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Communist China's Twenty Years: A Periodization

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

Roderick Macfarquhar
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Extract

The twentieth anniversary of the Chinese Communist regime, unlike the tenth, is an appropriate time for retrospection and appraisal. A decade ago, the revelation of statistical exaggeration during the Great Leap Forward underlined Mao's inability to discover a sure-fire method of economic development. With Soviet-style methods previously found wanting and mass mobilization now proved inadequate also, it was not clear where China would go next economically. Politically, Mao had just faced the first major challenge to his personal authority since the late 1930s. Would the leadership be able to close ranks or would there be further splits? In foreign policy, China had clearly adopted a more militant line. The crucial question, as Khrushchev flew to Peking for the tenth anniversary celebrations fresh from his meetings with Eisenhower, was how the Chinese leadership would react to their guest's advocacy of peaceful coexistence with the imperialist bloc.

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Type
Research Article
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The China Quarterly , Volume 39 , September 1969, pp. 55 - 63
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 1969

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References

1 Translated in Communist China 1955–1959: Policy Documents with Analysis (hereafter CC) (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, second printing, 1965), p. 103.Google Scholar

2 Ibid.

3 The change-over to joint state-private industry and commerce took place during the month of January 1956 for the most part. Collectivization, its pace surpassing even Mao's forecasts, was substantially completed by mid-1956.Google Scholar

4 CC, p. 118.Google Scholar

5 Ibid.

6 A number of reports are included in the BBC's Summary of World Broadcasts, Part V, Economic Supplement No. 197.Google Scholar

7 In his speech to the second session of the Eighth Congress. See CC, p. 425.Google Scholar

8 CC, pp. 119–126.Google Scholar

9 Ibid. p. 426.

10 See The Case of Peng Teh-huai (Hong Kong: Union Research Institute, 1968), pp. 1–13.Google Scholar

11 The renewed surge after the plenum was discussed by officials of the Peking Party in 1961. See “A detailed account of the counter-revolutionary incident of the Ch'ang Kuan Lou” in Tung-fang-hung (The East is Red), 20 April 1967. I am indebted to Mr. Charles Neuhausser for allowing me to see the translation of this article which he had prepared for his forthcoming documentary volume on the Cultural Revolution.Google Scholar

12 CC, p. 118. See also the earlier quote, note 5.Google Scholar

13 CC, p. 424.Google Scholar

14 For instance Liu, discussing Mao's report on the “Ten Great Relationships” made on 25 April 1956, said that its general idea was “to mobilize all positive factors and available forces for building China into a modern, prosperous and mighty socialist state in the shortest possible time.” It is significant also that the ambitious 12-year agricultural programme was revived in the autumn of 1957 on the eve of the great leap. For a discussion of the ups and downs of the 12-year programme and their importance, see my “Communist China's Intra-Party Dispute,” Pacific Affairs, December 1958 and a more detailed account in Chang, Parris H., Patterns and Processes of Policy-Making in Communist China, 1955–1962: Three Case Studies (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 1969).Google Scholar

15 Alexander Eckstein, Communist China's Economic Growth and Foreign Trade (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966), p. 45.Google Scholar

16 CC, p. 490.Google Scholar

17 Gargi, Dutt, Rural Communes of China (Bombay: Asia Publishing House, 1967). p. 105.Google Scholar

18 The various polemics are contained in Hudson, G. F., Richard, Lowenthal and Roderick, MacFarquhar, The Sino-Soviet Dispute (New York: Praeger, 1961).Google Scholar

19 Report in Mainichi (Tokyo), evening edition, 9 March 1967, from its Peking correspondent Takada.Google Scholar

20 See Richard, Baum and Frederick, Teiwes, Ssu-ch'ing: The Socialist Education Movement of 1962–1966 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968).Google Scholar

21 See The Polemic of the General Line of the International Communist Movement (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1965), pp. 415–480, especially pp. 477–479.Google Scholar

22 See John, Gittings, “The ‘Learn from the Army’ Campaign,” The China Quarterly, No. 18, pp. 153–159.Google Scholar

23 Take for instance Teng Hsiao-p'ing's alleged comment on economic methods: “So long as cats, black or white, can catch mice, they are good cats,” quoted in “Never Forget Class Struggle, Attack Class Enemy Actively and Perseveringly,” People's Daily, 23 April 1968Google Scholar, translated in Survey of China Mainland Press (Hong Kong: U.S. Consulate General), No. 4174, p. 4.Google Scholar

24 I base this conclusion partly on the fact that the Chinese documents (normally quite revealing in this kind of context) on this purge described Kao Kang's struggle as “unprincipled” and partly on the exhaustive study of the Kao Kang affair made by Frederick Teiwes for his Ph.D. dissertation on rectification and purges in China.Google Scholar