Abstracts
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Issue 66 (July 2011)
Frederick C. Teiwes and Warren Sun
China's New Economic Policy under Hua Guofeng: Party Consensus and Party Myths
[Issue 66]
This study debunks Deng Xiaoping's creation myth, the official narrative largely adopted by Western scholarship, which credits Deng with initiating the PRC's new post-Mao reforms at the Third Plenum in December 1978. In the Western literature, this is further portrayed as the outcome of a power struggle between CCP Chairman Hua Guofeng, identified as the leader of an alleged "whateverist" faction, against a coalition of forces led by Deng Xiaoping, variously identified as "modernizers" or "reformers". The analysis in this article focuses on the central aspect of the myth (economic policy): the claim that before the Third Plenum Hua carried out a reckless and unsustainable neo-Maoist policy, the so-called "Western leap forward", until he was pushed aside at the plenum by Deng, who then initiated the start of the "reform and opening" program. Contrary to this narrative, Hua and Deng were in essential agreement on all key aspects of economic policy before the Third Plenum, including both the subsequently rejected "Western leap forward" (with Deng arguably more reckless than Hua in pushing this approach), and the early moves toward "reform and opening". Moreover, the evidence suggests that Hua, not Deng, was in the forefront of efforts to promote economic system reform.
pp. 1–23
Lauri Paltemaa
The Maoist Urban State and Crisis: Comparing Disaster Management in the Great Tianjin Flood in 1963 and the Great Leap Forward Famine
[Issue 66]
The article analyzes disaster management in the Great Tianjin Flood and compares it to the Great Leap Forward Famine. The flood was successfully contained and damage to the city minimized by diverting flood waters around Tianjin and flooding its suburban areas instead. This was made possible by existing preparations, the Maoist technique of mobilizing a mass campaign to protect the city from the flood, and by the policy priority given to the campaign by central, provincial and city leaders. The 1963 case shows how effective the Maoist state could be in protecting its citizens from natural hazard. While many Maoist governance structures and techniques were conducive to disaster management, especially in the emergency phase of the disaster, the same structures constrained relief aid and reconstruction measures. When compared to the Great Leap Forward Famine disaster, the 1963 case shows how effective disaster management was possible in the Maoist era only under certain political conditions. Managing faceless "natural" disasters was always easier than dealing with "man-made" ones.
pp. 25–51
YAN Xiaojun
Regime Inclusion and the Resilience of Authoritarianism: The Local People's Political Consultative Conference in Post-Mao Chinese Politics
[Issue 66]
How do we explain the stubborn persistence of authoritarian rule in a rapidly rising China? While scholars today deem political institutions essential for answering this question, our understanding of an important yet unique Chinese political institution—the People's Political Consultative Conference (PPCC)—has remained significantly inadequate. This article attempts to fill in this gap, studying the functional and political role of the PPCC in Chinese politics. Exploring original texts recording the daily operations of a county-level PPCC over two decades, it demonstrates that the PPCC—a pivotal inclusive regime institution—plays a far more important role in upholding the political regime than previously thought. Through conducting ideological indoctrination, dispensing preferential treatment, facilitating controlled political participation and maintaining constant surveillance over non-Communist élites and other societal leaders, the PPCC provides the Party-state with an important platform for co-opting potentially threatening social forces, a forum for policy bargaining, a channel for monitoring various social sectors and a mechanism for offering material benefits to the regime's most loyal and trustworthy collaborators. The Party-state also uses this consultative body as an instrument to garner feedback from society and build good governance. Overall, the PPCC helps to consolidate the Communist regime's social base, improve the quality of public services and strengthen the regime's control over society.
pp. 53–75
Terry Woronov
Learning to Serve: Urban Youth, Vocational Schools and New Class Formations in China
[Issue 66]
A classic problem in social sciences asks how schools are complicit in reproducing class divisions. This paper seeks to explore how Vocational Secondary schools in urban China today are instead producing new class divisions in China's new economic order. Based on a year of ethnographic fieldwork in two vocational schools in Nanjing and using a Weberian approach to class distinction and class formation, it suggests that the education system is both dividing the young urban population into new social and economic categories and enabling new social groups to form.
pp. 77–99
Ka-ming Wu
Tradition Revival with Socialist Characteristics: Propaganda Storytelling Turned Spiritual Service in Rural Yan'an
[Issue 66]
This essay examines the recent evolution of state-sponsored storytelling in rural China. During a month-long period in 2004, I followed Master Xu, a storyteller trained as a propagandist during the Mao era, as he gave performances in eight villages in rural Yan'an. I found that, at the level of the rural community, Master Xu was neither disseminating propaganda for the state nor giving extensive storytelling performances. Rather, his propaganda itinerary was being transformed into opportunities for a variety of religious services. Master Xu was asked by the villagers to perform clandestine healing sessions and to fit his performance into a range of religious rites. This essay demonstrates the radical re-interpretation of a previously politicized cultural tradition, and shows how forms of spiritual revival respond to problems and translocal conditions prevalent in Yan'an rural communities today.
pp. 101–17
Scott Waldron, Colin Brown and John Longworth
Agricultural Modernization and State Capacity in China
[Issue 66]
As the gains from agricultural liberalization diminish, China's policy-makers are looking for new ways to generate sustained agricultural and rural development. One major attempt to do so has been through a multi-faceted agricultural modernization program, in which the state will play a major role. This paper examines the role of the state in China's agricultural modernization program and provides recommendations on how this role can be enhanced. It does so through a case study of China's fine wool marketing sector, which comprises a diverse cast of specialized actors stretching from the west to the east of China, linked through a tapestry of policies, services and institutions. The detailed, micro-level and nuanced analysis leads to a set of specific recommendations on how these policy, service and institutional settings can be strengthened, but highlights that these measures must be underpinned by increased state capacity to deliver public good services.
pp. 119–42
Scott Waldron, Colin Brown and John Longworth
Agricultural Modernization and State Capacity in China
[Issue 66]
As the gains from agricultural liberalization diminish, China's policy-makers are looking for new ways to generate sustained agricultural and rural development. One major attempt to do so has been through a multi-faceted agricultural modernization program, in which the state will play a major role. This paper examines the role of the state in China's agricultural modernization program and provides recommendations on how this role can be enhanced. It does so through a case study of China's fine wool marketing sector, which comprises a diverse cast of specialized actors stretching from the west to the east of China, linked through a tapestry of policies, services and institutions. The detailed, micro-level and nuanced analysis leads to a set of specific recommendations on how these policy, service and institutional settings can be strengthened, but highlights that these measures must be underpinned by increased state capacity to deliver public good services.
pp. 119–42
