China Studies Wiki - User contributions [en]

2011-12-09T08:11:17Z

Mao Zedong: Created page with 'Glorifying the origins of the Manchus Glorifying the origins of the Manchus is an account in the state archives which tries to establish a heavenly mandate on Manchu rule. Accord…'

Glorifying the origins of the Manchus
Glorifying the origins of the Manchus is an account in the state archives which tries to establish a heavenly mandate on Manchu rule. According to the article it explains the birth of Aisin-Gioro as being from a heavenly maiden named Fogulun. His purpose was to pacify unsettled countries and that is th Manchus reasoning for their right to take over China.

Two edicts on wearing the hair

2011-12-09T08:11:01Z

Mao Zedong: Created page with 'Two Edicts Concerning the wearing of the Hair Under Manchu Rule Dorgon’s edict (the "haircutting order") forced all adult Han Chinese men to shave the front of their heads and …'

Two Edicts Concerning the wearing of the Hair Under Manchu Rule
Dorgon’s edict (the "haircutting order") forced all adult Han Chinese men to shave the front of their heads and comb the remaining hair into a queue, on pain of death. The slogan of the order is: "To keep the hair, you lose the head; To keep your head, you cut the hair." To the Manchus, this policy was a test of loyalty and an aid in distinguishing friend from foe.

Party, Society, and Local Elite in the Jiangxi Communist Movement

2011-11-11T19:46:02Z

Mao Zedong: Created page with 'In Party, Society, and Local Elite in the Jiangxi Communist Movement, it talks about how a two-tiered local elite presided uneasily over the hill-country society. At the upper le…'

In Party, Society, and Local Elite in the Jiangxi Communist Movement, it talks about how a two-tiered local elite presided uneasily over the hill-country society. At the upper level was a relatively cultivated, town-dwelling group of ex-officials, large landlords, merchants, and their families.

By contrast, members of the elite's lower stratum were much less well educated, sophisticated, and urban. Most continued to live in villages and minor market towns and retained close contact with the peasantry, serving as small lineage heads, village elders, militia captains, traditional local schoolteachers, or dispute mediators. Some were small landlords, others rich peasants; almost all relied upon rural management or entrepreneurial skills such as dispute mediation or tax engrossment to provide at least part of their livelihood.

Many were also involved in secret societies, smuggling, extortion, opium growing, and other illegal activities. This behavior attracted the disapproval of both government officials and higher-level elites, and led to some of the lower elite being stigmatized as "local bullies and evil gentry."

Members of the hill-country elite feuded among themselves. Such struggles often expanded into group conflicts involving large numbers of peasants when elite protagonists appealed to kinship ties and local pride, invoked official status and institutional position, or simply disbursed large sums of money to mobilize mass followings. In this manner, the broader general society of the hill-country peasantry was linked to the specific imperatives of elite politics

In the early twentieth century the changes transforming the rest of Chinese society also crept gradually into the]iangxi hill country. The new schools that grew up in Chinese cities became centers for new ideas and for discussions of the political and cultural problems involved in China's transformation into a modern nation

Ultimately, these schools also became prime organizing sites for the various political parties that sprang up to transform the newly introduced ideas into political realities. Lower-level (county and subcounty) schools played similar roles on a local scale.

Equally important, the new schools were also arenas for elite factionalism and conflicts of very traditional sorts. For example, in Jiangxi during the 1920s, rival factions within the elite were commonly centered in different schools. Often such factional alignments began when disputes between school principals extended to encompass schools as a whole. Such struggles were long lasting, and succeeding generations of students perforce became involved in disputes not of their making, which did not necessarily involve their own interests.

The "modern" schools, then, were actually complicated mixtures of old and new, purposes. It was in such educational halfway houses that revolutionary leaders received their early exposure both to modern Chinese nationalism and to old-style local politics. Nationalism and an awareness of China's backwardness led students to demonstrate against local manifestations of the foreign presence in China and against particularly egregious examples of ignorance and conservatism in local society.

To illustrate the mixture of old and new in these first reform efforts the author examines the early political career of Fang Zhimin, a major leader of the Jiangxi Communist movement.

Fang was born into a lower elite family. After early schooling in his village, Fang moved to the nearby town of Lieqiao, where he lived and continued his education in the household of a large landlord named Zhang Nianzheng until his father was able to borrow money to enroll him in higher primary school in the county capital. In the city Fang was affected by the intellectual ferment of the New Culture movement, He and other students from northern Yiyang formed a cultural and political discussion group called the Ninth Qu Youth Society, which soon also began to lead anti-Japanese demonstrations, publish a muckraking journal, and press for political reforms.
The main target of their reform efforts was Fang's erstwhile patron Zhang Nianzheng. When Zhang ran for the provincial assembly, the Youth Society journal denounced Zhang's open vote-buying efforts, and chastised Zhang for channeling public funds into private weapons purchases instead of into new schools.
Fang soon left the county for further schooling. The confrontation between Fang and the Youth Society and Zhang and his allies illustrates many features of the numerous intra-elite political struggles that occurred in Jiangxi during the 1910s and 1920s. In these struggles idealistic scions of elite families thrown together in the modern schools mobilized on the basis of common institutional and ideological ties.

Even after Communist leaders realized the importance of rebuilding the revolution around nuclei of preexisting peasant organizations, they appealed more directly to bandit chiefs and secret-society heads than to their followers, and generally deviated little from methods long used by hill-country elites in search of armed followings. Such reliance upon long-established institutions and patterns of behavior, besides being psychologically congenial in many respects to Communist leaders who had been immersed in them since childhood, was also essential to the initial success of their efforts.

Later, following the defeats of 1927, the ability of Communist leaders to draw upon bandit gangs and upon traditions of local strongman behavior made it possible for them to mobilize armed followings at a time when their prestige and material resources were at very low ebb. Had the Communists immediately tried to appeal to the hill-country populace with Marxist slogans, tried to form complex, mass, political organizations, or tried to carry out fundamental land reform, their efforts would almost certainly have been doomed to failure. By enlisting existing armed groups into their followings and by approaching the populace through established religious or kinship or local place ties, the Communists were able to draw upon familiar and unthreatening appeals to gain adherents who would not otherwise have given their support.

Main Page

2011-10-16T21:23:10Z

Mao Zedong:

Mao Zedong

2011-10-16T21:01:12Z

Mao Zedong:

Mao Zedong

2011-10-16T20:59:39Z

Mao Zedong:

Let me introduce myself, my name is Mao Zedong. My story is one of humble beginnings followed by decades of struggle until the eventual triumph of our glorious revolution which brought about a new and better China. I was born in Shaoshan, Hunan Province, on December 26, 1893. During my childhood, I attended the village primary school, but for some time stopped attending in order to work on the family farm. I eventually left the farm to continue my studies at a secondary school at the capital of Hunan province, Changsha. When Revolution broke out against the Qing Dynasty in 1911, I joined the Revolutionary Army in Hunan. By the spring of 1912 the war had ended and I returned to school (Feigon 17). I attended the First Provincial Normal School of Hunan whose mission it was to train county elementary schoolteachers. The school’s curriculum combined traditional Chinese and modern Western subjects. It was the highest level of schooling available in Hunan (Liu 497). While at the school, I was greatly influenced by my teacher Yang Changji. Changji wrote that:

<nowiki>In the physical world, the center is my body; in the spiritual/mental realm, the center is my mind. In short, among the ten thousand things in the universe, I am the essence. The emperor is my emperor; the father is my father; the teacher is my teacher; the wealth is my wealth; heaven and earth are my heaven and earth. . . . Mencius said: “All things in the world are complete in me.” . . . Everything in the universe is also my responsibility. (Liu 459)</nowiki>

I absorbed a strong sense of responsibility to society from Yang Changji (Liu 509). In 1918, I graduated from the First Normal and traveled to Beijing, where I lived with my teacher Yang Changji, who had taken a position at Peking University (Chang 15).
I began work as an assistant librarian at the Peking University Library where I was introduced to communism. I worked under Li Dazhao, the curator of the library, and a leading communist intellectual who cofounded China’s Communist Party in 1921. Dazhao came to greatly influence my thinking (Chang 22-24).

I eventually moved back to Changsha, where I became headmaster of a school and married Professor Yang's daughter, Yang Kaihui. In 1921, I attended the first session of the National Congress of the Communist Party of China in Shanghai as a delegate from Hunan (Spence 311). Throughout the 1920s, I led several labor struggles; however, these struggles were suppressed by the government. I came to realize that industrial workers were unable to lead the revolution because they made up only a small portion of China's population. It became clear that a successful revolution would depend on the Chinese peasants.

During the Kuomintang’s Northern Expedition, in early 1927, I was dispatched by the Party to Hunan to investigate the peasant uprisings. I spent thirty-two days, from January to early February, in Hunan investigating the struggles of the peasants. After much criticism of the peasant’s actions from within and outside of the party, my Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan was not only a response to the criticisms, but also the first step towards the application of my revolutionary theories. What I witnessed was the peasants rising against their local tyrants—fighting back after generations of indignities and injustices. What I witnessed was a mobilization of the masses— something that could ultimately benefit the revolution. They formed new associations and empowered themselves after generations of being repressed. This force of rising peasants was powerful enough to help bring about the new China. While some criticized the so-called “atrocities” that the peasants were committing, I understood, as the son of a peasant farmer myself, that these so-called “atrocities” were necessary to right generations of wrongs. And, after all, as I stated in my report:
A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery; it cannot be so refined, so leisurely and gentle, so temperate, kind courteous, restrained. A revolution is magnanimous. A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another. (Mao Zedong)

Unfortunately, the Right opportunists in the Party rejected my views. They failed to support the peasant uprisings, leaving the working class and consequently the Party isolated from one another (Spence 338-339).

The Kuomintang exploited this weakness. They launched a purge of communists from their ranks later that year. In September, I led a small army called the Revolutionary Army of Workers and Peasants in Hunan Province, but our Autumn Harvest Uprising was ultimately suppressed and we retreated to Sanwan, Jiangxi where other’s had fled after the purge (Spence 340). There I established peasant-based soviets, transforming the Party’s base from urban proletariats to country peasantry (Spence 385). I reorganized the soldiers, and rearranged the military division into smaller regiments. I ordered a party branch office in each company with a commissar from the Party as leader of the each company. This rearrangement insured the Party had absolute control over our military force. Later, we moved to the Jinggang Mountains in Jiangxi (North 140).

In the Jinggang Mountains I joined my army with Zhu De’s to create the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army of China. From 1931 to 1934, we establish the Soviet Republic of China and I was elected Chairman of the republic; unfortunately my authority was challenged by the Jiangxi branch of the Party and some of the military officers (North 139). They opposed my land policies and my proposals to reform the local party branch and army leadership. These opportunists had to be purged for the sake of the revolution. Needless to say, my authority was secure after these Kulaks were dealt with.
Around 1930, there were more than ten soviet areas under Party control. The prosperity of our soviet areas worried that rat Chiang Kai-shek. He waged five waves of besieging campaigns against the central soviet area. Due to the relatively poor armament and training of the Red Army, we practiced guerrilla and mobile warfare. I believe “Weapons are an important factor in war but not the decisive one; it is man and not material that counts” (Katzenbach 327). Our revolutionary passions and the aspiration for our worker’s paradise helped drive us to victory against the first four campaigns. Unfortunately, under the increasing pressure from the Kuomintang Encirclement Campaigns, there emerged a struggle for power within the Communist leadership. I was removed from my positions and replaced by individuals of the 28 Bolsheviks loyal to the orthodox line advocated by Moscow. By October 1934, we were surrounded by the Kuomintang. We retreated from Jiangxi in a Long March southeast to Shaanxi; a 6,000 mile, year-long journey. By our arrival in Shaanxi in 1935, Chiang Kai-shek no longer considered us much of a threat; he underestimated us (Fuller 141).

In 1936, warlord Zhang Xueliang, from Japanese occupied Manchuria, kidnapped that rat Chiang Kai-shek in Xi'an. To secure the release of Chiang, the Kuomintang agreed to a temporary end to the Civil War and the formation of a United Front between the Communist Party and Kuomintang against Japan. During the Sino-Japanese War, I avoided open confrontations with the Japanese army and concentrating on guerrilla warfare from Yan'an. This left the Kuomintang to take on the brunt of the fighting and to suffer tremendous casualties. Instead, I directed the CCP forces to concentrate on absorbing, or eliminating if necessary, Chinese militia behind enemy lines. This fragile alliance broke down after the Nationalists treachery in the New Fourth Army Incident in January 1941.

I further consolidated power over the Communist Party in 1942 by launching the Shu Fan movement, or “Rectification” campaign against rival CCP members (Spence 447-448). During the Sino-Japanese War we increased support of the people by our anti-Japanese activities. I also greatly expanded the Party’s influence in areas outside of Japanese control through rural mass organizations, and administrative land and tax reform measures favoring poor peasants. After the Japanese defeat in 1945, there was a year of talks between the CCP and Kuomintang but it only lasted a year before fighting broke out again and the civil war recommenced. Our victory would not be achieved until three years later. Meanwhile, in 1948, under my direct order, the People’s Liberation Army starved out the Kuomintang forces occupying the city of Changchun. The siege lasted from June until October. Many died during the siege.

The next year, January 21, 1949, Kuomintang forces suffered great losses in battles against our forces. The People's Republic of China was established on October 1, 1949. It was the culmination of over two decades of struggle. Finally, “[t]he Chinese people have stood up.” In the early morning of December 10, 1949, People’s Liberation Army troops laid siege to Chengdu which was the last Kuomintang held city in mainland China. Chiang Kai-shek evacuated to Taiwan. From 1943 until my death in 1976, I remained Chairman of the Communist Party of China. But more on that later.

In 1951, I initiated the three-anti campaign aimed at members within the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), former Kuomintang members and bureaucratic officials who were not party members. The targets were: corruption, waste, and bureaucracy. The next year (1952) a second campaign, the Five-anti campaign, rid urban areas of corruption by targeting those participating in bribery, theft of state property, tax evasion, cheating on government contracts, and stealing state economic information. I insisted that minor offenders be criticized and reformed or sent to labor camps, "while the worst among them should be shot." These campaigns rid the China of a hundred thousand counterrevolutionary lives; though a majority not by our hand, they simply committed suicide. How can I be blamed for those deaths?

Following this cleansing in 1953, I launched the First Five-Year Plan. With this plan, China would end its dependence on agriculture and become a world power. We built new industrial plants and industry began to produce enough capital for us to grow independent of U.S.S.R. support. The First-Five Year Plan was a great success. In 1958, the Second Five-Year Plan, the Great Leap Forward, was launched. During this time, the Hundred Flowers Campaign was initiated. Under this campaign I was willing to consider different opinions about how China should be governed. Unfortunately, the Right opportunists took advantage of my good will and dared criticize me rather than offer serious ideas of how to better run the government. What nerve! After a few months, I had to reverse this policy! Once again I had to cleanse China of these counterrevolutionary rats and their dangerous thoughts. I am not exactly sure how many Rightists we rid ourselves of with this Anti-Rightist Movement, it is difficult to keep track. You’ll have to forgive me; do you know how many dangerous thinkers I’ve had to protect the revolution from? I am sure it was millions of well-deserved deaths.

The Great Leap Forward did have some setbacks, I’ll admit. We ordered the implementation of a variety of new agricultural techniques for use by the new communes which did not work out as well as planned. This combined with the shortage of labor in the fields this led to an approximately 15% drop in grain production in 1959 followed by a further 10% reduction in 1960 and no recovery in 1961 (Spence, 553). We just did not have enough labor to work in steel production and infrastructure projects and also work in agriculture.
I ordered the party to procure up to one third of all the grain. There were reports of food shortages in the countryside but I’m pretty sure the peasants were lying and those rightists and kulaks were hoarding grain. I launched a series of anti-grain concealment drives to once again purge our worker’s paradise of undesirables. At the Lushan Conference in late 1959, some expressed concern that the Great Leap Forward had not been as successful as planned. Chief among these right opportunists was Minister of Defense Peng Dehuai. Not to worry though, a good old fashion purge took care of that problem. Despite the questionable reports of famine, we continued to claim record harvests to the rest of the world. In fact, we increased exports by 50 percent. We also gave free grain to fellow Communist such as North Korea and North Vietnam. Though, after the less than desirable outcomes of the Great Leap Forward, I retired from the post of chairman of the People’s Republic of China but remained important in determining overall policy.

In 1966, I became concerned that the revolution had replaced the old elite with a new one. A revolution of culture was necessary for keeping China in a state of perpetual revolution which would serve the interests of the majority, rather than allowing an elite class to settle in and consolidate their power over time. The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution permeated every part of Chinese life. The Cultural Revolution may have deposed much of China's traditional cultural heritage but success of the Revolution required a fundamental change in the sentiments and values of the people. The events of the Revolution were necessary. There was much loss of life; many driven to suicide. When I was informed of people being driven to suicide I ordered: “People who try to commit suicide — don't attempt to save them! . . . China is such a populous nation, it is not as if we cannot do without a few people.” In 1969, I declared the Cultural Revolution over but it really continued until my death 1976.

[[User:Mao Zedong|Mao Zedong]] 21:01, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

== Works Cited ==

Chang, Jung, and Jon Holiday. Mao: The Unknown Story. New York: Knopf, 2005. Print.

Feigon, Lee. Mao: A Reinterpretation. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2002. Print.

Fuller, Francis F. “Mao Tse-Tung: Military Thinker.” Military Affairs, Vol. 22, No. 3 (Autumn, 1958), pp. 139-145.

Katzenbach, Jr., Edward, and Gene Hanrahan. “The Revolutionary Strategy of Mao Tse-Tung.” Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 70, No. 3 (Sep., 1955), pp. 321-340.

Liu, Liyan. “The Man Who Molded Mao: Yang Changji and the First Generation of Chinese Communists.” Modern China, Vol. 32, No. 4 (Oct., 2006), pp. 483-512.

North, Robert C. “The Rise of Mao Tse-Tung.” The Far Eastern Quarterly, Vol. 11, No. 2 (Feb., 1952), pp. 137-145.

Spence, Jonathan D. The Search for Modern China, Second Edition. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1999. Print.

Zedong, Mao. “Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan, March 1927.” Marxists.org. Web.

Mao Zedong

2011-10-15T21:01:43Z

Mao Zedong:

Main Page

2011-10-15T21:00:39Z

Mao Zedong:

Main Page

2011-10-15T20:59:51Z

Mao Zedong:

2011-10-07T18:55:26Z

Mao Zedong:

Main Page

2011-10-07T18:54:58Z

Mao Zedong:

Douglas Reynolds, China, 1898-1912: The Xinzheng Revolution and Japan

2011-10-07T18:53:54Z

Mao Zedong: Created page with 'Without the intimate cooperation of Japan at multiple levels and in multiple guises, China could not have broken the iron grip of tradition and embarked upon its road of modernit…'

Without the intimate cooperation of Japan at multiple
levels and in multiple guises, China could not have broken the
iron grip of tradition and embarked upon its road of modernity.
Between 1898-1910 japan had great influence on china
This time is called the “golden decade”
Westerners did not like it
Rev. A. P. Parker of
Shanghai wrote in his article, ''A New Japanese Invasion of China":
An invasion of ideas instead of one of arms. A propaganda of education
instead of one of coercion. A subtle attempt to make a conquest
of China by means of mental rather than physical forces.
Such is, in brief, the condition of things now rapidly coming to the
front in China under the Japanese program, as indicated by their
methods of procedure during the past few years
Western envy and anxiety are evident in the 1903 article of
George Lynch, “Japanization of China.” They are likewise evident
in “La Japonization de la Chine” of 1905, by Rene Pinon,
which declares, “This new China will be a Japanese China.” Pinon
proceeds to explain:

It is under Japanese influence that the [recent] reforms have been
decided upon and accomplished. The report of Chang Pao-hsi
[Zhang Baixi], President of the University, on "the reorganization of
education in the Chinese Empire" ... was directly inspired by the
Japanese system . . . and advises that all professors, except teachers
of foreign languages, should be chosen in Japan. In fact, in normal
schools which have just been founded, all the foreign teachers are subjects
of the Mikado.... It would be needless to dwell upon the enormous
influence which cannot fail to result from this educational
mission of the Japanese.

A secret report of the German consul general in Shanghai
expresses similar anxieties:

Along with the development of Japanese commerce and industry
which is enough to startle anyone, I wish merely to single out two
areas that should alarm us: one, namely, the drive [of Japan] to
increase shipping by massive state' funding and to expand trade
through protective subsidies; and, two, the eager encouragement of
education for Chinese by such agencies as To-A Dobunkai, and the
earnest training of their own people for future involvement with
China, by the opening of such schools as To-A Dobun Shoin in
Shanghai. In order to, counter these, the German government must
make available substantial subsidies with all due facility.

Mao

Main Page

2011-10-07T18:44:49Z

Mao Zedong:

Main Page

2011-10-07T18:44:25Z

Mao Zedong:

History in Three Keys: The Boxers As Event, Experience, and Myth

2011-10-07T18:42:00Z

Political Economy and Ecology on the Eve of Industrialization: Europe, China, and the Global

2011-10-07T18:26:11Z

Mao Zedong:

Political Economy and Ecology on the Eve of Industrialization: Europe, China, and the Global

2011-10-07T18:25:21Z

Mao Zedong: Created page with '<nowiki>This paper compares China’s and Europe’s economies and tries to explain why being very similar for a long time, around the 19th century, Europe prospered while China …'

<nowiki>This paper compares China’s and Europe’s economies and tries to explain why being very similar for a long time, around the 19th century, Europe prospered while China struggled.
From around 1550 to 1850 both Europe and China experienced an “industrious revolution.” Households began to spend their time and labor producing goods to sell in the market. They saved time to focus on producing these goods for the market by buying other goods that they would have usually produced at home.

The fact that this “industrious revolution” occurred in both China and Europe shows that similar economic phenomena were taking place in both places.
Around 1750 Europe and China had similar patterns of consumption. And in some cases China’s standard of living was slightly better than Europe’s.
For example, in 1750 Europe consumed about 2.2 pounds per capita of sugar while in china it was about 3.8 to 5.0 pounds of sugar per capita.
This may have been in part because Europe’s borrowing was used mostly for war (although it was easier to raise capital in Europe) while in China borrowing was mostly invested in further agriculture. So while Europeans squandered their wealth destroying the Chinese used it to produce which raised their standard of living.

It is also important to mention that interest rates in China were higher while penalties for defaulting were less severe than in Europe. This meant that High interest rates encouraged savings since you received higher interest while lower default penalties for borrowers encouraged borrowing which—as mentioned—earlier was used in further production which helped raise standard of living.

There is also evidence that both had similar ecological strains even with China’s denser population. For example, around 1800, England yielded 2,092 kg/acre of wheat while North China yielded about 1,836 kg/acre. Nitrogen depletion of the soil was about 44.77 kg/acre in England and North China’s was 42.49 kg/acre.

So economic conditions were very similar between China and the West in the 18th century yet in the 19th century there emerged a divergence between the two’s economic conditions.

Economic phenomena which occurred similarly in China as it did in Europe led to population growth in both places but population growth in China led to serious resource constraints while the west prospered.
W
hat the author is arguing is that the fact that there was a divergence in economic conditions was due in part to outside factors which helped Europe surpass their constraints and helped jump start its industrial revolution.
A big part of this was introduction of more resources from the Americas.

This means that the divergence in paths had to do with external factors rather than internal restriction by institutions, attitudes, demographic processes, or differences in the political structures.

If it weren’t for new world resources and advancements in technology, Europe may have followed a similar path as that of China.</nowiki>