12/14/09 - Session 5 - Dube - China: 1976 to present

I agree with you that it seems that we often get a one-sided view of Communism. We get Chinese communism and we get Soviet Communism, but not how they feel about eachother. It is a result of a one-sided learning of history that exists in many discussions in and outside of the classroom. This definitely was an eye-opener.

Mao build a Communist one-party totalitarian state built on the same Communist ideology in Russia. The goal was to reshape the economy and society that was once ruled by dynasties. With the help of the Soviets, the Chinese built dams and factories. Mao gave land to the peasants at first and then later collectivized the land and labor to try and increase productivity. Mao's Great Leap Forward created communes to try and increase farm and industrial output. They were more small-scale, backyard type industries that proved to produce low-quality, useless goods. The Commune food system cut food output partly because it removed the incentives for individual farmers. This lead to neglected farmland and food shortages. China was slow to recover from this.

China & the Soviet alliance during the 1950s was shaky. There was mistrust between the two countries and tensions dating back to territory disputes between czarist Russia and dynastic China. Eventually, the Soviets withdrew all aid and advisors from China as China went on to develop its own kind of communism. This of course, opened the door for the United States to rethink "China". If the U.S. could improve relations with the Chinese they might isolate the Soviet Union on both sides.

I like the idea of designing currency. The students can research images and symbols and recreate currency for our modern times. While reading historical fiction books, students can base their designs on the historical period they are reading about. I have my students design postage stamps based on a person they read about in a biography or autobiography. This project can be used in a history class. They can research not only the currency of China, but also other symbols and images used on stamps and in advertising and propaganda.

I like the stamp idea.. and after our last class.. concluding lecture, seeing the money again... a fun extension lesson would be having the students design a modern layout for the back of a us $bill to incorporate technology, or industry.. this would get them thinking about our imports, and commodities.. what is the us known for? and have them acknowledge the architecture first, and replace it with another version .

On the currency issue: the bill with the depiction of the citizens (farmer, soldier, peasant, etc) was actually refreshing to me. Given the images that grace the US currency, it's hard to picture images of citizens on our currency. If we had a picture like that, I can picture a scene simialr to that of the front of a college brochure where you see one person of each race and color sitting together in polite/casual discussion.

Communism was adopted by these countries to work with their economies.

Karl Marx's theory on communism was meant for industrial workers of the world to unite and rise up against the bourgeoisie capitalists and take control over all the means of production in society. Lenin in Russia did not have much of an industrialized society so his "Russian style" of communism called for a "dictatorship of the proletariat" (peasant laborers) and would have an elite group control society. There goals were similar; end private ownership and redistribute land to peasants. At first Mao was in line with this thinking but when Stalin came to power in Russia is where China and Russia begin to see communism differently.

It's too bad we didn't get a bit further in the course to cover present-day China. I know that most of the information that makes it's way out of China is filtered by the government's censors. I'm curious to know how China reconciles communism with the inroads made by capitalism into daily life. How does a true believer in communism deal with buying his child a copy of the latest Disney movie? How tight are the internet censors? What is taught in schools?