Shanghai Docent

The People's Republic of China (1949- )

In 1950, China intervened in the Korean War to save the North Koreans from being wiped off the map, and by 1953, the Korean War was over (actually, South Korea and North Korea are still technically at war with each other, even though the fighting stopped in 1953).

In 1958, Mao, who was growing increasingly distant from Moscow, launched the Great Leap Forward. The idea was to mobilize the peasant masses to increase crop production by collectivizing the farms and use the excess labor to produce steel. What ended up happening was the greatest man-made famine in human history. From 1958 to 1960, poor planning and bad management managed to starve 30 million people to death. Officially, the government blamed it on "bad weather."

By 1962, the break with the Soviets was complete, and China started to position itself as the 'other' superpower while it recovered from the Great Leap Forward. Unfortunately...

... in 1966, Mao launched the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. The origins of the Cultural Revolution are vague, but probably stem, in part, from a growing separation between Mao's clique and the rest of the CCP. Mao called upon students to rebel against authority, and they did, forming units of Red Guards. China promptly collapsed into anarchy. Schools shut down, offices closed, transportation was disrupted -- it was so bad that even today, the full history is still far from known. In terms of the chaos, blood, and destruction, it was comparable to the French Revolution, though it lacked the same political impact. At one point, Red Guards were fighting pitched battles with Government troops outside of the Foreign Ministry building. Later on in the Cultural Revolution, Red Guard units ended up fighting each other for supremacy. In the summer of 1967, there were massive riots in both Hong Kong and Macau.

One of the reasons why Mao was able to pull off something like the Cultural Revolution was because he was taking on the trappings of an emperor -- indeed, Mao himself often compared himself to the First Emperor of China. Another reason was the political support of the People's Liberation Army, spearheaded by a general named Lin Biao. During the glory years of the Cultural Revolution, Lin became very close to Mao, and was appointed his heir-apparent. Lin was also in charge of developing the 'cult of personality' around Mao. But after 1969, Lin's position began to deteriorate, and he vanished in 1971. Lin apparently died in an airplane crash in Mongolia; the official story is that he was fleeing to Russia. Many people believe that Mao had him murdered. It is doubtful that the whole story will ever be told, particularly as the principles involved (Mao and Lin) have taken their secrets to the grave.

While the Cultural Revolution 'officially' ended in 1969, and the worst abuses stopped then, the politically charged atmosphere was maintained until Mao's death in 1976. Deng Xiaoping, who was purged twice during the Cultural Revolution (once at the beginning; once again right before Mao died); eventually emerged as the paramount leader in 1978, and promptly launched his economic reform program.

Deng's actions, initially limited to agricultural reforms, gradually started to spread to the rest of the country. One of his favorite sayings is "It doesn't matter if the cat is black or white; what matters is how well it catches mice." This is in direct contrast to the ideology of the Maoist years, where a favored slogan was "Better Red than Expert," which meant, in practice, that totally unqualified ideologues were put in charge of projects that really needed technical expertise.

In 1982 Margaret Thatcher, then Prime Minister of Britain, went to Beijing to meet with Deng Xiaopeng. Most of the talks concerned the issue of Hong Kong. By the time she had left, the United Kingdom and the People's Republic of China had signed an agreement in principle to hand Hong Kong from the UK over to China. In 1984, the agreement was formalized in a document known as the Joint Declaration. The people of Hong Kong were never consulted about their future.

Hong Kong is a place of many ironies, and the handing over of the territory to China is replete with them. Many of the people who made Hong Kong what it is today were only in the territory because they were fleeing the Communists and are now faced with the prospect of returning to Communist rule. The Hong Kong Chinese residents lucky enough to have British citizenship are not actually allowed to live in Britain; and those who hold the British National (Overseas) [BN(O)] passport will find themselves PRC nationals after 1997, whether they like it or not. Finally, there is perversely poetic justice in the fact that Hong Kong, which was made by unequal treaties, will be unmade by an unequal treaty.

As the economic reforms on the mainland spread, the question of political reform started to come to the surface, propelled by events in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. This came to a head in Tiananmen Square in May, 1989. The leaders of the Communist Party saw this as an attack on their power, and proceeded to destroy it. Officially, 200 unarmed demonstrators died. The actual figure is far higher, and it is doubtful that there will ever be an accurate roll call of those who died on June 4.