In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

POST-MAO CHINA: ON A NEW COURSE A. Doak Barnett -tóst-Mao China today is undergoing a period of reaction and relaxation, a search for "normalcy" following a long period of revolutionary struggle that reached its climax during the Cultural Revolution. As Crane Brinton pointed out years ago, most major revolutions, after reaching a peak of intensity and extremism, undergo what he labeled a "convalescence from the fever of revolution." There was never reason to doubt that China eventually would undergo a major reaction against the millennial, Utopian extremism characteristic of the last years of the Maoist era. While Mao and China's top radicals tried to forestall such a reaction, they succeeded only in postponing it. In the current period of reaction, the change in the "public mood"—to use an imprecise but nevertheless useful term—has been striking. I base this judgment on observations made during four trips to China since Mao's death— in 1977, 1979, 1980, and 1982. On my most recent trip, I had an unusual opportunity to wander freely around three major Chinese cities that I have known well, and visited periodically, for roughly half a century, as well as one rural area. In all of these places, I observed that most ordinary Chinese are subjected to fewer ideological and political pressures than in earlier years and clearly feel a sense of relief. Not much euphoria is evident. In fact, in the wake of the Cultural Revolution one encounters considerable disilluA . Doak Barnett is George and Sadie Hyman Professor of Chinese Studies at SAIS, and has written extensively on China and Asia. His most recent book is China's Economy in Global Perspective (Washington, D.C: The Brookings Institution , 1981). 147 148 SAIS REVIEW sionment and even cynicism about the Party, its ideology, and the regime's bureaucracy. Nevertheless, there is substantial evidence ofhope and cautious optimism—hope for a more "normal" life and for gradually improving living standards, and cautious optimism that China's present leadership is committed to policies that point in these directions. The impulse ofmost people now seems to be to pursue personal, private, and family goals, to express their individuality in nonpolitical ways, and to try to improve their living standards. One can understand a good deal about the present period in China, therefore, simply by recognizing that it is a period of reaction against the revolutionary extremism of the past. However, this reveals little about China's future course. The most important aspect of post-Mao China is that it has begun to implement an important political and economic reform program, which is very different from previous Maoist efforts to promote revolution. China's present leaders maintain—with somejustification—that they are not abandoning revolution, only pursuing it in a different way. Yet, their present course unquestionably would have been labeled a betrayal of revolutionary concepts by the radicals of the Cultural Revolution. Today, the emphasis is on stability rather than struggle, on social harmony rather than class conflict, and on pragmatic adaptation of ideology and policy to solve concrete problems rather than on uncompromising commitment to ideological change to transform society and create "new socialist men." The new course stresses incremental change rather than dramatic "leaps." It focuses on practical measures to increase economic productivity rather than on the pursuit of egalitarian goals. Over the past six years, especially since Deng Xiaoping achieved primacy in 1978, China's leaders gradually have worked to define a comprehensive set of interrelated national policies that address, pragmatically and experimentally , the country's immediate economic and political systems. Anyone familiar with previous Chinese reform efforts is acutely aware of the enormous intrinsic obstacles to change in China; the record of past reform efforts includes many failures. However, China's present leadership probably has a better chance to implement its reforms than most past Chinese reformers. While it is true that the after-effects of the Cultural Revolution pose serious problems for China, its current leaders have important advantages over their predecessors. It now appears that there is a stronger consensus than in the past in favor of reformist change and a fairly broad-based agreement on the major priorities and...

pdf

Share