Between the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution

2021 ◽  
pp. 183-192
Author(s):  
Yuan-tsung Chen
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Foreign Minister ◽  
Chen Yi ◽  
Marco Polo ◽  
Great Leap Forward ◽  
Red Flag ◽  
One Year ◽  
Restrictive Environment ◽  
The Great Leap Forward

Yuan-tsung returned to Beijing in November 1960, but she could not forget what she had seen in the Red Flag Commune, and so she planned to circumvent another, probably worse catastrophe. She discussed options with Jack. Both agreed to leave China for Hong Kong, where Jack’s brother Percy ran the Marco Polo Club, a sort of bridge between Western businessmen and China. Jack would work as a freelance journalist. They consulted their friend Comrade Xia. Xia arranged for Jack to meet the foreign minister, Chen Yi, who liked to wear a French Beret. Chen Yi thought it was a good idea that Jack continue his work in a less restrictive environment. But Yuan-tsung and Jack disagreed on when to depart. She preferred 1965 and he, 1966. She was afraid that anything might happen in that one year.

A Necessary Evil: Conceptualizing the Socialist Commodity under Mao

2018 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-49 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laurence Coderre
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Chinese History ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
Great Leap ◽  
The Face ◽  
Great Leap Forward ◽  
The Great Leap Forward ◽  
Necessary Evil ◽  
The Impact

AbstractThis article traces the conceptual lineage of a statement, made by Mao Zedong and published in 1975, describing the contemporary economic system in the People's Republic of China as a commodity economy. Any surprise we might feel in the face of this verdict says more about our own narrow understanding of the (capitalist) commodity than it does about the political economy of the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976). As I detail in this study, the continued existence and necessity of commodities under socialism had long been an important topic of conversation in Communist circles, with important ramifications for economic planning and political movements. This article focuses on the impact of Stalin's theory of the socialist commodity, as articulated in 1952, on Chinese political economy in the 1950s; Mao's particular engagement with Stalin's work in the context of the Great Leap Forward (1958–1960); and the emergence of a new, less benign view of the socialist commodity in the 1970s. I argue that political economic theory and its study were in fact critical to the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution as mass mobilization campaigns, calling into question much of what we think we know about modern Chinese history and Chinese socialism. The essay is intended to unsettle enduring and uncritical associations between the commodity-form and capitalism. How might we, following on the heels of the theorists I discuss, imagine the commodity otherwise?

The Chinese Communist Party in the 1960s: Prelude to the Cultural Revolution

1967 ◽  
Vol 32 ◽  
pp. 3-36 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Neuhauser
Keyword(s):  
Communist Party ◽  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Chinese Communist Party ◽  
Commedia Dell'arte ◽  
Great Leap ◽  
Great Leap Forward ◽  
The Chinese Communist Party ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Great Leap Forward ◽  
The Cultural Revolution

The recent events in China are surely drama of the highest order, but at times it has seemed that the actors themselves were not entirely sure who was writing the lines. In fact what we seem to be witnessing is a form of commedia dell'arte: improvisation within a certain tacitly understood framework. The cultural revolution appears to have taken new turns and to have broken into new channels precisely because the actors have been faced with new and unforeseen circumstances as it has run its course. No faction in the struggle has been able to impose its will on the Party or the country by fiat; new devices and stratagems have been brought into play in what has looked like desperate attempts to gain the upper hand. It has clearly been a battle of the utmost seriousness, but there appear to have been limitations on the resultant chaos. Economic disorganisation does not seem to have occurred on the scale of the later stages of the Great Leap Forward. Nor, despite the clashes, confusion and bitter infighting, have new centres of power, totally divorced from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) itself, arisen. The cultural revolution has been pre-eminently a struggle within the Party.

scholarly journals The Nature of Leadership: The Chinese Communists, 1930–1945

1970 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 541-581 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henry G. Schwarz
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Major Event ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
Communist State ◽  
State And Society ◽  
Great Leap Forward ◽  
Twentieth Anniversary ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Great Leap Forward

The twentieth anniversary of the assumption of state power by the JL Chinese Communists is a convenient occasion to take stock of the many dramatic events that have taken place since that first day in October of 1949, when Mao Tse-tung proclaimed the new People's Republic of China. The anniversary, however, is more than a fortuitous product of the Western calendar. It lies close to one of those convulsive periods that have jolted China from time to time and have caused major changes in the Chinese state and society. The creation of the People's Republic twenty years ago was one such period. The Great Leap Forward of the late fifties was another, and the recent Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution may have been a third. Each of these events has substantially reshaped the state or society or both. From a historical point of view, the next major event that may well come shortly after the twentieth anniversary is the death of Mao Tse-tung and other co-founders of the Communist state. This anniversary, therefore, offers an opportunity to reassess the record of the Chinese Communists since 1949 with a view toward understanding the setting and the problems that the post-Mao leadership will soon inherit.

Embodied Activisms: The Case of the Mu Guiying Brigade

2010 ◽  
Vol 204 ◽  
pp. 850-869 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kimberley Ens Manning
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Rural Women ◽  
Development Policy ◽  
Female Body ◽  
Women's Leadership ◽  
The Political ◽  
Traditional Beliefs ◽  
Great Leap Forward ◽  
Rural Development Policy ◽  
The Great Leap Forward

AbstractIn this article I re-think the complex legacies of the Maoist era and their relationship to the contemporary decline in rural women's leadership. By focusing on some of the gendered dimensions of rural development policy, it becomes evident that many “traditional” beliefs about the leadership abilities of rural women were given new life during the Maoist era. Prior to the Cultural Revolution rural women had two dominant paths of “liberation” or jiefang available to them: one that involved a liberation through the female body and household, the path of dangjia, and one that involved a liberation from the constraints of the female body and household, the path of fanshen. In this article I show how the simultaneous implementation of these two paths of liberation on a unique women-led Mu Guiying Brigade during the Great Leap Forward reproduced the problem of the political unacceptability of rural women.

scholarly journals Ethnic Tensions between the Han and the Hui: The Neo-Sufi Jahriyya Movement of Ma Hua Long of the Late Qing Period (1862-1871)

2011 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 66-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
Calvin Ching
Keyword(s):  
Qing Dynasty ◽  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Marxist Theory ◽  
Historical Study ◽  
Late Qing Dynasty ◽  
Late Qing ◽  
Depth Analysis ◽  
Great Leap Forward ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Great Leap Forward

The historical study into the tensions of the late Qing Dynasty (1644–1912) between the Han and the Hui serves as a way to understand ethnic conflict in modern-day China. With an emphasis on the ideological and cultural differences between Islam and Confucianism, this paper will attempt to place the Neo-Sufi Jahriyyah movement of Ma Hua Long (d. 1871) into the historical framework of a deteriorating Qing Dynasty. Studies in this area have been challenging due to the paucity of resources on the subject and the tendency of mainstream academics during the time of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution in China to favour the application of Marxist theory to the historiography of Qing Dynasty China. A more in-depth analysis is therefore required before one can start to uncover a more complete picture of the ethnic, religious, and political aspects of the rebellions.

The Disobedient Diaspora: Overseas Chinese Students in Mao’s China, 1958-66不歸順的流散者: 僑生在毛澤東時代中國 (1958-66)

2014 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 220-238 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shelly Chan
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Chinese Students ◽  
Overseas Chinese ◽  
Chinese Youth ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
Great Leap Forward ◽  
Archival Record ◽  
The Great Leap Forward ◽  
Radical Transformation ◽  
Party State

Between 1950 and 1966, about 60,000 overseas Chinese youth, officially known as qiaosheng, entered the People’s Republic of China (prc) as students and refugees from Southeast Asia. In the state archival record, qiaosheng appeared collectively “disobedient” to socialism, first cast as “capitalist” during the Great Leap Forward (1958-60) and later as a “two-faced” threat during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). Not to be taken as face value, their supposed “disobedience” illustrated the broad and complex challenges that the diaspora posed to Mao’s China. Even as the Party-state valued the mobilization of overseas Chinese resources, a combination of massive inflows of refugees from abroad and radical transformation at home produced many conflicts over qiaosheng across the 1950s and 1960s. Thus, the narrative of “disobedience” revealed not only an unstable relationship between China and the diaspora, but also how the diaspora functioned as a key site whereby differences between socialism and capitalism were worked out.

Planned Birth in Tianjin

1980 ◽  
Vol 83 ◽  
pp. 551-567 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherlne Ch'iu Lyle
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Population Policy ◽  
Central Agency ◽  
Great Leap Forward ◽  
Birth Planning ◽  
The Great Leap Forward ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Professional Model ◽  
And Child Health

Studies on China's birth planning programmes have elicited certain variations and themes of the First Campaign (1954–57) and the Second Campaign (1962–65). Birth planning activities have rarely been reported during the Great Leap Forward (1958–60) and the Cultural Revolution (1966–69). From my earlier analysis of China's health and population policy it is evident that both the First and the Second Campaigns coincided with the bureaucratic ascendance of the Ministry of Public Health and the dominance of the professional model of health system. However, inadequate organization and co-ordination was evidenced by the lack of one single central agency, either as a supra-agency above the Ministry of Public Health or as a bureau agency under the ministry for birth planning work. In addition, the rationale for birth planning, especially during the Second Campaign, was for maternal and child health alone. Thus, the impact of both campaigns, in demographic terms, was limited.

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