Outline the effects of the communist party on Chinese national development

The People's Republic of China came into being on October the first 1949. Since that time the leadership of the Communist Party of China (CPC), the country's ruling party, has attempted to bring about social reconstruction and economic growth by employing different variants of 'socialist' policy. A number of periods may be identified, each characterised by particular policy directions and emphases. The principal aspects and implications of each of these will be discussed, beginning with the Rehabilitation period of 1949-52.

In 1949 the Chinese communists inherited a country which was backward, poor and underdeveloped due to continuing Imperial patterns of class structure, as well as having been ravaged by two civil wars and a Japanese invasion since the 1920s (Cannon and Jenkins 1990). Before the communist development envisaged by Mao Zedong's revolutionary government could begin, it was necessary to establish administrative control over the entire territory, as well as to revive the devastated economy. The former was effectively achieved by a four tier hierarchical spatial structure with six regions as the largest divisions and thousands of 'administrative villages', each consisting of a number of natural villages as the smallest (Riskin 1987). Economic rehabilitation was partly facilitated by deflationary policies, including central control of the new currency, the renminbi (RMB or yuan), which brought inflation under control by early 1950 (ibid). The encouragement of production, however, was also a necessary part of this revival, and one which had to be achieved alongside the socialist transformation of the relations of production required by the CPC's ideological beliefs. In the rural areas this compromise was effected by land reform policies which, while eliminating the landlord class and improving the lot of poor peasants, "deliberately stopped short of complete economic equality" (Riskin 1987, 50) in order to maintain the productive capacity of rich peasants. In urban industry economic strategy was aimed, at least initially, at encouraging the productive potential of 'national capitalists' although directing this potential towards the fulfilment of the state's objectives, while monopoly capital was centralised. By 1952, 56% of gross industrial output value (GIOV) and 63.7% of trade volume was controlled by the state (Lippit 1987).

`The land reform, while stopping short of complete redistribution and, it must be noted, bought at the cost of the lives of perhaps four million landlords, benefitted 60-70% of all peasants (ibid). In general economic terms, the first three years of communist rule in China saw agriculture and industry restored to levels of performance equal to or greater than past peak levels, although absolute production remained very low, with per capita grain output as well as that of coal steel and electric power all below half the level of those present in the Soviet Union immediately prior to its First Five Year Plan in 1952 (Riskin 1987). Nevertheless, it was on this foundation that the development of China was to be attempted.

The First Five Year Plan (FFYP), inaugurated in 1953, was based around the development of large-scale industry, particularly heavy producer goods industries such as iron and steel production, along Soviet lines and with Soviet aid, both financial and technological. In the interests of geographical allocative fairness, over 55% of this investment was to occur in inland regions, away from the traditional industrial centres of the East coast such as Shanghai (ibid). State control of the large majority of industrial and commercial operations was a central component of the overall industrial development policy, as well as a goal in itself due to fears within the CPC over the threat to the new regime posed by internal counter-revolutionaries in private capitalist industry, and exacerbated by the nearby presence of the Americans during the Korean war (ibid). As well as providing for military security, industrial growth was seen as instrumental in enabling the increases in agricultural technology fundamental to increased living standards. That there was no explicit concentration on agricultural technology in the FFYP is indicative of the CPC leadership's belief by 1954 that agricultural growth was to be achieved by effective socialist organisation, and that the rapid industrial development enabled by this growth could then improve agricultural technology (ibid). The encouragement of farm and handiwork co-operatives with a view to eventual collectivisation, therefore, was a significant component of the FFYP. The gradual path to large-scale socialist agricultural institutions was to be facilitated in this period by the progressive establishment of increasingly large and organisationally centralised collectives (see for instance Lippit 1987).

`The immediate effects of the FFYP were generally beneficial. While the massive industrialisation program gave rise to high unemployment levels, largely due to the widening gap between rural and urban incomes, it also succeeded in achieving remarkably high growth rates, particularly those of well over 20% in heavy industry (Hsueh and Woo 1991), and did not lead directly to any actual drop in living standards (Riskin 1987). Larger agricultural collectives had advantages over earlier farming systems in terms of organisation and efficiency, as well as benefitting poorer peasants by more egalitarian distribution of overall benefits.

`The transitional nature of such ...

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`The transitional nature of such collectives, however, led to frictions between individual and collective interests as well as a lack of incentives to improve land which the owners realised would eventually be communized. Along with other factors, such as the inability of industry at that time to contribute intensifying inputs such as chemical fertiliser and tractors, this led to a lag in farm production which in turn threatened the growth of industry. The increasing magnitude and complexity of the industrial sector also caused problems as the highly centralised administrative system became ineffective. As the period of the FFYP progressed, therefore, policy reforms were introduced, in 1956 in order to increase the pace of collectivisation (Riskin 1987), and in 1957-8 to decentralise government (Blecher 1986, Riskin 1987). These moves marked the transition from the original tenets of the FFYP to what Riskin (1987) calls 'late Maoism', which began in earnest with the Great Leap Forward (GLF) initiated in 1958.

The GLF was intended by Mao Zedong as a strategy to resolve what he saw as inherent contradictions in the Chinese economy by a quick and massive drive for development. Mao perceived five 'relations' which needed resolution (Brugger 1978, Cheng 1978, Riskin 1987). The first three of these emphasised a long-run approach to what were seen as problematic FFYP policy priorities. In the short term, therefore, a higher proportion of investment was to be directed towards agriculture and light industry compared to heavy industry, at the existing East coast industrial base compared to the interior, and at economic development compared to defence. The final two relations "concern the reconciliation of the interests of state, enterprise and individual worker, and of central and local authorities, respectively" (Riskin 1987, 115). The power of local authorities was to be increased, as had been occurring since 1957-8, as was the independence of enterprise.

`Central to the GLF was a policy of technological dualism, with modern, large-scale, capital-intensive industry, including both the previously capitalist production facilities of the North-East and the new Soviet aided projects, complimented by small-scale, low technology enterprises, particularly in rural areas. Rural, small-scale industry was particularly intended to provide necessary agricultural technology by the mobilisation of surplus labour, including that generated by the widespread movement of women into the labour force, and thus allow the larger urban industries to concentrate on their own expansion. This 'two legged' industrial policy was accompanied by the rapid full collectivisation of agriculture with the introduction of people's communes, averaging around 5,000 households each, which by December 1958 numbered 26,000 and contained all 740,000 rural collectives (Riskin 1987). In the off season the labour mobilised by these communes was to be employed in projects beneficial to the commune such as the building of water conservancy reservoirs.

`The Great Leap forward backfired on a massive scale. Although the GLF was officially the Second Five Year Plan of the People's Republic, decentralisation of government coupled with the centralisation of lower scale authority in the people's communes served to remove intervening administrative levels which, in a system dominated by ideology, prevented any effective planning (ibid). Agricultural production plummeted as high rural-urban migration due to urban industrialisation, part-time employment of agricultural labour in rural industry, and low incentives for agricultural production, due both to the position of the commune as the body responsible for income distribution and redistribution and to the massive government exaggerations of the size of the record 1958 harvest, cut labour input into the land. Much rural industry, including the famous 'backyard' iron and steel production plants, produced inferior quality products which therefore failed to improve agricultural production, as well as taking up scarce transport facilities needed for farm inputs and harvests (Lippit 1987). Massive urban unemployment also arose due to large-scale migration to towns and cities with already large labour surpluses and whose new industry was too capital intensive to provide many jobs. The Sino-Soviet split of 1960, due to growing ideological differences between the two countries originating with Mao's 'Ten Major Relationships' speech of 1956 (Brugger 1978, Cheng 1978), prevented the completion of many new industrial plants and further exacerbated China's problems.

`As these problems began to become apparent to the CPC, "the innovations of the Leap were rolled back one by one" (Riskin 1987), with the first moves towards returning a proportion of land to private control and reducing the organisational centralisation of the communes taken as early as December 1958 (Brugger 1978). Too little was done too late to prevent catastrophe, however, and a famine ensued which Cannon and Jenkins (1990) called "the worst disaster in the world this century" (p.6), with an excess death toll in the 'three bad years' (1959-61) of between 14 and 26 million due to hunger and associated illness (ibid). Although figures for 1958-60 show industry continuing to thrive, this was due to the completion at this time of many of the projects commissioned in the FFYP and to the initial intensive production drive of the GLF, and in 1961 industrial output fell by 42% (Ashbrook 1982 in Lippit 1986).

By 1961, China's development had been severely stalled and the period 1962-65, therefore, was necessarily one of recovery for the People's Republic. This recovery was based on realism in economic policy and the restoration of balance between sectors, with Mao Zedong only a peripheral actor. In a total reversal of major aspects of the GLF, central control was reimposed, authority in the people's communes was decentralised, with the most significant level of the new structure being the production team, typically containing perhaps thirty households although there was much variation (Lippit 1987), and market forces were accepted as a means for providing incentives. Also, the nature of agricultural production as a base for, and ultimate potential constraint on, industrial and economic growth was recognised and the proportion of investment in agriculture therefore rose during this period (Riskin 1987). The lessons of the GLF also led to the establishment of 'high and stable yield areas' enabling the channelling of resources to meteorologically stable areas in order to ensure adequate national harvests and surpluses even in bad years. While the majority of local enterprises created during the GLF were closed down, the many that remained were encouraged to rationalise and mechanise (ibid). Due to the poor condition of the economy, industrial investment was concentrated in high priority areas, particularly those of benefit to agriculture, such as chemical fertiliser manufacture, and defence, especially the nuclear programme, seen as being of increasing importance due to the break with the Soviet Union. The Sino-Soviet split also prompted closer trade links with the West and Japan, while the food crisis necessitated large grain imports. Overall foreign trade, however, was necessarily low due to China's weak economic position and this, along with the discovery of large Chinese oil reserves at Daqing in 1960, gave the country the potential for self sufficiency.

`Although even with large Western imports foodgrain consumption did not reach 1957-58 levels until the late 1970s, by 1965 rapid recovery had been made in China with industrial production up by over 45% and industrial production by over 90% from 1961 levels (Lippit 1987). The policies of the recovery period, however, had been largely enabled by the relegation of Chairman Mao to the political sidelines. The method of his re-emergence as China's dominant political force precipitated a distinct new phase in the history of the People's Republic, namely the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.

The 'Cultural Revolution proper' was a period of intense and often violent social and political unrest between 1966 and 1969, precipitated by Mao's attempts to mobilise the populace in order to prevent the emergence of a bureaucratic-technocratic elite and to create sweeping egalitarian reform. In terms of general policy, however, this period can be seen as the start of the 'Cultural Revolution decade' (1966-76), throughout which the 'gang of four', led by Mao's wife Jiang Chang, assumed leadership with the support of Mao himself (ibid). While many of the pragmatic strategies of the recovery period were accepted during this phase, including the acceptance of the concept of 'agriculture as the foundation, industry as the leading factor' and the notion of 'leeway' in targets of production (Cheng 1978), 'late Maoist' tendencies were also apparent, with a degree of re-collectivisation of agriculture taking place and de-centralisation based on self-reliance prominent. Such tendencies also included a far more immediate concentration on the reduction of distinctions and increments between urban and rural, worker and peasant and mental and manual labourer than that of the Great Leap Forward. This kind of egalitarianism is epitomised by the programme of 'rustication' of the qualified urban youth, undertaken from 1968 in order to reduce violent unrest in towns, reduce urban unemployment, induce acceptance of proletarian values and conditions and provide expertise for rural development (Riskin 1987). Cadres and others in political authority also had to be exposed to the living of the rural masses by about six months attendance of a May 7th cadre school, where they would do manual labour as well as studying the socialist classics and other literature (Lippit 1987). The rapid expansion of links with foreign countries in the early 70s, and the corresponding rapid growth in foreign trade of almost 140% between 1970 and 1973 (Cheng 1986, Riskin 1987), while initially appearing to run counter to Mao's concept of self-reliance, the channelling of imports into weak points and bottlenecks in the economy actually strengthened China's self-sufficient position (Riskin 1987). The tackling of regional inequalities with policies such as that of building production plants near supplies of raw materials also facilitated self-reliance.

`Figures for GNP, agricultural and industrial production and food consumption per capita all appear to show healthy growth during the Cultural Revolution decade. Riskin (1987), however, suggests that both systemic and structural problems were hidden in these figures by such factors as statistical exaggeration, high population growth, increasing sectoral imbalance, increased inputs per unit output, high quantities of useless production due to the prevention of effective planning by decentralisation, and by the fact that figures such as that for total grain output were still recovering from the Great Leap Forward. Increased grain output was also a facet of self-sufficiency, but was often bought at the cost of the prevention of other kinds of agriculture, while the politicisation of society made people reluctant to be decisive for fear of being labelled 'capitalist roaders', and therefore adversely affected both agricultural and industrial production. While increments between rural and urban workers did decrease due to such projects as the 'barefoot doctors', which allowed the transference of basic medical skills to rural areas (Lippit 1987), this must be seen in the context of the lack of effective growth of urban industry due to weakened education standards, anti-intellectualism and the partial removal of the distinction between manual and mental work. What growth did occur in this area was largely a function of investment made at the expense of stagnant living standards and wage freezes (Lippit 1987, Riskin 1987).

While the emphasis of the Cultural Revolution on egalitarianism may not, in itself, have been incompatible with economic and social development, the means by which this goal was attempted certainly were (Lippit 1987, Riskin 1987). The insistence of the gang of four on concentrating on class struggle in a society in which there was manifestly no bourgeois class was counter-productive and led to many of the problems outlined above. This was widely perceived in the CPC and led to the arrest of the gang of four soon after Mao's death in 1976, and to an inevitable change in policy direction. Between 1976 and 1978, Hua Guofeng became Chairman of the CPC and attempted to pursue less radical economic policies which were nonetheless still largely Maoist in character. This brief period, however, was distinguished by political infighting between 'reformers' led by Hua and 'moderates' led by Deng Xiaoping. The Third Plenum of the Eleventh Central Committee in December 1978 saw the moderates win out, marking the start of the reform period.

The reform period, which continues to the present day, has seen enormous changes from the 'Maoist' policies and strategies of the Cultural Revolution. The emphasis during this era has been on the "four modernisations", of industry, agriculture, science and technology and defence (Lippit 1987, Cannon and Jenkins 1990). These goals have been sought by way of a pragmatic approach characterised by Deng's view of practice as the sole criterion of truth, in distinct contrast to Mao's ideological view of correct political thinking as the basis for social and economic development. In line with this, agriculture has been de-collectivised, with the introduction of the responsibility system essentially representing a return to family farming (see for instance Lippit 1987), crop diversification has been encouraged and markets have been allowed to provide financial incentives as a motivational factor for production, with initial price increases for agricultural produce serving a similar purpose. In industry, although large-scale reform was initially resisted by elements within the CPC, measures to reduce party control to a more regulatory role were introduced from 1984, along with increased independence for urban enterprises and a revision of the price system in order to reflect such factors as supply and demand (Lippit 1987, Cannon and Jenkins 1990). Market mechanisms have been given progressively freer reign during the reform period, with Kristof (1994) describing the situation in the People's Republic as 'totalitarian capitalism'. The period has also been marked by an 'open door' policy on foreign relations in which foreign investment has been actively encouraged, particularly by the introduction of Special Enterprise Zones (SEZ) in coastal regions, consistent with the policy of allowing regional differentials in order to encourage overall production. The early eighties also saw significant attempts to reduce population growth by such methods as the one child policy, although such restrictions have since been greatly relaxed.

`Although creating some undesirable social consequences, such as an urban underclass of poor rural migrants, the reform of Maoist policies was rewarded initially by substantial growth in both agricultural and industrial output due to the relatively free operation of free market mechanisms. The economy, however, then went into a slump, due partly to the obstruction of reformist goals from within the CPC, but also to factors such as the 'overheating' of the economy and lack of growth in transport and power production with respect to industry creating massive inflation (Cannon and Jenkins 1990). The up and down nature of the economy in the eighties appears to be part of a cycle of boom and recession that China's semi-capitalist, semi-socialist state seems unable to control (Goldstein 1994), and which is exacerbated by widespread corruption in the bureaucracy facilitated by the intermediate nature of the system. In an atmosphere of political suppression, demonstrated by the Tiananmen massacre of 1989, the combatting of such tendencies is very difficult and this reveals an uncomfortable duality between free market mechanisms and a totalitarian regime. The future development of the People's Republic of China is in large part dependent on the satisfactory resolution of this duality.

Rehabilitation, the First Five Year Plan, the Great Leap Forward and its aftermath, the recovery period, the Cultural Revolution and the reform period constitute six relatively discrete phases of Chinese 'socialist' efforts to promote social and economic development. The reform period is particularly distinct as the previous phases can all be conceived of as 'Maoist' to a greater or lesser extent. Both Maoist and reformist strategies have had successes in creating economic growth and increased social prosperity, but these successes have always been temporary. Whether or not the People's Republic can enter a new and more constructive phase, perhaps with the imminent death of Deng Xiaoping, remains to be seen, but it is clear that the achievement of sustainable development in China is a far from easy task.

`BIBLIOGRAPHY

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