Chinese Communism

9 Key excerpts on "Chinese Communism"

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  Chinese Politics and Government

  Power, Ideology and Organization

  • Sujian Guo(Author)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  13 The former refer to universal truth, philosophical absolutism, and communist end-goal at the fundamental level, while the latter refer to practical ideas, policy preferences, and action means at the operative level.

  According to Lowenthal, the conflict between the reality and the goal that confronted all communist states in the process of modernization was “development versus utopia” or “modernity versus utopia.” With the advent of “mature industrialization,” a communist state had to adapt itself to certain institutional changes (such as material incentives, managerial autonomy, specialization, and income differentials), all of which conflict with its fundamental ideological goals. The twin goals of “utopia and modernity” are intertwined but produce recurrent conflicts over certain policy issues, and the communist party–state regimes repeatedly try to undo the “ideologically undesirable by-products of economic development and spontaneous social change.”14

  Political leaders in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe experienced such a goal conflict as these countries moved toward more mature industrialized societies. China, today, is facing the same goal conflict in the marketization of its economy. However, goal conflict does not necessarily prove the post-Mao regime’s abdication of the ultimate goal or suggest that the “fundamental goal” is being replaced by a “developmental goal” or “utopia” is being replaced by “modernity.” In contrast, the reality in post-Mao China suggests that there has been coexistence of the two goals—the ultimate goal of communism and the intermediate goal of modernization. The post-Mao regime has attempted to balance the two goals to meet the needs of the regime’s policy change and legitimacy. To do so, the post-Mao regime has become more tolerant of ideological change at the operative level while at the same time continuing to commit itself to its ultimate goal and those ideological elements at the fundamental level. The empirical evidence explored in this chapter will demonstrate that the most significant change has occurred at the operative level rather than at the fundamental level. Therefore, the terminology of “fundamental” and “operative” ideology is useful for analytic purpose. This framework can be illustrated in Figure 8.1

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  The Chinese Communist Party

  A 100-Year Trajectory

  • Jérôme Doyon, Chloé Froissart(Authors)
  • 2024(Publication Date)
  • ANU Press

    (Publisher)

  This was both a theory of Marxist revolution and an idea of how a post-revolutionary political system and political economy might function. Given the nature of China at the time, elements of the bourgeoisie could become allies with the working classes (including the peasantry) in overthrowing feudalism and colonialism. These were the major forces of oppression in China at the time rather than, for example, the oppression of a capitalist bourgeois system, as was the case in more advanced industrialised economies in America and Europe. After the revolution, while it would be important, Mao noted, that the private sector could not ‘dominate the livelihood of the people’, this did not mean the end of the private sector per se. Major enterprises and banks would be brought under state control, but otherwise the private sector would be allowed to contribute to economic reconstruction and development. This might not be a true socialist revolution, but neither was it a European- style transition from feudalism to capitalism; it was something distinct and different and a result of China’s distinct and specific circumstances. 3 2 Mao Zedong, ‘Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan’, 1927, www. marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_2.htm. 3 Mao Zedong, ‘On New Democracy’, January 1940, www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/ selected-works/volume-2/mswv2_26.htm. THE CHINESE COMMUNIST PARTY 212 Defining a Political Economy for the New People’s Republic Capacity, pragmatism and existential threats combined to provide the basis for China’s new political economy after 1949 as well (Brugger 1981, ch. 2). This was a country that had suffered governance deficiencies since at least the arrival of the British in 1839.

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  Pacific Century

  The Emergence of Modern Pacific Asia

  • Mark Borthwick(Author)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  To begin with, there was a critical reassessment of the basic ideological principles of the past and the specific policies and historical episodes that had emerged from them. The key breakthrough in this regard occurred at the end of 1978 when the Party’s Central Committee first endorsed Deng Xiaoping’s call to “seek truth from facts,” rather than mechanically perpetuating whatever policies had been associated with Mao Zedong. Three years later, another plenary meeting of the Central Committee adopted a resolution on Party history that repudiated the Cultural Revolution, the Great Leap Forward, and most of the other programs associated with Mao’s later years. Subsequently, leading reformers called for more “ideological breakthroughs” that would create a new body of Marxist ideology, suitable for China’s conditions in the latter part of the twentieth century.

  That new doctrine, which the Party has variously described as “socialism with Chinese characteristics” or the principles to guide national development during the “primary stage of socialism,” [was] a much more liberal version of Marxism than the utopian Maoist vision that it replaced. [The new ideology] stressed economic modernization rather than revolution, national unity rather than class struggle, and socialist democracy rather than proletarian dictatorship. Increasingly during the 1980s, the ideology of reform welcomed material incentives, diverse forms of economic ownership, markets for the allocation of goods and services, and fuller integration of China with the international economy. It valued not only the traditional notions of self-sacrifice, fraternity, and collectivism but also competition, initiative, and risk taking. Signboards that once carried revolutionary messages occasionally bore a new slogan, first popularized in the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone just outside Hong Kong, that neatly summarized the spirit of the new age: “Time is money; efficiency is life.”

  In addition to changing the content of ideology, China’s reformers also reduced its role in economic and political affairs. A wide range of cultural and scientific issues could at last be addressed on their merits, without reference to ideological considerations. Discussions of social and economic policy increasingly accepted the legitimacy, even the desirability, of studying the experience of advanced capitalist countries and adopting whatever policies contribute to the most rapid rates of economic growth.

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  Transforming History 中國歷史

  The Making of a Modern Academic Discipline in Twentieth-Century China

  • MOLOUGHNEY, Brian and ZARROW, Peter (eds.)(Authors)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • The Chinese University of Hong Kong

    (Publisher)

  An ironic aspect of these discussions was the Marxism and Social History · 379 conversion of rather casual statements by Comintern leaders about forces of feudalism and capitalism into fundamental conceptual issues of Marxism and structural characteristics of Chinese society. The turn to history followed from efforts to bolster claims on the present with the evidence of the past. 5 The grounds for controversy were established by Marxists in the Guomindang who claimed, in justification of Party policy, that China was neither feudal nor capitalist but somewhere in between, a view that would find many adherents in subsequent years, and spawn controversy and debate among Marxists over the years. This view most probably orig-inated with the Russian theorist Karl Radek. It found its most articulate spokesman in China in Tao Xisheng, whose influential historical studies published in the late 1920s would establish the contours of the so-called Social History Controversy of the early 1930s. In the early twenties, Tao was interested in, and wrote on, the relationship between kinship systems and law, influenced by the works of the British legal scholar Henry Maine. He joined the Guomindang in earnest in 1927, and thereafter worked for the Party in various academic capacities. It was with his writ-ings on social history that he emerged as an important Party theoretician on the left, which in general stood for social change against the right’s insistence on cultural and ideological orthodoxy. 6 Like all the Marxist historians, Tao took for granted the universalism of the social formations, and their order of development, that Marx had identified within the development of European society.

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  The Political Economy of East Asia

  Regional and National Dimensions

  • K. Cai(Author)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  The most important values that helped shape China’s development policy included self- reliance, egalitarianism, populism, asceticism, and unlimited power of man. Besides, the experience that the Chinese Communists had obtained in the course of more than two decades of guerrilla warfare and the administration of regional bases also exerted profound influence on China’s economic policy. 1 As such, China’s economic development dur- ing Mao’s period was primarily defined by the CCP’s broader political and economic objectives, China’s historical heritage, the communists’ own values and experience obtained in the long period of revolutionary war, the country’s natural endowment and Leninism–Stalinism. All these ele- ments interacted with, reinforced, transformed, or modified each other. It was within this context that the Chinese leadership was determined to achieve rapid industrial development and fundamental social trans- formation for post-revolution China through a series of policies. In the initial years of its rule, the CCP adopted a range of priority policy meas- ures to control hyperinflation and recover the war-torn economy. In the meantime, the land reform eliminated landlords as a class in China and let peasants for the first time become owners of the land they tilled. These early policies were quite successful. As a result, the 3 years from 1949 to 1952 witnessed impressive recovery and growth with the annual indus- trial growth rate reaching 34.8% while the annual agricultural growth being 14.1%. 2 Starting in 1953, China initiated a policy of socialist transformation of the economy, which involved the introduction of centralized eco- nomic planning and the transfer of ownership from private to public hands. In September 1953, the First Five-Year Plan (1953–57) was intro- duced. The transfer of the ownership, which occurred in both the rural and the urban areas in late 1955, established a socialist rural and urban

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  China

  Understanding Its Past

  • Eileen H. Tamura, Eileen Tamura, Linda K. Menton, Noren W. Lush, Francis K. S. Tsui, Warren Cohen, Francis K. C. Tsui(Authors)
  • 2003(Publication Date)
  • University of Hawaii Press

    (Publisher)

  The Communist conquest and reunification of mainland China was complete. Questions 1. Define “revolution.” Would you describe the Communist revolution in China as a political revolution where the form of gov-ernment changes, a social revolution where power shifts among classes, or both? Explain. 2. In your opinion, why did Mao Zedong and the Communists choose to focus on gaining the support of the peasants? 3. What were some of the weaknesses of the Guomindang that led to its defeat in 1949? The Communist Takeover of China Section 1: Chaos, Confusion, and Civil War, 1920 –1949 185 Reading: From Marxism to Marxism—Leninism to Maoism When Mao Zedong became leader of his coun-try in 1949, he renamed it the People’s Republic of China (PRC). He vowed that this Communist nation would be true to the principles of “Marxist–Leninist thought.” The PRC, he said, would weed out the “bourgeois element” and move with vigor and confidence to eliminate all “class antagonisms” in order to achieve the “Communist Utopia.” At that point, the “Great Proletariat Class,” together with the peasants, would rule through the Communist Party. Mao spoke in stark contrast to Confucianism, which had guided China for so long. Mao did not refer to the Five Cardinal Relationships or to filial piety. Where did Mao’s ideas come from? In this reading we look at the roots of his thinking. We discuss the Marxist tra-dition that he followed, focusing first on the development of Marxism, then on Marxism– Leninism, and finally on Maoism. Karl Marx (1818–1883). Courtesy of the Library of Congress. of class struggles. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf .

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  Globalization and Cultural Trends in China

  • Kang Liu(Author)
  • 2003(Publication Date)
  • University of Hawaii Press

    (Publisher)

  Issues of Culture, Politics, and Ideology 47 own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances di-rectly encountered, given and transmitted from the past.” 2 These circum-stances, or the tradition that was transmitted, through languages and ideas that Marx then expounded at length in the treatise, cannot be easily re-volted against or transcended. Even the material or economic inversion so dear to Marxist materialism cannot bypass it. The irony is that Deng Xiaoping’s reform, which began as a “revolt against the rule of thoughts”— that is, Maoist ideology (or hegemony)—seems to have run its course of materialist or economic reversal and reverted to the initial problem of the Maoist legacy that not only haunts the social consciousness like a specter of the past but also lives in the present. Indeed, the escalating tension or schism between the ideology—that is, the thoughts of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)—and the economic and political conditions of China now threatens to collapse the existing re-ality all over again. The last time calamity threatened was in 1976 after the death of Mao, when Deng amassed the support of the Chinese population, who were bereft of material and spiritual belongings. This time, however, the circumstances are more complex. The economic impoverishment is gone, for the last two decades have brought China a persistent, near double-digit economic growth rate and fundamentally transformed the lifestyles of the nation’s 1.2 billion people. This is the legacy of Deng that the current leadership under Jiang Zemin can boast of at the fiftieth an-niversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China (PRC).

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  China From the Inside Out

  Fitting the People's Republic into the World

  • Ronald C. Keith(Author)
  • 2009(Publication Date)
  • Pluto Press

    (Publisher)

  They talk only about politics and revolution but not about economics and production.’ 6 Reform Strategy In conventional Chinese Marxist-Leninist terms the distinction between ‘capitalism’ and ‘socialism’ lies in what are widely believed to be fundamental differences of the ownership and distribution systems. Agricultural modernization was one of the four mod-ernizations. Deng’s rural reform extended the principles of the early 1960s, especially as they related to sanzi yibao . Decision-making was shifted downward to the household. Eventually the Communes were dismantled. Formally, this was not ‘decollectivi-zation’ although this term was often used in Western observation. The most important means of production, the land remained in the hands of public ownership. In the early 1960s there had been limited expansion of private plots and private trade fairs as supplementary to the collective economy in the countryside. Deng’s economic reform experimented much more widely with the market although at first commodity production was seen only as supplementary to the planned economy. Under Deng there was a progressive relaxation of price controls and a graduated introduction of the market. The latter was at first represented as supplementary and the commodity economy was treated as a secondary phenomenon that would assist in the primary stage of socialism to provide more access to commodities to raise the standard of living. China in the ‘Primary Stage of Socialism’ In pushing for reform Deng pushed China back in ideological time. The left had been guilty of advancing too quickly in time, trying to generate a ‘wind of communism’ in the absence of appropriate material base in China’s economy. This was adventurist politics that lacked a basis in ‘seeking the truth from the facts’ and which ignored the importance of economics and economic laws.

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  Governance and Politics of China

  • Tony Saich(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Red Globe Press

    (Publisher)

  29 Chapter 2 Political History: 1949–2012 The political history of post-1949 China covers a dramatic story that has seen the nation develop from one of the poorest to become an economic powerhouse and an increasingly influential global player. The history contains numerous twists and turns as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) sought to find a suitable path for develop-ment. The initial flirtation with the Soviet model, which conflicted in some fundamental ways with the pre-1949 experiences, was dumped by the mid-1950s. Instead, the CCP launched its own path to develop-ment that led to economic and political chaos through the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. Finally, through the 1980s and beyond the CCP experimented with a variant of the kind of authoritar-ian politics combined with a guided market economy that has proven successful in other East Asian countries (see Amsden, 1989; Wade, 1990). China’s entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) in the new century provided a huge economic boost and the CCP gained further confidence in its own development path following the global financial crisis of 2008–09. This chapter reviews first the framework of the debates and tensions within the revolutionary inheritance, how Mao Zedong and the CCP moved from triumph to disaster, from state-building to state destruction, and how the post-Mao leadership has wrestled with those legacies to maintain its grip on power and develop the economy. Parameters of policy debate Two sets of issues have framed policy debates through the 1950s to the present day. The first is a set of debates that have been common to all socialist systems operating under a one-party political structure mana-ging a centrally planned economy. The second is a number of tensions derived from the Chinese revolutionary experience.

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