Paper 1 Test; term 3

1a. What, according to Source A, were the successes of the first Five Year Plan?

-They were ready to move from private property to socialist ownership as the basis of economy.

-Peasant farms were grouped into collective farms.

-Capitalist businesses were either taken over outright, or converted to state-private joint enterprises.

1b. How, according to Source A, did China's economic policies follow the pattern of Soviet economic plan?

-The farms for the peasants were equivalent to the kolkhoz that were in the Soviet Union.

-The chief goal was to develop heavy industry as quickly as possible, and light industry and agriculture was the second most important thing, except in Russia they were neglected more.

2. Compare and contrast the views on people's communes as expressed in Sources B and C.

-One very big comparison between these two sources are that Source C focuses on the negative aspects of the communes, whereas Source B focuses on the positive aspects of the communes. This is because the time of source B was written only in the very first part of the communes, in 1958, whereas source C was written in 1996 by a survivor of the famine. However, Source C does state that during the first year of the commune, things were good, which is a similarity, because Source B only talks about the year of 1958. Thus, it can be said that both of these sources agree that the communes were effective in 1958. Another contrast between these two sources is that Source B talks about everything being built up, whereas Source C is talking about everything being gone (food, linens, etc.)

3. With reference to their origin and purpose, assess the value and limitations of Source D and Source E for historians studying Mao's economic reconstruction.

- The origin of source D is an extract from Mao: The Unknown Story, written by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday, published in London in 2005. The purpose of this excerpt is to inform people of China's relations with Russia, and more importantly what happened with the technology that China received from Russia. The origin of this source provides a value, because it was written by a Chinese person, it may be more accurate, because this person may have lived in China while this was occurring. Also, because it wasn't published until 2005, it is a value, because the author had time to gather details, and look back on the past, rather than just writing this out of anger because he was in he heat of the moment. A limitation comes with the purpose of this source however, because it is trying to give alternate interpretations to Mao's life that were never heard before. Thus, some of this source may be exaggerated a bit to make it look significantly different from the other stories that were already told about Mao.

-The origin of Source E is a table of China's Agricultural Record in 1954-1962, which was entitled "The People's Republic of China Since 1949," and published in 1998. The purpose of the table is to compare the difference in grain and meat production from 1954 to 1962, (before and after The Great Leap Forward.) A value of this source is because it is a table with solid number values, the values are probably correct, because it is not opinion based. However, a limitation may be that it is only showing the grain and meat production- maybe it would be more valuable if it also showed the production of other things before and after the Great Leap Forward so that they could be compared and see if any positives came out of the Great leap Forward.