Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-7cvxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-28T02:42:11.919Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Study of Chinese Political Culture

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

John W. Lewis
John W. Lewis
Affiliation:
Cornell University
Get access

Extract

These seven recent works typify a cross section of scholarly publication on the Chinese People's Republic, its history, present operation, and prospects. Taken together, they provide the basis for some remarks on the study of Chinese “political culture.” Rather than attempt a full review of the individual works, this brief article will examine some of their assumptions and indirectly comment on the literature they represent. Each book reflects a prodigious scholarly effort and has received in various other journals a complete appraisal of its intellectual value. In general it may be fairly said that these volumes do not constitute significant breakthroughs of knowledge. They do, however, bring together and analyze important bodies of data on Communist China.

Type
Review Articles
Information
World Politics , Volume 18 , Issue 3 , April 1966 , pp. 503 - 524
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1966

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 In general I have followed the definitions of this concept provided in Almond, Gabriel A. and Verba, Sidney, The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations (Princeton 1963)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, chap. 1; and Ward, Robert E., “Political Modernization and Political Culture in Japan,” World Politics, XV (July 1963), 569–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Chalmers A. Johnson argues an alternative thesis that the revolutionary mobilization of the Chinese peasantry resulted from the shock of the Japanese invasion and subsequent terror. He writes, “The war totally destroyed the traditional rural social order and sensitized the Chinese peasantry to a new spectrum of possible associations, identities, and purposes.” See his Peasant Nationalism and Communist Power: The Emergence oj Revolutionary China 1937–1945 (Stanford 1962), 5Google Scholar; and Gillin, Donald G., “‘Peasant Nationalism’ in the History of Chinese Communism,” Journal of Asian Studies, XXIII (February 1964), 269–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 This theme has been argued in many forms. See, for example, Schwartz, Benjamin, “Modernisation and the Maoist Vision: Some Reflections on Chinese Communist Goals,” China Quarterly, No. 21 (January-March 1965), 3–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Lewis, “Revolutionary Struggle and the Second Generation in Communist China,” ibid., 126–47.

4 Hsiao, Kung-chuan, Rural China: Imperial Control in the Nineteenth Century (Seattle 1960), 371–73.Google Scholar Communist authors, particularly in their analyses of land tenancy and land rent, have also noted the unevenness of China's economic texture, but their preoccupation has been the ubiquitous existence of exploitation in pre-Communist China and the resultant need for a national Party victory. See, for example, Po-ta, Ch'en, A Study of Land Rent in Pre-Liberation China, first pub. August 1947 (Peking 1958)Google Scholar; Tse-tung, Mao, Nung-ts'un tiao-ch'a [Village Investigations] (Shanghai 1949)Google Scholar, and Nung-min yün-tung yü nung-ts'un tiao-ch'a [The Peasant Movement and Village Investigations] (Hong Kong 1949).Google Scholar

5 See Lewis, , “China's Secret Military Papers: ‘Continuities’ and ‘Revelations,’” China Quarterly, No. 18 (April-June 1964), 68–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The military papers are a set of twenty-nine issues of a secret military journal (Kung-tso t'ung-hsun [Bulletin of Activities]) which cover the period January 1-August 26, 1961, and were released by the Department of State on August 5, 1963. They were published by the General Political Department of the People's Liberation Army.

6 See Chung-hua min-kuo, Kuo-fang-pu, Ch'ing-pao chü [Republic of China, Ministry of National Defense, Bureau of Investigation], comp., Fan-kung yu-chi tui t'u-chi Fuchien Lien-chiang ao-hu fei-fang wen-chien hui-pien [Collected Documents on Bandit Activities Seized in Anti-Communist Guerrilla Raid on Lien-chiang, Fukien, hereafter cited as Lien-chiang Documents] (Taipei 1964).Google Scholar The Hoover Institution at Stanford University holds the microfilms of the original documents.

7 It is possible, of course, that a more effective rate of mobilization would correlate with a higher rate of deviation (rather than the reverse assumed here) because of the greater bureaucratic efficiency in reporting deviations in more advanced areas. For complete accuracy in assessing rates of deviation, it would also be necessary to control for differences in population distribution. Because of the suggestive character of this article, I have not considered it necessary to deal widi these problems here.

8 See Lien-chiang Documents, 31, 37, 53, 54, 140–41, 146, 175–76.

9 “Marketing and Social Structure in Rural China: Parts I, II, III,” Journal of Asian Studies, XXIV (November 1964, February 1965, May 1965), 3–43, 195–228, 363–99.Google Scholar

10 Lewis, , “The Leadership Doctrine of the Chinese Communist Party: The Lesson of the People's Commune,” Asian Survey, III (October 1963), 457–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11 Skinner, 385–86, 395–96.

12 In addition to Skinner, see Fei, Hsiao-tung, Peasant Life in China: A Field Study of Country Life in the Yangtze Valley (London 1939)Google Scholar, chap. 14; Hsiao, 12–24; and Yang, C. K., A North China Local Market Economy (New York 1944).Google Scholar

13 See Skinner, 32–43.

14 Ibid., 228.

15 The terms “modernization” and “development” are used interchangeably in this article and are defined as a process of interconnected social changes leading to “economic diversification within an advanced industrial technology; heightened social mobility and the movement toward impersonal and rationalized social relationships; a concentration of the population in cities and in more comprehensive social units generally; and the mobilization of persons en masse through popular education, organization, and communications” (Scalapino, Robert A., “Environmental and Foreign Contributions: Japan,” in Ward, Robert E. and Rustow, Dankwart A., eds., Political Modernization in Japan and Turkey [Princeton 1964], 65Google Scholar). “Industrialization” and “commercialization” are thus only two interconnected parts of the modernization process. See Levy, Marion J. Jr., “Contrasting Factors in the Modernization of China and Japan,” Economic Development and Cultural Change, 11 (October 1953), 161–97.Google Scholar

16 Hsiao, II.

17 The emphasis here is deliberately on the lack of political orthodoxy in the market towns. The official gods were located in these towns, which made the towns appear, from the religious point of view, more orthodox than the agricultural villages. Also the family structure in the towns more often approached the ideal form. As is suggested in the conclusion of this article, the problem of the congruence between different structures must be confronted before we can adequately understand the political culture of China.

18 Lineage Organization in Southeastern China (London 1958)Google Scholar, chap. 15.

19 There are several studies of the relationship between revolutionary impulses in a society and modernization. Chalmers Johnson, drawing on Deutsch, Karl, Nationalism and Social Communication (New York 1953)Google Scholar, and Hobsbawm, E. J., Social Bandits and Primitive Rebels: Studies in Archaic Forms of Social Movement in the 19th and 20th Centuries (Glencoe 1959)Google Scholar, also defines revolutionary nationalism in terms of “social mobilization.” He states that social mobilization is “the dynamic process whereby pre-national peoples enter into political community with their fellows” (pp. 21–22). Since Professor Johnson examines peasant mobilization in only one area of China, he overlooks the problem of differentials in levels of modernization.

20 On Mao's home area, Hsiao notes (p. 407) that Hsiang-t'an “has been for a long time the great market of foreign goods,” and that as early as 1870 people in eastern Hunan were, “on an average, better dressed than the inhabitants [elsewhere].”

21 This corresponds in part to Johnson's thesis, but also takes into account the problems that thesis offers when applied in detail to different Japanese-controlled areas. Cf. Gillin.

22 Pp. 368–71.

23 See Schram, 28–33, 179–88. The official translation of this Report is in Mao, , “Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan,” Selected Works (Peking 1964), I, 23–59.Google Scholar

24 Ibid., 34–35. In the quotation above I have corrected one or two errors in the translation.

25 On the state of development in Kiangsi, see Hsiao, 419, 421, 432, 445–46, 458; and Ho, Ping-ti, Studies on the Population of China 1368–1953 (Cambridge, Mass., 1959), 245–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 284. For recent commentary on the difficulties of mobilization in such districts, see Jen-min jih-pao (Peking), December 17, 1965.Google Scholar

26 “The Struggle in the Chingkang Mountains,” Selected Works, 88.

27 This discussion modifies my earlier thesis concerning the development of Chinese Communist Party leadership techniques. See my Leadership in Communist China (Ithaca 1963), 14–22.Google Scholar

28 On the state of development in and around Yenan, see Hsiao, 404, 405–6, 411.

29 The variation in types of participation in China places severe limits on Frederick C. Barghoorn's concept of participant subject. For discussion, see Almond and Verba, 4. For a full discussion of Maoist leadership techniques, see Lewis, Leadership, esp. chap. 3.

30 See Kuo-chun, Chao, Agrarian Policy of the Chinese Communist Party 1921–1959 (Bombay 1960)Google Scholar, esp. chaps. 3, 4.

31 The different level of development and compliance in China's northeast would help explain the famous deviation of Kao Kang, who argued that leadership should be changed to account for modernization. See Lewis, “Revolutionary Struggle,” 129–33.

32 See Skinner, , “Compliance and Leadership in Rural Communist China: A Cyclical Theory,” unpubl. paper prepared for the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, September 1965.Google Scholar

33 Mao, , The Question of Agricultural Co-operation, first pub. July 31, 1955 (Peking 1956), 11.Google Scholar

34 Chao, 72.

35 Chun, Chen, “Villages and Towns Draw Closer,” People's China (Peking), III (February 16, 1951), 12.Google Scholar

38 Skinner, “Marketing and Social Structure,” 363ff.

37 Ibid., 367–68.

38 Hsüeh-hsi (Peking), No. 8 (August 1956), 27.Google Scholar

39 I have developed this theme in “Political Aspects of Mobility in China's Urban Development,” unpubl. paper prepared for the Annual Meeting, APSA, September 1965.

40 Skinner, “Marketing and Social Structure,” 371–72.

41 Lewis, “China's Secret Military Papers.”

42 See Skinner, “Marketing and Social Structure,” 397; and the article on “restoring the traditional channels of commodity circulation,” Ta-kung pao (Peking), July 3, 1962.Google Scholar

43 Lewis, “China's Secret Military Papers,” 76; and People's Communes in China (Peking 1958), 21.Google Scholar

44 “Primacy” defines a situation in which a stratum of small towns and cities is dominated by one or more very large cities and in which there are deficiencies in the number of cities of intermediate size. See Jefferson, Mark, “The Law of the Primate City,” Geographical Review, XXIX (April 1939), 227Google Scholar; and Berry, Brian J. L., “Some Relations of Urbanization and Basic Patterns of Economic Development,” in Pitts, Forrest R., ed., Urban Systems and Economic Development (Eugene 1962), 1–15.Google Scholar

45 See Lewis, Leadership, 220–32.

46 These decisions (Kuan-yü shang-yeh kung-tso wen-t'i ti chüeh-ting) have yet to be published. Nevertheless, they have inspired a number of articles on the subject of “the rational simplification of links in commodity circulation.” See for example, Ta-kung pao, February 1 and 24, and March 13, 1963.

47 For a concise discussion of Tangshan, see Hsin-chen, Wei and Yün-ch'eng, Chu, eds., Tangshan ching-chi ti-li [The Economic Geography of Tangshan] (Peking 1960).Google Scholar This section is based on Ta-kung pao, April 8, May 13, and August 4, 1965; and Jen-min jih-pao, May 19, 1965.

48 Ironically, the Chinese used Tangshan as the model area in 1958 in their attempt to set up high-level systems on the basis of district political boundaries. See Shang-yeh shih-yung fa-kuei shou-ts'e [Handbook of Applied Commercial Law] (Peking 1958), 154–77.Google Scholar

49 See Chu T'ien-shun's article on the rational organization of transportation in Hung-ch'i (Peking), No. 23–24 (December 5, 1962), 35–39.Google Scholar

50 Ta-kung pao, April 8, 1965.

51 See the article written on the rural supply and marketing cooperatives at the time of the Tenth Plenum in Kuang-ming jih-pao (Peking), August 27, 1962.Google Scholar

52 See Ta-kung pao, August 12, 1965.

53 Ibid., April 8, 1965.

54 Ibid.

55 See ibid., April 3, May 5 and 7, 1965.

56 Ibid., April 8, 1965. Other statements in this paragraph are based on this same source.

67 Jen-min jih-pao, May 19, 1965.

58 Ta-kung pao, May 13, 1965.