The People's Republic of China: Early Years

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 Britishgoverned 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.

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

A map showing how the Korean War unfolded.

Source: warchat.org

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 FiveAntis 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 FiveAntis 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 FiveYear 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 AntiRightist 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 antirightist 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

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.

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

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/internation al/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/Ur banruraldivide.html Downloadable PDF about Social Change and the urban rural divide in China http://scholar.harvard.edu/martinwhyte/pub lications/social-change-and-urban-ruraldivide-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-byera/seventies/essays/united-states-andchina-during-cold-war

Paper about Zhou Enlai’s involvement in the Korean War from the Woodrow Wilson Center http://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/zh ou-enlai-and-chinas-response-to-the-koreanwar Asia for Educators website about the Hundred Flowers Campaign http://afe.easia.columbia.edu/ps/cup/hundre d_flowers.pdf Blog posting by an academic who lives in China about the Hundred Flowers Campaign http://granitestudio.org/2008/02/27/marria ge-counseling-and-mao-the-hundred-flowersmovement-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/kwchinter/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/h istory_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

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

Boston: Brill, 2008.

Google online archive of Life Magazine photos http://images.google.com/hosted/life

Bennett, Gordon. Yundong: Mass Campaigns in Chinese Communist Leadership.

Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976.

Modern Chinese Literature and Culture website—hosted by the Department of East Asian History and Languages at Ohio State University http://mclc.osu.edu/

Bianco, Lucien. Origins of the Chinese Revolution, 1915-1949. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1971.

University of Washington—Guide to modern Chinese clothing http://depts.washington.edu/chinaciv/clothi ng/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

Bianco, Lucien. Peasants without the Party: Grass-Root Movements in TwentiethCentury 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.

Ashiwa Yoshiko and David L. Wank. Making Religion, Making the State: The Politics of Religion in Modern China. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009.

Chan, Alfred L. Mao’s Crusade: Politics and Policy Implementation in China’s Great Leap Forward. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.

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.

Chan, Anita. Children of Mao: personality development and political activism in the Red Guard generation. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1985.

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.

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.

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.

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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, 18951995: A Century of Cultural Conflict.

New York: Garland Pub., 1996.

Hershatter, Gail. Remapping China: Fissures in Historical Terrain. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996.

Esherick, Joseph. “Ten Theses on the Chinese Revolution.” Modern China 21 (1995): 45-76.

Honig, Emily. Creating Chinese Ethnicity: Subei People in Shanghai, 1850-1980.

New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992.

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.

Huang Shaorong. To Rebel is Justified: Rhetorical Study of China’s Cultural Revolution Movement. Lanham: UP of America, 1996.

Jager, Shelia Miyoshi and Rana Mitter, eds.

Ruptured Histories: War, Memory, and the Post-Cold War in Asia. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009.

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

Karl, Rebecca. Staging the World: The Invention of China in Modern World Making. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004.

Lary, Diana, ed. The Chinese State at the Borders. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2004.

Li Huaiyin. Village China under socialism and reform: a micro-history, 1948-2008.

Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009.

Revolution. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1995.

Schoenhals, Michael. China's Cultural Revolution, 1966-1969: Not a Dinner Party, An East Gate Reader. Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 1996.

MacFarquhar, Roderick and Michael Schoenhals. Mao’s Last Revolution.

Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008.

Schoenhals, Michael. Doing Things with Words in Chinese Politics: Five Studies.

Berkeley: Center for Chinese Studies, Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, 1992.

MacFarquhar, Roderick. The Origins of the Cultural Revolution 1: Contradictions among the People, 1956-1957. London: Oxford University Press, 1974.

Schoppa, Keith. Revolution and Its Past: Identities and Change in Modern Chinese History, Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 2002.

MacFarquhar, Roderick. The Origins of the Cultural Revolution 2: The Great Leap Forward, 1958-1960. New York: Columbia University Press, 1983.

Shapiro, Judith. Mao's War Against Nature: Politics and the Environment in Revolutionary China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

MacFarquhar, Roderick. The Origins of the Cultural Revolution 3: The Coming of the Cataclysm, 1961-1966. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.

Solomon, Richard. Mao’s Revolution and the Chinese Political Culture. Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan Press, 1998.

Mackerras, Colin. China’s Minorities: Integration and Modernization in the Twentieth Century. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994.

Spence, Jonathan D. The Gate of Heavenly Peace: The Chinese and Their Revolution, 1895-1980. New York, N.Y.: Penguin Books, 1982.

Meisner, Maurice J. Mao's China and After: A History of the People's Republic. 3rd ed.

New York, NY: Free Press, 1999.

Thøgersen, Stig. A County of Culture: Twentieth-Century China Seen from the Village Schools of Zouping, Shandong.

Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002.

Mitter, Rana. A Bitter Revolution: China’s Struggle with the Modern World.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.

Nedostup, Rebecca. Superstitious Regimes: Religion and the Politics of Chinese Modernity. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010.

Perry, Elizabeth J. Patrolling the Revolution: Worker Militias, Citizenship, and the Modern Chinese State. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006.

Perry, Elizabeth. “Reclaiming the Chinese Revolution.” Journal of Asian Studies 67:4 (November 2008): 1147-1164.

Saich, Tony and Hans van de Ven. New Perspectives on the Chinese Communist

Tu, Wei-ming, ed. The Living Tree: The Changing Meaning of Being Chinese Today. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991.

Walder, Andrew G. Fractured Rebellion: The Beijing Red Guard Movement.

Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009 Wasserstrom, Jeffrey N. "Toward a Social History of the Chinese Revolution: A Review, Part Ii: The State of the Field."

Social History 17, no. 2 (1992): 290-317.

Wasserstrom, Jeffrey N. Putting 1989 in Historical Perspective: Pitfalls and Possibilities, Working Papers in Asian/Pacific Studies; 93-03. Durham,

N.C.: Asian/Pacific Studies Institute, Duke University, 1993.

Wasserstrom, Jeffrey N. Student Protests in Twentieth-Century China: The View from Shanghai. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991.

Wong, R. Bin, China Transformed: Historical Change and the Limits of European Experience. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997.

Yan Yunxiang. Private Life under Socialism: Love, Intimacy, and Family Change in a Chinese Village, 1949-1999. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003.

Yeh, Wen-Hsin. Provincial Passages: Culture, Space, and the Origins of Chinese Communism. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996.