During the 1959 Lushan Conference, Peng Dehuai wrote to Mao Zedong criticizing the Great Leap Forward; after Mao's speech on July 23, the conference's theme shifted from correcting the "Left" to opposing rightist opportunism.
At the Lushan Conference, Liu Shaoqi brought up old accounts against Peng Dehuai, supported the resolution to overthrow the Peng Dehuai anti-party clique, and subsequently signed the dismissal order in his capacity as Chairman of the State.
During the Great Famine disaster, Deng Xiaoping was accused of intentionally breaking his leg while playing billiards to evade political responsibility.
Liu Shaoqi was officially elected President of the People's Republic of China in April 1959, reaching the peak of his political career.
A nationwide famine struck China between 1959 and 1961, with various estimates putting the number of abnormal deaths at between 15 million and 55 million.
1961 was the most brutal year of China's Three Years of Natural Disasters, during which over 10 million Chinese people starved to death, and cannibalism even occurred in rural areas. Despite this, 9.49 million newborns were born that year.
In 1959, Peng Dehuai was labeled anti-party by Mao Zedong for echoing Khrushchev's criticism of the Great Leap Forward and the People's Communes, ending his political life on the spot.
The Chinese People's Liberation Army launched an artillery bombardment on Kinmen, and the Republic of China armed forces stationed there returned fire. This military conflict is historically known as the August 23 Artillery Bombardment, also referred to as the Second Taiwan Strait Crisis.
The CCP implemented the Great Leap Forward policy. During this period, the climate was normal, and there were no large-scale wars or epidemics, yet at least 45 million Chinese people died abnormally, with causes of death including starvation, overwork, and beatings by cadres.
During the famine caused by the Great Leap Forward, widespread large-scale cannibalism incidents broke out in places such as Xinyang, Tongwei in Gansu, Anhui, and Sichuan.
During the Great Leap Forward, local authorities at every level falsely inflated grain output figures. The central government collected grain based on these figures, ultimately triggering the great famine of 1958 to 1962, with various estimates putting abnormal deaths at between 15 million and 55 million people.
To provide fuel for "backyard furnaces", about 30% to 40% of rural houses were demolished during the Great Leap Forward, leaving people with nowhere to shelter from the wind and rain.
In 1958, the People's Liberation Army again carried out large-scale artillery bombardment of Kinmen and other coastal islands controlled by Taiwan.
Beginning in 1957, the Anti-Rightist Campaign was launched, resulting in the purge of numerous members of democratic parties and intra-party dissidents.
In the Anti-Rightist Campaign, the Chinese Communist Party labeled some individuals as rightists because intellectuals had voiced their opinions, and the people involved and their families subsequently suffered long-term political and social consequences.
As General Secretary of the Secretariat of the CCP Central Committee, Deng Xiaoping was the frontline commander of the Anti-Rightist Campaign. He drafted documents and issued rigid quotas for the arrest of "rightists," leading to 550,000 intellectuals being labeled as such.
In 1957, the Chinese Communist Party shifted from encouraging free expression to launching the Anti-Rightist Campaign. Official statistics show that about 553,000 people were labelled as rightists, while declassified archival data put the figure at more than 3.17 million.
Through a series of political movements, the CCP has successfully established a totalitarian state devoid of any dissenting voices.
In January 1956, Beijing and large and medium-sized cities across the country rapidly completed the state-private joint ownership of entire industries. Through a fixed-interest system, the state peacefully bought out private industry and commerce, marking the basic completion of the socialist transformation of the ownership of the means of production.
In a speech to Parliament, former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill pointed out that the Cairo Declaration was merely a statement of intent, and that the sovereignty of Taiwan had already been determined by the Treaty of San Francisco. He argued that the Taiwan issue had become an international matter involving the interests of multiple countries, rather than an internal affair of China.
With the adoption of the May Fourth Constitution in 1954, the National People's Congress replaced the CPPCC as the supreme organ of state power in China.
From 1954 to 1955, the People's Liberation Army shelled Kinmen and Matsu, attempting to seize the coastal islands controlled by Taiwan.
In 1953, Taiwan promoted the Land-to-the-Tiller program. The government requisitioned rented land exceeding the standard to sell to tenant farmers, and compensated landlords with land bonds and stocks of four state-owned enterprises, objectively achieving the privatization of state-owned enterprises.
Zhao Hanqi, a former Kuomintang military general who resisted Soviet invasions in the defense battles of Yining and Aksu in Xinjiang and later participated in the Xinjiang Peaceful Liberation, was publicly executed by the Chinese Communist Party during the Suppression of Counterrevolutionaries campaign at the age of 39.
In 1952, affected by campaigns such as the Three-Anti and Five-Anti movements, a large number of capitalists and merchants in Shanghai chose to commit suicide by jumping from buildings, unable to bear the persecution.
By the end of 1951, the CCP's campaign to suppress counter-revolutionaries had led to the abnormal deaths of about 2 million people.
The CCP launched the "Three-Anti and Five-Anti" campaigns, seizing the property of capitalists and private business owners on a large scale under charges such as tax evasion, and conducting public humiliation and struggle sessions.
the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) carries out a crackdown on counter-revolutionary movements, aiming to eliminate various personnel that threaten the regime, resulting in about 2,000,000 deaths.
Between 1950 and 1953, China dispatched troops to support North Korea against South Korea and the United Nations Command, becoming one of the major external wars China participated in after 1949.
After the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950, the U.S. Seventh Fleet established the Taiwan Strait Patrol Force. Destroyers and capital ships conducted routine patrols in the Taiwan Strait, deterring conflict and ensuring the strait remained open to international navigation, which laid the foundation for nearly two decades of peace in the Taiwan Strait.
In June 1950, the Agrarian Reform Law of the People's Republic of China was promulgated, and land reform rolled out across rural areas nationwide. Although the original intent was to distribute landlords' land to poor peasants, in actual implementation it evolved into a bloody and violent plundering feast, with numerous landlords stripped of their land and killed. Death tolls estimated by various scholars range between 200,000 and 2 million.
After the Korean War began in June 1950, a long-term policy reality formed among the United States, Taiwan, and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP): the mainland and Taiwan were treated as two separate political entities. Since then, in handling the Taiwan Strait issue, the U.S. has not viewed Taiwan's status as having been finalized by any international document, but has instead continued to make policy arrangements surrounding cross-strait relations, the use of force, and Taiwan's political future.
On June 25, 1950, the Korean People's Army crossed the 38th parallel southward, and the Korean War broke out; in October of the same year, China entered the war.
The CCP launched a nationwide land reform movement, inciting hatred and violence, which resulted in the massacre of approximately 2 million landlords and their families.
After the outbreak of the Korean War in late June 1950, U.S. President Truman declared the Taiwan Strait neutral, blocking either side of the strait from attacking the other.