Asian european relations

THOMAS P. BERNSTEIN is professor emeritus of political science at Columbia University.
HUA-YU LI is associate professor of political science at Oregon State University.

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“This excellent and important volume will come as a revelation to many readers. Nearly every
conceivable facet of the Sino-Soviet relationship is covered. The book’s breadth reveals just
how pervasive the Soviet model was in Chinese society, economics, politics, and culture.”
—Robert Ross, Boston College

AND

“At the recent 60th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), an old slogan
was repeated: ‘Without the Chinese Communist Party there would be no New China.’ We
might also say: ‘Without the Soviet Union, there would be no Communist Party of China,’
and ‘Without the Soviet Union, there would be no People’s Republic of China.’ The Chinese
Communist Party grew up in the Stalinist era. Today, after three decades of market reform,
there is still a Soviet DNA in its political culture. The essays in this volume, compiled by
an outstanding group of international scholars, trace the story of China’s most important
foreign relationship in its periods of tutelage, partnership, and tension. They remind us that,
whether as mentor or rival, revolutionary or revisionist, no foreign state has had greater
weight in modern China than the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.”
—William C. Kirby, Harvard University

CHINA LEARNS FROM THE
SOVIET UNION, 1949–PRESENT

“The Sino-Soviet relationship has played a critical role in the development of the People’s
Republic of China. Basing their analysis on recent documentation from Russia as well as
China, the authors in this collection contribute fresh and important insights into the nature
of that relationship. It should be essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the
evolution of Chinese domestic politics and foreign policy.”
—Steven M. Goldstein, Smith College

BERNSTEIN

History • China Studies
The Harvard Cold War Studies Book Series
Series Editor: Mark Kramer, Harvard University

CHINA LEARNS FROM
THE SOVIET UNION,
1949–PRESENT

edited by

THOMAS P. BERNSTEIN
AND HUA-YU LI
• THOMAS P. BERNSTEIN

• HUA-YU LI

• PÉTER VÁMOS

• TINA MAI CHEN

• LORENZ LÜTHI

• YOU JI

• IZABELLA GOIKHMAN

• ELIZABETH McGUIRE

• MIIN-LING YU

• GUAN GUIHAI

• GREGORY ROHLF

• JIAN ZANG

• DONGHUI HE

• GILBERT ROZMAN

• SHENGFA ZHANG

• XIAOJIA HOU

• LAURENCE SCHNEIDER

• MINGLANG ZHOU

• KONG HANBING

• DOUGLAS STIFFLER

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CHINA LEARNS FROM
THE SOVIET UNION,
1949–PRESENT

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CHINA LEARNS FROM
THE SOVIET UNION,
1949–PRESENT

Edited by
Thomas P. Bernstein and Hua-yu Li

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China learns from the Soviet Union, 1949–present / edited by Thomas P. Bernstein and
Hua-yu Li.
p. cm. — (Harvard Cold War studies book series)
Includes index.

ISBN 978-0-7391-4222-6 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-7391-4224-0 (electronic :
alk. paper)
1. China—Foreign relations—Soviet Union. 2. Soviet Union—Foreign relations—
China. 3. Communism—China—History—20th century. 4. Communism and culture—
China. 5. China—Politics and government—1949– 6. China—Economic conditions—
1949– 7. China—Social conditions—1949– 8. Education—China—History—20th
century. I. Bernstein, Thomas P. II. Li, Hua-Yu.
DS740.5.S65C477 2010
303.48'251047—dc22
2009025629

ϱ ™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American
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Printed in the United States of America

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To Dorothy J. Solinger and Jim McLendon

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Contents

Acknowledgments

xi

Introduction: The Complexities of Learning from the Soviet Union
Thomas P. Bernstein

1

Part One: The Ups and Downs of Sino-Soviet Relations
1

Sino-Soviet Relations during the Mao Years, 1949–1969
Lorenz M. Lüthi
2 The Main Causes for the Return of the Chinese Changchun
Railway to China and Its Impact on Sino-Soviet Relations
Shengfa Zhang
3 “Only a Handshake but no Embrace”: Sino-Soviet
Normalization in the 1980s
Péter Vámos

27

61

79

Part Two: Ideological and Military Influences
4

5

Instilling Stalinism in Chinese Party Members: Absorbing
Stalin’s Short Course in the 1950s
Hua-yu Li
The Soviet Model and the Breakdown of the Military Alliance
You Ji

— vii —

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131


viii

Contents

Part Three: Soviet Economic Assistance and Socialist Transformation
6

The Transplantation and Entrenchment of the Soviet
Economic Model in China
Kong Hanbing
7 “Get Organized”: The Impact of the Soviet Model on the
CCP’s Rural Economic Strategy, 1949–1953
Xiaojia Hou
8 The Soviet Model and China’s State Farms
Gregory Rohlf

153

167
197

Part Four: Society
9
10

“Labor Is Glorious”: Model Laborers in the PRC
Miin-ling Yu
The Soviet Impact on “Gender Equality” in China
in the 1950s
Jian Zang

231

259

Part Five: Soviet Influence on Science and Education
11

12

13

14

Soviet-Chinese Academic Interactions in the l950s:

Questioning the “Impact–Response” Approach
Izabella Goikhman
“Three Blows of the Shoulder Pole”: Soviet Experts at Chinese
People’s University, 1950–1957
Douglas Stiffler
Lysenkoism and the Suppression of Genetics in the
PRC, 1949–1956
Laurence Schneider
Between Revolutions: Chinese Students in Soviet Institutes,
1948-1966
Elizabeth McGuire

275

303

327

359

Part Six: Literature and Film
15

16

Coming of Age in the Brave New World: The Changing
Reception of the Soviet Novel, How the Steel Was Tempered,
in the People’s Republic of China
Donghui He
Film and Gender in Sino-Soviet Cultural Exchange, 1949–1969

Tina Mai Chen

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Contents

ix

Part Seven: The Era of Reform and the Impact of the Soviet Collapse
17

China’s Concurrent Debate about the Gorbachev Era
Gilbert Rozman
18 The Fate of the Soviet Model of Multinational State-Building
in the People’s Republic of China
Minglang Zhou
19 The Influence of the Collapse of the Soviet Union on China’s
Political Choices
Guan Guihai

449

Concluding Assessment: The Soviet Impact on Chinese Society
Gilbert Rozman

517

Index

527

About the Contributors

545

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505



Acknowledgments

T

international conference on “The Soviet Impact on China: Politics, Economy, Society, and Culture, 1949–1991,” held
at Columbia University in June 2007 and organized by the two co-editors.
In the course of editing the chapters, we changed the title to “China Learns
from the Soviet Union, 1949–Present” in order to highlight China’s active
role in the evolution of the relationship between the two countries and in the
process of adopting and adapting Soviet models of socialist construction and
governance. As is well known, China chose to emulate the Soviet Union most
closely in the first half of the 1950s, followed by increasing rejection of Nikita Khrushchev’s efforts to reform Stalinism, but also by Maoist critiques of
Stalin’s rule. As the Sino-Soviet conflict deepened, the Soviet Union became

fanmian jiaocai, a case of negative teaching material. In the 1980s, as Mikhail
Gorbachev’s reforms gathered steam, Chinese interest in what was transpiring
in the Soviet Union revived. However, after the end of Communist rule and
the disintegration of the Soviet Union, China turned harshly against the Gorbachev reforms, especially against his pursuit of political liberalization. This
stance has continued to this day. China thus once again regards the Soviet
Union as a teacher by negative example.
We would like to express our sincere gratitude to the funding provided by
the Harriman Institute for Russian, Eurasian, and Eastern European Studies
and the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, both at Columbia.
We are grateful to the anonymous reviewer for making very helpful and
detailed comments on the manuscript. And we would like to express our appreciation to our contributors for bearing with us during the editing process.
HIS BOOK IS THE RESULT OF AN

— xi —


xii

Acknowledgments

Some of the authors were not accustomed to writing western-style academic
papers but they responded readily to our requests for changes.
And last but not least, we would like to thank Mark Kramer, the director of
Cold War Studies at Harvard University and the editor of the Journal of Cold
War Studies, as well as Sylvana Kolaczkowska, the journal’s managing editor, for their continued support and encouragement. And we also thank the
editors at Rowman & Littlefield, and Lexington Books–Julie E. Kirsch, Paula
Smith-Vanderslice, and Melissa McNitt.


Introduction: The Complexities

of Learning from the Soviet Union
Thomas P. Bernstein

W

CHINESE COMMUNISTS CAME to power in 1949, they were determined to learn from the Soviet Union. As Mao Zedong put it:
HEN THE

the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, under the leadership of Lenin and
Stalin . . . learned not only how to make the revolution but also how to carry on
construction. It has built a great and splendid socialist state. The [CPSU] is our
best teacher and we must learn from it.1

Four years later, he made the same point even more emphatically:
In front of us lie very difficult tasks and we do not have enough experience.
Therefore, we must seriously study the advanced experiences of the Soviet
Union. Whether within or without the Communist Party, whether old or new
cadres, technicians, intellectuals, worker or peasant masses, all must learn sincerely from the Soviet Union. We must . . . study . . . the advanced science and
technology of the Soviet Union. In order to build up our great country, we must
launch a nationwide upsurge of studying the Soviet Union.2

Between 1949 and 1956, China intensively emulated Soviet experiences and
practices in a wide variety of fields, often, but not always quite uncritically. Especially in the first few years, Chinese leaders personally asked for instructions
and advice on political and developmental issues. One indicator of Soviet
influence is that roughly ten thousand advisors served in China, mainly from
1953 to 1957, quite a few remaining until Khrushchev abruptly pulled them
out in 1960. They served in a large variety of capacities. In the first quarter of
—1—

2

Thomas P. Bernstein

1954, 403 specialists served in twenty-eight ministerial-level units. The largest
group of 127 was in the Ministry of Education followed by 49 in the Ministry
of Fuel Industry and 45 in the Ministry of Heavy Industry.3
In l956, however, Mao Zedong struck a rather different tone about learning
from the Soviets and the Eastern Europeans:
we mustn’t copy everything indiscriminately and transplant mechanically.
Naturally, we mustn’t pick up their shortcomings and weak points. . . . Some of
our people were not clear about this and even picked up their weaknesses. While
they were swelling with pride over what they had picked up, it was already being
discarded in those countries; as a result they had to do a somersault like the
Monkey [King], Sun Wu-kung.4

And during the Great Leap Forward, China became even more critical as
it struck out on its own in a search for a more suitable developmental and
ideological model. As noted below, however, the new approaches continued
to be significantly influenced by core aspects of the Stalinist experience. In
the 1960s, the Soviet Union was treated largely as “negative” teaching material (fanmian jiaocai), as indicated by anti-Soviet polemics such as “On
Khrushchev’s Phony Communism and its Historical Lessons for the World,”
published in 1964 and probably authored by Mao.5 It contained detailed prescriptions for China on how to avoid falling into the Soviet revisionist abyss.
This negative view persisted until the Chairman’s death in 1976.
During the late 1970s and 1980s, Chinese interest in Soviet experience
revived. When Mikhail Gorbachev began his efforts to revitalize Soviet socialism, Chinese analysts once again examined what appeared as positive aspects
of Soviet policies and which seemed to converge with those underway in
China (see Gilbert Rozman’s chapter). But as Gorbachev’s glasnost’ (openness) and perestroika (restructuring) increasingly undermined the CPSU’s
monopoly of power, Chinese observers became alarmed. After the collapse
and disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991, a veritable cottage industry

arose as Chinese Soviet specialists were mobilized to provide explanations for
this catastrophic outcome and of its implications for China. Once more, the
Soviet Union became a teacher by negative example (see chapters by Rozman,
Zhou Minglang, and Guan Guihai).6
These remarkable ups and downs in the Chinese view of the value of Soviet
experience reflected the relevance of the Soviet Union to China’s own course.
As Gilbert Rozman puts it,
Discussions of the Soviet Union are of such importance because China’s communist leaders have continuously measured their country against the yardstick


Introduction

3

of their neighbor to the north; their worldview has been intimately related to
their view of Soviet socialism . . .7

This book seeks to shed additional light on the history of China’s adoption, adaptation, and rejection of the Soviet model. Over time, a significant
literature has appeared on the topic.8 But a new look at the issue is warranted
because of the large increase in documentation that became to available from
the early 1990s to the present, and which earlier studies were not able to use.
Following the Soviet collapse, Russian, Chinese, and western scholars gained
varying degrees of access to Soviet archives. Within China, a large academic
literature has appeared on Sino-Soviet relations, based also on varying degrees
of access to Chinese primary sources.9
As the table of contents of the book indicates, the authors, who come from
the People’s Republic of China, the United States, Europe, Australia, and Taiwan contribute case studies on the role of the Soviet model in the political,
economic, social and cultural spheres. The book aims to provide a picture of
the range, diversity, and complexity of Soviet influences. Two examples illustrate the point: Professor Zang Jian’s chapter on Chinese women emphasizes
an important source of attractiveness of the Soviet model to women, namely

that women should work outside the home, an ideal that in the reform period was significantly attenuated, contributing to nostalgia for the 1950s. In
contrast to this welcome feature of the Soviet model, Soviet efforts to export
Trofim Lysenko’s dogmas in biology and genetics ran into resistance from
western-trained scientists and were largely abandoned already in 1956 (see
Lawrence Schneider’s chapter).

Influences on Chinese Choices of the Soviet Model
Sino-Soviet Relations
The evolution of Sino-Soviet relations strongly influenced Chinese attitudes toward the Soviet model. Hence, we include several chapters on SinoSoviet relations—chapter 1, by Lorenz Luthi on the relationship from 1949
to 1969; a case study by Zhang Shengfa on the importance of the return to
China in 1952 of the jointly owned and managed Chinese Eastern Railway
for increasing China’s trust in Stalin, and Péter Vámos on the rapprochement in the 1980s.10 When relations were generally good as in the first half of
the 1950s, Chinese were strongly in favor of learning from Soviet “advanced
experiences.” Relations cooled somewhat from 1956 on, and in 1958 deteriorated sharply as Mao concluded that Nikita Khrushchev was seeking to
control China (see You Ji’s chapter). The work of Soviet advisors in China


4

Thomas P. Bernstein

was terminated in mid-1960, and a long period of adversary relations ensued.
The gradual warming of Sino-Soviet relations in the 1980s, culminating in
Gorbachev’s visit to China in May 1989, was also, as noted, accompanied by
renewed interest in the changing Soviet domestic scene.
Influence of Legacies
Chinese borrowing from foreigners did not of course start with the Soviet
Union in 1949, but began in the last third of the 19th century, when the famous formula, “Chinese learning as the essence; foreign learning for use” prevailed (zhongxue wei ti, waixue wei yong). Efforts to confine foreign models to
technology, especially military, lasted until China’s disastrous defeat by Japan
in 1895. After the anti-western Boxer uprising in 1900 and the victorious intervention by eight foreign powers, China seriously began to import political,

legal, social, and cultural institutions from France, Japan, Germany, and the
United States, and from 1949 on, from the Soviet Union.
With regard to the People’s Republic’s progression from acceptance to
rejection of the Soviet model, Suzanne Pepper finds a direct link to the past,
particularly in education:
Certain key features that had marked the initial experience of learning from the
outside world during the early decades of the century now reappeared: a sudden
enthusiastic rush to learn the secrets of the foreigners’ success, mechanical copying, followed by a backlash against the ensuing dislocations and unseemly desire
to emulate foreigners in so uncritical a manner.11

It should be noted that some of the Chinese contributors distinguish
sharply between imported models adopted under military pressure, characteristic of the Eastern European states, and the voluntary, selective adoption
of learning from the Soviet Union in China. Izabella Goikhman’s chapter also
argues that the Chinese side safeguarded its autonomy after 1949 in educational matters.
A second set of legacies arose from the road to power of the Chinese Communist Party, 1921–1949. Shortly after the Bolshevik Revolution, Chinese
intellectuals, disillusioned by the West, turned to Marxism and found inspiration and guidance in the successes of the Bolshevik revolution and in Soviet
Russia’s anti-imperialist stance. Transmitted via the Communist International or Comintern (1919–1943), the organization of worldwide communist
parties led by Moscow, the young CCP, founded in 1921, readily adopted
Leninist organizational structures and behavioral models.
As a member of the Comintern, the CCP was subordinate to Moscow and
obliged to follow its directives. This was problematic since Stalin viewed the


Introduction

5

international communist movement through the prism of Soviet national
interests. Orders by Stalin and the Comintern in 1927 led to the virtual destruction of the CCP.12 In the early 1930s, bitter disputes arose between Mao
Zedong’s faction and that of the leftist “Soviet returned students.” This was

one of a series of struggles with Moscow-trained communists that Mao eventually won during the Yan’an period (1935–45). His victory enhanced Mao’s
independence from Soviet tutelage. He did so on a platform that signified
pursuit of an independent road to power via the “Sinification” of MarxismLeninism and the development of an indigenously appropriate rural base area
strategy. Ironically, Mao legitimated this stance by referring to the Stalin era’s
canonical work, The History of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolshevik)—
Short Course, which emphasized Lenin’s own innovation in adapting Marxism to Russia (see below for more on the Short Course).
Mao’s independence was shown in 1941 and 1942, when he repeatedly
turned down Stalin’s urgent requests for the CCP to engage Japanese forces
directly, at a time when the Soviet Union was on the brink of defeat by Nazi
Germany, but also at a time when Mao felt that complying would put CCP’s
survival in jeopardy.13 For his part, Stalin put his bets on the Nationalist
government, signing a treaty with it in 1945 that was bitterly resented by the
Chinese Communists. Stalin also advised the Chinese to make peace with the
Nationalists, once in 1945 and more controversially, in l949 when he warned
them not to cross the Yangzi lest the United States intervenes in the Chinese
Civil War.14
Both parties put this legacy of distrust aside when they decided to put SinoSoviet relations on a new footing in 1949–50. As Zhang Shengfa notes in his
chapter, Stalin’s overriding interest in an alliance that would vastly expand the
socialist camp in the context of bipolarity overrode his reservations. Mao, of
course, needed an ally against the United States.
Against this background of the CCP’s largely independent rise to power
and the merger of Marxist-Leninist ideology with Chinese nationalism, the
first stage of the relationship in the first half of the 1950s is remarkable for the
explicitly subordinate status vis-à-vis Stalin and the Soviet model that Chinese
leaders seemed to accept. In Chinese culture, a relationship defined as this
one between the Soviet elder brother (laodage) and of China as the younger
brother implied an obligation on the part of the younger to accept the authority of the older, but also an obligation of the older brother to nurture and
protect the younger. This stance did make sense as long Joseph Stalin, the
acknowledged and legitimate leader of the world communist movement, was
still alive. But the deference due him naturally disappeared after the dictator’s

death in 1953 and helps account for Mao’s increasing assertiveness in the
years to come.


6

Thomas P. Bernstein

Memories of the past did not of course disappear during China’s “elder
brother” phase. When relations turned sour, the Chinese felt free to bring
up grievances about the past. At the Chengdu Conference in early 1958, for
example, Mao recalled that Stalin had favored the leftists in the early 1930s,
and more recently, trusted Mao Zedong as a real communist only after China
entered the Korean War.15

One Model or Several?
At a high level of generality, China accepted the entire Stalinist model of socialist construction, including the basic components of a socialist state such as
state ownership and central planning. This included the necessity of terminating private ownership of the means of production and hence of class struggle
against the urban bourgeoisie and against rich peasants in the villages. The
necessity for the collectivization of agriculture based on the assumption that
large units farmed in common were inherently superior to family farming was
also accepted, as was an industrialization program that gave absolute priority
to heavy and defense industry and that relied to a large extent on the extraction from agriculture of a surplus for urban-industrial investments.
The existence of a successful Soviet (Stalinist) model of socialist development, one that had proven itself in practice, was a major source of inspiration, confidence, and certainty as to the correctness of the Soviet course and
its outcome, as many analysts have noted.16 The popular slogan, “The Soviet
Union of today is our tomorrow” (Sulian de jintian shi women de mingtian)
signified this optimistic attitude.
As Kong Hanbing puts it in his chapter, “The Chinese equated the sacred
cause of socialism with the Soviet Stalinist Model, believing that it represented
the material embodiment of Marxism and the truth of socialism.” In order

to inculcate the correct strategy of Soviet-style socialist construction, China’s
cadres and intellectuals were mobilized to study The Short Course of the history of Soviet Communism, a distillation of the Soviet experience written at
Stalin’s behest and with his participation.17 The work was designed to glorify
the great man as Lenin’s only worthy successor. The Short Course was published in 1938 and shortly thereafter translated into Chinese. The work was
studied already during the 1942–44 Rectification Campaign. Mao Zedong
considered the book to be an “encyclopedia of Marxism and Leninism,” an
authoritative source and a model of integration of theory and practice. It conveyed the Soviet emphasis on class struggle and showed how the Soviets had
succeeded in their tasks of industrialization and collectivization. As shown
in Hua-yu Li’s chapter, the Short Course played a major role in orienting the


Introduction

7

country’s elite to the concepts and methods that came to be known in late
1953 as the “General Line of the Transition to Socialism.”
The unquestioning acceptance of the Soviet model at this general level
during the first half of the 1950s did not, however, free Chinese leaders from
having to make judgments about how it should be applied in practice, simply
because Chinese conditions differed in key respects. For instance, since China
lacked the capacity to mechanize agriculture until industrialization had made
a great deal of progress, China had to decide whether to defer the collectivization of agriculture. This, as noted below, caused disputes among the leaders
but was resolved by Mao Zedong in favor of plunging ahead. Interestingly, as
Hua-yu Li shows in her excellent study, Mao and the Economic Stalinization
of China, 1948–1953, plunging ahead was very much contrary to the advice
that Stalin conveyed to Chinese leaders from 1949 on. He recommended a
cautious, gradual course that would maintain a mixed economy for a prolonged period preparatory to the socialist stage. As Li shows, Mao formally
accepted this advice but actually circumvented it.18 On other issues, Soviet
advice coincided with Chinese preferences, as in the case of whether China

should establish a unitary or a federal state, as the Soviet Union had done.
Thus China explicitly diverged from this aspect of the “Soviet model” (see
Zhou Minglang’s chapter).
The preceding discussion points to the complexity of the Soviet model.
Looked at more closely it is possible to distinguish three models, using the
term loosely, which overlapped but were nonetheless distinct and that influenced Chinese choices (see Lorenz Luthi’s chapter). One was a moderate
strategy similar to the advice that Stalin gave to the Chinese from 1949 on.
It was relevant especially to the initial stage of socialist construction but also
emerged at later stages of China’s development. A second one was “revolutionary Stalinism” as embodied in the Soviet “socialist offensive” of 1929–
l934. And a third was “bureaucratic and middle class Stalinism,” approaches
that emerged in the late Stalinist period, and which were in profound conflict
with the Maoist effort to maintain and foster revolutionary values in the Great
Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution.
The Soviet moderate model drew its inspiration from one of Lenin’s last
articles, “On Cooperation,” published in early 1923 during the first years of
the Soviet New Economic Policy (NEP), 1921–27 adopted after the Civil War
and the radical practices of “War Communism.”19 Lenin focused on the most
problematic social group in the Soviet Union, the peasantry. He argued that
the socialist transformation of the peasantry would require several decades.
During these years the peasantry should be drawn into the orbit of the socialist urban-industrial sector by means of marketing, consumer, and credit
cooperatives. Together with a rural cultural revolution that would eliminate

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8

Thomas P. Bernstein

illiteracy, peasants would gradually become accustomed to socialist ways,

paving the way toward eventual collectivization.
During the Soviet industrialization debates and power struggles of the
mid-1920s, Nikolai Bukharin elaborated on Lenin’s ideas, emphasizing the
need for conciliating the peasants rather than waging class struggle in the
countryside, and taking an interdependent, mutually reinforcing approach to
agricultural and industrial development so as to maintain peasant incentives.
Bukharin was shot as an enemy of the people in 1938 and could not be mentioned by name, but his approach was known to some Chinese leaders (see
Hou Xiaojia’s chapter), and because Stalin had publicly sided with him until
1927.20 The moderate approach thus emphasized markets, incentives, and a
mixed economy. Beginning in the later 1920s, Stalin reinterpreted Lenin’s
article as calling for the establishment of producers’ collectives, that is, collective farms.
Revolutionary Stalinism was a stage that started in 1929 during which the
Soviets launched all-out campaigns to collectivize agriculture and eliminate
the so-called kulaks or rich peasants as part of the forcible seizure of presumed
peasant surpluses and to industrialize and urbanize at breakneck speed. An
additional component of these campaigns was a “cultural revolution,” which
aimed at literacy and technical training, but which also had anti-authoritarian
themes somewhat similar to the Chinese Cultural Revolution.21 The process
of mobilizing the country generated enormous dynamism and a sense of forward momentum that inspired many young urbanites. The cost in human life
and suffering, especially in the countryside, was prodigious but the country
did rapidly industrialize. It should not be surprising that Mao Zedong was
attracted to the core values of “Revolutionary Stalinism.”
The third approach, “bureaucratic and middle-class Stalinism,” reflected
a turn toward stability. Under the aegis of central planning and centralized
management of the economy, large bureaucracies emerged, which relied
heavily on rules, routines, regulations, and material incentives. Technological elitism was greatly valued and a high degree of inequality arose. Western
scholars saw a loss of revolutionary momentum and signs of petrification.22
Vera Dunham’s superb study, In Stalin’s Time: Middle Class Values in Soviet
Fiction, demonstrates the emergence of an acquisitive class that constituted an
important prop of the regime.23

The Soviet specialists who came to China in the early 1950s were to varying degrees the product of the bureaucratic mentality. A telling example of
this was the attitude of Soviet police specialists toward the 1951 Campaign to
Suppress Counterrevolution, which relied on mass mobilization rather than
on Stalinist “stability, formality, and professionalism.” A campaign program
that entailed ongoing and intense populist politicization worried Soviet advi-


Introduction

9

sors “who had not seen such actions since the days of their own first five-year
plan,” that is, the days of revolutionary Stalinism. In this case, reportedly, the
Soviet advisors became convinced of the merits of the Chinese approach.24 It
is not surprising that later, during the Great Leap Forward, Mao directed his
ire at bureaucratic Stalinism. All three approaches were the subject of political
disputes and manipulation in China.25
The Soviet Model and Socialist Transformation
In the very early 1950s, the PRC defined itself as a “New Democracy”
consisting of a mixed economy, in which the major industries were already
state-owned but coexisted with a sizeable sector of private manufacturing and
trading enterprises, as well as a private handicrafts industry. Agriculture, once
landlords had been violently dispossessed, was dominated by the individual,
private-property owning small-holder peasantry. CCP leaders agreed that in
due course, private property in the means of production would be abolished.
The question was how long the stage of New Democracy should last.
Chinese leaders looked at the Soviet NEP, which in key respects resembled
New Democracy. In the summer of 1950, Mao Zedong, in line with Lenin’s
ideas, claimed that full socialist transformation should occur in the distant
future. At a June meeting of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), Mao stated that New Democracy would take a long time

during which conditions for socialist transition would gradually mature. He
told anxious businessmen that it would take twenty to thirty years. Actually,
intra-party discussions had already shortened this estimate to ten, fifteen or
twenty years.26 And within a year, Mao started to short-circuit this long-term
perspective.
Other leaders, however, such as Liu Shaoqi, continued to adhere to NEPtype policies and to Stalin’s moderate advice. As Bo Yibo reports in his Recollections, Liu believed that the order of priority of the three branches of the
economy should be agriculture first; with light and heavy industry coming in
second and third, which resembled Bukharin’s project. Liu also believed that
agriculture could not be collectivized before industry could supply machinery. Instead, Liu advocated the promotion of supply and marketing cooperatives, also very much in line with the Lenin-Bukharin project. This approach
had long been advocated by Zhang Wentian, a former “returned student,”
a Politburo member and Heilongjiang Party secretary (see Hou Xiaojia’s
chapter). Liu thus wanted to encourage the individual economy, including
rich peasants, in order to maintain the incentives necessary for agricultural
growth, until the conditions for a rapid future transition to socialism had
been created.27


10

Thomas P. Bernstein

At the same time in 1950–51 that these NEP-type ideas were being discussed, the establishment of small mutual aid teams was promoted, which
were based on private property but used draft animals and large tools in common. When in 1951 party leaders in Shanxi province sought to go further by
elevating small teams to the level of larger, “semi-socialist producers’ coops”
with a higher level of socialized property, Liu condemned these efforts as
“utopian agrarian socialism,” since there was no corresponding change in the
productive forces. The authors of a two-volume Chinese biography of Mao
Zedong published in 2003 comment that “Liu Shaoqi’s opinion had a certain
representativeness within the Party.”28
Stalin himself continued to prefer the moderate course. In the fall of 1952,

he told a delegation to the 19th Congress of the CPSU led by Liu Shaoqi that
“Your ideas are correct. After we seized political power, the transition to socialism should have been done with a step-by-step approach (yinggai caiqu
zhubu de banfa). Your attitude toward China’s capitalists is correct.”29
Mao Zedong, however, as Hou Xiaojia shows in her chapter, had long come
to believe in the potential of even small rural collectives to serve as the bridge
to fully socialist agriculture. He also claimed that an organizational change
could by itself increase output and that therefore China could move toward
collectivization before agriculture could be mechanized. Mao criticized Liu,
together with Bo Yibo and others, and in the end Mao reportedly convinced
them. “Under the prevailing conditions and since there was a lack of experience, such disputes over differing opinions were normal.”30 From them on,
Mao pressed vigorously for the implementation of “Mutual-Aid and Cooperation,” intensively pressuring his subordinates from 1952 on.
Mao believed that the rural situation after land reform was sufficiently fluid
so that it was possible “to strike while the iron is hot.” Most likely he was also
influenced by the society-wide radicalization that began in late 1950 after
China’s entry into the Korea War, and continued to 1952.31 This included
the bloody Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolution, and urban campaigns
that aimed at bringing the bourgeoisie under full control and “reeducate”
those who still held pro-U.S. or pro-Nationalist views, especially intellectuals.
In this atmosphere of intolerance, policies that called for preserving the rich
peasants, that is, class enemies, could not thrive.
In this context, Mao repudiated the Soviet moderate model. In February
1953, Mao remarked to provincial officials that Soviet methods shouldn’t
necessarily be imitated (fangzhao). Contrary to Stalin’s advice to retain the
rich peasant economy lest production be harmed, he said, China was instead
relying on mutual-aid and cooperation to increase output.32 Mao’s biographers claim that in this way, Mao “broke through the Soviet model,” charting
a new road to the transformation of agriculture.33


Introduction

11

How long the transition to socialism should take was also in dispute and
subject to manipulation. Mao, for instance, formally accepted the time period
required for socialist transformation in the Short Course as that is largely valid
for China. The Short Course claimed that by the end of 1925, that, four years
after the onset of the NEP, the Soviet Union, having recovered from its civil
war, began to industrialize already in 1926. It attained a “decisive victory” in
1933, so that eight years were required for the transition.34
Mao publicly accepted such long time periods, which conveyed an impression of caution. Moreover, at times he agreed to slowdowns in the pace of
cooperativization, only to change his mind later and to blame subordinates
for rightism.35 Even in July 1955, when he predicted that a great upsurge in
agricultural transformation was about to commence, he noted that agricultural collectivization in the SU had taken seventeen years from 1921 to 1937
and that China’s would also take that long, that is, until 1967, to complete the
process.36 Yet, by unleashing China’s mobilizational assets in the “High Tide”
of socialist transformation in 1955–56 China completed collectivization by
the end of 1956, together with the equally unexpectedly rapid socialization of
private business and handicrafts.
Bo Yibo’s Recollections written during the reform period contained this
regretful assessment:
. . . we only used the time frame of the Soviet Union for carrying out socialist
transformation from 1924 on. But if we had paid attention to what Lenin said
about the New Economic Policy, and if we had done a political and economical calculus, perhaps we might have maintained a more sober outlook and the
entry into the transition and the procedural arrangements might have been done
somewhat more carefully and stably.37

Chinese leaders, including Mao, were aware of the costs of excessive speed,
since the Short Course had reported on the disastrous “leftist” mistakes that
Stalin labeled “Dizzy with Success” during the all-out collectivization drive in
early 1930. On the eve of the “High Tide,” Mao noted that during Soviet collectivization production had gone down, peasants had slaughtered livestock,

and Soviet agriculture down to the present had not reached pre-revolutionary levels.38 But Mao insisted that “what we should not do is to allow some
comrades to cover up their dilatoriness by quoting the experience of the Soviet Union.” Yes, he said, there were lessons for China in the losses of Soviet
collectivization, namely that the Chinese must make great efforts to secure
increased output and should not allow livestock to be slaughtered. “Our cooperatives must be better than those of the Soviets.” Alas, Mao’s hopes were
not realized.39


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Thomas P. Bernstein

The Soviet Model and Heavy Industrialization
The Chinese Communists inherited legacies from the state industrialization plans and programs of the Nationalist Government. Several vice-chairmen of the National Resources Commission, a planning agency, later served
in the Communist State Council planning apparatus. Thus, as William Kirby
has pointed out, China was not totally dependent on the Soviet Union.40 But
overall, the Soviet model of industrialization and Soviet assistance were extremely important to China, since much had to be learned about centralized
economic planning, management of large-scale enterprises, together with
the acquisition of technical knowledge and skills. In this sphere, as Kong
Hanbing’s chapter makes clear, China transplanted the industrial model in
its entirety. Kong provides a detailed description of the activities of a Chinese delegation of top-level industrial and planning officials, which, initially
led by Zhou Enlai, spent almost eight months, from August 1952 to May
1953, in the SU. Their goal was to learn how the Soviets drew up the various
components of a five-year plan. Its members listened to authoritative lectures, which then became embodied in successive drafts of the Chinese first
five-year plan. And they visited Soviet enterprises to learn the specifics of
the operations of large-scale industrial undertakings. Their activities were of
vital importance because the core of the Chinese industrialization program
of the First Five-Year Plan relied on Soviet assistance, including the delivery
of an estimated 156 plants.
Kong Hanbing observes that as each major project came to fruition, the
Soviet role in China’s initial industrialization “made a deep impression on

Chinese people.” It validated their faith in socialism. A U.S. analyst, writing in
1975, appraised Soviet technical assistance in these glowing terms:
In the 1950s . . . China eagerly accepted . . . the most comprehensive technology
transfer in modern history. . . . The Chinese obtained from the Soviet Union the
foundation of a modern industrial system . . . This was invaluable to China’s
subsequent development. It would have taken the Chinese decades to evolve
such a comprehensive industrial system on its own.41

Bureaucratic and Middle Class Stalinism
During the first half of the 1950s, bureaucratic Stalinism together with
middle class life styles made them felt in Soviet educational and cultural
exports to China. These themes are present in a number of chapters in this
volume. Douglas Stiffler emphasizes the degree to which the rigid approach
characteristic of Soviet higher education dominated Chinese People’s University, especially in the first three years, although there was more give and take