Table Of ContentModernization and Revolution in China
E xtensively revised and fully updated in this fifth edition, this popular textbook conveys the
drama of China’s struggle to modernize against the backdrop of a proud and difficult history.
It features new analysis of the issues facing China’s fifth generation of leaders, including
the current economic climate, China’s relations with its neighbors and the United States, the
latest Tibetan crisis, and the election of Xi Jinping. Incorporating new analytical summaries
in each chapter and updated suggested readings, this new edition covers:
• The breakdown of imperial China in the face of Japanese and Western encroachments
• The early struggles between the ideologies and armies of Chiang Kai-shek and Mao
Zedong
• China’s bitter and costly war with Japan
• The Chinese Communist Party’s successes during the 1950s
• Mao Zedong’s turbulent and tragic Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution
• Deng Xiaoping’s far-reaching reforms that resulted in the dismantling of socialism and
China’s dramatic economic growth
• The triumphant hosting of the 2008 summer Olympics and China’s emergence as a
world power.
Spanning the years from China’s defeat in the Opium Wars to its current status as a potential
superpower, the fifth edition of M odernization and Revolution in China is essential reading
for courses on Modern Chinese History, Chinese Politics and Modern East Asia.
June Grasso is Associate Professor of Social Sciences at the College of General Studies,
Boston University, USA.
Jay P. Corrin is Professor of Social Sciences at the College of General Studies, Boston
University, USA.
Michael Kort is Professor of Social Sciences at the College of General Studies, Boston
University, USA.
Modernization and Revolution
in China
Fifth Edition
June Grasso, Jay P. Corrin and
Michael Kort
Fifth edition published 2018
by Routledge
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© 2018 Taylor & Francis
The right of June Grasso, Jay P. Corrin and Michael Kort to be identified as authors
of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
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Trademark notice : Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered
trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to
infringe.
First edition published by M.E. Sharpe 1991
Fourth edition published by M.E. Sharpe 2009
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN: 978-1-138-64704-6 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-64705-3 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-62697-0 (ebk)
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Contents
Preface vi
A Note on the Pronunciation of Chinese Names ix
Map of China x
1 The Middle Kingdom 1
2 Patterns of Traditional Chinese Life 6
3 Imperial Breakdown and Western Invasion 22
4 The New Chinese Republic 46
5 Nationalists and Communists 63
6 China at War 80
7 Creating the New Order 1949–1957 94
8 The Great Leap and the Bad Fall 118
9 The Cultural Revolution 137
10 A Second Revolution: The Reforms of Deng Xiaoping 160
11 The Era of Jiang Zemin 175
12 The Fourth Generation 189
13 The Era of Xi Jinping—The Fifth Generation of CCP Leadership 202
Suggested Readings 221
Index 227
Preface
Modernization and Revolution in China has been written primarily with the undergraduate
college student and lay historian in mind. There are many fine textbooks on China, but the
authors of this book always had problems trying to find a survey of Chinese history in one
volume that could serve the needs of a course that focused on the modern era. We found that
most textbooks on Chinese history were either too lengthy and detailed in their coverage of
the imperial period or, if devoted to the Communist era, incomplete in their treatment of the
all-important nineteenth-century background. It is this gap in the literature that this history
of modern China hopes to fill.
The authors of this book believe that an understanding of contemporary China requires an
appreciation of the rich historical traditions that molded its past. China is one of the world’s
oldest, geographically contiguous civilizations, and for this reason alone, history probably
looms larger in the Chinese consciousness than it does in the minds and thoughts of most
other peoples. There are very few civilizations that have shown such reverence for the wis-
dom of the ancestral past. A deep sensitivity and respect for historical traditions also has
meant that the Chinese have had to travel down a much longer road to accommodate their
culture to the demands of “modernization”; that is, the panoply of forces that move a society
away from old habits and customs in the direction of urbanization, industrialization, and the
rationalization of thought and behavior.
T he central themes around which we have woven our narrative are those of modernization
and revolution. These processes of change can be seen in the crucial nineteenth century—
hence the great amount of space devoted to that period in this text—and partly were the prod-
uct of outside influences. Yet from the outset there was an ongoing struggle between external
forces and internal difficulties and differences that shaped the outcome of China’s efforts to
modernize. As such, they posed challenges that were far greater than those confronted by
other states that came late to modernization, especially Russia and Japan, countries against
which China’s attempts at modernization are frequently compared. The manner in which
the Chinese employed their past to overcome these challenges had a seminal influence on
the ways in which the Communists structured their revolution and, we believe, continues to
weigh heavily on the course of events in China today.
M odernization is a difficult concept to define. This is partly due to the complexity of
changes associated with it as well as the wide variety of ways in which nations have gone
through the experience. We define modernization here as the process by which societies
move from a rural, agrarian base to urban, industrial structures of living via the application
of science, technology, and rational modes of thought. Elements commonly associated with
such restructuring of the social order include sustained economic growth, specialization of
labor, increased public education, broader distribution of income, expanded life expectancy,
Preface vii
an increasing reliance on bureaucracy, and mass political participation. Once set in motion,
modernization affects all parts of a country’s social structure as well as the consciousness of
its citizens. When such changes take place rapidly they naturally have a revolutionary impact
on the society undergoing the experience.
The onset of modernization certainly brought revolution to China. Revolutions, we believe,
do not constitute mere alterations in the political framework of society. They are instead
traumatic upheavals in the core fixtures of a culture. Revolutions bring about radical changes
in the economic and political order of a country; they produce shifts in consciousness and
social structures and are always marked by the emergence of a new ruling elite, whose values
achieve legitimation through acceptance by the larger society. It has been said that revolutions
are “ruptures of conscience.” Mao Zedong would have agreed, for one of the purposes of his
Cultural Revolution was to compel a break with China’s past by touching the very souls of
every Chinese. 1
T he changes wrought by modernization first began in Western Europe, then spread to
North America and, with much turmoil and pain, to the rest of the globe. The model for such
change in the West employed by the “first-comers” (mainly Britain, France, and the United
States) was democratic capitalism. This paradigm had little success in other parts of the
world, most notably in Russia and China, both of which were “latecomers” to moderniza-
tion. 2 The principles of free market economics and liberal, participatory forms of governance
fell on arid soil in much of the non-Western world. Instead, local cultural traditions com-
bined with imperialist pressures made command economics and authoritarian political ideas
of the right and left more appealing. In the case of Russia and China, it was the preeminent
paradigm of the left, Marxian socialism, which provided the blueprint for modernization for
much of the twentieth century.
I t should be noted that we use the term m odernization rather than W esternization to
describe these processes of social change. The latter term suggests that the first-comer expe-
rience is somehow the only possible model and that modernity itself reproduces Western
ways. In fact, social change outside the first-comer core has been so dramatically unique and
variable as to nullify the term W esternization as applied to the global experience. Moreover,
the most modernized nations in the twenty-first century may well be China and Japan, whose
experiences in this direction have certainly not been the result of merely replicating Western
cultural forms.
S tudying China requires the analytical approach that the German sociologist Max Weber
called w ertfrei (“value free”). By this, Weber meant the necessity of evaluating social facts
without the distortion of one’s own cultural bias. As the historian Paul Cohen has noted,
histories of China often have relied too heavily on the vocabulary, concepts, and analytical
constructs borrowed from the West. The result has been a distortion of Chinese history by
either placing too much importance on the role of the West or by misconstruing its influence
on China. The challenge, says Cohen, echoing Weber’s dictum, is to reduce the distorting
pull of the outsider perspective and to view Chinese history on its own terms. 3 At the cen-
ter of current Chinese history is an ongoing struggle between the forces of modernity and
the pull of tradition. Some elements of Chinese civilization were prepared for change, oth-
ers resisted it, and still other indigenous aspects of Chinese culture interacted with outside
stimuli to produce new elements not found anywhere else in the world. The dynamic of these
tensions has given birth to a social, cultural, and political order that is unique, vital, and yet
still in transition. Whatever history might suggest about China’s future, it is the case that past
cultural and political experiences will continue to shape its rise to global prominence. The
challenge is to appreciate China’s past struggle for modernization so as to avoid the painful
viii Preface
clashes that scarred that earlier forced move into the modern world. This time the power
differentials will be reversed, and it is far more likely that the rest of the world will not just
have to accommodate itself to a new political and economic reality but prepare as well to be
influenced and even transformed by the encounter.
Notes
1. Anne Thurston, Enemies of the People: The Ordeal of the Intellectuals in China’s Great Cultural
Revolution (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988), xx.
2. “First-comers” and “latecomers” are terms used by the scholars working with the Center of Interna-
tional Studies, Princeton University. For a further discussion and analysis of social change outside
the West, see the extended essays in Cyril E. Black, Marius B. Jansen, Herbert S. Levine, and
Marion J. Levy, eds., T he Modernization of Japan and Russia (New York: Collier Macmillan, 1975)
and Gilbert Rozman, ed., T he Modernization of China (New York: Free Press, 1981).
3. Paul A. Cohen, Discovering History in China: American Historical Writing on the Recent Past
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1984), ix.
A Note on the Pronunciation
of Chinese Names
English-speaking students often have difficulty pronouncing Chinese names because certain
consonants and vowels used in the p inyin system of romanization for standard Chinese have
sounds unlike their English counterparts. Some approximate equivalents are as follows:
pinyin English
zh j
q ch
x sh
c ts
a a (as in father )
ui ay
In Chinese names, the surname is written first.
