A History of China Part 24

Both Taiwan and mainland China have developed extremely quickly. The reasons do not seem to lie solely in the form of government, for the pre-conditions for a "takeoff" existed in China as early as the 1920's, if not earlier. That is, the quick development of China could have started forty years ago but was prevented, primarily for political reasons. One of the main pre-conditions for quick development is that a large part of the population is inured to hard and repet.i.tive work. The Chinese farmer was accustomed to such work; he put more time and energy into his land than any other farmer. He and his fellows were the industrial workers of the future: reliable, hard-working, tractable, intelligent. To train them was easy, and absenteeism was never a serious problem, as it is in other developing nations. Another pre-condition is the existence of sufficient trained people to manage industry. Forty years ago China had enough such men to start modernization; foreign a.s.sistance would have been necessary in some fields, but only briefly.

Another requirement (at least in the period before radio and television) is general literacy. Meaningful statistical data on literacy in China before 1937 are lacking. Some authors remark that before 1800 probably all upper-cla.s.s sons and most daughters were educated, and that men in the middle and even in the lower cla.s.ses often had some degree of literacy. In this context "educated" means that these persons could read cla.s.sical poetry and essays written in literary Chinese, which was not the language of daily conversation. "Literacy," however, might mean only that a person could read and write some 600 characters, enough to conduct a business and to read simple stories. Although newspapers today have a stock of about 6,000 characters, only some 600 characters are commonly used, and a farmer or worker can manage well with a knowledge of about 100 characters. Statements to the effect that in 1935 some 70 per cent of all men and 95 per cent of all women were illiterate must include the last category in these figures. In any case, the literacy program of the Nationalist government had penetrated the countryside and had reached even outlying villages before the Pacific War.

The transportation system in China before the war was not highly developed, but numerous railroads connecting the main industrial centers did exist, and bus and truck services connected small towns with the larger centers. What were missing in the pre-war years were laws to protect the investor, efficient credit facilities, an insurance system supported by law, and a modern tax structure. In addition, the monetary system was inflation-p.r.o.ne. Although sufficient capital probably could have been mobilized within the country, the available resources either went into foreign banks or were invested in enterprises providing a quick return.

The failure to capitalize on existing means of development before the War resulted from the chronic unrest caused by warlordism, revolutionaries and foreign invaders, which occupied the energies of the Nationalist government from its establishment to its fall. Once a stable government free from internal troubles arose, national development, whether private or socialist, could proceed at a rapid pace.

Thus, the development of Communist China is not a miracle, possible only because of its form of government. What is unusual about Communist China is the fact that it is the only nation possessing a highly developed culture of its own to have jettisoned it in favour of a foreign one. What missionaries had dreamed of for centuries and knew they would never accomplish, Mao Tse-tung achieved; he imposed an ideology created by Europeans and understandable only in the context of Central Europe in the nineteenth century. How long his success will last is uncertain. One school of a.n.a.lysts believes that the friction between Soviet Russia and Communist China indicates that China's communism has become Chinese.

These men point out that Communist Chinese practices are often direct continuations of earlier Chinese practices, customs, and att.i.tudes. And they predict that this trend will continue, resulting in a form of socialism or communism distinctly different from that found in any other country. Another school, however, believes that communism precedes "Sinism," and that the regime will slowly eliminate traits which once were typical of China and replace them with inst.i.tutions developed out of Marxist thinking. In any case, for the present, although the Communist government's aim is to impose communist thought and inst.i.tutions in the country, typically Chinese traits are still omnipresent.

Soon after the establishment of the Peking regime, a pact of friendship and alliance with the Soviet Union was concluded (February 1950), and Soviet specialists and civil and military products poured into China to speed its development. China had to pay for this a.s.sistance as well as for the loans it received from Russia, but the application of Russian experience, often involving the duplication of whole factories, was successful. In a few years, China developed its heavy industry, just as Russia had done. It should not be forgotten that Manchuria, as well as other parts of China, had modern heavy industries long before 1949. The Manchurian factories ceased production because, when the Russians invaded Manchuria at the end of the war, they removed the machinery to Russia.

Russian aid to Communist China continued to 1960. Its termination slowed development briefly but was not disastrous. Russian a.s.sistance was a "shot in the arm," as stimulating and about as lasting as American aid to Taiwan or to European countries. The stress laid upon heavy industry, in imitation of Russia, increased China's military strength quickly, but the consumer had to wait for goods which would make his life more enjoyable. One cause of friction in China today concerns the relative desirability of heavy industry versus consumer industry, a problem which arose in Russia after the death of Stalin.

China's military strength was first demonstrated in the Korean War when Chinese armies entered Korea (October 1950). Their successes contributed to the prestige of the Peking regime at home and abroad, but they also foreshadowed a conflict with Soviet Russia, which regarded North Korea as lying within its own sphere of influence.

In the same year, China invaded and conquered Tibet. Tibet, under Manchu rule until 1911, had achieved a certain degree of independence thereafter: no republican Chinese regime ever ruled Lhasa. The military conquest of Tibet is regarded by many as an act of Chinese imperialism, or colonialism, as the Tibetans certainly did not want to belong to China or be forced to change their traditional form of government.

Having regarded themselves as subjects of the Manchu but not of the Chinese, they rose against the communist rulers in March 1959, but without success.

Chinese control of Tibet, involving the construction of numerous roads, airstrips, and military installations, as well as differences concerning the international border, led in 1959 to conflicts with India, a country which had previously sided with the new China in international affairs.

Indeed, the borders were uncertain and looked different depending on whether one used Manchu or Indian maps. China's other border problem was with Burma. Early in 1960 the two countries concluded a border agreement which ended disputes dating from British colonial times.

Very early in its existence Communist China a.s.sumed control of Sinkiang, Chinese Central Asia, a large area originally inhabited by Turkish and Mongolian tribes and states, later conquered by the Manchu, and then integrated into China in the early nineteenth century. The communist action was to be expected, although after the Revolution of 1911 Chinese rule over this area had been spotty, and during the Pacific War some Soviet-inspired hope had existed that Sinkiang might gain independence, following the example of Outer Mongolia, another country which had been attached to the Manchu until 1911 and which, with Russian a.s.sistance, had gained its independence from China. Sinkiang is of great importance to Communist China as the site of large sources of oil and of atomic industries and testing grounds. The government has stimulated and often forced Chinese immigration into Sinkiang, so that the erstwhile Turkish and Mongolian majorities have become minorities, envious of their ethnic brothers in Soviet Central Asia who enjoy a much higher standard of living and more freedom.

Inner Mongolia had a brief dream of independence under j.a.panese protection during the war. But the majority of the population were Chinese, and already before the Pacific War, the country had been divided into three Chinese provinces, of which the Chinese Communists gained control without delay.

In general, when the Chinese Communists discuss territorial claims, they appear to seek the restoration of borders that China claimed in the eighteenth century. Thus, they make occasional remarks about the Hi area and parts of Eastern Siberia, which the Manchu either lost to the Russians or claimed as their territory. North 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 offsh.o.r.e, 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 ma.s.ses 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 cla.s.s against another. Not all societies have a cla.s.s system so clear-cut that cla.s.s 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 inst.i.tutions, 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, j.a.pan, 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 att.i.tude 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 j.a.panese 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 a.n.a.lysis is given by E.

von Eickstedt (_Ra.s.sendynamik 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 a.n.a.lysis 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. The earlier theories of R. Heine-Geldern have been used here.

p. 11: This is a summary of my own theories. Concerning the Tungus tribes, K. Jettmar (_Wiener Beitrage zur Kulturgeschichte_, vol. 9, 1952, p. 484f and later studies) has proposed a more refined theory; other parts of the theory, as far as it is concerned with conditions in Central Asia, have been modified by F. Kussmaul (in: _Tribus_, vol.

1952-3, pp. 305-60). Archaeological data from Central Asia have been a.n.a.lysed again by K. Jettmar (in: _The Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, Bulletin_ No. 23, 1951). The discussion on domestication of large animals relies on the studies by C.O. Sauer, H. von Wissmann, Menghin, Amschler, Flohr and, most recently, F. Han[vc]ar (in: _Saeculum_, vol. 10, 1959, pp. 21-37 with further literature), and also on my own research.

p. 12: An a.n.a.lysis of the situation in the South according to Western and Chinese studies is found in H.J. Wiens, _China's March toward the Tropics_, Hamden 1954. Much further work is now published by Ling Shun-sheng, Rui Yi-fu and other anthropologists in Taipei. The best a.n.a.lysis of denshiring in the Far East is still the book by K.J. Pelzer, _Population and Land Utilization_, New York 1941. The anthropological theories on this page are my own, influenced by ideas of R.

Heine-Geldern and Gordon Luce.

p. 14: Sociological theory, as developed by R. Thurnwald and others, has been used as a theoretical tool here, together with observations by A.

Credner and H. Bernatzik. Concerning rice in Yang-shao see R.

Heine-Geldern in _Anthropos_, vol. 27, p. 595.

p. 15: Wu Chin-ting defended the local origin of Yang-shao; T.J. Arne, J.G. Andersson and many others suggested Western influences. Most recently R. Heine-Geldern elaborated this theory. The allusion to Indo-Europeans refers to the studies by G. Haloun and others concerning the Ta-Hsia, the later Yueh-chih, and the Tocharian problem.

p. 16: R. Heine-Geldern proposed a "Pontic migration". Yin Huan-chang discussed most recently Lung-shan culture and the mound-dwellers.

p. 17: The original _Chu-shu chi-nien_ version of the stories about Yao has been accepted here, together with my own research and the studies by B. Karlgren, M. Loehr, G. Haloun, E.H. Minns and others concerning the origin and early distribution of bronze and the animal style. Smith families or tribes are well known from Central Asia, but also from India and Africa (see W. Ruben, _Eisenschmiede und Damonen in Indien_, Leiden 1939, for general discussion).--For a discussion of the Hsia see E.

Erkes.