The Chinese Communist Party to 1949

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tony Saich ◽  
Nancy Hearst
Keyword(s):  
Communist Party ◽  
Chinese Communist Party ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Chinese Revolution ◽  
The Public ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
The Social ◽  
Economic Transformations ◽  
The Chinese Communist Party ◽  
Historical Periods

There is a vast array of materials available to assist in the study of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) before 1949. In China this is aided by the presence of a large number of officially employed researchers at party research centers and related archives. To earn their keep, these researchers have to put out publications. Availability of materials was boosted by the start of reforms in 1978 and preparations for the 1981 official party history. Given that, especially in the early years of reform, when expression of personal opinions could be dangerous, many of the released publications were documentary collections or chronologies. These came in several different varieties, based on either historical periods, particular events, or the lives of key individuals. These materials were complemented by memoirs of key figures who wanted to ensure that their version of history was in the public eye. This makes selection very difficult. Some of the works that follow are a must for students and scholars; others are personal favorites of the compilers and should be treated as exemplary of the types and varieties of sources that are available for the study of the CCP before 1949. More recently, materials from China have allowed researchers to conduct more detailed research on the social and economic transformations wrought by CCP presence and the difficulties the party had in maintaining local support. This has meant that, in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, we have seen fewer monographs that attempt to paint the broader picture of the sweep of the CCP revolution. Instead, there are many fine-grained analyses of particular events or CCP activities in specific locales that reveal the extremely complex and multifaceted nature of the Chinese revolution.

Reconstructing China: Japanese technicians and industrialization in the early years of the People's Republic of China

2015 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 141-174 ◽  
Author(s):  
AMY KING
Keyword(s):  
Communist Party ◽  
Chinese Communist Party ◽  
New Technology ◽  
Early Years ◽  
People’S Republic Of China ◽  
People's Republic Of China ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
Continuity And Change ◽  
The Chinese Communist Party ◽  
Foreign Ministry

AbstractThe Chinese Communist Party was confronted with the pressing challenge of ‘reconstructing’ China's industrial economy when it came to power in 1949. Drawing on recently declassified Chinese Foreign Ministry archives, this article argues that the Party met this challenge by drawing on the expertise of Japanese technicians left behind in Northeast China at the end of the Second World War. Between 1949 and 1953, when they were eventually repatriated, thousands of Japanese technicians were used by the Chinese Communist Party to develop new technology and industrial techniques, train less skilled Chinese workers, and rebuild factories, mines, railways, and other industrial sites in the Northeast. These first four years of the People's Republic of China represent an important moment of both continuity and change in China's history. Like the Chinese Nationalist government before them, the Chinese Communist Party continued to draw on the technological and industrial legacy of the Japanese empire in Asia to rebuild China's war-torn economy. But this four-year period was also a moment of profound change. As the Cold War erupted in Asia, the Chinese Communist Party began a long-term reconceptualization of how national power was intimately connected to technology and industrial capability, and viewed Japanese technicians as a vital element in the transformation of China into a modern and powerful nation.

Deconstructing the Construction of the Party-State: Gulin County in the Shaan-Gan-Ning Border Region

1994 ◽  
Vol 140 ◽  
pp. 1052-1079 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph W. Esherick
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Literature ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Chinese Communist Party ◽  
World History ◽  
Border Region ◽  
Chinese Revolution ◽  
The Social ◽  
Peasant Revolution ◽  
Party State

It used to be a truism that 20th-century China witnessed one of the great peasant revolutions of world history. The Chinese Communist Party built a popular base in the countryside, and eventually a massive army of peasant soldiers surrounded the cities and drove the urban-based Kuomintang from the Mainland. In the comparative literature, the Chinese revolution was classified as a peasant revolution, and a number of important studies sought to explain the social origins of that phenomenon.

scholarly journals Proscribing the “Spiritually Japanese”: Nationalist Indignation, Authoritarian Responsiveness and Regime Legitimation in China Today

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Peter Gries ◽  
Yi Wang
Keyword(s):  
Communist Party ◽  
Chinese Communist Party ◽  
The Public ◽  
Chinese Nationalism ◽  
Mediating Role ◽  
The Chinese Communist Party ◽  
China Today ◽  
Sensitive Issues ◽  
People's Congress

Abstract In spring 2018 China, indignant popular nationalists demanded that the “spiritually Japanese” activities of a fringe group of young Chinese who figure themselves as Japanese be proscribed. The National People's Congress quickly complied, passing legislation that made it illegal to “beautify the war of invasion.” Exploring how and why the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) responded to the demands of popular nationalists, we suggest that authoritarian representation occurs in China even beyond the bounds of everyday apolitical issues like education and healthcare. Indeed, because the CCP relies upon a nationalist claim to legitimate rule, authoritarian legislators may respond to the public on politically sensitive issues like nationalism as well. Journalists and lawyers, furthermore, can play a vital mediating role between elites and masses, facilitating the transmission of the information and expertise needed for authoritarian responsiveness. Implications for our understanding of Chinese nationalism, authoritarian responsiveness and state legitimation in China today are discussed.

Lu Hsün and the Communist Party

1960 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 17-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harriet C. Mills
Keyword(s):  
Communist Party ◽  
Chinese Communist Party ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Chinese Revolution ◽  
Modern Chinese ◽  
Cultural Movements ◽  
The Chinese Communist Party ◽  
Lu Hsun ◽  
China Today ◽  
Cultural Hero

In terms of his impact on the young intelligentsia of China, particularly in the 1930s, and of the emotional symbolism as patriot and reformer with which his name is charged, Lu Hsün (1881–1936) was the most powerful figure in modern Chinese letters. For the last seven years of his life he was openly identified with Communist-led left-wing cultural movements in China. Today he is honoured by the Chinese Communist Party as the great cultural hero of the Chinese Revolution. His homes have become museums, jiis tomb a shrine. He is presented as a Communist in everything but name.

The Influence of the Past: How the Early Years Helped to Shape the Future of the Chinese Communist Party

1968 ◽  
Vol 36 ◽  
pp. 23-44 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Martin Wilbur
Keyword(s):  
Social Environment ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Chinese Communist Party ◽  
Political System ◽  
Early Years ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Past ◽  
Historical Fact ◽  
The Chinese Communist Party ◽  
The Relationship

Early in 1928 the Chinese Communist Party was in crisis. It might have disintegrated and disappeared. Yet in fact it persisted, constantly refashioned itself, and ultimately became the political system of the country. The broad questions we may ask about this historical fact are: What was the nature of the Party in 1928? What had been the experience of the leadership? And what was the relationship between the Party, with its distinctive ideology, and the Chinese social environment?

The Chinese Revolution and the Colonial Areas: The View form Yenan, 1937–41

1978 ◽  
Vol 75 ◽  
pp. 594-622 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven M. Goldstein
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Chinese Communist Party ◽  
Formative Period ◽  
The Political ◽  
Military Strategy ◽  
Party Leadership ◽  
Chinese Revolution ◽  
The Chinese Communist Party

The years 1937 to 1941 constitute the formative period in the Maoist leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), when Mao and his colleagues developed much of the political and military strategy that was to guide the Party through the anti-Japanese war and into the civil war period. This package of revolutionary prescriptions – loosely labelled the Yenan experience – is generally recognized to have had a powerful, lingering hold on the Party leadership.

Sneevliet and the Early Years of the CCP

1971 ◽  
Vol 48 ◽  
pp. 677-697 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dov Bing
Keyword(s):  
Communist Party ◽  
Chinese Communist Party ◽  
Mass Movement ◽  
Early Years ◽  
The Other ◽  
Recent Past ◽  
Party Members ◽  
The Chinese Communist Party ◽  
Soviet Russia ◽  
The One

The formative years of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) have long remained one of the most obscure periods in the recent past of China. There remain many puzzles about why and how the alliances, between the CCP and the Kuomintang (KMT) on the one hand and Soviet Russia on the other, came about in the early 1920s.For the last four years I have been studying the establishment and first years of the CCP, at the same time paying attention to the foundation and first years of the Indische Sociaal Democratische Vereniging (ISDV), which was later to become the Partai Kommunis Indonesia (PKI). In this connexion I have been specially interested in outlining the origins of that strategy whereby Communist Party members entered a nationalist mass movement and tried to capture it from within.

scholarly journals CIRCULATION OF THE ELITE IN THE CHINESE COMMUNIST PARTY

2016 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 147-184 ◽  
Author(s):  
David A. Meyer ◽  
Megha Ram ◽  
Laura Wilke
Keyword(s):  
Communist Party ◽  
Chinese Communist Party ◽  
Central Committee ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Leadership Change ◽  
New Members ◽  
Political Body ◽  
Subsequent Transformation ◽  
New Family ◽  
The Chinese Communist Party

AbstractThe history of leadership change in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) exemplifies Pareto's notion ofcirculationof the elite. To analyze it we have compiled a partially ranked dataset of members and alternates of the Politburo Standing Committee, Politburo, and Central Committee for the 1st through 18th National Party Congresses. Quantitative studies of leadership change in the CCP have typically focused on the fraction of new members in each political body from one Party Congress to the next, but the existence of partially ranked data calls for a more subtle quantification of leadership change. Thus, we define a new family of metrics which consider change within each political body, the magnitude of such change, and the importance of each change to CCP structure and policy. We use two of these metrics to compute the distances between each pair of successive, partially-ranked leadership lists in our dataset. Our results capture important political developments from the irregular leadership change of the early years to the subsequent transformation of the CCP into a more institutionalized polity. This metric-based analysis also supplements our understanding of anomalous leadership transitions, intra-Party dynamics, and systemic change in the CCP.

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