Reconstructing China's National Identity: A Southern Alternative to Mao-Era Anti-Imperialist Nationalism

By the 1990sit was a commonplace that Mao-era anti-imperialist nationalism in China was dead. The anti-imperialist perspective had pitted an exploitative foreign imperialism against a courageous Chinese people (Hu 1955). This nationalist understanding of Chinese history was encapsulated in the Great Leap Forward-era film on the Opium War,Lin Zexu, which drew a contrast between patriotic Sanliyuan villagers and traitorous ruling groups in the capital city. If the brave peasants would join with all patriotic Chinese and not fear to die, then, under correct leadership, the foreign capitalists who got rich in making Chinese poor by forcing opium into China would be thrown out. But ruling reactionaries, afraid of popular mobilization, preferred to sell out to the imperialists. As with patriots who had led exploited peasants throughout Chinese history, Mao's Communists would save the nation by providing the correct leadership that would mobilize patriotic Chinese, push imperialists out of China, and thus permit an independent China to prosper with dignity.

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A Necessary Evil: Conceptualizing the Socialist Commodity under Mao

Comparative Studies in Society and History ◽

10.1017/s0010417518000488 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 61 (1) ◽

pp. 23-49 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

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?

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More Than Half the Sky: Women and Urban Neighbourhood Workshops in China, 1958–1978

The China Quarterly ◽

10.1017/s0305741019001383 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 243 ◽

pp. 757-779

Author(s):

Hanchao Lu

Keyword(s):

Large Scale ◽

Great Leap ◽

Women's Participation ◽

Great Leap Forward ◽

Employment Of Women ◽

The Great Leap Forward ◽

China’S Cities ◽

Mao Era

AbstractFrom the Great Leap Forward (GLF) of 1958–1960 onwards, China's urban neighbourhood workshops and services mostly hired women. The GLF marked the beginning of a large-scale and irreversible trend towards near universal employment of women in China's cities. By the end of the Mao era, about 42 per cent of women working in industry were employed in “collectives” that were largely developed from urban neighbourhood industry. This article takes Shanghai as a case study to examine this type of employment for women in China. It documents the origin and development of the institution, explores the nuances of state–labour interactions at its site, and argues that as far as the enduring effects of women's participation in the workforce are concerned, the disastrous GLF was indeed the initiator and in this respect may well be seen as a blessing in disguise.

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Trauma and Memory: The case of the Great Famine in the People's Republic of China (1959-1961)

Historiography East and West ◽

10.1163/157018603763585249 ◽

2003 ◽

Vol 1 (1) ◽

pp. 39-67

Author(s):

Susanne Weigelin-Schwiedrzik

Keyword(s):

Public Debate ◽

Traumatic Experiences ◽

Chinese History ◽

Mo Yan ◽

Nineteen Fifties ◽

Yu Hua ◽

Great Leap ◽

Great Famine ◽

Great Leap Forward ◽

The Great Leap Forward

Abstract Taking the Great Famine from 1959 to 1961 in the aftermath of the Great Leap Forward as an example, the article presents an inquiry into different aspects of trauma and memory in the context of culture and politics in the PRC. It shows that even in a highly politicized environment like the PRC politics in its capacity to either suppress or instigate public debate about individual or collective memories is not the only, probably not even the most important factor in making individual remembrances about events of traumatic dimensions enter the realm of communicative and possibly cultural memory. Besides psychological factors complicating communication about traumatic experiences cultural particularities have to be taken into account in order to be able to answer the question why the Great Famine could have been the subject of a taboo for such a long time and why it eventually re-emerged at the surface of public debate during the nineteen eighties and nineties. While party historians are still reluctant to discuss the disaster of the Great Famine at length, literature is serving as a forum of debate and remembrance on what peasants went through during the late nineteen fifties. Different novels are discussed in the article to show how the perspective of those who directly participated in the events differs from the next generation trying to answer the question why people in China could have gone through all these sufferings without asking any questions. The explanations they give stress cultural particularities such as ancestor worship compelling people to forget the suffering of the past if only enough people survive to preserve the continuity of the clan (Yu Hua). The repetitiveness of traumatic experiences occurring in 20th century Chinese history is seen as another reason why the Great Famine could be tabooed for more than 30 years (Mo Yan). But besides these factors stressing that trauma is dealt with differently in different cultural settings the fact that the Great Famine as part of the Great Leap Forward had been a topic of inner party debate ever since it took place has to be seen as a political factor of major importance both instrumental in this taboo and in instigating public debate on the estimated 35 million victims of what is called the greatest famine in world history.

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Multiplicity in Uniformity: Poetry and the Great Leap Forward

The China Quarterly ◽

10.1017/s0305741000026205 ◽

1960 ◽

Vol 3 ◽

pp. 1-15 ◽

Cited By ~ 16

Author(s):

S. H. Chen

Keyword(s):

Steel Production ◽

Chinese History ◽

Racial Groups ◽

Mental Life ◽

New Era ◽

Great Leap ◽

The People ◽

Physical Energy ◽

Great Leap Forward ◽

The Great Leap Forward

The Great Leap Forward has not only been measured by the claimed increases of grain and steel production by so many million tons. Peking boasts too that the Leap produced, in 1958 alone, millions and millions of poems and songs. These products, both in themselves as art and in their way and manner of accomplishment, should reveal a picture of how the mental life, or, more precisely, how the mental as well as physical energy, of the nation is being vigorously mobilised, organised and directed. For, as much of the steel was, regardless of its quality, produced in “backyard furnaces,” so are myriads of these poems and songs, regardless of their aesthetics, made by farm teams in the fields, workers in the factories, and labourers building roads or bridges. The people are goaded and urged, instructed and inspired by tireless party cadres who exhort all social and racial groups that, among other purposes, there has to be a new epoch of poetry production to celebrate the new era in Chinese history.

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