Contemporary China Institute Publications - Böcker

Shanghai is Asia's largest city and for over a hundred years has played a critical role both in China's internal political arid economic affairs, and in the history of international relations in the Far East. Before 1949, Shanghai was the principal point of western and, later, Japanese penetrations of China. Under foreign control the city saw the beginnings of modern economic growth, of new forms of westernized education and culture, and of fierce social and political conflicts. This book is a comprehensive study of the way in which old Shanghai was transformed and developed by the Communist Party between 1949 and the later 1970s. It throws light on the paradox that a city that for years was the object of hostility and distrust has become in the Post-Mao era the spearhead of China's new programme for economic and technological modernization. The book is divided into sections dealing with political, economic and cultural change, and with the special characteristics of Shanghai's rural suburbia.

Originally published in 1970, this volume consists of essays by twelve leading scholars from the United States and Britain, all of whom concentrated their studies on the problems of China. Their papers were originally written for a conference on the Chinese Communist Party, held at Ditchley Park, England, in July 1968. During the discussions, a number of themes emerged as the factors governing the evolution of the Party. These related to problems of leadership, power and the revolutionary struggle within the Party and their effect on Chinese society. The authors subsequently revised their papers, highlighting these problems within the realm of their own subject, ranging from the power elite and the Central Committee to the village leadership and the role of the Army. The editor, in his introduction, throws further light on the leadership and power struggle, on Mao's role and on the effects of the Great Cultural Revolution.

This 1973 volume is a fascinating collection of original studies on the immediate consequences and the likely long-term effects of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, the enormous social and political upheaval initiated by Mao Tse-Tung in 1966. The authors discuss a series of connected problems, all intimately related to the central theme of leadership and participation in the Chinese pattern of economic development and social change. The collection is edited by Stuart Schram, who also provides a long introduction; he puts the Cultural Revolution in the broad historical perspective of the Chinese revolution as it has taken shape since the end of the nineteenth century.

According to common misconception the Chinese political system is highly centralized. One result of this widely accepted view is that China specialists have often neglected the study of decision-making as a process. Concentrating upon the neighbouring but contrasting provinces of Sichuan and Guizhou during the decade before the Cultural Revolution, this book examines the interaction between centre and province and, without adopting a 'centralist' or a 'pluralist' viewpoint, argues that a spatial dimension is of necessity part of the Chinese decision-making process. Particular attention is paid to the variability of this interaction over time.

Dr Vermeer's study of the economic development on Central Shaanxi province from 1930 until 1988, when this was first published, illustrates the effects of famine, war and construction under Chinese communism. It focuses in particular on the organisational and technical potential of agriculture and industry to make use of the natural advantages of the region. Modernisation in Shaanxi was brought in from outside, with a dominant role for government institutions, and rapidly transformed the face of country and city. The book portrays the growing pains of a frontier economy, examining such crucial natural barriers to agricultural expansion as lack of irrigation water. It describes the technological advances, using clear maps to illustrate the development of transport, population distribution, soils, irrigation projects and cropping patterns. The extensive economy survey of counties in hill and plain areas, based on data from local government and the author's own observations, reveals great regional differences.

Originally published in 1976, this book examines how a new system of factory management was implemented in China after the liberation of 1948-9. At that time, the Chinese Communist Party attempted to integrate a commitment to broad participation in management by industrial workers with a rigid system of control deriving from the Soviet Union. The integration was not accomplished successfully and the events of the period 1948-53 discussed by Dr Brugger set the stage for the rejection of the Soviet model in the mid-1950s. The focus of the book is broadly political and sociological rather than economic, and the author examines closely the political background against which economic change was introduced. This book formed part of a growing genre of writing which rejected earlier assumptions of an uncritical acceptance in China of models of industrialism imported from the Soviet Union.

Armies are made up of a small number of officers and a large number of ordinary soldiers, recruited from the working class or peasantry. When the military dominates a society, as it did in Warlord China, it is these ordinary soldiers who become the direct agents of oppression and terror. Asking who these men were, and why they turned on their own society, this book looks at the origins, training and behaviour of the soldiers of Warlord China. It thus provides a case study of the misery inflicted by military regimes on civilian societies. Military control in China was long drawn out, and fragmented. The Warlord period, in the first years of Republican China, has been designated as the darkest of Modern Chinese history. The soldiers who served in the warlord armies were considered to be the lowest of the low, and have not for that reason been a subject for study, but their impact on their society was enormous. Their parallels in other, contemporary societies are equally influential. Diana Lary's book includes in translation documents of the period to illuminate the human side of her theme.

This 1984 book deals with those social transformations which occurred in Chinese society since the revolution in 1949. During the 1950s the Chinese Communist Party introduced a rigid system of class labels (e.g. landlord, rich peasant, middle peasant, landless labourer) based on pre-revolutionary notions of exploitation and property ownership. The class label system was a source of much social discontent during the 1960s and mid-1970s; the official use of labels ceased by the time of this book's publication, but the effects of the system are still felt by millions of Chinese. The book will be of interest to a wide range of readers, not just those who specialise in Chinese social history. Contributors include two anthropologists, one historian, three political scientists, and three sociologists.

This book, first published in 1984, looks at the way in which food grains still provided the overwhelming proportion of food intake in China. In common with other countries at a similar stage of economic development, there was a marked rise in the demand for food grain, and consequent difficulties in ensuring a sufficient increase in supply. This book, written by the late Kenneth R. Walker, analyses how the Chinese Government through central planning attempted to supply its vast, rapidly growing population with adequate grain, from 1953 to 1980. The book provides provincial estimates of grain production, procurement and consumption and assesses the impact which redistribution had on consumption. It concludes by examining why, with higher grain output per head in the period 1978-1980 than in the 1950s, China continued to import large quantities of grain and why the policy of transferring grain internally seemed no longer viable.

A study of China's urban employment problems set in the context of growth and fluctuations in the urban economy between 1949 and 1957. Its main objectives are to analyse the size and determinants or urban employment change, and to trace the evolution both of Chinese thinking about employment and the institutions of labour control that reflected this thinking in day-to-day administration. Important source materials used in this book, many of which had not previously been used by western scholars, include the journal of the Ministry of Labour and local newspapers and journals. These materials are used to show the ways in which the urban employment problem varied according to the geographical location and level of administration from which it was viewed. Dr Howe examines the changing urban economic environment and the dimensions of urban employment and its evolution and relates them to the broader understanding of economic change in China.

This 1975 bibliography catalogues the holdings of Chinese newspapers and periodicals in European libraries in the early 1970s. Europe had relatively few individual libraries that matched the finest collections in the USA and Japan but the richness and diversity of what is available has been seldom appreciated. Most scholars are aware of the main collections in Great Britain and France, but few will know, for example, that in Rome there are twenty libraries with holdings of sinological material. This bibliography also includes the range of Soviet and East European library holdings, in total cataloguing over one hundred libraries from twelve European countries. The titles are romanised according to the Pinyin system, and each entry comprises a bibliographical section followed by lists of holdings of individual libraries. Designed to facilitate the researches of those already using European libraries and to stimulate others to make more use of them, this volume is still of interest today.

Shanghai is Asia's largest city and for over a hundred years has played a critical role both in China's internal political arid economic affairs, and in the history of international relations in the Far East. Before 1949, Shanghai was the principal point of western and, later, Japanese penetrations of China. Under foreign control the city saw the beginnings of modern economic growth, of new forms of westernized education and culture, and of fierce social and political conflicts. This book is a comprehensive study of the way in which old Shanghai was transformed and developed by the Communist Party between 1949 and the later 1970s. It throws light on the paradox that a city that for years was the object of hostility and distrust has become in the Post-Mao era the spearhead of China's new programme for economic and technological modernization. The book is divided into sections dealing with political, economic and cultural change, and with the special characteristics of Shanghai's rural suburbia.

Mao Tse-tung was one of the most influential leaders of the twentieth century. In this 1977 book, eleven scholars renowned for their penetrating and lively analysis of Mao during his life, here make their assessments of his career and influence, after his death. They consider Mao's claims to be an original thinker; the practical side of his career; his ideas on education; his economic and international preoccupations; and his personality as a Chinese. Dick Wilson's introduction indicates some of the common themes, showing inter alia that Mao was neither as politically powerful, nor intellectually consistent and creative, as outsiders seem to have thought: that, on the contrary, his strength lay in his longevity, his concern for the methodology of social change, and those moral qualities that distinguished him. Very much of its time, this book will be essential reading for anyone wishing to assess China's political history.