Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-ndmmz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-07T08:30:40.065Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Political Aspects of Mobility in China's Urban Development*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

John W. Lewis
John W. Lewis*
Affiliation:
Cornell University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Traditionally, Chinese urbanism was as much “a way of life”as in present-day America or Europe though its style, scope and effect on general social change differed markedly from its Western counterparts. The pre-modern Chinese city, predominantly an administrative-military center, extended and enforced imperial authority and proved to be a hostile environment to entrepreneurship. Typically, the mark of officialdom was stamped on the Chinese city, and urban life and elite status were often equated. Moreover, the appeal of urban living remained sufficiently strong through the years to attract large numbers of non-official local elites or “gentry” as well as officials, particularly during periods of relative social instability and peasant unrest. Since the perquisites of status surrounded the lives of city dwellers in many areas of China, the young peasant aspirant to the elite also considered movement to the city and upward social mobility to be roughly equivalent. This view of mobility and the city in the Chinese scheme of things provides a basis from which we can examine trends in recruitment and their consequences for social change for selected periods since the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644). Particular emphasis will be placed on the interrelationships of urban social mobility and industrialization and on the implications of these interrelationships for political legitimacy in the Chinese People's Republic.

Following the time-honored Chinese system of evaluating occupations, the official was accorded unmatched prestige. The general citizenry, well beneath all officials, was classified into scholars, peasants, artisans, and merchants—in descending order of rank—with a tiny group of declassed individuals placed far below them.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 60 , Issue 4 , December 1966 , pp. 899 - 912
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1966

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 For a discussion of some of the literature on Chinese cities see Ginsburg, Norton S., “Urban Geography and ‘Non-Western’ Areas,” in Hauser, Philip M. and Schnore, Leo F.: (eds.), The Study of Urbanization (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1965), pp. 327–331Google Scholar.

2 In this analysis, I have relied particularly on Eberhard, Wolfram, Social Mobility in Traditional China (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1962)Google Scholar; Ho, Ping-ti, “Aspects of Social Mobility in China, 1368–1911,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 1 (1959), 330–359CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ho, Ping-ti, The Ladder of Success in Imperial China: Aspects of Social Mobility, 1868–1911 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1962)Google Scholar; Marsh, Robert. M., The Mandarins: The Circulation of Elites in China, 1600–1900 (New York: Free Press, 1961)Google Scholar; and Menzel, JohannaM. (ed.), The Chinese Civil Service: Career Open to Talent? (Boston: Heath, 1963)Google Scholar.

3 Ho, , “Aspects of Social Mobility,” p. 336Google Scholar. This was apparently less true of pre-Ming bureaucracies. See Eberhard, op. cit., pp. 22–27.

4 For evidence on the turnover of households in early Japanese cities, see Smith, Robert J., “Aspects of Mobility in Pre-Industrial Japanese Cities,” Comparative Studies in Societyand History, 5 (1963), 416–423CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Wolfram Eberhard discusses the effect of population turnover on urban culture in the areas of South China which he studied.

5 On the question of high rates of social mobility in traditional societies, see Lipset, Seymour Martin and Bendix, Reinhard, Social Mobility in Industrial Society (Berkeley and LosAngeles: University of California Press, 1962), pp. 62–64Google Scholar; and Lipset, Seymour Martin, “Research Problems in the Comparative Analysis of Mobility and Development,” International Social Science Journal, 16 (1964), 35–48Google Scholar. Marion J. Levy discusses the “source of motivation for a flight of both talent and capital from the merchant role” in “Contrasting Factors in the Modernization of China and Japan,”Economic Development and Cultural Change, 2 (1953), 161–197Google Scholar.

6 The amount and level of economic development in the pre-Ch'ing period remains the subject of considerable controversy. Many Chinese writers and most Japanese Marxist economic historians insist that “buddingcapitalism” existed for centuries prior to the intensification of Western contacts.

7 P'an Kuang-tan and Fei Hsiao-t'ung, “Cityand Village: The Inequality of Opportunity,” in Menzel, op. cit., pp. 9–21.

8 The best study of these enterprises is Feuerwerker, Albert, China's Early Industrialization: Sheng Hsuan-huai (1844–1916) and Mandarin Enterprise (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1958)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Feuerwerker and others indirectly raise the problem of the extent to which elite roles began to undergo fundamental changes in the Ch'ing in response to the pressures of industrialization. It should be emphasized that the kuan-tu shang-pan enterprises served highly limited purposes and did not include the treaty-port industries and businesses whichoriginated later.

9 I have attempted to deal with some of the problems surrounding the abolition of the examination system in my “Party Cadres in Communist China”, in Coleman, James S. (ed.), Education and Political Development (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965), chap. XIIGoogle Scholar. See also Franke, Wolfgang, Reform and Abolition of the Traditional Chinese Examination System (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 Liu, Ta-chung and Yeh, Kung-chia, The Economy of the Chinese Mainland: National Income and Economic Development, 1933–1959 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965), p. 8CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This generalization can be challenged on the basis of data provided in Tawney, R. H., Land and Labour in China (London: Allen and Unwin, 1932), pp. 122 and 196Google Scholar. His data are, however, subject to various interpretations and, on balance, he concludes that the record of factory industrialization “with some honourable exceptions, has not been good, and the question of the conditions under which it is to develop is one of the vital problems confronting China” (p. 110).

11 P. A. Sorokin in his definitive studyof mobility (Social Mobility [New York: Harper, 1927]Google Scholar) makes the point that “since the growth of cities, they have almost completely monopolized the function of social promotion of individuals. All channels of social promotion have been concentrated in the city.” China does not appear to have been an exception to this rule.

12 This echoes the classic argument made by R. H. Tawney (op. cit., pp. 137–138) that from the viewpoint of development there were two Chinas. This argument has been picked up in some studies of the two competingelites. North, Robert C., for example, in his Kuomintang and Chinese Communist Elites (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1952), p. 63Google Scholar, emphasizes the rural-urban differences between the backgrounds of the leading Communists and Nationalists. He alsonotes the inclusion of 22 persons identified as “merchant-scholar or wealthy merchant” and “other merchants” in the Kuomintang Central Executive Committees as contrasted with only two from these categories in the Communist Political Bureaus (p. 47).

13 See Tse-tsung, Chow, The May Fourth Move-ment: Intellectual Revolution in Modern China (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960), chap. IIGoogle Scholar. During the First World War, Chinese industry benefited from the sharp decreases in imports onlyto be disadvantaged again after the Armistice by renewed trade with the West.

14 See Isaacs, Harold R., The Tragedy of the Chinese Revolution (2nd rev. ed.; Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1961)Google Scholar, esp. chaps. V and IX. The details on the class support for the various parties and factions are much more complex than can be described here. For example, the need for revenues, particularly during the war against Japan, forced the Kuomintang to rely heavily on the modern and international sectors of the Chinese economy.

15 See Meisner, Maurice, “Li Ta-chao and the Origins of Chinese Marxism,” unpublished Ph.D. dissertation (Chicago, 1962)Google Scholar; and Schram, Stuart R., The Political Thought of Mao Tse-tung (New York: Praeger, 1963), pp. 7–21Google Scholar.

16 Ta-chao, Li, “Ch'ing-nien yü nung-ts'un” [Youth and the Village], in Li Ta-chao hsüan-chi [Selected Works of Li Ta-chao] (Peking: Jen-min ch'u-pan she, 1962), pp. 146–150Google Scholar.

17 Ibid., pp. 153–154.

18 Ibid., pp. 171–172; see also his longer essay on the May Day holiday the following year, Ibid., pp. 311–326. The most extensive treatment of Li's thought thus far in print is Schwartz, Benjamin I., Chinese Communism and the Rise of Mao (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1951), chap. IGoogle Scholar.

19 This discussion is based primarily on Lewis, John W., Leadership in Communist China (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1963), esp. chaps. I and VIGoogle Scholar.

20 Although sample quotations from Mao Tse-tung's writings must be used with care, some indication of Mao's persistent views on the urban role after 1926 can be gained from the following examples taken from volume I of his Selected Works (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1964)Google Scholar, as checked against the original Chinese versions: 1) “Though not very numerous, the industrial proletariat represents China's new productive forces, is the most progressive class in modern China and has become the leading force in the revolutionary movement. We can see the important position of the industrial proletariat in the Chinese revolution from the strength it has displayed in the strikes of the last four years….” (March 1926, p. 18); 2) “Yet in the last few months, both in the north and in the south, there has been a growth of organized strikes by the workers in the cities and of insurrections by the peasants in the countryside…. (W)hether it is possible for the people's political power in small [rural] areas to last depends on whether the nation-wide revolutionary situation continues to develop” (October 5, 1928, pp. 64, 66); 3) “The democratic revolution … is a long process of struggle, of struggle for leadership in which success depends on the work of the Communist Party in raising the level of political consciousness and organization both of the proletariat and of the peasantry and urban petty bourgeoisie” (May 7, 1937, p. 290).

21 For a fuller development of this theme see Lewis, John W., “The Study of Chinese Political Culture,” World Politics, 18 (1966), 503–524CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22 Robert C. North states: “Near the end of 1926 at least 66 percent of Chinese Communist Party membership could be classified as proletarian. Another 22 percent were considered to be intellectuals. Only 5 percentwere peasants, and 2 percent were soldiers. But by the early months of 1930, elements which could possibly be labeled working class totaled only 8 percent of the Chinese Communist Party membership, while the number of industrial workers was‘still smaller, accounting for only 2 percent’ of Party membership.” op. cit., pp. 32–33.

23 Shao-ch'i, Liu, On the Party[05 1945] (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1954), p. 18Google Scholar.

24 Ibid., pp. 19–22.

25 Ibid., p. 27.

26 Tse-tung, Mao, Lun hsin chieh-tuan [On the New Stage] (Hong Kong: Hsin min-chu ch'u-pan she, 1949), sect. III, 14Google Scholar.

27 This discussion will form part of a larger work on the political development of Tanshan, in progress.

28 K'ang-jih chan-cheng shih-ch'i chieh-fang-ch'ü kai-k'uang [The General Conditions of the Liberated Areas in the Anti-Japanese War Period] (Peking: Jen-min ch'u-pan she, 1953), pp. 1–2, 24Google Scholar.

29 Johnson, Chalmers, Peasant Nationalismand Communist Power: The Emergence of Revolutionary China, 1987–1945 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1962), pp. 113–115Google Scholar.

30 See Tang-shan lao-tung jih-pao [Tangshan Labor Daily, hereafter cited as TSLTJP], July 2 and 5, 1951, April 6, 1958.

31 The san-kuang policy was “kill all, burn all, loot all.” Johnson, op. cit., pp. 55–56. Contrary to Johnson, the Chinese state that the policy began in 1938, not in 1940 after the Hundred Regiments' Offensive.

32 Epstein, Israel, “The Kailan Mines …,” China Reconstructs, 12 (1963), 2–7Google Scholar.

33 For Li's biography, see TSLTJP, July 5, 1951, and April 6, 1958; Kasumigaseki Association, Gendai Chugoku jinmei jiten [Biographical Dictionary of Modern China] (Tokyo: Kōnan shoin, 1957), pp. 605–606Google Scholar; and she, Ta-kung pao (ed.), Jen-min shou-ts'e 1963 [People's Handbook for 1963] (Peking: Ta-kung pao she, 1963), p. 137Google Scholar.

34 These biographical details of Yen Ta-k'ai's life are largely drawn from TSLTJP for the years 1950, 1951, and 1952.

35 En-lai, Chou, Report on the Question of Intellectuals [01 14, 1956] (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1956), p. 8Google Scholar. In 1949–50,,700,000 new members joined the Party (Shih-shih shou-ts'e [Current Events Handbook], No. 16, 1951), and Chou suggests that many of these were intellectuals.

36 I am particularly indebted to Ezra Vogel for his insights concerning the problem of status in the early years of the Chinese People's Republic.

37 For the basic articles on Mao's new thinking on thecity, Bee Tse-tung, Mao, Selected Works (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1961), IV, pp. 247–249, 269–277, 337–339, and 361–375Google Scholar. For an earlydiscussion of Communist policies toward cities, see Steiner, H. Arthur, “Chinese Communist Urban Policy,” this Review, 44 (1950), 47–63Google Scholar.

38 Tse-tung, Mao, “Report to the Second Plenary Session …“ [03 5, 1949], Selected Works, IV, pp. 363–365Google Scholar. This same theme has been independently picked up by some Western scholars. See, for example, Hoselitz, Bert F., “Generative and Parasitic Cities,” Economic Development and Cultural Change, 3 (1955), 278–294CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

39 I have treated this theme of revolutionary struggle in my “Revolutionary Struggle and the Second Generation in Communist China,” The China Quarterly, No. 21 (01–March 1965), 126–147Google Scholar.

40 According to Professor A. Doak Barnett, “tang yüan kan-pu” applies to all Party members who are cadres not only in the government, mass organizations, military units, and communes, but also inthe Party administration. Thus, this term would include the tang kan-pu, although I have arbitrarily separated the two groups of cadres here. Tang yüan kan-pu is always used together with and in contrast to the term non-Party cadres (fei-tang kan-pu).

41 For a discussion of the bourgeoisie and the “united front,” see Lewis, , Leadership in Communist China, pp. 23–31Google Scholar.

42 Mao, , On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People [02 27, 1957] (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1957), pp. 8–9Google Scholar.

43 The problem of peasant movement to the cities has been arecurring one in Communist China. For the many references on the problem from 1952–1957, see Emerson, John Philip, “Manpower Absorption in the Non-Agricultural Branches of the Economy of Communist China, 1953–1958,” The China Quarterly, No. 7 (07–September 1961), 76Google Scholar.

44 Lewis, “Party Cadres in Communist China,” op. cit.

45 See Skinner, G. William, “Marketing and Social Structure in Rural China, Part III,” Journal of Asian Studies, 24 (1965), 363–399CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Lewis, “The Study of Chinese Political Culture,” op. cit.

46 Lipset, and Bendix, , Social Mobility in Industrial Society, p. 280Google Scholar. Many other variables are also at work in the processes of change. For an excellent discussion of these in the context of industrialization, see Lambert, Richard D., Workers, Factories, and Social Change in India (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963)Google Scholar.

47 Fu-ch'un, Li, Report of the First Five Year Plan … (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1955), p. 97Google Scholar.

48 See Lewis, “Party Cadres in Communist China,” op. cit.

49 Chou En-lai, Report on the Question of Intellectuals,op. cit.

50 Lewis, , Leadershp in Communist China, pp. 108–109Google Scholar.

51 See Inkeles, Alex, “Social Stratification and Mobility in the Soviet Union,” in Bendix, Reinhard and Lipset, Seymour Martin, eds., Class, Status and Power: A Reader in Social Stratification (Glencoe: Free Press, 1953), pp. 609–622Google Scholar.

52 En-lai, Chou, Report on the Work of the Government [09 23, 1954] (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1954), p. 27Google Scholar. This view of equalitarianism may be traced to Mao's, “On the Rectification of Incorrect Ideas in the Party,” Selected Works, I, pp. 111–112, written in 1929Google Scholar.

53 See particularly Fischer, George, Science and Politics: The New Sociology in the Soviet Union (Ithaca:Center for International Studies, 1964), pp. 32–38Google Scholar.

54 For the principal documents on Chinese Communist policies toward women in the early years, see Fu-nü yün-tung wen-hsien [Documents on the Women's Movement] (Hong Kong:Hsin min-chu ch'u-pan she, 1949)Google Scholar.

55 Mao, , On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People, p. 43Google Scholar.

56 Hsiao-p'ing, Teng in Eighth National Congress of the Communist Party of China (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1956), I, p. 183Google Scholar. Joseph S. Berliner describes the similar expression of bureaucratic habits in the Soviet Union in his Factory and Manager in the USSR (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1957), chaps. XI–XIIGoogle Scholar.

57 In Eighth National Congress, III, pp. 12 and 19Google Scholar.

58 Ibid., I, p. 75.

59 See Lewis, , Leadership in Communist China, pp. 220–232Google Scholar.

60 Ibid., pp. 169–175.

61 Orleans, Leo A., Professional Manpowerand Education in Communist China (Washington: National Science Foundation, 1961), p. 131Google Scholar.

62 See MacFarquhar, Roderick, Hundred Flowers Campaign and the Chinese Intellectuals (New York: Praeger, 1960)Google Scholar; Fu-sheng, Mu, The Wilting of the Hundred Flowers: The Chinese Intelligentsia Under Mao (New York: Praeger, 1963)Google Scholar; and Doolin, Dennis J., Communist China: The Politics of Student Opposition (Stanford: Hoover Institution, 1964)Google Scholar

63 Hsiao-p'ing, Teng, Report on the Rectification Campaign [09 23, 1957] (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1957), esp. pp. 11–22Google Scholar

64 China's urban population grew from 71,630,000 in 1952 to about 92,000,000 in 1957. Thereafter millions illegally entered the cities, raising the urban figures to over 130,000,000 in 1960. According to official sources, more than 20,000,000 of these had been sent back to their native villages by 1963.

65 In 1960, this shift in the “center of gravity” was formalized in the line of “taking agriculture as the foundation of the national economy.”

66 For an early discussion of the “proper” incentives, see Ch'eng-chieh, Liuet al., “Hsien-ching sheng-ch'an-che ti hsin-li t'e-tien” [The Psychological Characteristics of Advanced Producers], Pei-ching ta-hsüeh hsueh-pao [Peking University Journal], No. 4 (1958), 39–49Google Scholar.

67 For a discussion, see Lewis, John W., “China's Secret Military Papers: ‘Continuities’ and ‘Revelations,’ “ The China Quarterly, No. 18 (04–June 1964), 68–78Google Scholar.

68 See the article on incentives by Hsiu-lin, Shih in Jen-min jih-pao [People's Daily], 03 6, 1962Google Scholar.

69 Reported in China News Analysis, No. 382 (1961). Although this refugee is not identified as a worker from Tangshan, the description of his city in every detail fits Tangshan.

70 Lewis, “Party Cadres in Communist China,” op. cit.

71 Article by Han, Chao, Jen-min jih-pao, 05 20, 1964Google Scholar. The author also expressed a bias favoring the use of older cadres. For a discussion of other problems of cadre recruitment, see Lewis, , Leadership in Communist China, pp. 193–195Google Scholar.

72 On Khrushchov's Phoney Communism and Its Historical Lessons for the World (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1964), p. 69Google Scholar.

73 Ibid., p. 68.

74 For the text of the State Council notice of June 13, 1966, see Peking Review, 06 24, 1966, p. 3Google Scholar.

75 The State Council notice of June 13 states: “Bourgeois domination is still deeply rooted and the struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie is very acute in quite a number of universities, colleges and middle [high] schools. … The method of examination and enrolment for the higher educational institutions, has failed in the main, to free itself from the set pattern of the bourgeois system of examination….“

76 Peking Radio, June 18, 1966. In August a Central Committee decision labeled units in the large and medium cities as the “key points” in the movement (Peking Radio, August 8, 1966).

77 Jen-min jih-pao, June 10, 1966.

78 Chieh-fang chün pao [Liberation Army Daily], April 5, 1966. See also Ibid., April 18, May 4, and June 6, 1966; and Peking Radio, June 13, 1966.

79 The avowed purpose of the “cultural revolution” in progress in late 1966 is to erase these social limits. Mao Tse-tung in mid-August launched the Red Guards in China's cities. Operating as “combat groups,” bands of these young zealots began to invade churches, schools and shops, and with official encouragement, made “a clean sweep of the names of many places, shop signs, books, attire, customs, habits, and bad practices that represented the ideology of feudalism, capitalism and revisionism”(Chieh-fang chün pao, August 23, 1966).