Gli anni di Mao: storia e politica del presente

2009 ◽  
pp. 5-26
Author(s):  
Stephen A. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Republic Of China ◽  
Great Leap Forward ◽  
History Of ◽  
Key Issues ◽  
Collapse Of Communism ◽  
The Great Leap Forward ◽  
Western Historiography ◽  
The Way ◽  
Negative Representation ◽  
Mao Era

- Reflects on how political changes that have taken place in the People's Republic of China (Prc) during the era of economic reform, together with changes that have taken place in the world at large since 1989, especially those following the collapse of Communism in Europe, have shaped the way in which historians inside and outside the Prc have written the history of the Mao era (1949 to 1976). The article examines both Chinese and western historiography of four key issues relating to the Mao era: the idea of the 1950s as a "golden age"; the Great Leap Forward (1958-61); the Cultural Revolution (1966-76) and the view of Mao himself. The more negative representation of these issues derives, in part, from the fact that scholars now have much greater access to sources than was true prior to the 1980s. At the same time, the more negative representation it is bound up with political changes that have occurred inside and outside the Prc. For that reason, the historiography of the Mao may be said to represent an almost textbook example of the way in which historical writing is implicated in the politics of the present. Keywords: China, Communism, Mao, Economy, Historiography, History. Parole chiave: Cina, Comunismo, Mao, Economia, Storiografia, Storia.

Making It Count

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arunabh Ghosh
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Statistical Data ◽  
New Technology ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
Great Leap Forward ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Statistics ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Great Leap Forward

In 1949, at the end of a long period of wars, one of the biggest challenges facing leaders of the new People's Republic of China was how much they did not know. The government of one of the world's largest nations was committed to fundamentally reengineering its society and economy via socialist planning while having almost no reliable statistical data about their own country. This book is the history of efforts to resolve this “crisis in counting.” The book explores the choices made by political leaders, statisticians, academics, statistical workers, and even literary figures in attempts to know the nation through numbers. It shows that early reliance on Soviet-inspired methods of exhaustive enumeration became increasingly untenable in China by the mid-1950s. Unprecedented and unexpected exchanges with Indian statisticians followed, as the Chinese sought to learn about the then-exciting new technology of random sampling. These developments were overtaken by the tumult of the Great Leap Forward (1958–1961), when probabilistic and exhaustive methods were rejected and statistics was refashioned into an ethnographic enterprise. By acknowledging Soviet and Indian influences, the book not only revises existing models of Cold War science but also globalizes wider developments in the history of statistics and data. Anchored in debates about statistics and its relationship to state building, the book offers fresh perspectives on China's transition to socialism.

Marxist Thought in China

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. James Gregor ◽  
Susan Xue
Keyword(s):  
Chinese Communist Party ◽  
Mao Zedong ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
Academic Literature ◽  
The Third ◽  
Great Leap Forward ◽  
History Of ◽  
Considerable Controversy ◽  
Revolutionary Ideology ◽  
The Great Leap Forward

Throughout the history of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), disagreement has existed concerning the extent to which Chinese Communism might be considered authentically Marxist. In general, most of the available literature tends to simply accept the Chinese Communist self-identification as Marxist. No binding consensus among independent Sinologists, however, is found and resistance has taken on a variety of forms throughout the history of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)—some partisan and some genuinely analytic. The academic literature produced during the entire period of CCP rule in China has been characterized by wide differences in the acceptance of its Marxist authenticity. It has always been tacitly or explicitly accepted that the Marxism of the CCP at its founding in 1920–1921 was in a form acceptable to the Bolshevik rulers of revolutionary Russia. Having been founded directly through the influence of the Third (or Leninist) International, the CCP had to conform to the Bolshevik interpretation of Marxism. Since Lenin had taken “creative” liberties with the original doctrine, some have maintained that the Marxism of the CCP had never been truly Marxist. To add further difficulty to any analysis of the Marxism of the CCP, it is generally understood that Mao Zedong, who gradually assumed the leadership of the CCP, was not particularly well versed in any variant of Marxism. Over the years and under the pressure of circumstances, Mao delivered varied formulations of his revolutionary ideology. How much those formulations accorded with any variant of Marxism became a matter of interpretation. Some scholars hold that by the time of the “Great Leap Forward,” Mao had devised his own ideology. All of this speculation generated controversy within the CCP leadership. By the time of Mao’s demise in 1976, the doctrine of a “second revolution” animated Deng Xiaoping and his followers. It is still a matter of considerable controversy whether that post-Maoist doctrine, in any sense, is Marxist in content or aspiration.

The Campaign for Agricultural Development in the Great Leap Forward: A Study of Policy-Making and Implementation in Liaoning

1992 ◽  
Vol 129 ◽  
pp. 52-71 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alfred L. Chan
Keyword(s):  
Development Strategy ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Agricultural Development ◽  
Developmental Model ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
Great Leap ◽  
Policy Making Process ◽  
Great Leap Forward ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Great Leap Forward

As is well known, the Great Leap Forward (GLF) of 1958–59 was the most intense mobilizational phase in the history of the People's Republic of China and the most concentrated expression of the Utopian Maoist developmental model. Yet the adoption of an alternative development strategy to the Stalinist model by decentralization did not bring about material abundance; it led directly to an economic depression from which the country did not recover until 1965. Therefore, the “leap” is worthy of more scholarly attention than it has received. Of particular interest is the role played by the provinces in the policy-making process, the bureaucratic behaviour of the provincial authorities, the way policies were implemented, and the environmental constraints and how they affected policy-making.

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?

Maoism and Grassroots Religion

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiaoxuan Wang
Keyword(s):  
Land Reform ◽  
Religious Life ◽  
Religious Institutions ◽  
Religious Revival ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
Protestant Christianity ◽  
Great Leap Forward ◽  
Chinese Religions ◽  
State Archives ◽  
The Great Leap Forward

This book explores grassroots religious life under and after Mao in Rui’an County, Wenzhou, in southeastern China, a region widely known for its religious vitality. Drawing on hitherto unexplored local state archives, records of religious institutions, memoirs, and interviews, it tells the story of local communities’ encounters with the Communist revolution, and their consequences, especially the competitions and struggles for religious property and ritual space. It demonstrates that, rather than being totally disrupted, religious life under Mao was characterized by remarkable variance and unevenness and was contingent on the interactions of local dynamics with Maoist campaigns—including the land reform, the Great Leap Forward, and the Cultural Revolution. The revolutionary experience strongly determined the trajectories and development patterns of different religions, inter-religious dynamics, and state-religion relationships in the post-Mao era. This book argues that Maoism was destructively constructive to Chinese religions. It permanently altered the religious landscape in China, especially by inadvertently promoting the localization and even (in some areas) the expansion of Protestant Christianity, as well as the reinvention of traditional communal religion. In this vein, the post-Mao religious revival had deep historical roots in the Mao years, and cannot be explained by contemporary economic motives and cultural logics alone. This book calls for a renewed understanding of Maoism and secularism in the People’s Republic of China.

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.

Dealing with Responsibility for the Great Leap Famine in the People's Republic of China

2010 ◽  
Vol 201 ◽  
pp. 176-194 ◽  
Author(s):  
Felix Wemheuer
Keyword(s):  
Central Government ◽  
Rural China ◽  
Mao Zedong ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
Great Leap ◽  
Great Leap Forward ◽  
The Great Leap Forward ◽  
Official Evaluation ◽  
Different Levels

AbstractIn the aftermath of the famine in 1962, Mao Zedong took formal responsibility for the failure of the Great Leap Forward in the name of the central government. Thousands of local cadres were made scapegoats and were legally punished. This article focuses on the question of how the different levels of the Chinese state, such as the central government, the province and the county, have dealt with the question of responsibility for the famine. The official explanation for the failure of the Great Leap will be compared to unofficial memories of intellectuals, local cadres and villagers. The case study of Henan province shows that local cadres are highly dissatisfied with the official evaluation of responsibility. Villagers bring suffering, starvation and terror into the discourse, but these memories are constructed in a way to preserve village harmony. This article explains why these different discourses about responsibility of the famine are unlinked against the background of the “dual society”; the separation between urban and rural China. Finally, it will be shown that the Communist Party was unable to convince parts of society and the Party to accept the official interpretation.

Zheng Junli, Complicity and the Cultural History of Socialist China, 1949–1976

2006 ◽  
Vol 188 ◽  
pp. 1048-1069 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul G. Pickowicz
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Film Industry ◽  
State Building ◽  
The Other ◽  
Great Leap Forward ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One ◽  
Party State ◽  
Mao Era

This article explores cultural producation during the Mao era (1949–76) by focusing on the evolving relationship between artists and the party-state. The emphasis is on state direction of art in the all-important film industry. From 1949, well-known bourgeois Republican-era artists willingly began the complicated, painful and sometimes deadly process of adjusting to Communist Party state building, nation building and political domination. The career of influential film director Zheng Junli is examined as a case study of creative and strategic accommodation to new circumstances on the one hand, and of complicity on the other. Zheng is seen in his dual and contradictory roles as both trusted, ever loyal insider and unreliable, even degenerate, outsider. His Mao-era films, especially the spectacular Great Leap Forward production of Lin Zexu, are analysed in terms of their political thrust and reception in the difficult-to-predict world of the People's Republic.

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.

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

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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