Historian Huang Renyu studies Chinese history and is known for his "big historical view" of a long period of time and a wide field of vision. As early as the 1980s, he paid great attention to China's reform process and spoke highly of it. This can be seen in an unpublished manuscript during his lifetime, "China is No Longer a Mystery." In this essay, written around 1987, he forges history and reality into one, re-examines China's development over the past hundred years with a "big history" perspective, and expresses "cautious optimism" about China's future, which is very inspiring. He concludes the article by saying, "China's economic reform is a firm process. It can be expected that this will not only raise the standard of living, but will also establish standards and procedures in the development of commerce, enabling the country to be monetized. The full text is now published here for the reference of interested readers and friends.
China's recent developments may have reactivated one of the many people's thinking: this country is truly unpredictable! It is true that China is a huge country; great changes are coming, but it has not yet reached the stage of final stability. If we comment on these events in a brief vision, we may be surprised. But on the other hand, if we keep ourselves a little farther away from the scene of the incident, the picture will never be blurred. During and after World War II, I served in Chiang Kai-shek's army as a junior officer. I also had some friends who were already members of the Communist Party at the time or who later became Communists, and several of whom later became high-ranking officials and dignitaries of the People's Republic of China. However, after decades of research and reflection abroad, I came to understand that what is happening in this country can only be understood through the lens of "big history".
Traditional China is like a submarine-style sandwich. The upper loaf of bread is the "civilian bureaucracy", and the next loaf of bread is the peasant class, both of which are huge in number and indistinguishable. The institutional ties between the upper and lower levels are not based on legal concepts or economic ties, but rely entirely on a set of social values. Men are inferior to women, old and young are orderly, and the reading people rule the illiterate, and these social norms have ruled China for hundreds of years. The imperial examination regularly selects a small number of successful moves from the bottom of society and makes them successful. On the contrary, it also screens out some useless people and brings them back to the bottom, forming a downward social flow. As long as China remains closed and non-competitive, this basic organization characterized by tedious agricultural stability and egalitarianism can survive. However, in the face of modern Western civilization, it has been found that this organization, like lettuce and mayonnaise in submarine sandwiches, has no structural stability and practical flexibility.
Submersible type San meiji
As Adam Smith pointed out, the prosperity of the modern West was built on a "commercial system." The spread of credit, agency operations, including the sharing of services such as transportation, communications and insurance, have collectively contributed to a growing system of employment and ownership. In this system, both private interests and the public interest can be involved. When China faced this new pressure, more than a century of unrest and violence ensued. It could even be argued that these riots and violence occurred in this multi-ethnic and integrated country because of an underestimation of the technical difficulty of restructuring such a huge country;
It was only in the 1930s that Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang laid the superstructure of a new state. Of course, it is also a combination of karma and temporary coincidence. When I was a platoon commander in the Nationalist infantry regiment, we used to march on foot, from village to village. Along the way, we didn't see a single motorcycle, a phone, a tennis court, a clinic, or a newspaper. In many parts of the inland provinces, there is no modern commerce at all. The rural economy is carried out only in the village courtyard. There were very few large landowners and remote fiefdoms, and mortgages and usury were transferred and carried out among the peasants.
To produce a breakthrough, Mao Zedong and the CCP provided a new lower structure. Their strategy was to keep the Kuomintang protecting China from foreign enemies, while they themselves were temporarily completely away from urban culture. Between 3 and 5 million people lost their lives during the agrarian reform. But in every village, the alliance of the poor peasants was organized and became the nucleus of the orderly establishment of the peasant associations. Next, the farmers' association provided the organizational basis for the village committee. Members of the party's local branch were then subjected to detailed scrutiny by the villagers. Unless the member receives more than half of the votes in favour at the hearing, he will be turned out of the party. This arrangement embodies the "people's sovereignty" advocated by the Communist Party.
Peasants rallied to celebrate land reform
It does not matter whether such a claim is reasonable or not. After the agrarian reform, purge began. The purge completely abolished the debts between the members of the new society and gave the People's Republic a fresh and vibrant peasant masses, a situation that was unimaginable in imperial China or in China under Chiang Kai-shek. The rapid establishment of agricultural communes and, as is now happening, their dissolution without causing disturbance reflect the intensity of control by those in power. Today, the CCP claims to have nearly 40 million members, but a significant number of them remain illiterate.
Structurally, Chinese society, although compact and sturdy, is still a submarine sandwich. During Mao's various experiments, it was constantly exposed that Chinese society still lacked flexibility. After the Cultural Revolution, if China wanted to fully catch up with the prosperity and diversification of the West, it was clear that a different set of institutional links would be implemented in terms of organizational procedures. In fact, the actions of leaders tend to be in this direction. Introverted and non-competitive postures were abandoned. The land owned by the commune was leased to private individuals for production. The national economy has rapidly diversified its operations. Encourage foreign trade and openly attract foreign investment. The economic decentralization is so great that two years ago Hainan Island was asked to raise as much industrial and commercial capital as it could, apparently in the hope of turning it into another Taiwan. Local officials have been blunt about this directive. They set up agricultural banks and issued bonds to buy foreign exchange in the hands of mainland companies (the import business of mainland companies was restricted). Then, they imported a large number of cars and luxury goods, under the name of "second-hand goods", and sold them to the mainland for profit. The fraud of local governments is so blatant that the central government has had to suspend its autonomy in the wrong direction ... The law of supply and demand will determine everything.
At this point, we can argue that Chinese has matured and abandoned the debate about socialism and capitalism. In any case, these typical isochronistic labels invented only by theorists. As a developing country, it is difficult for China to meet almost any of these criteria. Obviously, if the country is to devote all its efforts to the development of industry and commerce, then so many state-owned enterprises will inevitably be squeezed out by private enterprises and retreat to the second and third lines. Otherwise, why was the People's Congress busy discussing the enactment of the new Bankruptcy Law just a few weeks ago? That's exactly what happened... A pluralistic society will be born on top of a pluralistic economy. If you install a phone in the home of an emergency repair worker, their wife will immediately call and arrange a party for the children. Call them bourgeois or socialists if you like. After all, matter determines consciousness, not the other way around; and the proponents of this truth were none other than Marx himself.
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Many Westerners... Few people pause to think that Western citizenship comes from the concessions of autonomous cities. It was only after substantial economic progress that this privilege, which had been accorded only to the inhabitants of the city, was extended to the entire population. However, China must initially confront a huge number of peasants, who can only accept overall control. Moreover, in participating in the movement for freedom, Chinese may consider drawing inspiration from the United States. No one told them that the United States faced a very favorable situation during its founding. Prior to the American Declaration of Independence, the convergence of common law and equitable law had been going on in britain for almost 100 years. Thus, U.S. agriculture managed to align itself with industry and commerce. The system has also succeeded because it has substantial room for development. As late as 1862, the Homestead Act still allowed every family working on public land to purchase 160 acres of land at a low price. Even with such favorable conditions, the United States suffered from the Shays Uprising, the Whiskey Rebellion, the state's refusal to enforce federal decrees, and a four-year Civil War. In addition, there are debates on money, banking, antitrust laws, domestic trade, and social and labor legislation. From these controversies, a great deal of civil and commercial law arose. The freedoms enjoyed by U.S. citizens depend on how monetized the country can be managed.
John Trumbull paints the Declaration of Independence
At the time of writing, Chinese still face enormous difficulties in abandoning food price subsidies. Buying coal from the free market costs about 6 to 7 times the price of government supply. There are 3 million bicycles in Shanghai alone. Its buses carry 15 million passengers a day, which is a huge burden for a developing country. More than 1 million intellectual youth, previously sent to villages or factories for productive labor, are now returning to the city. How to settle jobs, how to supply agricultural products, these have become problems. These problems are not all arising from the central planning system. Most of the problems are rooted in the uneven development of decades ago. At that time, modern law used the West as a reference and paid little attention to the remote interior, so it was still only effective in coastal cities and did not work in most areas...
Overall, I look at what is happening in China with cautious optimism. Temporary retreats are to be expected. What was vague in the past, however, has now become clear. There are many problems, but they are understandable. My conviction lies not in the praise of anyone in power, nor in the consistent correctness of any government, but in the legitimacy of a long period of history. From this favorable point of view, China's economic reform is a firm process. It can be expected that this will not only raise the standard of living, but will also establish standards and procedures in the development of commerce, enabling the country to be monetized.
*This article is excerpted from "I Believe in China's Future" (revised version), with deletions.
As historian Huang Renyu gave a speech,
Understand the course of a century-old Chinese history
I Believe in The Future of China (Revised Edition)
By Huang Renyu
This book focuses on a series of speeches by Chinese-American historian Mr. Huang Renyu on the theme of Chinese history and development, which can be described as the crystallization of Mr. Huang Renyu's academic thinking in his later years. With his unique long-term and broad-minded view of history, Mr. Huang looks at the course of China's history over the past century and explores the way for China to achieve modernization, reflecting the wisdom and conscience of a historian and inspiring people.