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Economic Development in Communist China & Vietnam

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Discuss efforts in China and Vietnam to adapt communist regimes to economic development.
The year range would be from 1920-1962 .

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Solution Summary

The solution provides a discussion of the efforts of China and Vietnam to adapt their communist states towards economic development (with a focus on China and to a lesser extent, Vietnam).

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Mainland China-

From its founding in 1949 until 1978, the People's Republic of China had a Soviet-style centrally planned economy. Privately owned business and capitalism did not occur. To push China towards a modern, industrialized and still communist society, Chairman Mao Zedong started the Great Leap Forward in 1961. Before this China's economy was often rural and definitely more 19th century in its industry (things were often powered by hand, animals, wind or water). Most machines that were run on fuels such as gasoline or diesel were often old Soviet ones that were unreliable and rare. Electricity was in a similar situation for the most part.

Also, when PRC started in 1949, the e former capitalists, i.e.; landlords and wealthier peasants had their land holdings forcibly re-distributed to poorer country dwelling people. In agriculture sections, crops deemed to be by Communist thinking's "evil" such as the opium making plants (poppies) were destroyed and re-placed with rice and other food crops. Inside the Party, there was much disagreement concerning re-distribution. A middle of the section in the party felt changes should be slow and any Soviet like collectivization of peasants could wait until industrializing was complete. This could allow machinery for modern farming. The more extreme faction of the party including Mao felt the best way to pay for future industry was for the Party to control the agriculture, thereby having total control over grain's amount and the distributing of it. This would allow the Party/Government state to buy low and sell to the peasant at a very inflated price. This would allow the collecting 0f the needed mass amounts of funds needed to modernize the country through modern machinery.

After it figured out that this idea would be unlike by the peasants, it was then proposed that the peasants should be brought under Party control. This would happen with the establishment of collectives of agriculture that would introduce and establish and run the sharing of tools and work animals. This new idea was slowly established into the system between 1949 and 1958. First it was done by establishing "mutual aid teams" of 5-15 households. Later, in the earlier part of the 1950s, larger "elementary agricultural cooperatives" of about 20-40 households were the norm. In 1956 "higher co-operatives" of 100-300 families were put in place. The prementioned, ever growing changes were still unpopular with peasants and he Party met much ...

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