Center for Chinese Studies, UC Berkeley – serie

It is widely accepted, both inside China and in the West, that contemporary Chinese history begins with the May Fourth Movement. Vera Schwarcz's imaginative new study provides China scholars and historians with an analysis of what makes that event a turning point in the intellectual, spiritual, cultural and political life of twentieth-century China.

This is a study of peasant-state relations and village politics as they have evolved in response to the state's attempts to control the division of the harvest and extract the state-defined surplus. To provide the reader with a clearer sense of the evolution of peasant-state relations over almost a forty-year period and to highlight the dramatic changes that have taken place since 1978,1 have divided my analysis into two parts: Chapters 2 through 7 are on Maoist China, and chapters 8 and 9 are on post-Mao China. The first part examines the state's grain policies and patterns of local politics that emerged during the highly collectivized Maoist period, when the state closed free grain markets and established the system of unified purchase and sales (tonggou tongxiao). The second part describes the new methods for the production and division of the harvest after 1978, when the government decollectivized agriculture and abolished its unified procurement program.

Using a wide variety of previously unavailable sources, Hong Yung Lee offers a theoretical and historical perspective on China's ruling elite, examining their politics and the bureaucratic system in which they participate. He traces the evolution of these cadres from the guerrilla fighters who first joined the communist movement and founded the new regime in 1949 to the technocratic specialists who wield power today.  In the revolution, communist leaders built a peasant-based party organization whose members were largely recruited from uneducated poor peasants and hired laborers. Even after they became the founders of a new regime, their rural orientation and revolutionary experiences continued to affect the political process.  Lee shows how the requirements of modernization compelled the state to replace the revolutionary cadres with bureaucratic technocrats. Selected from the postliberation generation, the new leaders are more committed to problem-solving than to socialism. Despite uncertainties in the immediate future, this elite transformation signifies an end to modern China's revolutionary era. Lee argues that it seems only a matter of time before China will have a bureaucratic-authoritarian regime led by technocrats possessing a managerial perspective and a pragmatic economic orientation.This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1991.

In 1949 a powerful political-military movement, led by the Chinese Communist party, gained control of war-ravaged China, inheriting a disorganized administration and a society eroded by decades of revolution. Within a short time China was so radically transformed politically, economically, and socially that it appeared to have cut all links with the past. The instruments of that transformation were ideology and organization. Today, seventeen years later, the ideology and the organizational network, despite changes, remain as powerful as they were in 1949. They still hold that vast country together politically and determine its economic and social development. This book, after a discussion of ideology in its first part, attempts to answer the question how Chinese Communist organization functions and why it is so successful. The second part analyzes the organization of Party and government, emphasizing methods of command and administration. The third part looks at industrial organization: the problems of management and control, especially the continuing struggle between the professionals and the politicians. The fourth part investigates the Chinese Communist methods of organizing their cities and villages, tracing the history of village organization from traditional times through the Yenan period, the land reform of the late 1940's, and the collectivization of the mid-1950's to communization in 1958. Although organization has been constantly changing in China, basic patterns ar apparent. The book analyzes the most characteristic pattern in all aspects of organization, the conflict between two incompatible elements or, in the Chinese Communist terms, "contradictions." The basic contradiction is that between professional ("expert") and political ("red") elements. This contradiction dominates the two distinctive periods in the short history of Communist China, the First Five-Year Plan (1953 - 1957) and the so-called Great Leap Forward (1958 - 1960). The book describes how the Chinese Communists attempted during the former period to emulate the Soviet organizational experience, with stress on techniques and technology; and during the latter period to use their own organizational methods to achieve economic progress. The presentation of the contrast between these two models of organization sheds light on the significant differences between the Soviet Union and Communist China. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1966.

This major biography of Mao draws on never before seen documents to reveal surprising details about Mao's rise to power and leadership in China. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1972.

History and Will: Philosophical Perspectives of Mao Tse-tung's Thought delves into the ideological, philosophical, and historical dimensions of Mao Tse-tung's revolutionary vision, focusing on the unique interplay between historical determinism and subjective will in his thought. Against the backdrop of the Cultural Revolution, the book explores Mao's departure from orthodox Marxist-Leninist doctrine, emphasizing his provocative embrace of ongoing revolution and grassroots dynamism over the institutional stability of his own Communist Party.Through a series of thematic essays, the author investigates Mao's intellectual roots, including his exposure to Kantian idealism, Marxist romanticism, and traditional Chinese metaphysical frameworks. The book juxtaposes Western philosophical constructs with Mao’s adaptations, arguing that his dialectic diverges fundamentally from European rationalist categories. By examining thinkers like K'ang Yu-wei and Rousseau alongside Mao, the work sheds light on how Maoism emerged as a hybrid intellectual language, uniquely blending Chinese and Western traditions. Ultimately, History and Will offers a nuanced perspective on the ideological tensions that shaped China's revolutionary trajectory, culminating in the dramatic contradictions of the Cultural Revolution.This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1973.

Resistance and Revolution in China: The Communists and the Second United Front examines how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) secured victory by reframing both its strategy and its relationship to China’s urban politics and to international conflict. Covering the years 1934 to 1943, the study challenges the CCP’s own official history, which portrays Mao’s rural “peasant war” strategy as continuous and unbroken from the Kiangsi period through Japan’s defeat. Instead, the book argues that the Party’s earlier defeats revealed the limits of an exclusively countryside orientation, and that Mao’s eventual success lay in forging the second united front with the Kuomintang (KMT) and embedding the revolution within the broader war of resistance against Japan.Drawing on internal CCP documents and Western interpretations, the book shows how peasant mobilization through land reform was vital, but only possible under the protection of prolonged foreign invasion, which neutralized the KMT and gave the Communists space to expand. Japan’s occupation, along with the involvement of the United States, Britain, Germany, and the Soviet Union, provided the international contradictions that made the united front viable. At the same time, the analysis insists that China’s cities—modern, nationalist, and tied to global currents—remained central to the trajectory of revolution, shaping both the KMT’s mandate and the CCP’s strategic recalibrations. By placing urban and rural China within a single semi-colonial, semi-feudal framework, the book offers a corrective to rural-only paradigms of Communist success, exposing how factional struggles within the CCP, foreign intervention, and the interplay of nationalism and class revolution combined to produce one of the twentieth century’s most consequential upheavals.This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1974.

Making Revolution: The Communist Movement in Eastern and Central China, 1937–1945 offers an in-depth analysis of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) dramatic transformation from a marginalized political force to a dominant revolutionary power. Centered on the CCP's activities in central and eastern China—regions pivotal to their wartime strategies—the book examines how the Party mobilized peasants, navigated shifting alliances, and built grassroots organizations to challenge entrenched power structures. Drawing from newly available internal Party documents and prior scholarship, this work bridges significant gaps in the understanding of the CCP’s revolutionary strategies and their nuanced interactions with both rural elites and local peasant populations.The book explores the CCP's tactical ingenuity in adapting its policies to local contexts while navigating the complex dynamics of the Sino-Japanese War and its rivalry with the Kuomintang (KMT). It delves into the processes of grassroots mobilization, the construction of rural administrations, and the development of a peasant-centric governance model, revealing how the Party carefully balanced class struggle with the need for broader coalitions. Through detailed case studies, the book uncovers the methods by which the CCP secured peasant loyalty, reshaped rural power structures, and managed internal challenges such as factionalism and the discipline of revolutionary cadres. Ultimately, Making Revolution provides a richly textured account of how the CCP turned ideological commitment into practical governance, forging a path that would ultimately lead to its triumph in the Chinese Civil War.This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1986.

In 1949 a powerful political-military movement, led by the Chinese Communist party, gained control of war-ravaged China, inheriting a disorganized administration and a society eroded by decades of revolution. Within a short time China was so radically transformed politically, economically, and socially that it appeared to have cut all links with the past. The instruments of that transformation were ideology and organization. Today, seventeen years later, the ideology and the organizational network, despite changes, remain as powerful as they were in 1949. They still hold that vast country together politically and determine its economic and social development. This book, after a discussion of ideology in its first part, attempts to answer the question how Chinese Communist organization functions and why it is so successful. The second part analyzes the organization of Party and government, emphasizing methods of command and administration. The third part looks at industrial organization: the problems of management and control, especially the continuing struggle between the professionals and the politicians. The fourth part investigates the Chinese Communist methods of organizing their cities and villages, tracing the history of village organization from traditional times through the Yenan period, the land reform of the late 1940's, and the collectivization of the mid-1950's to communization in 1958. Although organization has been constantly changing in China, basic patterns ar apparent. The book analyzes the most characteristic pattern in all aspects of organization, the conflict between two incompatible elements or, in the Chinese Communist terms, "contradictions." The basic contradiction is that between professional ("expert") and political ("red") elements. This contradiction dominates the two distinctive periods in the short history of Communist China, the First Five-Year Plan (1953 - 1957) and the so-called Great Leap Forward (1958 - 1960). The book describes how the Chinese Communists attempted during the former period to emulate the Soviet organizational experience, with stress on techniques and technology; and during the latter period to use their own organizational methods to achieve economic progress. The presentation of the contrast between these two models of organization sheds light on the significant differences between the Soviet Union and Communist China. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1966.

This major biography of Mao draws on never before seen documents to reveal surprising details about Mao's rise to power and leadership in China. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1972.

History and Will: Philosophical Perspectives of Mao Tse-tung's Thought delves into the ideological, philosophical, and historical dimensions of Mao Tse-tung's revolutionary vision, focusing on the unique interplay between historical determinism and subjective will in his thought. Against the backdrop of the Cultural Revolution, the book explores Mao's departure from orthodox Marxist-Leninist doctrine, emphasizing his provocative embrace of ongoing revolution and grassroots dynamism over the institutional stability of his own Communist Party.Through a series of thematic essays, the author investigates Mao's intellectual roots, including his exposure to Kantian idealism, Marxist romanticism, and traditional Chinese metaphysical frameworks. The book juxtaposes Western philosophical constructs with Mao’s adaptations, arguing that his dialectic diverges fundamentally from European rationalist categories. By examining thinkers like K'ang Yu-wei and Rousseau alongside Mao, the work sheds light on how Maoism emerged as a hybrid intellectual language, uniquely blending Chinese and Western traditions. Ultimately, History and Will offers a nuanced perspective on the ideological tensions that shaped China's revolutionary trajectory, culminating in the dramatic contradictions of the Cultural Revolution.This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1973.

Resistance and Revolution in China: The Communists and the Second United Front examines how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) secured victory by reframing both its strategy and its relationship to China’s urban politics and to international conflict. Covering the years 1934 to 1943, the study challenges the CCP’s own official history, which portrays Mao’s rural “peasant war” strategy as continuous and unbroken from the Kiangsi period through Japan’s defeat. Instead, the book argues that the Party’s earlier defeats revealed the limits of an exclusively countryside orientation, and that Mao’s eventual success lay in forging the second united front with the Kuomintang (KMT) and embedding the revolution within the broader war of resistance against Japan.Drawing on internal CCP documents and Western interpretations, the book shows how peasant mobilization through land reform was vital, but only possible under the protection of prolonged foreign invasion, which neutralized the KMT and gave the Communists space to expand. Japan’s occupation, along with the involvement of the United States, Britain, Germany, and the Soviet Union, provided the international contradictions that made the united front viable. At the same time, the analysis insists that China’s cities—modern, nationalist, and tied to global currents—remained central to the trajectory of revolution, shaping both the KMT’s mandate and the CCP’s strategic recalibrations. By placing urban and rural China within a single semi-colonial, semi-feudal framework, the book offers a corrective to rural-only paradigms of Communist success, exposing how factional struggles within the CCP, foreign intervention, and the interplay of nationalism and class revolution combined to produce one of the twentieth century’s most consequential upheavals.This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1974.

Making Revolution: The Communist Movement in Eastern and Central China, 1937–1945 offers an in-depth analysis of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) dramatic transformation from a marginalized political force to a dominant revolutionary power. Centered on the CCP's activities in central and eastern China—regions pivotal to their wartime strategies—the book examines how the Party mobilized peasants, navigated shifting alliances, and built grassroots organizations to challenge entrenched power structures. Drawing from newly available internal Party documents and prior scholarship, this work bridges significant gaps in the understanding of the CCP’s revolutionary strategies and their nuanced interactions with both rural elites and local peasant populations.The book explores the CCP's tactical ingenuity in adapting its policies to local contexts while navigating the complex dynamics of the Sino-Japanese War and its rivalry with the Kuomintang (KMT). It delves into the processes of grassroots mobilization, the construction of rural administrations, and the development of a peasant-centric governance model, revealing how the Party carefully balanced class struggle with the need for broader coalitions. Through detailed case studies, the book uncovers the methods by which the CCP secured peasant loyalty, reshaped rural power structures, and managed internal challenges such as factionalism and the discipline of revolutionary cadres. Ultimately, Making Revolution provides a richly textured account of how the CCP turned ideological commitment into practical governance, forging a path that would ultimately lead to its triumph in the Chinese Civil War.This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1986.