Historical Setting
The History Of China, as documented in ancient writings, dates back some 3,300 years.Modern archaeological studies provide evidence of still more ancient origins in a culturethat flourished between 2500 and 2000 B.C. in what is now central China and the lowerHuang He ( orYellow River) Valley of north China. Centuries of migration,amalgamation, and development brought about a distinctive system of writing,philosophy, art, and political organization that came to be recognizable as Chinesecivilization. What makes the civilization unique in world history is its continuity throughover 4,000 years to the present century.The Chinese have developed a strong sense of their real and mythological origins andhave kept voluminous records since very early times. It is largely as a result of theserecords that knowledge concerning the ancient past, not only of China but also of itsneighbors, has survived.Chinese history, until the twentieth century, was written mostly by members of the rulingscholar-official class and was meant to provide the ruler with precedents to guide orjustify his policies. These accounts focused on dynastic politics and colorful courthistories and included developments among the commoners only as backdrops. Thehistorians described a Chinese political pattern of dynasties, one following another in acycle of ascent, achievement, decay, and rebirth under a new family.Of the consistent traits identified by independent historians, a salient one has been thecapacity of the Chinese to absorb the people of surrounding areas into their owncivilization. Their success can be attributed to the superiority of their ideographic writtenlanguage, their technology, and their political institutions; the refinement of their artisticand intellectual creativity; and the sheer weight of their numbers. The process ofassimilation continued over the centuries through conquest and colonization until what isnow known as China Proper was brought under unified rule. The Chinese also left anenduring mark on people beyond their borders, especially the Koreans, Japanese, andVietnamese.Another recurrent historical theme has been the unceasing struggle of the sedentaryChinese against the threat posed to their safety and way of life by non-Chinese peopleson the margins of their territory in the north, northeast, and northwest. In the thirteenthcentury, the Mongols from the northern steppes became the first alien people to conquerall China. Although not as culturally developed as the Chinese, they left some imprint onChinese civilization while heightening Chinese perceptions of threat from the north.China came under alien rule for the second time in the mid-seventeenth century; theconquerors–the Manchus–came again from the north and northeast.For centuries virtually all the foreigners that Chinese rulers saw came from the lessdeveloped societies along their land borders. This circumstance conditioned the Chineseview of the outside world. The Chinese saw their domain as the self-sufficient center ofthe universe and derived from this image the traditional (and still used) Chinese name fortheir country–Zhongguo () , literally, Middle Kingdom or Central Nation. China sawitself surrounded on all sides by so-called barbarian peoples whose cultures weredemonstrably inferior by Chinese standards. This China-centered (“sinocentric”) view ofthe world was still undisturbed in the nineteenth century, at the time of the first seriousconfrontation with the West. China had taken it for granted that its relations withEuropeans would be conducted according to the tributary system that had evolved overthe centuries between the emperor and representatives of the lesser states on China’sborders as well as between the emperor and some earlier European visitors. But by themid-nineteenth century, humiliated militarily by superior Western weaponry andtechnology and faced with imminent territorial dismemberment, China began to reassessits position with respect to Western civilization. By 1911 the two-millennia-old dynasticsystem of imperial government was brought down by its inability to make this adjustmentsuccessfully.Because of its length and complexity, the history of the Middle Kingdom lends itself tovaried interpretation. After the communist takeover in 1949, historians in mainland Chinawrote their own version of the past–a history of China built on a Marxist model ofprogression from primitive communism to slavery, feudalism, capitalism, and finallysocialism. The events of history came to be presented as a function of the class struggle.Historiography became subordinated to proletarian politics fashioned and directed by theChinese Communist Party. A series of thought-reform and antirightist campaigns weredirected against intellectuals in the arts, sciences, and academic community. The CulturalRevolution (1966-76) further altered the objectivity of historians. In the years after thedeath of Mao Zedong in 1976, however, interest grew within the party, and outside it aswell, in restoring the integrity of historical inquiry. This trend was consistent with theparty’s commitment to “seeking truth from facts.” As a result, historians and socialscientists raised probing questions concerning the state of historiography in China. Theirinvestigations included not only historical study of traditional China but penetratinginquiries into modern Chinese history and the history of the Chinese Communist Party.In post-Mao China, the discipline of historiography has not been separated from politics,although a much greater range of historical topics has been discussed. Figures fromConfucius–who was bitterly excoriated for his “feudal” outlook by Cultural Revolutionerahistorians–to Mao himself have been evaluated with increasing flexibility. Amongthe criticisms made by Chinese social scientists is that Maoist-era historiographydistorted Marxist and Leninist interpretations. This meant that considerable revision ofhistorical texts was in order in the 1980s, although no substantive change away from theconventional Marxist approach was likely. Historical institutes were restored within theChinese Academy of Social Sciences, and a growing corps of trained historians, ininstitutes and academia alike, returned to their work with the blessing of the ChineseCommunist Party. This in itself was a potentially significant development.
The Ancient Dynasties
Chinese civilization, as described in mythology, begins with Pangu ( ), the creator ofthe universe, and a succession of legendary sage-emperors and culture heroes (amongthem are Huang Di , Yao, and Shun) who taught the ancient Chinese tocommunicate and to find sustenance, clothing, and shelter.
The first prehistoric dynasty is said to be Xia ( ), from about the twenty-first to thesixteenth century B.C. Until scientific excavations were made at early bronze-age sites atAnyang ( ), Henan ( ) Province, in 1928, it was difficult to separate myth fromreality in regard to the Xia. But since then, and especially in the 1960s and 1970s,archaeologists have uncovered urban sites, bronze implements, and tombs that point tothe existence of Xia civilization in the same locations cited in ancient Chinese historicaltexts. At minimum, the Xia period marked an evolutionary stage between the lateneolithic cultures and the typical Chinese urban civilization of the Shang dynasty.
The Dawn of History
Thousands of archaeological finds in the Huang He ( ), Henan Valley ( ) –theapparent cradle of Chinese civilization–provide evidence about the Shang ( ) dynasty,which endured roughly from 1700 to 1027 B.C. The Shang dynasty (also called the Yin () dynasty in its later stages) is believed to have been founded by a rebel leader whooverthrew the last Xia ruler. Its civilization was based on agriculture, augmented byhunting and animal husbandry. Two important events of the period were the developmentof a writing system, as revealed in archaic Chinese inscriptions found on tortoise shellsand flat cattle bones (commonly called oracle bones or ), and the use of bronzemetallurgy. A number of ceremonial bronze vessels with inscriptions date from the Shangperiod; the workmanship on the bronzes attests to a high level of civilization.
A line of hereditary Shang kings ruled over much of northern China, and Shang troopsfought frequent wars with neighboring settlements and nomadic herdsmen from the innerAsian steppes. The capitals, one of which was at the site of the modern city of Anyang,were centers of glittering court life. Court rituals to propitiate spirits and to honor sacredancestors were highly developed. In addition to his secular position, the king was thehead of the ancestor- and spirit-worship cult. Evidence from the royal tombs indicatesthat royal personages were buried with articles of value, presumably for use in theafterlife. Perhaps for the same reason, hundreds of commoners, who may have beenslaves, were buried alive with the royal corpse.
The Zhou Period
The last Shang ruler, a despot according tostandard Chinese accounts, was overthrown by achieftain of a frontier tribe called Zhou ( ), whichhad settled in the Wei ( ) Valley in modernShaanxi ( ) Province. The Zhou dynasty hadits capital at Hao ( ), near the city of Xi’an (), or Chang’an ( ), as it was known in itsheyday in the imperial period. Sharing thelanguage and culture of the Shang, the early Zhourulers, through conquest and colonization,gradually sinicized, that is, extended Shang culturethrough much of China Proper north of the ChangJiang ( or Yangtze River). The Zhou dynastylasted longer than any other, from 1027 to 221B.C. It was philosophers of this period who firstenunciated the doctrine of the “mandate of heaven” (tianming or ), the notion that theruler (the “son of heaven” or ) governed by divine right but that his dethronementwould prove that he had lost the mandate. The doctrine explained and justified the demiseof the two earlier dynasties and at the same time supported the legitimacy of present andfuture rulers.
The term feudal has often been applied to the Zhou period because the Zhou’s earlydecentralized rule invites comparison with medieval rule in Europe. At most, however,the early Zhou system was proto-feudal ( ), being a more sophisticated versionof earlier tribal organization, in which effective control depended more on familial tiesthan on feudal legal bonds. Whatever feudal elements there may have been decreased astime went on. The Zhou amalgam of city-states became progressively centralized andestablished increasingly impersonal political and economic institutions. Thesedevelopments, which probably occurred in the latter Zhou period, were manifested ingreater central control over local governments and a more routinized agriculturaltaxation.
In 771 B.C. the Zhou court was sacked, and its king was killed by invading barbarianswho were allied with rebel lords. The capital was moved eastward to Luoyang ( ) inpresent-day Henan ( ) Province. Because of this shift, historians divide the Zhou erainto Western Zhou (1027-771 B.C.) and Eastern Zhou (770-221 B.C.). With the royal linebroken, the power of the Zhou court gradually diminished; the fragmentation of thekingdom accelerated. Eastern Zhou divides into two subperiods. The first, from 770 to476 B.C., is called the Spring and Autumn Period ( ), after a famous historicalchronicle of the time; the second is known as the Warring States Period (475-221 B.C.).
The Ancient Dynasties: II
The Hundred Schools of Thought
The Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods, though marked by disunity and civilstrife, witnessed an unprecedented era of cultural prosperity–the “golden age” () of China. The atmosphere of reform and new ideas was attributed to the strugglefor survival among warring regional lords who competed in building strong and loyalarmies and in increasing economic production to ensure a broader base for tax collection.To effect these economic, military, and cultural developments, the regional lords neededever-increasing numbers of skilled, literate officials and teachers, the recruitment ofwhom was based on merit. Also during this time, commerce was stimulated through theintroduction of coinage and technological improvements. Iron came into general use,making possible not only the forging of weapons of war but also the manufacture of farmimplements. Public works on a grand scale–such as flood control, irrigation projects, andcanal digging–were executed. Enormous walls were built around cities and along thebroad stretches of the northern frontier.
So many different philosophies developed during the late Spring and Autumn and earlyWarring States periods that the era is often known as that of the Hundred Schools ofThought ( ). From the Hundred Schools of Thought came many of the greatclassical writings on which Chinese practices were to be based for the next two and onehalfmillennia. Many of the thinkers were itinerant intellectuals who, besides teachingtheir disciples, were employed as advisers to one or another of the various state rulers onthe methods of government, war, and diplomacy.
The body of thought that had the most enduring effect on subsequent Chinese life wasthat of the School of Literati (ru or ), often called the Confucian school in the West.The written legacy of the School of Literati is embodied in the Confucian Classics (– , , , , and from which the period derived its name), whichwere to become the basis for the order of traditional society. Confucius (551-479 B.C.),also called Kong Zi, ( ) or Master Kong, looked to the early days of Zhou rule for anideal social and political order. He believed that the only way such a system could bemade to work properly was for each person to act according to prescribed relationships.”Let the ruler be a ruler and the subject a subject,” ( ) he said, but he added thatto rule properly a king must be virtuous. To Confucius, the functions of government andsocial stratification were facts of life to be sustained by ethical values. His ideal was thejunzi ( or ruler’s son), which came to mean gentleman in the sense of a cultivated orsuperior man.
Mencius (372-289 B.C.), or Meng Zi ( ), was a Confucian disciple who made majorcontributions to the humanism of Confucian thought. Mencius declared that man was bynature good. He expostulated the idea that a ruler could not govern without the people’stacit consent and that the penalty for unpopular, despotic rule was the loss of the”mandate of heaven.”
The effect of the combined work of Confucius, the codifier and interpreter of a system ofrelationships based on ethical behavior, and Mencius, the synthesizer and developer ofapplied Confucian thought, was to provide traditional Chinese society with acomprehensive framework on which to order virtually every aspect of life
There were to be accretions to the corpus of Confucian thought, both immediately andover the millennia, and from within and outside the Confucian school. Interpretationsmade to suit or influence contemporary society made Confucianism dynamic whilepreserving a fundamental system of model behavior based on ancient texts.
Diametrically opposed to Mencius, for example, was the interpretation of Xun Zi (ca. 300-237 B.C.), another Confucian follower. Xun Zi preached that man is innatelyselfish and evil and that goodness is attainable only through education and conductbefitting one’s status. He also argued that the best government is one based onauthoritarian control, not ethical or moral persuasion.
Xun Zi’s unsentimental and authoritarian inclinations were developed into the doctrineembodied in the School of Law ( or fa), or Legalism. The doctrine was formulated byHan Fei Zi ( d. 233 B.C.) and Li Si ( d. 208 B.C.), who maintained thathuman nature was incorrigibly selfish and therefore the only way to preserve the socialorder was to impose discipline from above and to enforce laws strictly. The Legalistsexalted the state and sought its prosperity and martial prowess above the welfare of thecommon people. Legalism became the philosophic basis for the imperial form ofgovernment. When the most practical and useful aspects of Confucianism and Legalismwere synthesized in the Han period (206 B.C.-A.D. 220), a system of governance cameinto existence that was to survive largely intact until the late nineteenth century. Taoism (), the second most important stream of Chinese thought, also developed during theZhou period. Its formulation is attributed to the legendary sage Lao Zi ( or OldMaster), said to predate Confucius, and Zhuang Zi ( ) (369-286 B.C.). The focus ofTaoism is the individual in nature rather than the individual in society. It holds that thegoal of life for each individual is to find one’s own personal adjustment to the rhythm ofthe natural (and supernatural) world, to follow the Way (dao) of the universe. In manyways the opposite of rigid Confucian moralism, Taoism served many of its adherents as acomplement to their ordered daily lives. A scholar on duty as an official would usuallyfollow Confucian teachings but at leisure or in retirement might seek harmony withnature as a Taoist recluse. The Taoist approach to life is embodied in the classic Dao DeJing ( ).
Another strain of thought dating to the Warring States Period is the school of yin-yang () and the five elements. The theories of this school attempted to explain the universein terms of basic forces in nature, the complementary agents of yin (dark, cold, female,negative) and yang (light, hot, male, positive) and the five elements (water, fire, wood,metal, and earth). In later periods these theories came to have importance both inphilosophy and in popular belief.
Still another school of thought was based on the doctrine of Mo Zi ( 470-391 B.C.?),or Mo Di. Mo Zi believed that “all men are equalbefore God” and that mankind should follow heavenby practicing universal love. Advocating that allaction must be utilitarian, Mo Zi condemned theConfucian emphasis on ritual and music. He regardedwarfare as wasteful and advocated pacificism. Mo Zialso believed that unity of thought and action werenecessary to achieve social goals. He maintained thatthe people should obey their leaders and that theleaders should follow the will of heaven. AlthoughMoism failed to establish itself as a major school ofthought, its views are said to be “strongly echoed” inLegalist thought. In general, the teachings of Mo Zileft an indelible impression on the Chinese mind.
Another good source of information about Chinese philosophy on the web can be foundin the Chinese Philosophy page by Su Tzu.
The Imperial Era
The First Imperial Period
Much of what came to constitute China Proper was unified for the first time in 221 B.C.In that year the western frontier state of Qin, the most aggressive of the Warring States,subjugated the last of its rival states. (Qin in Wade-Giles romanization is Ch’in, fromwhich the English China probably derived.) Once the king of Qin consolidated his power,he took the title Shi Huangdi ( First Emperor), a formulation previously reservedfor deities and the mythological sage-emperors, and imposed Qin’s centralized,nonhereditary bureaucratic system on his new empire. In subjugating the six other majorstates of Eastern Zhou, the Qin kings had relied heavily on Legalist scholar-advisers.Centralization, achieved by ruthless methods, was focused on standardizing legal codesand bureaucratic procedures, the forms of writing and coinage, and the pattern of thoughtand scholarship. To silence criticism of imperial rule, the kings banished or put to deathmany dissenting Confucian scholars and confiscated and burned their books ( ).Qin aggrandizement was aided by frequent military expeditions pushing forward thefrontiers in the north and south. To fend off barbarian intrusion, the fortification wallsbuilt by the various warring states were connected to make a 5,000-kilometer-long greatwall ( ). What is commonly referred to as the Great Wall is actually four greatwalls rebuilt or extended during the Western Han, Sui, Jin, and Ming periods, rather thana single, continuous wall. At its extremities, the Great Wall reaches from northeasternHeilongjiang ( ) Province to northwestern Gansu ( ). A number of publicworks projects were also undertaken to consolidate and strengthen imperial rule. Theseactivities required enormous levies of manpower and resources, not to mention repressivemeasures. Revolts broke out as soon as the firstQin emperor died in 210 B.C. His dynasty wasextinguished less than twenty years after itstriumph. The imperial system initiated during theQin dynasty, however, set a pattern that wasdeveloped over the next two millennia.
After a short civil war, a new dynasty, called Han(206 B.C.-A.D. 220), emerged with its capital atChang’an ( ). The new empire retained muchof the Qin administrative structure but retreated abit from centralized rule by establishing vassalprincipalities in some areas for the sake of political convenience. The Han rulersmodified some of the harsher aspects of the previous dynasty; Confucian ideals ofgovernment, out of favor during the Qin period, were adopted as the creed of the Hanempire, and Confucian scholars gained prominent status as the core of the civil service. Acivil service examination system also was initiated. Intellectual, literary, and artisticendeavors revived and flourished. The Han period produced China’s most famoushistorian, Sima Qian ( 145-87 B.C.?), whose Shiji ( Historical Records)provides a detailed chronicle from the time of a legendary Xia emperor to that of the Hanemperor Wu Di ( 141-87 B.C.). Technological advances also marked this period.Two of the great Chinese inventions, paper and porcelain, date from Han times.
The Han dynasty, after which the members of the ethnic majority in China, the “people ofHan,” are named, was notable also for its military prowess. The empire expandedwestward as far as the rim of the Tarim Basin (in modern Xinjiang-Uyghur AutonomousRegion), making possible relatively secure caravan traffic across Central Asia to Antioch,Baghdad, and Alexandria. The paths of caravan traffic are often called the “silk route” () because the route was used to export Chinese silk to the Roman Empire. Chinesearmies also invaded and annexed parts of northern Vietnam and northern Korea towardthe end of the second century B.C. Han control of peripheral regions was generallyinsecure, however. To ensure peace with non-Chinese local powers, the Han courtdeveloped a mutually beneficial “tributary system” ( ). Non-Chinese states wereallowed to remain autonomous in exchange for symbolic acceptance of Han overlordship.Tributary ties were confirmed and strengthened through intermarriages at the ruling leveland periodic exchanges of gifts and goods.
After 200 years, Han rule was interrupted briefly (in A.D. 9-24 by Wang Mang or , areformer), and then restored for another 200 years. The Han rulers, however, were unableto adjust to what centralization had wrought: a growing population, increasing wealth andresultant financial difficulties and rivalries, and ever-more complex political institutions.Riddled with the corruption characteristic of the dynastic cycle, by A.D. 220 the Hanempire collapsed.
Era of Disunity
The collapse of the Han dynasty was followed bynearly four centuries of rule by warlords. The ageof civil wars and disunity began with the era of theThree Kingdoms (Wei, Shu, and Wu, which hadoverlapping reigns during the period A.D. 220-80). In later times, fiction and drama greatlyromanticized the reputed chivalry of this period.Unity was restored briefly in the early years of theJin dynasty (A.D. 265-420), but the Jin could notlong contain the invasions of the nomadic peoples.In A.D. 317 the Jin court was forced to flee fromLuoyang and reestablisheditself at Nanjing to the south. The transfer of thecapital coincided with China’s politicalfragmentation into a succession of dynasties that was to last from A.D. 304 to 589.During this period the process of sinicization accelerated among the non-Chinese arrivalsin the north and among the aboriginal tribesmen in the south. This process was alsoaccompanied by the increasing popularity of Buddhism (introduced into China in the firstcentury A.D.) in both north and south China. Despite the political disunity of the times,there were notable technological advances. The invention of gunpowder (at that time foruse only in fireworks) and the wheelbarrow is believed to date from the sixth or seventhcentury. Advances in medicine, astronomy, and cartography are also noted by historians.
The Imperial Era: II
Restoration of Empire
China was reunified in A.D. 589 by the short-lived Sui dynasty (A.D. 581-617), whichhas often been compared to the earlier Qin dynasty in tenure and the ruthlessness of itsaccomplishments. The Sui dynasty’s early demise was attributed to the government’styrannical demands on the people, who bore the crushing burden of taxes and compulsorylabor. These resources were overstrained in the completion of the Grand Canal( )–a monumental engineering feat–and in the undertaking of other construction projects,including the reconstruction of the Great Wall. Weakened by costly and disastrousmilitary campaigns against Korea ( )in the early seventh century, the dynastydisintegrated through a combination of popular revolts, disloyalty, and assassination.
The Tang dynasty (A.D. 618-907), with its capital at Chang’an ( ), is regarded byhistorians as a high point in Chinese civilization–equal, or even superior, to the Hanperiod. Its territory, acquired through the militaryexploits of its early rulers, was greater than that ofthe Han. Stimulated by contact with India ( )and the Middle East, the empire saw a floweringof creativity in many fields. Buddhism ( ),originating in India around the time of Confucius,flourished during the Tang period, becomingthoroughly sinicized and a permanent part ofChinese traditional culture. Block printing wasinvented, making the written word available tovastly greater audiences. The Tang period was thegolden age of literature and art. A governmentsystem supported by a large class of Confucianliterati selected through civil service examinations( ) was perfected under Tang rule. Thiscompetitive procedure was designed to draw the best talents into government. Butperhaps an even greater consideration for the Tang rulers, aware that imperialdependence on powerful aristocratic families and warlords would have destabilizingconsequences, was to create a body of career officials having no autonomous territorial orfunctional power base. As it turned out, these scholar-officials acquired status in theirlocal communities, family ties, and shared values that connected them to the imperialcourt. From Tang times until the closing days of the Qing empire in 1911, scholarofficialsfunctioned often as intermediaries between the grass-roots level and thegovernment.
By the middle of the eighth century A.D., Tang power had ebbed. Domestic economicinstability and military defeat in 751 by Arabs at Talas, in Central Asia, marked thebeginning of five centuries of steady military decline for the Chinese empire. Misrule,court intrigues, economic exploitation, and popular rebellions weakened the empire,making it possible for northern invaders to terminate the dynasty in 907. The next halfcenturysaw the fragmentation of China into five northern dynasties and ten southernkingdoms.
But in 960 a new power, Song (960-1279), reunified most of China Proper. The Songperiod divides into two phases: Northern Song (960-1127) and Southern Song (1127-1279). The division was caused by the forced abandonment of north China in 1127 by theSong court, which could not push back the nomadic invaders.
The founders of the Song dynasty built an effective centralized bureaucracy staffed withcivilian scholar-officials. Regional military governors and their supporters were replacedby centrally appointed officials. This system of civilian rule led to a greater concentrationof power in the emperor and his palace bureaucracy than had been achieved in theprevious dynasties.
The Song dynasty is notable for the development of cities not only for administrativepurposes but also as centers of trade, industry, and maritime commerce. The landedscholar-officials, sometimes collectively referred to as the gentry, lived in the provincialcenters alongside the shopkeepers, artisans, and merchants. A new group of wealthycommoners–the mercantile class–arose as printing and education spread, private tradegrew, and a market economy began to link the coastal provinces and the interior.Landholding and government employment were no longer the only means of gainingwealth and prestige.
Culturally, the Song refined many of the developments of the previous centuries.Included in these refinements were not only the Tang ideal of the universal man, whocombined the qualities of scholar, poet, painter, and statesman, but also historicalwritings, painting, calligraphy, and hard-glazed porcelain. Song intellectuals soughtanswers to all philosophical and political questions in the Confucian Classics. Thisrenewed interest in the Confucian ideals and society of ancient times coincided with thedecline of Buddhism, which the Chinese regarded as foreign and offering few practicalguidelines for the solution of political and other mundane problems.
The Song Neo-Confucian philosophers, finding a certain purity in the originality of theancient classical texts, wrote commentaries on them. The most influential of thesephilosophers was Zhu Xi ( b1130-1200), whose synthesis of Confucian thought andBuddhist, Taoist, and other ideas became the official imperial ideology from late Songtimes to the late nineteenth century. As incorporated into the examination system, ZhuXi’s philosophy evolved into a rigid official creed, which stressed the one-sidedobligations of obedience and compliance of subject to ruler, child to father, wife tohusband, and younger brother to elder brother. The effect was to inhibit the societaldevelopment of premodern China, resulting both in many generations of political, social,and spiritual stability and in a slowness of cultural and institutional change up to thenineteenth century. Neo-Confucian doctrines also came to play the dominant role in theintellectual life of Korea, Vietnam, and Japan.
The Imperial Era: III
Mongolian Interlude
By the mid-thirteenth century, the Mongols had subjugated north China, Korea, and theMuslim kingdoms of Central Asia and had twice penetrated Europe. With the resourcesof his vast empire, Kublai Khan ( 1215-94), a grandson of Genghis Khan (1167?-1227) and the supreme leader of all Mongol tribes, began his driveagainst the Southern Song. Even before the extinction of the Song dynasty, Kublai Khanhad established the first alien dynasty to rule all China–the Yuan (1279-1368).
Although the Mongols sought to govern China through traditional institutions, usingChinese (Han) bureaucrats, they were not up to the task. The Han were discriminatedagainst socially and politically. All important central and regional posts weremonopolized by Mongols, who also preferred employing non-Chinese from other parts ofthe Mongol domain–Central Asia, the Middle East, and even Europe–in those positionsfor which no Mongol could be found. Chinese were more often employed in non-Chineseregions of the empire.
As in other periods of alien dynastic rule of China, a rich cultural diversity developedduring the Yuan dynasty. The major cultural achievements were the development ofdrama and the novel and the increased use of the written vernacular. The Mongols’extensive West Asian and European contacts produced a fair amount of culturalexchange. Western musical instruments were introduced to enrich the Chineseperforming arts. From this period dates the conversion to Islam, by Muslims of CentralAsia, of growing numbers of Chinese in the northwest and southwest. Nestorianism andRoman Catholicism also enjoyed a period of toleration. Lamaism (Tibetan Buddhism)flourished, although native Taoism endured Mongol persecutions. Confuciangovernmental practices and examinations based on the Classics, which had fallen intodisuse in north China during the period of disunity, were reinstated by the Mongols in thehope of maintaining order over Han society. Advances were realized in the fields oftravel literature, cartography and geography, and scientific education. Certain keyChinese innovations, such as printing techniques, porcelain production, playing cards,and medical literature, were introduced in Europe, while the production of thin glass andcloisonne became popular in China. The first records of travel by Westerners date fromthis time. The most famous traveler of the period was the Venetian Marco Polo, whoseaccount of his trip to “Cambaluc,” the Great Khan’s capital (now Beijing), and of lifethere astounded the people of Europe. The Mongols undertook extensive public works.Road and water communications were reorganized and improved. To provide againstpossible famines, granaries were ordered built throughout the empire. The city of Beijingwas rebuilt with new palace grounds that included artificial lakes, hills and mountains,and parks. During the Yuan period, Beijing became the terminus of the Grand Canal,which was completely renovated. These commercially oriented improvementsencouraged overland as well as maritime commerce throughout Asia and facilitated thefirst direct Chinese contacts with Europe. Chinese and Mongol travelers to the West wereable to provide assistance in such areas as hydraulic engineering, while bringing back tothe Middle Kingdom new scientific discoveries and architectural innovations. Contactswith the West also brought the introduction to China of a major new food crop–sorghum–along with other foreign food products and methods of preparation.
The Chinese Regain Power
Rivalry among the Mongol imperial heirs, naturaldisasters, and numerous peasant uprisings led tothe collapse of the Yuan dynasty. The Mingdynasty (1368-1644) was founded by a HanChinese peasant and former Buddhist monk turnedrebel army leader ( ). Having its capitalfirst at Nanjing ( which means SouthernCapital) and later at Beijing ( or NorthernCapital), the Ming reached the zenith of powerduring the first quarter of the fifteenth century.The Chinese armies reconquered Annam ( ),as northern Vietnam was then known, in SoutheastAsia and kept back the Mongols, while theChinese fleet sailed the China seas and the IndianOcean, cruising as far as the east coast of Africa.The maritime Asian nations sent envoys with tribute for the Chinese emperor. Internally,the Grand Canal was expanded to its farthest limits and proved to be a stimulus todomestic trade.
The Ming maritime expeditions stopped rather suddenly after 1433, the date of the lastvoyage. Historians have given as one of the reasons the great expense of large-scaleexpeditions at a time of preoccupation with northern defenses against the Mongols.Opposition at court also may have been a contributing factor, as conservative officialsfound the concept of expansion and commercial ventures alien to Chinese ideas ofgovernment. Pressure from the powerful Neo-Confucian bureaucracy led to a revival ofstrict agrarian-centered society. The stability of the Ming dynasty, which was withoutmajor disruptions of the population (then around 100 million), economy, arts, society, orpolitics, promoted a belief among the Chinese that they had achieved the mostsatisfactory civilization on earth and that nothing foreign was needed or welcome.
Long wars with the Mongols, incursions by the Japanese into Korea, and harassment ofChinese coastal cities by the Japanese in the sixteenth century weakened Ming rule,which became, as earlier Chinese dynasties had, ripe for an alien takeover. In 1644 theManchus ( ) took Beijing from the north and became masters of north China,establishing the last imperial dynasty, the Qing (1644-1911).
The Rise of the Manchus
Although the Manchus were not Han Chinese and were strongly resisted, especially in thesouth, they had assimilated a great deal of Chinese culture before conquering ChinaProper. Realizing that to dominate the empire they would have to do things the Chineseway, the Manchus retained many institutions of Ming and earlier Chinese derivation.They continued the Confucian court practices and temple rituals, over which theemperors had traditionally presided.
The Manchus continued the Confucian civil service system. Although Chinese werebarred from the highest offices, Chinese officials predominated over Manchuofficeholders outside the capital, except in military positions. The Neo-Confucianphilosophy, emphasizing the obedience of subject to ruler, was enforced as the statecreed. The Manchu emperors also supported Chinese literary and historical projects ofenormous scope; the survival of much of China’s ancient literature is attributed to theseprojects.
Ever suspicious of Han Chinese, the Qing rulersput into effect measures aimed at preventing theabsorption of the Manchus into the dominant HanChinese population. Han Chinese were prohibitedfrom migrating into the Manchu homeland, andManchus were forbidden to engage in trade ormanual labor. Intermarriage between the twogroups was forbidden. In many governmentpositions a system of dual appointments wasused–the Chinese appointee was required to dothe substantive work and the Manchu to ensure Han loyalty to Qing rule.
The Qing regime was determined to protect itself not only from internal rebellion but alsofrom foreign invasion. After China Proper had been subdued, the Manchus conquered Outer Mongolia (now the Mongolian People’s Republic) in the late seventeenth century.In the eighteenth century they gained control of Central Asia as far as the PamirMountains and established a protectorate over the area the Chinese call Xizang ( )but commonly known in the West as Tibet. The Qing thus became the first dynasty toeliminate successfully all danger to China Proper from across its land borders. UnderManchu rule the empire grew to include a larger area than before or since; Taiwan, thelast outpost of anti-Manchu resistance, was also incorporated into China for the first time.In addition, Qing emperors received tribute from the various border states.
The chief threat to China’s integrity did not come overland, as it had so often in the past,but by sea, reaching the southern coastal area first. Western traders, missionaries, andsoldiers of fortune began to arrive in large numbers even before the Qing, in the sixteenthcentury. The empire’s inability to evaluate correctly the nature of the new challenge or torespond flexibly to it resulted in the demise of the Qing and the collapse of the entiremillennia-old framework of dynastic rule.
Emergence Of Modern China
The success of the Qing dynasty in maintaining the old order proved a liability when theempire was confronted with growing challenges from seafaring Western powers. Thecenturies of peace and self-satisfaction dating back to Ming times had encouraged littlechange in the attitudes of the ruling elite. The imperial Neo-Confucian scholars acceptedas axiomatic the cultural superiority of Chinese civilization and the position of the empireat the hub of their perceived world. To question this assumption, to suggest innovation, orto promote the adoption of foreign ideas was viewed as tantamount to heresy. Imperialpurges dealt severely with those who deviated from orthodoxy.
By the nineteenth century, China was experiencing growing internal pressures ofeconomic origin. By the start of the century, there were over 300 million Chinese, butthere was no industry or trade of sufficient scope to absorb the surplus labor. Moreover,the scarcity of land led to widespread rural discontent and a breakdown in law and order.The weakening through corruption of the bureaucratic and military systems and mountingurban pauperism also contributed to these disturbances. Localized revolts erupted invarious parts of the empire in the early nineteenth century. Secret societies, such as theWhite Lotus sect ( ) in the north and the Triad Society ( ) in the south,gained ground, combining anti-Manchu subversion with banditry.
The Western Powers Arrive
As elsewhere in Asia, in China the Portuguese were the pioneers, establishing a footholdat Macao ( or Aomen in pinyin), from which they monopolized foreign trade at theChinese port of Guangzhou ( or Canton). Soon the Spanish arrived, followed by theBritish and the French.
Trade between China and the West was carried on in the guise of tribute: foreigners wereobliged to follow the elaborate, centuries-old ritual imposed on envoys from China’stributary states. There was no conception at the imperial court that the Europeans wouldexpect or deserve to be treated as cultural or political equals. The sole exception wasRussia, the most powerful inland neighbor
The Manchus were sensitive to the need for security along the northern land frontier andtherefore were prepared to be realistic in dealing with Russia. The Treaty of Nerchinsk(1689) with the Russians, drafted to bring to an end a series of border incidents and toestablish a border between Siberia and Manchuria (northeast China) along the HeilongJiang ( or Amur River), was China’s first bilateral agreement with a Europeanpower. In 1727 the Treaty of Kiakhta delimited the remainder of the eastern portion ofthe Sino-Russian border. Western diplomatic efforts to expand trade on equal terms wererebuffed, the official Chinese assumption being that the empire was not in need offoreign–and thus inferior–products. Despite this attitude, trade flourished, even thoughafter 1760 all foreign trade was confined to Guangzhou, where the foreign traders had tolimit their dealings to a dozen officially licensed Chinese merchant firms.
Trade was not the sole basis of contact with the West. Since the thirteenth century,Roman Catholic missionaries had been attempting to establish their church in China.Although by 1800 only a few hundred thousand Chinese had been converted, themissionaries–mostly Jesuits–contributed greatly to Chinese knowledge in such fields ascannon casting, calendar making, geography, mathematics, cartography, music, art, andarchitecture. The Jesuits were especially adept at fitting Christianity into a Chineseframework and were condemned by a papal decision in 1704 for having tolerated thecontinuance of Confucian ancestor rites among Christian converts. The papal decisionquickly weakened the Christian movement, which it proscribed as heterodox anddisloyal.
The Opium War, 1839-42
During the eighteenth century, the market in Europe and America for tea, a new drink inthe West, expanded greatly. Additionally, there was a continuing demand for Chinese silkand porcelain. But China, still in its preindustrial stage, wanted little that the West had tooffer, causing the Westerners, mostly British, to incur an unfavorable balance of trade. Toremedy the situation, the foreigners developed a third-party trade, exchanging theirmerchandise in India and Southeast Asia for raw materials and semiprocessed goods,which found a ready market in Guangzhou. By the early nineteenth century, raw cottonand opium ( ) from India had become the staple British imports into China, in spite ofthe fact that opium was prohibited entry by imperial decree. The opium traffic was madepossible through the connivance of profit-seeking merchants and a corrupt bureaucracy.
In 1839 the Qing government, after a decade of unsuccessful anti-opium campaigns,adopted drastic prohibitory laws against the opium trade. The emperor dispatched acommissioner, Lin Zexu ( 1785-1850), to Guangzhou to suppress illicit opiumtraffic. Lin seized illegal stocks of opium owned by Chinese dealers and then detained theentire foreign community and confiscated and destroyed some 20,000 chests of illicitBritish opium. The British retaliated with a punitive expedition, thus initiating the firstAnglo-Chinese war, better known as the Opium War (1839-42). Unprepared for war andgrossly underestimating the capabilities of the enemy, the Chinese were disastrouslydefeated, and their image of their own imperial power was tarnished beyond repair. TheTreaty of Nanjing (1842), signed on board a British warship by two Manchu imperialcommissioners and the British plenipotentiary, was the first of a series of agreementswith the Western trading nations later called by the Chinese the “unequal treaties.” Underthe Treaty of Nanjing, China ceded the island of Hong Kong ( or Xianggang inpinyin) to the British; abolished the licensed monopoly system of trade; opened 5 ports toBritish residence and foreign trade; limited the tariff on trade to 5 percent ad valorem;granted British nationals extraterritoriality (exemption from Chinese laws); and paid alarge indemnity. In addition, Britain was to have most-favored-nation treatment, that is, itwould receive whatever trading concessions the Chinese granted other powers then orlater. The Treaty of Nanjing set the scope and character of an unequal relationship for theensuing century of what the Chinese would call “national humiliations.” The treaty wasfollowed by other incursions, wars, and treaties that granted new concessions and addednew privileges for the foreigners.
Emergence Of Modern China: II
The Taiping Rebellion, 1851-64
During the mid-nineteenth century, China’s problems were compounded by naturalcalamities of unprecedented proportions, including droughts, famines, and floods.Government neglect of public works was in part responsible for this and other disasters,and the Qing administration did little to relieve the widespread misery caused by them.Economic tensions, military defeats at Western hands, and anti-Manchu sentiments allcombined to produce widespread unrest, especially in the south. South China had beenthe last area to yield to the Qing conquerors and the first to be exposed to Westerninfluence. It provided a likely setting for the largest uprising in modern Chinese history–the Taiping Rebellion.
The Taiping rebels were led by Hong Xiuquan ( 1814-64), a village teacher andunsuccessful imperial examination candidate. Hong formulated an eclectic ideologycombining the ideals of pre-Confucian utopianism with Protestant beliefs. He soon had afollowing in the thousands who were heavily anti-Manchu and anti-establishment. Hong’sfollowers formed a military organization to protect against bandits and recruited troopsnot only among believers but also from among other armed peasant groups and secretsocieties. In 1851 Hong Xiuquan and others launched an uprising in Guizhou ( )Province. Hong proclaimed the Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace ( or TaipingTianguo) with himself as king. The new order was to reconstitute a legendary ancientstate in which the peasantry owned and tilled the land in common; slavery, concubinage,arranged marriage, opium smoking, footbinding, judicial torture, and the worship of idolswere all to be eliminated. The Taiping tolerance of the esoteric rituals and quasi-religioussocieties of south China–themselves a threat to Qing stability–and their relentless attackson Confucianism–still widely accepted as the moral foundation of Chinese behavior–contributed to the ultimate defeat of the rebellion. Its advocacy of radical social reformsalienated the Han Chinese scholar-gentry class. The Taiping army, although it hadcaptured Nanjing and driven as far north as Tianjin ( ), failed to establish stable baseareas. The movement’s leaders found themselves in a net of internal feuds, defections,and corruption. Additionally, British and French forces, being more willing to deal withthe weak Qing administration than contend with the uncertainties of a Taiping regime,came to the assistance of the imperial army. Before the Chinese army succeeded incrushing the revolt, however, 14 years had passed, and well over 30 million people werereported killed.
To defeat the rebellion, the Qing court needed, besides Western help, an army strongerand more popular than the demoralized imperial forces. In 1860, scholar-official ZengGuofan ( 1811-72), from Hunan ( ) Province, was appointed imperialcommissioner and governor-general of the Taiping-controlled territories and placed incommand of the war against the rebels. Zeng’s Hunan army, created and paid for by localtaxes, became a powerful new fighting force under the command of eminent scholargenerals.Zeng’s success gave new power to an emerging Han Chinese elite and erodedQing authority. Simultaneous uprisings in north China (the Nian Rebellion) andsouthwest China (the Muslim Rebellion) further demonstrated Qing weakness.
The Self-Strengthening Movement
The rude realities of the Opium War, the unequal treaties, and the mid-century massuprisings caused Qing courtiers and officials to recognize the need to strengthen China.Chinese scholars and officials had been examining and translating “Western learning”since the 1840s. Under the direction of modern-thinking Han officials, Western scienceand languages were studied, special schools were opened in the larger cities, and arsenals,factories, and shipyards were established according to Western models. Westerndiplomatic practices were adopted by the Qing, and students were sent abroad by thegovernment and on individual or community initiative in the hope that nationalregeneration could be achieved through the application of Western practical methods.
Amid these activities came an attempt to arrest the dynastic decline by restoring thetraditional order. The effort was known as the Tongzhi Restoration, named for theTongzhi ( )Emperor (1862-74), and was engineered by the young emperor’s mother,the Empress Dowager Ci Xi ( 1835-1908). The restoration, however, which applied”practical knowledge” while reaffirming the old mentality, was not a genuine program ofmodernization.
The effort to graft Western technology onto Chinese institutions became known as theSelf-Strengthening Movement ( ). The movement was championed by scholargeneralslike Li Hongzhang ( 1823-1901) and Zuo Zongtang ( 1812-85),who had fought with the government forces in the Taiping Rebellion. From 1861 to 1894,leaders such as these, now turned scholar-administrators, were responsible forestablishing modern institutions, developing basic industries, communications, andtransportation, and modernizing the military. But despite its leaders’ accomplishments,the Self-Strengthening Movement did not recognize the significance of the politicalinstitutions and social theories that had fostered Western advances and innovations. Thisweakness led to the movement’s failure. Modernization during this period would havebeen difficult under the best of circumstances. The bureaucracy was still deeplyinfluenced by Neo-Confucian orthodoxy. Chinese society was still reeling from theravages of the Taiping and other rebellions, and foreign encroachments continued tothreaten the integrity of China.
The first step in the foreign powers’ effort to carve up the empire was taken by Russia,which had been expanding into Central Asia. By the 1850s, tsarist troops also hadinvaded the Heilong Jiang watershed of Manchuria, from which their countrymen hadbeen ejected under the Treaty of Nerchinsk. The Russians used the superior knowledge ofChina they had acquired through their century-long residence in Beijing to further theiraggrandizement. In 1860 Russian diplomats secured the secession of all of Manchurianorth of the Heilong Jiang and east of the Wusuli Jiang (Ussuri River). Foreignencroachments increased after 1860 by means of a series of treaties imposed on China onone pretext or another. The foreign stranglehold on the vital sectors of the Chineseeconomy was reinforced through a lengthening list of concessions. Foreign settlements inthe treaty ports became extraterritorial–sovereign pockets of territories over which Chinahad no jurisdiction. The safety of these foreign settlements was ensured by the menacingpresence of warships and gunboats.
At this time the foreign powers also took over the peripheral states that hadacknowledged Chinese suzerainty and given tribute to the emperor. France colonizedCochin China, as southern Vietnam was then called, and by 1864 established aprotectorate over Cambodia. Following a victorious war against China in 1884-85,France also took Annam. Britain gained control over Burma. Russia penetrated intoChinese Turkestan (the modern-day Xinjiang-Uyghur Autonomous Region). Japan,having emerged from its century-and-a-half-long seclusion and having gone through itsown modernization movement, defeated China in the war of 1894-95. The Treaty ofShimonoseki forced China to cede Taiwan and the Penghu Islands to Japan, pay a hugeindemnity, permit the establishment of Japanese industries in four treaty ports, andrecognize Japanese hegemony over Korea. In 1898 the British acquired a ninety-nineyearlease over the so-called New Territories of Kowloon ( or Jiulong in pinyin),which increased the size of their Hong Kong colony. Britain, Japan, Russia, Germany,France, and Belgium each gained spheres of influence in China. The United States, whichhad not acquired any territorial cessions, proposed in 1899 that there be an “open door”policy in China, whereby all foreign countries would have equal duties and privileges inall treaty ports within and outside the various spheres of influence. All but Russia agreedto the United States overture.
Emergence Of Modern China: III
The Hundred Days’ Reform and the Aftermath
In the 103 days from June 11 to September 21, 1898, the Qing emperor, Guangxu (1875-1908), ordered a series of reforms aimed at making sweeping social andinstitutional changes. This effort reflected the thinking of a group of progressive scholarreformerswho had impressed the court with the urgency of making innovations for thenation’s survival. Influenced by the Japanese success with modernization, the reformersdeclared that China needed more than “self-strengthening” and that innovation must beaccompanied by institutional and ideological change.
The imperial edicts for reform covered a broad range of subjects, including stamping outcorruption and remaking, among other things, the academic and civil-service examinationsystems, legal system, governmental structure, defense establishment, and postal services.The edicts attempted to modernize agriculture, medicine, and mining and to promotepractical studies instead of Neo-Confucian orthodoxy. The court also planned to sendstudents abroad for firsthand observation and technical studies. All these changes were tobe brought about under a de facto constitutional monarchy.
Opposition to the reform was intense among the conservative ruling elite, especially theManchus, who, in condemning the announced reform as too radical, proposed instead amore moderate and gradualist course of change. Supported by ultraconservatives andwith the tacit support of the political opportunist Yuan Shikai ( 1859-1916),Empress Dowager Ci Xi ( ) engineered a coup d’tat on September 21, 1898, forcingthe young reform-minded Guangxu into seclusion. Ci Xi took over the government asregent. The Hundred Days’ Reform ( ) ended with the rescindment of the newedicts and the execution of six of the reform’s chief advocates. The two principal leaders,Kang Youwei ( 1858-1927) and Liang Qichao ( 1873-1929), fled abroadto found the Baohuang Hui ( or Protect the Emperor Society) and to work,unsuccessfully, for a constitutional monarchy in China.
The conservatives then gave clandestine backing to the antiforeign and anti-Christianmovement of secret societies known as Yihetuan ( or Society of Righteousnessand Harmony). The movement has been better known in the West as the Boxers (from anearlier name–Yihequan, or Righteousness and Harmony Boxers). In 1900 Boxerbands spread over the north China countryside, burning missionary facilities and killingChinese Christians. Finally, in June 1900, the Boxers besieged the foreign concessions inBeijing and Tianjin, an action that provoked an allied relief expedition by the offendednations. The Qing declared war against the invaders, who easily crushed their oppositionand occupied north China. Under the Protocol of 1901, the court was made to consent tothe execution of ten high officials and the punishment of hundreds of others, expansion ofthe Legation Quarter, payment of war reparations, stationing of foreign troops in China,and razing of some Chinese fortifications.
In the decade that followed, the court belatedly put into effect some reform measures.These included the abolition of the moribund Confucian-based examination, educationaland military modernization patterned after the model of Japan, and an experiment, if halfhearted,in constitutional and parliamentary government. The suddenness andambitiousness of the reform effort actually hindered its success. One effect, to be felt fordecades to come, was the establishment of new armies, which, in turn, gave rise towarlordism.
The Republican Revolution of 1911
Failure of reform from the top and the fiasco of the Boxer Uprising convinced manyChinese that the only real solution lay in outright revolution, in sweeping away the oldorder and erecting a new one patterned preferably after the example of Japan. Therevolutionary leader was Sun Yat-sen ( or Sun Yixian in pinyin, 1866-1925), arepublican and anti-Qing activist who became increasingly popular among the overseasChinese and Chinese students abroad, especially in Japan. In 1905 Sun founded theTongmeng Hui ( or United League) in Tokyo with Huang Xing ( 1874-1916), a popular leader of the Chinese revolutionary movement in Japan, as his deputy.This movement, generously supported by overseas Chinese funds, also gained politicalsupport with regional military officers and some of the reformers who had fled Chinaafter the Hundred Days’ Reform. Sun’s political philosophy was conceptualized in 1897,first enunciated in Tokyo in 1905, and modified through the early 1920s. It centered onthe Three Principles of the People ( or san min zhuyi): “nationalism,democracy, and people’s livelihood.” The principle of nationalism called foroverthrowing the Manchus and ending foreign hegemony over China. The secondprinciple, democracy, was used to describe Sun’s goal of a popularly elected republicanform of government. People’s livelihood, often referred to as socialism, was aimed athelping the common people through regulation of the ownership of the means ofproduction and land.
The republican revolution broke out on October 10, 1911, in Wuchang ( ), the capitalof Hubei ( ) Province, among discontented modernized army units whose anti-Qingplot had been uncovered. It had been preceded by numerous abortive uprisings andorganized protests inside China. The revolt quickly spread to neighboring cities, andTongmeng Hui members throughout the country rose in immediate support of theWuchang revolutionary forces. By late November, fifteen of the twenty-four provinceshad declared their independence of the Qing empire. A month later, Sun Yat-sen returnedto China from the United States, where he had been raising funds among overseasChinese and American sympathizers. On January 1, 1912, Sun was inaugurated inNanjing as the provisional president of the new Chinese republic. But power in Beijingalready had passed to the commander-in-chief of the imperial army, Yuan Shikai, thestrongest regional military leader at the time. To prevent civil war and possible foreignintervention from undermining the infant republic, Sun agreed to Yuan’s demand thatChina be united under a Beijing government headed by Yuan. On February 12, 1912, thelast Manchu emperor, the child Puyi ( ), abdicated. On March 10, in Beijing, YuanShikai was sworn in as provisional president of the Republic of China.
Republican China
The republic that Sun Yat-sen ( ) and his associates envisioned evolved slowly.The revolutionists lacked an army, and the power of Yuan Shikai ( ) began tooutstrip that of parliament. Yuan revised the constitution at will and became dictatorial.In August 1912 a new political party was founded by Song Jiaoren ( 1882-1913),one of Sun’s associates. The party, the Guomindang ( Kuomintang or KMT–theNational People’s Party, frequently referred to as the Nationalist Party), was anamalgamation of small political groups, including Sun’s Tongmeng Hui ( ). In thenational elections held in February 1913 for the new bicameral parliament, Songcampaigned against the Yuan administration, and his party won a majority of seats. Yuanhad Song assassinated in March; he had already arranged the assassination of several prorevolutionistgenerals. Animosity toward Yuan grew. In the summer of 1913 sevensouthern provinces rebelled against Yuan. When the rebellion was suppressed, Sun andother instigators fled to Japan. In October 1913 an intimidated parliament formallyelected Yuan president of the Republic of China, and the major powers extendedrecognition to his government. To achieve international recognition, Yuan Shikai had toagree to autonomy for Outer Mongolia and Xizang ( ). China was still to be suzerain,but it would have to allow Russia a free hand in Outer Mongolia and Britain continuanceof its influence in Xizang.
In November Yuan Shikai, legally president, ordered the Guomindang dissolved and itsmembers removed from parliament. Within a few months, he suspended parliament andthe provincial assemblies and forced the promulgation of a new constitution, which, ineffect, made him president for life. Yuan’s ambitions still were not satisfied, and, by theend of 1915, it was announced that he would reestablish the monarchy. Widespreadrebellions ensued, and numerous provinces declared independence. With opposition atevery quarter and the nation breaking up into warlord factions, Yuan Shikai died ofnatural causes in June 1916, deserted by his lieutenants.
Nationalism and Communism
After Yuan Shikai’s death, shifting alliances of regional warlords fought for control of theBeijing government. The nation also was threatened from without by the Japanese. WhenWorld War I broke out in 1914, Japan fought on the Allied side and seized Germanholdings in Shandong ( ) Province. In 1915 the Japanese set before the warlordgovernment in Beijing the so-called Twenty-One Demands, which would have madeChina a Japanese protectorate. The Beijing government rejected some of these demandsbut yielded to the Japanese insistence on keeping the Shandong territory already in itspossession. Beijing also recognized Tokyo’s authority over southern Manchuria andeastern Inner Mongolia. In 1917, in secret communiques, Britain, France, and Italyassented to the Japanese claim in exchange for the Japan’s naval action against Germany.
In 1917 China declared war on Germany in the hope of recovering its lost province, thenunder Japanese control. But in 1918 the Beijing government signed a secret deal withJapan accepting the latter’s claim to Shandong. When the Paris peace conference of 1919confirmed the Japanese claim to Shandong and Beijing’s sellout became public, internalreaction was shattering. On May 4, 1919, there were massive student demonstrationsagainst the Beijing government and Japan. The political fervor, student activism, andiconoclastic and reformist intellectual currents set in motion by the patriotic studentprotest developed into a national awakening known as the May Fourth Movement (). The intellectual milieu in which the May Fourth Movement developed wasknown as the New Culture Movement and occupied the period from 1917 to 1923. Thestudent demonstrations of May 4, 1919 were the high point of the New CultureMovement, and the terms are often used synonymously. Students returned from abroadadvocating social and political theories ranging from complete Westernization of Chinato the socialism that one day would be adopted by China’s communist rulers.
Opposing the Warlords
The May Fourth Movement helped to rekindle the then-fading cause of republicanrevolution. In 1917 Sun Yat-sen had become commander-in-chief of a rival militarygovernment in Guangzhou ( ) in collaboration with southern warlords. In October1919 Sun reestablished the Guomindang to counter the government in Beijing. The latter,under a succession of warlords, still maintained its facade of legitimacy and its relationswith the West. By 1921 Sun had become president of the southern government. He spenthis remaining years trying to consolidate his regime and achieve unity with the north. Hisefforts to obtain aid from the Western democracies were ignored, however, and in 1921he turned to the Soviet Union, which had recently achieved its own revolution. TheSoviets sought to befriend the Chinese revolutionists by offering scathing attacks on”Western imperialism.” But for political expediency, the Soviet leadership initiated a dualpolicy of support for both Sun and the newly established Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The Soviets hoped for consolidation but were prepared for either side toemerge victorious. In this way the struggle for power in China began between theNationalists and the Communists. In 1922 the Guomindang-warlord alliance inGuangzhou was ruptured, and Sun fled to Shanghai ( ). By then Sun saw the need toseek Soviet support for his cause. In 1923 a joint statement by Sun and a Sovietrepresentative in Shanghai pledged Soviet assistance for China’s national unification.Soviet advisers–the most prominent of whom was an agent of the Comintern, MikhailBorodin–began to arrive in China in 1923 to aid in the reorganization and consolidationof the Guomindang along the lines of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The CCPwas under Comintern instructions to cooperate with the Guomindang, and its memberswere encouraged to join while maintaining their party identities. The CCP was still smallat the time, having a membership of 300 in 1922 and only 1,500 by 1925. TheGuomindang in 1922 already had 150,000 members. Soviet advisers also helped theNationalists set up a political institute to train propagandists in mass mobilizationtechniques and in 1923 sent Chiang Kai-shek ( Jiang Jieshi in pinyin), one ofSun’s lieutenants from Tongmeng Hui days, for several months’ military and politicalstudy in Moscow. After Chiang’s return in late 1923, he participated in the establishmentof the Whampoa ( Huangpu in pinyin) Military Academy outside Guangzhou, whichwas the seat of government under the Guomindang-CCP alliance. In 1924 Chiangbecame head of the academy and began the rise to prominence that would make himSun’s successor as head of the Guomindang and the unifier of all China under the rightwingnationalist government.
Sun Yat-sen died of cancer in Beijing in March 1925, but the Nationalist movement hehad helped to initiate was gaining momentum. During the summer of 1925, Chiang, ascommander-in-chief of the National Revolutionary Army, set out on the long-delayedNorthern Expedition against the northern warlords. Within nine months, half of Chinahad been conquered. By 1926, however, the Guomindang had divided into left- and rightwingfactions, and the Communist bloc within it was also growing. In March 1926, afterthwarting a kidnapping attempt against him, Chiang abruptly dismissed his Sovietadvisers, imposed restrictions on CCP members’ participation in the top leadership, andemerged as the preeminent Guomindang leader. The Soviet Union, still hoping to preventa split between Chiang and the CCP, ordered Communist underground activities tofacilitate the Northern Expedition, which was finally launched by Chiang fromGuangzhou in July 1926
In early 1927 the Guomindang-CCP rivalry led to a split in the revolutionary ranks. TheCCP and the left wing of the Guomindang had decided to move the seat of the Nationalistgovernment from Guangzhou to Wuhan. But Chiang, whose Northern Expedition wasproving successful, set his forces to destroying the Shanghai CCP apparatus andestablished an anti-Communist government at Nanjing in April 1927. There now werethree capitals in China: the internationally recognized warlord regime in Beijing; theCommunist and left-wing Guomindang regime at Wuhan ( ); and the right-wingcivilian-military regime at Nanjing, which would remain the Nationalist capital for thenext decade.
The Comintern cause appeared bankrupt. A new policy was instituted calling on the CCPto foment armed insurrections in both urban and rural areas in preparation for an expectedrising tide of revolution. Unsuccessful attempts were made by Communists to take citiessuch as Nanchang ( ), Changsha ( ), Shantou ( ), and Guangzhou, and anarmed rural insurrection, known as the Autumn Harvest Uprising, was staged by peasantsin Hunan Province. The insurrection was led by Mao Zedong ( 1893-1976), whowould later become chairman of the CCP and head of state of the People’s Republic ofChina. Mao was of peasant origins and was one of the founders of the CCP.
But in mid-1927 the CCP was at a low ebb. The Communists had been expelled fromWuhan by their left-wing Guomindang allies, who in turn were toppled by a militaryregime. By 1928 all of China was at least nominally under Chiang’s control, and theNanjing government received prompt international recognition as the sole legitimategovernment of China. The Nationalist government announced that in conformity withSun Yat-sen’s formula for the three stages of revolution–military unification, politicaltutelage, and constitutional democracy–China had reached the end of the first phase andwould embark on the second, which would be under Guomindang direction.
Republican China: II
Consolidation under the Guomindang
The decade of 1928-37 was one of consolidation and accomplishment by theGuomindang ( ). Some of the harsh aspects of foreign concessions and privilegesin China were moderated through diplomacy. The government acted energetically tomodernize the legal and penal systems, stabilize prices, amortize debts, reform thebanking and currency systems, build railroads and highways, improve public healthfacilities, legislate against traffic in narcotics, and augment industrial and agriculturalproduction. Great strides also were made in education and, in an effort to help unifyChinese society, in a program to popularize the national language and overcome dialectalvariations. The widespread establishment of communications facilities furtherencouraged a sense of unity and pride among the people.
Rise of the Communists
There were forces at work during this period of progress that would eventuallyundermine the Chiang Kai-shek government. The first was the gradual rise of theCommunists.
Mao Zedong ( ), who had become a Marxist at the time of the emergence of theMay Fourth Movement (he was working as a librarian at Beijing University), hadboundless faith in the revolutionary potential of the peasantry. He advocated thatrevolution in China focus on them rather than on the urban proletariat, as prescribed byorthodox Marxist-Leninist theoreticians. Despite the failure of the Autumn HarvestUprising of 1927, Mao continued to work among the peasants of Hunan Province.Without waiting for the sanction of the CCP center, then in Shanghai, he beganestablishing peasant-based soviets (Communist-run local governments) along the borderbetween Hunan and Jiangxi ( ) provinces. In collaboration with military commanderZhu De ( 1886-1976), Mao turned the local peasants into a politicized guerrillaforce. By the winter of 1927-28, the combined “peasants’ and workers'” army had some10,000 troops.
Mao’s prestige rose steadily after the failure of the Comintern-directed urbaninsurrections. In late 1931 he was able to proclaim the establishment of the ChineseSoviet Republic under his chairmanship in Ruijin Jiangxi Province. The Soviet-orientedCCP Political Bureau came to Ruijin at Mao’s invitation with the intent of dismantling hisapparatus. But, although he had yet to gain membership in the Political Bureau, Maodominated the proceedings.
In the early 1930s, amid continued Political Bureau opposition to his military andagrarian policies and the deadly annihilation campaigns being waged against the RedArmy by Chiang Kai-shek’s forces, Mao’s control of the Chinese Communist movementincreased. The epic Long March of his Red Army and its supporters, which began inOctober 1934, would ensure his place in history. Forced to evacuate their camps andhomes, Communist soldiers and government and party leaders and functionariesnumbering about 100,000 (including only 35 women, the spouses of high leaders) set outon a circuitous retreat of some 12,500 kilometers through 11 provinces, 18 mountainranges, and 24 rivers in southwest and northwest China. During the Long March, Maofinally gained unchallenged command of the CCP, ousting his rivals and reassertingguerrilla strategy. As a final destination, he selected southern Shaanxi ( ) Province,where some 8,000 survivors of the original group from Jiangxi Province (joined by some22,000 from other areas) arrived in October 1935. The Communists set up theirheadquarters at Yan’an ( ), where the movement would grow rapidly for the next tenyears. Contributing to this growth would be a combination of internal and externalcircumstances, of which aggression by the Japanese was perhaps the most significant.Conflict with Japan, which would continue from the 1930s to the end of World War II,was the other force (besides the Communists themselves) that would undermine theNationalist government.
Republican China: III
Anti-Japanese War
Few Chinese had any illusions about Japanese designs on China. Hungry for rawmaterials and pressed by a growing population, Japan initiated the seizure of Manchuriain September 1931 and established ex-Qing emperor Puyi ( ) as head of the puppetregime of Manchukuo ( ) in 1932. The loss of Manchuria, and its vast potential forindustrial development and war industries, was a blow to the Nationalist economy. TheLeague of Nations, established at the end of World War I, was unable to act in the face ofthe Japanese defiance. The Japanese began to push from south of the Great Wall intonorthern China and into the coastal provinces. Chinese fury against Japan waspredictable, but anger was also directed against the Guomindang government, which atthe time was more preoccupied with anti-Communist extermination campaigns than withresisting the Japanese invaders. The importance of “internal unity before external danger”was forcefully brought home in December 1936, when Nationalist troops (who had beenousted from Manchuria by the Japanese) mutinied at Xi’an ( ). The mutineersforcibly detained Chiang Kai-shek for several days until he agreed to cease hostilitiesagainst the Communist forces in northwest China and to assign Communist units combatduties in designated anti-Japanese front areas.
The Chinese resistance stiffened after July 7, 1937, when a clash occurred betweenChinese and Japanese troops outside Beijing (then renamed Beiping ) near theMarco Polo Bridge. This skirmish not only marked the beginning of open, thoughundeclared, war between China and Japan but also hastened the formal announcement ofthe second Guomindang-CCP united front against Japan. The collaboration took placewith salutary effects for the beleaguered CCP. The distrust between the two parties,however, was scarcely veiled. The uneasy alliance began to break down after late 1938,despite Japan’s steady territorial gains in northern China, the coastal regions, and the richChang Jiang ( ) Valley in central China. After 1940, conflicts between theNationalists and Communists became more frequent in the areas not under Japanesecontrol. The Communists expanded their influence wherever opportunities presentedthemselves through mass organizations, administrative reforms, and the land- and taxreformmeasures favoring the peasants–while the Nationalists attempted to neutralize thespread of Communist influence.
At Yan’an ( ) and elsewhere in the “liberated areas,” Mao was able to adapt Marxism-Leninism to Chinese conditions. He taught party cadres to lead the masses by living andworking with them, eating their food, and thinking their thoughts. The Red Army fosteredan image of conducting guerrilla warfare in defense of the people. Communist troopsadapted to changing wartime conditions and became a seasoned fighting force. Mao alsobegan preparing for the establishment of a new China. In 1940 he outlined the program ofthe Chinese Communists for an eventual seizure of power. His teachings became thecentral tenets of the CCP doctrine that came to be formalized as Mao Zedong Thought.With skillful organizational and propaganda work, the Communists increased partymembership from 100,000 in 1937 to 1.2 million by 1945.
In 1945 China emerged from the war nominally a great military power but actually anation economically prostrate and on the verge of all-out civil war. The economydeteriorated, sapped by the military demands of foreign war and internal strife, byspiraling inflation, and by Nationalist profiteering, speculation, and hoarding. Starvationcame in the wake of the war, and millions were rendered homeless by floods and theunsettled conditions in many parts of the country. The situation was further complicatedby an Allied agreement at the Yalta Conference in February 1945 that brought Soviettroops into Manchuria to hasten the termination of war against Japan. Although theChinese had not been present at Yalta, they had been consulted; they had agreed to havethe Soviets enter the war in the belief that the Soviet Union would deal only with theNationalist government. After the war, the Soviet Union, as part of the Yalta agreement’sallowing a Soviet sphere of influence in Manchuria, dismantled and removed more thanhalf the industrial equipment left there by the Japanese. The Soviet presence in northeastChina enabled the Communists to move in long enough to arm themselves with theequipment surrendered by the withdrawing Japanese army. The problems ofrehabilitating the formerly Japanese-occupied areas and of reconstructing the nation fromthe ravages of a protracted war were staggering, to say the least.
Return to Civil War
During World War II, the United States emerged as a major actor in Chinese affairs. Asan ally it embarked in late 1941 on a program of massive military and financial aid to thehard-pressed Nationalist government. In January 1943 the United States and Britain ledthe way in revising their treaties with China, bringing to an end a century of unequaltreaty relations. Within a few months, a new agreement was signed between the UnitedStates and China for the stationing of American troops in China for the common wareffort against Japan. In December 1943 the Chinese exclusion acts of the 1880s andsubsequent laws enacted by the United States Congress to restrict Chinese immigrationinto the United States were repealed.
The wartime policy of the United States was initially to help China become a strong allyand a stabilizing force in postwar East Asia. As the conflict between the Nationalists andthe Communists intensified, however, the United States sought unsuccessfully toreconcile the rival forces for a more effective anti-Japanese war effort. Toward the end ofthe war, United States Marines were used to hold Beiping and Tianjin against a possibleSoviet incursion, and logistic support was given to Nationalist forces in north andnortheast China.
Through the mediatory influence of the United States a military truce was arranged inJanuary 1946, but battles between Nationalists and Communists soon resumed. Realizingthat American efforts short of large-scale armed intervention could not stop the war, theUnited States withdrew the American mission, headed by General George C. Marshall, inearly 1947. The civil war, in which the United States aided the Nationalists with massiveeconomic loans but no military support, became more widespread. Battles raged not onlyfor territories but also for the allegiance of cross sections of the population.
Belatedly, the Nationalist government sought to enlist popular support through internalreforms. The effort was in vain, however, because of the rampant corruption ingovernment and the accompanying political and economic chaos. By late 1948 theNationalist position was bleak. The demoralized and undisciplined Nationalist troopsproved no match for the People’s Liberation Army (PLA or ). TheCommunists were well established in the north and northeast. Although the Nationalistshad an advantage in numbers of men and weapons, controlled a much larger territory andpopulation than their adversaries, and enjoyed considerable international support, theywere exhausted by the long war with Japan and the attendant internal responsibilities. InJanuary 1949 Beiping was taken by the Communists without a fight, and its namechanged back to Beijing. Between April and November, major cities passed fromGuomindang to Communist control with minimal resistance. In most cases thesurrounding countryside and small towns had come under Communist influence longbefore the cities. After Chiang Kai-shek and a few hundred thousand Nationalist troopsfled from the mainland to the island of Taiwan, there remained only isolated pockets ofresistance. In December 1949 Chiang proclaimed Taipei ( ), Taiwan ( ), thetemporary capital of China.
The People’s Republic Of China
On October 1, 1949, the People’s Republic of China was formally established, with itsnational capital at Beijing. “The Chinese people have stood up!” declared Mao as heannounced the creation of a “people’s democratic dictatorship.” The people were definedas a coalition of four social classes: the workers, the peasants, the petite bourgeoisie, andthe national-capitalists. The four classes were to be led by the CCP, as the vanguard ofthe working class. At that time the CCP claimed a membership of 4.5 million, of whichmembers of peasant origin accounted for nearly 90 percent. The party was under Mao’schairmanship, and the government was headed by Zhou Enlai ( 1898-1976) aspremier of the State Administrative Council (the predecessor of the State Council).
The Soviet Union recognized the People’s Republic on October 2, 1949. Earlier in theyear, Mao had proclaimed his policy of “leaning to one side” as a commitment to thesocialist bloc. In February 1950, after months of hard bargaining, China and the SovietUnion signed the Treaty of Friendship, Alliance, and Mutual Assistance, valid until 1980.The pact also was intended to counter Japan or any power’s joining Japan for the purposeof aggression.
For the first time in decades a Chinese government was met with peace, instead ofmassive military opposition, within its territory. The new leadership was highlydisciplined and, having a decade of wartime administrative experience to draw on, wasable to embark on a program of national integration and reform. In the first year ofCommunist administration, moderate social and economic policies were implementedwith skill and effectiveness. The leadership realized that the overwhelming andmultitudinous task of economic reconstruction and achievement of political and socialstability required the goodwill and cooperation of all classes of people. Results wereimpressive by any standard, and popular support was widespread.
By 1950 international recognition of the Communist government had increasedconsiderably, but it was slowed by China’s involvement in the Korean War. In October1950, sensing a threat to the industrial heartland in northeast China from the advancingUnited Nations (UN) forces in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea),units of the PLA–calling themselves the Chinese People’s Volunteers–crossed theYaluJiang ( ) River into North Korea in response to a North Korean request foraid. Almost simultaneously the PLA forces also marched into Xizang to reassert Chinesesovereignty over a region that had been in effect independent of Chinese rule since thefall of the Qing dynasty in 1911. In 1951 the UN declared China to be an aggressor inKorea and sanctioned a global embargo on the shipment of arms and war materiel toChina. This step foreclosed for the time being any possibility that the People’s Republicmight replace Nationalist China (on Taiwan) as a member of the UN and as a vetoholdingmember of the UN Security Council.
After China entered the Korean War, the initial moderation in Chinese domestic policiesgave way to a massive campaign against the “enemies of the state,” actual and potential.These enemies consisted of “war criminals, traitors, bureaucratic capitalists, andcounterrevolutionaries.” The campaign was combined with party-sponsored trialsattended by huge numbers of people. The major targets in this drive were foreigners andChristian missionaries who were branded as United States agents at these mass trials. The1951-52 drive against political enemies was accompanied by land reform, which hadactually begun under the Agrarian Reform Law of June 28, 1950. The redistribution ofland was accelerated, and a class struggle landlords and wealthy peasants was launched.An ideological reform campaign requiring self-criticisms and public confessions byuniversity faculty members, scientists, and other professional workers was given widepublicity. Artists and writers were soon the objects of similar treatment for failing to heedMao’s dictum that culture and literature must reflect the class interest of the workingpeople, led by the CCP. These campaigns were accompanied in 1951 and 1952 by the sanfan ( or “three anti”) and wu fan ( or “five anti”) movements. The former wasdirected ostensibly against the evils of “corruption, waste, and bureaucratism”; its realaim was to eliminate incompetent and politically unreliable public officials and to bringabout an efficient, disciplined, and responsive bureaucratic system. The wu fanmovement aimed at eliminating recalcitrant and corrupt businessmen and industrialists,who were in effect the targets of the CCP’s condemnation of “tax evasion, bribery,cheating in government contracts, thefts of economic intelligence, and stealing of stateassets.” In the course of this campaign the party claimed to have uncovered a wellorganizedattempt by businessmen and industrialists to corrupt party and governmentofficials. This charge was enlarged into an assault on the bourgeoisie as a whole. Thenumber of people affected by the various punitive or reform campaigns was estimated inthe millions.
The Transition to Socialism, 1953-57
The period of officially designated “transition to socialism” corresponded to China’s FirstFive-Year Plan (1953-57). The period was characterized by efforts to achieveindustrialization, collectivization of agriculture, and political centralization.
The First Five-Year Plan stressed the development of heavy industry on the Sovietmodel. Soviet economic and technical assistance was expected to play a significant partin the implementation of the plan, and technical agreements were signed with the Sovietsin 1953 and 1954. For the purpose of economic planning, the first modern census wastaken in 1953; the population of mainland China was shown to be 583 million, a figurefar greater than had been anticipated.
Among China’s most pressing needs in the early 1950s were food for its burgeoningpopulation, domestic capital for investment, and purchase of Soviet-supplied technology,capital equipment, and military hardware. To satisfy these needs, the government beganto collectivize agriculture. Despite internal disagreement as to the speed ofcollectivization, which at least for the time being was resolved in Mao’s favor,preliminary collectivization was 90 percent completed by the end of 1956. In addition,the government nationalized banking, industry, and trade. Private enterprise in mainlandChina was virtually abolished.
Major political developments included the centralization of party and governmentadministration. Elections were held in 1953 for delegates to the First National People’sCongress, China’s national legislature, which met in 1954. The congress promulgated thestate constitution of 1954 and formally elected Mao chairman (or president) of thePeople’s Republic; it elected Liu Shaoqi ( 1898-1969) chairman of the StandingCommittee of the National People’s Congress; and named Zhou Enlai premier of the newState Council.
In the midst of these major governmental changes, and helping to precipitate them, was apower struggle within the CCP leading to the 1954 purge of Political Bureau memberGao Gang ( ) and Party Organization Department head Rao Shushi ( ), whowere accused of illicitly trying to seize control of the party.
The process of national integration also was characterized by improvements in partyorganization under the administrative direction of the secretary general of the party DengXiaoping ( who served concurrently as vice premier of the State Council). Therewas a marked emphasis on recruiting intellectuals, who by 1956 constituted nearly 12percent of the party’s 10.8 million members. Peasant membership had decreased to 69percent, while there was an increasing number of “experts” , who were needed for theparty and governmental infrastructures, in the party ranks.
As part of the effort to encourage the participation of intellectuals in the new regime, inmid-1956 there began an official effort to liberalize the political climate. Cultural andintellectual figures were encouraged to speak their minds on the state of CCP rule andprograms. Mao personally took the lead in the movement, which was launched under theclassical slogan “Let a hundred flowers bloom, let the hundred schools of thoughtcontend” ( ). At first the party’s repeated invitation to airconstructive views freely and openly was met with caution. By mid-1957, however, themovement unexpectedly mounted, bringing denunciation and criticism against the partyin general and the excesses of its cadres in particular. Startled and embarrassed, leadersturned on the critics as “bourgeois rightists” ( ) and launched the Anti-RightistCampaign. The Hundred Flowers Campaign , sometimes called the Double HundredCampaign ( ), apparently had a sobering effect on the CCP leadership.
The People’s Republic Of China: II
The Great Leap Forward, 1958-60
The antirightist drive was followed by a militant approach toward economicdevelopment. In 1958 the CCP launched the Great Leap Forward ( ) campaignunder the new “General Line for Socialist Construction.” The Great Leap Forward wasaimed at accomplishing the economic and technical development of the country at avastly faster pace and with greater results. The shift to the left that the new “GeneralLine” represented was brought on by a combination of domestic and external factors.Although the party leaders appeared generally satisfied with the accomplishments of theFirst Five-Year Plan, they–Mao and his fellow radicals in particular–believed that morecould be achieved in the Second Five-Year Plan (1958-62) if the people could beideologically aroused and if domestic resources could be utilized more efficiently for thesimultaneous development of industry and agriculture. These assumptions led the party toan intensified mobilization of the peasantry and mass organizations, stepped-upideological guidance and indoctrination of technical experts, and efforts to build a moreresponsive political system. The last of these undertakings was to be accomplishedthrough a new xiafang ( or down to the countryside) movement, under which cadresinside and outside the party would be sent to factories, communes, mines, and publicworks projects for manual labor and firsthand familiarization with grass-roots conditions.Although evidence is sketchy, Mao’s decision to embark on the Great Leap Forward wasbased in part on his uncertainty about the Soviet policy of economic, financial, andtechnical assistance to China. That policy, in Mao’s view, not only fell far short of hisexpectations and needs but also made him wary of the political and economic dependencein which China might find itself.
The Great Leap Forward centered on a new socioeconomic and political system createdin the countryside and in a few urban areas–the people’s communes . By the fall of 1958,some 750,000 agricultural producers’ cooperatives, now designated as productionbrigades, had been amalgamated into about 23,500 communes, each averaging 5,000households, or 22,000 people. The individual commune was placed in control of all themeans of production and was to operate as the sole accounting unit; it was subdividedinto production brigades (generally coterminous with traditional villages) and productionteams. Each commune was planned as a self-supporting community for agriculture,small-scale local industry (for example, the famous backyard pig-iron furnaces),schooling, marketing, administration, and local security (maintained by militiaorganizations). Organized along paramilitary and laborsaving lines, the commune hadcommunal kitchens, mess halls, and nurseries. In a way, the people’s communesconstituted a fundamental attack on the institution of the family, especially in a fewmodel areas where radical experiments in communal living–large dormitories in place ofthe traditional nuclear family housing– occurred. (These were quickly dropped.) Thesystem also was based on the assumption that it would release additional manpower forsuch major projects as irrigation works and hydroelectric dams, which were seen asintegral parts of the plan for the simultaneous development of industry and agriculture.
The Great Leap Forward was an economic failure. In early 1959, amid signs of risingpopular restiveness, the CCP admitted that the favorable production report for 1958 hadbeen exaggerated. Among the Great Leap Forward’s economic consequences were ashortage of food (in which natural disasters also played a part); shortages of raw materialsfor industry; overproduction of poor-quality goods; deterioration of industrial plantsthrough mismanagement; and exhaustion and demoralization of the peasantry and of theintellectuals, not to mention the party and government cadres at all levels. Throughout1959 efforts to modify the administration of the communes got under way; these wereintended partly to restore some material incentives to the production brigades and teams,partly to decentralize control, and partly to house families that had been reunited ashousehold units.
Political consequences were not inconsiderable. In April 1959 Mao, who bore the chiefresponsibility for the Great Leap Forward fiasco, stepped down from his position aschairman of the People’s Republic. The National People’s Congress elected Liu Shaoqi asMao’s successor, though Mao remained chairman of the CCP. Moreover, Mao’s GreatLeap Forward policy came under open criticism at a party conference at Lushan ( ),Jiangxi Province. The attack was led by Minister of National Defense Peng Dehuai (), who had become troubled by the potentially adverse effect Mao’s policieswould have on the modernization of the armed forces. Peng argued that “putting politicsin command” was no substitute for economic laws and realistic economic policy;unnamed party leaders were also admonished for trying to “jump into communism in onestep.” After the Lushan showdown, Peng Dehuai, who allegedly had been encouraged bySoviet leader Nikita Khrushchev to oppose Mao, was deposed. Peng was replaced by LinBiao ( ), a radical and opportunist Maoist. The new defense minister initiated asystematic purge of Peng’s supporters from the military.
Militancy on the domestic front was echoed in external policies. The “soft” foreign policybased on the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence to which China had subscribed inthe mid-1950s gave way to a “hard” line in 1958. From August through October of thatyear, the Chinese resumed a massive artillery bombardment of the Nationalist-heldoffshore islands of Jinmen ( Chin-men in Wade Giles but often referred to asKinmen or Quemoy) and Mazu ( Ma-tsu in Wade-Giles). This was accompanied byan aggressive propaganda assault on the United States and a declaration of intent to”liberate” Taiwan.
Chinese control over Xizang had been reasserted in 1950. The socialist revolution thattook place thereafter increasingly became a process of sinicization for the Tibetans.Tension culminated in a revolt in 1958-59 and the flight to India by the Dalai Lama, theTibetans’ spiritual and de facto temporal leader. Relations with India–where sympathyfor the rebels was aroused–deteriorated as thousands of Tibetan refugees crossed theIndian border. There were several border incidents in 1959, and a brief Sino-Indianborder war erupted in October 1962 as China laid claim to Aksai Chin, nearly 103,600square kilometers of territory that India regarded as its own. The Soviet Union gave Indiaits moral support in the dispute, thus contributing to the growing tension between Beijingand Moscow.
The Sino-Soviet dispute of the late 1950s was the most important development inChinese foreign relations. The Soviet Union had been China’s principal benefactor andally, but relations between the two were cooling. The Soviet agreement in late 1957 tohelp China produce its own nuclear weapons and missiles was terminated by mid-1959.From that point until the mid-1960s, the Soviets recalled all of their technicians andadvisers from China and reduced or canceled economic and technical aid to China. Thediscord was occasioned by several factors. The two countries differed in theirinterpretation of the nature of “peaceful coexistence.” The Chinese took a more militantand unyielding position on the issue of anti-imperialist struggle, but the Soviets wereunwilling, for example, to give their support on the Taiwan question. In addition, the twocommunist powers disagreed on doctrinal matters. The Chinese accused the Soviets of”revisionism”; the latter countered with charges of “dogmatism.” Rivalry within theinternational communist movement also exacerbated Sino-Soviet relations. An additionalcomplication was the history of suspicion each side had toward the other, especially theChinese, who had lost a substantial part of territory to tsarist Russia in the mid-nineteenthcentury. Whatever the causes of the dispute, the Soviet suspension of aid was a blow tothe Chinese scheme for developing industrial and high-level (including nuclear)technology.
Readjustment and Recovery, 1961-65
In 1961 the political tide at home began to swing to the right, as evidenced by theascendancy of a more moderate leadership. In an effort to stabilize the economic front,for example, the party–still under Mao’s titular leadership but under the dominantinfluence of Liu Shaoqi, Deng Xiaoping, Chen Yun ( ), Peng Zhen ( ), Bo Yibo (), and others–initiated a series of corrective measures. Among these measureswas the reorganization of the commune system, with the result that production brigadesand teams had more say in their own administrative and economic planning. To gainmore effective control from the center, the CCP reestablished its six regional bureaus andinitiated steps aimed at tightening party discipline and encouraging the leading partycadres to develop populist-style leadership at all levels. The efforts were prompted by theparty’s realization that the arrogance of party and government functionaries hadengendered only public apathy. On the industrial front, much emphasis was now placedon realistic and efficient planning; ideological fervor and mass movements were nolonger the controlling themes of industrial management. Production authority wasrestored to factory managers. Another notable emphasis after 1961 was the party’s greaterinterest in strengthening the defense and internal security establishment. By early 1965the country was well on its way to recovery under the direction of the party apparatus, or,to be more specific, the Central Committee’s Secretariat headed by Secretary GeneralDeng Xiaoping.
The People’s Republic Of China: III
The Cultural Revolution Decade, 1966-76
In the early 1960s, Mao was on the political sidelines and in semiseclusion. By 1962,however, he began an offensive to purify the party, having grown increasingly uneasyabout what he believed were the creeping “capitalist” and antisocialist tendencies in thecountry. As a hardened veteran revolutionary who had overcome the severest adversities,Mao continued to believe that the material incentives that had been restored to thepeasants and others were corrupting the masses and were counterrevolutionary.
To arrest the so-called capitalist trend, Mao launched the Socialist Education Movement(1962-65), in which the primary emphasis was on restoring ideological purity, reinfusingrevolutionary fervor into the party and government bureaucracies, and intensifying classstruggle. There were internal disagreements, however, not on the aim of the movementbut on the methods of carrying it out. Opposition came mainly from the moderatesrepresented by Liu Shaoqi ( )and Deng Xiaoping ( ), who wereunsympathetic to Mao’s policies. The Socialist Education Movement was soon pairedwith another Mao campaign, the theme of which was “to learn from the People’sLiberation Army.” Minister of National Defense Lin Biao’s rise to the center of powerwas increasingly conspicuous. It was accompanied by his call on the PLA and the CCP toaccentuate Maoist thought as the guiding principle for the Socialist Education Movementand for all revolutionary undertakings in China.
In connection with the Socialist Education Movement, a thorough reform of the schoolsystem, which had been planned earlier to coincide with the Great Leap Forward, wentinto effect. The reform was intended as a work-study program–a new xiafangmovement–in which schooling was slated to accommodate the work schedule ofcommunes and factories. It had the dual purpose of providing mass education lessexpensively than previously and of re-educating intellectuals and scholars to accept theneed for their own participation in manual labor. The drafting of intellectuals for manuallabor was part of the party’s rectification campaign, publicized through the mass media asan effort to remove “bourgeois” influences from professional workers–particularly, theirtendency to have greater regard for their own specialized fields than for the goals of theparty. Official propaganda accused them of being more concerned with having”expertise” than being “red” .
The Militant Phase, 1966-68
By mid-1965 Mao had gradually but systematically regained control of the party with thesupport of Lin Biao ( ), Jiang Qing ( Mao’s fourth wife), and Chen Boda (), a leading theoretician. In late 1965 a leading member of Mao’s “ShanghaiMafia,” Yao Wenyuan ( ), wrote a thinly veiled attack on the deputy mayor ofBeijing, Wu Han ( ). In the next six months, under the guise of upholding ideologicalpurity, Mao and his supporters purged or attacked a wide variety of public figures,including State Chairman Liu Shaoqi and other party and state leaders. By mid-1966Mao’s campaign had erupted into what came to be known as the Great ProletarianCultural Revolution ( ), the first mass action to have emerged against theCCP apparatus itself.
Considerable intraparty opposition to the Cultural Revolution was evident. On the oneside was the Mao-Lin Biao group, supported by the PLA; on the other side was a factionled by Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping, which had its strength in the regular partymachine. Premier Zhou Enlai, while remaining personally loyal to Mao, tried to mediateor to reconcile the two factions.
Mao felt that he could no longer depend on the formal party organization, convinced thatit had been permeated with the “capitalist” and bourgeois obstructionists. He turned toLin Biao and the PLA to counteract the influence of those who were allegedly “`left’ inform but `right’ in essence.” The PLA was widely extolled as a “great school” for thetraining of a new generation of revolutionary fighters and leaders. Maoists also turned tomiddle-school students for political demonstrations on their behalf. These students,joined also by some university students, came to be known as the Red Guards . Millionsof Red Guards were encouraged by the Cultural Revolution group to become a “shockforce” and to “bombard” with criticism both the regular party headquarters in Beijing andthose at the regional and provincial levels.
Red Guard activities were promoted as a reflection of Mao’s policy of rekindlingrevolutionary enthusiasm and destroying “outdated,” “counterrevolutionary” symbols andvalues. Mao’s ideas, popularized in the Quotations from Chairman Mao, became thestandard by which all revolutionary efforts were to be judged. The “four big rights”–speaking out freely, airing views fully, holding great debates, and writing big-characterposters –became an important factor in encouraging Mao’s youthful followers to criticizehis intraparty rivals. The “four big rights” became such a major feature during the periodthat they were later institutionalized in the state constitution of 1975. The result of theunfettered criticism of established organs of control by China’s exuberant youth wasmassive civil disorder, punctuated also by clashes among rival Red Guard gangs andbetween the gangs and local security authorities. The party organization was shatteredfrom top to bottom. (The Central Committee’s Secretariat ceased functioning in late1966.) The resources of the public security organs were severely strained. Faced withimminent anarchy, the PLA–the only organization whose ranks for the most part had notbeen radicalized by Red Guard-style activities–emerged as the principal guarantor of lawand order and the de facto political authority. And although the PLA was under Mao’srallying call to “support the left,” PLA regional military commanders ordered their forcesto restrain the leftist radicals, thus restoring order throughout much of China. The PLAalso was responsible for the appearance in early 1967 of the revolutionary committees, anew form of local control that replaced local party committees and administrative bodies.The revolutionary committees were staffed with Cultural Revolution activists, trustedcadres, and military commanders, the latter frequently holding the greatest power.
The radical tide receded somewhat beginning in late 1967, but it was not until after mid-1968 that Mao came to realize the uselessness of further revolutionary violence. LiuShaoqi, Deng Xiaoping, and their fellow “revisionists” and “capitalist roaders” had beenpurged from public life by early 1967, and the Maoist group had since been in fullcommand of the political scene.
Viewed in larger perspective, the need for domestic calm and stability was occasionedperhaps even more by pressures emanating from outside China. The Chinese werealarmed in 1966-68 by steady Soviet military buildups along their common border. TheSoviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 heightened Chinese apprehensions. In March1969 Chinese and Soviet troops clashed on Zhenbao Island (known to the Soviets asDamanskiy Island) in the disputed Wusuli Jiang (Ussuri River) border area. The tensionon the border had a sobering effect on the fractious Chinese political scene and providedthe regime with a new and unifying rallying call.
The Ninth National Party Congress to the Demise of Lin Biao, 1969-71
The activist phase of the Cultural Revolution–considered to be the first in a series ofcultural revolutions–was brought to an end in April 1969. This end was formally signaledat the CCP’s Ninth National Party Congress, which convened under the dominance of theMaoist group. Mao was confirmed as the supreme leader. Lin Biao was promoted to thepost of CCP vice chairman and was named as Mao’s successor. Others who had risen topower by means of Cultural Revolution machinations were rewarded with positions onthe Political Bureau; a significant number of military commanders were appointed to theCentral Committee. The party congress also marked the rising influence of two opposingforces, Mao’s wife, Jiang Qing, and Premier Zhou Enlai.
The general emphasis after 1969 was on reconstruction through rebuilding of the party,economic stabilization, and greater sensitivity to foreign affairs. Pragmatism gainedmomentum as a central theme of the years following the Ninth National Party Congress,but this tendency was paralleled by efforts of the radical group to reassert itself. Theradical group–Kang Sheng ( ), Xie Fuzhi ( ), Jiang Qing ( ), ZhangChunqiao ( ), Yao Wenyuan ( ), and Wang Hongwen ( ) –no longerhad Mao’s unqualified support. By 1970 Mao viewed his role more as that of the supremeelder statesman than of an activist in the policy-making process. This was probably theresult as much of his declining health as of his view that a stabilizing influence should bebrought to bear on a divided nation. As Mao saw it, China needed both pragmatism andrevolutionary enthusiasm, each acting as a check on the other. Factional infighting wouldcontinue unabated through the mid-1970s, although an uneasy coexistence wasmaintained while Mao was alive.
The rebuilding of the CCP got under way in 1969. The process was difficult, however,given the pervasiveness of factional tensions and the discord carried over from theCultural Revolution years. Differences persisted among the military, the party, and leftdominatedmass organizations over a wide range of policy issues, to say nothing of theradical-moderate rivalry. It was not until December 1970 that a party committee could bereestablished at the provincial level. In political reconstruction two developments werenoteworthy. As the only institution of power for the most part left unscathed by theCultural Revolution, the PLA was particularly important in the politics of transition andreconstruction. The PLA was, however, not a homogeneous body. In 1970-71 Zhou Enlaiwas able to forge a centrist-rightist alliance with a group of PLA regional militarycommanders who had taken exception to certain of Lin Biao’s policies. This coalitionpaved the way for a more moderate party and government leadership in the late 1970sand 1980s.
The PLA was divided largely on policy issues. On one side of the infighting was the LinBiao faction, which continued to exhort the need for “politics in command” and for anunremitting struggle against both the Soviet Union and the United States. On the otherside was a majority of the regional military commanders, who had become concernedabout the effect Lin Biao’s political ambitions would have on military modernization andeconomic development. These commanders’ views generally were in tune with thepositions taken by Zhou Enlai and his moderate associates. Specifically, the moderategroups within the civilian bureaucracy and the armed forces spoke for more materialincentives for the peasantry, efficient economic planning, and a thorough reassessment ofthe Cultural Revolution. They also advocated improved relations with the West in generaland the United States in particular–if for no other reason than to counter the perceivedexpansionist aims of the Soviet Union. Generally, the radicals’ objection notwithstanding,the Chinese political tide shifted steadily toward the right of center. Among the notableachievements of the early 1970s was China’s decision to seek rapprochement with theUnited States, as dramatized by President Richard M. Nixon’s visit in February 1972. InSeptember 1972 diplomatic relations were established with Japan.
Without question, the turning point in the decade of the Cultural Revolution was LinBiao’s abortive coup attempt and his subsequent death in a plane crash as he fled China inSeptember 1971. The immediate consequence was a steady erosion of the fundamentalistinfluence of the left-wing radicals. Lin Biao’s closest supporters were purgedsystematically. Efforts to depoliticize and promote professionalism were intensifiedwithin the PLA. These were also accompanied by the rehabilitation of those persons whohad been persecuted or fallen into disgrace in 1966-68.
End of the Era of Mao Zedong, 1972-76
Among the most prominent of those rehabilitated was Deng Xiaoping, who wasreinstated as a vice premier in April 1973, ostensibly under the aegis of Premier ZhouEnlai but certainly with the concurrence of Mao Zedong. Together, Zhou Enlai and DengXiaoping came to exert strong influence. Their moderate line favoring modernization ofall sectors of the economy was formally confirmed at the Tenth National Party Congressin August 1973, at which time Deng Xiaoping was made a member of the party’s Central Committee (but not yet of the Political Bureau).
The radical camp fought back by building an armed urban militia, but its mass base ofsupport was limited to Shanghai and parts of northeastern China–hardly sufficient toarrest what it denounced as “revisionist” and “capitalist” tendencies. In January 1975Zhou Enlai, speaking before the Fourth National People’s Congress, outlined a programof what has come to be known as the Four Modernizations for the four sectors ofagriculture, industry, national defense, and science and technology. This program wouldbe reaffirmed at the Eleventh National Party Congress, which convened in August 1977.
Also in January 1975, Deng Xiaoping’s position was solidified by his election as a vicechairman of the CCP and as a member of the Political Bureau and its StandingCommittee. Deng also was installed as China’s first civilian chief of PLA General StaffDepartment.
The year 1976 saw the deaths of the three most senior officials in the CCP and the stateapparatus: Zhou Enlai in January, Zhu De (then chairman of the Standing Committee ofthe National People’s Congress and de jure head of state) in July, and Mao Zedong inSeptember. In April of the same year, masses of demonstrators in Tiananmen Square inBeijing memorialized Zhou Enlai and criticized Mao’s closest associates, Zhou’sopponents. In June the government announced that Mao would no longer receive foreignvisitors. In July an earthquake devastated the city of Tangshan ( ) in Hebei Province.These events, added to the deaths of the three Communist leaders, contributed to apopular sense that the “mandate of heaven” had been withdrawn from the ruling party. Atbest the nation was in a state of serious political uncertainty.
Deng Xiaoping, the logical successor as premier, received a temporary setback afterZhou’s death, when radicals launched a major counterassault against him. In April 1976Deng was once more removed from all his public posts, and a relative political unknown,Hua Guofeng ( ) , a Political Bureau member, vice premier, and minister of publicsecurity, was named acting premier and party first vice chairman.
Even though Mao Zedong’s role in political life had been sporadic and shallow in his lateryears, it was crucial. Despite Mao’s alleged lack of mental acuity, his influence in themonths before his death remained such that his orders to dismiss Deng and appoint HuaGuofeng were accepted immediately by the Political Bureau. The political system hadpolarized in the years before Mao’s death into increasingly bitter and irreconcilablefactions. While Mao was alive–and playing these factions off against each other–thecontending forces were held in check. His death resolved only some of the problemsinherent in the succession struggle.
The radical clique most closely associated with Mao and the Cultural Revolution becamevulnerable after Mao died, as Deng had been after Zhou Enlai’s demise. In October, lessthan a month after Mao’s death, Jiang Qing and her three principal associates–denouncedas the Gang of Four ( ) –were arrested with the assistance of two senior PoliticalBureau members, Minister of National Defense Ye Jianying ( 1897-1986) andWang Dongxing ( ), commander of the CCP’s elite bodyguard. Within days it wasformally announced that Hua Guofeng had assumed the positions of party chairman,chairman of the party’s Central Military Commission, and premier.
The People’s Republic Of China: IV
The Post-Mao Period, 1976-78
The jubilation following the incarceration of the Gang of Four and the popularity of thenew ruling triumvirate (Hua Guofeng , Ye Jianying , and Li Xiannian, a temporary alliance of necessity) were succeeded by calls for the restoration topower of Deng Xiaoping ( )and the elimination of leftist influence throughout thepolitical system. By July 1977, at no small risk to undercutting Hua Guofeng’s legitimacyas Mao’s successor and seeming to contradict Mao’s apparent will, the Central Committeeexonerated Deng Xiaoping from responsibility for the Tiananmen Square incident (). Deng admitted some shortcomings in the events of 1975, and finally, at aparty Central Committee session, he resumed all the posts from which he had beenremoved in 1976.
The post-Mao political order was given its first vote of confidence at the EleventhNational Party Congress, held August 12-18, 1977. Hua was confirmed as partychairman, and Ye Jianying, Deng Xiaoping, Li Xiannian, and Wang Dongxing ( )were elected vice chairmen. The congress proclaimed the formal end of the CulturalRevolution, blamed it entirely on the Gang of Four, and reiterated that “the fundamentaltask of the party in the new historical period is to build China into a modern, powerfulsocialist country by the end of the twentieth century.” Many contradictions still wereapparent, however, in regard to the Maoist legacy and the possibility of future culturalrevolutions.
The new balance of power clearly was unsatisfactory to Deng, who sought genuine partyreform and, soon after the National Party Congress, took the initiative to reorganize thebureaucracy and redirect policy. His longtime protege Hu Yaobang ( ) replacedHua supporter Wang Dongxing as head of the CCP Organization Department.Educational reforms were instituted, and Cultural Revolution-era verdicts on literature,art, and intellectuals were overturned. The year 1978 proved a crucial one for thereformers. Differences among the two competing factions–that headed by Hua Guofeng(soon to be branded as a leftist) and that led by Deng and the more moderate figures–became readily apparent by the time the Fifth National People’s Congress was held inFebruary and March 1978. Serious disputes arose over the apparently disproportionatedevelopment of the national economy, the Hua forces calling for still more large-scaleprojects that China could ill afford. In the face of substantive losses in leadershippositions and policy decisions, the leftists sought to counterattack with calls for strictadherence to Mao Zedong Thought and the party line of class struggle. Rehabilitations ofDeng’s associates and others sympathetic to his reform plans were stepped up. Not onlywere many of those purged during the Cultural Revolution returned to power, butindividuals who had fallen from favor as early as the mid-1950s were rehabilitated. It wasa time of increased political activism by students, whose big-character posters attackingDeng’s opponents–and even Mao himself–appeared with regularity.
China and the Four Modernizations, 1979-82
The culmination of Deng Xiaoping’s re-ascent to power and the start in earnest ofpolitical, economic, social, and cultural reforms were achieved at the Third Plenum of theEleventh National Party Congress Central Committee in December 1978. The ThirdPlenum is considered a major turning point in modern Chinese political history. “Left”mistakes committed before and during the Cultural Revolution were “corrected,” and the”two whatevers” ( ) policy (“support whatever policy decisions Chairman Maomade and follow whatever instructions Chairman Mao gave”) was repudiated. The classicparty line calling for protracted class struggle was officially exchanged for one promotingthe Four Modernizations. In the future, the attainment of economic goals would be themeasure of the success or failure of policies and individual leadership; in other words,economics, not politics, was in command. To effect such a broad policy redirection, Dengplaced key allies on the Political Bureau (including Chen Yun as an additional vicechairman and Hu Yaobang as a member) while positioning Hu Yaobang as secretarygeneral of the CCP and head of the party’s Propaganda Department. Althoughassessments of the Cultural Revolution and Mao were deferred, a decision wasannounced on “historical questions left over from an earlier period.” The 1976Tiananmen Square incident, the 1959 removal of Peng Dehuai ( ), and other nowinfamous political machinations were reversed in favor of the new leadership. Newagricultural policies intended to loosen political restrictions on peasants and allow themto produce more on their own initiative were approved.
Rapid change occurred in the subsequent months and years. The year 1979 witnessed theformal exchange of diplomatic recognition between the People’s Republic and the UnitedStates, a border war between China and Vietnam, the fledgling “democracy movement”(which had begun in earnest in November 1978), and the determination not to extend thethirty-year-old Treaty of Friendship, Alliance, and Mutual Assistance with the SovietUnion. All these events led to some criticism of Deng Xiaoping, who had to alter hisstrategy temporarily while directing his own political warfare against Hua Guofeng andthe leftist elements in the party and government. As part of this campaign, a majordocument was presented at the September 1979 Fourth Plenum of the Eleventh NationalParty Congress Central Committee, giving a “preliminary assessment” of the entire thirtyyearperiod of Communist rule. At the plenum, party Vice Chairman Ye Jianying pointedout the achievements of the CCP while admitting that the leadership had made seriouspolitical errors affecting the people. Furthermore, Ye declared the Cultural Revolution”an appalling catastrophe” and “the most severe setback to [the] socialist cause since[1949].” Although Mao was not specifically blamed, there was no doubt about his shareof responsibility. The plenum also marked official acceptance of a new ideological linethat called for “seeking truth from facts” and of other elements of Deng Xiaoping’sthinking. A further setback for Hua was the approval of the resignations of other leftistsfrom leading party and state posts. In the months following the plenum, a partyrectification campaign ensued, replete with a purge of party members whose politicalcredentials were largely achieved as a result of the Cultural Revolution. The campaignwent beyond the civilian ranks of the CCP, extending to party members in the PLA aswell.
Economic advances and political achievements had strengthened the position of the Dengreformists enough that by February 1980 they were able to call the Fifth Plenum of theEleventh National Party Congress Central Committee. One major effect of the plenumwas the resignation of the members of the “Little Gang of Four” (an allusion to theoriginal Gang of Four, Mao’s allies)–Hua’s closest collaborators and the backbone ofopposition to Deng. Wang Dongxing, Wu De, Ji Dengkui, and Chen Xilian were chargedwith “grave [but unspecified] errors” in the struggle against the Gang of Four anddemoted from the Political Bureau to mere Central Committee membership. In turn, theCentral Committee elevated Deng’s proteges Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang ( )tothe Standing Committee of the Political Bureau and the newly restored party Secretariat.Under the title of secretary general, Hu Yaobang took over day-to-day running of theparty. Especially poignant was the posthumous rehabilitation of the late president andone-time successor to Mao, Liu Shaoqi ( ), at the Fifth Plenum. Finally, at theFifth National People’s Congress session in August and September that year, Deng’spreeminence in government was consolidated when he gave up his vice premiership andHua Guofeng resigned as premier in favor of Zhao Ziyang.
One of the more spectacular political events of modern Chinese history was the monthlongtrial of the Gang of Four and six of Lin Biao’s ( ) closest associates. A 35-judgespecial court was convened in November 1980 and issued a 20,000-word indictmentagainst the defendants. The indictment came more than four years after the arrest of JiangQing ( ) and her associates and more than nine years after the arrests of the Lin Biaogroup. Beyond the trial of ten political pariahs, it appeared that the intimate involvementof Mao Zedong, current party chairman Hua Guofeng, and the CCP itself were on trial.The prosecution wisely separated political errors from actual crimes. Among the latterwere the usurpation of state power and party leadership; the persecution of some 750,000people, 34,375 of whom died during the period 1966-76; and, in the case of the Lin Biaodefendants, the plotting of the assassination of Mao. In January 1981 the court renderedguilty verdicts against the ten. Jiang Qing, despite her spirited self-vindication anddefense of her late husband, received a death sentence with a two-year suspension; later,Jiang Qing’s death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. So enduring was Mao’slegacy that Jiang Qing appeared to be protected by it from execution. The same sentencewas given to Zhang Chunqiao, while Wang Hongwen was given life and Yao Wenyuantwenty years. Chen Boda and the other Lin Biao faction members were given sentencesof between sixteen and eighteen years. The net effect of the trial was a further erosion ofMao’s prestige and the system he created. In pre-trial meetings, the party CentralCommittee posthumously expelled CCP vice chairman Kang Sheng and Political Bureaumember Xie Fuzhi from the party because of their participation in the”counterrevolutionary plots” of Lin Biao and Jiang Qing. The memorial speechesdelivered at their funerals were also rescinded. There was enough adverse pre-trialtestimony that Hua Guofeng reportedly offered to resign the chairmanship before the trialstarted. In June 1981 the Sixth Plenum of the Eleventh National Party Congress CentralCommittee marked a major milestone in the passing of the Maoist era. The CentralCommittee accepted Hua’s resignation from the chairmanship and granted him the facesavingposition of vice chairman. In his place, CCP secretary general Hu Yaobangbecame chairman. Hua also gave up his position as chairman of the party’s CentralMilitary Commission in favor of Deng Xiaoping. The plenum adopted the 35,000-word”Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of Our Party Since the Founding of thePeople’s Republic of China.” The resolution reviewed the sixty years since the foundingof the CCP, emphasizing party activities since 1949. A major part of the documentcondemned the ten-year Cultural Revolution and assessed Mao Zedong’s role in it. “Chiefresponsibility for the grave `Left’ error of the `cultural revolution,’ an errorcomprehensive in magnitude and protracted in duration, does indeed lie with ComradeMao Zedong . . . . [and] far from making a correct analysis of many problems, heconfused right and wrong and the people with the enemy. . . . Herein lies his tragedy.” Atthe same time, Mao was praised for seeking to correct personal and party shortcomingsthroughout his life, for leading the effort that brought the demise of Lin Biao, and forhaving criticized Jiang Qing and her cohort. Hua too was recognized for his contributionsin defeating the Gang of Four but was branded a “whateverist.” Hua also was criticizedfor his anti-Deng Xiaoping posture in the period 1976-77.
Several days after the closing of the plenum, on the occasion of the sixtieth anniversaryof the founding of the CCP, new party chairman Hu Yaobang declared that “althoughComrade Mao Zedong made grave mistakes in his later years, it is clear that if weconsider his life work, his contributions to the Chinese revolution far outweigh his errors.. . . His immense contributions are immortal.” These remarks may have been offered inan effort to repair the extensive damage done to the Maoist legacy and by extension to theparty itself. Hu went on, however, to praise the contributions of Zhou Enlai, Liu Shaoqi,Zhu De, Peng Dehuai, and a score of other erstwhile enemies of the late chairman. Thusthe new party hierarchy sought to assess, and thus close the books on, the Maoist era andmove on to the era of the Four Modernizations. The culmination of Deng’s drive toconsolidate his power and ensure the continuity of his reformist policies among hissuccessors was the calling of the Twelfth National Party Congress in September 1982 andthe Fifth Session of the Fifth National People’s Congress in December 1982.
The People’s Republic Of China: V
Reforms, 1980-88
Note: The following section is actually the introduction of the Army Area Handbook, butit contains a lot of information about China in the 80’s, so I have placed it here.
Reform – dubbed China’s “Second Revolution”–was one of the most common termsin China’s political vocabulary in the 1980s. Reform of the Chinese Communist Party andits political activities, reform of government organization, reform of the economy,military reforms, cultural and artistic reforms, indeed, China’s post-Mao Zedong leaderscalled for reform of every part of Chinese society. The leaders of the People’s Republic ofChina saw reform as the way to realize the broad goal of the Four Modernizations(announced by Premier Zhou Enlai in 1975: the modernization of industry, agriculture,science and technology, and national defense) and to bring China into the community ofadvanced industrial nations by the start of the new millennium. The reform movementhad antecedents in Chinese history in the Han (206 B.C.-A.D. 220), Song (960-1279),and Qing (1644-1911) dynasties, when concerted efforts were made to bring aboutfundamental changes in administrative methods while keeping the overall institutionalframework intact. Thus, the reform movement of the 1980s–which has been attributedlargely to the insights and determination of Deng Xiaoping, the most important figure inthe post-Mao Zedong leadership–took its place in the broad spectrum of Chinese history.As with previous reform movements, history will measure this one’s success.
Late twentieth-century Chinese society has developed out of some 3,300 years ofrecorded history and, as archaeological finds indicate, several millennia of prehistoriccivilization. For thousands of years, the Middle Kingdom (Zhongguo–the Chinese namefor China) was marked by organizational and cultural continuity, which were reaffirmedin a cyclic rise, flourishing, and decline of imperial dynasties. Short-lived, vibrant, butoften tyrannical dynasties frequently were followed by long periods of stability andbenevolent rule that were built on the best features of the preceding era and that discardedor modified more authoritarian ideas. An ethical system of relations–governed by rulesof propriety attributed to the School of Literati (also known as the Confucian school)–carefully defined each person’s place in society. In this system, harmony of socialrelations rather than the rights of the individual was the ideal. The highest social statuswas held by scholar-officials, the literati who provided the interpretations needed formaintaining harmony in a slowly evolving world. Hard-working farmers, the providers ofsustenance to society, also occupied an important place in the societal structure.
China’s development was influenced by the alien peoples on the frontiers of Chinesecivilization, who were sinicized into the Chinese polity. Occasionally, groups aroseamong alien border peoples that were strong enough to conquer China itself. Thesegroups established their own dynasties, only to be absorbed into an age-old system ofgovernance. The importation of Buddhism, too, in the first century A.D. and its gradualassimilation had a fundamental impact on China. Early contacts with the premodernWestern world brought a variety of exchanges. The Chinese contributed silk, printing,gunpowder, and porcelain. Staple foodstuffs from Africa and the Americas wereassimilated by China, as was the Western-style chair. In later centuries, Chinese scholarsstudied Western astronomy, mathematics, and other branches of science. Westernersarrived in China in the nineteenth century, during the decline of the Qing dynasty, insearch of trade and colonial empires. Through force of arms the Westerners imposedunequal treaties compelling China to accept humiliating compromises to its traditionalsystem of society and government.
China reacted to intrusions from the West–and from a newly modernized Japan (to whichChina lost a war in 1895)–in a variety of ways, sometimes maintaining the traditionalstatus quo, adapting Western functions to Chinese substance, or rejecting Chinesetradition in favor of Western substance and form. As the Qing dynasty declined, reformscame too late and did too little. The unsuccessful reform efforts were followed byrevolution. Still burdened with the legacy of thousands of years of imperial rule andnearly a century of humiliations at foreign hands, China saw the establishment of arepublic in 1911. But warlord rule and civil war continued for nearly forty more years,accompanied in 1937-45 by war with Japan.
The Chinese civil war of 1945-49 was won by the Chinese Communist Party, the currentruling party of China, led by its chairman and chief ideologist, Mao Zedong. TheCommunists moved quickly to consolidate their victory and integrate all Chinese societyinto a People’s Republic. Except for the island of Taiwan (which became the home of theexiled Guomindang under Chiang Kai-shek and his successors), the new governmentunified the nation and achieved a stability China had not experienced for generations.
Eagerness on the part of some Communist leaders to achieve even faster resultsengendered the Great Leap Forward (1958-60), a program that attempted rapid economicmodernization but proved disastrous. Political reaction to the Great Leap Forwardbrought only a temporary respite before a counterreaction occurred in the form of theCultural Revolution (1966-76), a period of radical experimentation and political chaosthat brought the educational system to a halt and severely disrupted attempts at rationaleconomic planning. When Mao Zedong died in 1976, the Cultural Revolution eraeffectively came to an end.
Eager to make up for lost time and wasted resources, China’s leaders initiated China’s”second revolution”–a comprehensive economic modernization and organizationalreform program. Deng Xiaoping and his associates mobilized the Chinese people in newways to make China a world power. Starting with the Third Plenum of the ChineseCommunist Party’s Eleventh National Party Congress in December 1978, Dengreaffirmed the aims of the Four Modernizations, placing economic progress above theMaoist goals of class struggle and permanent revolution. Profit incentives and bonusestook the place of ideological slogans and red banners as China’s leaders experimentedwith ways to modernize the economy. Mao’s legendary people’s communes weredismantled and replaced by a responsibility system, in which peasant households weregiven greater decision-making power over agricultural production and distribution. Farmfamilies were allowed to lease land and grow crops of their own choosing. In the urbansector, factory managers were granted the flexibility to negotiate with both domestic andforeign counterparts over matters that previously had been handled by central planners inBeijing. Exploitation of China’s rich natural resources advanced significantly in the late1970s and throughout the 1980s. As China’s industrial sector advanced, there wasincreasing movement of the population to urban areas. China’s population itself hadsurpassed 1 billion people by 1982 and was experiencing an annual rate of increase of 1.4percent. As in times past, foreign specialists were invited to assist in the modernizationprocess, and joint ventures with foreign capitalists and multinational conglomeratesproliferated. Increasing numbers of Chinese students went abroad to pursue advanceddegrees in a wide range of scientific and technical fields.
All this change was not without cost–both political and monetary. Efforts at fundamentaltransformation of economic, governmental, and political organizations caused discontentamong some people and in some institutions and were resisted by those who clung to the”iron rice bowl” of guaranteed lifetime job tenure. Beijing’s reform leaders made repeatedcalls for party members and government bureaucrats to reform their “ossified thinking”and to adopt modern methods. Older and inappropriately trained bureaucrats retired ingreat numbers as a younger and more technically oriented generation took over. In theongoing debate between those who emphasized ideological correctness and those whostressed the need for technical competence–“reds” versus “experts”–the technocratsagain emerged predominant. But developing and successfully applying technologicalexpertise–the very essence of the Four Modernizations–cost vast sums of money andrequired special effort on the part of the Chinese people. In a rejection of the timehonoredconcept of “self-reliance,” China entered into the milieu of international bankloans, joint ventures, and a whole panoply of once-abhorred capitalist economicpractices.
As politics and the economy continued to respond to and change each other, China’sreformers had to balance contending forces within and against their reform efforts whilemaintaining the momentum of the Four Modernizations program. In doing so, DengXiaoping and his associates were faced with several unenviable tasks. One was to createunity and support for the scope and pace of the reform program among party members.There was also a necessity to deliver material results to the broad masses of people amideconomic experiments and mounting inflation. Failure to achieve these balances and tomake mid-course corrections could prove disastrous for the reform leadership.
A sound ideological basis was needed to ensure the support of the party for the reformprogram. Deng’s political idioms, such as “seeking truth from facts” and “socialism withChinese characteristics,” were reminiscent of reformist formulations of centuries past andhad underlying practical ramifications. The supporters of Deng held that theory andpractice must be fully integrated if success is to be hoped for, and they articulated theposition that the Marxist-Leninist creed is not only valid but is adaptable to China’sspecial–if not unique–situation. The ideological conviction that China was still in the”initial stage of socialism”–a viewpoint reaffirmed at the Thirteenth National PartyCongress in October and November 1987–provided a still broader ideological basis forcontinuing the development of the Deng’s reform program in the late 1980s and early1990s. This ideological pronouncement also emphasized reformers’ fundamental tenetthat since the end of the “period of socialist transformation” (turning over privateownership of the means of production to the state) in 1956, there had been numerous”leftist” errors made in the party’s ideological line. Mistakes such as the Great LeapForward and the Cultural Revolution had produced setbacks in achieving “socialistmodernization” and had kept China from emerging from the initial stage of socialism. Itwas, perhaps, the very failure of these leftist campaigns that had paved the way for thereforms of the 1980s.
Political confrontation over the reforms was pervasive and, to many foreign observers,confusing. In simplistic terms, the “conservatives” in the reform debate were members ofthe post-Mao “left,” while the “liberals” were the pro-Deng “right.” Being conservative inChina in the 1980s variously meant adhering to the less radical aspects of Maoistorthodoxy (not all of which had been discredited) or accepting the goals of reform butrejecting the pace, scope, or certain methods of the Deng program. Thus, there were bothconservative opponents to reform and conservative reformers. While many reformopponents had been swept away into “retirement,” conservative reformers until the late1980s served as members of China’s highest ruling body and locus of power, the StandingCommittee of the party’s Political Bureau. Such leaders as Standing Committee memberChen Yun, one of the principal architects of economic reform, objected to the “bourgeoisliberalization” of the modernization process that came with infusions of foreign,especially Western, culture. In the conservative reform view, the application of Chinesevalues to Western technology (reminiscent of the traditional tiyong [substance versusform] formulation evoked in the late-nineteenth-century reform period) would serve thePeople’s Republic in good stead.
In the 1980s China’s intellectuals and students frequently tested the limits of officialtolerance in calls for freer artistic and literary expression, demands for more democraticprocesses, and even criticisms of the party. These confrontations reached their apex inlate 1986, when thousands of students throughout the nation took to the streets to maketheir views known. In the resulting crackdown, some prominent intellectuals weredemoted or expelled from the party. Even its highest official was not invulnerable:General Secretary Hu Yaobang was demoted in January 1987 for having dealtunsuccessfully with public activism and criticism of the party. Hu’s ouster paved the wayfor the chief implementer of the Deng reforms, Zhao Ziyang, premier of the StateCouncil, to assume command of the party and more firmly establish Deng’s ideology asthe status quo of reform. At the time of the writing of this book, it remained to be seenwhat degree of success the conservative reform elements would have in effecting acompromise, having placed their own representatives in the Political Bureau StandingCommittee and the State Council’s highest offices in late 1987.
Self-proclaimed successes of the reforms of the 1980s included improvements in bothrural and urban life, adjustment of the structures of ownership, diversification of methodsof operation, and introduction of more people into the decision-making process. Asmarket mechanisms became an important part of the newly reformed planning system,products circulated more freely and the commodity market was rapidly improved. Thegovernment sought to rationalize prices, revamp the wage structure, and reform thefinancial and taxation systems. The policy of opening up to the outside world (theChinese eschew the term open door, with its legacy of imperialist impositions) brought asignificant expansion of economic, technological, and trade relations with othercountries. Reforms of the scientific, technological, and educational institutions roundedout the successes of the Deng-inspired reforms. For the first time in modern Chinesehistory, the reforms also were being placed on the firm basis of a rational body of law anda carefully codified judicial system. Although reform and liberalization left the oncemore-strictly regimented society open to abuses, the new system of laws and judicialorganizations continued to foster the stable domestic environment and favorableinvestment climate that China needed to realize its modernization goals.
Amid these successes, the authorities admitted that there were difficulties in attemptingsimultaneously to change the basic economic structure and to avoid the disruptions anddeclines in production that had marked the ill-conceived “leftist experiments” of theprevious thirty years. China’s size and increasing economic development rendered centraleconomic planning ineffective, and the absence of markets and a modern banking systemleft the central authorities few tools with which to manage the economy. A realisticpricing system that reflected accurately levels of supply and demand and the value ofscarce resources had yet to be implemented. The tremendous pent-up demand forconsumer goods and the lack of effective controls on investment and capital grants tolocal factories unleashed inflationary pressures that the government found difficult tocontain. Efforts to transform lethargic state factories into efficient enterprises responsiblefor their own profits and losses were hampered by shortages of qualified managers and bythe lack of both a legal framework for contracts and a consistent and predictable taxationsystem. The goals of economic reform were clear, but their implementation was slowedby practical and political obstacles. National leaders responded by reaffirming support forreform in general terms and by publicizing the successes of those cities that had beenpermitted to experiment with managerial responsibility, markets for raw materials, andfundraising through the sale of corporate bonds.
National security has been a key determinant of Chinese planning since 1949. Althoughnational defense has been the lowest priority of the Four Modernizations, it has not beenneglected. China has had a perennial concern with being surrounded by enemies–theSoviets to the north and west, the Vietnamese to the south, and the Indians to thesouthwest–and has sought increasingly to project itself as a regional power. In responseto this concern and power projection, in the 1970s China moved to augment “people’swar” tactics with combined-arms tactics; to develop intercontinental ballistic missiles,nuclear submarines, and other strategic forces; and to acquire sophisticated foreigntechnologies with military applications. In the international arena, China in the 1980sincreasingly used improved bilateral relations and a variety of international forums toproject its “independent foreign policy of peace” while opening up to the outside world.
From October 25 to November 1, 1987, the Chinese Communist Party held its ThirteenthNational Party Congress. Dozens of veteran party leaders retired from active front-linepositions. Not least among the changes was the alteration of the Standing Committee ofthe party Political Bureau–the very apex of power in China–both in personnel and instated purpose. Deng Xiaoping, Chen Yun, and Li Xiannian stepped down, and HuYaobang’s demotion to mere Political Bureau membership was confirmed. Only oneincumbent–Zhao Ziyang–was left on the Standing Committee. In place of the partyelders and Hu Yaobang, a group of mostly younger, more technologically orientedindividuals were seated. The Political Bureau’s Standing Committee comprised Deng’sprotg, sixty-eight-year-old Zhao Ziyang (who relinquished his position as head ofgovernment to become general secretary of the party); Li Peng, a sixty-year-old, Sovieteducatedengineer, who became acting premier of the State Council in Zhao’s place (hewas confirmed as premier in spring 1988); Qiao Shi, a sixty-four-year-old expert in partyaffairs, government administration, and legal matters; Hu Qili, a fifty-eight-year-old partySecretariat member in charge of ideological education, theoretical research, andpropaganda; and veteran economic planner and conservative reform architect Yao Yilin,the new party elder at age seventy-one. In regard to function, the Political Bureau nolonger was conceived of as a group of influential individuals but as a consensualdecision-making organization. The party constitution was amended to make the partySecretariat a staff arm of the Political Bureau and its Standing Committee, rather than thesomewhat autonomous body it had been since 1982. By mid-1988, the ChineseCommunist Party announced that its increasingly well educated membership had risen to47 million, an all-time high.
The retirees were not left without a voice. Deng, eighty-three and still China’s de factoleader, retained his positions as chairman of the party and state Central MilitaryCommissions, the latter of which designated him as commander-in-chief of the Chinesearmed forces. (Zhao Ziyang was appointed first vice chairman of the party and stateCentral Military Commissions, giving him military credentials and paving the way forhim to succeed Deng.) Eighty-two-year-old Chen Yun gave up his position as firstsecretary of the party Central Commission for Discipline Inspection but replaced Deng aschairman of the party’s Central Advisory Commission, a significant forum for partyelders. Li Xiannian who relinquished his position as head of state, or president, to anotherparty elder–eighty-one-year-old Yang Shangkun–to become chairman of the SeventhChinese People’s Political Consultative Conference in spring 1988, was left without aleading party position. Hu Yaobang, far from being totally disgraced after his January1987 debacle, retained membership on the Political Bureau and enjoyed a fair amount ofpopular support at the Thirteenth National Party Congress and afterward.
Below the national level, numerous leadership changes also took place following theThirteenth National Party Congress. More than 600 younger and better educated leadersof provincial-level congresses and governments had been elected in China’s twenty-nineprovinces, autonomous regions, and special municipalities.
The Seventh National People’s Congress was held from March 25 to April 13, 1988. Thiscongress, along with the Seventh Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference,held from March 24 to April 10, 1988, was marked by a new openness and tolerance ofdebate and dissent. The opening ceremony of the National People’s Congress wastelevised live, and meetings and panel discussions were recorded and broadcast the sameday. Chinese and foreign journalists were permitted to attend the panel discussions andquestion the deputies in press conferences. Dissenting statements and dissenting voteswere widely publicized in the domestic press. A spirit of reform prevailed as laws andconstitutional amendments were ratified to legitimize private business and land sales andto encourage foreign investment. The State Council was restructured and streamlined.Fourteen ministries and commissions were dissolved and ten new ones–the StatePlanning Commission and ministries of personnel, labor, materials, transportation,energy, construction, aeronautics and astronautics industry, water resources, and machinebuilding and electronics industry–were established. Many of the ministries that weredissolved were converted into business enterprises responsible for their own profits andlosses.
Li Peng was elected premier of the State Council, as expected, and Yao Yilin and fiftynine-year-old financial expert Tian Jiyun were re-elected as vice premiers. Sixty-sixyear-old former Minister of Foreign Affairs Wu Xueqian also was elected vice premier.State councillors, all technocrats chosen for their professional expertise, were reduced innumber from eleven to nine. All state councillors except Beijing mayor Chen Xitong andSecretary General of the State Council Chen Junsheng served concurrently as heads ofnational-level commissions or ministries. Although seven of the nine were new statecouncillors, only Li Guixian, the newly appointed governor of the People’s Bank ofChina, was new to national politics. On a move that seemed to bode well for reformefforts, long-time Deng ally and political moderate Wan Li was selected to replace PengZhen as chairman of the Standing Committee of the Seventh National People’s Congress.The conservative Peng had been considered instrumental in blocking or delaying manyimportant pieces of reformist legislation. It also was decided at the Seventh NationalPeople’s Congress to elevate Hainan Island, formerly part of Guangdong Province, toprovincial status and to designate it as a special economic zone.
In September and October 1987 and again in March 1988, riots erupted in the streets ofLhasa, the capital of Xizang Autonomous Region (Tibet). Calls for “independence forTibet” and expressions of support for the exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, weremade amid violence that claimed the lives of at least six people in 1987 and at least ninemore (including policemen) in 1988. Many more were reported to have been badlyinjured. Although Chinese authorities condemned the riots, their initial response wasrestrained in comparison with actions they had taken against earlier anti-Chinesedemonstrations in Xizang. In addition, the authorities accompanied their censure of theLhasa riots with a plethora of publicity on advances made by the inhabitants of Xizang inrecent years and a lifting of travel restrictions on foreign correspondents. The March1988 rioting spread to neighboring Qinghai Province, where there is a sizable Tibetan(Zang) minority. This time the authorities resorted to sterner measures, such as militaryforce and numerous arrests, but only after offering lenient treatment to rioters who turnedthemselves in voluntarily. By mid-1988, it appeared that both the Dalai Lama, concernedthat violence and bloodshed in his homeland was out of control, and the Chinesegovernment, worried about instability in a strategic border area, were displaying greaterflexibility in their respective positions.
The January 1988 death of Taiwan’s leader, Chiang Ching-kuo, brought expressions ofsympathy from Zhao Ziyang and other Chinese Communist Party leaders and renewedcalls for the reunification of China under the slogan “one country, two systems.” Implicitin the mainland’s discussion of the transfer of power to a new generation of leaders–Taiwan-born Li Teng-hui succeeded Chiang–was regret that the opportunity had beenlost for reaching a rapprochement with the last ruling member of the Chiang family.Beijing appealed to the patriotism of the people in Taiwan and called for unity with themainland but, at the same time, kept a close watch for any sentiments that might lead toindependence for Taiwan.
In foreign affairs, Beijing continued to balance its concern for security with its desire foran independent foreign policy. China reacted cautiously to the signing of a nuclear armstreaty by the Soviet Union and the United States and refused to hold its own summit withSoviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. Despite a lessening of tensions between Beijing andMoscow and greatly improved Chinese relations with the governments and ruling partiesthroughout Eastern Europe, China continued to insist that the Soviet Union would have toend its support for Vietnamese occupation of Cambodia, withdraw all of its troops fromAfghanistan, and significantly reduce Soviet forces deployed on the Sino-Soviet borderand in the Mongolian People’s Republic before relations between the Chinese and Sovietgovernments and parties could improve. By mid-1988 there were indications that theSoviet Union was taking steps to remove these “three obstacles” to improved Sino-Sovietrelations. As early as the fall of 1986, the Soviet Union announced the pullback of asignificant number of troops from Mongolia and the Sino-Soviet border. In May 1988Moscow began withdrawing troops from Afghanistan with the goal of evacuating itsforces from that country by early 1989. But China remained skeptical of Vietnamesegovernment announcements that it would withdraw 50,000 troops from Cambodia by theend of 1988, and China’s leaders continued to pressure the Soviet Union to exert moreinfluence on Vietnam to secure an early withdrawal of all Vietnamese troops fromCambodia. Already strained Sino-Vietnamese relations were exacerbated when Chineseand Vietnamese naval forces clashed in March 1988 over several small islands in thestrategically located Nansha (Spratly) archipelago.
In Sino-American relations, disputes over trade and technology transfer in 1987 werefurther clouded by United States concern over reported Chinese Silkworm missile sales toIran, sales of Dongfeng-3 intermediate range missiles to Saudi Arabia, and disclosuresthat Israel allegedly assisted China in the development of the missile system later sold tothe Saudis. Another concern was China’s protest over an October 1987 United StatesSenate resolution on the “Tibetan question” that focused on alleged human rightsviolations in Xizang. A visit to Washington, by then Minister of Foreign Affairs WuXueqian in March 1988, however, had salutary effects on bilateral relations: China madeassurances that it would cease Silkworm missile sales to Iran and the United Statespledged to continue to make desired technologies available to China. The perennialTaiwan issue and problems in Xizang apparently were subsumed by larger nationalinterests.
In February 1988 Beijing China achieved its long-sought goal of establishing diplomaticrelations with Uruguay, one of the few nations that still had state-to-state ties with Taipei.With this accomplishment China increased its diplomatic exchanges to 134 countries,while Taiwan’s official representations were reduced to 22.
The dynamism of China’s domestic activities and international relations will continue thenew millennium approaches. Developments in the all-encompassing reform program andtheir resulting impact on Chinese society, particularly the efforts of China’s leaders tobring increasing prosperity to the more than 1 billion Chinese people, and China’sgrowing participation and influence in the international community will remain ofinterest to observers throughout the world.
Christian Kresall 