Education and Healthcare Reform in Mao's China (Edexcel A Level History: Route E: Communist states in the twentieth century): Revision Note

Summary

• Illiteracy was common, and an extensive education was rare in China before 1949, especially for girls

• The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) massively increased the number of children who attended school

  • The number of people who could read and write in China increased from around 2 in 10 in 1949 to over 6 in 10 by 1964

  • Literacy was also improved by the adoption of a national, standard written form of language known as Pinyin

• The advances in education were damaged by the Cultural Revolution, (opens in a new tab) which took young people out of schools and saw thousands of teachers being attacked and killed

  • Teachers were viewed as representing the old authority, and were commonly targeted

• The CCP attempted to improve health in China through the 'barefoot doctors'

  • These were people who were given between three and six months of medical training before being sent into rural areas

  • They helped educate peasants on how to avoid sickness and provided basic treatments

  • Although the Great Famine killed millions of people, improvements in health care led to life expectancy rising and infant mortality rates falling

Literacy campaigns, Pinyin and education expansion under the CCP

• Before 1949, the standard of education in China was very low

  • Around 45 per cent of males attended school for an average of four years

  • Around 2 per cent of females attended school for an average of three years

• The schooling they received was mainly based on the teachings of Confucius

  • There was less teaching of maths or science, particularly in rural areas

    • Although this was already improving after 1912

• Access to education often depended on being able to afford the expensive tuition fees

• Entrance examinations also prevented others from attending

CCP Literacy Campaigns

• In 1949, approximately 80 per cent of China's population was illiterate

  • The CCP made improving this a priority

• The number of students attending primary school increased from 24 million in 1949 to 64 million by 1957

  • This led to a literacy rate of 64 per cent by 1964

• There were also attempts to improve the education and literacy of adults

  • Winter schools were opened to provide short educational courses for workers

  • Official figures claim that 42 million peasants attended courses in the winter of 1951-52

The Introduction of Pinyin and improvements in literacy

• One of the factors that led to China's low literacy rate was the use of ideograms to represent words instead of letters to represent sounds

  • Learning the enormous number of ideograms was complicated

• In response, the CCP introduced a standardised and simplified form of written language

  • This reduced the number of strokes used in traditional characters

• The spoken language of China varied greatly between regions

  • This made communication between regions almost impossible

• The CCP also introduced Pinyin, which used Latin letters to spell out the sounds of characters in Mandarin

  • This helped learners to read characters phonetically

Cultural Revolution and education: collapse of schooling after 1966

• The Cultural Revolution caused China's schools and universities to close

  • This was partly because millions of young people joined the Red Guards

    • This meant they travelled the country in search of people they believed were betraying the revolution

  • But it was mainly because of attacks on teachers

    • Mao had called upon the Red Guards to attack and overthrow all figures of authority

    • For many young people, teachers represented traditional authority, and many thousands were killed

• Even after the Red Guards were disbanded, the disruption to education continued

  • Millions of young people in cities were sent to the countryside as part of the 'Up to the Mountains, Down to the Villages' campaign (opens in a new tab)

    • As a result, their education did not continue, and they lived like rural peasants

Barefoot doctors programme: rural healthcare reform, successes and failures

• Public health in China in 1949 was very basic, and in most rural areas, non-existent

  • Human manure was the main fertiliser used in the fields

    • This led to waterborne diseases such as cholera, dysentery, and typhoid becoming widespread

    • The shortage of food meant that many people were already physically weakened and died if they became sick

• In rural areas, there was no access to medical professionals

  • Most of the population relied upon ancient herbal remedies if they were ill

Barefoot Doctors

• 'Barefoot doctors' was the name given to the people that Mao ordered to be given three to six months of medical training and sent into rural areas

  • 'Barefoot doctors' were quick and cheap to train and instructed peasants on how to stop the spread of disease and improve hygiene

  • They also provided basic healthcare, although they were limited in their training, equipment and access to medicine

    • For many peasants, 'barefoot doctors' were the only trained medical professionals they had ever seen

How successful was the CCP in improving education and healthcare for the Chinese people in the years 1949 to 1976?

• The changes to education and healthcare in China between 1949 and 1976 have divided opinion

  • Some historians see that as overwhelmingly positive

  • Others argue that the Cultural Revolution had a devastating impact on education in China and that this cannot be ignored

Enormous Improvements to Healthcare

• These historians point to the fact that access to doctors and improved public health led to a widespread and significant increase in life expectancy

Key historians

In some respects, China exhibited the hallmarks of successful economic development. Measures of public health improved steadily. The crude death rate, 25.8 per thousand in 1953, had shrunk to 7.8 per thousand in 1976. Infant mortality, which was 175 per thousand births in 1953, was 45 per thousand in 1976. Life expectancy at birth, which was only 40 years in 1953, had risen to 64 years, a level usually attained only at much higher levels of economic development.2 These indicators were a testament to a government infrastructure that had the capacity to improve public health and deliver basic medical care to the vast majority of the population

Andrew G. Walder, China Under Mao: A Revolution Derailed, 2015

Death and Disruption in Education

• These historians argue that the Cultural Revolution had a devastating and l;ong lasting impact on education in China

Key historians

In Beijing’s western district alone, in the course of little more than two weeks, the violence left close to one hundred teachers, school officials, and educational cadres dead. The number of those injured was, according to one investigation, simply “too large to be calculated.” In every one of eighty-five elite colleges, middle schools, and elementary schools throughout China investigated by a Chinese scholar after the Cultural Revolution, teachers were tortured by students. At twelve of them, a teacher was beaten to death; at one school, two teachers were murdered. Of the thirteen institutions at which killings of teachers occurred, eleven were middle schools and two were elementary schools. Of the eleven middle schools, four were girls’ schools.

The more fortunate teachers, though they may not have thought so at the time, were those assigned to humiliating tasks such as cleaning latrines.

Roderick MacFarquhar, Mao’s Last Revolution, 2008