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11 results

  • 2 - The Chinese state in crisis

  • from PART I - THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION: CHINA IN TURMOIL, 1966–1969
  • Edited by Roderick MacFarquhar, Harvard University, Massachusetts, John K. Fairbank, Harvard University, Massachusetts
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of China
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    29 November 1991, pp 105-217

  • Summary

    This chapter is a history of the first three and a half years of the Cultural Revolution, from its initial stirrings in late 1965 to the convocation of the Ninth National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in April 1969. These three and a half years encompass several shorter periods. First, there was the growing confrontation between Mao Tse-tung and the Party establishment from the fall of 1965 to the summer of the following year. The second period, from the Eleventh Plenum through the end of 1966, was one in which Mao's assault on the Party establishment spread across the country, with the Red Guards now its major instrument. The Red Guard movement drew on many of the socioeconomic cleavages and grievances, particularly the tension between class background and academic performance as criteria for success in China's educational system. During the third period, from January 1967 until mid-1968, Mao ordered that political power be seized from the discredited Party establishment.

  • 5 - The opening to America

  • from PART II - THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION: THE STRUGGLE FOR THE SUCCESSION, 1969–1982
  • Edited by Roderick MacFarquhar, Harvard University, Massachusetts, John K. Fairbank, Harvard University, Massachusetts
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of China
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    29 November 1991, pp 402-472

  • Summary

    Among the legacies of the era of Mao Tse-tung, the opening to the United States ranks as one of the most important. More than any other foreign policy initiative in Mao's twenty-seven years in power, the Sino-American accommodation reflected the Chairman's determination to establish China's legitimacy among the world's major powers. This chapter first explains the character of foreign policy decision making during the period of 1970s and 1980s, and how it influenced the opportunities for policy change. The opening to America reflected longer-term strategic developments that directly affected Peking's security calculations. Then, it explores some of the connections between Lin Piao's declining fortunes at home and the success of Mao and Chou in building a relationship with the United States. The chapter also reviews the events that prompted China's strategic reassessment in the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution.

  • 3 - China confronts the Soviet Union: warfare and diplomacy on China's Inner Asian frontiers

  • from PART I - THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION: CHINA IN TURMOIL, 1966–1969
  • Edited by Roderick MacFarquhar, Harvard University, Massachusetts, John K. Fairbank, Harvard University, Massachusetts
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of China
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    29 November 1991, pp 218-302

  • Summary

    This chapter suggests that even with a near absence of foreign relations, in reality China was responding to the combined influence of well-understood domestic and international pressures. Chinese foreign policy during the Cultural Revolution showed what the costs were when the Party elected to run the risk of violating several of the cardinal principles of its own policy and of international systemic behavior. The chapter specifies the foreign policy origins of the Cultural Revolution under three aspects: the broadening, particularly in the mind of Mao Tse-tung, of the issue of ideological revisionism from Sino-Soviet relations to the Chinese domestic political and socioeconomic arena; the alleged delay of the Cultural Revolution necessitated by the American military intervention in Vietnam and the debate over the appropriate Chinese response; and the influence of these and other foreign policy issues on interpersonal relations among top Party leaders. All are textbook examples of the complex intermingling of foreign and domestic factors.

  • 1 - Mao Tse-tung's thought from 1949 to 1976

  • Edited by Roderick MacFarquhar, Harvard University, Massachusetts, John K. Fairbank, Harvard University, Massachusetts
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of China
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    29 November 1991, pp 1-104

  • Summary

    Like Lenin, Mao Tse-tung, on coming to power, continued to develop his ideas in a context different from that within which he had operated while in opposition. One important constant in the development of Mao Tse-tung's thought was his concern to adapt Marxism, or Marxism-Leninism, to the economic and social reality of a backward agrarian country, and to the heritage of the Chinese past, which for Mao was no less real. This chapter first quotes a passage about Stalin's propensity to exterminate his critics. Following on from this, Mao developed, under the heading of eliminating counterrevolutionaries, a comparison between China and the Soviet Union as regarded the use and abuse of revolutionary violence. Mao drastically changed his position regarding the nature of the contradictions in Chinese society during the summer of 1957. The consequences of this shift for economic policy have already been explored, and some of its implications in the philosophic domain have also been evoked.

  • 4 - The succession to Mao and the end of Maoism

  • from PART II - THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION: THE STRUGGLE FOR THE SUCCESSION, 1969–1982
  • Edited by Roderick MacFarquhar, Harvard University, Massachusetts, John K. Fairbank, Harvard University, Massachusetts
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of China
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    29 November 1991, pp 303-401

  • Summary

    The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution was an attempt to shape the future of China. The issues of party building and the reconstruction of state institutions basically were about power. There also seems to have been one issue of policy dividing Mao Tse-tung and Lin Piao, although it is given less attention in Chinese sources: the opening to America. The beneficiaries of the Cultural Revolution were those officials who had risen as a result of the purge of their seniors, as well as through their own ability to manipulate the turbulent politics of the late 1960s and early 1970s. In the immediate aftermath of the fall of Lin Piao, these were principally military figures: Hsu Shih-yu, Ch'en Hsi-lien, Li Te-sheng, and Wang Tung-hsing; but they also included a civilian cadre, Chi Teng-k'uei, who was involved in the post-Lin cleanup and would achieve increasing prominence.

  • 10 - The Party and the intellectuals: phase two

  • from PART II - THE SEARCH FOR A CHINESE ROAD, 1958–1965
  • Edited by Roderick MacFarquhar, John K. Fairbank
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of China
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    26 June 1987, pp 432-477

  • Summary

    The suppression of specific intellectuals in the Anti-Rightist campaign turned into anti-intellectualism in general in the Great Leap Forward (GLF). In contrast to the Hundred Flowers period, the GLF emphasized political reliability rather than professional skill. The Anti-Rightist Campaign and GLF had silenced and demoralized a larger number of intellectuals than the Hu Feng campaign of 1955. In May 1961, P'eng Chen instructed his closest deputies in the Peking Party Committee to evaluate the GLF. At the Tenth Plenum, held in September 1962, Mao Tse-tung announced a shift from the relative relaxation of the early 1960s to increased control over intellectual activity. He called for ideological class struggle, which was an implicit summons for an attack on his critics. The arguments, rhetoric, and symbols used in the 1963-64 debates with the senior intellectuals provided the ideological underpinnings for the Cultural Revolution. The major flank of the radical attack on the cultural establishment was the effort to reform Peking Opera.

  • 7 - The Great Leap Forward and the split in the Yenan leadership

  • from PART II - THE SEARCH FOR A CHINESE ROAD, 1958–1965
  • Edited by Roderick MacFarquhar, John K. Fairbank
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of China
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    26 June 1987, pp 291-359

  • Summary

    During the spring and summer of 1958 Mao Tse-tung and his colleagues pushed the Great Leap Forward (GLF) idea as an alternative to the development strategy that had been imported from the Soviet Union for the first Five-Year Plan (FYP). Needing some way to overcome bottlenecks that appeared to preclude a simple repetition of the first FYP strategy, the Chinese leaders settled on an approach that utilized the mass mobilization skills they had honed to a fine edge during the Anti-Japanese War years in Yenan. Mao began to take the fateful steps that led to unleashing the Cultural Revolution in 1966. Factors such as weather and the industrial sector produced a rising crescendo of support for the GLF, both within the Chinese Communist Party and among the general populace. The split in the Yenan leadership has focused on the different components that came together to launch the Cultural Revolution in 1966.

  • 8 - The Chinese economy under stress, 1958—1965

  • from PART II - THE SEARCH FOR A CHINESE ROAD, 1958–1965
  • Edited by Roderick MacFarquhar, John K. Fairbank
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of China
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    26 June 1987, pp 360-397

  • Summary

    The most fundamental issue surrounding the 2nd Five-Year Plan was the prospect for increasing the rate of growth of Chinese agriculture. The Great Leap Forward was predicated on Mao Tse-tung's misunderstanding of the constraints facing Chinese agriculture. In large part the labor mobilization strategy was directed toward water conservancy and irrigation projects that were expected to raise crop yields substantially. The Chinese famine, by comparison, took from three to five times that number of lives and even surpassed the Soviet famine in proportional terms if Western estimates of excess mortality are used in place of the official figures. In higher-stage Agricultural Producers' Cooperatives (APCs), net income was distributed to APCs members according to their labor contributions. The recovery of production and other measures led to the reestablishment of price stability, particularly in rural markets. Industrial recovery was far more rapid than that of agriculture. The recovery of industrial and agricultural output is reflected in China's national income.

  • 2 - Establishment and consolidation of the new regime

  • from PART 1 - EMULATING THE SOVIET MODEL, 1949–1957
  • Edited by Roderick MacFarquhar, John K. Fairbank
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of China
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    26 June 1987, pp 49-143

  • Summary

    Mao Tse-tung was clearly the unchallenged leader of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) throughout the 1949-57 period. In this period, broad agreement existed within the CCP leadership on adopting the Soviet model of socialism. The essence of Mao's program for revolution before 1949 had been the need to address Chinese realities, and he was not about to disown that principle during the stage of building socialism. Differences in economic and cultural levels, agricultural patterns, local customs, and ethnic composition all required suitably varied responses. The crucial difference, however, was the degree of CCP presence in various areas before 1949. In addition to gradualism, the common program adopted the classic united front tactic of narrowly defining enemies as 'imperialism, feudalism and bureaucratic capitalism'. The crucial task for the new liberated areas generally was land reform. To this task the CCP brought experience and personnel that were often lacking for the more complex conditions of the cities.

  • 6 - Foreign relations: from the Korean War to the Bandung Line

  • from PART 1 - EMULATING THE SOVIET MODEL, 1949–1957
  • Edited by Roderick MacFarquhar, John K. Fairbank
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of China
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    26 June 1987, pp 259-290

  • Summary

    China's top foreign policy goal was to develop good relations with its socialist "elder brother", the Soviet Union. The newly established People's Republic of China was soon faced with the outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950. The Sino-American antagonism fueled by the Korean War set the pattern for the subsequent Cold War in Asia. Consequently the potential friction between China and the Soviet Union was played down by both sides. In the mid-1950s China's foreign policy thus followed what might be termed the Bandung Line of peaceful coexistence. China's prestige and influence rose steadily, and at one point Peking seemed to be emerging as the champion of the world's newly independent nations. Mao Tse-tung witnessed the signing of the Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship and Alliance, and the treaty was basically a military pact designed to display the monolithic unity of China and the Soviet Union against any resurgence of Japanese militarism.

  • 12 - The Chinese Communist movement during the Sino-Japanese War 1937–1945

  • Edited by John K. Fairbank, Albert Feuerwerker
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of China
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    24 July 1986, pp 609-722

  • Summary

    The three periods, 1937-8, 1939-43, and 1944-5 were the principal phases of the Communist movement during the Sino-Japanese War. The outbreak of war transformed the political and military environment for all Chinese parties and forced the Chinese Communists into fundamental reconsideration of all important policies, of strategy and of tactics. The principal issues confronting Party Central during the first year and a half of the war were the following: The united front; Military strategy and tactics; and Leaders and leadership. At the outbreak of the war, Mao Tse-tung's position in the Chinese Communist movement was that of primus inter pares. The Communists used the euphemism ' friction' to describe their conflicts with the Nationalists during the middle years of the war. Chinese Communist Party and its principal armies expanded greatly during the Sino-Japanese War. The Japanese were preparing for their greatest military offensive in China since 1937-8, Operation Ichigo.