Modern China

1
Modern China

• Peoples Republic of China 1949-
• From the point of view of the Chinese Communist
  Party, as distinct from the people,
• The first 8 years were positive--Oct. 1949-late
  1957 saw growth, reconstruction, innovation
  under the guidance of CCP organizers and
  administrators.
• CCP consolidated its political control,
  collectivized agriculture and began Soviet-style
  (heavy) industrialization.
• The collectivization of the agricultural
  population lasted 20 years.
• Maos Great Leap Forward of 1958-60 was a time of
  disorder.
• Economic recovery occurred 1961-65 under CPP
  organizers and administrators.
• Maos Cultural Revolution was a disastrous period
  1966-76.
• In the 1970s universities gradually reopened and
  under Deng Xiaoping the CCP organized the Four
  Modernizations (in agriculture, industry, science
  and technology, and defense).
• Here begin economic reforms and opening China to
  the outside world.
• 1980-2000 economy grew 9/yr. and modern
  industrial and service economy emerged.
• Standard of living increased 400 for most
  Chinese in a decade it took the US 50 years to
  double its per capital income in the 19th C when
  at an economic level comparable to China.
• There has been an inflow of people to the urban
  areas and, at the same time, job loss among
  workers in state enterprises with their
  privatization.

2
Modern China 1949-

• The new Chinese state was forged from 1949-1953
• Nationalist officials (2 million comp. to. PRCs
  .75 m) were left in place.
• Inflation was controlled when CCP took over the
  banking system and credit, set up national
  trading associations for each commodity, and
  paying personnel in market-basket terms, thereby
  keeping the salaried class up with inflation
  (15).
• Rebuilding was not a problem though manpower and
  resoruces were drained by the Korean War the war
  provided a reason for tightening controls over
  all sectors (thought, movement, etc.).
• There was widespread popular support for the CCP
  and PRC regime in the early yearsit grew from
  2.7-6.1 million in 6 years.
• It was anti-corruption, anti-waste and
  anti-bureaucratism so purged the disloyal it was
  anti-capitalist class and eliminated them and
  took over their factories through charges of
  corruption and it set up mass campaigns for
  youth, labor, women, etc. to extend its reach
  through the country and a) drew talent and b)
  eliminated those disloyal.
• Pacifying the more independent south led to death
  for large landholding peasants, upper class,
  etc., and tactics like denunciations, self
  criticism, etc.
• The 1954 state constitution was based on the
  Soviet model and concentrated power in the
  CCPMao went a step further by keeping the
  military under CCP control as well the state,
  with himself at the helm of all 3.

3
Modern China

• Collectivizing Agriculture 1950s-1978
• After consolidating state government, the CCP
  next went after collectivization of agriculture,
  but not following the Soviet strategem that had
  been such a disaster--
• First, peasants were organized into mutual-aid
  teams then set up Agricultural Producers
  Cooperatives in which farmers pooled land and
  equipment and got a return in proportion to them
  (keeping the rich peasant mollified) this
  redistributed about 2.6 of the land to the
  peasants but the land could still be bought and
  sold privately.
• Next, the CCP truly collectivizedall labor and
  equipment was pooled and everyone was compensated
  equallyMao insisted on this move that was hotly
  debated in the CCP their were three tiers of
  organization.
• Organization of the countryside was remarkable
  with everyone obliged to participate in meetings,
  labor, etc. and to practice brown-nosing, lying,
  etc. for sheer survivalactivistscadres of the
  CCP formed the new peasant leadership that
  cultivated guanxi (networks, connections),
  ingratiated themselves with their superiors, and
  exploited their inferiors in traditional Chinese
  style.
• This was the ultimate in state intrusion into the
  peasant household.

4
Modern China

• Collective Agriculture in Practice 1950s-1978
• 75 of the rural Chinese were engaged in the
  collectives and the same major peasant-state
  issue was at the forehow to divide the
  harvestthe irony is that the CCP freed the
  peasants from landlords but became the ultimate
  landlord itself.
• Communes were established nationwide in 1958 and
  the individual farmer was under 6 levels of
  administration (province, prefecture, county,
  commune, brigade, production team).
• There were 2000 counties, 70,000 communes,
  750,000 brigades approximately the size of a
  small village with 260 householdsbelow were 5
  million production teams of 35 household each.
• Overall was the grain monopolythe state bought,
  sold and moved food nationwide, setting prices,
  setting production etc.
• To receive food a peasant had to show
  registration certificates (so couldnt move from
  their land)the free markets were closed.
• It kept the agricultural tax low (10 dropping to
  4.5) but then established a level of production
  beyond which the state declared it surplus which
  had to be sold low to the state.
• Harvest 1) state tax 2) set aside next years
  seed, animal fodder, and peasants
  shareallegedly subsistence but really well below
  self sufficient rations as internationally
  recognized3) surplus to the state.
• Negotiating the production was the team leaders
  job, again bringing guanxi, corruption, bribery,
  falsifying accounts, leaving grain in the field,
  etc. into play.
• Production increased after 1978 when individuals
  had more control over production.

5
Modern China

• Beginning Industrialization 1949-1957
• The CCP victory in 1949 stimulated migration to
  the cities, keeping urban unemployment high. CCP
  began with heavy industry, following the Soviet
  model, which was not suited to Chinas stage of
  development.
• 3/5 of the labor in manufacturing were
  self-employed in 1949, 90 were organized in
  cooperatives in 1957.
• The labor force doubled between 1949-57, with 50
  of it in factories.
• Under Jiang, the Nationalists National Resources
  Commission controlled 2/3 of industrial
  investment much of this infrastructure remained
  in China to build a state controlled economy
  along Soviet lines and opposed to the US
  preference for mixed state and private.
• Rapid state moves reduced the private industrial
  sector from 50 in 1949 to under 20 in 2 years.
• The first Five Year Plan (1953-57) saw 8.9
  income growth, 3.8 agricultural growth, more
  kids in school (50) and a 35 increase in urban
  wages (hard to know if the figures are to be
  trusted).
• Rather than a second Five Year Plan, China
  undertook the Great Leap Forward in 1958-60in
  which well see parallels in Chinas past.

6
Modern China

• Education and Intellectuals 1949-1957
• The CCPs fixation on control lost it many
  intellectuals and undermined parts of the
  educational system it needed.
• Classically trained scholars tried to influence
  the emperor but at the same time remained
  conservative and as the major beneficiaries of
  education in the late 19th C it was W. liberal
  arts education that developed Chinas scholars.
• Mao wished to bring education to the masses that
  was relevant that that promoted the new state he
  followed the Soviet model.
• Massive thought reform awaited professors and
  intellectuals in the 1950srenounce capitalist
  imperialism, guilt for betraying the people, and
  new enlightenment thanks to Mao
• Maos educational reforms called for
  ideologically sound technocrats on the one hand
  and basic education for all on the other, along
  with basic health servicesthe contradiction was
  that a rise in middle school graduates would lead
  to demands for white collar jobs (not enough) and
  college (not enough).
• China revamped the liberal arts curricula of its
  colleges, established 20 new polytechnics and 26
  engineering institutes, leaving only 13 of the
  older comprehensive model. Still, seats were
  limited.
• All curricula were the same and developed
  centrally, pitting faculty against disciplinary
  standards and government dictates and forcing
  colleges to accept party activists who lack
  sufficient educational preparation.
• Under the brief Hundred Flowers Campaign of
  1956-57, Mao and Deng trusted in the support of
  intellectuals to constructively criticize
  instead there was an outpouring of criticism from
  all angles, causing Mao to lose face.

7
Modern China

• Anti-Rightist Campaign of 1957-58
• The new cadres were undereducated and hated the
  intellectuals they were only to happy to act
  against them to end the Hundred Flowers Campaign
  and later to vilify them during the Cultural
  Revolution.
• Chinese emperors had occasionally opened the path
  for words of criticism, and got more than they
  expected similarly, Mao and the CCP were
  unprepared for the criticism of intellectuals and
  took strong action against themthat is, anyone
  whose ideas strayed to freeing the people from
  controls. 10s of 1000s were persecuted by the
  newly emerging leadership in city and village,
  the under-educated, narrow in experience,
  xenophobic and anti-intellectual younger people
  only too easily moved toward destruction once in
  power.
• Casting aside the educated and experienced
  intellectual elites, as Mao and the CCP
  leadership did, was a mistakethey stifled
  patriotic talent and lost the benefit of
  reflections upon proposed policies and actions
  that earlier Chinese governments retained.
• Class-status and fierce loyalty to the PRC became
  the basis for much selection of new leaders.

8
Modern China

• The Great Leap Forward 1958-1960 the Need
• The CCP was shocked in 1957 to learn that the
  Soviet model of industrialization was not suited
  to Chinese conditions.
• China had 4 times the population as the USSR and
  half the standard of living even with remarkable
  agricultural collectivization production was not
  much increased.
• China owed the USSR for loans that it was paying
  out of food production at the same time, the
  urban population was growing at 10 X the rate as
  agricultural production.
• A western economic view would be to decrease
  investment in heavy industry and direct it to
  light industry (for consumer goods to stimulate
  peasant production).
• Mao thought this approach far too slow and
  convinced the CCP leadership about the ability to
  muster the rural peasant psychology for massive
  public works (out of a labor tax), raise
  agricultural production by putting more hands to
  work in the fields, and expand small scale
  industry locallysupposedly, Chinese industry
  would produce goods for export to pay for the
  exercise.
• Massive decentralization to the local level
  began, including of the banking system local
  production targets were more out of zeal than any
  educated understanding of what was possible.
• Indeed, new roads, dames, cultivation, factories,
  were built, but attempts to bring small industry
  into the countryside (tiny, smelting furnaces
  turned out unusable steel) were uneconomical.

9
Modern China

• The Great Leap Forward 1958-1960 the Disaster
• While a great patriotic exercise, the Great Leap
  Forward was an economic failureattempts to
  report the reality of deteriorating peasant life
  led to being dismissed from the leadership by
  Mao..
• Mao waged anti-rightist campaign against the
  critics of the GLF.
• Mao and his supporters increased grain taxes at a
  time when harvests were down, labor was exhausted
  from the public works projects, and peasants had
  insufficient foodmalnutrition and disease were
  major problems.
• Industrial production dropped and only the grain
  taxes from the countryside kept the cities under
  the illusion that all was normal.
• Because he took criticism of the failure
  personally, and it was his failure, Mao
  disbanded the bimonthly leadership meetings where
  policy was thrashed out and direction taken by a
  united front.
• Thus, the personality cult of Mao was another
  factor adding to Chinas problemsthat and his
  approach to problem solving that still focused on
  mobilizing the masses and suppressing the
  intellectuals (Mao was still rebelling against
  Confucianism).
• Mao refused to modernize the army, preferring
  instead to bank on nuclear weapons (and demoting
  the head of the army).

10
Modern China

• The Great Leap Forward 1960s, Labor Education
• In 1960, leaders like Deng got accurate
  information on communes, industry, science,
  commerce, etc. as bases for practical
  improvementas always, Maos solutions prevailed.
  
• Status distinctions developed within city labor
  enfranchised workers in state enterprises had
  fringe benefits (housing, subsidized meals,
  pensions, etc.), some 2/5 of the labor force
  producing ¾ of the industrial output 2/5 in
  collectives produced ¼ the output temporary
  workers were menials on contracts shipped in and
  out of the countryside.
• Mao opposed the idea of peasants having local
  plots to sell to local markets instead, he went
  after newly emerged peasant leaders who, upon
  investigation (informing by peasants) forced to
  confess and removedanother purge.
• Meanwhile there was bifurcation in the
  educational system it was realized that the
  regular schools were the track to success
  (college and status) rather than the system of
  self-study schools that had been established in
  the Great Leap Forward.
• There was increasing unrest among peasants and
  urban workers.
• At this same time, the inevitable break with the
  USSR occurred, fueled by Khrushchev's dislike of
  Mao and the latters mutual dislike. At the
  time, the some US scholars joked that students
  studying Chinese were the worlds pessimists.

11
Modern China

• The 1958 Great Leap Forward in Chinese Historical
  Perspective
• Political activists and managers led the
  collectivization process and carried through its
  edictsrising to the occasion as representatives
  of higher authority to positions similar to the
  lower gentry of late imperial timesuntrained in
  Confucian principles, some too became petty
  despots.
• By the 1960s the population was largely young
  people, many of whom were idealists serving the
  new Chinese cause.
• The GLF was an updated form of huge public works
  projects of imperial China using conscripted
  labor, a form of tax thousands of years old.
• Even erroneous directions minor authorities might
  give about planting recall the theorists of
  imperial China telling the peasants their jobs.
• The reorganization of peasant life itself has
  parallels in agrarian reforms of Song and early
  Ming.
• Foreign affairs were not successful (organizing
  the 3rd World against the USSR, for example) and
  Mao was ready for another great effort to remake
  the Chinese people the Cultural Revolution of
  1966-76.

12
Modern China

• Maos Cultural Revolution 1966-1976 Overview
• To understand the Cultural Revolution you have to
  understand the Chinese society under Mao and the
  party dictatorshipthe population is passive in
  politics and obedient to authority to be
  otherwise would be antisocial and severely
  punished there are no semiautonomous sectors of
  a civil societymedia, labor, professions, etc.
• In the family and in village life Confucian
  teaching of social order through dutiful
  self-subordination can be felt even today.
• Mao had acquired some prerogatives of an
  emperorbut why he would nearly destroy the party
  he built and thereby endanger the revolution is a
  matter for much analysis. AS so often happens,
  Maos understanding of the peasants and their
  needs was genuine but, once in power he had to
  use them to maintain CPP leadership and control
  of the country.
• Over 15 years he feared a revival of the ruling
  class domination of the villagersthe need for
  expert management and the tendency one in power
  for personal privilege.
• He was as concerned with his own failing
  reputation in the CCP for his record and
  policiescriticism leveled through allusions and
  historical examples by the partys own organs,
  mainly in Beijing.
• The mess with the USSR further concerned him.
• The goal of the Cultural Revolution was to
  recapture control of the CCP and place his own
  followers into power breaking with precedent,
  the military was raised to a prominent position.
• Nominally from 1966-1969, the activities of the
  Cultural Revolution continued until Maos death
  in 1976.

13
Modern China

• Maos Cultural Revolution 1966-1976 Maos Role
• Mao has been described as a rebel leader and
  later on an updated emperorhe had am emperors
  power but the self image of a liberator. He was
  the heart and soul of Chinese communism.
• He saw the new bureaucracy following the old
  top-down pattern this would leave the peasants
  behind yet again. He sought decentralization.
• This is contrary to the Chinese tradition of
  governing the masses by a trained and loyal elite
  of ministers, subordinate officals, etc., in
  effect an attack on the establishment he helped
  set up.
• Evidently Mao thought the student youth he would
  mobilize to attack the evils of establishment
  would be a form of manipulated mass movement
  against the older leadership, himself excepted.
• The Cultural Revolution got increasingly out of
  control, spilled over to violence, and Mao was
  not very successful in reining in his own
  creation.
• The purge rate among party officials was 60 and
  400,000 died.
• In their 1977 trail, the Gang of Four were
  charged with persecuting many more and those
  injured number in the millions.

14
Modern China

• The Cultural Revolution 1966-1976 Support of the
  Peoples Liberation Army Approval to Mobilize
  the Masses 1
• Mao could not have perpetrated the Cultural
  Revolution without the support of the army.
  Structure and deployment allowed Mao to initiate
  the Cultural Revolution from the regional PLO who
  were part of the local government and public
  security services. The main army, some 38
  main-forces in 11 military regions, maintained
  support for the government, and didnt get
  involved until later.
• There regional forces divided among 28 provincial
  military districts, less well armed and trained
  for local defense work including mobilizing the
  local militias and citizen-soldiers. They were
  in small commands throughout China. They were
  also, like their predecessors, required to be
  partially self-sufficient through growing crops
  and running small scale industries.
• Mao as commander-in-chief used them as his power
  base against his enemies in the CCP.

15
Modern China

• The Cultural Revolution 1966-1976 Support of the
  Peoples Liberation Army Approval to Mobilize
  the Masses 2
• Tensions between Maos group and the CCP
  establishment worsened in 1966--Maos group
  included Lin Biao at the head of the PLA Maos
  wife, Jiang Qing, a competent politician who
  brought in a group Shanghai intellectuals who
  became the Central Cultural Revolutionary Group.
• Both groups purged dissidents in 1966 and Mao
  removed officials who were going to play ball his
  way (Deng and Zhou Enlai, long-time right arm to
  Mao did go along, not realizing the mess to
  come).
• Mao was in central China through this period,
  laying low a photo purporting to show swim
  across the Yangtze (about like Elizabeth II
  swimming the Channel), proved his almost super
  human capability and gained the admiration of the
  countryside.
• At the 11th Plenum (a meeting of the Central
  Committee packed with Maoists), his chief rival
  was demoted from 2 to 8 and his supporter to
  2, and his plan for moving against revisionism
  was unfoldedthe principal of class struggle
  would be applied to all intellectuals,
  bureaucrats and party members to weed out those
  taking the capitalist road.
• By this means, Mao gained nominal legality for
  stirring up a mass movementagainst whom in the
  CCP wasnt clear at this point.

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17
Modern China

• Peoples Republic of China 1949-Today
• Exposure to the outside has undermined the hold
  of Marxist-Leninist-Maoist Thought and control of
  the CCP.
• The move to market decentralized political power
  and economic power to the local areas contributed
  to loss of power at the center.
• The party-state that controls the military could
  still repress any perceived threat but has been
  less successful in controlling the new middle
  class and pluralistic culture.
• The weaker CCP allowed the development of
  competitive elections in a third of the villages
  and helped the National Peoples Congress,
  formerly the rubber-stamp legislature, to develop
  a degree of autonomy.
• At the same time, the weaker CCP at the center
  hindered the states ability to collect taxes and
  maintain the infrastructure of public education,
  health care, and irrigation works, begun in the
  1950s and that was the under-girder for Chinas
  development.
• In the 2000s the question is whether its
  leadership can lead China to both wealth and
  power without basic changes in its political
  structure.
• That is, Chinas reforms have created their own
  problemscost to the party-state and various
  segments of society disintegration of the
  command economy and rise of entrepreneurship have
  created social disparities and worker/farmer
  protests diffusion of economic decision making
  to the regions has lessened Beijings power
  wealthier provinces with international trade are
  less willing to follow Beijing-directives on
  trade and taxes if they are in conflict with
  their regional interests ability of the
  party-state to deal with social ills.

18
Modern China

• Peoples Republic of China 1949-Today
• Chinas unity as a nation has been less affected
  by the changes since 90 of the population is Han
  (the N and far W being the exceptions with
  Muslims and Tibetan Buddhists).
• The party-state can still suppress a group it
  perceives threatens its power (e.g., democracy
  dissidents, Fulonggong cult) but its concerns
  about corruption, growing social and geographic
  disparities, regional protectionism, agricultural
  stagnation, pollution, etc. are largely ignored.
• Inflation is a threat and China lacks
  macroeconomic controls of the money supply or
  interest rates.
• The party-state lacks political institutions and
  infrastructure to regulate the informal
  federalism that is developing.
• There is no mechanism for regular interactions
  between regions and center on policy.
• There are no political institutions that bind
  society together.
• Party leadership doesnt acknowledge the need for
  transformation
• Chinas huge population, regionalization etc.
  make it hard to guide.
• Party leaders rose to power through the command
  economy and bureaucracy, and lack the history and
  authority of Deng to maintain their power.
• The military itself controls a vast economic
  empire within China and may be unwilling or
  uninterested in stepping into a power vacuum.
• The next decade will be critical to Chinas
  future and ability to sustain its remarkable
  re-emergence on the world scene as a wealthy
  powerful nation.