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      From Mao to the Hu/Wen Era

      The Origins and Trajectory of Capitalist-Driven Modernization

      With the help of my research framework, I will now analyze the nature of Chinese modernization and assess to what extent and in what form drivers of capitalism can be determined in the areas examined. The focus of the present chapter is the period of reform from the 1980s into the 2000s. First, however, I will describe the background to the transition under Deng Xiaoping, that is, the key historical features of China’s political economy from the 1930s to the 1970s. In contrast to more nationally oriented accounts, already at this early juncture, I also describe international factors that had a significant impact on the development and transformation of the Maoist model.

Protocapitalism: The Historical Background to the Transition Under Deng

      The beginning of the process of reform at the end of the 1970s saw the government of the PRC facing the almost herculean task of restructuring a country with a billion inhabitants without undermining its social stability. This huge challenge was further complicated by the severe social crisis faced by the party and state leadership in the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution. It was this very crisis that left the leadership no alternative but a precarious attempt at fundamental reform.

      In the following section, I will summarize the key characteristics of the classical Maoist stage of development. Here I discuss continuities with Deng’s later restructuring, which is often prematurely referred to as the “new Chinese revolution” (Pei 1994). This section demonstrates that it is also essential to take into account external global economic and political developments as well as those within Chinese society. This approach allows a fruitful analysis of Maoism, which combined elements of Stalinism, Third World nationalism, and distinctive sociocultural traditions¹ to form a national modernization strategy that, in fact, resembled protocapitalist development policies (on this, see Bian 2005; Dittmer 1987; Harris 1971, 1978; Karl 2010; Leys 1972; Lieberthal and Oksenberg 1988; Naughton 2007; Osterhammel 1989; Spence 1995; Unger 2007; Walder 1986, 2015).²

      It is still a widely held view that in China under Mao, and indeed all other real socialist countries, either noncapitalist or postcapitalist imperatives were the key structural driving forces (see D. Lane 1976). Contrary to this opinion, the present work interprets China’s development trajectory as a path to modernity that was influenced by (global) capitalism from the outset. Like other underdeveloped countries classified as “capitalist,” the PRC was faced with the challenge of national advancement in the context of a globalizing capitalism.³

      As discussed in more detail elsewhere (ten Brink 2014b, chapter 6), a global analytical perspective provides us with an understanding of the different types of “real existing” socialism and state-interventionist capitalism that prevailed during the postwar period (in developing countries, frequently in a protocapitalist form). These can be understood as different versions of a common phase of global capitalist development or modernization shaped by capitalism. Global economic and geopolitical interdependencies prevented genuinely autonomous socioeconomic development. After 1945, economic competition was overlaid by the arms race to a certain extent, which not only put the defense policy of the USSR under strain but also that of Mao’s China. Similarly, military-led movements that aimed to create an alternative non-capitalist form of social organization, that is, particularly the radical wings of the workers’ movement and, under Mao, also peasants’ movements, faced the problem of being dragged into the maelstrom of global capitalism and its power hierarchies when they assumed social and political control. The history of the Russian Revolution is, of course, an impressive example of this. Yet in China the legacy of underdevelopment came into play to an even greater extent than in Russia. The Maoists, whose primary objective was to effect radical social change, could not simply dismiss these circumstances. Bearing this in mind, the following chapter focuses predominantly on the regime’s actual practices and not primarily on its ideological self-definition.

      Notwithstanding its (unattained) normative objectives, to a certain degree, classical Maoism was a radical version of instrumental reason (Horkheimer and Adorno), that is, of the attempt to improve the efficiency of the domination of nature and society. “The absurd Western images of Mao as some kind of utopian ruralist or twentieth-century peasant rebel have now been laid to rest: he was a super-industrializer and an empire-builder of the most ambitious kind” (Arnason 2008, 406). In contrast to using a private workforce, here Mao resorts to the “state workers” (and peasants) to obtain the surplus product required for the achievement of CCP ambitions. The existence of subordinated classes primarily facilitated the reproduction of the Chinese state class. In a sense, therefore, in Mao’s post-1949 China, capitalist relations of production were imitated on the basis of a very low level of development, although modern liberal relations of distribution, consumer trends, and styles of governance were replaced by a bureaucratic form of management. A combination of preindustrial and industrial traditions created a historically unique social formation. This system reached its limits, however, and was superseded by a new process of restructuring from the end of the 1970s.

      Thus, in retrospect, the Maoist era constituted a kind of expedient transitional phase, which both restored national integration and created certain preconditions for the subsequent growth trend: “Maoism was not madness (although some of Mao’s actions were). In fact, it expressed a possible solution to the fundamental problem of the Chinese Revolution: how to make China strong and independent and how to retain the power of the Communists in a world dominated by Superpowers and where technological and economic development was rapidly advancing just across the China Sea” (Castells 2003, 325, my translation).

      The fact that this brought in its wake considerable human suffering and repression confirms that the instrumentally rational dynamics of modernity (or modernities) are radically contradictory.

      For an analysis of the reform process under Deng Xiaoping in the context of its historical continuity with China’s pre-1978 system, we first need to examine the development of ownership structures. In contrast to the narrow notion of private ownership we are familiar with from Western industrial societies, I will conduct an analysis of ownership based on actual power of disposition. This includes the capacity to have exclusive control over access to certain resources without being legally classified as a private owner.⁴ Here, China’s process of reform after 1978 can be seen as a move away from one type of class society to another, which was, as yet, not clearly defined.

      The separation of state-owned property stipulated by law and the actual power of disposition of government decision makers over the means of production in 1950s China constituted a class society dominated by a state bureaucracy. In this context, the disposing state class was characterized by specialized knowledge and its power was justified with the teleological argument that it was expressing a higher cause in the interests of the majority. This separation resulted in different degrees of participation in political and/or economic decision making, and differences between those in managerial and subordinate positions, as well as differences in terms of access to information and to (frequently scarce) goods. As the exclusive controlling owners, the power elites under Mao claimed their right

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