Mao's Campaigns
- Mao Zedong attempted to make a classless communist state through land reforms
- Redistribution of wealth and land from landlords occurred
- 2/3 of peasants recieved more land
- Collective farms, or multiple farms combined, were made to increase profit in agriculture
- However, production didn't increase
- Zedong begins the Great Leap Forward
- Mao wanted people to believe in permanent revolution
- Communes of thousands of people with multiple collective farms were created
- Mao said that several years of hard work would bring thousands of years of happiness
- Droughts and bad crops, however, caused over 15 million people to die of starvation
Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution
- Mao, who was losing the faith of people, started the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution
- The Red Guards were created to purge cities of anti-communism and the old ways and traditions
- Mao had his criticizers killed in the Hundred Flowers Period
- There were many portraits of Mao as well
- Also, Little Red Books, which contained many thoughts and quotes from Mao, were given to everybody
- Before Mao's death in 1976, Richard Nixon, the 37th president of the United States, decided to meet with him and Zhou Enlai in 1972
- Sino-American relations had been severed with the tension of the Cold War
- Relations were established in 1979