The purpose of this course is to summarize new directions in Chinese history and social science produced by the creation and analysis of big historical datasets based on newly opened Chinese archival holdings, and to organize this knowledge in a framework that encourages learning about China in comparative perspective. Our course demonstrates how a new scholarship of discovery is redefining what is singular about modern China and modern Chinese history. Current understandings of human history and social theory are based largely on Western experience or on non-Western experience seen through a Western lens. This course offers alternative perspectives derived from Chinese experience over the last three centuries. We present specific case studies of this new scholarship of discovery divided into two stand-alone parts, which means that students can take any part without prior or subsequent attendance of the other part. Part 1 (this course) focuses on comparative inequality and opportunity and addresses two related questions ‘Who rises to the top?’ and ‘Who gets what?’. Part 2 (https://www.coursera.org/learn/understanding-china-history-part-2) turns to an arguably even more important question ‘Who are we?’ as seen through the framework of comparative population behavior - mortality, marriage, and reproduction – and their interaction with economic conditions and human values. We do so because mortality and reproduction are fundamental and universal, because they differ historically just as radically between China and the West as patterns of inequality and opportunity, and because these differences demonstrate the mutability of human behavior and values. Course Overview video: https://youtu.be/dzUPRyJ4ETk
4.3: Political Processes and Institutions of Regime Change in Shuangcheng, 1946-1948
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Understanding China, 1700-2000: A Data Analytic Approach, Part 1
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The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
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Module 4: Wealth Distribution and Regime Change in Twentieth Century China
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James Z. LeeDean and Chair Professor of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences
If you go to Shuangcheng today, what you'll notice is that it'll remind you if
you're an American of Kansas or Iowa. the entire county is flat, the soil is
all a kind of rich, brown trinisome soil and the countryside is identified by its
rich sort of agricultural resources and its sparse population.
what makes Shuangcheng of course slightly different from Kansas or Iowa is this
proximity to Harbin, the largest metropolis.
In northeast China. And of by the construction of the
Russian-Japanese railway, which runs right through the center of the county,
and connects Harbin and Shuangcheng to the ports of Talien and [INAUDIBLE] to
the south in Liaoning province. It's because of this railway that in the
late 19th, and the early 20th century you find the rapid settlement and economic
growth of the northeast. As England after the second opium war is
able to muscle open the treaty ports of northeast China, opening northeast China
to commercial exploitation. And with the.
given the rich, sort of, Agricultural setting of Shuangcheng.
By 1930 the Shuangcheng area. Manchuria as a whole, produced around 60%
of the world's entire soybean crop. And so what you find, therefore in
Shuangcheng, which probably explains its high level of have-nots, in the 20th
century, is the rapid agricultural commercialization of agrarian enterprise,
therefore the rise of land acquistion. By commercial enterprises.
By, absentee landlords. By managerial farms.
and, therefore, a very. A, distribution of wealth, with, if
anything, was even more extreme than that claim by the Communist party.
By [FOREIGN], by Mao, for China as a whole.
Now, the other sort of striking feature of Shuangcheng, of course.
Is that, as a frontier region of the Ching Dynasty, the last Chinese Dynasty.
It is also a, one of the earliest, settlements in this frontier region in
the early 19th century. And in that sense, the, history of
Shuangcheng is a harbinger for the history of Manchuria as a whole with the
r, rise of over 12 million migrants who moved to Manchuria in the early 20th
century. This is a map of contemporary
Shuangcheng. divided into 11 subdistricts.
with the city of Harbing to the northeast of of the the of the county and the
square roughly in the center of the county being the historical and the
contemporary county seat. Now the land reform campaigns in
Shuangcheng follow the process which are roughly the same as that for China as a
whole. first, the communist party, of course,
had to gain military dominance over the county, then through a series of
campaigns. Called first the anti traitor and
clearing accounts campaign. Then they cut down land lords and dig up
wealth campaign. And then the mop-up campaign.
A structured sort of choreography of progressive emancipation from the
oppressive old feudal regime. Simultaneously you have the establishment
of a new egalitarian order with class lines and class labels.
with a, draw class lines to determine class labels campaign.
The identification of which houses would be landlords, which would be rich
peasants, which would be middle peasants, which would be poor peasants, and which
would be real proletariat. And then finally, the culmination, where
they equally divide up the land campaign. The fifth campaign.
Making up together land reform as a whole, the redistribution of the land
from the landlords and the rich peasants to the poor and lower middle peasants
from the have-a-lots to the have-nots and have-a-littles.
This was a process which even in Swanson County happened unevenly.
at both the district and the, and the village level.
the classic story of land reform is one where a catter goes to the village, is
able to organize, and the, the poor lower middle peasants who take control
themselves of the revolution, lead the various five campaigns, and, are able to
take the revolutionary peace situation and create a revolutionary outcome based
on the shared class interests. Of the have nots and the have a littles.
The fact is, Matthew shows, from his study what this process is highly uneven
and actually only really happened, especially in what would, specific model
villages, which were. that used to, as examples for the other
villages. Some of who followed only parts of the
five campaign model. Matthew documents both how this is a top
down political process, where campaigns were directed from above.
And passed through a traditional bureaucratic structure county leaders
received directives ,attended meetings at the provisional level issued directives
and call meetings for district leaders ,who then issued directives and called
meetings for village leaders. Where this is factorly from the province
to the county to the village and then these campaigns were carried out first in
these experimental model villages before being promulgated to the rest of the
district and county. as a result he shows in fact the actual
documentation of land reform only really exists as an entirely for those
experimental villages. That is about 10% of all villages as a
whole. In fact, for the other 90% of the
villages, we only have summaries of the outcomes.
We do not have documentation at the village level or at the county level of
the actual process and timing of the events.
the mop-up campaign, of course, was the first real grass roots campaign to
mobilize large inter-village groups of poor peasants.
There was indeed an inter-village struggle to wipe out the more powerful
landlords by confiscating all personal wealth.
The draw class lines, determine class status, and equally divide up the land
campaigns, were also extremely important. And, creating a new village political
hierarchy that was registered based on class and moral character rankings.
And land, indeed this map shows, ultimately was divided equally per
capita. What course different quality plots and
where as how unequally allocated by class and rank.
that study is based on a large number of work reports which are shown here by the
red circles for Shuangcheng county. and by summary statistics of the other
various campaigns. these summary statistics come from the
Shuangcheng County archives and include first the confiscation records of
landlords and rich peasants. And little peasants, ten record registers
and nearly 6,000 individual landlords, and approximately 400 natural villages,
recording over 133,000 shang of land that was confiscated from the 175,000 shang of
total registered land. It also comes from two what's called
[FOREIGN] that is the 300 individuals and approximately 100 natural villages were
actually executed or died during the struggle.
It also includes, two, ah, [FOREIGN] that has two registers that are over 600
individuals, again, in over 100 natural villages, were struggled against, but
were neither killed nor had their property confiscated.
And it includes registers of 800 individuals who escaped, between 1945 and
1947. And then the final, summary registers the
[FOREIGN] for the county as a whole summarizing the end results for all
83,000 households, 400,000 some odd people in Shuangcheng County, including a
total of 559 natural villages. Out of perhaps 740 existing villages.
In other words the data are extremely detailed providing you week window about
the process, and the results of land reform.
In fact, even here do not actually include every village, because it is not
clear. They are saying no records.
That these campaigns actually happen in all villages through out this area ,we
only have documents from 560 of the 740 natural villages.
Now Mathew shows first of all is that we look at the distribution of individuals
who were struggled against of the individuals who escaped, of the
individuals who were executed, and of the individuals who have property confiscated
from them, what we see is that the distribution of these individuals in fact
is not uniform throughout Shuangcheng. Moreover, in other words.
You cannot find areas where, sort of people were equally executed, struggled
against, confiscated, and escaped. Or perhaps because some of them are
mutually exclusive. Since presumably if you escaped you're
not there to be executed. At the same time, what it does show is,
is that there's a distinct pattern of variation.
Not randomly, but rather by district. And districts, for example, in the upper
left hand quadrant where confiscation was a, was especially sort of predominant.
Those big red circles, indicating, more cases of a confiscation as opposed to the
small red circles, which would be fewer cases of confiscation.
You see the areas where you have the big red circles of confiscation, you don't
see, you only see small circles of execution.
And small circles of escape. in the far left quadrant where you see
larger circles indicating more people or executed.
Also true at the center. You'll find again smaller circles when we
look at escape or when we look at struggle.
so we see in other words, by Matt's, sort of data which takes these materials for
the 540 natural villages, maps them out by administrative village, is a very
unusual pattern which is not stated in the choreography of land reform in
revolution. Which is that it seems that land reform,
while it may have occurred at the village level.
It is organized at the district level. At the sub county district level.
Which is a, finding, which is, to be quite frank, totally new for [INAUDIBLE]
the Chinese Revolution.
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