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Communism And China
by Blayne Bradley

In Paul Kennedy's Rise and Fall of the Great Powers Kennedy observes that the abandonment of Maoist Doctrines by Deng Xiaoping the Paramount Leader of the People's Republic of China (PRC) starting in 1978 allowed China to rapidly modernize and gain an unprecedented double digit economic growth entirely undisturbed until the end of the scope of the books' analysis in 1985. This allows for the prediction that should China be able to keep it up will manage to overtake the United States by 2020. However Susan L. Shirk in China Fragile Superpower while for the most part confirms Kennedy's observations for the 21st century makes interesting observations in regards to the Chinese Communist Party's abandonment of traditional Maoist doctrine and its replacement with constructive patriotism at its best and ultra-nationalism at its worse posses to cause a contradictory political dilemma between foreign policy and domestic popular opinion that could lead to a crisis and instability making the challenge of China's “peaceful rise” difficult to say the least. However in contrast to the above sources that posit generally that the abandonment of Maoist dogma for more liberal market economic ideals is a good thing China! Inside the People's Republic by the Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars shows a much more positive view of both China's Cultural Revolution and of the period of the prevalence of Maoist dogma during the period between 1949 the date of the establishment of the People's Republic of China and the defeat of Chiang Kai Shek's Nationalist Government to 1978 the date of Deng Xiaoping's ascension to Paramount Leader of the Communist Party. In this paper I will explore the relationship between China's political and economic stability with its relationship with Communism and ask the questions of was China doing better under Communism or is it doing better now with Communist dogma “dead” and nationalism taken its place?

The question of whether China's fortunes are better off now with the full effect of Deng Xiaoping's reforms fully revealing themselves or back when China was striving for the Marxist utopian ideal with Mao Zedong Thought is not open and clear cut, nostalgia for the previous era is wide spread among urban labourers and the rural poor especially as the income wealth gap increases is forcing the Party leadership to grapple with issues they haven't had to deal with previously especially so now that the Long March generation of leadership have stepped down and the newer generation have to grapple with these new issues without the same revolutionary credentials of the previous elite. To study how the differences between the period of Deng era reforms we must first take a look at each period in question starting with an analysis of Deng's era of reforms and the Hu Jintao (current President of China) era of trying to build a “Harmonious Society” of how the breaking away from Maoism and adopting pragmatic foreign and economic policy have led to economic growth and its benefits but also the current problems and issues with the reforms and reasons and possible causes for instability. Then followed by an overview of Pre-Deng era, essentially the period of 1949 to the death of Mao, the effects of unity under a single solid leadership, the costs and benefits of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution and the effects of Maoist Thought on then China's foreign policy and internal stability. Once a cost-benefits relationship has been established for both periods then a comparison between the two can be established and once established we will have our final result, has China been better off under Communism or is it better off now with economic reforms?

Starting firstly with the Deng Xiaoping era of reform, modernization and economic development. The reforms began roughly in the late 1970's beginning with a series of successful local reforms in the town and village level that were adopted to higher levels by Party authorities on higher levels until finally adopted by the Central Government when Chinese leaders concluded that the Soviet-styled system that had been in place since the 50's wasn't working to make China economically strong. As such starting 1979 the economic reforms by Deng Xiaoping can be seen as noted by Kennedy in the same light as either Post-Meiji Japan, Colbert's France, or Frederick the Great's reign in how China's leaders are straining in every sense of the world to milk every pragmatic advantage to encourage enterprise, initiative and innovation with a determination to catch up economically with the West. Reforms were gradual and “phased” beginning with decreasing collectivization by implementing the household responsibility system in agriculture letting farmers retain a surplus of their crop yield over individual plots of land, encouraging private enterprise, making China attractive to foreign investment and increasing international trade. These reforms skyrocketed China's growth in GDP and over four times in just under a decade and allowed for the rapid increase in the standard of living for much of the Chinese population and increased support for additional more challenging reforms.

Not only were reforms done on an economic level but also on military, domestic, and foreign policy levels, modernizing the military was the 4th but least important of Deng Xiaoping's “Four Modernizations” behind agriculture, industry and science. By keeping a firm hand on military spending and keeping it down much more of the countries limited economic resources can be directed to economic growth and as a long term effect will be far more capable to drag the military forward then it was then or now. This in conjunction with developments of the foreign policy arena helped with the rapid growth rates as during Mao's time Mao operating under the idea of exporting world socialist revolution abroad to other Third World nations to fight imperialism was all to eager to partake in border skirmishes with neighboring nations, with UN forces in Korea (1950), with India over the border with Tibetan Autonomous Region (1962), with the Soviet Union during the Sino-Soviet split (1969), and with Vietnam over the later's invasion of Cambodia (1979) siphoning needed resources away from the economic and then into the People's Liberation Army. With Mao's death the Chinese leadership under Deng Xiaoping with their determination to adopt all practical pragmatic means to insure economic growth “It doesn't matter if the cat is white or black as long as it catches mice” quietly broke with Mao's counter productive foreign policy and sought to improve relations with China's neighbors, such as dropping the Maoist era of inflammatory polemics and rhetoric loudly denouncing American and Soviet imperialism to more conciliatory talk of multipolar or “win-win” diplomacy that when combined with PLA modernizations such as the enhancement of real strength by having the PLA reduced from over 4.2 million soldiers to a more professional 3 million during the 1980's, adopting conscription to acquire a ample pool of skilled professionals and the acquiring of more sophisticated military hardware, and the reinstatement of military ranks allowed China to acquire military parity with the Soviet military forces (during the 1980's as described by Paul Kennedy) which at the time thus no longer then seemed so one sided in Moscow's favor. Modernizations, market reforms, constructive foreign policy, were all set to see China launched into a new world era for the 21st century as at least a major regional military and economic power to the definitive Great Power it is now.

However, economic reforms are not without their fair share of troubles, despite the economy quadrupling in worth between 1979 and 1989, and that while China's reforms since 1979 had lifted over 400 million people out of poverty, growth did not effect or help everyone equally, initially the growth in the economy resulted in the escalation of costs as the economy was then reacting realistically to market forces causing much discontent among urban workers whose raises were not rising as fast as the entrepreneurs or the farmers and now in the 21st century there is a reversing trend where the wealth gap between the rich and poor, between the richer coastal provinces and the underdeveloped inner provinces and the old centers of industry such as Manchuria becoming a rust belt is a further cause and escalation of strife, leading to the Tienanmen Square protests and subsequent crackdown in 1989 and now in the 21st leading to a startling and unprecedented number of local protests against corruption, a staggering 74,000 per year and growing since 2004. To maintain legitimacy in the eyes of the people with hardline Maoism discredited in the eyes of the people and “Socialism with Chinese characteristics” the new slogan the Party had to choose a new idealism to appeal to the people to maintain popular support. This was gradual with the first break with Mao's policies with Deng Xiaoping declaring Mao “7 Parts Right, 3 Parts Wrong” to maintain Party continuality honoring the “Great Helmsman” as the father of the nation while quietly breaking from his unproductive policies, which was built up upon as “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics” and then with the Hu Jintao administration in China as “Building a Harmonious Society” but under all this subtext is the truth of China's switch from Maoism to the adoption of patriotic nationalism as the new credential of Party legitimacy. Economically this translates as doing well and being productive to help the nation, on one hand offering almost total economic and social freedom while on the other using patriotism to ensure One Party Rule and that the Communist Party remains as the sole authority in Chinese politics and by encouraging nationalism and by acting tough on sensitive issues such as Japan or USA Hegemony Party leaders increase their legitimacy in the eyes of the people. This is currently seen as a double edged sword as is the central thesis for Susan Shirks work, as by increasing public stake in nationalism and pride in the nations accomplishments it becomes harder for China's leaders to be conciliatory and productive in foreign relations to maintain the economic growth that is now the cornerstone of Party legitimacy. With wide internet access to world affairs and with thousands of tabloids and independent magazines covering foreign relations in detail and with the “control cartel” of China's Information and Propaganda Ministry(s) inflaming popular patriotic sentiment forces China's leadership into an uncomfortable position where they risk their jobs by compromising in foreign affairs and seeming weak in the eyes of the people. This wasn't as hard for China's leaders during the times of Mao or Deng Xiaoping whom had every credential in the eyes of the people and could risk being conciliatory and compromising in foreign relations to ensure a better and more practical diplomatic position and wouldn't be seen as betraying China much in the same way Nixon wouldn't be seen as a Communist sympathizer by opening relations with China but becomes steadily more difficult with successive generations of Chinese leaders starting with Jiang Zhemin who not being of the Long March generation of leaders and lacking their charisma could neither a) depend on the automatic loyalty of the army and b) lacked the charisma and revolutionary credentials to maintain popular support in the midst of controversial foreign policy decisions. The issues threaten China's domestic stability that should a diplomatic dispute arise where China's pride is on the line newer leaders may find themselves unable to do anything but act and escalate matters or risk the annihilation of the Communist Party plunging China into unrest and possibly civil war undoing all of the efforts and successes of the last 3 decades.

The China of the Mao Zedong era was much different from the current era of reform, from the 1950's onwards China had established a system of economic planning on the Soviet model of 5 year plans, China followed the socialist heavy industry path of modernization focusing on constructing new factories and heavy industries, nationalizing large portions of the economy and tightening control of the budget and monetary system to combat the previous Koumintang regimes hyperinflation with the goal of ending or reducing it by 1950. Private enterprise and capitalism was suppressed in a series of ideological campaigns directed by the Party in the early 50's forcing the merging the small capitalist element in Chinese society to merge with Communism in order for it to help aid the building of a “New China” as China lacked heavy industry and only had minimal secondary production and many large scale capital intensive industrial plants were set up partly thanks to Soviet assistance. Then in 1958 the Great Leap Forward was announced which settled on the goals to have China catchup to the west and surpass it in a single generation. The effort failed with the official number of deaths by famine by the Chinese government at 16.5 Million people, agricultural production dropped by real terms and not much of the industrial expansion accomplished was useful in real economic terms. However on the other hand much else was accomplished, with the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949 a series of social reforms were decreed and carried out, equal rights for women such as the making of traditional “foot bindings” illegal and the legal protection of women's rights, abolition of polygamy, adoption of a horizontal left-right method of writing, the ending of social chaos from the civil war of the warlord era and other socialist reforms such as land reform which abolished the land lord class in China which gradually equalized the wealth gap in the remaining classes of rural farmers. Major public health institutions were established in rural and urban communities as the economy experienced rapid growth from the stability of the 1949 to 1958 period.

However things got worse, during the above mentioned Great Leap Forward the Sino-Soviet split occurred hurting China's efforts in modernization which came about due to the conflict in personalities between Mao Zedong and Nikita Khrushchev which will not be discussed further here as it is a complicated topic and not within the scope of the essay but suffice it to say that Maoist policies of inflammatory political polemics in criticizing the resident superpowers did not help matters causing the withdrawing of Soviet aid and economic assistance to China hurting its economic growth and leading to a unstable international relations climate that could have escalated to war at nearly anytime during Mao's tenure keeping scare economic resources tied into the PLA instead of being invested in economic growth. As a result of the failures of the Great Leap Forward Mao retired from politics but later apprehensive in leaving his reputation and legacy in shambles upon seeing what happened to Khrushchev launched a political campaign targeted at the pragmatists within the Communist Party known as the “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution” which was an unprecedented event where it was the thus far only time a section of the Chinese communist leadership or any communist leadership in any Communist country sought to rally popular support against existing Communist Institutions, a fact that was not lost on Henry Kissinger and contributed to his desire to open relations with China. Schools and Universities were closed and forced to work in unproductive manners, many army generals and senior politicians were humiliated and ousted from office, much of China's cultural legacy was damaged by over zealous Red Guards and the economy was severally disrupted and disoriented during the period and at its worst moments nearly plunged into civil war between the different aspects of Chinese society until the situation plunging out of control was stabilized when Mao called in the People's Liberation Army to intervene and stop the unrest. Kennedy notes that the Cultural Revolution may just as well had pushed back China's economic development by a decade and was only starting to shake off its effects by the late 1980s and that had it not happened China would be much further along economically then it is today. Things are not entirely bad though, Chinese popular mass action ended the widespread problem of pestilence, bringing down the numbers of pests such as insects and rodents to unprecedentedly low levels between the events of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, the “barefoot doctors” program was officially endorsed by Mao and made official national policy in 1968 and became an official part of the Cultural Revolution which soon expanded to bring preventative care to cover roughly 90% of rural China making China one of the “overachievers” in reducing infant mortality rate and raising the life expectancy of the average Chinese and reduced healthcare costs in the People's Republic, and in fact the World Health Organization regarded the program was a “successful example of solving shortages of medical services in rural areas.”

Now all of the information required is available to consider the Mao and Post Mao era's and their effects between each other. If the question to ask was “Is China better off under Communism?” we can now from examining the evidence provided settle on our answer. The Mao era provided social stability (for the most part), a quasi classless society and generalized equality between farmers and the urban workers, social reforms and an end to warlord civil war era. But soon came with Mao's egocentric impatience to see Communism achieved in his lifetime bringing about intermittent periods of chaos and instability marring his reputation and tarnishing his legacy and millions suffered for his mistakes and Maoist polemics and angry rhetoric and desire to export revolution caused or contributed to a number of border skirmishes which in the case of the Soviet Union could have resulted in nuclear war at nearly anytime after the Sino-Soviet split. However then there's post-Mao era of Deng Xiaoping's open market reforms and open door policy that brought foreign investment into China and open China to international trade and leading China into phenomenal economic growth and a period of regional peace and stability as the new leaders sought to break from the skirmish prone past and sought regional cooperation and trade to speed up economic growth to make China a global economic and military power. While on one hand the growth successfully lifted over 400 millions out of poverty, on the other hand the economic growth as resulted in a troubling wealth income gap disparity between the rich and poor that undermines stability and One Party rule. Also with Communist ideals losing their luster for the Chinese masses the Chinese control cartel is forced to rely and fall back onto encouraging patriotism and national pride in many ways forcing the leadership into a corner where they may be forced to respond to international disputes over sensitive issues with force to maintain popular support. The rapid economic growth has also resulted in environmental degradation and rampant wide scale corruption among Party politicians, bureaucrats and businessmen, the barefoot doctors program was abolished in the 1980's switching China to a privatized system of healthcare a system that is ever closer seemingly on the brink of collapse all of this further fuels popular discontent forcing the party to at all costs maintain something around 10% economic growth or risk a mass popular uprising which could topple of Communist Party putting the party leadership into a siege mentality making them paranoid at popular opinion, forcing increases in the military budget to insure the loyalty of the PLA and making it as mentioned above harder for China to keep potentially issues low key and maintain a conciliatory stance to better aid economic growth. While Maoist era China, or more accurately an idealized Maoist era China seems satisfactory in hindsight and its contributions to China undeniable the fact that economic growth wasn't necessarily raising the standard of living anywhere quick enough and that while equal everyone was equally poor makes it undeniable conclusion that a post Mao China adopting capitalist principles to the Chinese situation has undeniably resulted in a much better off China and that while China's challenges are considerable they are the same challenges that any and all developing nations eventually go through and that of them China is in a far better position to profit from its development then others before it, and that the current 21st century issues of pollution and corruption are considerable there is ample evidence to conclude that effort is being made to invest in “greener” technologies and anti corruption campaigns to curb corruption and increase Party legitimacy without resorting to nationalist sentiment that has been proven to be a double edged sword. In short the economic growth and successes of a post Mao China are undeniable but its problems are solvable with further gradual reforms and technological implementation, while Maoist China's problems while acceptable to an extant has its problems inherent within its ideological system.

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Communism And China
by Blayne Bradley

In Paul Kennedy's Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, Kennedy observes that the abandonment of Maoist Doctrines by Deng Xiaoping, the former Paramount Leader of the People's Republic of China (PRC), allowed China to rapidly modernize and gain unprecedented double digit economic growth, entirely undisturbed until the end of the scope of the book's analysis in 1985. This allows for the prediction that, should China be able to maintain its growth, it will manage to overtake the United States by 2020. While Susan L. Shirk in China: Fragile Superpower for the most part confirms Kennedy's observations, she makes interesting notes regarding the Chinese Communist Party's abandonment of traditional Maoist doctrine, and its replacement with patriotism and nationalism. This causes a contradictory political dilemma between foreign policy and domestic popular opinion that could lead to a crisis and instability, which could challenge China's “peaceful rise”. However, in contrast to the above sources, which posit that the abandonment of Maoist dogma for more liberal market economic ideals is a good thing, the Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars' China! Inside the People's Republic shows a much more positive view of both China's Cultural Revolution and of the period between 1949 and 1978, where Maoist thought was prevalent. In this paper I will explore the relationship between China's political stability, economic prosperity, and Communism. Then I will answer the question of whether China was doing better under Communism, or whether it is better now with Communist dogma “dead” and replaced by nationalism.

The question of whether China's fortunes are better off now with Deng Xiaoping's reforms than they were back when China was following Maoist ideology, is not settled; nostalgia for the previous era is widespread among urban labourers and the rural poor, especially as income disparities continue to grow, forcing the Party's leadership - who haven't the same revolutionary credentials as the previous elite - to grapple with issues they haven't had to deal with previously. To study the differences between the Deng and Mao era reforms, we must first take a look at each period in question, starting with an analysis of Deng's era of reforms and the Hu Jintao (current President of China) era of trying to build a “Harmonious Society”. This notion concerns how breaking away from Maoism, and adopting pragmatic foreign and economic policy, has led to both economic growth and instability. Following that will be an overview of the pre-Deng era (essentially the period from 1949 to the death of Mao), the effects of unity under a single solid leadership, the costs and benefits of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution and the effects of Maoist Thought on (then) China's foreign policy and internal stability. Once a cost-benefit analysis has been established for both periods, a comparison between the two can be established, and once it is we will be able to establish whether China was better off under Communism than it is now.

First we will begin with the Deng Xiaoping era of reform. The reforms began roughly in the late 1970's beginning with a series of successful local reforms in the town and village level, that were adopted at higher levels by Party authorities. Finally they were used by the Central Government when Chinese leaders concluded that the Soviet-styled system, in place since the 50's, wasn't working. Reforms were gradual and “phased” - they began by decreasing collectivization by implementing the household responsibility system in agriculture, letting farmers retain a surplus of their crop yield over individual plots of land, encouraging private enterprise, making China attractive to foreign investment and increasing international trade. These reforms skyrocketed China's growth in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by over four times in just under a decade, and allowed for a rapid increase in the standard of living of much of the Chinese population, as well as increased support for additional more challenging reforms.

Not only were there reforms on an economic level, but also on military, domestic, and foreign policy levels. Modernizing the military was the 4th and least important of Deng Xiaoping's “Four Modernizations” behind agriculture, industry and science. By keeping military spending down, far more of the country's limited resources could be directed towards economic growth. With Mao's death the Chinese leadership, with their determination to adopt all pragmatic means to ensure economic growth, quietly broke with Mao's counterproductive foreign policy and sought to improve relations with China's neighbors, such as dropping the Maoist era of inflammatory polemics and rhetoric, which loudly denounced American and Soviet imperialism, to more conciliatory talk of multipolar or “win-win” diplomacy. When combined with People's Liberation Army (PLA) modernizations, such as the enhancement of "real" strength by having the PLA reduced from over 4.2 million soldiers to a more professional 3 million, adopting conscription to acquire an ample pool of skilled professionals, the acquiring of more sophisticated military hardware, and the reinstatement of military ranks, allowed China to acquire military parity with the Soviets' military forces. Modernization, market reforms, and constructive foreign policy, all launched China into a new era of, at the very least, major regional military and economic power, to the definitive Great Power it is now.

However, economic reforms are never without their fair share of troubles, even in the case of China, despite the economy quadrupling in worth between 1979 and 1989. While China's reforms since 1979 had lifted over 400 million people out of poverty, growth did not help everyone equally. Initially the growth in the economy caused much discontent among urban workers, whose wages were not increasing as quickly as those of entrepreneurs or farmers. This trend has been reversing in the 21st century, where a new kind of unrest from the rural classes has led to a startling and unprecedented number of local protests against corruption - a staggering 74,000 per year and growing since 2004. With hardline Maoism discredited, it was difficult to maintain the legitimacy in the eyes of the people, and so the Party chose as its new slogan “Socialism with Chinese characteristics” to appeal to the people and maintain popular support. This was gradual with the first break from Mao's policies, with Deng Xiaoping famously declaring Mao “7 Parts Right, 3 Parts Wrong” to maintain the Party's continuity with the “Great Helmsman” who was father of their nation, while quietly breaking from his more questionable policies. In economic terms, this translates as doing well and being productive to help the nation, on the one hand offering almost total economic and social freedom, while on the other using patriotism and nationalism to ensure one party rule. This is currently seen as a double edged sword - and this is the central thesis of Susan Shirk's work - as by increasing public stake in nationalism and pride in the nation's accomplishments, it becomes harder for China's leaders to be conciliatory and productive in foreign relations and maintain the economic growth that is now the cornerstone of Party legitimacy. This was never difficult for Mao or Deng Xiaoping who had every credential in the eyes of the people, and could risk being conciliatory and compromising in foreign relations to ensure a better and more practical diplomatic position while never being seen as betraying China. Much in the same way Nixon wouldn't be seen as a Communist sympathizer by opening relations with China, but for future presidents this becomes steadily more difficult, with successive generations of Chinese leaders who, not being of the Long March generation and lacking their charisma, could neither a) depend on the automatic loyalty of the army and b) lacked the charisma and revolutionary credentials to maintain popular support in the midst of controversial foreign policy decisions. These issues threaten China's domestic stability such that, should a diplomatic dispute arise where China's pride is on the line, newer leaders may find themselves with either two choices - either act and escalate matters, or risk the annihilation of the Communist Party, plunging China into unrest and possibly civil war while undoing all of the efforts and successes of the last three decades.

The China of the Mao Zedong era was very different from the current era of reform. From the 1950's onwards China had based a system of economic planning on the Soviet model of 5-year plans. China followed the heavily socialist path of industrialization, modernization, and nationalization. Private enterprise and capitalists were suppressed in a series of ideological campaigns directed by the Party in the early 50's, subsuming the small capitalist elements in Chinese society into the Communist system in order for it to help aid the building of a “New China”. China lacked heavy industry and only had minimal secondary production, and many large scale, capital-intensive industrial plants were set up partly thanks to Soviet assistance. Then in 1958 the Great Leap Forward was announced. It had the goal of China catching up to the west and surpassing it in a single generation. This effort failed - agricultural production dropped by real terms, not much of the industrial expansion accomplished was useful in real economic terms, and 16.5 million Chinese died from famine. However much else was accomplished, with the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949 a series of social reforms were decreed and carried out: equal rights for women, such as illegalizing traditional “foot bindings” and the abolition of polygamy, adoption of a horizontal left to right method of writing, the ending of social chaos from the civil war of the warlord era, and other socialist reforms such as land reform which abolished the landlord class in China and gradually equalized the wealth gap in the remaining classes of rural farmers. Major public health institutions were established in rural and urban communities as the economy experienced rapid growth from the stability of the 1949 to 1958 period.

However things worsened; during the above-mentioned Great Leap Forward the Sino-Soviet split occurred, which came about due to the conflict in personalities between Mao Zedong and Nikita Khrushchev (the details of which are beyond the scope of this essay), hurting China's efforts to modernize. As a result of the failures of the Great Leap Forward, Mao retired from politics, but later was apprehensive to leaving his reputation and legacy in shambles. After seeing what happened to Khrushchev, Mao launched a political campaign targeted at the pragmatists within the Communist Party known as the “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution”. This was an unprecedented event as it was the only time a section of the Chinese communist leadership, or in fact any communist leadership in any Communist country, sought to rally popular support against existing Communist Institutions. This fact that was not lost on Henry Kissinger, and contributed to his desire to open relations with China. At the time, schools were closed in China and forced to work in unproductive manners, many army generals and senior politicians were humiliated and ousted from office, much of China's cultural legacy was damaged by over-zealous Red Guards, and the economy was severally disrupted during the period. At its worst moments the campaign nearly resulted in civil war between the different aspects of Chinese society. The situation was stabilized when Mao called in the People's Liberation Army to intervene and stop the unrest. Kennedy notes that the Cultural Revolution may have pushed back China's economic development by a decade, and that China was only starting to shake off its effects by the late 1980s. On the other hand, Chinese popular mass action ended the widespread problem of pestilence, bringing down the numbers of pests such as insects and rodents to unprecedentedly low levels between the events of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. The “barefoot doctors” program was officially endorsed by Mao, made official national policy in 1968 and became an official part of the Cultural Revolution, which soon expanded to bring preventative care to cover roughly 90% of rural China. This made China one of the “overachievers” in reducing its infant mortality rate, raising the life expectancy of the average Chinese, and reducing healthcare costs in the People's Republic. In fact the World Health Organization regarded the program was a “successful example of solving shortages of medical services in rural areas.”

Now all of the information is in place for us to compare the effects of the Mao and Post-Mao eras. If the question to ask was, “Is China better off under Communism?” we can now, from examining the evidence provided, settle on our answer. The Mao era provided social stability (for the most part), a quasi-classless society, and increased equality between farmers and urban workers, as well as bringing an end to the warlord era. But soon came, with Mao's egocentric impatience to see Communism achieved in his lifetime, intermittent periods of chaos and instability which marred his legacy and made millions suffer for his mistakes. The desire to export revolution caused or contributed to a number of border skirmishes, which in the case of the Soviet Union could have resulted in nuclear war at nearly any time after the Sino-Soviet split.

The post-Mao era of Deng Xiaoping's open market reforms and open door policy, which brought foreign investment into China and opened China to international trade, led China to phenomenal economic growth. It also brought upon a period of regional peace and stability as the new leaders sought a break from the skirmish-prone past. They sought regional cooperation and trade to speed up economic growth and make China a global economic and military power. While on one hand the growth successfully lifted over 400 million Chinese out of poverty, on the other it resulted in a troubling gap in wealth between the rich and poor, which undermines stability and One Party rule. Also with Communist ideals losing their luster for the Chinese masses, the Chinese control cartel is forced to rely on encouraging patriotism and national pride. In many ways this forces the leadership into a corner where they must respond to sensitive international disputes with force to maintain popular support. The rapid economic growth has also resulted in environmental degradation and rampant, wide-scale corruption among Party politicians, bureaucrats and businessmen. The barefoot doctors program was abolished in the 1980's, switching China to a privatized system of healthcare - a system that seems more and more on the brink of collapse. All of this further fuels popular discontent, forcing the party to at all costs maintain extremely high economic growth or risk a mass popular uprising which could topple the Communist Party. This puts the party leadership into a siege mentality, making them paranoid of popular opinion, forcing increases in the military budget to ensure the loyalty of the PLA and making it, as mentioned above, more difficult for China to keep potential issues low-key, and maintain a conciliatory stance to better aid economic growth. While Maoist era China, or more accurately an idealized Maoist era China, seems satisfactory in hindsight and its contributions to China undeniable, the fact that economic growth wasn't necessarily raising the standard of living anywhere quickly enough, and that while everyone was equal, this simply meant that everyone was equally poor. Post-Mao China's adoption of capitalist principles has undeniably resulted in a much better off China, and while China's challenges are considerable, they are the same challenges that all developing nations must experience. While the 21st century's issues of pollution and corruption are considerable, there is ample evidence to conclude that effort is being made to invest in “greener” technologies and anti-corruption campaigns to curb corruption and increase Party legitimacy, without resorting to nationalist sentiment. In short the economic growth and successes of a post-Mao China are undeniable, and its problems are solvable with further, gradual reforms and technological implementation - whereas Maoist China's problems, while acceptable to an extent, were problems inherent to its ideological system.

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Originally posted by Lyrhawn:
And while doing so, introduce your paper to the comma. It will lead to a long and fruitful relationship.

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Originally posted by Sean Monahan:

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Originally posted by Lyrhawn:
And while doing so, introduce your paper to the comma. It will lead to a long and fruitful relationship.

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I would say to introduce more periods as well; split up your sentences. You have many sentences which are 7, 8, 9 lines. (For example, the first and last sentences in the next-to-last paragraph.)

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Originally posted by Blayne Bradley:

I went over the word limit of 2500 to about 3880 words, but currently finding plenty that we could make shorted and cut out, my brother suggests that as long as the essay is engaging they shouldnt mind reading it.

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As a result of the failures of the Great Leap Forward, Mao retired from politics, but later was apprehensive to leaving his reputation and legacy in shambles.

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In Paul Kennedy's Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, Kennedy observes that Deng Xiaoping's abandonment of Maoist doctrines in 1978 allowed China to modernize rapidly. That modernization caused the country's economy to grow at unprecedented, double-digit rates. While Kennedy's analysis ends in 1985, extending his numbers forward suggests that China's economy may overtake the U.S. economy by 2020. However, in China: Fragile Superpower, Susan L. Shirk suggests a potential barrier to this economic ascent. In replacing traditional Maoist doctrine with patriotism and nationalism, the Chinese Community Party has created tension between the conciliatory foreign policy it desires and the nationalist sentiment that prevails in domestic popular opinion. That divide may lead to internal crisis and instability, challenging China’s “peaceful rise.” The Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars’ China! Inside the People’s Republic offers stronger objections to Kennedy’s thesis. It takes a positive view of China’s Cultural Revolution and the period between 1949 and 1978, and attributes the successes achieved during these years to the prevalence of Maoist thought. That approach, however, ignores the inherent problems with Maoism’s ideological system. While modern China’s nationalist focus is not without problems, including those raised by Shirk, it has allowed the country to achieve greater political stability and economic prosperity than would have been possible under Communism.

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It's looking better, but it could still benefit from some work. I agree with others that many of your sentences would be clearer if they were broken into two or three shorter ones.

Also, I'm a bit confused by your thesis. My undergraduate professors always requested that the first paragraph clearly state what my argument was; i.e., not "This paper. . . will answer the question of whether China was doing better under Communism, or whether it is better now with Communist dogma “dead” and replaced by nationalism," but "China is doing better under nationalism than it did when Communist dogma still held sway." Unless your professor has made it clear that they prefer theses be phrased in the form of questions, I would strongly recommend reworking your introduction.

Here, I'll try my hand at it to get you started:

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The instructions were to specifically write my thesis using the research question formulated.

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Students are required to write a term paper of 7-8 pages (2000 – 2500 words), font size 12, due to the Reception Desk in the Dept of Political Science at H 1225 on November 3, 4 p.m. In addition to list already provided to class students may choose their own topic(s) in consultation with the Professor.
Your paper should state the research question in the introductory paragraph. This should be followed by a short paragraph indicating the nature and scope of the paper’s central argument. The following paragraphs should clearly discuss/ examine various aspects of the research question while laying down coherent and cogent arguments.

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Originally posted by Blayne Bradley:
Adding in sources is a bitch.

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Originally posted by Blayne Bradley:
He can be said to have retired or at least bowed out of the spotlight for a time, a behavioural patten hes done often enough before, step 1) people stop listening to him, step 2) he makes a big deal of pulling out, step 3) wait, step 4) wait until they screw up step 5) jump back in with more power and influence then before.

Hes done this twice during the Jiangsi Soviet republic years, then again in Yunnan and again after that after the GLF. It always results in him gaining more influence then when he left.

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Originally posted by ambyr:
Okay, so he wants the thesis in the second paragraph ("This should be followed by a short paragraph indicating the nature and scope of the paper’s central argument"). That's a bit odd, but I'll go with it. But you don't have a thesis there, either. "Once a cost-benefit analysis has been established for both periods, a comparison between the two can be established, and once it is we will be able to establish whether China was better off under Communism than it is now" isn't an argument, it's a question.

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(most likely due to you reading Jung Chang)

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Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005  |  IP: Logged | 

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Originally posted by Blayne Bradley:
Your loss.

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