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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 July 2011
Few if any Communist movements have been more energetic and successful than the Communist Party of China (CPC) in disproving Karl Marx's belief in the primacy of economics over politics. An adequate analysis of economic policy and development in Communist China therefore requires a consideration of their political dimension, which in turn is closely bound up with the problem of leadership and power within the largest political party and the most populous country on earth.
1 For a fuller discussion of these two groups, see the writer's analysis in Kahin, George McT., ed., Major Governments of Asia, Ithaca, N.Y., 1958, pp. 71–73.Google Scholar See also Kuo-tao, Chang, “Mao—A New Portrait by an Old Colleague,” New York Times Magazine, August 2, 1953.Google Scholar
2 It is termed “the sloganeers” by MacFarquhar, Roderick, in “Communist China's Intra-Party Dispute,” Pacific Affairs, XXXI, No. 4 (December 1958), p. 324.Google Scholar
3 Chen-lin, T'an in the People's Daily (Peking), August 11, 1958.Google Scholar T'an is the main spokesman for the domestic faction on agricultural affairs.
4 MacFarquhar, loc.cit., calls them “the pragmatists.”
5 An excellent example of Chou's thinking is his speech of January 14, 1956, on the intellectuals (Chinese Home Service dispatch, Peking, January 29, 1956).
6 In the 7th Central Committee, elected in 1945, Liu ranked third (after Mao and Chu Teh), but in all probability he already outweighed Chu in actual influence within the Party. Liu's rise to this position seems to have been due largely to Mao's favor. Chou En-lai ranked only twenty-third on die Central Committee in 1945. Soon after 1949, Liu and Chou came to rank second and third respectively in the Politburo and, informally at least, in the Central Committee as well. It was Liu who made the major speeches at the first (September 1956) and second (May 1958) sessions of the CPC's 8th National Congress. At the first session the post of honorary chairman of the Central Committeewas created. If and when Mao retires to it, Liu will automatically become chairman—unless there is some reshuffling of the present order of precedence within the Politburo, which seems unlikely.
7 This was the timetable laid down in the First Five-Year Plan, published in July 1955.
8 See Li, Choh-ming, Economic Development of Communist China: An Appraisal of the First Five Years of Industrialization, Berkeley, Calif., 1959Google Scholar; Barnett, A. Doak, Communist Economic Strategy: The Rise of Mainland China, Washington, D.C., 1959Google Scholar; Nations, United, Economic Survey of Asia and the Far East, 1957, Bangkok, 1958Google Scholar, ch. 4; Moorsteen, Richard, “Economic Prospects for Communist China,” World Politics, XI, No. 2 (January 1959), pp. 192–220.CrossRefGoogle Scholar One yuan equals approximately US $0.42 at the official Communist Chinese exchange rate.
9 Cf. Krader, Lawrence and Aird, John S., “Sources of Demographic Dataon Mainland China,” American Sociological Review, XXIV, No. 5 (October 1959), pp. 623–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Krader, Law rence, The Economic Status of Communist China, 1965–1970, Santa Barbara, Calif., General Electric Company, Technical Military Planning Operation, 1958, p. 2.Google Scholar
1 It was Malenkov who reported to the CPSU's 19th Congress (October 1952), its last before Stalin's death, on the work of the Central Committee.
11 Deutscher, Isaac, “Khrushchev, Mao, and Stalin's Ghost,” The Reporter, February 19, 1959.Google Scholar
12 For evidence to this effect, see Labin, Tito's speech (New York Times, June 16, 1958)Google Scholar and Newsweek, August 3, 1959, p. 33.
13 From this point on, chronology may generally be verified by reference to American Consulate General, Kong, Hong, Current Background, Nos. 489, 506, 519, 546, 572, and 611.Google Scholar
14 E.g., the directive by the General Political Department of the People's Liberation Army General Staff of November 21, 1957, ordering officers' dependents to return to their native villages to “participate in socialist construction.” In general, enlisted men's dependents had never been allowed to live with them.
15 See Hsien-nien's, Li budget speech for 1958Google Scholar (New China News Agency [NCNA], Peking, February 12, 1958).
16 Red Flag (Peking), July 1, 1958.
17 In fact, state investment in 1958 approximated 21.4 billion yuan (NCNA, Peking, September 4, 1959), more than half again as much as the amount invested in 1956, the previous peak year.
18 Ibid., May 26, 1958. During the three weeks that elapsed between the delivery of this speech and its publication, die People's Dailypublished a number of articles by provincial and local Party secretaries containing similar ideas and paving the way for its publication (see Current Background, No. 509).
19 MacFarquhar, Roderick, “The Leadership in China: Succession to MaoTse-tung,” World Today, xv, No. 8 (August 1959), pp. 318–19.Google Scholar
20 ”Being an instrument of political struggle and the struggle of production, statistical work must be led by local party committees before its role can be brought into full play and before estrangement from politics and reality can be rectified” (NCNA, Paoting, July 31, 1958).
21 Cf. Chandrasekhar, Sripati, “The 'Human Inflation' of Red China,” New York Times Magazine, December 6, 1959.Google Scholar
22 An excellent discussion of the communes may be found in Ravenholt, Albert, “The Chinese Communes: Big Risks for Big Gains,” Foreign Affairs, XXXVII, No. 4 (July 1959), pp. 573–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also Hudson, G. F. and others, The Chinese Communes: A Docu mentary Analysis of the “Great Leap Forward” London, n.d. [1959].Google Scholar The key official documents on this phase of the Great Leap arethe Politburo decision on increased iron and steel production (NCNA, Peking, August 31, 1958) and the Central Committee's decision of August 29 on the communes (ibid., September 10, 1958).
24 Ibid., December 17, 1958. Section Two of the 1954 constitution fails to specify whether the Chairman is eligible to succeed himself.
25 The phrase is taken from the communique of the 6th Plenary Session; cf. “Walking on Two Legs,” Ta Kung Pao(Peking), May i8, 1959.
26 ”Take the Whole Country as a Coordinated Chess Game,” People's Daily, February 24, 1959.
27 Cf. the joint directive by the CPC Central Committee and the State Council on manure accumulation (NCNA, Peking, January 28, 1959) and the stress on “mass emulation movements” at the conference of directors of Rural Work Departments of local CPC committees (ibid., February 2, 1959).
28 Cf. “It is true that the policy of 'small, local, mass'introduced last winter has been replaced by the policy of 'small, modern, mass.' However, it cannot be said that 'small, local, mass' was wrong; on the contrary, this policy has proved to be correct” (“pLet Us Put an End to the Theory 'What You Lose Is More Than You Gain,'” People's Daily, September 1, 1959).
29 On February 7, 1959, the Soviet Union committed itself to aid, on a repayable basis, in the construction of 78 major additional industrial enterprises in Communist China between 1959 and 1967.
30 Cf. the report on an industrial conference in Shanghai, in Wen Hui Pao (Shanghai), February 21, 1959Google Scholar; and MacFarquhar, , “The Leadership in China” (loc.cit., p. 322)Google Scholar, which however appears to overestimate the extent of the concessions to Chou En-lai's viewpoint made at that time.
31 NCNA, Peking, March 13, 1959.
32 Ibid., April 7, 1959.
33 Ibid., April 14, 1959.
34 Ibid., April 18, 1959. Chou's references to the communes and “native” furnaces were decidedly brief.
35 Cf. Tzu-hui, Teng, “Strive to Run the Community Mess Halls Well, Seriously Try to Follow the Principle of Voluntariness,” Hsin Hua pan-yiieh-k'an (New China Fortnightly), June 25, 1959Google Scholar; Durdin, Tillman, “Peiping Continues Easing Communes,” New York Times, August 20, 1959.Google Scholar Teng Tzu-hui is the chief spokesman for mose views on agriculture which are associated in this analysis with the international faction.
36 E.g., “Overcome Rightist-Inclined Sentiment and Endeavor to Increase Production and Practice Economy,” People's Daily, August 6, 1959. “Right opportunism” was held responsible for a small “saddle,” or dip in production, diat appeared in June and July (“Strive to Fulfill the Industrial Production Plan for This Year Ten to Fifteen Days Ahead of Schedule,” ibid., October 8, 1959).
37 “Rightist-Inclined Opportunism Is an Attempt to Open the Road for Reviving Capitalism,” Red Flag, November 1, 1959.
38 NCNA, Peking, July 27, 1959.
39 “Pursue the Anti-Drought Struggle to the End,” People's Daily, August 14, 1959.
40 “Plant More Land and Gather More Crops,” ibid., June 11, 1959.
41 Cf. “Recently, inspired by the resolution of the Eighth Plenary Session of the Eighth CPC Central Committee, the masses of commune members demanded at gen eral meetings that their production plans be revised upward” (“Strive to Overfulfill the Grain and Cotton Production Plans,” ibid., September 3, 1959).
42 Cf. speeches by Li Fu-ch'un and Po I-po reported by NCNA, Peking, October 26- 27, 1959.
43 The key documents of this session, and on the third phase of die Great Leap to date, are die communique of die session (ibid., August 26, 1959) and the resolution on increasing production and practicing economy (ibid.). The revised claims for 1958 are undoubtedly far closer to the trutli dian were die original claims, but they are not necessarily accurate. There is no compelling reason to attribute the whole of the agricultural exaggeration, as the CPC officially does, to inexperience in crop estimation and odier statistical work, and to a large difference between the biological crop and the barn crop resulting from diversion of manpower to non-agricultural work. These factors undoubtedly played a part, but they can hardly account for an admitted over estimate of 50 per cent. A large-scale inflation of agricultural figures as a matter of policy, or at least the conscious acceptance at the upper levels of the CPC of obviously unreal figures submitted from below, must have occurred. In either case, the Party leadership was guilty of trying to deceive the Chinese people and the world. The deflation in steel represents a writing-off of the output of the “native” furnaces as unusable in modern industry. The official explanation of these deflations was conveyed to die Standing Committee of the National People's Congress by Chou En-lai on August 24 (ibid., August 28, 1959). On August 24 Liu Shao-ch'i delivered a major unpublished speech on die domestic and international situations before die 1701 Supreme State Conference (ibid., August 24, 1959), a body over which he as Chairman of the Republic presides ex officio.
44 In November 1959 the CPC prohibited the export of newspapers other than the People's Daily.
45 The major statement on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist regime was by Shao-ch'i, Liu (People's Daily, October 1, 1959)Google Scholar; in it he defended the Great Leap and defined no existing “left deviation” from it, although he defined both “left” and “right deviations” from several other CPC policies. Chou En-lai's statement (NCNA, Peking, October 6, 1959) included an unusually large number (for him) of favorable references to mass campaigns, an indication perhaps of the pressures to which he has been subjected.
46 NCNA, Peking, September 17, 1959.
47 It has been announced that the armed forces “voluntarily” contributed 40 million days of agricultural and industrial labor during 1959 (ibid., January 4, 1960).
48 Cf. T'an Chen-lin speech (ibid., October 28, 1959).
49 Ibid., January 22, 1960.
50 Cf. Nurkse, Ragnar, Problems of Capital Formation in Underdeveloped Countries, New York, 1953, pp. 37–47.Google Scholar
51 Contrary to the normal procedure specified in its constitution, the CPC held no such congress in 1957 or 1959.