2016 Senior External Examination
Modern History
Tuesday 8 November 2016Paper Two — Historical sources book
1 pm to 3:40 pmDirections
You may write in this book during perusal time.
Contents
• Seen sources (Sources A–L)
• Unseen sources (Sources 1–12)
• Acknowledgments
After the examination session
Take this book when you leave.Planning space
Note: The spelling of Chinese names may occur in either the older Wade-Giles form or the more recently adopted Pinyin form, e.g. Guangzhou (Canton), depending on the timeframe of the origin of the source. Names like Mao Zedong (Mao Tse-tung) are, however, readily recognisable in either form.
Source A
China at the start of the 20th century
Seen sources (Sources A– L)
Source B
The Communists and nationalism
The Communists, for their part, after shedding the theoretical internationalism that had hampered their early efforts, could plausibly claim to be more nationalist than the Nationalists, and indeed the only real nationalists. Whatever may have been the hidden thoughts and real feelings of the two parties during the war with Japan and the civil war, the evidence is beyond dispute; it was the Chinese Revolution, and only the Chinese Revolution that brought the Chinese nationalism to fruition …
Bianco, L and Bell, M (trans) 1971, Origins of the Chinese Revolution, 1915–1949
Source C
The Mandate of Heaven: the basis of imperial rule
The Chinese developed a way to explain these changes of dynasties; they called it the Mandate of Heaven. They believed that the emperor ruled by the will of Heaven; indeed the emperor was sometimes called the Son of Heaven and his throne was called the Celestial (Heavenly) Throne. He had the mandate (authority or permission) of Heaven to rule the people as long as he ruled wisely.
Because the emperor had the authority of Heaven, the people had a duty to obey him. The idea of the Mandate of Heaven was linked to the teachings of Confucius. He had taught that society was based on different relationships. In the family the father had authority over his family; in the country the emperor had authority over his people.
Mason, KJ, Fielden, P, Burgess, C et al 2004, Experience World History: Kingdoms, Dynasties and Colonies
Source D
The contribution of Marxism–Leninism
Marxism–Leninism helped the Chinese for a number of reasons. In the pre-war period it gave them the confidence and moral support of belonging to a world movement; it claimed to be scientific and therefore modern; it was disliked by the Western countries and therefore acceptable to Chinese who felt let down by the West; it was optimistic in its assurance that the stage of feudalism must lead through capitalism to socialism; it provided a rationale and a programme for putting ordinary people in the centre of the picture while insisting that an elite group (the Communist Party) must always lead.
Moreover, it fitted into the Chinese traditional pattern of authority-centred society, dominated by an educated elite held together by a common philosophy and commitment to the service of the state.
Milston, G 1978, A Short History of China
Source E
Mao’s contribution
Mao Tse-Tung’s great accomplishment has been to change Marxism from a European to an Asiatic form … China is a semi-feudal, semi-colonial country in which vast numbers of people live at the edge of starvation, tilling small bits of soil … In attempting the transition to a more industrial
economy, China faces the pressures … of advanced industrial lands … There are similar conditions in other lands of Southeast Asia — the course chosen by China will influence them all.
From a 1946 interview between Shaoqi, L (Head of State, 1959–1968) and Strong, AL in Morcombe, M & Fielding, M 1999, The Spirit of Change:
China in Revolution
Source F
People’s tribunal, 1953
A people’s tribunal sentencing a landlord. This man was sentenced to death.
www.hodderplus.co.uk/modernworldhistory/pdf/maos-china-1930-76.pdf (photo credit: Bettman/Corbis)
Source G
Tung Hsiu-Ching, an original resident, quoted in China Reconstructs, 1973
Before liberation, our land three ‘manys’ — many poor people, many slum houses and many children …
With liberation in 1949, we working people stood up and became masters of the new society. As soon as the People’s Liberation Army men entered the city, they got us together and explained the
revolution to us. The people’s government began solving the problem of unemployment and we all got jobs. With stable monthly wages, our life improved steadily.
Our people’s government thinks of everything for us. More than 100 families have moved into new apartments or houses. The homes of the others have been well-repaired. The street’s housing management office always asks for the opinions of the neighbourhood representatives before they distribute or renovate housing. If anything goes wrong with the electricity, water or drains, we just tell the office and it sends repairmen right away.
www.johndclare.net/China7.htm
Source H
Strengthen the study of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought
http://chineseposters.net/themes/mao-thought.php
Source I
Two statements by Deng Xiaoping about the need for reform in China
1978: ‘If we do not carry out reform (political and economic) now, our cause of modernisation and socialism will be ruined.’
1986: ‘As economic reform progresses, we deeply feel the necessity for change in the political structure. The absence of such change will hamper the development of productive forces.’
Deng, Xiaoping in Burke, P 1999, Heinemann Outcomes: Studies of Asia
Source J
Has the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) transformed itself since 1978?
Overall, it seems clear that the CCP has undergone a significant transformation since 1978. Many aspects of the Party including its composition and the declining role of ideology would be
unrecognisable to the Maoist era, whilst Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao have emphasised
‘absolute stability at any cost’, a striking contrast from Mao’s chaotic regime. The importance of maintaining political stability in order to facilitate economic development has become central to the party’s role, and the declining significance of ideology has resulted in a ‘shift in the party’s
fundamental legitimacy to its capacity to deliver the economic goods’. To a large extent, the institutionalisation and reform program has achieved this stability, but major problems such as widespread corruption remain. However, the Party has adopted a dynamic approach to development and appears flexible in dealing with the challenges of the contemporary world whilst still maintaining its iron grip on power.
Hawkes, S 2011, Has the Chinese Communist Party transformed itself since 1978?
Source K
The policy of ‘de-Maoisation’
The policy of ‘de-Maoisation’ was accelerated in 1978–81, as the new moderate leadership pushed further along the paths of modernisation and increased cooperation with the industrial West. The policy of ‘Four Modernisations’ — in industry, agriculture, defence and technology — stressed practical achievement. Experts and specialists were again to be respected, education was to have high priority and material incentives were restored. The policy also implied an inevitable strengthening of relationships with capitalist powers, which could provide the investment, products and expertise China needed to achieve these goals. Foreign technology and technical imports were actively sought.
Cowie, HR 1987, Asia and Australia in World Affairs, Vol. 3
Source L
Land of hope and opportunity
Chappatte in ‘Le Temps’ (Geneva) 2012, http://globecartoon.wordpress.com
End of Seen sources
Source 1
Nationalism in China: Two historians’ views
‘Chinese nationalism was actually partly a creation of Western imperialism,’ says Minxin Pei, a senior associate in the China program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Pei says the first surge of Chinese nationalism was seen in 1919 in what’s now widely referred to as the May 4th Movement when thousands of students demonstrated against the Treaty of Versailles’ transfer of Chinese territory to Japan. Some of these student leaders went on to form the Chinese Communist Party two years later in 1921.
‘The current Chinese communist government is more a product of nationalism than a product of ideology like Marxism and Communism,’ says Liu Kang, a professor of Chinese cultural studies at Duke University. Kang says today nationalism has probably ‘become the most powerful legitimating ideology’.
Pei, M and Kang, L in Bajoria, J 2008, Nationalism in China
Source 2
Mao’s Great Leap to Famine
The worst catastrophe in China’s history, and one of the worst anywhere, was the Great Famine of 1958 to 1962, and to this day the ruling Communist Party has not fully acknowledged the degree to which it was a direct result of the forcible herding of villagers into communes under the “Great Leap Forward” that Mao Zedong launched in 1958.
To this day, the party attempts to cover up the disaster, usually by blaming the weather. Yet detailed records of the horror exist in the party’s own national and local archives.
Access to these files would have been unimaginable even 10 years ago, but a quiet revolution has been taking place over the past few years as vast troves of documents have gradually been declassified.
While the most sensitive information still remains locked up, researchers are being allowed for the first time to rummage through the dark night of the Maoist era.
www.nytimes.com/2010/12/16/opinion/16iht-eddikotter16.html?_r=0
Unseen sources (Sources 1–12)
Source 3
Chairman Mao visits a homemade blast furnace, 1958
http://chineseposters.net/posters/pc-1958-007.php
Source 4
The Hundred Flowers Campaign of 1957
Known as the Hundred Flowers Campaign, Mao’s new policy had a dramatic effect. For the next several weeks, China’s intellectuals answered the chairman’s call for criticism with a vengeance derived from years of CCP oppression. Finding itself the subject of serious criticism, the Party soon repealed its newly adopted liberal policy and placed the intellectuals under even more strict control.
Despite its early demise, however, the Hundred Flowers Campaign had far-reaching effects on the direction of the People’s Republic of China and the CCP’s view of intellectual debate. Under Mao’s leadership, these policies hindered China’s modernisation efforts and would eventually culminate in the disastrous Cultural Revolution.
Jackson, JM 2004, An Early Spring: Mao Tse-tung, the Chinese Intellectuals and the Hundred Flowers Campaign
Source 5
The Cultural Revolution, 1967
Source 6
Long live great Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought
During the cultural revolution, the representation of Marx played a great role in the attempts to position Mao Zedong as the last living — and therefore most relevant — contributor to Marxism.
http://chineseposters.net/themes/marx.php
Source 7
Official view of Mao, post-Cultural Revolution
Before and after the convocation of the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee, the Party led and supported the large-scale debate about whether practice is the sole criterion for testing truth. The nationwide debate smashed the traditional personality cult of Chairman Mao Zedong and shattered the argument of the ‘two whatevers’*, the notion pursued by then Party Chairman Hua Guofeng after the death of Chairman Mao. The erroneous notion included that whatever policy decisions Mao had made must be firmly upheld and whatever instructions he had given must be followed unswervingly. The statement first appeared in an editorial entitled ‘Study the Documents Carefully and Grasp the Key Link’, which was published simultaneously in the People’s Daily, the Liberation Army Daily and later in the monthly journal Hongqi, or the ‘Red Flag’. The debate upheld again the ideological principles of emancipating the mind and seeking truth from facts and brought order out of chaos.
* ‘We will resolutely uphold whatever policy decisions Chairman Mao made, and unswervingly follow whatever instructions Chairman Mao gave.’
The Central People’s Government of The People’s Republic of China, 1978
Source 8
The four modernisations
The [Party] Centre believes that in realising the four modernisations in China we must uphold the four basic principles in thought and politics. They are the fundamental premise for realising the four modernisations. They are [as follows]:
1. We must uphold the socialist road.
2. We must uphold the dictatorship of the proletariat.
3. We must uphold the leadership of the Communist Party.
4. We must uphold Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought.
http://afe.easia.columbia.edu/ps/cup/deng_xiaoping_uphold_principles.pdf
Source 9
Deng — The present situation and the tasks before us (1980)
‘First is essential to follow a firm and consistent political line. We now have such a line. In his speech at the meeting in celebration of the 30th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic, Comrade Ye Jianying formulated the general task — or, if you will, the general line — as follows:
Unite the people of all our nationalities and bring all positive forces into play so that we can work with one heart and one mind, go all out, aim high and achieve greater, faster, better, and more economical results in building a modern, powerful socialist country.
The socialist system is one thing, and the specific way of building socialism another. This superiority [of the socialist system] should manifest itself in many ways, but first and foremost it must be revealed in the rate of economic growth and in economic efficiency. Without political stability and unity, it would be impossible for us to settle down to construction. This has been borne out by our experience in the more than twenty years since 1957 …
In addition to stability and unity, we must maintain liveliness … when liveliness clashes with stability and unity, we can never pursue the former at the expense of the latter. The experience of the Cultural Revolution has already proved that chaos leads only to retrogression, not to progress …’
http://afe.easia.columbia.edu/ps/china/deng_xiaoping_present_situation.pdf
Source 10
ModernisationGiven China’s backwardness, modernisation would require assistance from foreign countries. During the Cultural Revolution, the Chinese government had put up barriers against influence from outside and its foreign relations were in general very constricted. But Deng Xiaoping instituted the slogan
‘openness to the outside’ (duiwai kaifang) and set about improving relations with foreign countries,
Source 11
China’s economic performance
Note: Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is a measure commonly used to determine the economic performance of a country.
www.china-mike.com/chinese-history-timeline/part-15-deng-xiaoping
Source 12
How long can the Communist party survive in China?
How long the heirs to Mao’s 1949 revolution can hang on to power has been a perennial question since the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre and the disintegration of the Soviet Union. Many dire predictions of imminent collapse have come and gone but the party has endured and even thrived, especially since it opened its ranks to capitalists for the first time a decade ago. These days the revolutionary party of the proletariat is probably best described as the world’s largest chamber of commerce and membership is the best way for business people to network and clinch lucrative contracts.
In less than five years the Chinese Communist party will challenge the Soviet Union (69 or 74 years in power depending how you count it) and Mexico’s Institutional Revolutionary Party (71 years until 2000) for the longest unbroken rule by any political party. Modernisation theory holds that
authoritarian systems tend to democratise as incomes rise, that the creation of a large middle class hastens the process and that economic slowdown following a long period of rapid growth makes that transition more likely. Serious and worsening inequality coupled with high levels of corruption can add to the impetus for change.
www.ft.com/cms/s/2/533a6374-1fdc-11e3-8861-00144feab7de.html
End of Unseen sources
Acknowledgments Seen sources Source A
Hodder Education Group, www.hodderplus.co.uk/modernworldhistory/pdf/maos-china-1930-76.pdf.
Source B
Bianco, L and Bell, M (trans) 1971, Origins of the Chinese Revolution, 1915–1949, Stanford University Press, California, USA.
Source C
Mason, KJ, Fielden, P, Burgess, C et al 2004, Experience World History: Kingdoms, Dynasties and Colonies, McGraw-Hill Australia Pty Ltd, Sydney, NSW.
Source D
Milston, G 1978, A Short History of China, Cassell, Sydney.
Source E
Morcombe, M and Fielding, M 1999, The Spirit of Change: China in Revolution, McGraw-Hill Australia, North Ryde, NSW.
Source F
Hodder Education Group, www.hodderplus.co.uk/modernworldhistory/pdf/maos-china-1930-76.pdf.
Source G
Clare, JD, www.johndclare.net/China7.htm.
Source H
Landsberger, SR and the International Institute of Social History, The Netherlands, political poster, http://chineseposters.net/themes/mao-thought.php.
Source I
Burke, P 1999, Heinemann Outcomes: Studies of Asia, Heinemann, Melbourne.
Source J
Hawkes, S 2011, ‘Has the Chinese Communist Party transformed itself since 1978?’, www.e-ir.info.
Source K
Cowie, HR 1987, Asia and Australia in World Affairs, Vol. 3, Thomas Nelson Australia, Melbourne.
Source L
Unseen sources Source 1
Bajoria, J 2008, Nationalism in China, Council on Foreign Relations, USA, www.cfr.org.
Source 2
The New York Times Company, Mao’s Great Leap to Famine, 16 December 2010, www.nytimes.com/2010/12/16/opinion/16iht-eddikotter16.html?_r=0.
Source 3
Landsberger, SR and the International Institute of Social History, The Netherlands, political poster, http://chineseposters.net/posters/pc-1958-007.php.
Source 4
Jackson, JM 2004, An Early Spring: Mao Tse-tung, the Chinese Intellectuals and the Hundred Flowers Campaign, http://filebox.vt.edu.
Source 5
Landsberger, SR and the International Institute of Social History, The Netherlands, political poster, http://chineseposters.net/posters/pc-196b-002.php.
Source 6
Landsberger, SR and the International Institute of Social History, The Netherlands, political poster, http://chineseposters.net/themes/marx.php.
Source 7
The Central People’s Government of The People’s Republic of China, History, China Factfile, http://
english.gov.cn.
Sources 8 and 9
Deng, Xiaoping, Uphold the Four Basic Principles, 30 March 1979, speech excerpt, Asia for Educators, Columbia University, New York, http://afe.easia.columbia.edu/ps/cup/
deng_xiaoping_uphold_principles.pdf.
Source 10
Mackerras, C, Taneja, P and Young, G 1994, China since 1978: Reform, Modernisation and
‘Socialism with Chinese Characteristics’, 3rd edn, Longman Pearson Education, Sydney.
Source 11
China Mike, www.china-mike.com/chinese-history-timeline/part-15-deng-xiaoping.
Source 12
The Financial Times Ltd, How long can the Communist Party survive in China?, 20 September 2013, www.ft.com/cms/s/2/533a6374-1fdc-11e3-8861-00144feab7de.html.
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