Agricultural cooperativization in art

One of the greatest horrors of Chinese communism was the collectivization of agriculture that began in the mid-1950s. This poster, created in 1956, was part of one of the CCP’s early efforts to bring all farm production under state control. It reads: "agricultural cooperativization is the socialist course which makes everybody prosperous."

The collectivization program started because Mao wanted to finally exert full control over the Chinese countryside. Peasants who had survived the early throes of "landlord" persecution were stripped of their property and were compelled to work on large, state-run, cooperative farming units. After several months of this process, there began to appear reports of widespread famine, and some of Mao’s cohorts – Zhou En-Lai among them – urged him to back down from the radical line.

Mao relented, and began the "Let One-Hundred Flowers Bloom" campaign, in which critics of his rule were invited to speak freely about the regime in Beijing. This relaxation was short-lived however, for Mao used it as a means to identify his enemies and exterminate them. He called it his "Anti-Rightist Campaign."

After opposition was silenced, Mao re-adopted the radical line, although this time on a far greater scale. This "Great Leap Forward" was a country-wide forced industrialization that caused the greatest man-made famine in history – approximately 30 million people died.

This poster’s creator was the artist Ma Changli. Ma was born in 1931 in Northeast China’s famous town of Shanhaiguan (it is the eastern terminus of the Great Wall), and was of the Hui people, or Chinese Muslims. He graduated from the Painting Department of the Central Institute for Fine Arts in 1953 and from the Academy’s Oil Painting and Research class in 1963. He still teaches there today.

*The translation of the orginal poster and information about the artist came from Stefan Landsberger’s website on Chinese propaganda posters.