This essay will discuss
how works of history written between the 1950s and recent decades represent the
relationship between state and society during the early socialist transition in
China. The relationship between state and society is one of the most important issues
in modern Chinese history. The theme of state-society relations in the early
socialist period is especially deserving of scholarly attention, given the Chinese
Communist Party’s rise to state power.
The power
relationship between state and society has been highlighted by Chinese
governments as well as scholars. In particular the historical process of modern
China since the late Qing shows us that how to strengthen state power was one
of the primary concerns of Chinese leaders. Leaders continuously attempted to
enhance state power. When the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) gained power in
1949 after years of disorder and devastating civil war, these attempts seemed
to bear fruit, although the quality of the harvest and whether Chinese at that
time welcomed the Communist ideology remain open to interpretation. Therefore,
how the emergence of a socialist state influenced the Chinese state-society
relationship became an important theme in academia as early as the
establishment of People’s Republic of China.
From our contemporary
perspective, a strong state might be more of a threat to society or individuals
than a blessing. But if we consider the process leading up to Communist victory
in 1949, what underlay the common need of strong state was the pressure to rapidly
modernize. A strong state was thought to be more effective than society for
accelerating modernization in China. China’s sustained pursuit of a strong
state left little room for giving society the attention it deserved. In Origin
of the Modern Chinese State (2002) Philip A. Kuhn points out this trend in
Chinese modern history.
Beginning in the
1950s, scholars regarded the new strong state led by the CCP as an imposer of
modernization and viewed Chinese society, which was predominantly agricultural
and rural, as the object to be modernized. C.K. Yang’s thesis in The Chinese
Family in the Communist Revolution (1959)
and A Chinese Village in Early Communist Transition (1959) provides a good example of how
scholars portrayed the state-society relationship as a contrast between a strong
modern state and a traditional society which needed to change in the modern
world. Yang mentions that for two millennia no major revolution had
successfully altered the basic pattern of Chinese society before the Communist
revolution. Even certain changes and social disintegration in the Republican
period were not significant because they were not made by “the coordinated and conscious
planning of an organized political power” (Yang b, 4). His assumption that only
a strong political organization, or a strong state, was able to bring
fundamental changes to Chinese society can be easily noticed. The reason Yang focuses
on family and village also seems apparent. That is because the family was “an
ancient, deeply rooted institution” and the village also “deeply rooted in
traditional culture” (Yang b, 4; Yang a, 13). In other words, they are the most
traditional and the most non-modern sectors in society. But the traditional
elements of family and village were subjected to change “to better fit into the
modern social order” because they were incompatible with modern social values
and socio-economic structure (Yang b, 21). Therefore, Yang describes the early
years of People’s Republic of China (PRC) is described as a struggle of a state
trying to impose modernization onto a traditional society.
Yang’s main
concern is not whether the state was communist or not because he accepts socialist
revolution as an attempt to build a modern society on the socialist pattern.
But Yang focuses on the possibility for the state to bring modern changes to
Chinese society with a strong initiative. With an emphasis on the changes in
institutional structure and framework of society, Yang indicates that communist
regime had an “unprecedented revolutionary impact” on Chinese society (Yang a,
13). Yang concludes that in the early transitional period significant, or even
revolutionary changes occurred in China, and traditional elements and
relationships in Chinese society disintegrated. In a sense, Yang seems to
suggest that revolution by a strong communist state achieved success in
modernization to an unprecedented degree.
Yang’s work is
one of the most famous first-hand on-the spot accounts in older works on the early
PRC. When most Western scholars were unable to access mainland China and relied
on official sources or interviews with refugees, the assumption that Yang’s
books were reliable is understandable. Nevertheless, first-hand field research
is not necessarily more authentic or closer to reality in a given society. Lack
of long-term perspective of the consequences of a particular historical event
is inevitable in this kind of research. Therefore criticizing a myopic
perspective is also myopic because it is in many cases unavoidable in fist-hand
accounts. A more meaningful way to read first-hand accounts is to abstract the
vantage point of the time when the book was written. Sometimes people see what
they want to see.
Derk Bodde’s Peking
Diary (1950), which is
another first-hand account in the early PRC but covers more a limited time
span, provides a more general perspective to understand Yang’s viewpoint. Bodde
positively evaluates the Communists’ success in ending the long disorder and
devastation in modern China. Although Bodde points out that during the
transitional period characterized by New Democracy, social changes were not
radical and actually not “communist,” he suggests that more fundamental change
of traditional China would be expected and possible. He concludes that China
needs to escape from her age-old framework because “no modern society can be
found” on the basis of conventional thinking (Bodde, 95). “Chinese Communists seem the only group”
likely to achieve this change because they supply the “forces originally alien
to Chinese traditional civilization” (38).
Even if the
criteria by which Yang and Bodde judge the historical events are fairly
different – the former is modernization in its structural aspect, the latter
humanism with a focus on people’s minds -, the two scholars show us the common viewpoints
at that time of the state-society relationship in several respects: Chinese
traditional social structure, relationships, and way of thinking need to be
changed to modernize China, only a
strong initiative by an effective political organization –or state– would be
able to bring profound change to the status quo, the state should be in charge
of modernizing traditional Chinese society, and finally, tradition could
be thoroughly destroyed by the changes that the state imposed on
society.
It is apparent
that Yang and Bodde pay little attention to society vis-à-vis the state. In
their framework, Chinese society is traditional, and therefore an impediment to
Chinese modernization. At best society
is not important, passive, and plays little role, whether positive or negative,
in the Chinese historical process. The gap between state and society, which had
been a highly critical problem among the Chinese and scholars in China field
since the late Qing, does not matter from the state-centered perspectives of
Yang and Bodde because the state seemed to successfully penetrate into society.
The crucial
question that Yang and Bodde, with their fairly optimistic view of social
change in early PRC history, fail to ask is “what is left of tradition under
the surface, and how much the old is intermixed with the new” (Barnett, 121).
A. Doak Barnett in Communist China: The Early Years, 1949-55 (1964), provides a clue to understand why Yang and
Bodde overlook the question of continuity. Barnett suggests that the changes
taking place at that time were “so rapid” that it was easy for an observer of
the Chinese scene “to be impressed only by innovation and lose sight of what
was permanent and enduring” (116). Even if Barnett raises this important matter
properly, he does not deal with this matter in a critical way as later scholars
do. Barnett’s answer to the question is that for the first five years under the
Communist regime, tremendous and real changes took place in China and the
changes were more rapid and greater than ever before. But the refugees who
Barnett interviewed make him uncertain of this answer. This is because his
interviewees, who believed that new ideas must supplant traditional Chinese
one, still remained traditional about family obligations.
Nevertheless,
the persistence of tradition does not constitute Barnett’s main concern.
Barnett’s framework is limited to politics, narrowly defined. He examines
government structure, social and political controls and indoctrination, all of
which center on the policies and practice of the state. Chinese society is
still characterized as unimportant, passive and having little role in its own
fate. As Barnett writes that the majority of Chinese “have not directly caused
the political change; they have merely accepted it” (9). This passive nature of
the majority of society is pointed out as one of the primary reasons for the
state’s success in political indoctrination. And another reason Barnett pays
little attention to the continuity of tradition is his idea that there was a “vacuum
created by the disintegration of old Chinese society and the disintegration of traditional
Chinese thought” when the Communists gained power. The Communists just “filled
the vacuum” with their new ideas. (6)
In brief, scholars
who published their works based on the research done in the 1950s distinguished
between strong / active / modern state and weak / passive / traditional society
in social changes. While the authors emphasized state policy and practice,
society remained little-known. The framework that the state initiates change
and society is susceptible to it tends to conclude that revolutionary rapid change
is possible, whether or not an individual scholar has a positive attitude toward
Chinese Communists. However, we can discern a split in perspectives between
older scholars and those who accessed China since the 1970s. New scholars
convey a significantly different scene of the state-society relationship in the
transitional period of PRC.
Kenneth G.
Lieberthal in Revolution and Tradition in Tientsin, 1949-1952(1980), examines the question that
Barnett raised more seriously. Lieberthal argues that there was no “vacuum.” Rather,
traditional perspectives have not vanished and modern and traditional elements
have coexisted in urban China since 1949. Lieberthal defines the relationship
between the modern and the traditional in the transitional period differently
from the older scholars. His main premise is that people and their social
perspectives do not change fundamentally in a short time. He admits that
significant social developments do occur and can affect the way people view
society, but their result is always “a mixture of new and old,” not a
thoroughly new concept of human relationships (Lieberthal, 181). While pointing
out that the Chinese media has overemphasized what is new, Lieberthal draws our
attention to the fact that there are equally important legacies from the past.
A crucial point
of Lieberthal’s argument is that Chinese Communist leaders did not merely try
to dismantle all tradition at once but that the process of transformation in Tianjin
required a highly selective strategy that gave sufficient priority to economic
reconstruction. To reconcile transformation and economic recovery successfully,
the Chinese Communist leaders relied on or left intact traditional sectors
while trying to penetrate and control them. Consequently, large portions of
nonessential segments of the populace remained outside of state penetration. Furthermore,
people turned to old private relationships more eagerly at the absence of
authority caused by political campaigns.
In short, Lieberthal
suggests that the changes were not necessarily easy to bring about even if the
state undertook strong efforts to transform Tianjin. The resilience of old
social relationships and ways of thinking intensified the difficulty. Lieberthal uses the same frame of a strong
state in charge of social changes and society remaining in tradition as the
older scholars did. However, the difference is also clear. By shedding light on
what remained unchanged after seemingly sweeping transformation in the society,
Lieberthal makes visible the society and the interaction between the society
and the state that remained unseen in the earlier works. Society is not considered
as a merely passive object even if it was not especially active.
If old elements
of society remained strong in Tianjin, the second largest city in China at the time,
an important question should be raised. How should we understand the same
matter in rural areas which are generally assumed to be more traditional? Chinese
Village, Socialist State by Edward Friedman, Paul G. Pickowicz, and Mark
Selden is an attempt to answer this question. The state-society relationship is
reconsidered from the perspectives of rural areas and villagers. There is no
change in the premise that society remained traditional and state took the initiative
to transform society. However, what differentiates this work from older
research is the question that it raises: to what extent changes occurred and what
did changes mean to Chinese villagers? To answer the question we should
understand more about the society.
To find an
answer, Chinese Village, Socialist State traces how villagers in North
China wrestle with an emerging socialist state. What the authors encountered in
Chinese villages were “deeper continuities of culture in relation to rapid
changes in other realms” (Friedman, xiv). The authors stress that Chinese
villagers kept to their own culture and agenda although the Communist Party
both tried to adapt to and transform peasant values and social relations. If we
follow this interpretation, revolutionary transformation would be impossible.
That is the authors’ answer. Their argument is that “surprisingly little had
changed in human relations and understanding” in spite of the attempts at
social transformation by the state (268).
On the other
hand, in Chinese Village, Socialist State the society is not depicted merely
as a passive side of the relationship with the state. Villagers were able to
choose if they would support the state’s agenda or not, whether or not to express
their voices explicitly or not. This means the state-society relationship is a
mutual interaction, not a one-sided imposition. Therefore, the keyword characterizing
the state-society linkages described in Chinese Village, Socialist State
is “vicissitudes” (xix).
The Chinese
socialist state was relatively successful in gaining popularity and voluntary
cooperation among villagers by the early 1950s. The main key to this success is
that the state permitted and encouraged individual households to “develop
household fortunes.” Social changes were compatible with customary ways of
thinking, life and relationships among villagers. Referring to what Susan
Pepper revealed about land reform in North China during the Civil War makes
this interpretation more valid. It was not the elimination of the tenant-landlord
relationship but adjustment of the “inequality of wealth” that created a base
of mass support for the communists (Pepper, 243-244). Yet Chinese Village, Socialist State shows that after the
fundamentalist turn to socialism, the consequences were miserable. In the
authors’ view, being “modern” or taking an active role in social changes does
not provide any automatic guarantee for the state’s legitimacy. They even imply
that the socialist state was rather feudal-like.
By highlighting
the agency of society and its internal persistency, Chinese Village,
Socialist State creates a binary divide between state and society. But unlike
earlier works, there is no cleavage between a modern state in charge of social changes
and a traditional society irreconcilable with modern society.
Lieberthal and
the authors of Chinese Village, Socialist State reflect the changed
perspectives toward the relationship between state and society, or modernity
and tradition. The society that was previously obscured when authors stressed a
strong state became considered a vital factor in understanding history and
social changes. Various sectors of society were highlighted and became
important historiographical topic. Incompatibility between modern and
traditional elements was challenged by proof of strong continuities in old
relationships and ways of thinking in Chinese society even after the attempts
at radical social transformation. However, Lieberthal and the authors of
Chinese Village, Socialist State share the premise of older scholars who hold
that Chinese traditional elements are unsusceptible to social changes and that
the Communist state had a strong initiative, whether it was successful or not.
Neil J. Diamant
argues against these notions in Revolutionizing the Family (2000). Diamant’s main argument is that traditi;mso-fareast-font-family:Batang;mso-fareast-language:KO'>
Despite Diamant’s
hope that studying divorce will “open a wide window” onto the interaction
between state and society, divorce is indeed a very narrow topic for a full
explanation of the state-society relationship (Diamant, 14). The lack of
attempts to connect rapid changes in divorce with the general pace of the
revolution makes it difficult to use the case for generalizing about revolutionary
changes.
Nevertheless,
the idea that traditional elements can facilitate social changes is more
radical than previous scholars’ discovery of coexisting traditional and modern
elements. It breaks the binary opposition between modern and traditional in the
state-society relationship. Diamant argues against the “strong state” thesis
not only by juxtaposing it with a strong society but also by challenging
assumptions that the state was effective and rational. Revolutionizing the
Family is a revisionist work. Its fresh ideas are thought-provoking. But
Diamant’s attempt to defend his own thesis by attacking almost every previous
work makes it difficult to understand the history of this topic in academia.
The perspective on
the state-society relationship that stressed the contrast between a modern/active
state and traditional/passive society on Chinese early 1950s, and which later
scholars properly challenged, reminds us that how powerful the concerns the
modernization were in the 1950s, regardless of individual scholars’ different
political view. However, later scholars provided critical questions about what
the framework of modernization had failed to raise. Is modernization necessarily
positive? Is tradition always negative? Cannot tradition be compatible with
modern change? The legitimacy of the strong state was also questioned because of
its violence and negligence of the real situation of Chinese people. At the
same time, more emphasis was placed on society, the persistency of traditional
culture, and ordinary people’s agency. In other words, more nuanced
perspectives have been added to the topic.
This change was
probably possible because long term perspectives became more viable as time
passed and modernization itself came under serious examination and criticism.
Disillusionment with socialist practice and the human consequences of the revolution
are also crucial reasons. In addition, improved access to Chinese society
through newly available sources, interviews, and first-hand observation also were
reflected in the works mentioned. However, for the development of this topic,
the contribution of older works by Yang. Bodde, Lieberthal and others is no
less important. No academic contribution can be created in a vacuum, especially
on a topic like state-society relations that has received sustained attention
from scholars of multiple generations.
References
Barnett, A.
Doak. Communist China: The Early Years, 1945-55. New York: Frederick A.
Praeger, 1964.
Bodde, Derk. Peking
Diary: A Year of Revolution. New York: Henry Schuman, 1950.
Diamant, Neil J.
Revolutionizing the Family: Politics, Love, and Divorce in Urban and rural
China. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000.
Friedman, Edward
et al. Chinese Village, Socialist State. New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1991.
Kuhn, Philip A. Origins
of the Modern Chinese State. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002.
Lieberthal,
Kenneth G. Revolution and Tradition in Tientsin, 1949-1952. Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 1980.
Pepper, Susan. Civil
War in China: The Political Struggle, 1945-1949. Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1978.
Yang, C.K. A Chinese Village in Early Communist
Transition. Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. and Harvard University Press, 1959. (Yang
a)
Yang, C.K. The Chinese Family in the Communist
Revolution. Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. and Harvard University Press, 1959. (Yang
b)
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