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China's Modern Economic History in Communist Chinese Historiography *

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

Albert Feuerwerker
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Extract

It will be evident to a reader of historical works produced in the People's Republic of China that this article, in the choice of subject-matter and in its treatment, is decidedly influenced by the current domestic and foreign political “line” of the Communist Party and Government. This is a relative matter, not absolute, but I would suggest that the dominant “class viewpoint” of the first decade of the Peking régime which produced an anonymous history of dynasties without “feudal” emperors or bureaucrats, literature minus the landlord-scholar-official literatus and nameless peasant rebellions as the central matter of China's history, was to a degree correlated with the process of the internal consolidation of power which may more or less be said to have been accomplished with the completion of the collectivisation of agriculture. The more recent “historicist” trend, which while not rejecting entirely its predecessor concentrates on what may be “positively inherited” from the “feudal” past, represents a quickening of Chinese nationalism fanned to a red-hot intensity, one cannot resist the temptation to conjecture, by the increasingly severe quarrel with the Soviet Union. Soviet Russian commentary on recent Chinese historiography, for example, accuses the Chinese of the “introduction of dogmatic, anti-Marxist and openly nationalistic and racist views.” The Chinese, for their now relatively favourable view of the thirteenth-century Mongol conquests (which are seen as calamitous by the Russians and other Europeans), for their claim that Chinese “feudalism” is the classical model of this historical phenomenon, and because they exaggerate the role of Confucian ideas and their influence on Western philosophy, are roundly condemned by the Russians for “bourgeois nationalism.”

Type
Research Article
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 22 , June 1965 , pp. 31 - 61
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 1965

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References

1 See Albert, Feuerwerker, “China's History in Marxian Dress,” The American Historical Review, 01 1961, pp. 323–353.Google Scholar

2 Vyatkin, R. V. and Tikhvinsky, S. L., “Some Questions of Historical Science in the Chinese People's Republic,” Voprosy istorii, 10 1963, pp. 3–20Google Scholar; translated in The Current Digest of the Soviet Press, XVI, No. 4, 02 19, 1964, pp. 3–10.Google Scholar And for some of the writing which inspired this attack see Ts'ao Ts'ao Lun-chi (Collected Discussions of Ts'ao Ts'ao) (Peking: San-lien Shu-tien, 1962)Google Scholar; Liu, Ta-nien, “Lun K'ang Hsi” (“On K'ang Hsi,”) Li-shih Yen-chiu (Historical Research), No. 3, 1961, pp. 5–21, where the Manchu emperor is described as “the great feudal ruler who united China and defended her against European penetration”; Han Ju-lin, “Lun Ch'eng-chi-ssu-han” (“On Genghis Khan”)Google Scholar, ibid. No. 3, 1962, pp. 1–10; Chou Liang-hsiao, “Kuan-yü Ch'eng-chi-ssu-han” (“About Genghis Khan”), ibid. No. 4, 1963, pp. 1–7.

3 For brief reviews of these discussions, see Jen-min Jih-pao (People's Daily), 02 25, 1964Google Scholar; Kuang-ming Jih-pao (Kuang-ming Daily), 01 18, 1964.Google Scholar

4 Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung (English ed., London: Lawrence & Wishart Ltd., 1954–56), III, p. 154.Google Scholar

5 Like much else in the treatment of China's modern history, the “classical” text for this characterisation is Mao's The Chinese Revolution and the Chinese Communist Party. See Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung, III, pp. 72–101.Google Scholar

6 Yen, Chung-p'ing, “Kuan-yü Hsuan-ts'e Yen-chiu Ti-mu” (“On the Selection of Subjects for Research”), Hung-ch'i (Red Flag), 06 16, 1962; available in English translation, U.S. Department of Commerce, Office of Technical Services, Joint Publications Research Service, JPRS: 14,595, July 25, 1962, pp. 46–71.Google Scholar

7 See Kuo, Mo-jo, “Kuan-yü Hou-chin Po-ku Wen-t'i” (“On Emphasising the Present and De-emphasising the Past”), Pei-ching Ta-hsueh Pao, Jen-wen K'o-hsueh (Peking University Journal, Humanistic Sciences), No. 3, 1953, pp. 111–114.Google Scholar

8 Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung, III, p. 76.Google Scholar

9 See Wittfogel, Karl A., “The Marxist View of China,” The China Quarterly, No. 11 (07–September 1962), pp. 1–20, No. 12 (October–December 1962), pp. 154–169; and Feuerwerker, “China's History in Marxian Dress,” pp. 339–340.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10 George, Lichtheim, “Marx and the ‘Asiatic Mode of Production,’” St. Anthony's Papers, Number 14 (London: Chatto & Windus, 1963), pp. 86–112.Google Scholar

11 Hou, Wai-lu, “Chung-kuo Feng-chien She-hui T'u ti So-yu Chih Hsing-shih ti Wen-t'i” (“The Problem of the Form of Land Ownership in Chinese Feudal Society), in Chung-kuo Feng-chien She-hui T'u ti So-yuh Chih Hsing-shih Wen-t'i T'ao-lun Chi (Collected Papers on the Problem of the Form of Landownership in China's Feudal Society), comp. by Department of History, Nankai University (Peking: San-lien Shu-tien, 1962, 2 vols.), Vol. I, pp. 1–20. This symposium reprints 39 papers on this topic and includes a listing of more than 100 others originally published between October 1949 and the end of 1960.Google Scholar

12 Kuang-ming Daily, 04 10, 1961.Google Scholar

13 See, for example, Hu, Ju-lei, “Kuan-yü Chung-kuo Feng-chien She-hui Hsing-t'ai ti I-hsieh T'e Tien” (“The Special Forms of Feudal Society in China”), Historical Research, No. 1, 1962, pp. 1–23Google Scholar, which has its own peculiarities but reflects fairly well the general trend of thought on this question at present. The following paragraphs are based largely on Hu's article. There is little indication in recent Chinese publications of any acquaintance with the important work on the medieval Chinese economy of such Japanese scholars as Sudō Yoshiyuki. See, for example, his Chūgoku Tochiseidoshi Kenkyū (A Study of the History of Land Systems in China) (Tokyo: Tokyo University Press, 1954).Google Scholar

14 Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung, III, p. 77.Google Scholar

15 Shang, Yüeh, ed., Chung-kuo Li-shih Kang-yao (Outline History of China) (Peking: Jen-min Ch'u-pan-she, 1954).Google Scholar

16 The chief contributions to this discussion are reprinted in Chung-kuo Tzu-pen Chu-i Meng-ya Wen-t'i T'ao-lun Chi (Collected Papers on the Problem of the Incipiency of Capitalism in China) (Peking: San-lien Shu-tien, 1957, 2 vols.)Google Scholar; and Ming-Ch'ing She-hid Ching-chi Hsing-t'ai ti Yen-chiu (Studies in the Society and Economy of the Ming and Ch'ing Periods) (Shanghai: Jen-min Ch'u-pan-she, 1957). Both collections are edited by the Chinese History Seminar of the Chinese People's University in Peking.Google Scholar

17 See Shang, Yüeh, Chung-kuo Tzu-pen Chu-i Kuan-hsi Fa-sheng Chi Yen-pien ti Ch'u-pu Yen-chiu (Preliminary Studies on the Origin and Development of Capitalist Relations in China) (Peking: San-lien Shu-tien, 1956); and his preface to the collection Ming-Ch'ing She-hui Ching-chi Hsing-t'ai ti Yen-chiu.Google Scholar

18 See Schwartz, Benjamin I., “A Marxist Controversy on China,” Far Eastern Quarterly, 02 1954, pp. 143–153.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19 See, e.g., Liu, Ta-nien (associate editor of Historical Research, the leading mainland historical journal), “Kuan-yü Shang Yüeh T'ung-chih wei Ming-Ch'ing She-hui Ching-chi Hsing-t'ai ti Yen-chiu I-shu so Hsieh ti Hsü-yen” (“A Critique of Shang Yüeh's Preface to Studies in the Society and Economy of the Ming and Ch'ing Periods”) Historical Research, No. 1, 1958, pp. 1–16; a sweeping attack by the modern historians at the People's University in Peking, “P'ing Shang Yüeh T'ung-chih Kuan-yü Ming-Ch'ing She-hui Ching-chi Chieh-kou ti Jo-kan Kuan-tien” (“A Critique of Shang Yüeh's Views concerning the Social and Economic Structure of the Ming and Ch'ing Dynasties”)Google Scholar, ibid. No. 12, 1958, pp. 21–35; and Li Shu, “Chung-kuo ti Chin-tai Shih yü ho Shih?” (“When was the Beginning of Modern History in China?”), ibid. No. 3, 1959, pp. 1–11.

20 Liu Ta-nien, op cit., pp. 11–12.Google Scholar

21 People's University historians, op. cit., pp. 22–23. Shang Yüeh, however, did not give up the fight; see his rebuttal to Li, Shu: “Yu-kuan Chung-kuo Tzu-pen Chu-i Meng-ya Wen-t'i Erh-san Shih” (“Some Matters concerning the Question of Incipient Capitalism in China”), Historical Research, No. 7, 1959, pp. 25–50.Google Scholar

22 Wen-hui Pao (Shanghai), 11 1, 1959Google Scholar; summarised in China News Analysis, No. 326, 06 3, 1960, p. 7.Google Scholar

23 People's Daily, 06 13, 1960Google Scholar, p. 7; see also Historical Research, No. 4, 1960, pp. 1–22, and No. 5, 1960, pp. 1–48.Google Scholar

24 For summaries of these discussions, see Ching-chi Yen-chiu (Economic Research), No. 3, 1962, pp. 52–61Google Scholar, and People's Daily, 08 9, 1962.Google Scholar

25 Kuang-ming Daily, 06 23, 1960.Google Scholar

26 “On New Democracy,” Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung, IV, p. 123.Google Scholar

27 Shang, Yüeh, Chung-kuo Tzu-pen-chu-i Kuan-hsi Fa-sheng chi Yen-pien ti Ch'u-pu Yen-chiu (Preliminary Investigations of the Origin and Development of Capitalist Relations in China) (Peking: San-lien Shu-tien, 1956), p. 277.Google Scholar

28 Huang, I-feng and Chiang-To, , “Chung-kuo Yang-wu Yün-tung yü Jih-pen Mei-chih Wei-hsin Tsai Ching-chi Fa-chan Shang ti Pi-chiao” (“A Comparison of Economic Development in China's Industrialisation Movement and in the Japanese Meiji Restoration”), Historical Research, No. 1, 1963, pp. 27–47Google Scholar; see also Economic Research, No. 4, 1963, pp. 62–71, for a report of discussions by the Shanghai Economic Society.Google Scholar

29 See, for example, Sun, Yü-t'ang, comp., Chung-kuo Chin-tai Kung-yeh Shih Tzu-liao, Ti-i-chi, 1840–1895 nien (Source Materials on the History of Modern Industry in China, First Collection, 1840–1895) (Peking: K'o-hsueh Ch'u-pan-she, 1957), Introduction, passim.Google Scholar

30 See, for example, Mou, An-shih, Yang-wu Yün-tung (The “Foreign Affairs” Movement) (Shanghai: Jen-min Ch'u-pan-she, 1956).Google Scholar

31 On the “critical inheritance” of China's early bourgeois economic thought, see People's Daily, 05 18, 1962.Google Scholar

32 Ibid.

33 See Jen, I, “Kuan-yü Chung-kuo Chin-tai Ching-chi Shih Fen-ch'i Wen-t'i ti T'ao-lun” “On the Discussions concerning the Periodisation of Modern Chinese Economic History”), Historical Research, No. 3, 1961, pp. 122–123.Google Scholar

34 For a more detailed survey see Albert, Feuerwerker and Cheng, S., Chinese Communist Studies of Modern Chinese History (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1961), pp. 168–207.Google Scholar

35 Yen Chung-p'ing, “Yuan-yü Hsuan-ts'e Yen-chiu T'i-mu” (“On the Selection of Subjects for Research”). See note 6 above.Google Scholar

36 See, for example, the notice in Economic Research, 05 1958, pp. 89–90, of 39 major projects to collect and compile source materials on the modern economic history of China.Google Scholar

37 See Kuang-ming Daily, 09 12, 1962.Google Scholar