The Political Economy of the People's Commune in China: Changes and Continuities

1975 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 631-658 ◽  
Author(s):  
Byung-Joon Ahn

The establishent of the Chinese rural people's commune in 1958 as a new political and economic organization has aroused considerable interest among observers. One important question in this regard has been the role the commune has played in China's modernization. Since China is committed to both “socialist transformation and construction,” modernization in China involves two tasks: revolution and development. As for China's rural problems, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) regards the commune as the best organization for achieving these two goals during its transition to communism. Yet the commune has undergone a series of changes as a result of interactions between the Party's revolutionary goals and its development requirements, presenting a microcosm of Chinese communism. This article is an attempt to account for changes and continuities in the political economy of the commune.

2008 ◽  
Vol 195 ◽  
pp. 675-690 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Kai-Sing Kung

AbstractA farm survey conducted in Wuxi county in the 1950s found that the Chinese Communist Party had successfully “preserved the rich peasant economy” in the “newly liberated areas”: the landlords were indeed the only social class whose properties had been redistributed, yet without compromising on the magnitude of benefits received by the poor peasants. A higher land inequality in that region, coupled with an inter-village transfer of land, allowed these dual goals to be achieved. Our study further reveals that class status was determined both by the amount of land a household owned and whether it had committed certain “exploitative acts,” which explains why some landlords did not own a vast amount of land. Conversely, it was the amount of land owned, not class status, that determined redistributive entitlements, which was why 15 per cent of the poor peasants and half of the middle peasants were not redistributed any land.


1988 ◽  
Vol 114 ◽  
pp. 198-222 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lawrence R. Sullivan

Following Hu Yaobang's resignation as general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party on 16 January 1987, the political and economic reforms sponsored by Deng Xiaoping since 1978 came under intense criticism. Warning against “bourgeois liberalization” and renewed “spiritual pollution” from the west, Party conservatives reacted to student demonstrations in December 1986 by reversing the “Double Hundred” policy of literary and scientific freedom and by engineering the purge of the ardent westernizers Fang Lizhi, Liu Binyan and Wang Ruowang. Deng Liqun's “Leading Group to Oppose Bourgeois Liberalism,” Chen Yun's Central Discipline Inspection Commission (CDIC), and the outspoken Peng Zhen emerged as the main ideological watchdogs favouring restrictions on individual expression. But even the pro-reformer Zhao Ziyang condemned western ideas as “pernicious,” just as his chief secretary Bao Tong, warned intellectuals against “writ[ing] only about (the merits) of developed capitalist countries.”


Asian Studies ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 99-113 ◽  
Author(s):  
Téa SERNELJ

The article investigates the political views of one of the most prominent representatives of the so-called second generation of Modern Confucianism, Xu Fuguan. It reveals his unique position within this intellectual movement. Even though all other adherents of Modern Confucianism were focused upon metaphysics and ontology rather than political theory, Xu believed that these lines of thought could not contribute enough to solving the various urgent social and political problems of modern China. In this regard, the present article focuses upon a critical analysis of Xu’s critique of the Chinese Communist Party. The author presents and evaluates his critique mainly with regard to his search for a resolution of the problematic and chaotic political and social situation of China during the first half of the 20th century. In conclusion, the author provides a critical evaluation of Xu’s social democratic thought and particularly of his attitude towards the Chinese Communist Party.


1962 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 161-168 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Guillermaz

August 1, 1927, is one of the big days in the history of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). It marked the opening of a military phase which was to last more than twenty years and was to leave a deep mark on the Party and the present régime both in their outlook and their structure. Symbolically, it is the birthday of the People's Liberation Army (PLA), the Chinese Red Army, and it is as such that it is celebrated every year. It would perhaps be worthwhile after thirty-five years to make an accurate assessment of this event and first to place it in the political context of the time.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Enver Tohti Bughda

Dr Enver Tohti Bughda is a qualified medical surgeon and a passionate advocate for Uyghur rights. Having been ordered to remove organs from an executed prisoner, Enver has since taken up a major role in the campaign against forced organ harvesting and is determined to bring China’s darkest secret to light. In this personal testimony, Enver shares his experience working as a surgeon in Xinjiang and reflects more broadly on the situation of Uyghurs in China, explaining that unless Uyghurs earn the sympathy and support of China’s Han majority, unless it is understood that all Chinese people are the victims of the same authoritarian regime, ethnic animosity will continue to serve the political purposes of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).


1964 ◽  
Vol 18 ◽  
pp. 55-66 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stuart R. Schram

The second half of 1927 is one of the most obscure periods in the history of the Chinese Communist Party. From a large and well-organised force openly playing a major role in the political and military affairs of the country, the Chinese Communist Party rapidly found itself reduced to a few small remnants fighting for their existence. As a result, the printed sources available for future historians were drastically reduced. The Communists cut their output of publications both for lack of the means to produce them, and because it was no longer prudent to reveal even as much about their plans as they had done before. The Nationalist authorities further decimated this scanty output by confiscation and repression. So much of what has been written about this period is based on verbal testimony or secondary sources, and cannot be regarded as altogether reliable.


1995 ◽  
Vol 143 ◽  
pp. 784-800 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeremy T. Paltiel

Civil-military relations in China demonstrate a unique fusion of military and political leadership within the Communist Party. Variously described as a “symbiosis,” “dual-role elite” or “the Party in uniform,” this feature rooted in the guerrilla experience of the Chinese Communist Party was sustained over six decades by the political longevity of the Long March generation. The civil war experience formed political leaders skilled in both civil affairs and military command. Analysts of civil-military relations in China must therefore define the scope of “civil” in relation to the Chinese Communist Party.


Author(s):  
Andrey Schelchkov

The disagreements and rupture between the Chinese Communist Party and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) were the most important event in the history of the International Communist Movement in the 60s and 70s of the 20th century, which had a huge impact on the fate of communist parties around the world. Latin America has become a place of fierce rivalry between Moscow and Beijing for influence on the political left flank. Moscow's tough opposition to any attempts by the Chinese Communist Party to increase its influence in the continent's communist parties without resorting to splitting them caused a backlash and a change in the policy of criticism within the parties to a policy of secession of independent “anti-revisionist” communist parties. Maoist communist parties emerged in all countries of the continent, opposing their policies to the pro-Moscow left parties. Maoism was able to penetrate not only the old communist movement but also the ranks of socialists, leftist nationalists and even Christian democrats. It often became the ideological and political basis for a break with the “traditional” left parties, a kind of transit bridge towards the “new left”. The ideas of Maoism were partly accepted by the trend of the “new left”, which gained special weight among the intelligentsia and students of the continent. This article is devoted to the emergence and development of the Maoist Communist Parties, the reaction of Moscow and Havana in the political circumstances of Latin America in the 60s of the 20th century.


1965 ◽  
Vol 21 ◽  
pp. 108-125
Author(s):  
Howard L. Boorman

Writing some four hundred and fifty years ago, the founder of the modern realist school of political analysis struck the mark. “The first impression that one gets of a ruler and of his brains,” Machiavelli observed, “is from seeing the men that he has about him.” To the student of the terrain of post-1928 Chinese political history, the prominent positions of Chiang Kai-shek's Chekiang clique in the Kuomintang and of Mao Tse-tung's Hunan faction in the Chinese Communist Party are obvious landmarks. Yet the difference in the political styles of Chiang and Mao, as revealed in the men around them, has been less emphasised. Chiang Kai-shek's trusted political and military associates, with some exceptions, have been either members of his own family or natives of his own province of Chekiang in east China. Mao Tse-tung, while revealing similar parochialism in selecting and retaining associates from his native province of Hunan, has nevertheless shown more imagination and less inflexibility than Chiang.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
Rebecca E. Karl

Abstract This brief essay meditates on the advent of the ideal of horizontal social relations, exemplified in the early CCP years in the political term, “comrade” (tongzhi). It takes up Qu Qiubai as exemplary of a Marxist political thinker whose commitments to horizontality/comrade relations can be illustrated through his theories of literature, translation and language. It proposes that despite Xi Jinping's recent rhetorical admonishments to re-activate “comrade” as a political term, it is the LGBTQ community's appropriation of “comrade” in contemporary China that actually holds the potential for a substantive reanimation of the utopian ideals begun a century ago.


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