Government and Politics of Asia

China
Midterm Period

Phases of Chinese Politics
The Xinhuamen or the New China Gate is the formal
entrance to Zhongnanhai-the south and central seas that
are part of the former imperial park. Just inside the gate
stands, in Chairman Mao Zedongs calligraphy, the
slogan wei renmin fuwu (serve the people). The Peoples
Republic means serving the people.
The Mao Zedong Years (1948-1976)
The Chinese Communist Party took power at the
end of the Chinese Civil War and had led a
communist revolution, in a particular sort.
First (Peasant Revolution) - literally means the
property-less class, including poor and landless
peasants.
Second (Chinese Communist Party came to
power at the head of an army) the party and
army were deeply fused in a way that was not
the case in many other communist regimes.
Later on, the party leadership over the army
gave way to an arrangement approaching
military rule.
Third (Chinese Communist
Revolution/Nationalist Revolution) a victory for
Chinese nationalism, against the Japanese who
had invaded China, and bringing an end to the
century humiliation.
Fourth (Chinese Communist Regime to build a
wealthy and powerful China) This enduring
aim has taken center stage under the leadership
of Deng Xiaoping in the late 70s.
The three decades that followed the Mao years
were tumultuous but it is possible to understand
their key features by following a conventional
periodization while stressing structural parallels
that run across the periods.
The regime was flush with the success of
nationalist revolutionary triumph and the
legitimacy that came with it.



The major events of the period reflected these
insecurities. They included campaigns with
archetypically Maoist:
The Three Anti-Campaign
The Five Anti-Campaign
The Campaign against Counter Revolutionaries
Overhauling China from Prior Regime
A period of planning, blooming and contending.
The regime had achieved considerable additional
success rapidly consolidating power over the
long fragmented country.
Eliminating many of the vestiges of the prior
regime and socializing the ownership of the
means of production. Including taking over
factories and commercial firms and collectivizing
agricultural land and production.
This period saw adoption of broadly Soviet-Style
economic policies.
In other words, the focus of revolutionary
change in this period was on the means and
relations of production-building up economic
production and especially industrial capacity and
transforming ownership to state and collective
ownership, thereby, eliminating the capitalist
and semi feudal structures of the prior order.
This was also an era of major construction of
political institution.
The First Peoples Republic of China constitution
was adopted. Major laws were written.
Relatively stable government-put fully in place,
including ministries of the central government,
provincial and local government organs.
Despite these major accomplishments, the
period was also marked by worries and
perceived dangers.
One is, the regime was losing its revolutionary
zeal.
Emerging complaints from the Intellectuals-a
notoriously critical and politically suspect group
about the way the party-sate rules.
In response to these concerns, Mao launched
the Hundred Flowers Campaign, and invited
people in general and the intellectuals to voice
their concerns.
This period of openness lasted only briefly. The
political winds shifted abruptly.
The Shut Down
This shut down of blooming and contending
had been shockingly harsh and out of control.
The political and social effects were significant
The following period was dominated by the
Green Leap Forward.
Flush with the success of rapid version of
communism.
At the same time, Mao and his colleagues
discerned dangers to be addressed.
The rise of what was called bureaucratism and
the problem of a new class of party cadres.
These gave rise to a sense that communism
might be in trouble generally and in China
specifically.
What followed was a remarkable and ultimately
disastrous attempt to leap dramatically forward
in both level of development, thus the
establishment of giant communes.
Another Aim; Another Try
The aim was to create a landscape of large scale
of agricultural with some industry collective that
were fairly low tech but largely self sufficient
and highly productive.
The idea of what revolutionary progress meant
had shifted from developing the forces of
production to a belief in the power of human
organization to achieve great things.
Loss of Confidence; Reason
The combination of bad policy with the bad luck
of bad weather and the failure to reverse failed
policies promptly led to massive starvation and
malnutrition, contributing to millions of deaths.
The political consequences were dire, with vast
peasantry suffering terrible devastation and a
severe loss of confidence in the regime.
Mao then came down hard on perceived
challenges to his leadership, undertaking the
first top-level purge and arguably paving the
way for the more widespread assault on senior
leaders.
The Last Period
After a few years of recovery from the Great
Leap Forward, China began to move toward the
last major period of the Mao Era the Great
Proletarian Cultural Revolution.
Given the disaster of the Great Leap, it seems
odd to describe the Cultural Revolution as
coming upon the heels of a preceding periods
successes.
With Mao and radical ideas in temporary eclipse,
the regime adopted moderate economic policies
that would later prove so successful in the early
years of the Reform Era the decentralization to
smaller scale production units in the
countryside, greater reliance on material
incentives, allowing peasants to farm small plots
and so on.
Politically and institutionally, there were also
attempts to re-instill top-down discipline and
accountability and to address ongoing problems
of corruption and laxness in party-state
structures.
Retrenchment/ Rebuilding
There was a sense that China had recover from
many of the horrors of the Great Leap Forward.
There is the rising determination of the so called
Great Helmsman to undertake one last great
intervention to steer the Chinese Revolution in a
more radical direction
Chinas Youth: Said Mao, young people had no
personal experience of revolution and thus were
at risk of becoming insufficiently revolutionary.
In his view, they need to learn to make
revolution by making revolution.
To address these problems, Mao unleashed the
Cultural Revolution by first ousting Pheng Zhen
and topples Liu and Deng and many others.
The methods again were striking and chilling.
Members of the top-elites were subjected to
humiliating and sometimes brutal struggle
sessions in which, they were coerced to confess
their political errors.
Much of the violence was initially undertaken by
Red Guard Groups (a group of students). Mao
unleashed the students encouraging them to
attack leaders of schools.
Factional groups emerged in and disrupted
virtually every institution in society.
Thus, the consequences were dramatic
conflicts paralyzed and shutdown state and
party institutions across the country.
The End of the Cultural Revolution
The Cultural Revolution meant a good many
things. In terms of the focus and meaning of the
revolution, the revolution had migrated fully into
superstructure.
In Mao last years, the key agenda was not
building up the means of production or
exploiting the power of political organization;
politics was about ideological standpoint, the
power of having the right thoughts which could
be re-defined retroactively.
Therefore, the political and social effects of the
Cultural Revolution were transformative.
The Reform Era
Unfolded as not that politics.

It was a reaction against the Cultural Revolution
as chaos and brought substantial rebuilding of
party and state institutions and a commitment
to prevent relapses into social disorder.

It was also a reaction against Cultural
Revolution as tyranny, which meant abandoning
demands that citizens zealously embrace a hard
ideology and establishing legal and other
restraints on abusive behaviour by local officials
and some private actors as well.

Its fundamental shift in economic policies and
the related adoption of a pragmatic style of
governance and policymaking, particularly in
shaping and implementing development-
promoting economic policies.