A collection of eight selected papers from the conference entitled Construction of the Party State and State Socialism in China, 1936-1965 , Colorado College, June 1993, examining the mechanisms of compliance in China that supported Mao and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The contributors provide key examples of the CCP structures put into place in the 1950s, bridging the traditional historiographic divide of 1949 and outlining the problems and power of the United Front, propaganda and military systems, as well as supplying case studies of important social contradictions in the party-state before and after the Great Leap Forward. An additional five essays give details of sources and methods of study from new information on CCP history to approaches toward researching China's provinces. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.
Placing Chinese Community Party history in the realm of social history and comparative politics, this text studies the roots of the policy failures of the late Maoist period and the tenacity of the CCP.
Introduction: The Making and Breaking of the Party-State in China Part
1: Studies Mechanisms of Control
1. The Construction of Spatial Hierarchies:
China's Hukou and Danwei Systems
2. The United Front Redefined for the
Party-State: A Case Study Of Transition and Legitimation
3. The Mechanics of
State Propaganda: The People's Republic of China and the Soviet Union in the
1950s;
4. Building the Party-State in China, 1949-1965: Bringing the Soldier
Back In Contradictions in Practice
5. The Politics of an Un-Maoist lnterlude:
The Case of Opposing Rash Advance, 19561957;
6. Localism, Central Policy,
and the Provincial Purges of 1957-1958: The Case of Zhejiang ;
7. Shanghai's
Strike Wave of 1957;
8. Surviving the Great Leap Famine: The Struggle Over
Rural Policy, 1958-1962; Conclusion: Uncertain Legacies of Revolution; Part
11: Sources and Methods; Newly Available Sources on CCP History from the
People's Republic Of China; Interviews on Party History; Mendacity and
Veracity in the Recent Chinese Communist Memoir Literature; The National
Defense University's Teaching Reference Materials; Researching China's
Provinces
Timothy Cheek is associate professor of history at Colorado College. Tony Saich is director of the Ford Foundation Office, Beijing and former professor of contemporary Chinese politics at the Sinological Institute, University of Leiden.