China: The People's Republic, 1949-1976

270 Pages·1979·5.75 MB·English

by  Jean Chesneaux

CHINA:
The People’s Republic,
1949-1976
The Pantheon Asia Library
New Approaches to the New Asia
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Volume 1 Imperial Japan: 1800-1945
Volume 2 Postwar Japan: 1945 to the Present
A Chinese View of China, by John Gittings
Remaking Asia: Essays on the American Uses of Power, edited by Mark
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Without Parallel: The American-Korean Relationship Since 1945, edited
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Chairman Mao Talks to the People: Talks and Letters, 1956-1971, edited
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Origins of the Modern Japanese State: Selected Writings of E, H. Norman,
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The Waves at Genji’s Door: Japan Through Its Cinema, by Joan Mellen
China from the Opium Wars to the 1911 Revolution, by Jean Chesneaux,
Marianne Bastid, and Marie-Claire Bergere
China's Industrial Revolution: Politics, Planning, and Management, 1949
to the Present, by Stephen Andors
China from the 1911 Revolution to Liberation, by Jean Chesneaux, Fran-
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The Pacific War: World War II and the Japanese, 1931-1945, by Saburo
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Shinohata: A Portrait of a Japanese Village, by Ronald P. Dore
CHINA:
The People’s Republic,
1949-1976
Jean Chesneaux, Director
With the assistance of J. Bellassen,
A.-M. Dubois, F Le Barbier, J-F. Olivier,
J.-P. Peemans, and N Wang
Translated from the French
by Paul Auster and Lydia Davis
PANTHEON BOOKS, NEW YORK
English translation Copyright © 1979 by Random House, Inc.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.
Published in the United States by Pantheon Books, a division of Random House,
Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada
Limited, Toronto.
Originally published in France as La Chine: Un Nouveau Communisme, 1949-1976
by Hatier Universite, Paris, France.
Copyright © 1977 by Hatier.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Chesneaux, Jean.
China: the People’s Republic, 1949-1976.
(The Pantheon Asia Library)
Translation of La Chine
Includes index
1. China—History— 1949-1976. I. Title.
DS777.55.C44572313 951.05 78-51797
ISBN 0-394-42873-0
ISBN 0-394-73623-0 pbk.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint
previously published material:
Victor Gollancz Ltd. and Random House, Inc.: Extract from The Other Side of
the River by Edgar Snow. Copyright © Edgar Snow 1962, published by Victor
Gollancz Ltd. Used by permission.
Holt, Rinehart & Winston and Neale Hunter: Excerpts from Shanghai Journal:
An Account of the Cultural Revolution by Neale Hunter. Copyright © 1969 by
Frederick A. Praeger, Inc.
G. P. Putnam’s Sons and Jonathan Cape Ltd.: Excerpts from Birdless Summer by
Han Suyin. Copyright © 1968 by Han Suyin.
Manufactured in the United States of America
First American Edition
Contents
List of Maps vii
Preface ix
1. China in 1949 3
The Communist Party Takes Power: The Political
and Ideological Stakes 4
China's Historical Heritage: Unequal Development
and Misery 1 6
2. The Period of Reconstruction: 1949-1952 31
The Communists Take Power 32
Economic Reconstruction 41
3. The Five Year Plan: 1953-1957 56
The Soviet Economic and Political Model 56
Tensions and Crises Between 1953 and 1955 64
Early Breaks in the Rhythm: 1956-1957 69
4. The Great Leap Forward: 1958-1962 83
The Great Leap Forward in the Rural Areas:
The People's Communes 87
Transforming Urban Work 93
Disillusionment and Readjustment: The Struggle
over the Great Leap Forward and
the Swing Back to the Right: 1959-1962 98
5. The Struggle Between the Two Lines: 1962-1965 113
1962, a Year of Taking Stock 1 14
The Struggle Between the Two Lines in the Rural Areas
in 1963 and 1964 117
vi Contents
Preparations for an Antibureaucratic and
Antirevisionist Break 123
6. The Cultural Revolution: 1965-1969 138
From Academic Debate to Fighting in the Factories:
November 1965-January 1967 139
The Turbulent Restoration of Order: February 1967-
April 1969 146
The Cultural Revolution: An Attempt at a General Analysis 153
7. After the Cultural Revolution: 1969-1976 171
From the Ninth Party Congress to the Fall of Lin Biao 171
Lin Biao, Confucius, and the Bourgeois Right: The New
Targets (1972-1976) 178
The Influence of the Cultural Revolution on China 187
8. The Chinese Way 201
The Chinese Approach to the Contradictions Between
Accumulation and Socialism 202
Economic Transformations 212
Conclusion: The Problems and the Stakes of the
Chinese Way 225
Glossary of Chinese Terms and Names 236
Index 241
Major Administrative Divisions of the
People’s Republic of China 22-23
National Minorities in China 26
Expansion of the Railroad Network 61
Northward Movement of Rice Growing 229
Urban Growth 232

Preface
The year 1949 marks a radical break in the historical development
of contemporary China. It also marks the beginning of a completely
new historical approach to that development.
There are new types of source materials to be dealt with: for
the most part these are documents which have come directly or
indirectly from the Chinese authorities and include information
from the national press, the local press when possible, official
publications and materials, as well as the accounts of visitors who
have been allowed to enter China. No matter how rich and
diversified it might be, this type of information is tightly supervised
and controlled.
New types of problems have also come into being as a result of
the development of a communist society in China: these problems
are different from those in the West and from those that existed in
China prior to 1949. In China today questions of “line” and of
theoretical analysis are all-important. Concrete historical facts are
considered only in relation to more general political ideas which
are used to describe those facts and demonstrate the limits of their
application. Knowledge of the “diachronic” development of a
particular province or area of society, for example, is not considered
to be a legitimate goal of a historian’s work: the Chinese do not
consider such knowledge to be an end in itself. There is no equiva-
lent in China of E. Vogel’s book on Canton from 1949 to 1970,
which is a typical product of the Harvard universe. Even the author
himself confesses that such a book has no more than a very uneven
hold on Chinese reality. In China the study of history is not seen
as an attempt to resuscitate the past in the manner of Michelet,
but as a way of integrating the past with a political thought that is
rooted in the present.
How do the Chinese experience and think about the history of
their country since 1949? Their relationship with the past is in-
tense and deeply collective, but they do not see it as a neat,
chronological story. Not only is their history filled with crises and