The Chinese Communist Party In Power, 1949-1976

Jacques Guillermaz

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9781000315394
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Asian Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book traces the history of the Chinese Communist Party's behavior toward itself, and the way it has created and developed the regime on the state of affairs at home and abroad, and on a compelling ideology dominated by the giant-like personality of Mao Tse-tung.

Part 1
New Democracy in China 1949-1953

Behold, New China is within sight. Let us all hail her! Her masts have already risen above the horizon. Let us all cheer in welcome! Raise both your hands. New China is ours!

Mao Tse-tung, "On New Democracy"

1 China in 1949

An immense task awaited the Communist Party when it came to power. Since the fall of the Empire in 1911, China had been split up between numerous politico-military groups supported by persistent provincial particularism. This situation gave rise to frequent, complicated civil wars involving little loss of life but enormous loss to the economy. These wars were followed by ten years of Communist insurrections and revolts within the Nationalist movement between 1927 and 1937, eight years of war against Japan (which took Manchuria as early as 1931) between 1937 and 1945, and lastly, from 1946 onward, a final struggle between the Nanking central government and the Communist Party. In 1949, at the end of the Third Civil War, the Communist Party, now equal to its adversary in the military field, won victory at last.¹

The political fragmentation, the civil wars, and the war with Japan all hindered the successive Chinese governments, particularly the Kuomintang government, created on April 18, 1927, from guiding the general development of the country toward the modern world, whether in the realm of developing the economy, of administrative structures and practices, or of the transformation of customs and ideas. The Kuomintang, influenced by the syncretism of Sun Yat-sen who was little known among the rural population, was more inclined to encourage cautious changes than to provoke sudden transformations. This state of affairs was reflected in the country's foreign relations, for it prevented the Chinese governments from being on an equal footing with the foreign powers who for the century from 1842 to 1943 continued to benefit from the important privileges granted to them by the Unequal Treaties.

Map 1 Physical map of China and Provinces

In the autumn of 1949, the general situation appeared to be worse than ever. The administrative system of the former government had collapsed in a few months. This left a void, which the Communists, whose armies had fallen like a curtain from Manchuria across North China to the Yangtze Valley and as far as Canton and who saw the population under their control suddenly increase from 200 million to nearly 600 million, could not fill by appointing experienced staff everywhere, as they had neither the time nor the means. Although completely at ease when in charge of the rural bases, they knew little of the more intricate difficulties presented by the towns, which were largely under the influence of the industrial and business bourgeoisie, and their ignorance worried them.² Twelve years later, when Field Marshal Montgomery asked Mao Tse-tung what had concerned him the most after the establishment of the new regime, Mao replied that it was the extent to which both the Communist Party and himself were lacking in experience in the face of the enormous problems ahead.³

The industrial economy was seriously disorganized by what was going on and above all by difficulties in obtaining supplies, both at home and abroad. Its equipment in Manchuria had been dismantled by the Russians in 1945 and 1946. Large factories were paralyzed or slowed down. The production figures for 1949—a bad year to use as a reference, it is true, because of military operations and the transfer of power—were 53 percent below those of the best prewar years, if the Communists are to be believed, when production amounted to 61,880,000 tons of coal, 923,000 tons of steel, and 6,000 million kilowatt hours of electricity.⁴ Agricultural output which had reached a prewar maximum of 138.7 million tons for food crops and 850,000 tons for cotton, also fell by 25 percent in the case of food crops and soybeans, and by 48 percent in the case of cotton.⁵

Railway transport, which was inadequate at the outset—about 26,000 kilometers of line for a country covering 9.6 million square kilometers— had been largely restored. By late 1949,21,715 kilometers of line were open, but most of the rolling stock had been requisitioned by the army.⁶ Civilian motor transport was virtually nonexistent: there were only 20,000 to 30,000 vehicles and 131,000 kilometers of roads in good condition. Almost all commercial ships had gone to Taiwan.

The country's finances were in ruins. The currency of the central government had collapsed during the hyperinflation of 1946-49. The Communist currency, the jen-min-pi, now the yuan, had no foreign market value. China survived because its economy was mainly based on agriculture and handicrafts. Urban and rural craftsmen produced three-quarters of the consumer goods, while more than 80 percent of the total population, then estimated at 475 million, was engaged in agriculture, farming more than 100 million hectares. In 1949, in terms of the 1952 yuan, production amounted to 32,590 million yuan in agriculture, 14,020 million yuan in industry, and 3,240 million yuan in handicrafts.⁷

Serious specific problems existed alongside the general decay of the economy. These included returning several million refugees to their native regions; taking command of the Nationalist armies; preventing the flight of capital (currency and precious metal) and even of equipment to Hong Kong, Singapore, and Southeast Asia; and collecting taxes, not to mention continuing the war against the former government, whose fleet and air force partially blockaded the large coastal ports, and who still had 400,000 disbanded soldiers on the mainland in June 1950.

The first aims of the new regime were naturally to create and establish new political and administrative institutions; to take in hand a weary, indifferent, and illiterate population and bring about their ideological conversion; and to restore the economy to its general prewar level—that of 1936. It was essential to achieve these aims, not only to ensure the continued existence of the nation, but also to secure the establishment of a modern socialist economy, which was the chief raison d'être of the regime.

Several positive factors were to help the Communists in this colossal task. First of all, after an interval of nearly forty years, political unity (including the outer provinces) had been achieved once more, the administration was again centralized, it was possible to move freely from one end of the country to the other, and order had been restored. For the first time since 1911, a Chinese government was in a position to determine what changes were necessary and to put them into effect on a national scale. The people's government was to bring about all that the imperial government and the Kuomintang central government had been unable to undertake, the former through lack of imagination, and the latter through lack of authority.

To direct this work, which was without historical precedent in scope and difficulty, the Communist Party had leaders and cadres of proven worth. These people had survived rigorous selection in the field and at their work; they were tempered by twenty years of experience as military commanders, administrators, and leaders of the population. They belonged to a solid, coherent hierarchy, united by a centralized political system, which had maintained a certain degree of initiative and flexibility at the local level, because of the distances separating the red bases and the variety of problems involved. The methods used could both take into account the feelings of the population among whom the Party had had to settle, and also, when

Map 2 Administrative map of China

necessary, set aside any humanitarian scruples or useless precautions, in the name of the liberation of the masses and national salvation.

In general, the state of mind and attitude of the Chinese people was also to be a positive element for the Communist Party. Few regrets followed the former government to Taiwan. In spite of initial successes and the personal popularity of Marshal Chiang Kai-shek right up to 1945, the Nationalist Party and its government had not been able to stand up to the test of war. The administration, which was unsure of itself and often corrupt, was not firmly rooted in the people. Unlike the old imperial regime, it was no longer based on a traditional moral order that ensured, from the village and family level upward, the stability and durability of structures and customs and consequently the continuity of social and economic life even during periods when the central power was weak or absent.

A weak, fragmented, liberal opposition had already played into the Communists' hands, either by joining forces with them during the war against Japan, or by forming small parties incapable of gaining power or winning confidence. Whether through propaganda or through the experience of their friends and relations, both the urban bourgeoisie and workers and the rural artisans and peasants knew of the strict austerity reigning in the red zones and of the constant intervention by the Party in the family and professional life of every individual. They accepted the new system with no illusions and no enthusiasm; their dislike of the old system, their political insignificance, and their fears made them all the more ready to accept it. This readiness, which the Communists skillfully put to use, was not born of circumstances but was linked with traditional attitudes. The Chinese people accepted dynastic changes, considering it natural and just for a vigorous race to replace an exhausted one, and they had a long acquaintance in the still recent past with the totalitarian order of the Empire, which was founded on a single ideology of Confucian inspiration. On the so-called blank page for the year 1949, the Communists drew up a Common Program appealing to all social categories—peasants, workers, petty bourgeoisie, national bourgeoisie—through its apparent moderation and national ambitions.

These ambitions were first of all economic in character. They could hardly be anything else. It was absolutely imperative to develop the Chinese economy, because of the time lost since the nineteenth century, because of unparalleled demographic pressure, and because of the desperate poverty of the people—almost all economists estimate China's national annual income at less than $50 per head in 1949 or thereabouts.⁸

A priori, it did not look as if a liberal regime, by allowing the situation to develop as circumstances dictated, could accomplish so great a task. Examples would have to be found elsewhere, among countries that were undergoing total renewal and were using ideology as a pretext to make the individual serve the higher interest of the state: Japan in the Meiji era, Italy under Mussolini and, above all, Russia in 1928. When they quoted a doctrine founded on a scientific theory of production, and cited, as proof of their future success, the economic achievements and military victories of the Soviet Union, which closely resembled China in size and initial lack of development, the Chinese Communists showed themselves in a favorable light that would ensure them of widespread support in principle.

Although the new regime came up against the same difficulties as its predecessors in science, technology, and finance, at least it had all the country's natural resources at its disposal. These are comparable to those of the Soviet Union and of the United States and, if well used, guarantee China a role as a great power. By 1949...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of tables
• List of maps
• List of figures
• Prologue
• Preface
• Foreword to the French Edition
• Translator's Note
• Part 1 New Democracy in China 1949-1953
• Part 2 The First Five-Year Plan 1953-1957
• Part 3 The Chinese Road to Socialism 1958-1962
• Part 4 The Socialist Education Movement and the Cultural Revolution and Its Aftermath 1962-1976
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index