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Chinese History - Republic of China 中華民國 (1911-1949)

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Republic of China
literature, thought and philosophy

period before (Qing)
-- Taiwan ROC
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11" height="17" border="0">The People's Liberation Army (PLA; Renmin Jiefangjun 人民解放军) attained a quite easy victory over the nationalist government, mostly because the PLA was very popular and was staffed with peasant soldiers, disciplined, well-trained and with a clear objective. On October 1st, 1949 chairman Mao Zedong 毛泽东 and his fellowship of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP; Gongchandang 共产党), declared the foundation of the People's Republic of China (Zhonghua Renmin Gongheguo 中华人民共和国). The party that has proved to be very effective in the war against the Japanese aggressors and a corrupt government, had to undertake the task to build up a new civil government. The national constitution says, "The People's Republic of China is a socialist state under the people's democratic dictatorship led by the working class and based on the alliance of workers and peasants." In 1953, the expropriatation of landowners was gone through, and the start of the proletarian socialist revolution was marked by agrarian collectivization without former mechanization. Commerce and industry were nationalized until 1956. Already at the begin of the 50es, several campaigns against rightists and counter-revolutionaries were undertaken to intimidate opposition against expropriatation and collectivization. In the international sphere, China could not rely on the United States to be recognized as an existing state. The only way was "to lean on one side" with the Soviet Union, although there have been pending differences between Mao and Stalin who saw China mere as a sattelite state that had to follow the advises of the USSR. Soviet money and Soviet advisors helped China to build up its own industry and modern infrastructure - following the Soviet model, Mao Zedong was convinced that China first had to build up a heavy industry, especially in the northeast. Tensions with the Soviet Union already arose in the case of the separatists Gao Gang 高岗 and Rao Shushi 饶漱石 in 1954. The liberation (or occupation) of Tibet in 1951 met no international interference. The nationalist government of Chiang Kai-shek (Jiang Jieshi) 蒋介石 that hed fled to Taiwan could defend its small island because of massive military aid of the United States (serious clashes between the PRC and Taiwan ocurred in 1958 during the bombardement of the island of Quemoy). The Soviet Union did not want to engage militarily in a brother war inside Korea, when Kim Il-song wanted to reunite the divided country. In Stalin's place, China had to send thousands of "voluntaries" to help North Korea during the war 1950-1953.

The Hundred Flowers Campaign

Mao Zedong was a political idealist. He believed in the goodness of mankind that would be willing to serve freely the aims of a better community and a communist society. Not only workers and peasants should take part in the socialist reconstruction of China, but also the intellectuals. In 1956 he announced the Hundred Flowers Campaign ("Let hundred flowers blow, let hundred schools contest." Bai hua qi kai, bai jia zheng ming. 白花齐开，百家争鸣) to encourage writers and literati to feel free in making proposals to the socialist reconstruction. But instead, six years of totalitarian regime had accumulated many need for criticism. Mao, very disappointed about the writers' unfairness, turned the campaign for intellectual freedom into a campaign against rightists. Many writers like Wang Meng 王蒙 and Ding Ling 丁玲 suffered hard punishment for their honesty in cri