The Politics of Permission:
Sources and Interpretations
In the Scholarship on the
Early Years of the PRC
Brent Haas
What we know is based on the information available to us. This truism is especially applicable to the
case of historical knowledge, being so attached to the availability of
documentary evidence. Since the
Communist takeover of mainland China, international politics have been played out
on a mundane and quite unlikely stage—the library. Thus in order to assess the state of scholarship on the late
1940’s and early 1950’s transitional period, the most fundamental factor is
sources.
Broadly speaking, scholarship on the transitional period has undergone
three stages in the last half-century.
As the Chinese Civil War crept towards its conclusion, a handful of
Westerners were fortunate to record first-hand accounts of experiences living,
traveling, researching, and “spying” in China.
These sources are invaluable for their observations of the events in
China, even though Cold War politics greatly colored their analysis. After the PRC entered the Korean War,
Western scholars were barred from access to the mainland. This forced retreat
to Hong Kong profoundly affected scholarship on the People’s Republic for the
next four decades. This second, and
longest, stage forced “China watchers” and scholars alike to rely upon official
government publications and refugee interviews as the primary bodies of
evidence. Only within the last decade have PRC authorities begun to relax their
restrictions on Western academic access to Chinese archives, a fortuitous
result of China’s policy of opening up to the outside world. Increasing, though selective and often
arbitrary, access continues has opened new avenues of research while presenting
novel problems of interpretation. Thus scholarship on the early years of the
Communist era is itself in transition.
As the Nationalist regime lost control of the mainland to its Communist
rivals, a handful of scholars were able to pen influential studies of
conditions in China based on their personal experiences. The observations of Derk Bodde, Doak
Barnett, Allyn and Adele Rickett, and C.K. Yang illuminated certain aspects of
life in China during the end of the Civil War and the Communist takeover. A profound sense of uncertainty pervades
their works and we see how deeply disconnected the corrupt and demoralized
Nationalist government was from the people. As primary sources, they are
limited by the experiences and methodologies of the writers—thus Derk Bodde’s
sensitive and insightful observations of life in Beiping during 1948-1949 are
naturally restricted by his geographic location; Barnett’s travel account,
although it covers nearly all of Guomindang-held China, is severely hampered by
his lack of citation of sources; the experiences of the Rickett’s, which so
shocked Western contemporaries, suffers from their biases after “re-education”. Although C. K. Yang was able to conduct
sociological research over several years’ time in a Guangdong village, PRC
information control deprived him of his notes upon exiting China.
That anti-Communist rhetoric dominated the age in which these
first-hand accounts were written is not only evident in the writings
themselves, but also in academic and popular reactions to these works. Allyn Ricketts’s bewilderment at the
reception he was given by fiercely dogmatic reporters in Hong Kong is a memorable
if extreme case. The sensitivity to the common Beijinger which Bodde’s account
exudes as well as his skepticism that the PRC was part of an international
Communist conspiracy orchestrated from Moscow undoubtedly received criticism
from anti-Communists. That reviewer
Michael F. M. Lindsay’s felt compelled to defend Bodde as “a believer in the
best standards of American democracy” (Pacific
Affairs 24.2) attests to the political milieu of the time.
C.K. Yang’s studies of the family and village in the Chinese Revolution
can serve as an effective illustration of the transition that took place in
scholarship due to the implementation of PRC information controls. From 1948-1951, Yang and his team of
student-sociologists conducted extensive field research in Nanjing village, a
suburb of Guangzhou, allowing him to describe from a local perspective the
changes during the fall of the Guomindang through the first stage of land
reform. Yet upon expulsion from the
mainland, the authorities confiscated his research notes, thus forcing him to
write his study from memory two years later.
The much weaker sections on national collectivization and the Chinese
family were necessarily written using PRC laws, newspapers, and propaganda
statements. The information lockdown
was on.
From 1951 through the early 1980’s, scholarship on the transitional
period in the PRC made the best of the available sources. Largely limited to official publications and
interviews with refugees in Hong Kong, observers of China struggled to
understand events on the mainland. Lack
of documentary sources left much room for scholars to speculate, drawing on
possible past experience in the mainland (in Yang, Barnett, and Bodde’s cases),
personal political leanings, and disciplinary biases. This difficult situation led Maurice Freedman in his review of
Yang’s Chinese Village to exclaim
that “China is almost author-proof” (British
Journal of Sociology 11.2).
Reliance on official publications without corroborating evidence made
it quite difficult to differentiate between the idealized situation presented
in the press and the real situation within the PRC. Scholars were, therefore, left to analyze propaganda on its own
terms, which is a ripe setting for applying one’s ideological views. John Lewis (JAS 24.4) called for careful analysis of the key concepts,
functions, and problems of Chinese politics—a goal that could be accomplished
through study of propaganda—yet that only represented the ideal without its
necessary foil, the real. Therefore,
translating the voice of the PRC was generally done within an overriding
framework, consequently shaping the questions that were asked.
As always, political trends greatly influenced scholarship on the
transitional period. Much American work
sought to understand how the Communists succeeded in their bid for power (how
the democratic West “lost” China), the nature of the relationship between the
PRC and the Soviet Union, and how to make sense of the Korean War. A prime example of an attempt to answer the
last question is Allen Whiting’s China
Crosses the Yalu published in 1960.
His surprisingly even-handed speculations on the PRC leadership’s
rationale for entering the war lie sandwiched between generalizations in the
introduction and conclusion aimed at “understanding one’s enemy.” Sponsored by the U.S. Air Force and based
solely on official press reports, Whiting’s study represents the symbiosis of
politics and scholarship during this era—applying preconceptions to
insufficient data.
Academia’s strong tilt to the left during the late 1960’s offered a new
ideological lens for interpreting the CCP victory and consolidation. Instead of viewing the PRC in terms of the
Cold War ideological “battle” against Communism, the American experience in
Vietnam offered a new framework. Thus
some young academics, confident that radical, qualitative social change was in
fact possible and hoping for justice for all Chinese in the new system, assumed
a direct link between CCP theory and practice.
There were skeptics, however, who recognized and acknowledged Maoist
ideology yet doubted that it could actually penetrate the grass-roots of
Chinese society. They therefore
stressed continuities to the past instead of celebrating radical social change. While still suffering from many of the
same restrictions on access to sources, Lieberthal painted a complex and
impartial assessment of Communist economic policies in Tianjin. His source base drew heavily from national
and local media, and U.S. government translations, yet he presents a level of
critical analysis which is generally lacking in other studies based on media
reports. Perhaps his counter-balance
came in the form of case studies of two companies in Tianjin based on extensive
interviews with an employee of each company.
A major conclusion of his study is that the Chinese media often
exaggerated the success of mass campaigns in changing pre-existing economic
patterns. Furthermore, to the extent
these campaigns were indeed successful, Lieberthal strongly argued that CCP
organization was a major factor. Here
is a CCP intimately connected to “traditional” Tianjin, negotiating and
cooperating with the old guard in order to consolidate until strong enough to
enforce its own agenda. In this
instance, the author’s skepticism makes for a nuanced study, a major step in
towards differentiating between propaganda and reality.
By sheer size, geographic, linguistic, and ethnic diversity, and
decades of political division, transition-era China defies sweeping
generalizations and even analysis of the nation as a cohesive unit. Despite this and other barriers to effective
scholarship, much progress was nevertheless made during the decades of
restriction. C.K. Yang’s field work in
Guangdong was a problematic yet ground-breaking first step towards understanding
China through individual case studies.
His Nanjing was representative of suburban villages in South China, and
he rightfully called for further case studies of China’s divergent parts in
order to piece together a picture of the “whole.” While Solinger’s (1977) obstructive methodology and uncritical
analysis of official press reports are problematic, she effectively described
the regionalism in China which impeded the integration of the PRC as a whole
and the government’s creative use of regional governments. Kenneth Lieberthal’s 1980 study of Communist
ideology and organization in transition-era Tianjin followed in the footsteps
of several important studies on individual Chinese cities. Furthermore, a few Westerners began to
trickle into China during the early 1970s, resulting in better knowledge of
reality during the Cultural Revolution as well as illuminating if limited
studies, such as Nebioli’s The People’s
Comic Book. Thus the “pieces”
were beginning to fit together.
Throughout the 1980’s and 1990’s physical access to China drastically
increased, followed more slowly by an ability to view published and archival
primary sources relating to the transitional period. The resulting scholarship has been quite fruitful and sometimes
subversive, leading to reassessments of many earlier views of this period. In light of new sources, the Civil War
period, effects of Communist policy on the dynamics of peasant families, and
China’s role in the Cold War have all undergone revisionist scrutiny. Despite our increasing access to archival
and collections of primary documents, many obstacles still remain. Historical hindsight has made the current
generation more than aware of the drastic consequences of Maoist policies in
the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution. Yet we cannot project later failures back onto the situation
during the transitional period. While
scholarly subjectivity will always remain, an increase of data at least
restricts the room for speculation.
If ever a study suffered from too much new information, it is Suzanne
Pepper’s Civil War in China. Pepper utilized a huge body of Chinese
language sources, although it is notable that her main evidence still remains
periodical publications. Nevertheless,
this work was the first to attempt to deal with the Civil War period from the
perspectives of both the vanquished GMD and the victorious CCP. She systematically analyzes the shortcomings
of the GMD from economic and intellectual viewpoints, notably charting the
intelligentsia’s growing dissatisfaction with the government. Where the GMD failed, Pepper also stresses
how the Communists were able to succeed, thereby painting a more complete
picture of the Civil War. Many of the
observations which caused Bodde to look hopefully upon the CCP takeover in
Beijing are confirmed and documented in this work. Her treatment of Communist land reform in the “liberated” areas,
furthermore, adds another geographic dimension to our understanding of the
relative conservatism of CCP policy in the transitional period. When the peasantry reacted unfavorably to
early land reform efforts, Party leadership adjusted accordingly, reversing
earlier radical policies.
Neil Diamant’s access to local government archives at the municipal,
district and county level in Beijing, Shanghai, and Yunnan province allowed for
a bold reinterpretation of the 1950 Marriage Law, which had previously only
been treated from the ideological perspective in Yang’s study of the
family. From divorce cases, Women’s
Federation documents, and labor union reports, a picture of relatively free
peasant sexual culture emerges, replete with female agency and even
manipulation of the divorce law for personal benefit. Such unedited sources allow scholars to clearly differentiate
between idealized social interaction and reality. Yet it is not a panacea for all that ailed scholarship in the
previous decades. Indeed just how
representative divorce cases are for the institution of the family as a whole
is questionable, since it is likely the vast majority of Chinese peasants did
not actually take their cases to court.
Chen Jian’s study of Maoist ideology and practice in Cold War diplomacy
benefited from similar access to Chinese archival sources, including published
collections of Party documents, and the papers, diaries, and memoirs of CCP
leaders. While Chen acknowledged that
published documentary collections were often selected by the PRC government for
release with ulterior motives, they nevertheless enrich our understanding of
the processes of government in China.
He admirably cross-referenced these documents whenever possible, a
practice which all historians of contemporary China should follow. His focus on international relations did
facilitate this process by providing the documents of other governments as a
ready comparison to Chinese sources.
This problem is more significant, however, when researching domestic
topics. As the first hand accounts discussed
above aptly illustrate, impartial observers of the period in question are few
and far between. Chen does offer the
possibility of a solution by pointing out that provincial and local archives
frequently hold copies of central directives, which although intended for
internal circulation, have possibly escaped the editorial scrutiny of the
published documentary collections.
Before the discussion moves to an appraisal of the state of the field,
my own politics and perceptions deserve some scrutiny. The genesis of this paper began with a
nagging skepticism which recurred whenever I traced a statement about the
situation in China to its citation, only to find an official government
publication, like the Renmin Ribao
for instance, as its source. Present in China for the media assault on
Falungong in 1999 and a government cover-up of SARS during 2003, I have seen
the efficiency of state controls on media at the turn of the century. With no internet chat rooms, how much more
effective would it have been in the early 1950’s? Yet my reaction felt to be more than scholarly skepticism. Much like Doak Barnett in Hong Kong,
straining his analytical eye across the border into the mainland, my political
persuasion and experiences in China were shaping my reaction. While certainly not a “Cold Warrior,” my Western,
liberal tendencies combined with personal experiences of PRC information
control colored the way in which I interpreted the documents. If that is my “framework,” this paper is an
attempt at measured deconstruction.
As a native Chinese who benefited from training in both the PRC and
United States, Chen Jian represents a new trend in the scholarship of Chinese
history. Although his American
citizenship certainly contributes to his political views (clearly illustrated
in the Epilogue to Mao’s China and the
Cold War), he is nevertheless able to combine the scholarly analysis of an
outsider with insights and experience of the insider. Furthermore, the current laudable emphasis on graduate programs
whose students represent both sides of the Pacific Ocean promises that Chen
Jian will not be the last scholar to operate with equal comfort in Chinese and
Western academic circles.
Thus new resources and perspectives are allowing scholars not only to
find novel research topics, but also revisit old questions with fresh insight
and information. As trans-Pacific academic interaction increases, scholars from
both sides will be able to offer critical analysis of the theoretical
frameworks prevalent in each setting yet often invisible to those trained
within them. The more time passes,
issues in the transitional period should become less sensitive, hopefully
resulting in new sources coming to light.
Although political circumstances are bound to change in the future, and
will most likely affect academia, time is on the historian’s side. Thus it seems we can look forward to a
“continuous revolution” in scholarship on the 1950s.
References Cited
Derk Bodde. Peking Diary: A Year of Revolution. New York: Henry Schuman, 1950.
Allyn and Adele Rickett. Prisoners of Liberation. New York: Cameron Associates, 1957.
C. K. Yang. Chinese Communist
Society: The Family and the Village. Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. Press, 1959.
Allen S. Whiting. China Crosses
the Yalu: the Decision to Enter the Korean War. New York: MacMillan, 1960.
A. Doak Barnett. China on the Eve
of Communist Takeover. New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1963.
----. Communist China: The Early Years, 1949-55. New York, Frederick A.
Praeger, 1964.
Gino Nebioli. The People’s Comic Book
(Originally I Fumetti de Mao).
Translated from Chinese by Endymion Wilkinson. Compiled with Jean Cheasneaux
and Umberto Eco. New York Anchor
Press, 1973.
Dorothy J. Solinger. Regional
Government and Political Integration in Southwest China, 1949-1954: A Case
Study. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977.
Kenneth G. Lieberthal. Revolution
and Tradition in Tientsin, 1942-1952. Stanford: Stanford University Press,
1980.
Suzanne Pepper. Civil War in
China: the Political Struggle, 1945-1949. Lanham, MD: Rowman &
Littlefield, 1999.
Neil J. Diamant. Revolutionizing
the Family: Politics, Love, and Divorce in Urban and Rural China, 1949-1968.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000.
Chen Jian. Mao’s China and the
Cold War. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2001.
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