …