[This is the last of 6 Articles I have written on the
respective positions of Britain,
the US, France, Germany,
Russia and China in the
Post-War World]
Leaders of the
Republic of China (ROC)
until 1949 and of the Peoples’ Republic of China (PRC) thereafter.
1925-49 Chiang Kai
Shek 1978-92 Deng Xiaoping
1949-76 Mao Zedong
(Mao Tse-tung) 1992-2002 Jiang Zemin
1976-78 Hua Guofeng 2002-
Hu Jintao
China
in 1945
1945 was not quite so pivotal a date to China as it was
to the other powers. To be sure the Japanese, invaders of China since 1931 and heavily engaged in
hostilities within China
from 1937, were finally defeated; only as late as 1947 had they withdrawn
completely. They had caused immense suffering. It is one of the many ironies of
China
that the Japanese felt an obligation to Chiang Kai Shek for years thereafter
for the chivalrous way he treated Japanese soldiers – Chiang had been trained
militarily by the Japanese and knew many senior Japanese officers personally.
 |
| Chiang Kai Shek and Mao Zedong in 1942 |
The civil war between the Nationalist Kuomintang Party (KMT)
of Chiang Kai Shek and Mao Zedong’s Communist Party (CPC) was resumed after
attempts at peaceful reconciliation failed. The war had been fought
intermittently since 1926, when Chiang had lethally purged the Communists in Shanghai, who were then
attached to the Left of the KMT. The Long March, when the remnants of the
Communists fled to Shaanxi
had followed after many campaigns in 1934. From 1937 the warring factions
called a truce to face the Japanese together, but a clandestine war continued. The
KMT alienated the people with its corruption and incompetence and the
Communists seized most of China
after 1945. The KMT capital, Chongqing
(Chungking), fell in 1949 and the Nationalists withdrew to the former Japanese
colony of Taiwan (Formosa),
where they remain.
China
under Mao
Mao can be credited with unifying mainland China after decades of division.
The European concessions in Shanghai and other
ports were swept away and only colonial Hong Kong and Macau
awaited reincorporation. The West was generally hostile to Mao. He revered
Stalin and fortified the USSR
in the Cold War. He intervened in Korea
to save the North in its attack on the South in 1950, and assisted Ho Chi Minh
in his struggle against the French in Vietnam. China
retreated behind a “Bamboo Curtain”, closing down trading connections and
refusing substantive diplomatic relations; with Britain, for example, contact was
only at chargé d’affaires level from
1954 to 1972, despite full British recognition of the PRC since 1950. The US took a tougher line, only recognising Chiang’s
ROC as the legitimate government, stationing a fleet to defend Taiwan and turning Japan
into a vast US
base. Détente between China
and the US
did not come until Nixon and Kissinger’s initiative in 1972.
Mao was a Communist ideologue and, given absolute power, he
set about trying to mould China
into his fantasy world-view. The results were disastrous.
 |
| Mao, "The Great Leader" |
The collectivisation of Chinese agriculture was being
gradually introduced in the 1950s. In 1958 Mao announced The Great Leap Forward involving the forcible collectivisation of
all farms, large industrial investment and the production of steel in back-yard
furnaces. With no private incentive to produce food, agricultural productivity
sharply declined. A famine resulted in which an estimated 30m died to add to
about 3m executed or often beaten to death in the coercive collectivisation or
who committed suicide. The steel produced in back-yard furnaces was useless as
coal of decent quality is required in the process. Despite the privations of
the people, Mao cruelly insisted on China continuing to export grain it
needed desperately itself, in some perverted face-saving gesture or purported show
of strength.
The Great Leap Forward was ended prematurely in 1961 and Mao
fell under a cloud in the Party echelons for a period. Executive power was
taken up by foreign minister Zhou Enlai, administrator Liu Shaoqi and economic
radical Deng Xiaoping. However, using all the propaganda tools of a subservient
state, Mao cowed the opposition and bounced back to challenge his critics with The Cultural Revolution, launched in 1966.
 |
| Deification of Mao |
This was a campaign to eliminate all “bourgeois” influences,
to radicalise the population and to “re-educate” town-dwellers by sending them
to forced labour in the countryside. From 1966-77 many schools and all
universities were closed, notionally to free young people to participate and
join the fanatical Red Guards. All wisdom was contained in The Little Red Book,
embodying the Thoughts of Chairman Mao, a banal and unreadable production.
Historic sites were desecrated, an ignorant generation grew up and China’s
GDP dropped 12% during this period.
 |
| Victim Liu Shaoqi |
 |
| Enigmatic Zhou Enlai |
Mao’s Red Guards caused chaos everywhere defying local authorities and police. Former president Liu Shaoqi was denounced, tortured, denied medical care and died in captivity in 1968. Zhou Enlai tried to help Liu and Deng Xiaoping who was purged and sent to a factory as a machinist. The madness continued, egged on by Lin Biau, defence minister and chosen successor of Mao and by Mao’s 4th wife, the infamous virago Jiang Qing.
 |
| Plotter Lin Biau |
 |
| Fanatic Jiang Qing |
By 1971, things were falling apart for Mao. In an episode still cloaked in mystery, Lin Biau was said to have mounted a coup against Mao and died when his plane crashed in Mongolia en route for Russia. Much of the energy left the Cultural Revolution although it lasted until 1976. Détente with the US was achieved in 1972 but Mao was ailing. He lingered on until his death in 1976.
A few months earlier, his lieutenant Zhou Enlai (Chou En
Lai) died of cancer. Chou was the most recognisable Chinese politician of the
age, a consummate diplomat who had shone at Geneva
in 1954, Bandung
in 1956 and impressed Kissinger in 1972. Yet his opposition to Mao’s wild
excesses had been muted and feeble. Like Mao, he was a conspirator and
subversive, familiar with and implicated in assassination and torture: he was
impervious to the sufferings of his nation. The West’s regard for Chou was surely
misplaced; he was Mao’s willing accomplice: he had charm, but Goering and
Goebbels also had charm a-plenty serving their master.
Mao takes his dishonourable place among the three evil mega-criminals
of the 20th century, Hitler, Stalin and Mao. There are few redeeming
features. Mao could have industrialised China
with infinitely less suffering; he could have defended China’s
national interests in a rational manner; he could have raised the living
standards of the peasantry by good government. Instead he revelled in
ideological terror and blood-letting, holding back China’s progress for 30 years.
The Triumph of the Reformers
Ineffective Hua Guafeng succeeded Mao but at least he
arrested the Gang of Four, the
fanatical Maoist group led by Jiang Qing. The group was tried and condemned
(though reprieved) and Jiang committed suicide later. Deng Xiaoping was
recalled to office and soon ousted Hua as paramount leader. Although Deng held
no formal office, he headed a ruling committee and governed China from 1978
until his retirement in 1992 and he remained influential until his death in
1997. He transformed China
utterly.
 |
| Deng Xiaoping, the Great Reformer |
Although we in the West take a benign view of Deng, whose achievements have been prodigious, it may be a mistake to make a plaster saint of Deng. His conversion to “state capitalism” came late in his life, in his 70’s. Before that he was Mao’s enforcer in Chongqing and a trusted apparatchik in Mao’s regime, although latterly an economic critic. Future historians, when the files are opened, may paint an unflattering picture of those years. Unlike Khrushchev vis-a-vis Stalin, Deng never denounced Mao, cautiously opining that Mao was “seven parts good, three parts bad”, a pretty feeble formula. Let it not be forgotten either that Deng in his pomp was responsible for the killing of hundreds of demonstrators in Tiananmen Square in 1989, who had the temerity to challenge Communist Party authority.
China
takes off
Deng embarked upon his economic reforms in 1978. China now
exports as much in a day as it did in the whole year of 1978. The statistics
(whose reliability cannot be vouched) are astonishing. The Chinese economy has
grown at an average of some 10% pa for the last 30 years. China is now the second largest economy in the
world after the US.
Restrictions on foreign investment were first relaxed in a few coastal areas
but have now been lifted nation-wide. The largest “foreign” investors have been
Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan,
but the US, Japan and Europe
have been heavily involved and encouraged by tax breaks. China is the
largest exporter in the world and the second-largest importer. Its vast foreign
trade has allowed China to
build up currency reserves and China
now holds 20% of all US
treasury bonds. In 2001 China
joined the World Trade Organisation, giving it new privileges and obligations.
The success of industry has transformed Chinese cities and a
prosperous middle class and not a few billionaires have emerged. Progress in
agriculture has been rather slower and the majority of Chinese are still in the
country. Communal farms have been broken up and land reform has allowed a
measure of private ownership. China
is the world’s largest rice producer and a very large wheat and grain grower.
Demand for energy has grown rapidly with China the world’s second-largest
importer of oil and a large consumer of coal. Raw materials pour into China from Africa and Australia.
With its huge population of 1.3bn and with about 30m joining
the labour force every year, China
needs to grow consistently. On a per
capita basis China
is only ranked 90th in the world wealth ratings. A recent policy
change has been to concentrate less on exports and more on domestic consumption
to raise this measure of prosperity.
Whatever the short-term problems of shortages, inflation and
bureaucracy, China since Mao has been a huge success story and Deng has the
distinction of having raised more people out of poverty than any other leader
in history – a fine epitaph.
The Future
Viewed in the perspective of centuries, China is within
sight of regaining the premier position it held in the world economy for much
of its history. Its size in terms of area, resources and population gave it
this position. The 19th and 20th Centuries have been
aberrations in this general picture.
As the success of Hong Kong or Singapore could have easily
illustrated to leaders in Mao’s time, the Chinese are hugely talented
businessmen and dedicated workers in the right environment. Deng has shown the
way forward and his successors will hopefully shed much of his residual
ideological baggage.
The West will always find the Chinese mentality impenetrable
and can but hope civil rights, the rule of law and civilised standards prevail
as the Chinese giant builds up its strength.
SMD
8.10.12
Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2012
No comments:
Post a Comment