How is China Revolutionary History still Relevant to an Understanding of China Today - Assignment Example

How is China’s revolutionary history still relevant to an understanding of China today? Name: Course: Institution: Date: How is China’s revolutionary history still relevant to an understanding of China today? Introduction In her 2006 article “Rising dragon still sees red,” Kristy Needham highlights what she considers a contradictory China of sorts-progressively capitalist and liberalist in appearance but fundamentally communist in essence (Needham 2006 p1-3). To observers such as Needham, contemporary China is characterized by the contradiction of an economically progressive state walking the capitalist tightrope but steeped in conservative bureaucracy, command economics and communist style authoritarianism. A more comprehensive understanding of China, however, can only be obtained by analyzing her revolutionary past. This literature review will undertake an examination of China’s revolutionary past through a comparative analysis of the opinions and critical accounts of various commentators and authors. The review will show that China’s revolutionary history, as conceived by Mao Zedong and the Communist Party of China at Yan’an and carried on in the Great Leap Forward (GLF) all the way to the Cultural Revolution, has shaped current Chinese politics, economics and culture. The review will trace China’s command economy and authoritarian leadership style to the ideological influence of Maoism and show how negative Chinese experiences with their unique brand of socialism is leading them away from their past. China’s Revolutionary History: Maoism from Yan’an to the Cultural Revolution Many commentators such as Selden (1995 p.10) often refer to the remote region of Yan’an as the birthplace of China’s revolutionary history. After the CCP’s tactical military retreat from the Guomidang (Kuomitang) nationalists during the Long March, Mao’s mass line ideology would eventually prove key to the CCP’s successes both against the Guomidang domestically and against Japanese aggression and establish it firmly in control of China. Sheltered in communist Yan’an, Mao and the CCP use their time in isolation to redefine their relationships with peasants to survive from both internal and external challenges (Apter 1995 p.206). The mass line was Mao’s organizing principle and tool of peasant mobilization which stressed proper leadership as taking the ideas of the masses, through study concentrating these scattered and unsystematic ideas, returning to the masses and explaining and propagating these ideas until they eventually accepted them as their own (Selden 1995 p. 9). In the base areas of Shanxi-Chahar-Hebei, Shanxi-Shebei-Shadnong-Henan and Shanxi-Shuiyuan, the CCP introduced land reforms, tax reductions, literacy campaigns and other socio economic reforms aimed at creating a self sustaining, self sufficient and anti-bureaucratic society (Selden 1995 p.10). It entailed reforms such as decentralization of agricultural production, the education of women and even population control measures. Selden attributes the success of the Yan’an way in redefining the relationships between the peasants and the CCP and identifies four critical factors to its success. First, it promised socio-economic benefits for peasants long oppressed by the Guomidang who found socio-economic progress through rent and tax reduction and the increased owner-cultivator links due to and reforms a welcome relief from the impoverishment suffered under landlords and Guomidang warlords. Secondly, it capitalized and built on popular support for their guerilla effort against the Japanese in the Sino-Japanese war. Third, it introduced a form of communist democracy to an increasingly disillusioned peasantry and fourth, it highlighted the superior organizational capability of the CCP. The Yan’an way would leave a lasting legacy on Chinese politics, economics and culture. Apter (1994 p.) attributes the brutal crackdown on the student protests in Tiananmen Square to the legacy of Yan’an. He refers to it as the Yan’an myth of mobilization (p. 199), an intellectual syllabus (p.207) politics which was used by the CCP to justify oppression, violence and control-at-all-cost measures and policies through the GLF and the Cultural Revolution. Critical review of the Yan’an way by Western journalist and scholars has often been colored by communist antipathy especially in the post war era. As a result, many scholars and journalists who wrote on the subject were initially sympathetic of the peasantry who had suffered from Japanese imperialism and they noted the popular support enjoyed by the CCP for their socio-economic programs (Selden 1995 p.10). Nevertheless, many commentators have traced some of the prevalent features of Chinese authoritarian rule back to Yan’an. Apter (1994) demonstrates how media control took root during the reactification period where the CCP felt the need to control the flow of information by destroying opposing influences within the party-those of foreign Stalinist and liberal influences (Zhao p.25-26). Journalism was made subjective to party interests as had many state organs such as the police and the army. The flow of information was tightly controlled and monitored through the party hierarchy. News was heavily laden with ideological values such as the benefits of the CCP’s embedded economic policies and was expected to serve party interests rather than entertain (Zhao p.25-26). Selden (1995 p.40) notes that once the CCP had consolidated power, it would eventually abandon the goals of reform and that authoritarianism and manipulation took center stage as shown by the nature of Mao’s various campaigns such as the reactification itself and subsequent campaigns against political and economic problems. Mobilizational politics, he argues, would come to be characterized by negatives such as scapegoating, personality cultism and repression (Selden 1995 p.28). Liang supports this view arguing that Mao did not just use violence but also moral sublimation to manipulate. During the reactification, noncompliant peasants were subjected to mock trials, beatings and assassinations. Mao also systematically repressed intellectuals resistant to CCP subordination such as Wang Shiwei from Lu Xan (Apter 1996 p.223). This was an important period in Chinese revolutionary history as Mao developed a streak for solving social, economic and political problems through targeted campaigns. For instance, the CCP would orchestrate the 1953 “Campaign to suppress counterrevolutionaries” and the “Three Anti Campaign against official corruption”. These would set the tone for larger campaigns such as the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. Yan’an would pave way for the CCP’s implementation of the Soviet model of economic development in an effort to modernize a backward economy ravaged by years of conflict (Saich 2004 p. 30). As Saich and Blecher (1989 p.56) retrospectively reflects on China’s experience with the Soviet model, he indicates that at the time, it appeared the only viable option to the CCP and Mao as it had proven that it could work elsewhere . Blecher also cites the lack of any real experience in industrial development among the CCP leadership and the allure of the Soviet type model which had seen rapid industrialization in the Soviet Union (p.56). They drew parallels between China and the Soviet Union- large war torn countries isolated from the West bereft of foreign aid, technology and markets and saw the potential for similar rapid and self sustaining industrialization all the more too alluring. The first five year economic plan would thus be launched in 1953. However, the Soviet model would be inconsistent with the principles of the mass line as conceptualized at Yan’an. Blecher (1989 p.54-55) traces the evolution of China’s highly centralized political system to the changes in the five year plans by noting the departures from Yan’an. For instance, self reliance as practiced in the isolated base areas was sacrificed for more centralized economic planning. The leadership style of the mass line was also mutilated for a single vertical authority which left little or no room for participation by local government. Investment priorities also shifted from agriculture to heavy industry with industrial capital funded by the Chinese public. This period also saw the rapid nationalization of the entire private sector and the establishment of a hierarchical one man management factory system which placed the entire Chinese industry under state command (Blecher 1989 p.54-55). Although the Soviet model has been characterized by commentators such as Blecher (1989), Brugger (1981) and Saich (2004) as a success owing to the growth rates experienced, many felt that the goals and ideals of the mass line had been compromised and the CCP awakened itself to attempt to reconcile the ideals of Yan’an with their new reality. The need to reconcile the mass line with the new bureaucracy would set the stage for the disastrous Great Leap Forward (GLF). The second five year economic plan, or the GLF as it would come to be known, was a suite of radical economic policies-as the name suggests- by the CCP to try and transform China from an agrarian society to a modern industrialized state in the shortest time possible (1996, pp.26-30). The GLF primarily targeted the issue of agricultural production as China had plunged into economic crisis in 1955 where agricultural production in the bureaucratized countryside had fallen behind and could match the demands of rapid industrialization. Blecher (1989) points out that the Soviet model had been inappropriate and ill advised for China’s development needs. To guarantee the path of industrialization, Mao and the CCP felt that it was necessary to introduce radical industrial and agrarian reform that would ensure the necessary agricultural surplus for industrial development (Zhou 1996, p.7). Prior to the GLF, Mao in had launched the Hundred Flowers Campaign (1956) and the Anti-Rightist Campaign (1957) to suppress revisionist right leaning criticism of the CCP’s communist policies and clear the way for accelerated agricultural collectivism under the GLF (Jefferys 2008) . In the latter campaign, according to Jeffreys (2008), Mao and the CCP systematically orchestrated attacks on intellectuals who criticized the impulsive, unscientific and radical policies of the GLF. The GLF was marked by abolition of private land ownership, the enforced collectivization of agricultural production and consumption in people communes, the systematic segregation of the population into rural and urban polity and the propagation of ambitious and unscientifically tested and methods of production such as backyard steel production, deep ploughing, and close planting to try and accelerate production overnight (Zhou 1996, pp.26-30). The GLF is unanimously characterized as disastrous both in its formulation and implementation. It precipitated the worst famine in Chinese history that claimed the lives of 30 million in rural China, led to rural-urban segregation and the impoverishment of the rural in their hukou far-removed from the social welfare enjoyed by their rural counterparts in a caste-like system (Chen et al 1994, Gao 1999). Gao (1999) and Chan et al (1994) have documented the experience of Chinese villagers in the GLF period. In Gao Village, Gao attributes the famine to structural factors such as explosion of the industrial urban population which placed pressure on grain production, the inappropriateness of the commune system of production in certain parts of China and the unscientific, labour intensive methods such as close planting which actually led to lower production. Chinese government officials eager to impress Mao and the CCP often exaggerated production figures and underreported famine statistics (Gao 1999 p.140). In addition, the government would often appropriate grain from rural producers to feed urban populations (Gao p.140). In villages such as Chen Village, this implied no incentive for farmers to produce as owner cultivator ranks were severed. Although they blamed natural disasters and poor implementation, the crushing famine necessitated a reconsideration of the GLF policies by both Mao and the CCP. It proved that a “one-size fits all approach” was impractical for China. In light of the monumental failure of the GLF, Mao trained his crosshairs on what he referred to as capitalist roaders who had derailed China’s progress to communism. According to the CCP and Mao, the principle objective of the revolution was to root out the old and replace it with the new (Jeffreys 2008). The CCP, true to Mao’s character, launched campaigns to criticize Confucius-representative of the old- and the former leader of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Lin Biao. Mao blamed the failures of the GLF on capitalist bourgeoisie who had wormed their way into party leadership and their revisionist tendencies which impeded the proper working of socialist China. The revolution was characterized by attacks on authors of literature that criticized Mao’s policies such as Khrushchev (Jeffreys 2008). Jeffreys outlines the four stages of the Cultural Revolution from these ideological attacks, attacks on rightist party members by the Red Guard to the forceful transfer of university students back to rural areas to impose rural lifestyles on them. The most common response elicited by observers of the Cultural Revolution outside China is one of consternation and horror and the revolution has often been refereed to as 10 years of disaster or catastrophe. Xing Li sums up sentiment over the revolution stating that most people have blamed the unprecedented horrors to Mao and a handful of evil men while likening Maoism to madness and irrationality (Li 2001 p.148). Critics such as Leys have rubbished the notion of the Cultural Revolution as anything but a revolution and have argued it was simply a power struggle within the CCP. Leys (1977) and Pye (1987) have faulted the rationale given by both Chinese and Western scholars for the revolution and argued that the mayhem unleashed by the revolution that led to the death of millions was an unintended consequence of a power struggle within the CCP between Mao, Lin Biao and the “Gang of Four” (Leys 1977 p.13-14). However, Li does counter that Mao’s fears over capitalist roaders were not entirely unfounded as it is they (Deng Xiaoping) who took over after his death and set China on the path of capitalism and reversed the disastrous policies of the GLF and revolution (Li 2008 p.150-151). Li also points out that the revolution was not entirely the playing out of Mao’s utopian fantasy but an expression of the collective will of the Chinese People who would otherwise not have rallied behind him and the CCP (Li 2001 p.). Mao’s death in 1976 was the practical demise of Maoism in China. Mao’s successor, Deng Xiaoping, oversaw a raft of political and economic reforms that drew on China’s experiences from Yan’an to the GLF to the Cultural Revolution. The CCP is now wary of the dangers of mass-line style leadership (Kaplan 1999). Commentators such as Needham and Kaplan have concluded that China under Deng underwent progressive transition from revolutionary Maoist communism characterized by command economy to a more market oriented economy (Deng 1985). China’s progressive adoption of capitalism is seen by commentators such as Needham and Goodman as a drift from its communist past yet China retains a streak of its authoritarian past as characterized by the tight regulation of financial information by Xinhua news agency (Needham 2006). China has also often come under criticism from its repression of the student uprising at Tiananmen Square which captured sweeping sentiment against Maoism style rule. Deng has overseen the “opening up” of China’s economy. This is the state of contradiction that commentators such as Needham have observed in contemporary China, aspects of its revolutionary past infused with rapid capitalist modernization. Conclusion China’s revolutionary past has cast a predominant shadow over any aspects and understanding of contemporary China. The modern Chinese authoritarian state draws its legacy from Maoist policies which remain central to an understanding of China. From its birthplace in Yan’an through to the GLF and the Cultural Revolution, the dominant theme in China’s revolutionary history has been the overbearing influence of Maoist politics and policies. The early successes and failures of Maoism have consequently shaped politics and economics in China as it remains wary of the dangers of radical socialism while still retaining its authoritarian legacy through instruments such as media control. China, according to commentators, has taken a more moderate path to socialism. Bibliography Apter, David E. (1995) ‘Discourse as Power: Yan’an and the Chinese Revolution’, in Tony Saich & Hans van de Ven (eds.), New Perspectives on the Chinese Communist Revolution, Armonk, New York: M.E. Sharpe. Blecher, M. 1989, ‘Socialist Transition, 1953-57’, China Politics, Economics and Society (Iconoclasm and Innovation in a Revolutionary Socialist Country), pp. 53-58. 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W. 1986, ‘Reassessing the Cultural Revolution’, The China Quarterly, Issue 108, December 1986, p.604- 610. Saich, T. 2004, Governance and Politics of China, New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Selden, M. 1995, ‘Yan’an Communism Reconsidered’, Modern China, vol. 21, no. 1, p. 9-40. Zhao, Y. 1998, Media, market, and democracy in China: between the party line and the bottom line, Illinois: University of Illinois Press. Zhou, K.X. 1996, How the Farmers Changed China, Preface and Chapter 2, The ‘feudalization’ of Chinese farmers: bound to the land’, Boulder: Westview. Read More