Guerrilla resistance leader, Zhao Yiman: Warrior teacher and self-sacrificing CCP mother

Reviewed by: Mao's Generals: Chen Yi and the New Fourth Army Peter O. Hefron (bio) Lanxin Xiang . Mao's Generals: Chen Yi and the New Fourth Army. Lanham, New York, and Oxford: University Press of America, 1998. xi, 223 pp. Hardcover $37.50, ISBN 0-7618-1129-x. Lanxin Xiang, Professor of International History at Geneva's Graduate Institute of International Studies, has written a well-researched work that is part biography of Chen Yi and part military history of the Chinese Communist Revolution. It traces Chen Yi's career from radical student to founder and commander of the New Fourth Army (NFA). It is also a military history of the NFA, dealing especially with its pivotal role in destroying the main power base of the Guomindang (GMD) in central and eastern China during the 1947-1949 period. One of the book's strengths is Xiang's use of his interviews with surviving members of the NFA as well as his utilization of newly published primary sources, mainly from the People's Republic of China (PRC). The history of the Eighth Route Army, created by the veterans of the Long March, is well known. Xiang provides us with an in-depth look at what happened to those scattered Chinese Communist Party (CCP) guerrilla units in Southeast China that the CCP Central Committee left behind at the start of the Long March. From these units and their commanders arose the New Fourth Army. He traces the evolution and unification of these units during their three years of isolation from Mao Zedong's Yan'an headquarters. Communications were reestablished in late 1937, parallel to the creation of the second CCP-GMD United Front. From the surviving thirteen thousand "Red Bandits," Mao in Yan'an, Chen Yi and his guerrilla cohorts in southern China, and the Guomindang fashioned the New Fourth Army from October to December 1937. Xiang gives a detailed analysis of the chief battles of the NFA as well as of the controversies between Mao and the NFA leadership over correct military and political strategy. The NFA soon became a microcosm for the factional rivalry between Mao's real and imagined enemies within the CCP, ranging from the pro Stalinist Comintern group to potential rightists among CCP military officers. The NFA ostensibly harbored both varieties. The NFA also served as the arena for strategic debates between Mao and the NFA's leadership, soon personified by Chen Yi and a number of his generals such as Su Yu, Ye Fei, and Huang Kechang. At issue were three matters: Should the CCP continue to rely on Mao's guerrilla warfare strategy or escalate permanently to conventional mobile warfare using regular CCP troop units? By 1947, mobile warfare was favored and successfully practiced by the NFA. To do otherwise, Chen felt, would extend the civil war by allowing the GMD to dominate the battlefield. [End Page 248] Should the NFA follow Mao's periodic desire to rebuild the CCP guerrilla bases south of the Yangzi River or follow Chen's strategy of taking the revolution to the GMD's strategic heartland north of the Yangzi River? Xiang discusses this seesaw debate in detail. Finally, should the CCP's chief goal for the second CCP-GMD United Front be to fight the Japanese invaders or to use it as cover for the CCP to expand its territory, troops, and population at the expense of the GMD? Unlike the other two issues, this latter debate was easily won by Mao. Soon most of the NFA leadership accepted Mao's view that the anti-Japanese war was secondary. CCP expansion, even at the risk of restarting the civil war, was necessary if Mao was to defeat the GMD government after the Western Allies defeated Japan. Xiang includes an analysis of Mao's pre-1949 purges of his CCP opponents, most notably the anti-Bolshevik purge of the early 1930s and the 1942 rectification of both Rightists and Cominternists. Mao's egocentric determination to become "China's Stalin" through periodic purges, regardless of their impact on the revolution, is a forerunner of post-1949 Maoist excesses. Inevitably these issues focus the author's attention on the credibility...

This dissertation examines the motivations, logic, and functions of media control in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Rather than telling the history of media control in modern China, or giving a comprehensive account of the techniques employed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to control the media, it investigates the origins of the CCP’s theoretical approach to the media, as well as the consequences of the resulting concepts for practical media work in the PRC. The first half of the thesis tracks the genesis of the Party’s media concept and reconstructs the conditions that contributed to its rise in the first half of the twentieth century; the chapters in the latter half follow this concept in its implementation through a number of case studies from the early 1950s through the late 1990s. Since the day of its founding, the CCP has placed great emphasis on questions of media and propaganda; after 1949 the party-state has claimed full control of the Chinese print, broadcast, and electronic media. Asking for the reasons behind this claim, I argue that it must be traced back to the Party’s desire to bring about the transformation of human consciousness and to create an environment conducive to this process, a utopian project informed as much by the Leninist version of Marxism as by Neo-Confucian ideas of education and state-society relations prevalent in the late imperial era. This project and its underlying fundamental assumptions have survived – in greatly transmuted form – to the present day and continue to inform the strict control of the Chinese media, even when such controls clash with other political and socio-economic interests of the Party-state. I propose to take the media as a variable to measure changes in the CCP’s approach to governance. The Party’s handling of the media serves as a mirror of state-society relations; consequently, the investigation into the media provides us with information on the CCP’s conceptions of governance under changing circumstances. I argue that over the past twenty years, the CCP has successfully altered and reinterpreted its vision of the state and its position therein; it has adopted a more flexible set of methods to achieve its fundamental political objectives. At the same time, however, the ultimate goals of the Party – originally formulated in Yan’an – have changed remarkably little.

When Mao Zedong shouted loudly, “The central people’s government of the People's Republic of China is established today” at the Tiananmen tower on October 1 of 1949, that very moment not only symbolized the emergence of the Chinese Communist Party as the victor in the Chinese civil war, but also signaled the beginning of the geographical and political separation across the Strait. “The Republic of China” and “the People’s Republic of China” have taken their respective controls across the Taiwan Strait for more than 60 years and the cross-strait relations experienced “military standoff and hostile confrontation.” When Taiwan lifted the ban on visiting relatives in Mainland China in the 1980s, the stance of “mutual confrontation and zero contact” was transformed into the phase of “open and exchange; cold government and enthusiastic citizens” with military conflicts largely reduced. However, the two consecutive Taiwanese presidents Lee Teng-hui and Chen Shui-bian proposed the highly contentious “special state-to-state relationship” and “one country on each side” respectively. This led to the complete lack of trust from both sides and the People’s Republic of China unilaterally shutting down the official communication channel. When Ma Ying-jeou took the presidency in 2008, the governments of both sides began to resume their roles as promoters of the normalization of the cross-strait relations under the principle of the “1992 Consensus.” Nevertheless, the “two political entities” have been established for more than 60 years which have developed their own politics, economics and cultures.Although the current cross-strait relations are having great future prospect, they are only limited to “economic” exchanges. The “political” aspect is still confined to the “One China” and “Taiwan independence” policies firmly held by the governments across the strait. In addition, the potential “party alteration” in Taiwan every four years creates more uncertainty to the cross-strait stability. Although the cross-strait relations have witnessed a U-turn, the subjective and objective factors surrounding the person in power inevitably affect the cross-strait relations. Taiwan witnessed its first party alteration in 2000 when the KMT ended its rule for more than 50 years. Chen Shui-bian’s successful bid to the presidency was then confronted with issues such as how to break the cross-strait deadlock and the direction of Taiwan’s economic development in view of China’s emerging economic power. As a result, it is worth examining in details how the China policy was formulated and the effects thereof under Chen Shui-bian’s government amid pressures from both the United States and China internationally and the resistance from the opposition party domestically. Finally, the research conclusion is drawn from the evaluation on how the Democratic Progress Party responses to China as China constantly pushes on the economic front without sacrificing Taiwan’s sovereignty at the Post- Chen Shui-bian era as the summary of this thesis.

After the Second World War, a bipolar world, known as the Cold War Era, has been clearly formed between the Western Bloc and Communist Bloc while the United States and the Soviet Union at the peak on each side. In Eastern Europe, the United States was restrained and felt helpless about Soviet expansion in this area with the perception of Yalta system. On the other hand, in Asia, with the breakdown of talks, an all-out war resumed. A Chinese civil war fought between Kuomintang (also as KMT or Chinese National Party) and Chinese Communist Party (CCP). At the end of 1948, KMT has occupied the inferior position. In the early period of 1949, CCP forces crossed the Yangtze River and successfully captured Nanking, the capital of KMT’s Republic of China (PRC) government. On October 1, 1949, Mao Zedong proclaimed the People’s Republic of China (PRC) with its capital at Beiping, which was renamed Beijing. Chiang Kai-shek and millions of Nationalist Chinese retreated from mainland China to the island of Taiwan. Confronted with the CCP takeover of mainland China, the United States came to reformulate its China Policy which later marked a turning point in Sino-American relationship during the period of 1949 to the middle 1950. In June 1948, the leader of Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia, Josip Broz Tito, was officially denounced and his party, the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (CPY), was ejected as a member of the Cominform by the Soviet Union. Since the West branded Tito a Soviet puppet for his loyalty and constancy of faith to Stalinism, the Tito-Stalin Split presented a whole new realm of possibilities to the United States for its dilemma in china—“Chinese Titoism.” With the influence of Stilwell Incident over Sino-American relationship and the facts of Tito-Stalin Split, Truman made an about-face change to U.S. China Policy in 1949. By the early 1949, the Truman Administration has already been making plans to diverge from Chiang and his KMT such as the publication of China White Paper; at the same time, Truman Administration keeping making chances to have conversations with the CCP. By meeting and negotiating with the CCP officials, Truman Administration attempted to disunite Communist China and the Soviet Union, expected Mao to be the “Asian Tito,” and then Communist China can joint forces with the United States to fight against the Soviet Union, especially in the Asia-Pacific region. Until the outbreak of Korean War in June 1950, the United States finally realized that what it faced is hostile china along with the Sino-Soviet partnership. By applying Graham T. Allison’s three decision-making models, namely, the Rational Actor Model (RAM), the Organizational Behavior Model (OBM), and the Governmental Politics Model (GPM) as the theoretical structure and basis, the thesis would step by step explore the decision-making process of Truman Administration in engaging China to counter the threat from the Soviet Union during the period of 1949 to the middle 1950 through the perspectives of the rational assessment and choice on national interest, struggles between/among organizations based on different target and organizational culture, and pulling, hauling and bargaining games among relative bureaucrats. In addition, the thesis also applied the principles from Alexander L. George’s book, Presidential Decision-making in Foreign Policy, to aim at examining how President Truman’s, who has the final say, character, personality, value and world views made effect in the decision-making process of the target case study. In the process of theory confirming, the thesis discovered that by the period of transformation of Chinese regimes in 1949, the Tito-Stalin Split of 1948 presented the United States a new inspiration for the Communist World, that is, the Eastern Bloc is not a rigid “Iron Curtain.” Truman Administration considered that Titoism may set its roots upon China, the Yugoslav-Soviet Conflict could be a replay situation that occurred in mainland China, and both would put the strategic thought—Engaging China to counter the Soviet Threat—into practice. Nevertheless, from the historical perspectives, this kind of strategic thought seemed over-optimistic, which did not conform to fully rational considerations. However, with regard to the background of the early Cold War Era and the suspicion between the Truman Administration and KMT, the alternative that the United States took reflected the principles of “bounded rationality model.” As a result, by examining the decision-making process of Truman Administration in engaging China to counter the threat from the Soviet Union during the period of 1949 to the middle 1950, what the thesis explored not only the facts about the Sino-American relationship in this period, but also the continuity and change of Truman’s China Policy along with its cause and effect.

Reviewed by: Finding Women in the State: A Socialist Feminist Revolution in the People's Republic of China, 1949–1964 by Zheng Wang Aminda Smith Finding Women in the State: A Socialist Feminist Revolution in the People's Republic of China, 1949–1964 by Zheng Wang. Oakland: University of California Press, 2017. Pp. xv + 380. $85.00 cloth, $34.95 paper, $34.95 e-book. I recently attended a lecture by a well-known China watcher who is often cited for her expertise on Chinese Communist Party (CCP) policies related to women and gender equality. When an audience member asked whether there were contestations, over antifeminist policies, between the Party leadership and officials in the Women's Federation (Funü lianhehui 妇女联合会, or Fulian), the speaker responded by claiming that the Fulian cannot be considered a feminist organization as it is simply an arm of the Party. While this claim is not entirely false, it is misleading. Moreover, such a position is all too common in the reportage and scholarship on the People's Republic of China (PRC): the CCP is often portrayed as a thoroughly patriarchal, Borg-like monolith, just as masculinist and oppressive to women as any other modern state power, despite its early claims to the contrary. Thus, Zheng Wang's forceful and convincing argument to the contrary makes her new book a crucial intervention in the fields of PRC history and the history of Chinese feminism. As her title suggests, among [End Page 408] Party members and PRC state leaders, Wang finds committed feminist women, who truly endeavored to bring about a socialist feminist revolution. Finding Women in the State, organized into two parts and eight chapters, considers the work of Chinese Communist feminists through a series of cases. Because Wang's argument requires the close reading and unpacking of extremely rich and detailed source materials, her chapters are quite dense. And her discussion is so wide-ranging that one sometimes senses at least two different books in this one volume. But in the end, all of the pieces coalesce around Wang's answer to an important historiographical question: how do we evaluate the CCP's famous claim to have liberated women, epitomized in Mao Zedong's all-too-oft-quoted pronouncement that "women hold up half the sky"? The research conducted over the past several decades suggests one answer: Chinese women were, and remain, partially liberated—thanks to the whims of a male-dominated and patriarchal Communist Party that nevertheless maintained its rhetoric supporting gender equality and thus sporadically promoted women's rights when doing so did not undermine other Party goals. Wang shows, however, that what appears to be a series of half-hearted and superficial concessions made by a masculinist state are actually evidence of hard-won victories achieved by women working in the Women's Federation and other Party-state units; these feminists were truly committed to the Maoist claim that women's liberation was central to China's socialist revolution. Wang does not deny that the sites in which state feminists worked, such as the Women's Federation, were inseparable parts of the Communist Party. Indeed, it was enthusiasm for socialism's liberatory promise that led these women to join the revolution. Those feminists who held positions within the PRC state certainly demonstrated their loyalty to the Party. Crucially, however, Wang shows that cadres and leaders who did women's work (funü gongzuo 妇女工作) also saw themselves as quasi-independent actors, dedicated to opposing patriarchy in Chinese society and in the Communist state. And their pursuit of a bona fide feminist agenda caused repeated clashes between state feminists and other Party members, including those in the central leadership. This book traces the histories of those state feminists committed to women's work. It demonstrates that while their battles were all uphill and against strong opposition from many Party men, [End Page 409] state feminists fought hard and sometimes successfully fomented real change for Chinese women. Wang reveals that the effects of state feminism can be seen everywhere during the socialist period, even in high-level Party policy and propaganda. She also argues, however, that historians must search for feminism in PRC history because it...

In the winter of 1947 a teenaged girl from a small Shanxi village was beheaded with a hay-cutter-turned guillotine – Liu Hulan was another victim of the bloody Chinese Civil War of 1946–1949 in which the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Nationalist Party vied for control over the country. Her membership of the CCP and active involvement in its armed struggle within the local People's Militia drew her into danger as the village came into Nationalist hands. Within weeks of her execution, the CCP mobilised the story of Liu Hulan to rally support for its campaign. Mao Zedong himself declared that hers was ‘A great life and a glorious death’ and personally penned the calligraphy of this epithet that now graces the various memorials and materials constructed and produced in her honour. A peasant girl of enormous courage and bravery, defiant in the face of death and resistant to her captors’ demands that she recant her communist beliefs and betray her comrades, Hulan has been hailed as a heroic communist martyr for well over half a century.

Reviewed by: China's Lonely Revolution: The Local Communist Movement of Hainan Island, 1926–1956 by Jeremy A. Murray Fabio Lanza Jeremy A. Murray. China's Lonely Revolution: The Local Communist Movement of Hainan Island, 1926–1956. SUNY Series in Chinese Philosophy and Culture. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2017. 237 pp. $85.00 (cloth), $25.95 (paper). China's Lonely Revolution is the first study in English of the Communist movement on Hainan Island, from the unpromising founding of the local Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1926 to the first few years after the liberation of the island by a joint offensive of mainland forces and the Hainan column in 1950. In this well-researched monograph, Jeremy A. Murray provides another vivid example showing that the Chinese Revolution was not a univocal, centralized, or even well-coordinated affair. Rather, the long and complex struggles of Communist fighters—as well as all the other non-Communist actors who joined them—from the 1920s up to the Second Sino-Japanese War and the Chinese Civil War look more like a series of "revolutions," sharing overarching, if continuously evolving, goals but embedded in local situations and expressed in specific and contingent practices. This is already enough to recommend the book. Murray focuses on the Hainanese character of the Hainan Communist revolution, clearly pushing against an official "mainland" narrative that, since the early 1950s, has obscured the role of local leaders and islands activists who, basically with no support from and often with no connection to the central CCP, kept the revolutionary struggle going. As the Hainan leaders proudly declared in 1950, "for twenty-three years, the Red Flag did not fall" (1) on the tropical island. Murray's analysis of these 23 years is often cast against the knowledge that this regional emphasis would eventually create problems for Hainan CCP leaders in the early 1950s, when they would be accused of "localism" and often marginalized in the implementation of center-driven policies; he thus connects the political struggles of the early People's Republic of China (PRC) with the long history of "pragmatism, improvisation, and isolation" (1) that characterized the Hainan revolutionary experience. After a mad rush through centuries of Hainan's relations with the mainland in the first introductory chapter, the book follows a more or less chronological sequence: Murray describes the shifting political prospects of Hainan revolutionaries in the 1910s and early 1920s, moving then to the founding of the CCP and the early, troubled history of the Communist movement in Hainan, which, like its mainland counterpart, was almost completely annihilated by Nationalist repression. The Japanese occupation led to a very unstable alliance between the two Chinese parties, but it was a different alliance that would be crucial for the fate of the revolution, that between the Communists and the indigenous Li (黎) people who inhabited the island's interior. This was, as Murray notes, one of the main factors that allowed for the Hainan column—as the local CCP group was [End Page E-13] called—to survive and establish solid bases, but it was also an alliance that was declaredly anti-Guomindang, as it was the Nationalists (and not the Japanese) who had exercised unprecedented pressure on Li territories. The second half of the book is by far the most interesting and revealing, as Murray describes three important moments in the history of the Hainan Communist movement and of its relationship with the larger revolution taking place on the mainland. Chapter 6 details the refusal on the part of the Hainan fighters to leave the island and join the main force in the north of China, as ordered by the central CCP, a refusal that was motivated by practical and political considerations and that left the local forces almost completely isolated in fighting for their own survival during the civil war. The liberation of Hainan in 1950, when People's Liberation Army troops crossed the treacherous Qiongzhou Strait to join the local Hainan guerrilla fighters, is taken up in chapter 7; the military conquest was a brief affair, but a more lasting, if theoretical, battle was fought over how to construct the narrative of liberation...

Like Regime, Like Newspaper: Comparative Analysis on Newspaper Industries across Taiwan Strait (1949-1958) Abstract Ever since 1949, across Taiwan strait, the Republic of China on Taiwan ruled by Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuo Min Tang, KMT) and the People’s Republic of China on Chinese Mainland ruled by Chinese Communist Party (CCP) were antagonist to each other for a long time. Far-reaching changes were mandated both in Taiwan and Mainland China by the two regimes while communications between people on both sides of Taiwan strait were banned, and later vanished. Thus, to all professions across Taiwan strait, two groups of numerous experiments were performed at the same time. The experiences and consequences of these experiments influenced the working conditions, lives and cultures on both territories and evidenced distinction between the two national systems. As the most important media at the time, newspaper industry was highly regarded by both KMT and CCP. Although in the beginning of the political separation, newspaper industries across Taiwan strait were quite similar, the many newspaper policies raised by the two governments molded different environments for the industry. Experiments of newspaper industry under different regimes were taken place from then on. Within ten years, the newspaper industries evolved seperately across the strait, and around 1958, divergent newspaper systems appeared. Newspaper industry in Mainland China became a typical example of the industry under totalitarian regime, while newspaper industry in Taiwan showed itself a model of the industry under authoritarian regime. Base on the above historical background, what was the mechanism that caused and shaped different newspaper industries across Taiwan strait? How did newspaper industry respond to totalitarian or authoritarian ruling? What factors that differentiated authoritarianism from totalitarianism can be reached through the examples in newspaper industry? These questions reckon the necessity of comparative study on the same industry in two isolated and widely different regions during the same time period. This dissertation tries to be contributive to the answers. Newspaper industry is considered and studied here with its entire functionality. Not only are news reporting, editing and editorial writing examined, but newspaper’s producing, sales and management are also studied. Comparative historical analysis is applied as the main methodology with the assistance of knowledges from journalism, political science, sociology, business administration and accounting. Acknowledging newapapers as the “tongue and throat to the party” and tool for propaganda, CCP spared no effort to control newspaper industry. However, it’s means and artifices were nimble and flexible. From 1949, CCP elaborated a government-owned hierarchy newspaper system. Party leaders directed newspapers owned and operated by central to local governments, while tolerated temporary existence of some privately-owned newspapers. Following the establishment of the regime, CCP seized newspaper industry’s resources such as manpower, materials, financial supply, news announcing, circulation channels and market throughout Mainland China. The number of remaining privately-owned newspapers and circulation and advertising agent houses declined sharply and eventually died out in a few years. When CCP had monopolized the newspaper industry, consequently, it had monopolized the social capitals contained in the industry. Newspapers in the totalitarian country became part of the regime itself. On the other side of the strait, the retreating and exhausted KMT faced difficulties inside and outside Taiwan. For surviving, the adoption of a two-handed policy, with both suppressions and compromises was inevitable, which made the ROC of Taiwan an authoritarian country. Government’s publication moratorium and journalistic taboos set walls around newspaper industry, but also kept potential competitors away. Among the coexisting, fixed-numbered newspapers, those owned by government or KMT were in leading positions in 1949. However, due to the realism of authoritarianism, some “reservations,” such as social and crime news, popular supply and circulation markets, and advertisements had been made by the government for other newspapers to maneuver their future with free competition in these areas. Privately-owned newspapers utilized the opportunities created by these “reservations” to compete capitalistically. In ten years, resources contained in Taiwanese societies were gradually excavated and transferred to privately-owned newspapers when social capitals were being accumulated by them; meanwhile government- and KMT-owned newspapers began to ebb. Preparation for privately-owned newspapers to meet the further economic development and foundation for them to exceed government- and KMT-owned newspapers were established in this period of time. Ten years were short in history, yet long enough to create two completely different newspaper industries in two areas that were politically separated and isolated to each other. It was the decade right after the split in 1949 that the two regimes across Taiwan strait, CCP’s totalitarian and KMT’s authoritarian, formed newspaper industries based on each one’s political ideology. So ten years are long enough to have a specific newspaper industry appear under a regime’s specific ruling. Sensitive to its environment as any other news media is, newspaper industry is a product of the regime that brings about the media industry’s environment. Like regime, like newspaper.

The Republic of China (ROC), which was created in 1912, succeeded the territory and complete national sovereignty of governments of successive dynasties of China. Therefore, it is simply called "China" in the international community. Ten years after the founding of the ROC, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was formed under the direction of the Comintern (Third International) and then expanded its forces by taking advantage of the opportunity of Japan's invasion of China. In 1949, the CCP, under the support and assistance of the former Soviet Union, took control of the mainland area of the ROC by force and declared the founding of the People's Republic of China (PRC) on October 1 of the same year. The CCP set up a different state on the mainland area and the government of the ROC was relocated to the Taiwan area, and since then, two mutually exclusive regimes have coexisted in China, and thus the so-called issue of China emerged in the international community.

Journal of Democracy 14.1 (2003) 18-26 [Access article in PDF] The Limits of Authoritarian Resilience Bruce Gilley The success of the recent leadership transition in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might be interpreted as evidence that China's authoritarian regime is historically unique. More than a decade after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the communist orders of Eastern Europe, the CCP not only remains in power but has installed a younger, better-educated, even more confident set of successors at its head. And the CCP's Sixteenth Party Congress in November 2002 marked the first smooth leadership transition in a communist regime not to have involved the death or purging of the outgoing leader. Authoritarian regimes have been traditionally understood by political theorists as being terminally weak at their core, due to the absence of any of the checks on power that the rule of law, the separation of powers, or popular contestability would afford. The view is that the inherent weakness of these regimes will inevitably become more pronounced as the relative balance of resources shifts over time away from the state and toward autonomous social forces, often as a result of such forms of development as economic growth or international opening. At these stages of development, it is generally believed, authoritarian regimes find themselves suffering from what might be called "the logic of concentrated power"—that is, the tendency for power to concentrate in the hands of a few individuals or personalistic factions and to be fatally misused by them, with results that typically include misgovernment, a deterioration of legitimacy, corruption, and weak norms of conduct among governing elites. 1 But China—whose people represent roughly half of that part of the [End Page 18] world's population which is not allowed to choose its leaders though democratic elections—has so far defied the traditional model. Some have attempted to account for this in terms of a fundamental reconsolidation of the CCP's house following the nadir of the Party's legitimacy after the 1989 Tiananmen protests. The CCP, these observers argue, appears to have effectively solved the democracy deficit without democracy by putting in place mechanisms that have mitigated, or possibly eliminated, the traditional weaknesses of authoritarian regimes. Andrew Nathan nicely sums up the evidence for such mechanisms under the rubric of "regime institutionalization." I think that this characterization is mistaken, a point I will argue below in reference to three features of authoritarian regimes that have historically been among the most difficult to institutionalize: 1) the process of elite promotions; 2) the maintenance of elite functional responsibility; and 3) popular participation. Certainly by comparison to the bedlam of the Mao Zedong era, the People's Republic of China (PRC) is today a fairly institutionalized state. But relative to the actual needs of contemporary Chinese society, the PRC falls conspicuously short: Any given feature of a political system can be said to be "institutionalized" only when it is both consistent with a state's normative ideals and effectively implemented. By these standards, the evidence of PRC institutionalization remains faint. Nor does it seem likely that such institutionalization will eventually strengthen. Indeed, since 1949, there have been discernable cycles of consolidation and breakdown in China: The limits of regime institutionalization have been reached before and, in response, the "logic of concentrated power" has reasserted itself. Something similar is likely to happen again and, in due course, weaken the institutionalization apparent at the CCP's recent Sixteenth Party Congress. Present Institutionalization Samuel P. Huntington characterizes political institutionalization as the process by which a given feature of a political system acquires the traits of "adaptability, complexity, autonomy, and coherence." The feature in question may be a process, an institution, or a rule. When institutionalization is achieved throughout a political system, Huntington says, it produces government which is "effective, authoritative, [and] legitimate." 2 Although this definition suffices to explain a government's effectiveness or authoritativeness, Huntington has almost certainly misconceived the particular nature of the problem of legitimacy in an authoritarian context: He fails to grasp that for any of the above mentioned features of...

The generally accepted view of the first United Front in China was that the Communist International (Comintern) initially proposed this policy in 1920, at approximately the same time that Marxist study groups were being formed into a communist party in China.' According to this view, an active policy of alliance between the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Guomindang (GMD) began in 1922, as a result of the intervention of Henk Sneevliet (Maring), an agent of the Moscow-based Comintern. These dates assume the existence of the CCP prior to the Comintern's adoption of the United Front, an interpretation that most recently published Western histories of the CCP accept.2 Not surprising, historians from the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the former USSR also subscribe to this view because to do otherwise would devalue the CCP's role.3 However, this traditional view that the CCP was integral to the United Front is contradicted by a wealth of evidence showing that the Bolsheviks proposed this policy almost three years before the CCP was formed. In fact, Soviet officials first promoted an alliance with Sun Zhongshan (Sun Yat-sen) during summer 1918 before there were any communists in China at all. The Comintern followed suit during spring 1919, more than a year before Marxist study groups were formed. Finally, with the Comintern's backing, in January 1921 Chen

The consolidation of a state rests not only on military and administrative power, but most importantly cultural power. Only cultural power can consolidate systems of thought and standards of value. From the outset, the Chinese Communist Party recognized culture as a power of influence. Contrary to the negative opinion towards peasant farmers (which Marxists customarily held), the Chinese Communist Party did not stigmatize peasant farmers as passivists and pacifists, but instead mobilized them using cultural power and thereby creating Peasant Movements. This strategy forcefully induced regime change. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, the Chinese Communist Party further prioritized control over cultural power as a matter of national and strategic importance. As the Cultural Revolution came to an end, and the Chinese Government sought to reconnect its people with its cultural heritage, four masterpieces of Chinese Classical literature were produced in the form of television series, and were largel successful. Notably, audiences of these televised Chinese masterpieces also happen to be current practitioners who are leading the transition of the Chinese government away from Marxist-Leninist ideologies and principles, and towards classical Chinese values such as ”ho” (peace) and ”yi” (justice).As China's successful economic reform reached its thirtieth year, the Chinese government produced another television series titled ”Rise of Great Nations”. This series narrate nine countries that had ”risen” in the past five hundred years. While China is not included in the list of the ”risen”, the series itself provoked much discourse-both domestic and foreign-regarding Cina's new role in a new era. There are five sections in this paper. Introduction and conclusion aside, the three core chapters are respectively analyses on: 1) the critiques of foreign scholars toward the television series; 2) historical comparisons of Chinese and world history; and 3) the causes and prequisites that lead to the rise of a nation. This paper aims to study the historical perspective of the People's Republic in comparison to the histories of the nine countries which the People's Republic seeks to highlight itself. This paper finds that culture is a critical source of power to peace and worldwide integration in a multipolar world system.

Reviewed by: Hong taiyang shi zenyang shengqi de David Cheng Chang (bio) Gao Hua 高華. Hong taiyang shi zenyang shengqi de 紅太陽是怎樣升起的: 延安整風運動的來龍去脈 (How did the red sun rise over Yan'an? A history of the Rectification Movement). Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2000. 705 pp. Paperback $24.00, isbn 962-201-920-X. Published in Hong Kong and now in its seventh printing but banned in China, Nanjing University history professor Gao Hua's Hong taiyang shi zenyang shengqi de is a historiographical tour de force, in terms of both sources and analysis. Unparalleled in scope and depth, and nuanced in approach, Gao Hua's work offers the most complete and convincing account of the Rectification Movement (1942–1945) to date. By tracing the Rectifications origin's and discussing its long-term consequences (來龍去脈), Party historian Gao makes a major contribution to the study of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in general. While it confirms the fact that the campaign emancipated the Party from Soviet-influenced dogmatism and unified the Party in its preparation for the final showdown with the Kuomintang (KMT), this book shatters the Party's orthodox version of this crucial history as a salubrious thought-reform process. In sharp contrast to the Party line and earlier Western scholarship influenced by Edgar Snow and John Service's impressions, and anti-Vietnam War sentiment (e.g., Selden 1971),1 Gao defines the campaign as a political process directed by Mao, in which Mao employed his political preponderance (shi 势) "to thoroughly reconfigure the upper structure of the Party, to redistribute upper-level power with himself as the absolute master." In terms of methods (shu 術), Mao applied his innovative dual process of thought reform and coercive cadre examinations and purges. In the realm of ideology (dao 道), Mao "used his own ideas and thoughts and fundamentally transformed the ethos of the CCP from a Russianized party to a party of Mao" (p. xii). Gao takes pains to argue that the Rectification dealt a fatal blow to any remnant of "the May Fourth idealism of freedom and democracy" within the Party and thus laid the foundation for a "total Mao Zedong-ization." Gao further emphasizes that "the institution of a full gamut of new Party traditions, concepts, and paradigms bearing Mao's hallmarks would change the lives and fate of several hundred million Chinese after 1949"(p. xii). This is an unmistakable reference to various political campaigns in the People's Republic of China (PRC), particularly the Anti-Rightist Campaign (1957) and the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976). In a sense, this book suggests that the origins of the Cultural Revolution should be sought in the 1940s, not in the 1950s as MacFarquhar has done in his famed trilogy.2 [End Page 515] Gao's book has two major strengths. One is its exhaustive and astute use of a wide range of available sources, including published official accounts, memoirs by former officials, rank-and-file participants of the campaign, Soviet observers, and CCP defectors. To sift through such an immense amount of data, which encompass complex and ever-evolving relationships between hundreds of historical actors in the span of decades, requires extraordinary sensitivity and tenacity. Gao states, "It could be said that my extensive life experience in the PRC and my wide-ranging reading of relevant historical materials sharpened my sensitivity, and gradually enabled me to read behind the lines" (p. 653). Second, while eschewing "excessive interpretation" in theoretical analysis (p. 654) and focusing on delineating historical facts, Gao draws from traditional Chinese concepts and he proposes an incisive analytical framework of "dao, shu, shi" (道術 勢), and offers a number of illuminating insights, such as the "double-faced" Mao and the "double-personality" of the CCP body politic. Historiographical Contribution In the fine tradition of "carrying the red flag to attack the red flag," Gao effectively uses CCP sources to subvert CCP orthodoxy. As Gao notes in his epilogue, with a few rare exceptions, the vast majority of archives related to the Rectification are still classified, including those pertaining to the CCP Politburo, Secretariat, the Central Organization Bureau, and the former Central Bureau of Social Affairs (Yan'an KGB). It is noteworthy that Gao acquired all his sources...

The impact of Deng Xiaoping's leadership on Chinas foreign relations was as great as on its domestic politics. The exit of a ruler of Deng's stature potentially clears the way for the kinds of momentous changes that occurred in Chinese foreign policy after Deng succeeded Mao Zedong to the paramount leadership. But such fundamental change has not occurred in the immediate wake of Deng's death in February 1997. While Jiang Zemin's need to consolidate his position may exacerbate tensions on certain issues between China and some foreign powers, particularly the United States, the long-term trends in Chinas foreign relations are generally unaffected by the leadership transition. Even in maintaining its present course, however, post-Deng China will likely arrive at crossroads which have significant and uncertain consequences for its foreign relations, and indeed for peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific region.It is useful at the outset to identify some of the important elements of Chinas foreign relations that have changed with Deng's passing and equally useful to point up those which have not.Changes and ContinuitiesTo be sure, Deng's death changes the environment of foreign policy making in the People's Republic of China (PRC). The era of ultra-paramount leaders such as Mao and Deng appears to be over. With Deng'sThis article was written when the author was a Research Fellow at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Australian National University, Canberra. efforts to systematize and decentralize the leadership structure and with the evolution of the Chinese Communist party (CCP) from a revolutionary to a conservative, managerial party, major foreign policy decisions are now the result of consensus-building among several top- ranking officials.To oversimplify, PRC elites may be divided into two camps: conservatives and moderates. The conservatives favour limited and gradual economic liberalization. They believe reforming the Chinese economy too rapidly and allowing foreign economic interests to penetrate too deeply could cause unacceptable damage to the PRC's sociopolitical system and 'spiritual civilization.' They are also highly sensitive to what may be perceived as infringements upon Chinese 'sovereignty' and do not think such infringements should be overlooked out of fear of offending Chinas foreign trading partners. In contrast, moderate Chinese elites favour relatively swift and broad economic reforms because they believe that only fundamental changes will allow China to bridge the gulf with the developed countries and that the benefits of rapid growth are widespread enough to enable the country to endure some temporary pain and dislocation while laying the groundwork for higher overall living standards for the next generation. Moderates are also more inclined to accept political compromises with powerful countries such as the United States for the sake of harmonious relations and of Chinas economic development. Because Deng was a moderate and a powerful bulwark against a policy driven by hyper-nationalism, his death does not bode well for the important Sino-United States relationship. While Jiang is in many respects a protege of Deng, he does not yet appear to have a political vision or agenda of his own. Instead, he acts rather as a broker among other powerful groups and factions. He may be less committed to Deng's philosophy and less able than Deng to bend the system to his will. Through 1997, however, Deng's moderate agenda was still on track. Jiang and the president of the United States, Bill Clinton, met in Washington on 29 October to patch up their recently strained relations, and the CCP announced further market-oriented economic reforms during the 15th party congress in September.Although he carries the titles of president of the PRC, chairman of the Central Military Commission, and general secretary of the CCP Central Committee, Jiang does not command the authority of his predecessor. …

PurposeOne of the standard practices of Communist Parties around the world is to employ art, including music, as a channel to spread political ideologies. This study aims to scrutinize the reception of Beethoven's music, particularly from a political viewpoint, by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in the People's Republic of China (PRC) during the early years of its rule, i.e. from 1949–1959. The ambiguity of Beethoven's own political outlook may have provided an opportunity for the CCP to choose the composer and his music in support of its aims.Design/methodology/approachTo understand why and how the CCP could exploit Beethoven and his music to support its political ideologies, a series of Chinese writings on Beethoven between 1949 and 1959 have been studied. Those literatures not only helped the composer gain reputation and popularity in the PRC, but also provided a platform for the CCP to manipulate such candidate and his music. Finally, the reception of the performances of the Ninth Symphony in 1959 in the PRC is singled out for close examination.FindingsDuring the first ten years of the establishment of the PRC, the quantity and quality of the articles on Beethoven expanded considerably. These writings continued to reflect the reception of Beethoven and his music with the addition of political nuances that could be interpreted in the CCP's favour.Originality/valueThis paper seeks to examine the PRC's artistic policies, with a particular emphasis on the reception of Beethoven and western classical music.