C. K. Yang. The Chinese Family in the Communist
Revolution. Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. and Harvard
University Press, 1959.
Approaching with a
sociological lens of economic determinism and structural functionalism, C.K. Yang’s
The Chinese Family in the Communist
Revolution is one of the earliest studies of this integral social
institution from 1911 to the late 1950’s.
The author centers his discussion on the 1930 Nationalist Law of Kinship
Relations and the 1950 Communist Marriage Law, with supplemental sources coming
in the form of CCP newspaper reports with a heavy emphasis on legal cases
relating to familial tensions. In
short, the reader should not hope for the wealth of personal experience from
field research which added richness to the analysis and writing of the
companion volume, The Chinese Village in
Early Communist Transition.
Yang’s thesis
argues that destabilizing socio-economic factors associated with
industrialization and “modernization” converged with the organizational thrust
of Communist reform to shake, if not raze, the foundation of the traditional
Chinese family. His argument is
strongest when discussing the role of social factors in the disintegration of
the family as an institution, such as wartime human displacement and reassignment
of economic responsibilities outside the family unit. New concepts also play a
vital role in his thesis, most notably those of women’s rights,
anti-traditionalism, and elevation of youth during the May Fourth Movement,
though in this area Yang simplistically assumes the impact of the West.
Suggesting a
prescience of current scholarly trends of re-evaluating the contributions of
the Guomindang, Yang notably argues that the above processes commenced under
Republican rule but only successfully spread within the educated, urban
elite. It was thus left to the CCP to
fulfill these reforms through top-down organization, propaganda, and mass
campaigns. For Yang, then, the completion
of the “family revolution” was not a spontaneous, popular effort. Presaging the case of Lieberthal’s Tianjin,
Communist legal changes and conscious social revolution played a decisive role
in the battle against the “traditional” family and associated hierarchies.
It is precisely
Yang’s approach to the “traditional” family which makes this work
problematic. While his efforts at
setting the scene for the changes to family structure are most appreciated, the
work suffers from an essentialized, and frustratingly undocumented, description
of the “traditional” family. He seems to
assume the universality of this social institution for every Chinese and paints
his description of it in starkly archetypal terms, as if only setting up a foil
for his argument on the changes to the family.
Perhaps it was characteristic of sociology during the 1950s, yet the
historian’s wariness of sweeping generalizations without documentation is
frequently triggered by his statements.
Furthermore, uncritical presentation of official Party statistics and
overemphasis on loaded Western, liberal terms such as liberty and rights leaves
something to be desired.
Such faults were
noted by contemporary reviewers, who were very mixed in their assessments of
this work (Freedman Pacific Affairs
33.3; Levy JAS 20.1). Yet no one denies its contribution to the
early stages of studying the Chinese family during the Communist
Revolution. At the very least, his
boldly-stated theories force readers to better understand their own views on
the topic.
Brent Haas
© Copyright 2004.
All rights reserved.