Politics, Economy, and Society in Contemporary China 9781503622388

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Politics, Economy and Society in Contemporary China

Politics, Economy and Society in Contemporary China Bill Brugger and Stephen Reglar

Stanford University Press Stanford, California 1994

Stanford University Press Stanford, California © 1994 Bill Brugger and Stephen Reglar Originating publisher: The Macmillan Press Ltd First published in the U.S.A. by Stanford University Press, 1994 Printed in Hong Kong . Cloth ISBN 0-8047-2349-4 Paper ISBN 0-8047-2350-8 LC 93-86794 This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Contents Acknowledgements

Vll

Introduction 7

Part 1 Overview

9

China Under Mao

2 China After Mao

48

Part 2 Themes

89

3 State and Countryside

91

4 State, Enterprise and Town

138

5 Law and Policing

176

6 Intellectuals and Struggles

225

7 Family and Gender Relations

261

8 Minority Nationalities

305

Bibliography

341

Index

358

v

Acknowledgements The authors have drawn on some parts of earlier works and have reproduced a few passages verbatim (Brugger 1981 a and b; Brugger 1971 ). In all cases we are grateful to the publishers (International Thompson Publishing Services and UNESCO) who have given their permission for direct quotation. Thanks also are due to Professor Ted W olfers and the staff of the Department of History and Politics at the University of Wollongong for making time available for one of the authors. We are, of course, grateful for the contributions from students at the Flinders University of South Australia to whom a draft text was directed. For constructive comments, thanks arc due also to Tony Saich, Yvonne Corcoran-Nantes and Noel Tracy. For editorial work, thanks go to David Jolley. For much wider support, particular thanks go to Suzanne Brugger and Rosemary Reglar.

Vll

Introduction Since the eighteenth century Western accounts of China have oscillated between excessive admiration and excessive horror. That oscillation has continued up to the present in characterisation of the Communist Party and the regime it created. In the mid-1920s, Chinese Communists were regarded as extreme revolutionaries. Then during the Second World War, when that Party moderated its policies, Communists were seen as patriotic agrarian reformers. The Cold War thinking of the 1950s saw the new Chinese regime as 'totalitarian' in Soviet mode and when the Chinese Communist Party broke with the Soviet Party in the 1960s as even more sinister. The Cultural Revolution of the mid-1960s confirmed all the worst fears of cold-warriors whilst offering inspiration for a while to Western radicals. Then the opening-up of China in the early 1970s began to produce amongst some scholars a very favourable view of the 'Chinese road to socialism' and Mao Zedong's model of economic development. While many economists were sceptical, China was proclaimed a developmental success. Then after 1978, when the Chinese Communist Party changed tack and rejected many of Mao's policies in favour of market socialism, the World Bank revised downwards its estimate of China's gross domestic product and the favourable assessment of Mao's strategy began to evaporate. The mood changed later to one of extreme optimism for China's economic reform and gave rise to hopes for a future democratic agenda. During the 1980s, the Party blocked most moves towards the latter for fear of renewed Cultural Revolution-type turmoil but most commentators were mesmerised by economic success. When the economic reforms were beset by major problems, they were often explained away as inevitable setbacks in a transition to what Francis Fukuyama (1992) was later to call 'the end of history' (the triumph of liberal capitalist democracy). To question aspects of the reform process (as one of the present authors did) was often to invite criticism as a 'Maoist'. Then the Tiananmen massacre of 1989

2 Introduction caused a massive shock and gave rise once again to negative assessments of China, both political and economic. Yet before long, while there was no political reform, the government embarked on a new round of market reforms which are beginning to engender a new mood. Now one hears talk of huge rates of growth and estimates that China will become the largest economy in the world by 2010. General works on China have reflected those changes of mood. Such a text, written by one of the present authors at the end of Mao's life in the mid-1970s (Brugger 198la and b), adopted an orientation very different to any such book produced today. All writing inevitably reflects the milieu in which it is written but general texts are usually required to exhibit a greater degree of balance than most theses which are constructed around a discrete argument. Such balance is often illusory. In part this is because of the paucity of data. For example, output data on collectivised Chinese agriculture in the 1970s testified to great success. When input data became available, the Chinese agricultural 'miracle' was seen as a costly failure. Sociological survey work, moreover, has only really been possible since 1978 and only covers a small part of a huge country. Balance is also difficult to achieve by scholars in abstract disciplines which take historical context insufficiently seriously. For example, by the standards of the 1990s, the model of economic management adopted in China in the 1950s and copied from the Soviet Union was inappropriate. But is the current assessment being made according to standards of 'intensive' development (where productivity is important) and applied inappropriately to a stage of 'extensive development' where labour and resources are cheap and the cost of energy is not seen as vital? Also consider once again the assessment of collective agriculture. To be sure, changes in agriculture did not significantly raise the per capita standard of living of peasants, but they may perhaps be seen as providing some of the infrastructure without which privatised agriculture of the 1980s would have been less spectacular. Economics is notorious for being wise after the event. But the discipline of history is not much better. Because of ideological controls (both traditional and Communist), the old historical method of basing one's account on contemporary documents and testimony will be distorted by adherence to the official line or to radical repudiation of that line. Throughout the past forty years

Introduction

3

documents have surfaced dealing with the events of decades previously and these have been interpreted by people whose memories have been twisted by the traumas of civil war, mass campaigns and Cultural Revolution or who have been socialised into new discourses of power. One wonders sometimes about the veracity of contemporary accounts by people who always knew that the Cultural Revolution was wrong. The 'narrative unity' of a person's life is often achieved by unwitting distortion. This book is not so presumptuous as to claim to be following the slogan, beloved of Deng Xiaoping, 'seeking truth through facts'. It seeks to marshal various conflicting arguments around controversial themes. It tries to be open-minded though sometimes a judgmental tone is adopted (for example, that members of the 'Gang of Four' were inept politicians). While conflicting arguments may be found concerning all aspects of Chinese society, the themes included in this book are chosen to highlight questions of general relevance. For example, is collective agriculture necessarily wasteful? What is the best way of extracting a rural surplus for industrial development and what should the degree of that extraction be? Is collective agriculture in centrally planned states best seen in terms of a centrally controlled system based upon coercive direction or should it be seen in terms of patron-