From: gaojeng@durras.anu.edu.au (J. Gao)
Newsgroups: aus.culture.china
Subject: CND: Books and Journals Review, Sun, 11/8/1992
Date: 8 Nov 92 06:49:07 GMT
Organization: Australian National University
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            |  \/___| |/    China News Digest     | |/__/  |/
             \_______/  (Books & Journals Review) |_______/
                            
                             November 8, 1992

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1. Foreign Concessions, Chinese Fate --
   "Spoilt Children of Empire: Westerners in
    Shanghai and the Chinese Revolution of
    the 1920s"  by Nicholas Clifford  .................................. 68

2. "The Chinese Classic Novels"  by Margaret Berry  .................... 15

3. "A Change of Face: A Survey of Taiwan" by John Andrews .............. 32

4. Perspectives on Political Change in Contemporary China: 4 --
   "Politics of Disillusionment"  by Hsi-sheng Ch'i  .................. 177
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Editor's Note:  We welcome all CND readers to contribute to this column. If 
                you encounter any China-related books  or journals that you
                would like to share with  other CND readers, please send in  
                comments, newspaper reviews, journal articles, and excerpts
                etc to  cnd-editor@Sdsc.edu   Thank you.

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1. Foreign Concessions, Chinese Fate --
   "Spoilt Children of Empire: Westerners in
    Shanghai and the Chinese Revolution of
    the 1920s"  by Nicholas Clifford  .................................. 68
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Forwarded by: XU Ming Yang
Source: F.E.E.R.  10/30/91
Review written by: Lynn Pan

"Spoilt Children of Empire: Westerners in
Shanghai and the Chinese Revolution of the 1920s"
by Nicholas R. Clifford. University Press of New England,
Hanover and London. US$54

At first sight, Andre Malraux's "Man's Fate" is a fictional treatment of
the April Twelfth incident, Chiang Kai-shek's massacre of communists in
Shanghai in 1927. In fact, it is an exploration of what man can do against
death, probing the character of an individual who accepts the risk of
torture for a cause which is not the defence of his own kind but of the
human condition. Indeed, "Man's Fate" is not about Shanghai at all. Why,
then, set it here? Because, as Nichaolas Clifford says, Shanghai is an image
of the human condition in the 20th century, a "city between worlds," a place
governed more by the laws of human nature and mortality than by the
conventions of a more ordered society.

Clifford says in his preface that his book is more concerned with the world
of the Western expatriate than with any of the other worlds of Shanghai - so
that it is about Chinese history in the same way a study of "Paris of Stein
and Hemingway and Pound would be about France." In fact, it is a detailed
chronicle of the drama played out in Shanghai as the forces of warlordism,
nationalism, communism and imperialism contended for supremacy in China;
plus a social portrait of 1920s Shanghai with the Chinese half left out.
Must as Malraux's book is not really about Shanghai, Clifford's is not
really about the "spoilt children of empire."

Since what he tells is largely a Chinese story, his claim to be dealing
primarily with Western colonialism is either unwarranted modesty or an
attempt to suggest a higher and broader perspective for his narrative. The
storytelling itself, though, is admirable; Clifford has done a thorough job
of research and collation, tapping English, Chinese and French sources. If
only he had left it at that.

It is not, for example, a good idea to begin and end the book by drawing an
analogy between Shanghai and Hongkong (another product of Western
imperialism), since he can offer us nothing beyond the obvious reflections.
After the blow-by-blow account of the conflicts in 1924-27, the question
with which he concludes his study - whether today's Hongkong adumbrates
tomorrow's Shanghai (an outward-looking city of the modern world), or
whether present-day Shanghai presages the future Hongkong (a dynamo which
threatens China's rulers and must be reined in) - appears merely tacked on.
Indeed, he may not have contrived generalisations on larger themes had such
generalisations not become mandatory in scholarly studies.

Nonetheless, it should be urged that much of Clifford's book is a pleasure
to read. This is particularly true of his depiction of the servant-pampered
expatriate existence.

For all the cosmopolitanism of expatriate Shanghai, a certain Englishness
prevailed. An American would feel it in the inadequacy of the heating
system: one observer is quoted as remarking that the dance halls present "a
wonderful sample of a certain race's idea of heating - if you look carefully
about it is probable that you will find, inconspicuously under a mantel
shelf, a fireplace!"

It was the British who landed troops when, under the banner of the united
front, armed pickets of the General Labour Union and Chiang's revolutionary
army prepared to seize the city in 1927. American, French and Japanese
marines arrived in lesser force and celebrity.

In the event, the attack, when it came, did not pit Chinese against
foreigners but Chinese against Chinese. In a betrayal of the highest order,
Chiang moved against his allies and crushed the worker's movement in a
bloody purge on 12 April.

To the success of the coup, the money of Shanghai's businessmen, the brawn
of its underworld and the connivance of its foreign authorities all
contributed. Wang Shouhua, the head of the General Labour Union, was invited
to dinner by the underworld boss and murdered. All in all, there was
mortality enough for the pen of a Malraux.

Clifford plots all this with verve and care. The interplay of events in
1920s Shanghai is not likely soon to find another chronicler with such a
confident grasp of the facts.

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2. "The Chinese Classic Novels"  by Margaret Berry  .................... 15
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Forwarded by: Jian
Source: Choice Book Reviews
Review written by: Robert Bravard

"The Chinese Classic Novels"  by Margaret Berry
Publisher: Garland  1988  302 pages  US$42.00
ISBN: 0-8240-6633-2

Since the world of higher education has recently experienced a vigorous and
continuing discussion concerning the canon of great literature, this book
could hardly be better timed.  It has been long accepted that the six
classic novels of China (The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, The Water
Margin, Monkey, The Golden Lotus, The Scholars, and The Dream of the Red
Chamber) rank with the great Japanese classic, The Tale of Genji.  This
bibliography is to translations and studies in English; there are some
materials in other Western languages.  The initial chapter consists of more
general studies containing extensive material pertaining to the six novels.
Each novel is then treated, first by listing translations, then critical
works.  The annotations are brisk, comprehensive, and opinionated.

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3. "A Change of Face: A Survey of Taiwan" by John Andrews .............. 32
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Forwarded by: Steve Haber (shaber@ccm.UManitoba.CA)
Source: The Economist  Oct. 10-16,1992

[excerpted from: "A change of face: A survey of Taiwan", by John Andrews,
Asia editor of The Economist]

[The last three paragraphs of an excellent survey article on Taiwan are
given below.  Interested readers should obtain a copy of the whole, highly
informative, 18-page article]

...As recently as the mid-1980s, Taiwan was one of the world pariahs, a
developing country run by a mercantilist military regime. Today it is almost
free and the economy is almost developed. In five years' time, barring
accidents, Taiwan will be completely free and its economy fully developed.
There will be a new president, elected in 1996 by popular vote (albeit
probably, as in America, through some form of electoral college).  There
will still be a Kuomintang government, with the party perhaps split into
factions along the lines of Japan's Liberal Democratic Party; there will be
a DPP-led opposition, still unable to convince the people that independence
is an issue worth risking the mainland's ire for; and there will be
Taiwanese investments and aid projects around the world.

Such a Taiwan will be influential - and no more so than on the mainland,
where Taiwan's Mandarin-speaking businessmen will spread ideas of freedom
far wider in China than their counterparts from Hong Kong, confined by their
Cantonese dialect to Guangdong province.  Those ideas may well find ready
listeners even within the Communist Party, whose next generation of leaders,
too young to have revolutionary credentials, will gain legitimacy only if
they can muster popular support.

Given that coincidence of interests, perhaps the prospect of one China - be
it through federation or, as some in the KMT believe, confederation - is not
so remote and fantastic as it once seemed.  In which case, let the rest of
the world take note: Greater China will be the world's most vibrant economy,
and Taiwan, bigger and better educated than Hong Kong, will be its dynamo.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
4. Perspectives on Political Change in Contemporary China: 4 --
   "Politics of Disillusionment"  by Hsi-sheng Ch'i  .................. 177
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Forwarded by: Wang HAO (Hao.Wang@mtsg.ubc.ca)  10/12/92
Source: China Information, Vol. VII, No. 1, (summer, 1992)

[Editor's Note:  This is the final part of the four-part series following
                 the last issue]

Hsi-sheng Ch'i, Politics of Disillusionment: the Chinese
Communist Party under Deng Xiaoping, 1978-1989, Armonk, NY: M. E.
Sharpe, Inc., 1991.


Hsi-sheng Ch'i discusses thoroughly some of the major activities of the CCP
under Deng Xiaoping (1978-89). He does not provide relevant theories or
clear-cut categories around which he undertakes his discussion. Among the
many subjects he discusses, the main ones are Party leadership, quality and
discipline, and the Party's relations with intellectuals.

The first thing Deng tried to do when he came to power was to restore the
Party leadership in the country. He tried to do so by retiring old cadres
and promoting younger successors. The author records both achievements and
failures of Deng's policy. For example, he tells us:

     ...the average age of the 41 ministers and deputy ministers of the
        State Council declined from 65.7 in 1982 to 59.5 in the spring of
        1985, while the ordinary cadres in these ministries with
        college-level education increased from 38 percent to 50 percent
        during this period. ...[By 1986] some 1.8 million old cadres had
        taken retirement [65]. On the provincial level, by October 1984, the
        membership of party standing committees on the provincial and
        municipal level as well as the number of governors and deputy
        governors had been reduced by 34 percent as compared with 1982-83.
        Their average age dropped by seven years [79].

In spite of those achievements, serious problems have persisted. The quality
of the leadership has remained questionable, because the personal qualities
that old leaders approved of were affability, obedience, cautiousness, and
humility, etc. Factionalism, family connections and the "party of princes"
also have had adverse effects on the Party leadership [89-91]. Despite his
lengthy discussion of the Party leadership, the author unfortunately does
not give us any insight into the Party's policy of separation between the
Party and government.

Attempts to instill Party discipline revealed even more problems. Although
the Party tried to combat misconduct through a rectification movement, the
results were not impressive. The author discerns five different factors
contributing to the campaign's failure: "the loss of organizational control,
the inadequacy of rectification techniques, the lack of leadership resolve
to enforce discipline, the confusion generated by the decision-making
process, and the difficulty of balancing political and economic interests".
Evidence of the campaign's failure is plentiful. For instance, in 1984, the
Party informed the provinces that it would not conduct an inspection of the
results of rectification. This hands-off policy of the Party center left the
local committees and rural Party organs untouched. Discipline problems also
revealed themselves in the facts that "nobody was in charge of convening
Party meeting, collecting Party dues, or conducting Party activities" [238].
Finally, poor discipline was a contributing factor to the pro democracy
movement of 1989. "Many of the leading instigators and organizers of the
demonstrations were CCP members" [269].

The third main subject Ch'i discusses is the Party's relationship with
intellectuals. Indeed, the relationship between a regime and intellectuals
in many developing countries tends to be uneasy. On the one hand, the regime
needs the contribution of intellectuals; on the other, it does not want them
to play an active political role. The author provides enough evidence to
show this point in China. He points out that "the party's new theory and
policies on intellectuals marked a radical departure from tradition" [132].
"In 1978, intellectuals constituted only 8.3 percent of the total party
recruits of that year. They constituted 23.6 percent in 1982, 27 percent in
1983, and more than 40 percent for the first half of 1984" [136]. However,
the new policy toward intellectuals was far from fully realized. Widespread
discrimination, exclusion, and oppression of intellectuals still exist. "In
the decade since the CCP adopted a new policy toward intellectuals,
therefore, the disparity between its rhetoric and reality remained as great
as ever" [140]. Since the Tiananmen Incident, the Party has carried out
punitive actions against the intellectuals. The relationship between the
Party and intellectuals has been damaged by the Incident. However, we should
not exaggerate the antagonism between the Party and the intellectuals. Some
form of cooperation existed and has been existing between them. The State
Commission of Structural Reform, Zhao Ziyang's think tank, recruited many
young educated people. Intellectuals who proposed neo-authoritarianism
supported the enhancement of the role of government. Even after Tiananmen,
neo-conservative scholars, such as He Xing and Xiao Gongqin, advocated an
authoritarian solution to Chinese problems. I suppose that if only the Party
insist reform and open-door policies, some intellectuals will support it.

A major contribution of Ch'i's book is his analysis of the middle- and
lower-level Party organizations. He devotes a separate chapter to analyzing
rural Party problems. He rightly points out the general tendency of decline
and decay in rural and urban local Party branches. However, this author
believe that this decline can be deemed as political development, because it
is the depoliticization of Mao's extreme Leftist practice, and it is good
for rural economic growth. Despite the general decline of the rural Party's
power, there are examples of the rural Party branches becoming stronger and
taking a leading role in rural development. For instance, the Party branch
in Daqiuzhuang village in suburban Tianjin is still a dominant force  and
has led the village in its high economic growth. Another important fact is,
irregardless of whether the Party branches have been weakened or not, the
image of rural China changed most rapidly during the reform decade.  The
Party's rural experiences lead me to argue that, 1/ less political and
ideological commitment of the Party can facilitate rural economic
development; 2/ the Party branches in rural areas may play a leading role in
rural modernization.

Generally speaking, Ch'i is rather critical towards the changes of the Party
under Deng. For instance, he finds that the policy of the third echelon was
basically a failure. However, this author think that although this policy
failed, the principle of rejuvenation (Nianqinghua) and knowledgeablization
(Zhishihua) of the cadres was established. The implementation of civil
service system in recent years is an attempt to institutionalize personnel
reform. The Party absorbs most of the social elites in China. By and large,
the Party has been gradually transformed from a revolutionary organization
into a modernizing force. With all its shortcomings, it is this Party that
led a decade of reforms.

Concluding Remarks

If earlier Western studies of Chinese reforms succeeded in calling attention
to very real changes in China, these four books under review remind us of
the limits of change. All authors agree that China has changed, but they
maintain that this change has not led China into a capitalist, liberal
democracy. McCormick argues that "The reforms may somewhat decrease the
autonomy of China's Leninist state, but they are nonetheless intended to
increase its capacity to rule" [3]. O'Brien argues that rationalization,
inclusion and intermittent liberalization of the NPC did not establish its
supreme authority, rather, the Party has kept tight control of it and uses
the Party membership within the NPC to carry out the Party's will. Ch'i
thinks that the CCP has been transformed from Maoist leadership into Deng's
reformist one, but the Party still insists on the four cardinal principles
among which the Party's dominance is the most important.

Although the four authors are successful in measuring changes in China, they
are less successful in interpreting the limits and/or significance of
change. Are the limits strong enough to frustrate further reform? What do
intermittent, continuous reforms mean for the future of China? As Bachman
admits, his "structural approach to Chinese politics is not capable of
revealing much about the possibility of system change" [232]. He argues that
coalitional politics has be institutionalized, and the situation today may
be worse than before [230]. However, as you know, the situation has changed,
and this change cannot be fully explained by the pattern of planning
coalition vs. financial coalition. Deng, who supported planning coalition in
1957, now is the leader of reforms. The former platforms and members of the
coalitions have become obscure. Although leap and readjustment phenomena are
still alive, they reveal themselves to a weak degree.

Like Bachman, O'Brien and Ch'i do not provide systematic and theoretical
explanations for the change and stubbornness of the Chinese political
system. They are theoretically weak. McCormick does an in-depth theoretical
analysis. He uses the Weberian conception of patrimonialism in his analysis
of the Chinese Leninist state. However, his emphasis is more on the
resistance to the reforms than on the changes. To differing degrees, the
dynamics of political change in communist China are not fully explored by
these authors. The recent wave of reform indicates that a study of earlier
dynamic of change is very useful in predicting the development in the future
of China.

One common feature of these four books is that they do not discuss what
caused change and/or stubbornness of the Chinese political system. This
question may not be of primary concern to these authors, and it may be
beyond the intended scope of each book. Nevertheless, taking the four books
together, we can easily discern the Leninist and authoritarian nature of the
Chinese political system. Taken together, studies of the Chinese political
system should lead us to ask why it remains authoritarian. Is the present
situation an inevitable result of historical development? Does the official
theory of "initial stage of socialism" have a seed of truth? O'Brien
mentions two historical factors that determined the Party's attitude towards
the NPC: the quest for a strong and rich nation and the fear of chaos. These
two factors are among other factors that encourage the authoritarian
tendency. But O'Brien does not discuss this aspect fully.

Similar to above questions, we may also ask what type of political system is
most suitable for Chinese modernization. If Leninist patrimonialism is no
good for change, what system is better? Ch'i seems to suggest a multiparty
system by saying that "the party needs to reexamine the cardinal principle
of party domination over Chinese politics" [122]. Can this approach really
solve all the problems? Neither these four books nor this review can answer
this question. Such a broad question needs more empirical research and
comparative studies. For instance, Have the democracies in the Third World
countries performed well? Are the experiences of the Newly Industrializing
Countries in East Asia useful for the modernization in China? Is there a
better approach that can stimulate both economic and political development?
Answering these questions will undoubtedly contribute to our understanding
of political change in China?

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