Contemporary China

A History since 1978

Yongnian Zheng

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781118538012
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: 20th Century History
• Index: History

Using new research and considering a multidisciplinary set of factors, Contemporary China offers a comprehensive exploration of the making of contemporary China.

• Provides a unique perspective on China, incorporating newly published materials from within and outside China, in English and Chinese. Discusses both the societal and economic aspects of China's development, and how these factors have affected Chinese elite politics
• Includes coverage of recent political scandals such as the dismissal of Bo Xilai and the intrigue surrounding the 18th National Congress elections in late 2012
• Discusses the reasons for—and ramifications of—the gap that exists between western perceptions of China and China itself

Chapter 1

The Maoist Legacy

Contemporary Chinese history began when the late Deng Xiaoping initiated the reform and open-door policy in 1978. These policy initiatives had their roots in the pre-reform Mao era. After the People’s Republic of China (PRC) was established in 1949, Mao embarked on one of the largest experiments in human history to bring forth a total transformation to Chinese politics, economy, and society. In the early decades of his rule, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its state (hereafter, the Party-state) successfully undertook a number of far-reaching social changes. But the Maoist development model was soon found to be unsustainable as it came at extremely high human costs. By the late 1970s, all signs indicated a collapse of the system, and reforms were imperative. The Maoist experiment was a great lesson for the post-Mao leadership and became an integral part of contemporary Chinese history. After Mao, Chinese leaders introduced enormous reforms to remedy Mao’s errors and to make institutional innovations and renewals.

While drastic economic changes have taken place in the post-Mao era, China’s political structure remains intact. The post-Mao reform has been seriously constrained by the Maoist legacy. While the system was a product of the twentieth-century revolution, both Nationalist and Communist, it is also linked to China’s deep imperial history and carries powerful imperial traditions that influence basic ideas and practices.¹ Many features of institutions and policies of historical patterns adopted during the Maoist rule have reappeared in the post-Mao era.

This chapter identifies the main institutional features and policy orientations during the Maoist era. It first traces the origins of the system to China’s transformation since the late nineteenth century. It also shows how Maoist rule further transformed the country with its establishment of new state institutions which penetrated Chinese society, mobilizing social forces and constraining China’s socioeconomic development. Finally, it discusses how the system led to the post-Mao reform. To a great degree, Maoist communism met its end not because of the post-Mao reform but because of its self-destructive nature.

Political System

The political system that Mao established was a product of China’s long struggles with a modern state system since the late Qing dynasty.² China’s modern history began with the coming of Western powers. For a country with a long history of established civilization, it was hard for China to become modernized under external forces. China was defeated repeatedly by Western powers, first by the British during the two Opium Wars and then by the alliances of Western powers. It was also thoroughly defeated by its own modernized neighbor Japan.

These defeats had set Chinese political and intellectual elites thinking of the need to rebuild and revamp the Chinese state, which was no match to the Western form of modern state.³ Nationalism, an idea which China imported from Japan and other Western powers, played a crucial role in the country’s long search for a modern state. In its later years, the Qing court made attempts to introduce various measures toward a constitutional monarchy, much in line with the successful Japanese model. With the rise of nationalism, however, Chinese elites began to doubt whether the Qing state had an adequate foundation on which to build a modern state. For political radicals, particularly nationalists, China should be not only a strong state, but also a state of Chinese ethnicity rather than the Manchurian ethnicity on which the Qing state was built. A constitutional monarchy or reforms within the existing Qing state would not be able to help save China and its people. This version of nationalism was shared by many Chinese political activists at home and abroad and even prevailed among Chinese officials. For nationalistic revolutionaries, constitutional monarchy was not enough; only a republic purged of all traces of the self-serving and inept Manchurians could make the state strong and bring about their patriotic goals. Only nationalism could forestall racial destruction by foreign powers and build a strong China.

Dr Sun Yat-sen and his revolutionary followers employed two principles of nationalism – statehood based on ethnicity and popular sovereignty based on democracy – to rebuild China, and their efforts eventually led to the 1911 revolution and the establishment of the Republic of China in 1912.⁴ Central to the new republican state was the parliamentary system. Nevertheless, the revolution itself was a product of decentralization of political power. State-making, which required a centralized political force, became very difficult. During and after the revolution, the forces for decentralization became dominant in Chinese politics. Provincial officials, who had acted autonomously during the revolution, sought to strengthen their autonomy and block the resurgence of an all-powerful and autocratic center. The state itself was no longer monolithic, but composed of competing levels of authority. Below the provincial level, local elites dominated the self-government organs that proliferated after 1911, expanded control over local finances, and held sway over the appointment of local officials.⁵

Great political liberalization convinced Yuan Shikai, the most powerful military man, that “the devolution of power from the center to the provinces and localities was inimical to the restoration of Chinese national strength.”⁶ Following the advice of his American advisor Frank Goodnow⁷ and others that a constitutional monarchy was more appropriate to China’s tradition than republicanism, Yuan attempted to re-establish the political dominance of the center. Yet Yuan’s various efforts to restore the monarchy failed because of political opposition from all sides. By the early 1920s, the republican state began to disintegrate as a constitutional and parliamentary entity and as a bureaucratic force. This trend soon brought chaos and warlordism to China.

Dr Sun Yat-sen initiated a long process to establish a new political order. In his early days, Sun placed much emphasis on popular sovereignty and believed that a republican government, based on the Western European and North American multiparty model, would provide a channel for popular political participation and make China strong. But this was not to be. Indeed, the new democratic political arrangement “failed to bring unity and order, not to mention legitimacy. Representative government degenerated rapidly into an autocracy hostile to popular participation and ineffective in foreign policy.”⁸ Sun came to the conclusion that without strong political institutions, no democratic regime would be stable and China would not become a strong state. Consequently, he turned to the organizational side of state-building. His new strategy was “state-building through party organization,” a concept he adapted from the Russian revolution.

According to Sun, Russians placed the Communist Party above the state; the Russian model was more appropriate to China’s modernization and state-making than the liberal European and American model. China should follow the strategy of “governing the state through the party” whose first priority was to establish a new state structure. He argued that “[w]e now do not have a state to be ruled. What we need to do is to construct a state first. After the construction of the state, we can govern it.”⁹ Only after a strong and highly organized party had been built could China begin to make a strong state, and only a strong state could lead to a working democracy. He also categorized China’s political development into three stages: first, military government; second, authoritarian government; and third, constitutional government.¹⁰

With Sun’s great efforts, the Nationalist Party was reformed and became highly organized and centralized. Sun’s successor Chiang Kai-shek kept to the same course and used the party to restore unity and order, end foreign humiliation, abolish unequal treaties, regain lost territory, and ultimately restore China’s lost grandeur. After the Northern Expedition (1926–28), China was recentralized under the Nationalist Party regime. The new state was established through two primary methods. In the military sphere, the regime maximized the center’s control over the instruments of force; in the civilian sector it extended and deepened the national government’s penetration of local society by quasi-fascist projects such as the Blue Shirts and the New Life movements and self-government reforms like new country campaigns. However, the Nationalist regime put much emphasis on the control of urban areas, and failed to realize that “in a predominantly rural society the sphere of influence of cities was much more severely circumscribed than in the West where such a strategy might well have proved successful.”¹¹ Local elites, on whom the regime heavily relied, were not able to succeed in fundamentally transforming the lives of the peasants.¹²

More importantly, the Nationalist government failed to arrive at a viable state idea.¹³ As the ruling party, the Nationalist Party stressed a centralized state structure and limited political participation. However, the idea of popular sovereignty was spreading in the country, and was very appealing at that societal level. By contrast, the CCP was able to transform the idea of popular sovereignty and use it to mobilize urban people and intellectuals against the Nationalist regime. Joseph Levenson showed that the Communist version of the state idea was more appealing to Chinese intellectuals than the Nationalist version.¹⁴ Furthermore, the Nationalist regime lacked effective means to spread its nation-state ideas among the Chinese. The regime’s urban-centered modernization strategy left rural areas untouched. In contrast, by sending its officials to rural areas, the CCP successfully transmitted its nation-state ideas to the peasants. The rise of peasant nationalism during the anti-Japanese war (1937–45) finally led to the downfall of the Nationalist government and the triumph of the CCP in 1949.

The CCP quickly established a highly centralized political system by placing much emphasis on organizational and ideological control. The new state system until today has the following unique institutional features.¹⁵

The nomenklatura system

The CCP’s most powerful instrument in structuring its domination over the state is a system called the nomenklatura system.¹⁶ It was based on the Soviet model, with little changes made from time to time.¹⁷ Within this system, the two most important principles are Party control of the government and Party management of cadres.¹⁸ The CCP selects all government officials; almost all government officials and all top officials are Party members; and in each government agency, Party members are organized under a Party committee that is subordinate to the Party committee at the hi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• A HISTORY OF THE CONTEMPORARY WORLD
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Figures and Tables
• Series Editor’s Preface
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Chapter 1: The Maoist Legacy
• Chapter 2: Elite Politics
• Chapter 3: Economic Reform
• Chapter 4: Globalization
• Chapter 5: Civil Society
• Chapter 6: Social Discontent
• Chapter 7: Cultural Changes
• Chapter 8: De Facto Federalism
• Chapter 9: Social Policy Reform
• Chapter 10: Bureaucracy and Governance
• Chapter 11: Democratization
• Selected Bibliography
• Index