A History of China, Wolfram Eberhard [ebook offline txt] 📗

Vietnam is probably aware that Imperial China exercised political rights over Tongking and Annam (the present-day North and part of South Vietnam). And, treaty or no, the Sino-Burmese question may be reopened one day, for Burma was semi-dependent on China under the Manchu.

The build-up of heavy industry enabled China to conduct an aggressive policy towards the countries surrounding her, but industrialization had to be paid for, and, as in other countries, it was basically agriculture that had to create the necessary capital. Therefore, in June 1950 a land-reform law was promulgated. By October 1952 it had been implemented at an estimated cost of two million human lives: the landlords. The next step, socialization of the land, began in 1953.

The co-operative farms were supposed to achieve higher production than small individual farms. It may be that any farmer, but particularly the Chinese, is emotionally involved in his crop, in contrast to the industrial worker, who often is alienated from the product he makes. Thus the farmer is unwilling to put unlimited energy and time into working on a farm that does not belong to him. But it may also be that the application of principles of industrial operation to agriculture fails because emergencies often occur in farming and are followed by periods of leisure, whereas in industry steady work is possible.

In any case, in 1956 strains began to appear in China's economy. In early 1958 the "Great Leap Forward" was promoted in an attempt to speed production in all sectors. Soon after, the first communes were created, against the advise of Russian specialists. The objective of the communes seems to have been not only the creation of a new organizational form which would allow the government to exercise more pressure upon farmers to increase production, but also the correlation of labor and other needs of industry with agriculture. The communes may have represented an attempt to set up an organization which could function independently, even in the event of a governmental breakdown in wartime. At the same time, the decentralization of industries began and a people's militia was created. The "back-yard furnaces," which produced high-cost iron of low quality, seem to have had a similar purpose: to teach citizens how to produce iron for armaments in case of war and enemy occupation, when only guerrilla resistance would be possible. In the same year, aggressive actions against offshore, Nationalist-held islands increased. China may have believed that war with the United States was imminent. Perhaps as a result of Russian talks with China, a detente followed in 1959, but so too did increased tension between Russia and China, while the results of the Great Leap and its policies proved catastrophic. The years 1961-64 provided a needed respite from the failures of the Great Leap. Farmers regained limited rights to income from private efforts, and improved farm techniques such as better seed and the use of fertilizer began to produce results. China can now feed her population in normal years.

Chinese leaders realize that an improved level of living is difficult to attain while the birth rate remains high. They have hesitated to adopt a family-planning policy, which would fly in the face of Marxist doctrine, although for a short period family planning was openly recommended. Their most efficient method of limiting the birth rate has been to recommend postponement of marriage.

First the limitation of private enterprise and business and then the nationalization of all important businesses following the completion of land reform deprived many employers as well as small shopkeepers of an occupation. But the new industries could not absorb all of the labor that suddenly became available. When rural youth inundated the cities in search of employment, the government returned the excess urban population to die countryside and recruited students and other urban youth to work on farms. Reeducation camps in outlying areas also provided cheap farm labor.

The problem facing China or any nation that modernizes and industrializes in the twentieth century can be simply stated. Nineteenth-century industry needed large masses of workers which only the rural areas could supply; and, with the development of farming methods, the countryside could afford to send its youth to the cities. Twentieth-century industry, on the other hand, needs technicians and highly qualified personnel, often with college degrees, but few unskilled workers. China has traditionally employed human labor where machines would have been cheaper and more efficient, simply because labor was available and capital was not. But since, with the growth of modern industry and modern farming, the problem will arise again, the policy of employing urban youth on farms is shortsighted.

The labor force also increased as a result of the "liberation" of women, in which the marriage law of April 1950 was the first step. Nationalist China had earlier created a modern and liberal marriage law; moreover, women were never the slaves that they have sometimes been painted. In many parts of China, long before the Pacific War, women worked in the fields with their husbands. Elsewhere they worked in secondary agricultural industries (weaving, preparation of food conserves, home industries, and even textile factories) and provided supplementary income for their families. All that "liberation" in 1950 really meant was that women had to work a full day as their husbands did, and had, in addition, to do house work and care for their children much as before. The new marriage law did, indeed, make both partners equal; it also made it easier for men to divorce their wives, political incompatibility becoming a ground for divorce.

The ideological justification for a new marriage law was the desirability of destroying the traditional Chinese family and its economic basis because a close family, and all the more an extended family or a clan, could obviously serve as a center of resistance. Land collectivization and the nationalization of business destroyed the economic basis of families. The "liberation" of women brought them out of the house and made it possible for the government to exploit dissension between husband and wife, thereby increasing its control over the family. Finally, the new education system, which indoctrinated all children from nursery to the end of college, separated children from parents, thus undermining parental control and enabling the state to intimidate parents by encouraging their children to denounce their "deviations." Sporadic efforts to dissolve the family completely by separating women from men in communes—recalling an attempt made almost a century earlier by the T'ai-p'ing—were unsuccessful.

The best formula for a revolution seems to involve turning youth against its elders, rather than turning one class against another. Not all societies have a class system so clear-cut that class antagonism is effective. On the other hand, Chinese youth, in its opposition to the "establishment," to conservatism, to traditional religion, to blind emulation of Western customs and institutions, to the traditional family structure and the position of women, had hopes that communism would eradicate the specific "evil" which each individual wanted abolished. Mao and his followers had once been such rebellious youths, but by the 1960's they were mostly old men and a new youth had appeared, a generation of revolutionaries for whom the "old regime" was dim history, not reality. In the struggle between Mao and Liu Shao-ch'i, which became increasingly apparent in 1966, Mao tried to retain his power by mobilizing young people as "Red Guards" and by inciting them to make the "Great Proletarian Revolution." The motives behind the struggle are diverse. It is on the one hand a conflict of persons contending for power, but there are also disagreements over theory: for example, should China's present generation toil to make possible a better life only for the next generation, or should it enjoy the fruits of its labor, after its many years of suffering? Mao opposes such "weakening" and favours a new generation willing to endure hardships, as he did in his youth. There is also a question whether the Chinese Communist Party under the banner of Maoism should replace the Russian party, establish Mao as the fourth founder after Marx, Lenin, and Stalin, and become the leader of world communism, or whether it should collaborate with the Russian party, at least temporarily, and thus ensure China Russian support. When, however, Chinese youth was summoned to take up the fight for Mao and his group, forces were loosed which could not be controlled. Following independent action by youth groups similar in nature to youth revolts in Western countries, the power and prestige of older leaders suffered. Even now (1969) it is impossible to re-establish unity and order; the Mao and Liu groups still oppose each other, and local factions have arisen. Violent confrontations, often resulting in hundreds of deaths, occur in many provinces. The regime is no longer so strong and unified as it was before 1966, although its end is not in sight. Quite possibly far-reaching changes may occur in the future.

Three factors will probably influence the future of China. First, the emergence of neo-communism, as in Czechoslovakia in 1968, in an attempt to soften traditional communist practice. Second, the outcome of the war in Vietnam. Will China be able to continue its eighteenth-century dream of direct or indirect domination of South-east Asia? Will North Vietnam detach itself from China and attach itself more closely to Russia? Will Russia and China continue to create separate spheres of influence in Asia, Africa, and South America? The first factor depends on developments inside China, the second on events outside, and at least in part on decisions in the United States, Japan, and Europe.

The third factor has to do with human nature. One may justifiably ask whether the change in human personality which Chinese communism has attempted to achieve is possible, let alone desirable. Studies of animals and of human beings have demonstrated a tendency to identify with a territory, with property, and with kin. Can the Chinese eradicate this tendency? The Chinese have been family-centered and accustomed to subordinating their individual inclinations to the requirements of family and neighborhood. But beyond these established frameworks they have been individualistic and highly idiosyncratic at all times. Under the communist regime, however, the government is omnipresent, and people must toe the official line. One senses the tragedy that affects well-known scholars, writers and poets, who must degrade themselves, their work, their past and their families in order to survive. They may hope for comprehension of their actions, but nonetheless they must suffer shame. Will the present government change the minds of these men and eradicate their feelings?

Communist China has made great progress, no doubt. Soon it may equal other developed nations. But its progress has been achieved at an unnecessary cost in human lives and happiness.

That the regime is no longer so strong and unified as it was before 1966 does not mean that its end is in sight. Far-reaching changes may occur in the near future. Public opinion is impressed with mainland China's progress, as the world usually is with strong nations. And public opinion is still unimpressed by the achievements of Taiwan and has hardly begun to change its attitude toward the government of the "Republic of China." To the historian and the sociologist, the experience of Taiwan indicates that China, if left alone and freed from ideological pressures, could industrialize more quickly than any other presently underdeveloped nation. Taiwan offers a model with which to compare mainland China.

NOTES AND REFERENCES

The following notes and references are intended to help the interested reader. They draw his attention to some more specialized literature in English, and occasionally in French and German. They also indicate for the more advanced reader the sources for some of the interpretations of historical events. As such sources are most often written in Chinese or Japanese and, therefore, inaccessible to most readers, only brief hints and not full bibliographical data are given. The specialists know the names and can easily find details in the standard bibliographies. The general reader will profit most from the bibliography on Chinese history published each year in the Journal of Asian Studies. These Notes do not mention the original Chinese sources which are the factual basis of this book.

Chapter One

p. 7: Reference is made here to the T'ung-chien kang-mu and its translation by de Mailla (1777-85). Criticism by O. Franke, Ku Chieh-kang and his school, also by G. Haloun.

p. 8: For the chronology, I rely here upon Ijima Tadao and my own research. Excavations at Chou-k'ou-tien still continue and my account should be taken as very preliminary. An earlier analysis is given by E. von Eickstedt (Rassendynamik von Ostasien, Berlin 1944). For the following periods, the best general study is still J.G. Andersson, Researches into the Prehistory of the Chinese, Stockholm 1943. A great number of new findings has been made recently, but no comprehensive analysis in a Western language is available.

p. 9: Comparison with Ainu has been made by Weidenreich. The theory of desiccation of Asia is not the Huntington theory, but I rely here upon arguments by J.G. Andersson and Sven Hedin.

p. 10.