Kerry Brown - China

1 Cover

2 Front Matter China Kerry Brown polity

3 Map

4 Abbreviations Abbreviations BRIBelt and Road InitiativeCCDICentral Commission for Discipline and InspectionCPCCommunist Party of ChinaCRCultural RevolutionGATTGeneral Agreement on Tariffs and TradePLAPeople’s Liberation ArmyPRCPeople’s Republic of ChinaSEZSpecial Economic ZoneTVEsTown and Village EnterprisesWTOWorld Trade Organization

5 About the Author About the Author Kerry Brown is Professor of Chinese Studies and Director of the Lau China Institute, King’s College, London, and Associate Fellow on the Asia Pacific Programme at Chatham House, London. From 2012 to 2015, he was Professor of Chinese Politics and Director of the China Studies Centre at the University of Sydney. Prior to this, from 1998 to 2005, he served as a diplomat in the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and then from 2006 to 2012 was Senior Fellow and then Head of the Asia Programme at Chatham House. He was Director of the Europe China Research and Advice Network (ECRAN) funded by the European Union from 2011 to 2014. He is the author of twenty books, the most recent of which are China’s Dream: The Culture of Chinese Communism and the Secret Sources of its Power (Cambridge: Polity, 2018) and The Trouble with Taiwan: History, the United States and a Rising China (London: Zed Books, 2019).

6 1 China’s Arduous March to Modernity 1 China’s Arduous March to Modernity Chinese history is long and complex. It is a story that splits into many different themes and plots. Trying to understand China without having at least some knowledge of this historical background is, nevertheless, impossible. This is particularly true today, when current Chinese leaders daily appeal to the glorious, unique past of their country as a source of their authority and power in the present. The complexity of this history, however, means that there are many different interpretations and meanings that can be harvested from it. This book aims to present at least some of these, and show why they are important. Despite China’s global prominence in the twenty-first century, these Chinese histories are not well known by people in Europe or the United States (broadly what we can call ‘the West’). This lack of knowledge is compounded by the politicized way that China’s history is told within the current People’s Republic of China (PRC). This book aims at helping to rectify this situation, giving those with no specialist engagement with China a workable outline by which to make sense of this vast story. One aim of this book is to demonstrate that, however marginal China may have seemed in much of the period since the mid-nineteenth century, for a country and a culture accounting for a fifth of humanity, its story is a global one. It was an aberration that so little of this story was known outside of China. What we are witnessing now is a long-overdue correction to this imbalance – something that should have been done earlier. What is China? China’s Struggle to Catch Up The Key Chinese Modernizers Competing Visions: Sun, Chiang, and Mao Risen from the Ashes: China at War and After Notes

7 2 China Reconstructs (1949–1958) Economic Priorities Land Reform: China’s Earliest Harvest of Sorrows Cleansing of the People China and the World Notes

8 3 The Years of Dissent (1958–1966) The Sino-Soviet Split Liberalization with Maoist Characteristics Going to the Moon: The Great Leap Forward Death in the Countryside: The Great Famines Four Modernizations: Their First Appearance Notes

9 4 The Great Proletariat Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) Bombard the Headquarters Smashing the Four Olds ‘Who Hits Me, I Hit Back’: Social Divisions The Mystery of Lin Biao Revolution on the Outside: Détente with the United States Notes

10 5 Reform and Opening Up (1976–1989) Ideological Battles in the 1970s: The Three Paths The Means to Economic Transformation Crossing the River by Feeling the Stones Making Money, Losing Faith Tiananmen Square: The End of the China Dream, Phase One Notes

11 6 Starting Over after Tiananmen (1989–2001) Aftermath of 1989: Steadying the Ship The Taiwan Strait Issue The New Narrative: Patriotism and Love of the Chinese Motherland The Zhu Rongji Reforms Social and Political Change in the 1990s Painting the Capitalists Red Notes

12 7 The Hu Jintao Era (2001–2012) The New Long March: China’s Entry to the WTO The Life of China’s Peasants: China’s Sorrow Contention in the Cities The Era of the Peaceful Rise Political Reform with Chinese Characteristics Olympic Jumps China’s Conscience: Liu Xiaobo Notes

13 8 China’s Dream Realized under Xi Jinping? China’s Dreaming Rejuvenation Starts at Home: Cleansing the Party China’s World Social Life in the China Dream A Happy Ending? Notes

14 Further Reading

15 Index

16 End User License Agreement

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2 Contents

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Jeff Kingston, Japan

David W. Lesch, Syria

Dmitri Trenin, Russia

Kerry Brown