At the heart of Hua-yu Li's argument is the policymaking process of the early People's Republic of China (PRC). Between the years 1948 and 1953, the PRC began its massive and far-reaching socialist transformation. The author suggests not only that Mao Zedong played the decisive role in the drastic policy shift but that he also helped clarify various convoluted economic issues, as well as ignored Stalin's advice on how to achieve socialism.
In late September 1953, the Chinese regime announced the so-called general line for socialist transition, aimed at eradicating any residual capitalist elements in the existing economic structure and replacing it with a Stalinist economic system. The result was the rapid collectivization of agriculture, Soviet-style heavy industrialization and nationalization, and the complete ideological penetration of the lives of individuals by the state. This socioeconomic program is of great significance for understanding the whole picture of the Chinese political economy because it directly entailed the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, both of which are understood as human and political catastrophes.
The “general line” took the nation by surprise. The gradualism and flexibility of the mixed economy of the “New Democracy” that had infused the period of Yanan and the early years of the PRC abruptly gave way to ideologically driven radicalism. The policy shift of 1953 put an end to the disputes, confusion, and policy experiments that had developed soon after the revolution of 1949 when the Chinese ruling elite were faced with the necessity of resolving numerous and imminent economic issues. The most pressing of the economic problems was whether or not the existing mixed economic system, with private ownership, should be maintained, discarded at once, or phased out gradually. The timing of the socialist transition was based on the current conditions “necessary” for the transition. Finally, the leaders were faced with the task of defining the nature of the future socialist economy in China and the generic question of what specific actions to take (“what is to be done?”), reminiscent of the Bolsheviks' preoccupation.
Li organizes her work chronologically, beginning in 1948, and traces the cumulative formulation of the general line that grew out of a change in Mao's thinking. She identifies two major reasons for the drastic policy change from the mixed economy to a Stalinist socialist model. First, Mao was inspired by Stalin's History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolshevik): Short Course that justifies the Soviet experience of the 1920s and 1930s. He relied exclusively on this text as a “sacred” manual for China's policy formation in the late 1940s and early 1950s. When faced with possible and actual disagreements from his subordinates over various economic issues, Mao used the Short Course to justify and defend his position. He “intervened at every opportunity to promote radical positions during disputes and was ready to adopt policy options that were in tune with Stalinist ideas as presented in the Short Course” (p. 175).
Second, Li's subtle but powerful narratives of Mao's belief system provide an intriguing finding that although Mao was a dedicated Stalinist, he had “strong feelings of personal rivalry toward Stalin and of national rivalry toward the Soviet Union” (p. 3). These personal and nationalist sentiments put great pressure on him to achieve socialism in China faster than Stalin had done in the Soviet Union, and made him even shrewdly ignore Stalin's pragmatic and moderate advice.
There are numerous studies on the Sino-Russian relationship and Soviet influence on Chinese policies, but few systematic studies have been conducted to carefully document the role of the Soviet Union in Chinese economic policymaking and to unpack the mysteries of the economic policy shift of 1953. Discussions of the Soviet impact have often been assumed but not documented. The main strength of Li's study lies in the author's well-documented historical accounts of the underresearched period from the late 1940s and the early 1950s. Employing the archival materials released in China since the mid-1980s and in Russia since the early 1990s, and drawing on her field research and interviews in China, the author successfully reconstructs a vivid political picture of the complex policymaking process. With her impressive command of primary sources, she presents a richly contextualized historical discussion of how Mao skillfully employed both persuasion and threats to ensure that other main party leaders (e.g., Lui Shaoqi) carried out his socialist blueprint. The most invaluable analysis I found in this work is the careful tracing of the diffusion of the socialist economic blueprint from Lenin to Mao via Stalin: The original idea by Lenin was modified and applied by Stalin until finally imported by Mao.
Li goes to great lengths to provide “thick descriptions” of the events of those crucial years, but surprisingly she fails to place her arguments in current theoretical studies on political economy. Her analysis is fundamentally based on the “ideas matter” thesis that highlights the adoption and spread of new ideas on the role of economic ideas in policy and institutional change, of which there is now a large body of literature. In addition, her period of analysis is limited to the five years from 1948 to 1953, and readers whose interests are driven primarily by a desire for more information on the subsequent change (if any) of Mao's economic thinking after 1953 must look elsewhere. Overall, however, this dense and original study is an invaluable contribution not only to the much-neglected topic of Mao's role in early PRC economic history but more broadly to the literature on the political economy of China.
