Michel Oksenberg – författare

The Chinese Communist system was from its very inception based on an inherent contradiction and tension, and the Cultural Revolution is the latest and most violent manifestation of that contradiction. Built into the very structure of the system was an inner conflict between the desiderata, the imperatives, and the requirements that technocratic modernization on the one hand and Maoist values and strategy on the other. The Cultural Revolution collects four papers prepared for a research conference on the topic convened by the University of Michigan Center for Chinese Studies in March 1968. Michel Oksenberg opens the volume by examining the impact of the Cultural Revolution on occupational groups including peasants, industrial managers and workers, intellectuals, students, party and government officials, and the military. Carl Riskin is concerned with the economic effects of the revolution, taking up production trends in agriculture and industry, movements in foreign trade, and implications of Masoist economic policies for China’s economic growth. Robert A. Scalapino turns to China’s foreign policy behavior during this period, arguing that Chinese Communists in general, and Mao in particular, formed foreign policy with a curious combination of cosmic, utopian internationalism and practical ethnocentrism rooted both in Chinese tradition and Communist experience. Ezra F. Vogel closes the volume by exploring the structure of the conflict, the struggles between factions, and the character of those factions.

Harold K. Jacobson and Michel Oksenberg bring their considerable knowledge of, respectively, international agencies and China to this study of the evolving relationship between the People’s Republic of China and the keystone international economic organizations (KIEQs): the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and its affiliated agencies, and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT).Until the early 1970s China was hostile toward the KIEOs, seeing them as instruments of capitalist exploitation. The change in that position, and the ensuing rapprochement between the two sides culminating in the negotiations and Chinese membership in the KEIOs, is an important subject. It is made immeasurably more significant by the extraordinary potential of China in the world economy. The different perspectives of the two authors permits this process to be analyzed from the point of view of both sides and to be informed by discussions and interviews with senior officers of the KIEOs and high Chinese officials.Among the questions addressed are: How and why did such a sharp change in the relationship between China and the KIEOs occur? What accounts for the Chinese decision to seek inclusion in the KIEOs? How did the KIEOs, and their most important members, the Western states, come to welcome China’s inclusion? What have the consequences of China’s involvement in the IMF and World Bank been for the two institutions and for China? What are the issues involved in China’s request for entrance in the KIEOs and full participation in the GATT? How will China’s involvement in the KIEOs affect the USSR’s involvement?Although the book deals with issues and events that predate the June, 1989, events in Tiananmen Square, the authors completed their manuscript after those events. They endeavor to interpret their observations in the light of the changed situation in China and the clear evidence that China has not yet settled into easy international participation with the Western states.

The description for this book, Policy Making in China, will be forthcoming.