The People’s Republic of China: Early Years

(1949-1959)

Teacher Resource Guide

East Asia National Resource Center

By Kelly Hammond

Revolution and Change in China

On October 1, 1949, the Chinese

Communist Party (CCP) became the ruling

party of China. After nearly fifty years of

continuous warfare, internal division,

invasion, occupation, and general turmoil,

the country was united (though it did take

the CCP a few additional years to bring

Tibet and Xinjiang under its control)

under one regime. With the establishment

of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) by

the CCP, the Chinese were hopeful about

the future of their country and believed

that the socialist regime will help them

enhance the quality of their lives. However,

the second half of the twentieth century

was just as tumultuous as the first half was

for people living in China. To understand

why, it is important to first think about

what the word “revolution” means in the

Chinese context. Was there a revolution in

China in 1949? Did fundamental changes

occur to warrant the establishment of PRC

to be called the “Chinese Revolution”?

Many people died while fighting for the

Communists from the 1920s onward and

the CCP’s rise to power did bring some

dramatic changes to Chinese society.

However, did the “revolution” stop there?

When did the Chinese Revolution actually

start? Thinking about revolution as a

process rather than as an event gives us

insight into the historical complexities of

the twentieth century China and a more

accurate analysis of the changes that the

Communists brought to China after they

assumed power in 1949.

Mao announces the establishment of the People’s

Republic of China at Tiananmen Square in

Beijing on October 1, 1949. Source: China Daily

The Communists and older generations in

China call their national celebration day

“Liberation” because the CCP “liberated”

China from the clutches of the Nationalists

and the Western imperial powers. For

decades, historians wrote about the events

of 1949 and onward as if they were a break

from the past. Nevertheless, there was a

lot of carry-over from the years before

1949, and continuing to think of 1949 as a

completely new era oversimplifies the

realities of people’s lives in China to a

dichotomy of pre-Communist and

Communist.

The People’s Republic of China

By early 1949, it was becoming clear to

great powers invested in China, including

the United States, that the Nationalists

were losing the Civil War to the

Communists. The Communists were

launching successful land reform

campaigns in northern China and earned

the support of the rural populations in

those regions. Though these reform

campaigns were not without fault—as

peasants often killed or maimed their old

landlords in revenge for their suffering—

the Chinese peasants felt that someone

finally had their interests in mind.

In addition to losing their territories in

northern China to the Communists,

Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang

(KMT) faced massive inflation. After the

end of the war in 1945, numerous factors—

unemployment, currency reform, currency

speculation—as well as poor economic

decisions made by Chiang led to a serious

financial crisis. Between September 1945

and March 1947, prices in some areas in

China increased over thirty-fold. In other

words, if the base price was 100 units, it

cost 3,000 units less than two years later.

The KMT further lost popular support. It

was their ineptitude, corruption, and lack

of identification with China’s mostly rural

populace that sealed the fate of the

Nationalists. The United States also

withdrew its support and the CCP finally

claimed its victory. The Communists

established the People’s Republic of China

on October 1, 1949; it was now the CCP’s

turn to assume the Mandate of Heaven.

Urban and Rural Divide

In most agrarian societies, there is a

significant difference between the

standard of living in urban cities and that

in rural areas. This was also the case for

China. Besides those in a few modern

cities like Shanghai and Beijing, the

majority of Chinese population lived in the

countryside. Mao and other CCP leaders

realized that in order to launch a

successful revolution, they needed to tap

into massive human resources in rural

areas. This was not an easy task. Most

Chinese peasants were poor, uneducated,

and skeptical of change, especially as

authorities began to encroach on areas of

their lives that had traditionally been

completely under the purview of the

family or the neighborhood community.

For example, the tradition of midwifery

and decisions regarding the education of

girls were left entirely to the family and

these were areas that the state did not

touch.

A rural village in China. Source: Mkalty

Yet, the Communists were successful in

garnering the support of the peasants

because the party made enormous

changes to the land-holding systems in the

countryside, abolishing the landlord class

and redistributing land among the

peasants. In the cities, people who owned

businesses were persecuted as bourgeois

and most small businesses were forced to

close. The CCP thus had more difficulties

in convincing people living in urban areas

that they were the most viable group to

rule China. Most people who could afford

to leave with the KMT fled to Taiwan, and

small business owners risked their lives to

cross the border to reach then British-

governed Hong Kong in the early 1950s.

This urban-rural divide in China was

exacerbated by the household registration

system, which essentially tied people to

their localities through their work-units. If

one was to move, restrictions applied.

People could not simply pack and move

from the countryside to the city not only

because they were part of a work unit but

also because if they moved to the city, they

would not be able to have access to local

hospitals and schools, or any other social

services that were provided by the state.

This division between the urban and rural

areas is one of the most defining features

of twentieth century China. Only recently

more people in China have started

migrating to the cities as lines between

city and countryside have begun to be

blurred.

The Korean War As the Communists began to consolidate

their power on the mainland and the

Nationalists regrouped on the island of

Taiwan, Mao Zedong traveled to the Soviet

Union to meet Stalin. Mao wished to

foster the relationship between the two

largest Communist powers. Unlike his

comrades who studied in the Soviet Union

or Europe, Mao has never visited places

beyond the borders of China at the time.

Mao and Stalin in Moscow in 1949.

Source: cnmzd.51.net

As the leader of the most populous

country on the planet, Mao now had to

immerse himself in international affairs.

Simultaneously, he had to think of ways to

further consolidate the CCP’s power on the

mainland. The United States was still

supporting the KMT in Taiwan, though it

did so only nominally since the U.S.

government was fully aware of the cost it

would take to retake the mainland and did

not wish to be involved. Furthermore, the

Truman Doctrine, which created a

perimeter for the U.S. policy of

containment of Communism in East Asia,

excluded the Korean peninsula. In essence,

both Mao and Stalin saw the U.S.

indifference as an opportunity. It was

being signaled to Mao and Stalin that even

if a war broke out on the Korean peninsula,

the United States would not intervene.

After WWII, Korea was divided along the

38th parallel into two spheres of influence.

In the North, the Soviet Union was

supporting Kim Il Sung, while in the South,

the United States backed a right-wing

authoritarian leader Syngman Rhee. On

June 25, 1950, the North Koreans invaded

the South pushing all the way down the

peninsula. The Americans, who were

increasingly becoming disillusioned with

Rhee in the South, had withdrawn their

troops to Japan, leaving the peninsula

virtually undefended. The United Nations

quickly voted to condemn the North

Korean actions and sent troops under the

command of the United States. The UN

forces pushed the North Koreans back to

the 38th parallel. Mao warned the

international community that if the UN

forces crossed the parallel, he would send

forces to join the fight, and when they did,

PRC sent around 1,000,000 Chinese

“volunteers” to Korea with the Soviets

providing air cover.

A map showing how the Korean War unfolded.

Source: warchat.org

Chinese People’s Volunteer Army during the

Korean War. Source: Arlequin’s World

The war dragged on and many soldiers

from both sides—more than 2 million

people—died in the rough Korean winter.

By spring 1951, the war was essentially in a

stalemate along the 38th parallel, the

same place that it had started. U.S.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower finally

called for an armistice and in June 1953, a

truce was signed, once again diving Korea

into north and south. The war brought the

Chinese and the Soviets closer together,

but also planted the seeds of animosity

between the two. Stalin charged the CCP

with a 2 billion dollar bill for the air

support that the Soviet Union provided

during the war. In Cha, this sparked a new

venomous anti-imperial and anti-foreign

sentiment, and almost all of the remaining

foreigners were kicked out of China.

The Mass Line The Mass Line was a political,

organizational, and leadership method

developed by Mao and the CCP during the

Chinese Revolution that intended to show

people how to engage in socialism on a

daily basis. The Mass Line techniques

employed by the CCP helped the

Communists consolidate their power and

gain further popular support. Throughout

the Civil War, the party continued to grow

at a steady pace, and after the revolution,

the Communists assumed that many

people would rush to join the party.

However, that was not the case and the

numbers evened off at around 5 million

official members. Although the CCP won

the peasant support in rural areas, it had

trouble gaining support of large numbers

of urban dwellers. Through numerous

propaganda campaigns and political

tactics, the party was able to get

communities to offer self-criticisms. In

urban centers, many of these campaigns

became quite brutal, and urban elites were

quickly convinced that their lives were

about to change dramatically under the

new Communist leadership.

The CCP’s socialist propaganda.

Source: A History of Graphic Design

Two of the most famous campaigns were

the Three-Antis Campaign and the Five-

Antis Campaign, both of which targeted

corruption and waste. The Three-Antis

campaign was directed at the party itself,

and the Five-Antis campaign targeted

industrialists who stayed in China after

the Communist takeover. In order to get

the industrialists “confess” about their

“crimes,” the CCP used all kinds of

techniques, such as intimidation, forcing

workers to give up their bosses or pitting

bosses against one another. The

campaigns signaled that private enterprise

would not be tolerated in China. Few of

the victims were killed, and many were

terrified and had all their assets seized by

the state. These techniques of intimidation,

honed during the Three-Antis and Five-

Antis campaigns, were to be revisited

throughout Mao’s reign in power.

The First Five-Year Plan

By 1953, some serious land-reform

campaigns were initiated, the economic

base of the industrialist class had been

shattered, the Korean War was over, and

the CCP had consolidated its power and

been recognized by the international

community. It was time to remold the

economy based on a Soviet model, in

which state controlled industrial

production was blocked off into five-year

plans with production goals and standards

that were to be met every year. The CCP

began to reorganize labor and production

in China by launching the first Five-Year

Plan. Some people doubted that China

would be able to meet the goals set by the

plan, because the economy and industry

had essentially been shut down by the

continuous war that had ravaged the

country since the 1930s. Despite some

errors, such as production bottlenecks and

disagreements between local producers

and party officials, the CCP’s First Five-

Year Plan was a relative success.

The growth of the industrial sector was

closely tied to agricultural production. As

more and more people were working in

industrial jobs, the agricultural sector

needed to provide sufficient food for these

workers. During this period, the CCP

subsidized farming and kept prices on the

market at artificially low prices. However,

by 1956, Mao was concerned that

collectivization was happening too slowly,

and that peasants were beginning to

return to small-scale private enterprise as

their yields were increasing and the price

of food was kept artificially low. In these

years, peasants had more to eat than they

ever had. There was tension between these

two competing factors—the desire of Mao

to completely socialize the country and the

growth of small-scale private enterprise in

the countryside—that would have an

enormous impact on China in the Second

Five-Year Plan.

Ethnic Minorities in China

When the CCP was consolidating its power

in the early years after the establishment

of the PRC, it was faced with the same

conundrum as the Republican

Government after the end of the Qing, and

that the Soviets faced at the end of the

Tsarist Regime in Russia. How would the

new government maintain the territorial

integrity of the empire and successfully

incorporate ethnic minorities who mostly

lived in the borderlands into the new

People’s Republic of China? Many of these

areas, such as Xinjiang, had fallen out of

Chinese control during the Warlord Era,

WWII, and the Civil War that followed,

but Mao was intent on bringing these

areas back under the control of the

Chinese nation-state. The People’s

Liberation Army invaded Tibet in 1950

and has occupied it ever since, and they

reclaimed territories from the Soviets in

the early 1950s as well.

Chinese propaganda emphasizing the integration

of ethnic minorities. Source: Chineseposters.net

Mao further wanted to win the hearts and

minds of these minorities, and to make

these new peoples feel more respected, he

adopted the Soviet model of creating

“autonomous regions.” Today, Xinjiang is

the Uyghur Autonomous region and Tibet

also remains as one. In theory, an

autonomous region was allowed to secede

at any time. Also using the Soviet model,

the CCP sent out anthropologists to the

borderlands to classify the peoples who

lived in those regions.

According to this model of ethnic

classification, anthropologists developed

specific criteria to designate the different

peoples living within the borders of the

new Chinese nation-state, mostly based on

factors such as language, region, religious

beliefs, and cultural characteristics.

Autonomous regions in China. Source: ASDFGH

As a result, more than 200 groups were

classified as “ethnic minorities,” and then

narrowed down to fifty-five. In this

process, smaller and lesser known groups

or tribes that had been around for a long

time were grouped together to form one,

larger group. This was especially prevalent

in the diverse and ethnically different

regions in southern China, such as

Yunnan and Tibet.

The ethnic classification of minorities in

China is one of the most tenuous and

enduring policies or the early years of the

PRC, and many people now have

internalized these classifications, and

some people even marry minorities on

purpose because they are granted special

privileges in university entrance exams,

akin to affirmative action programs in the

United States.

The Hundred Flowers & the Anti-Rightist Campaigns Intellectuals, including university

professors, doctors, and engineers, had a

difficult time finding their place in the

Maoist China. Since higher education was

extremely expensive before the Revolution,

most well-educated people came from

wealthy families that mostly comprised

the urban elite in China. Many of them

had also studied in the West and brought

back what they learned to help their

country. However, under the CCP,

Western ideas were completely vilified and

attacked as bourgeois or imperialist

thoughts. Throughout the 1950s, some

intellectuals were “re-educated” with

Communist propaganda. Intellectuals

struggled to prove themselves to the new

regime. Although the CCP understood that

it needed these intellectuals to modernize

China, in the early years of the regime, it

did not allow them any academic freedom

and harshly punished those who criticized

the party.

Anti-rightist campaign.

Source: factsanddetails.com

As more and more intellectuals began to

speak out against the party for their harsh

treatment, the Hundred Flowers campaign

emerged. By 1956, the CCP’s leadership

was satisfied with the progress of the First

Five-Year Plan and realized the benefits

that the Soviet leadership gained when

Khrushchev had allowed cadres to criticize

Stalin. Content with their successes, the

party allowed intellectuals in China to levy

criticisms at them. Between May 1 and

June 7, 1957, intellectuals across China

began to voice their grievances. It got to a

point that the criticisms came pouring out,

and in Beijing, students built what they

called the “democracy wall” covered with

posters that criticized the CCP’s policies.

Mao had opened a floodgate.

Chinese intellectuals being shamed during anti-

rightist campaigns. Source: factsanddetails.com

The backlash came in June, when Mao

stopped tolerating and came out swinging

against the intellectuals. People who had

come out to offer criticisms of the party

were branded “rightists” and heavily

criticized. In the end, over 300,000

intellectuals were labeled as “rightists”

and relieved of their posts. This backlash

against intellectuals signaled a new turn

the revolutionary struggle: one where

dissent would not be tolerated and people

would tow the party line.

The Great Leap Forward

Although crop yields were high in 1956,

the agricultural production levels in 1957

were not that great. Industrial production

was booming, but agricultural production

was not keeping pace. This was a problem

because the modernization model

required high agricultural production in

addition to industrial growth. One of the

reasons that Mao was so concerned with

agricultural output was that the Soviets

were charging the Chinese an arm and a

leg for their advisors and technology to

help them industrialize, and this payment

was mostly made in the form of grain

exports.

Mao also wanted to see China become a

Communist country, and he was

disappointed because he thought that the

revolutionary fervor was dying. His idea

what that the revolution should continue

without stopping led him to outline a way

that all people in China could both be “red

and expert,” which meant that

Communism and the technological skills

were both essential to China’s successful

future as a Communist nation. Mao also

knew that he had a large peasant base to

work with, and he and other party officials

began to think about ways to make larger,

more productive communes that could

also take care of large infrastructure

projects, such as building dams.

CCP propaganda for the Great Leap Forward.

Source: Chineseposters.net

By the summer of 1958, agricultural yields

increased and peasants were being

reorganized into large work units, where

people were given specific jobs on large

farms and everything was collectivized. In

less than a few months, almost 750,000

collectives had merged into just 26,000

communes. Growth was high, but it was

also overstated. Cadres worried that they

would displease Mao, so many communes

reported much higher numbers than their

actual yields (about 1/3-1/2 higher than

the actual yields). A lot of grain was

shipped off to the Soviet Union to pay

national debt, and there was insufficient

grain to feed the population in China.

Throughout all this, there were also some

changes to social structures of the family

and the community.

In communes, people were given tasks,

and everyone needed to fulfill them. Some

people worked in the kitchens, some in the

fields, and others took care of children.

Peasants were also enlisted to do things

like search for uranium (to make nuclear

weapons) with minimal training. Some

people in the party voiced their opinions

that they were moving too quickly, but

Mao was relentless. Soon, peasants started

to starve because the grain yields were

wrong, and many people were off doing

useless tasks, like looking for uranium

deposits or doing other pointless tasks,

like melting down pots to smelt iron for

industrial production. In the end, China’s

available grain dropped almost fifty

kilogram per person per year between

1959 and 1962, resulting in one of the

largest human engineered famine in world

history. An estimated 20 million people

starved to death in the Great Leap

Forward.

Chinese people starving during the Great Leap

Forward. Source: China-Mike.com

The Sino-Soviet Split

Stalin and Mao. Source: Chineseposters.net

During the period of the Great Leap

Forward, the relationship between the

Chinese and the Soviets was in a tailspin.

The relationship between the two

Communist countries had always been

built on the idea of “keep your friends

close and your enemies closer.” When Mao

consolidated his power in the late 1940s,

his disdain for Stalin became apparent.

After Stalin’s death, Khrushchev tried to

continue to assert the same influence on

Sino-Soviet relations as Stalin once did,

but heavy losses of Chinese lives in the

Korean War, coupled with the enormously

heavy bill that the Soviets charged the

Chinese with, and the mounting tensions

between the Soviet officials sent to aid

China’s development plans, as well as the

burdensome amounts of grain shipments

the Chinese were sending to the Soviet

Union (while their own people were

starving to death by the millions) greatly

exacerbated the tensions that already

existed between the two countries.

Nikita Khruschev. Source: globalsecurity.org

Furthermore, there were underlying

tensions due to Khrushchev’s “revisionist”

policies concerning Yugoslavia and

Hungary. While Khrushchev was busy

trying to mend the Soviet relations with

the Communist Bloc in Eastern Europe,

Mao was looking for an ally to work

against the United States. However, Mao’s

hope was dashed as Khrushchev noted

that the Soviet Union would respect the

political systems of other sovereign

nations and began to withdraw his

support for Mao’s China and its foreign

policy exploits in East Asia, especially in

regards to Taiwan and Tibet (where the

Dalai Lama was forced to flee to India

after the Communist occupation of the

region). After years of accumulation, the

tensions between the PRC and the Soviet

Union finally resulted in the Sino-Soviet

split when Zhou Enlai walked out of a

meeting in Moscow. The rift had a lasting

impact on the Cold War and Cold War

policy, as the two largest communist states

were overtly contentious towards each

other from 1961 onward.

Useful Websites Marxist.org documents on the Sino-Soviet Split http://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/sino-soviet-split/ Explaination of the Mass Line http://www.massline.info/ Marxists.org hosts some of Mao’s writings about the Mass Line http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/works/red-book/ch11.htm Mount Holyoke hosts a website about the Urban-Rural divide in China http://www.mtholyoke.edu/~koyam20m/Urbanruraldivide.html Downloadable PDF about Social Change and the urban rural divide in China http://scholar.harvard.edu/martinwhyte/publications/social-change-and-urban-rural-divide-china-0 CIA World Factbook on China https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ch.html Relationship between China and the United States during the Cold War http://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-by-era/seventies/essays/united-states-and-china-during-cold-war

Paper about Zhou Enlai’s involvement in the Korean War from the Woodrow Wilson Center http://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/zhou-enlai-and-chinas-response-to-the-korean-war Asia for Educators website about the Hundred Flowers Campaign http://afe.easia.columbia.edu/ps/cup/hundred_flowers.pdf Blog posting by an academic who lives in China about the Hundred Flowers Campaign http://granitestudio.org/2008/02/27/marriage-counseling-and-mao-the-hundred-flowers-movement-of-1957/ Article from 1959 by Tony Cliff (prominent Marxist) about the failures of the Hundred Flowers Campaign http://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1959/05/chinawilt.htm Website about Chinese intervention in the Korean War http://www.history.army.mil/brochures/kw-chinter/chinter.htm Navy Historian website about the Chinese offensive in the Korean War http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/events/kowar/50-chin/50-chin.htm Official Website of the People’s Republic of China http://english.gov.cn/ Historical maps of China from the University of Texas http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/historical/history_china.html Fairbank Online Chinese history library http://www.cnd.org/fairbank/fair-prc.htm Gallery of Chinese propaganda posters http://chineseposters.net/gallery/index.php

Fordham University History sourcebook—primary sources online http://www.fordham.edu/HALSALL/eastasia/eastasiasbook.asp#Imperial China Google online archive of Life Magazine photos http://images.google.com/hosted/life Modern Chinese Literature and Culture website—hosted by the Department of East Asian History and Languages at Ohio State University http://mclc.osu.edu/ University of Washington—Guide to modern Chinese clothing http://depts.washington.edu/chinaciv/clothing/clotweb.htm University of Washington—Guide to modern Chinese graphic art http://depts.washington.edu/chinaciv/graph/9gramain.htm Cultural guide to understanding how Chinese people say “hello” to each other https://www.mtholyoke.edu/courses/jlipman/chifanlemeiyou.htm

Suggestions for Further Reading

Ashiwa Yoshiko and David L. Wank. Making

Religion, Making the State: The Politics of Religion in Modern China. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009.

Baranovitch, Nimrod. “Others No More: The

Changing Representation of Non-Han Peoples in Chinese History Textbooks, 1951-2003.” The Journal of Asian Studies 69.1 (February 2010): 85-122.

Baum, Richard. Prelude to Revolution: Mao,

the Party and the Peasant Question, 1962-66. New York: Columbia University Press, 1975.

Becker, Japer. Hungry Ghosts: China’s Secret

Famine. London: John Murray, 1996.

Belléer-Hann, Ildiko. Community matters in Xinjiang, 1880-1949: Towards A Historical Anthropology of the Uyghur. Boston: Brill, 2008.

Bennett, Gordon. Yundong: Mass Campaigns

in Chinese Communist Leadership. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976.

Bianco, Lucien. Origins of the Chinese

Revolution, 1915-1949. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1971.

Bianco, Lucien. Peasants without the Party:

Grass-Root Movements in Twentieth- Century China. Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe,

2001. Bianco, Lucien. Rural Disturbances on the

Eve of the Chinese Revolution. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010.

Brown, Jeremy and Paul G. Pickowicz.

Dilemmas of Victory: The Early Years of the People’s Republic of China. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010.

Brugger, Bill, and David Kelly. Quelling the

People: The Military Suppression of the Beijing Democracy Movement. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.

Chan Anita, Richard Madsen, and Jonathan

Unger. Chen Village Under Mao and Deng. Berkeley: University of California at Berkeley, 1992.

Chan, Alfred L. Mao’s Crusade: Politics and

Policy Implementation in China’s Great Leap Forward. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.

Chan, Anita. Children of Mao: personality

development and political activism in the Red Guard generation. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1985.

Cheek, Timothy, et al. New Perspectives on

State Socialism in China. Armonk, N.Y.; London: M.E. Sharpe, 1997.

Chen Yung-fa. Making Revolution The

Communist Movement in Eastern and Central China. Berkeley, University of California Press, 1986.

Chong, Woei-lien, ed. China’s Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution: Master Narratives and Post-Mao Counternarritives. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002

Clayton, Cathryn H. Sovereignty at the Edge:

Macau and the Question of Chinessness. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010.

Cohen, Paul. “The 1949 Divide in Chinese

History,” in Jeffrey Wasserstrom (ed.) Twentieth-Century China: New Approaches. New York and London: Routledge, 2003.

Cohen, Paul A. Discovering History in China:

American Historical Writing on the Recent Chinese Past. New York: Columbia University Press, 2010.

Cohen, Paul. “The Post-Mao Reforms in

Historical Perspective.” Journal of Asian Studies. 47:3 (1988): 518-540.

Dahpon, David Ho. “To Protect and Preserve:

Resisting the Destroy the Four Olds Campaign, 1966-1967.” In The Chinese Cultural Revolution as History. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006.

David Apter and Tony Saich. Revolutionary

discourse in Mao's Republic. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994.

Dryer, June Teufel. “China’s Minority

Nationalities in the Cultural Revolution.” China Quarterly 35 (1968): 96-109.

Esherick, Joseph. “Ten Theses on the Chinese

Revolution.” Modern China 21 (1995): 45-76.

Esherick, Joseph, Paul Pickowicz, and

Andrew G. Walder. “The Chinese Cultural Revolution as History: An Introduction.” In The Chinese Cultural Revolution as History. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005.

Fewsmith, Joseph. China since Tiananmen:

The Politics of Transition, Cambridge Modern China Series. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

Fitzgerald, John. Awakening China: Politics, Culture, and Class in the Nationalist Revolution. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996.

Friedman, Edward, Paul Pickowicz, and Mark

Selden. Chinese Village, Socialist State. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991.

Fung, Edmund S.K. “Nationalism and

Modernity: The Politics of Cultural Conservatism in Republican China” Modern Asian Studies 43.3 (May 2009): 777-819.

Gladney, Dru C. Muslim Chinese: Ethnic

Nationalism in the People’s Republic. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991.

Goldman, Merle and Andrew Gordon.

Historical Perspectives on Contemporary East Asia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

Greenhalgh, Susan. Cultivating Global

Citizens: Population in the Rise of China. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010.

Harrison, Henrietta. China, Inventing the

Nation. London, New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.

Hayhoe, Ruth. China's Universities, 1895-

1995: A Century of Cultural Conflict. New York: Garland Pub., 1996.

Hershatter, Gail. Remapping China: Fissures

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