CANSU ECE GOKSIN TAKE HOME EXAM1
QUESTION 1:
When we look at the Chinese modernization process, we should bear in mind that it has historical roots for more than a hundred year. In 1911, Chinese dynasty called Qing Empire collapsed, in which ruling system there was no unification and economic stability. The people who made revolution and established Republic of China wanted to bring nationalism and modernism to the country so meaning of modernism was wealth and power in both international arena and state territory for Chinese people. When Sun Yatsen was chosen as first temporary president in Chinese Republic, he intended to unify China less than one reign but he couldn’t success it because there were regional powers, which had their own army and landlord, through different backgrounds and ethnics.
To sum up things that was mentioned above, China was not able to perform stable modernization process as it need to deal with many problems such as regional powers, Japan and civil war.
Modernization was not occurred in a sudden time after an important historical event. There were many steps that influenced Mao’s reforms contexts. First of all, when they were beaten by Japan, they understood that they didn’t have enough military and economic power as much as developed states. In addition to that point, they thought that they don’t have modern institution and political structure in order to enhance their economic power. Lastly, with reference to Chinese culture, they thought that they were so primitive than other Western states. For instance, science was not based on practical methods rather than that; it was more about to learning from books and memorizing it. There was patriarchal social structure, which didn’t have any equal right and conditions for women under the men authority. On the other hand, Western societies had more individual and equal social structure in order to enhancing
individualism, democracy as well as freedom in state.
As for cultural changes, China didn’t want to adopt itself completely to Westernize structure, as it didn’t want to lose east spiritual but it also wanted to take parts, which are proper for it.
For me, Mao combined all things that I discussed above and made them possible for Chinese context. For some people, he can be seen brutal and old fashioned but he made the true patterns according to what China needs.
rational thing can be done is unify peasants and people in rural area and encourage them to produce more in order to competing with other industrialized nations. There was agrarian economy and most of the population lived in rural area during that time, Great Leap Forward was the social and economic campaign, which considered circumstances of the state. As for its economic notions, it tried to created modern production and industrialized economy by encouraging people to produce steel and work on farms or in manufacturing. At the same time, it forced to people live in communes, producing all together without any private farming and private individual rights such as travelling.
To come up with Cultural Revolution (1966), failure of Great Leap Forward weakened Mao’s authority in China. He aimed to reassert his authority and revive revolutionary sprit by organizing students and young population by giving them financial aid. After Great Leap Forward, economy was getting worse and there was increasing hunger in society as well as environmental damages so that Mao needed to improve his authority. China didn’t have stable political order since Mao got the power and made strong party structure. When he got the power, he built strong state figure in all segments of political life as well as economy that make plans for economical agenda and dominates politics by one party. After Great Leap Forward, anxiety against Mao grew up among society and something should be done, especially after China provided its political stability after a long time since Mao got the power.
China’s own historical context because there is not only one system in the world that all countries must apply in order to be developed and modern.
QUESTION 2:
As for Yu’s thoughts about contemporary China, he usually interprets the China by looking at his own personal experiences about Cultural Revolution and Tiananmen Incident. For him, China was driven by market economy since 1978 but revolutionary ideas had never disappeared yet they existed in different way. That means status of high official people from Cultural Revolution to today have never changed although society had altered in many ways. From this point, Yu underlined the importance of corruption, bankruptcy and social unequal structures by giving example of huge disparity between city and country and related to that income differences between rural and urban areas. Secondly, he claimed that although China is the second largest economy according to annual growth rate, per capita income is still at very low level, which means “ as the popular saying has it, in a society where the state is rich but the people are poor. “ (HUA, 161) To illustrate this point, 250 million people in China were able to buy international brands while there are still people, who cannot buy banana for their children. (HUA, 159)
political approaches and should mediate competing demands. They both stated that corruption is one of the biggest problem in China and it caused to gap between rich and poor in terms of their economic abilities. For Wu, economic boom was seen as “ the ‘miracle’ of systemic corruption, the ‘miracle’ of an unjust society, the ‘miracle’ of moral decline, and the ‘miracle’ of a squandered future. (OSNOS, 158) Likely to Wu, Hua interpreted China as a country in where there was a economic steady growth and rising standard of living after economic boom due to Deng open door policy approach. At the same, the people who were getting benefit from this are children of high officials so since 1990 corruption have been increased at the same speed with economic growth.
On the other hand, Hua thoughts were completely different than Lin thoughts on consequences in the economic development in China. First of all, for Hua
government’s heavy control among certain economic sectors was obvious while in some areas unchecked capitalism maintained caused to many problems such as environmental pollution, deficiency of health insurance and retirement funds, public discontent. It can shortly be said that economic growth was more important than any other aspect of social and political life.
(OSNOS, 154)
WORKS CITIED:
Yu, Hua, and Allan Hepburn. Barr. China in Ten Words. New York: Pantheon, 2011. Print.
