Mao Zedong and China’s Revolutions: A Brief History with Documents

269 Pages·2002·28.808 MB·English

by  Timothy Cheek (auth.)

THE BEDFORD SERIES IN HISfORY AND CULTURE
Mao Zedong
and China's Revolutions
A Brief History with Documents
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THE BEDFORD SERIES IN HISTORY AND CULTURE
Mao Zedong
and China's Revolutions
A Brief History with Documents
Timothy Cheek
University of British Columbia
palgrave
*
MAO ZEDONG AND CHINA'S REVOLUTIONS, by Timothy Cheek
The library of Congress has catalogued the paperback edition as follows:
2001097845
Copyright© Bedford/St. Martin's 2002
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2002 978-0-312-29429-8
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ISBN 978-1-349-63485-9 ISBN 978-1-137-08687-7 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-137-08687-7
Cover art: Mao Zedong © Bettmann/CORBIS.
Acknowledgments
Acknowledgments and copyrights can be found at the back of the book on
pages 243-44, which constitute an extension of the copyright page.
Transferred to Digital Printing 2008
Foreword
The Bedford Series in History and Culture is designed so that readers
can study the past as historians do.
The historian's first task is finding the evidence. Documents, letters,
memoirs, interviews, pictures, movies, novels, or poems can provide
facts and clues. Then the historian questions and compares the sources.
There is more to do than in a courtroom, for hearsay evidence is wel
come, and the historian is usually looking for answers beyond act and
motive. Different views of an event may be as important as a single ver
dict. How a story is told may yield as much information as what it says.
Along the way the historian seeks help from other historians and per
haps from specialists in other disciplines. Finally, it is time to write, to
decide on an interpretation and how to arrange the evidence for readers.
Each book in this series contains an important historical document
or group of documents, each document a witness from the past and
open to interpretation in different ways. The documents are combined
with some element of historical narrative-an introduction or a bio
graphical essay, for example-that provides students with an analysis
of the primary source material and important background information
about the world in which it was produced.
Each book in the series focuses on a specific topic within a specific
historical period. Each provides a basis for lively thought and discussion
about several aspects of the topic and the historian's role. Each is short
enough (and inexpensive enough) to be a reasonable one-week as
signment in a college course. Whether as classroom or personal reading,
each book in the series provides firsthand experience of the challenge
and fun -of discovering, recreating, and interpreting the past.
Natalie Zemon Davis
Ernest R. May
Lynn Hunt
David W. Blight
v
Preface
What can the life of a notable figure tell us about the experience of a
people or a country? And how can we get at that life-get access to
the thoughts and goals of a leader? This book seeks to provide such
an avenue through a brief history and documents by and about Mao
Zedong. Mao is probably the greatest figure of twentieth-century
China-a hero to some, a demon to others. He led the Chinese Com
munist party (CCP) to national victory in 1949. He drove the People's
Republic of China (PRC) through three decades of tumultuous revolu
tions, from the Soviet model in the 1950s, to the Cultural Revolution in
the 1960s, to rapprochement with the United States in the 1970s. More
than twenty-five years after his death in 1976, Mao remains an iconic
figure in China today, both as the indispensable legitimator of the
troubled CCP and as the object of popular fascination and nationalist
hopes.
Mao's writings provide a concrete path into the experience of
China's twentieth-century revolutions, as he deals with rural misery in
the 1920s, government formation in the 1940s, and social revolution
in the late 1950s and 1960s. Earlier histories, in the West as well as in
China, have conventionally presented Mao as the embodiment of each
stage of the Chinese revolution. Now we can ask, When was Mao in
synch or out of synch with the social experiences and political aspira
tions of major groups in China? In the 1920s, Mao was not the most
important CCP leader, but his 1927 "Report on the Peasant Movement
in Hunan" was an accurate assessment of rural poverty and its poten
tial as a catalyst for social revolution. By 1940, when Mao wrote "On
New Democracy," he was a top leader of a revived CCP, and the plan
outlined in that essay became the public blueprint for the CCP's
takeover of China in 1949. By 1957 Mao was supreme leader and ideo
logical fountainhead, but his assessment of Chinese society, as well as
his hypocritical reluctance to follow his own prescriptions, made his
"On the Correct Handling of Contradictions among the People" both
vi
PREFACE vii
misrepresent reality and contribute to tragedy. By the era of the Cul
tural Revolution, beginning in 1966, Mao's writings had been reduced
to oracular pronouncements and sound bites from the famous "Little
Red Book" (Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong). These writings
did not provide an accurate assessment of Chinese society, but they
did contribute to the Mao cult and the emerging chaos of the Cultural
Revolution.
The three long essays by Mao referred to above characterize three
periods in the life of Mao and China. Briefer selections of the Chair
man's writings are also included to provide a sense of Mao's national
ism, poetry, literary policies, and leadership model. In each of these
three periods-rural revolution in the 1920s and 1930s, political revo
lution in the 1940s, and utopian social revolution in the late 1950s and
1960s-we can observe Mao's contributions (for good or for ill) to
China's varied revolutions in nationalism, socialism, and economic
development.
This collection offers students in an introductory or world studies
course a manageable and representative sample of Mao's writings.
I have chosen long extracts from the three periods outlined above.
As a result, I have omitted some of the topics covered by Mao's ex
tensive corpus, such as his views on the Soviet Union and land re
form, his philosophical essays, and his economic plans. These are all
available in the new comprehensive collections of Mao's writings
edited by Schram and by Kau and Leung (see the bibliography). Some
teachers may find the three core texts too long and may choose to
focus on certain sections of them. Or they may focus on one of the
three main essays (and the related secondary texts in part two) or on
certain themes, such as the status of women or changes in rural life.
In any case, these three core texts represent complete thoughts by
Mao that were published under his scrutiny and were influential
both inside and outside China. They remain important primary docu
ments, which intelligent readers can mine for purposes beyond those I
suggest.
The Mao texts are followed by several writings about Mao to help
describe the contexts in which Mao operated and to indicate some
thing of what Mao meant to Chinese and non-Chinese in the twentieth
century. They range from Edgar Snow's famous interview with Mao in
1936, to the memoirs of his doctor, to uses of Mao by Red Guards in
the Cultural Revolution and by people in China today. This section also
includes a taste of what academics have tried to contribute to our
understanding of Mao. The romanization of Chinese names and words
viii PREFACE
has been changed to the pinyin system, except for a few names, such
as Chiang Kai-shek and Sun Yat-sen.
The volume begins with a comprehensive introduction, which pre
sents the major issues in modern Chinese history and Mao's growing
role in the events of the twentieth century. It includes a small set of
photographs and graphic images to give a sense of how Mao was por
trayed. In all, this book aims to equip students to make their own read
ings of Mao's writings and to find for themselves what the "Great
Helmsman's" life and work can teach us about China's continuing
revolutions.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I wish to thank Jeff Wasserstrom for making this project possible and
Louise Townsend for making it happen. I am grateful to the students
in my Mao seminar at Colorado College for testing the readings and
offering necessary suggestions. I owe a special debt to the five review
ers for Bedford/St. Martin's-Stephen Averill, Jeff Hornibrook,
Steven I. Levine, Sandra Loman, and Patricia Stranahan-for their
alarmingly detailed and trenchant readings of the first draft of this
book. Although I was not able to follow all of their suggestions, to the
degree that this book achieves the impossible goal of satisfying both
specialist and newcomer, it is due to our collective efforts. Thanks as
well to Tim Brook, Nancy Hearst, Nick Knight, David Ownby, Stuart
Schram, and Mark Selden for making careful readings of earlier drafts
and providing extensive comments and suggestions. Also thanks to
the following colleagues for helpful suggestions: Vera Fennell, Anne
Hyde, David Kelly, Tony Saich, and Michael Schoenhals. I am grateful
to Stuart Schram not only for his prodigious scholarship, on which I
have relied, but also for permission to use the forthcoming translation
of "On New Democracy" from his Mao's Road to Power collection.
Sandy Papuga helped bring the manuscript to order, and Jack Hayes
researched the photos used in this volume. The professional team at
Bedford/St. Martin's made this the best book it can be under the
guiding hand of Emily Berleth. Nancy Benjamin at Books By Design
served as efficient project manager, Rachel Siegel assisted with per
missions, and Billy Boardman created the striking cover art. Special
thanks are due to Barbara J atkola for copyediting above and beyond
the call of duty. Finally, thanks to my family for their patience, and
especially to my daughter, Tessa.
Timothy Cheek
Contents
Foreword v
Preface vi
UST OF MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS xi
Introduction: Comrade, Chairman, Helmsman-
The Continuous Revolutions of Mao Zedong 1
China's Revolutions 6
Battle Cry 9
Creating a New China 13
Utopian Revolutions: The Hundred Flowers Campaign,
Great Leap Forward, and Cultural Revolution 21
Experiencing Mao's Revolutions 29
PART ONE
Mao Documents 37
A Note about the Texts 37
1. Report on the Peasant Movement in Hunan, February 1927 41
2. On New Democracy, January 15, 1940 76
3. Talks at the Yan 'an Conference on Literature and Art, 1942 112
4. Resolution of the Central Committee of the Chinese
Communist Party on Methods of Leadership, June 1, 1943 117
5. Snow, 1945 123
6. The Chinese People Have Stood Up, September 1949 125
ix