The Cambridge History of China - Volume 14 The People's Republic, Part 1: The Emergence of Revolutionary China 1949-1965

THE CAMBRIDGE HISTORY

OF CHINA

General editors

DENI S TWITCHETT and JOH N K. FAIRBANK

Volume 14

The People's Republic, Part 1:

The Emergence of Revolutionary China 1949-1965

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE CAMBRIDGE

HISTORY OF

CHINA

Volume 14

The People's Republic, Part 1:

The Emergence of Revolutionary China

1949-1965

edited by

RODERICK MACFARQUHA R

and

JOHN K. FAIRBANK

CAMBRIDGE

UNIVERSITY PRESS

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

Published by the Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge

The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge CB2 1RP

40 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011-4211, USA

10 Stamford Road, Oakleigh, Melbourne 3166, Australia

© Cambridge University Press 1987

First published 1987

Reprinted 1989, 1995

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Gualoging-in-Publication Data is available.

A catalogue record fir this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 0-521-24336-X hardback

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GENERAL EDITORS' PREFACE

As the modern world grows more interconnected, historical under￾standing of it becomes ever more necessary and the historian's task

ever more complex. Fact and theory affect each other even as sources

proliferate and knowledge increases. Merely to summarize what is

known becomes an awesome task, yet a factual basis of knowledge

is increasingly essential for historical thinking.

Since the beginning of the century, the Cambridge histories have

set a pattern in the English-reading world for multivolume series

containing chapters written by specialists under the guidance of

volume editors. The Cambridge Modern History, planned by Lord

Acton, appeared in sixteen volumes between 1902 and 1912. It was

followed by The Cambridge Ancient History, The Cambridge

Medieval History, The Cambridge History of English Literature, and

Cambridge histories of India, of Poland, and of the British Empire.

The original Modern History has now been replaced by The New

Cambridge Modern History in twelve volumes, and The Cambridge

Economic History of Europe is now being completed. Other Cam￾bridge histories include histories of Islam, Arabic literature, Iran,

Judaism, Africa, Japan, and Latin America.

In the case of China, Western historians face a special problem. The

history of Chinese civilization is more extensive and complex than

that of any single Western nation, and only slightly less ramified than

the history of European civilization as a whole. The Chinese histori￾cal record is immensely detailed and extensive, and Chinese historical

scholarship has been highly developed and sophisticated for many

centuries. Yet until recent decades the study of China in the West,

despite the important pioneer work of European sinologists, had

hardly progressed beyond the translation of some few classical

historical texts, and the outline history of the major dynasties and

their institutions.

Recently Western scholars have drawn more fully upon the rich

traditions of historical scholarship in China and also in Japan, and

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VI GENERAL EDITORS PREFACE

greatly advanced both our detailed knowledge of past events and in￾stitutions and also our critical understanding of traditional histori￾ography. In addition, the present generation of Western historians of

China can also draw upon the new outlooks and techniques of

modern Western historical scholarship, and upon recent develop￾ments in the social sciences, while continuing to build upon the solid

foundations of rapidly progressing European, Japanese, and Chinese

sinological studies. Recent historical events, too, have given promi￾nence to new problems, while throwing into question many older

conceptions. Under these multiple impacts the Western revolution in

Chinese studies is steadily gathering momentum.

When The Cambridge History of China was first planned in 1966,

the aim was to provide a substantial account of the history of China

as a bench mark for the Western history-reading public: an account

of the current state of knowledge in six volumes. Since then the

outpouring of current research, the application of new methods, and

the extension of scholarship into new fields have further stimulated

Chinese historical studies. This growth is indicated by the fact that

the History has now become a planned fifteen volumes, but will still

leave out such topics as the history of art and of literature, many

aspects of economics and technology, and all the riches of local

history.

The striking advances in our knowledge of China's past over recent

decades will continue and accelerate. Western historians of this great

and complex subject are justified in their efforts by the needs of their

own peoples for greater and deeper understanding of China. Chinese

history belongs to the world, not only as a right and necessity but

also as a subject of compelling interest.

JOHN K. FAIRBANK

DENIS TWITCHETT

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CONTENTS

General editors' preface p<*ge v

List of maps xi

List of tables xii

Preface to volume 14 xiii

List of acronyms xvi

1 The reunification of China

by JOH N K. FAIRBANK , Professor of History, Emeritus,

Harvard University 1

Phases of historical understanding 1

The Chinese achievement of unity 11

The role of modernization 23

The problem of local control 3 8

PART I : EMULATING THE SOVIET MODEL, 1949-195 7

2 Establishment and consolidation of the new regime

by FREDERICK C. TEIWES, Reader in Government,

The University of Sydney 51

An overview 51

Consolidation and reconstruction, 1949-1952 6j

Socialist construction and transformation, 1953-1956 92

Adjusting the new socialist system, 1956-1957 122

3 Economic recovery and the 1st Five-Year Plan

by NICHOLA S R. LARDY , Professor of International

Studies, University of Washington, Seattle 144

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VHl CONTENTS

The economic setting 144

The 1 st Five-Year Plan 155

The formulation of the 2nd Five-Year Plan 180

4 Education for the new order

by SUZANN E P E P P E R, Associate, Universities Field Staff

International, Hong Kong 18 5

The heritage from the Republican era 18 5

The heritage of the Communist Border Regions 192

Learning from the Soviet Union 197

The 1950s in perspective 203

5 The Party and the intellectuals

by MERL E GOLDMAN , Professor of History, Boston

University 218

The historical relationship between the intellectuals

and the government 218

Pre-1949 conflicts between Party and intellectuals 220

Establishment of Party control over intellectuals,

1949-1955 23 4

The Hundred Flowers Campaign 242

The Anti-Rightist Campaign 253

6 Foreign relations: from the Korean War to the Bandung

Line

by MINE O NAKAJIMA , Professor, Tokyo University of

Foreign Studies 259

An overview 259

Leaning to one side: Mao Tse-tung and Stalin 262

The Korean War 270

The Bandung Line 283

PART II: THE SEARCH FOR A CHINESE ROAD,

1958-196 5

7 The Great Leap Forward and the split in the Yenan

leadership

by KENNET H LIEBERTHAL, Professor ofPolitical

Science, The University of Michigan 293

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CONTENTS IX

An overview 293

Origins of the Great Leap Forward 299

The Lushan Conference, July 1959 311

After the Leap: the Liu-Teng program 322

The rise of Lin Piao 335

Rectification 348

8 The Chinese economy under stress, 1958-1965

by NICHOLA S R. LARDY 360

The economic strategy of the Great Leap Forward 363

The incidence of the Chinese famine 372

The Party's response to the famine crisis 378

Economic recovery, 1963-1965 391

9 New directions in education

by SUZANNE PEPPER 398

The Great Leap in education: 1958 400

The aftermath: 1959-1960 411

Walking on two legs into the 1960s 415

10 The Party and the intellectuals: phase two

by MERLE GOLDMAN 432

The denigration of intellectual endeavor in the Great

Leap Forward 432

The intellectual relaxation in the aftermath of the Great

Leap Forward 434

Resistance to Mao's ideological class struggle 450

The radical intellectuals 455

Party rectification, 1964-1965 463

11 The Sino-Soviet split

by ALLEN S. WHITING , Professor of Political Science,

The University of Arizona 478

Phase one: 1958 481

Phase two: 1959-1960 501

Phase three: 1961-1962 519

Phase four: 1963-1964 525

Epilogue

by RODERICK MACFARQUHAR, Professor of

Government, Harvard University 539

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X CONTENTS

Bibliographical essays

Politics takes command: an essay on the study of

post- 1949 China

by MICHE L OKSENBERG , Professor of Political Science,

The University of Michigan 543

The basic sources and their limitations 547

The English-language secondary literature 576

Bibliographical essays for chapters 591

Bibliography 609

Appendixes: meetings and leaders 660

Conversion tables: pinyin and Wade-Giles 66$

Glossary-index 671

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MAPS

1 China's physical features 2

2 PRC: political (Wade-Giles romanization) 52

3 PRC: political {pinyin romanization) 54

4 Administrative regions, 1949-54 80

5 Agriculture: major cropping areas 146

6 Korean War 273

7 Railway construction between 1949 and i960 368

8 Offshore islands 494

9 Sino-Indian border 510

10 Sino-Indian hostilities, 1962 522

11 China and Southeast Asia 530

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TABLES

1 Agricultural cooperatives: development and targets 112

2 Students in 1949 186

3 Graduates in 1949 186

4 Numbers of schools and students, 1949-1957 211

5 Urban and rural grain consumption, 1952-1965 373

6 Mortality rates, 1956-1962 374

7 Grain production and government transactions with the

rural sector, 1953-1965 381

8 Grain exports and imports, 1952-1965 381

9 Numbers of schools and students, 1958-1965 427

10 Party leadership, 1921-1928 660

11 High-level formal Party meetings, 1945-1965 662

12 Party leadership, 1945-1965 663

13 State leaders, 1949-1965 664

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PREFACE TO VOLUME 14

In 1949 a new stage was reached in the endeavors of successive

Chinese elites to meet domestic problems inherited from the Late

Imperial era and to respond to the century-old challenge posed by the

industrialized West. A central government had now gained full

control of the Chinese mainland, thus achieving the national unity so

long desired. Moreover, it was committed for the first time to the

overall modernization of the nation's polity, economy, and society.

The history of the succeeding decades is of the most massive experi￾ment in social engineering the world has ever witnessed. Volumes 14

and 15 of the Cambridge History of China attempt to chronicle and

analyze that experiment.

The very power and purposefulness of the Chinese Communist

regime have shaped the format of these volumes. Unlike in the imperial

and republican periods, under the Chinese Communists no aspect of

life, no region of the country has been immune from the determined

efforts of the central authorities to revolutionize China. It is simply

not meaningful to examine any part of Chinese society except in the

context of the Communist Party's efforts to transform it. Perforce,

one must start by looking at China from the viewpoint of the Party's

Politburo and the government's State Council in Peking.

The division of this volume into two sections has been dictated by

the major change in Party policy that took place in 1958 and affected

all sectors of society. The division between this volume and the

succeeding one reflects the watershed of the Cultural Revolution

launched by Mao Tse-tung in 1966.

Of course, the ideas, objectives, strategies, policies, and actions

of Chairman Mao, his colleagues, and his successors do not amount

to a history of China. The greater part of these two volumes is con￾cerned with assessing the impact they have had on the Chinese

nation. Given the enormous quantity of new data released and the

easier access to the mainland allowed by the People's Republic in

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XIV PREFACE

recent years, it is possible now to delineate more clearly the outcomes

of the experiment so far.

Nevertheless, we are conscious that ours must be an interim

judgment - not so much because there remain vital data that have not

been released, for it is very likely that some never will be; nor because

the events we describe are so recent, for the assessments of historians

are continually subject to revision no matter how great the advantage

of distance; but because the experiment is far from over, and only

near its completion - a century hence? - will a rounded perspective

on these earliest decades be possible.

This is the fifth volume of The Cambridge History of China

covering the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. From the beginning

of this endeavor we have been conscious of our indebtedness to every

significant contribution to the field. Only our footnotes can tell that

story.

We can, however, express our gratitude to the experienced chief

manager and processor of this volume, Joan Hill, who pursues

precision with good humor, and a perseverance worthy of Chairman

Mao's Foolish Old Man Who Removed the Mountains. Chiang

Yung-chen has given us valuable assistance with the Chinese bib￾liography and calligraphy. Our thanks go also to Katherine Frost

Bruner and Gwendolyn Stewart for highly skilled indexing.

In January 1983, we ran a working conference of contributors

under the aegis of Harvard's Fairbank Center, which was excellently

organized by Patrick Maddox, assisted by Debra Knosp and gener￾ously financed by the Rockefeller Foundation. We are delighted to

acknowledge also with gratitude the support of the Ford and Mellon

foundations, which has been critical to sustaining the production of

these volumes, as well as the backing of the American Council of

Learned Societies and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

We are indebted to Harvard University and especially to Philip A.

Kuhn for assistance in his capacity as Center director.

RLM

JKF

ON ROMANIZATION

For purely technical reasons we continue, as in preceding volumes, to

use the Wade-Giles system for transcription of Chinese into alpha￾betic writing. The main reason is that, in order to avoid confusion, we

have to use here the forms used in previous volumes - for example,

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PREFACE XV

Chou En-lai, not Zhou Enlai. At the same time, we note that names

and terms in publications today, both from the People's Republic and

from around the world, are using the official pinyin romanization,

based on the incontrovertible assumption that a nation has the right

to decide how it wishes its writing system to be romanized abroad.

To meet this situation we have inserted conversion tables at the back

of the book, just before the Glossary-Index.

To avoid enslavement by the arbitrary nature of any romanization

system, we have consciously tolerated deviations, especially in per￾sonal names. Thus the reader will sometimes find chow instead of

chou, yi instead of i, hwa for hua, teh for te, Anhui for Anhwei, and

almost always Peking for Beijing. (Such deviations need not be called

to our attention.) We also take no responsibility for the name Chen,

which should often be Ch'en.

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