session 11: china since mao (nov. 28)

[clay dube]

 

 

We have one lecture for this session. Our focus is on China 1976-2022. At a couple of junctures I ask that you pause the video to think about questions. Please feel free to post comments in response below. As always, please think about how you might bring these topics or materials into your own classes. The links below offer supplementary materials. Required readings are at the bottom of this post.

In the lecture, we explore three institutions that did much to shape Chinese life during this period:

a. Chinese Communist Party
b. Household Registration System
suggested videos: Invisible Wall (youtube version), Last Train Home (Kanopy, PBS trailer)
c. Family Planning Policy
suggested video: One Child Nation on Prime Video, our discussion with the director (optional: Mei Fong, author of One Child)

We also look at China's foreign policy shift in the 1970s, where Nixon and Mao both saw advantage in reaching out to the other. You may find our Assignment China episode (our website, YouTube version) on the Nixon visit of use. Also, these two pages include several primary sources that you might want to use with students (Getting to Beijing, Getting to Know You). China's central foreign policy initiatives today include the Belt and Road Initiative and its desire to dominate the South China Sea. We'll return to those in our last session on East Asia today. 

With economic reform we've seen social tensions, people advocating for political liberalization in 1989: Assignment: China Tiananmen Square, website, Youtube and over a number of issues today.

READINGS (We will discuss how you might use these during the discussion session on 11/17)
politics: Democracy Wall, Tiananmen, Xi Jinping Thought for Children

economics: (skim) Back to the Countryside, Why more young Chinese Want to be civil servants

society: (skim) Images of Teachers, (skim) Chinese in Europe

 

Attachments:

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[Molly Cowan Johnson]

One of the things that I have done before, especially when discussing why places like Russia and China go communist, is to discuss the system. The history behind both these countries is similar in that they come from centuries of (mostly) absolute monarchy and have much of their population that lives in relative poverty. We compare it to the United States and discuss what would happen to a lot of people in the US if we were to shift to a communist regime. China has done something that the Soviet Union couldn’t (?) or chose not to, China evolved. Is it Marx’s idea of true communism where there will be no need for a government? No, but it continues to work well enough. One of the pitfalls of democracy, which we are experiencing, is majority rules which doesn’t necessarily lead to the best or most utilitarian outcome for society. To be fair there are many instances of the same thing in authoritarian governments; however, those responsible for that decision is limited.  

[Molly Cowan Johnson]

I think this is an interesting topic for discussion in both a history class or a geography class. I think I would probably open with asking students where they dream of living when they grow up. We live in Kansas so none of them think they will stay here. Since many Americans don’t even consider the idea of the government regulating where they can and cannot live it would be a good discussion. We could research other policies similar like work visas or school visas that are similar but different.

[Molly Cowan Johnson]

I have two ideas with this one. One is to discuss the history of China and how China was a major dominating force and then fell behind. It isn’t a country with a relatively short history like the United States. China as a state has had a golden age and then declined but it like the memory of it as a people is still very much there. China today recognizes what steps they must take to be competitive in a globalized world, kind of like Japan after the Meiji restoration.

The other idea I have is more of a micro level analysis. For a person with a family to feel secure and prosperous what do they need? Necessities? A comfortable life? This might be a hot take, but I can compare it to what we are seeing in the younger generations here in the US. Where many younger adults are having to put off major life goals because they don’t have the means to take them on like buying a house and starting a family. We could even wrap it around to what policies would help improve our own population decline.

[Denis Vovchenko]

How do you explain to your students the role of the CPC and the significance of the Household Registration System?

I would introduce the basics of both institutions in a lecture or in a short reading like a textbook chapter or an article (homework). That propaganda video about CPC meritocracy might be a helpful A/V aid when contextualized by lecture material or more academic readings. Based on such an introduction, I would divide students into small groups to have them find parallels in the US party system and the federal system (things like lower tuition for state residents etc).

 

[Denis Vovchenko]

How might you help students to understand how important economic development has been both to Chinese leaders and to the Chinese people?

I wonder if it would be appropriate to use the limited support for the Tiananmen protesters in 1989 as an example of silent majority’s interest only in economic development at that time. Were most Chinese satisfied with Deng’s “4 modernizations”? Is it possible to gauge how many were interested in democratization in 1989? In other words, how justified were the official statements by Deng and others in the Democracy Wall handout?

 

[Denis Vovchenko]

What activities or materials might you use to help students understand how the family planning policy was implemented and experienced?

I would introduce ethnicity into the analysis of the family planning policy to have students compare Chinese and American approaches. Correct me if I am wrong, CPC allowed non-Han ethnic minorities to have two or more kids. In the US, in the 1910s through 1970s, there was a concerted state-private effort to reduce African-American population by encouraging or requiring sterilization under various pretexts like hereditary “social deviancy” etc. For the US side, I would assign an excerpt from Edwin Black’s War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America’s Campaign to Create a Master Race. Is there a short article explaining how the one-child policy varied by ethnicity? Would it be appropriate compare those family planning policies in China vs. USA from that angle?

 

[Denis Vovchenko]

It seemed to me that “Xi Jinping Thought for Children” (Economist, 4 Sept 2021) misrepresented Mao and exaggerated the differences between him and Xi. Mao did not always encourage the young to attack the teachers. Before the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), Mao embodied the “establishment,” right?

 

[Denis Vovchenko]

 

Are Chinese less Westernized in their beauty standards than Japan and S. Korea? “The Grand Tour: Europe on 1500 yuan a day” (New Yorker, 18 April 2011) mentioned a ten-year-old’s surprise, “Do all foreigners have big noses?” As far as I know, pre-Meiji Japan similarly considered the Whites to be ugly but in the 20^th century S. Korea and Japan adopted more Western sensibilities, hence, the popularity of plastic surgery to get rid of the eye fold etc.

 

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