COMMUNIST CHINA’S ECONOMIC GROWTH AND FOREIGN TRADE
By Alexander Eckstein
McGraw-Hill, New York
1966, 366 pp., US$8.50
Reviewed by Kao Yung-an
Economically speaking, this is a painstaking, scholarly, and valuable book. Politically, we cannot agree with the author’s conclusion that the Peiping regime is a going concern that is likely to be around for a long time to come. He shares the shortsightedness of so many other American students of Red China. Current mainland events are providing the coup de grace for this erroneous line of thought.
In Eckstein’s case, however, politics is neither a large nor important part of his study. The University of Michigan professor sticks primarily to his economic knitting and on that count can be read with profit.
The book’s value does not reside in any economic bombshells. Eckstein has no secret access to Chinese Communist data. He admits to statistical unreliability from 1958 to 1960 and the virtual disappearance of figures thereafter. He is well acquainted with the web of deceit that the Communists spin with the twisting of economic facts. His principal service is in bringing together all the known economic information and delivering it in one readable package.
In the first three chapters, he discusses the framework of Chinese Communist economics, the economy that the Peiping regime took over, what it tried to do, and its successes and failures during the first decade. Then came the Great Leap calamity and the statistical blackout. About half of the volume is devoted to the mainland’s foreign trade. Here Eckstein is on relatively sound statistical ground, because he is able to obtain the figures from Peiping’s trading partners. In a final chapter, the policy implications are discussed. There are three appendices, many tables, and a selected bibliography.
Eckstein has some interesting views on the Great Leap and its aftermath.
“ ... one needs to face the fundamental question of whether China’s economic stagnation is a temporary, short-run phenomenon or a more chronic condition reflecting the existence of more durable and therefore less tractable variables,” he writes. “Here it is important to emphasize that the Chinese Communists mounted a program of economic development which carried them continuously forward with great momentum... There were, of course, certain favorable factors uniquely operative in this period. During the first half of the (1949-59) decade, for example, economic expansion was based to a considerable extent on the rehabilitation of a war-devastated or -disrupted plant. As a result, relatively modest inputs could yield sizable increments in output. Other advantages were the availability of Soviet credits until 1957 and of Soviet technical assistance until mid-1960. On the other hand, certain uniquely unfavorable factors have been at work in recent years. Apart from a succession of three adverse weather years, the sudden withdrawal of Soviet technicians in 1960 and the near cessation of complete plant deliveries which followed contributed greatly to the sharp curtailment and disruption of industrial production.
“Perhaps the most significant and possibly most lasting legacy of the Great Leap may lie in the damage it wrought in morale and in the organizational framework of the economy and polity. The economic crisis must have destroyed the image of invincibility and infallibility in which the regime had so convincingly enveloped itself up to 1959-60. There is no question that the cadres were left confused and disillusioned and that the people’s confidence in the leadership was shaken. At the same time, the institutional framework of the economy was weakened. Such a judgment applies particularly to agricultural organization, the pattern of land use, and the whole incentive structure in agriculture. Last but not least, statistical services were profoundly disorganized and technical considerations were thrown to the wind.”
It is when the author turns to politics that we must disagree with him. He writes: “Since 1950, U.S. policy on trade with (Red) China has involved a virtually total embargo on all economic contacts between ourselves and the mainland and the maintenance of as stringent controls as possible on trade between our allies and the mainland ... U.S. policy and regulations concerning trade with China have remained unchanged since 1950, while those of our allies have gradually and progressively been liberalized, more or less to our displeasure and in a number of cases despite our resistance. As a result, essentially what is left of the elaborate structure of COCOM controls constructed in the early fifties is a continuing ban on the shipment of arms, weapons, military materiel of all kinds, fissionable materials, and some other clearly strategic goods. In addition, there is an agreement to limit credits to a term of five years.
“U.S. policy toward China in effect is designed to isolate it and to contain it within its present boundaries, and trade controls are intended to support both these objectives. If adhered to by all major trading countries, such controls would, of course, limit intercourse with China and therefore isolate her not only commercially but politically as well. At the same time, they would deprive her of modern weapons and other defense materials and thus tend to weaken her militarily ... U.S. trade policy, thus, is designed to reduce Communist China's military potential in both the short and the long run.”
He goes on to conclude that U.S. policy has failed because the Chinese Communists can buy from most of the countries of the free world as well as from those of the Communist bloc, and that even the limitation of credit has not hurt the Peiping regime seriously. “ ... the U.S. embargo is practically of no economic significance ... ,” he writes. “Therefore, the embargo has only a symbolic meaning. It stands as a symbol of our determination to isolate China, to treat her as an outlaw, and to refuse to have any dealings with her.” Before this, Eckstein had said the Peiping regime is the “largest national entity in the world” and “it seems to be a regime which is here to stay for some time to come”. He therefore wants the United States to give up the futile embargo and find a “new posture and take new initiatives” toward the Chinese Reds.
His prediction that Peiping will be around for a long time to come is brought sharply into question by the present course of events on the mainland. It seems to this reviewer that the embargo and overall U.S. policy toward Red China have been successful despite trade loopholes and the unwillingness of other free world countries to go as far as the United States in isolating Red China. Peiping is still not in the United Nations. It is still isolated and to a considerable extent contained. The hopes of the Republic of China for a free and democratic Chinese mainland are still alive. Other free Asian countries are still resisting or prepared to resist the Chinese Communist bid for regional hegemony.
U.S. policy has been more effective than not despite the obstacles Eckstein enumerates. With the Peiping regime now on the edge of civil war or collapse, the final pragmatic justification of American policy seems clearly in sight.
STUDENT NATIONALISM IN CHINA 1927-1937
By John Israel
Hoover Institution on War,
Revolution and Peace Stanford U. Press, Stanford
1966, 194 pp.
Reviewed by Geraldine Fitch
John Israel, assistant professor of history at Claremont Men’s College, chose as his field of research for his Ph. D. thesis what he calls “an academic wilderness”, unexplored material on the student movement in China, much of which is presently hidden in libraries and archives on the Chinese mainland. While these sources are inaccessible to Americans, the author acknowledges the generous help of such institutions in free China as the Academia Historica, the National Historical Museum, and the Modern History Institute of the Academia Sinica. He also spent some time in the libraries of the National War College, the Kuomintang Archives, and the Ministry of Justice in Taipei. Professors of National Taiwan University located Japanese materials for him, and during a brief stay in Japan, he had the help of Japanese scholars. This was painstaking research, and - allowing for one or two mental fixations (to be noted later) — he has dealt objectively with his material.
Prof. Israel points out that “the pattern was set for a generation of student uprisings” in 1919 with the May 4th demonstration of righteous indignation over the Versailles Treaty which permitted Japan to retain its acquisitions in China’s Shantung province. China refused to ratify the treaty. That was the year this reviewer went to China.
Another famous date in student protest history is well remembered: May 30, 1925. A large student crowd gathered on the main street of Shanghai to protest the death of a Chinese textile worker at the hands of a Japanese foreman. British-led Shanghai police fired on the demonstrators when they refused to disperse. Thirteen were reportedly killed and others injured. Sympathy protests in Canton and Peking followed. The fact that the Kuomintang (KMT) and the young Chinese Communist Party (CCP) formed an alliance about this time led students to flock to Canton for training in the Whampoa Military Academy in “a crusade to save China”, and they gave their support enthusiastically to Chiang Kai-shek’s Northern Expedition (1926-28) to overcome the warlords and unify China.
Israel has read widely in his research, quoting from the reports of all YMCA fraternal secretaries working with students in China, as well as from such left-wing writers as: Agnes Smedley, Nym Wales, James Bertram, T. A. Bisson, Lawrence Rosinger, Edgar Snow, and Harold Isaacs (Trotskyite), and Chinese writers on both sides. He discovered that while “the sole goal of one group of students was to rally the country to resist aggression”, another, “the Communists and fellow-travelers saw the anti-Japanese movement as a vehicle for spreading Marxist political and economic doctrines”.
After the Communist coup in Nanking in March, 1927, the alliance of the KMT with the CCP was dissolved and Chiang Kai-shek cracked down on Communists, dismissing Borodin and other Soviet advisers. Israel makes no mention of the Communist attempt to discredit Chiang by the Nanking coup. He admits the weakening of the CCP as a result of Chiang’s purge, and the falling away of 50 per cent of the members of the Communist Youth Corps.
The KMT was also divided, one group setting up its leftwing government in Wuhan while the Chiang Kai-shek government was established in Nanking. Israel claims that because it was neither monolithic nor capable of enlisting student cooperation, the KMT entered a period of “inertia and confusion”. As acting Minister of Education, Chiang directed educators to be strict in discipline, urged students to apply themselves to study, and warned that “reactionary students” would be punished. Their frequent demonstrations, trips to Nanking with petitions, etc., were taking them away from their studies. China needed a future generation of educated leaders, and intensive activity in politics was incompatible with academic excellence. On the other hand, the government needed mass support, and the students were the group best suited to rally the masses. The author admits the government listened to their petitions, high officials met them to explain government policy, and there was direct contact with thousands of students. The author concludes “Perhaps it was an unsolvable problem, whoever headed the government.”
Much of this student activity and protest was after the Japanese navy attacked the Chinese area of Shanghai (Chapei) in 1932. The students were for immediate, direct action against Japan. The author seems to agree with the students that the government was following a policy of appeasement. Those of us who lived there at the time knew that China was in no sense ready to fight Japan. While the students were shouting patriotic slogans of “Resist Japan! Save China!”, the government was feverishly preparing for the inevitable conflict - building an air force, equipping and training the army.
It is significant, since so many Westerners accept the myth that “Mao won over the peasants”, that Prof. Israel agrees with Jerome Ch’en, professor of Leeds University, London, (author of Mao and the Chinese Revolution), that the peasants were the least moved of all classes in Chinese society by the Communist propaganda. In 1935 the Peiping Student Union decided, to “rally the masses”. Israel admits that “the North China peasant’s traditional suspiciousness and lethargy were not easily overcome”. The speeches were delivered “in an atmosphere of frigid curiosity” and again their attitude was “95% curiosity and 5% sympathy”.
It is also significant that Israel demonstrates that the Japanese and KMT accusations of Communist manipulation of student movements, which the student leaders “indignantly denied at the time”, are admitted by Communist historians. They claim that the Chinese National Liberation Vanguard (CNLV) and the Peiping Student Union were both party-organized.
The debatable assumptions of the author’s thesis are two. One fixation is apparent in the very first paragraph of his book when he says that Chiang Kai-shek failed either to win the support of the intellectuals or to control or neutralize the peasants. The fact that most of China’s intellectuals leaders, Hu Shih, Mei Yi-chi, Lo Chia-lun and others, as well as tens of thousands of students, left Red China for Taiwan is evidence to the contrary. That the peasants resented the new regime that confiscated their land holdings (however small) and are ready for resistance today disproves the other. Israel is inclined to give students more credit than they deserve for a united front ordered by Stalin, and makes no mention anywhere of two vital factors which gave the Chinese Communists military superiority over Chiang’s army: (1) Russia’s turn-over to them of all the Japanese arms and ammunition in Manchuria, and (2) the Marshall embargo during the civil war which kept ammunition, repairs and replacements from the National Government. It is debatable whether the Communists “won the allegiance of an impatient generation”, either in 1948-49 or in the 18 years since.
Dr. Israel has done a praiseworthy “pioneering” job, as he calls it. He does not claim that it is “definitive” nor the last word.