Chinese History Weeks 12, 13, and 14

Special Economic Zones

Primarily on China's coastline. These were designated areas, usually cities, where China aimed to carry out its reform and opening up policy without rapidly changing its economic system in one fell swoop. Characterized by simplified administrative structures, less restrictive regulations, duty-free importation of important supplies, and lower taxes. Coastline allowed for easy access to global markets as well as a way for the PRC to contain reform to specific areas.

Shenzhen

City in China located in the southeast and near Hong Kong. This forms an interesting case study for SEZs, as Shenzhen was one of the first four Chinese cities to be made an SEZ in 1980 and remains one to this day. Created significant inequalities in and around Shenzhen. Government passes needed to move back and forth into and out of the city. Official and unofficial methods are mixed to allow for development; for instance, urban villages were unofficial spaces that allowed for migrant workers to gain benefits without official Hukou.

Shekou Industrial Zone

This refers to an area of Shenzhen that did not report to the Shenzhen municipality but rather directly to the ministry of transportation. Yuan Geng, Director of China Merchants who ran the area, tried to replicate Hong Kong's market economy and industrial development. This meant he broke the trend of the "iron rice bowl" work system that assigned people to specific work units, and instead recruited through applications (free market principle). Also created a relatively independent media that was allowed to criticize the zone's leaders.

Shekou Storm

January of 1988 -- 3 propaganda officials go to Shekou to observe the effects of reform, especially on young people. They meet with several urban youths who go off script and debate with the officials what it means to be a "gold prospector" or purely driven by profit rather than national sentiments etc. The students argued that this was not a bad thing and even could be a way of being patriotic. The propagandists write a critical essay of these students, while the Shekou press defends them. Shekou thus becomes a focal point about a wider debate about the meaning of socialism and reform.

Villages in the City

These refer to mixed spaces within urban Special Economic Zones that are composed of many people without proper Hukou, many of them migrant workers. As urban areas expand, they begin to surround and urbanize previously rural areas. These "rural" areas, however, practiced collective ownership and owned about 15% of land in Shenzhen. Villages within the city in Shenzhen, and other areas, built high rises on this land and rented them out to migrant workers while providing them some basic social services. This allows cities to offload the cost of housing workers onto villages in the city that build these cites without regulation. This allows migrant workers to live in these cities without Hukou and participate in the market economy in an unofficial manner. Provided key services like basic goods and schooling as well.

Shenzhen's second line

Constructed in 1982 and decomissioned in 2010. Administered by the PLA. This was a kind of second border that divided between the Shenzhen SEZ and the rest of China. Needed government documentation to get across this border in order to work or trade in the different areas. This allowed the CCP to limit reform to a specific area, and use it as a kind of experimentation site. This created inequalities on either side of the second line.

PLA Engineering Corps

This refers to the construction sections of the People's Liberation Army that were deployed by the state to aid reform efforts. For instance, they helped construct Shenzhen's "second line" in 1982 to contain reform to the Shenzhen SEZ. Furthermore, they were used to help improve urban infrastructure so as to bolster urban development in the opening years of the reform era.

Frontier Pass

This refers to the documentation required to go from HK to the PRC and vice versa. Needed to have permission from both governments to do so.

Frontier closed area

This is a so-called "buffer zone" between the PRC and HK on the HK side. It was meant to prevent illegal immigration from the PRC and requires a special permit to be in. Highlights how borders are not just a line on a map, but often have many layers that are variable depending on the political situation or other external pressures.

Bao'an County --> Shenzhen

Bao'an county is on the border with HK and is an interesting case of how land reform in the PRC interacted with HK policy. During collectivization, land was concentrated into village collectives that HK did not recognize as legal entities. However, because people in some of these villages owned land in HK, the commune technically claimed ownership of it. HK officials, as a result, set up payment stations to collect rent from anyone who arrives to pay it, turning a blind eye to collectivization.

Communes also allow HK cultivators to farm the land and pay taxes to the commune. When the communes lack labor to farm this land in HK, they would rent out the land to HK farmers and charge steep taxes for the right to farm it! Even amid the socialist economy, there was this quasi-rentier system!

Border as a liminal space that complicates these broader political claims. Also highlighted when Chinese tradition became the lingua franca of borderland land claims, rather than the new socialist lingo.

Pearl River Delta

Major industrial area in Guangdong that includes Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Hong Kong, and Macau. Important intersection of different development models and political systems. One of the focal points of reform and opening up, as the PRC sought to industrialize and connect to the system of international investment and trade. The pearl river delta was ideal for this kind of policy, providing ready access to the sea, as well as foreign markets via Hong Kong.

Three fives policy/petty trade

Policy implemented in 1961 due to China's suffering during the Great Leap Forward.

1. Border residents can go to Hong Kong 5 times a month

2. They can sell produce worth up to 5 caddies? (HK currency?)

3. Can bring back goods worth up to 5 RMB.

The point of this policy was to allow for a petty trade to exchange goods between HK and PRC in order to alleviate the suffering that had resulted from the strict socialist system during the GLF.

Many people on both sides did not abide strictly to the policy's terms, allowing for greater volume of trade between the two areas. This policy helped prepare the ground for reform in the 1970s, as many PRC residents near Hong Kong were already accustomed to a more open kind of economy during this time.

Jiang Zemin

Succeeded Deng as head of the CCP in 1997. First elevated to general secretary of the CCP after the Tiananmen square protests because of his deft handling of the crisis in Shanghai. Jiang continued Deng's reformist policies and entered into the WTO in 2001. Official state visits with the US in 1998 and a rising nationalist wave in China characterized his reign. Implemented a system of socialist legality by aiming to create legal frameworks and rule of law to govern Chinese society that supported the market economy and can control grassroots society. He was also party to the bid that ultimately allowed China to host the 2008 Biejing olympics, a major milestone in the reform and opening up project.

Three represents

This was the slogan/policy that Jiang was most known for.

1. Represent the development trend of China's advanced productive forces

2. Represent China's advanced culture

3. Represent the overwhelming interests of the majority of Chinese people.

Notably, the first and third represent lent itself to allowing red capitalists to join the party for the first time in the CCP's history.

This was a step away from class conflict, a transition toward a ruling party instead of a revolutionary party.

Hu Jintao

General secretary of the CCP from 2002-2012, and China's paramount leader during this period, succeeding Jiang Zemin. Hu was party secretary of Tibet during the 1989 protests, and was thus chosen for his ability to handle such unrest. Hu's reign saw China undergo major changes, developing into a much more modernized, export economy. Implemented social welfare to address wealth inequality. Eliminated the agricultural tax and the household registration laws are loosened to allow migrant workers with limited education and social safety net. Chinese consumer culture takes off and western brands are consumed en masse -- China becomes the largest car market -- rise of the Chinese middle class. Internet age! Briefly opens up information space in China. By 2012, China's economy is dominated by the market instead of central planners, and it is a world power. Weathers 2008 economic crisis with a massive stimulus package.

Scientific Development and Harmonious Society

These were Hu's most notable slogans, and highlighted his administration's main goals for China. Hu sought to modernize China mostly in a technocratic manner, emphasizing the development of new productive forces and catching up with the rest of the world technologically. Harmonious society refers to Hu's efforts to limit the ill effects of reform with things like his social safety net and loosening Hukou restrictions.

Guerilla policy style

This refers to one of the "mao era legacies" that remains important for China today. This idea argues that because many of China's early administrators were originally guerilla commanders, this experience influenced their statecraft. Such Guerrilla policy style was characterized by a pragmatic outlook that was willing to use different methods to achieve a specific end. Also showed a willingness to experiment, with a strong example being the special economic zones.

Xi Jinping

General secretary and leader of China from 2012 until present day. Broke the trend of stepping down after two five year terms as Chinese president. Xi was a sent down youth during the cultural revolution, and also had early experience at the local level with marketization in Zhejiang and Fujian. Xi Jinping thought was added to the constitution, bringing Xi into the same caliber of leader as Mao and Deng. Xi's ideology focused on bringing China to national rejuvenation in a new era that will see it reap the benefits of reform and return to China's prestigious position on the world stage.

Xi's government has embarked on a massive anti-poverty campaign, and has sought to inject capital into the economy to raise rural income and development. Seeking to have even development rather than development for its own sake.

China Dream

One element of Xi's ideology that emphasizes the great rejuvenation of the Chinese people. This seems to mean that China will aim to realize its two centenary goals which are discussed on another flashcard.

Two Centenary Goals

The first centenary goal was for 2021, 100 year anniversary of the CCP's founding. Xi claimed that by this year the PRC would achieve a "moderately prosperous society." The next centenary goal was for 2049, the 100 year anniversary of the PRC. By this year, Xi aimed to reach a fully modernized and prosperous socialist society.

In this view, China was still a developing country that was yet to reach its full potential, but when it did, it would become the preeminent world power.

New Era

Xi Jinping's ideology is officially known as Xi Jinping thought on socialism with Chinese characteristics for the new era. This "new era" bit seems to refer to a period after reform that will allow China to move towards complete prosperity. It signifies a new historical stage, and therefore perhaps a new breakthrough in Marxism, that will allow China to explode off of the platform of reform into a new historical moment in which China can seize the mantle of hegemon.

Belt and Road Initiative

A Chinese global development strategy that is unprecedented in scope or scale. The "road" refers to Chinese infrastructure projects in central asia and europe to connect China to Europe through the "old silk road." The "belt" is the maritime route that connects China to southeast asia and Africa. China has spent billions of dollars aiding infrastructure development in several African and Asian countries (even extending across the globe to Europe and Latin America). Critics see this as an attempt to leverage China's economic might for political power through debt traps. Chinese claim that this is part of China's attempt to realize a harmonious global world order that the US has failed to provide.

Party-state capitalism

Typically, we term state capitalism as a mixed economy in which the government has a significant presence in the economy and will intervene to promote its interests and that of state owned enterprises.

However, scholars suggest that Chinese system is currently a party-state capitalism: party-state survival trumps economy goals of the party. One example of this is Made in China 2025 which is seeking to mitigate risk of importing foreign technology. Party is leveraging its economic influence to encourage domestic production.

This has coincided with an increasing party presence in businesses and government oversight over firms. The party holds special shares in sensitive private companies, such as media and tech, which give the state more power over their actions.

Made in China 2025

This refers to a policy in China that aims to centralize innovation and tech development to do these solely domestically. China views relying on foreign, especially western, powers for such development as a threat to its own security, and so is using its party-state apparatus to direct the economy toward self-sufficiency in this sector.

Netizens

Term used in China to describe internet users. The internet has exploded in China. In 1997 only 650,000 users and was 88% male. Today, there are over 1 billion internet users as people mostly have access through their mobile phones.

Charter '08

Document modeled after Vaclav Havel's Charter '77 demanding the USSR abide by claims to support human rights. Liu Xiaobo, and many others who signed onto the Charter, demanded something similar from the CCP, highlighting the party's historical failures to defend human rights and arguing that modernization needed political change. The charter challenged the CCP's frequent claim that communism alone brought China into modernization.

The Charter demanded that the Chinese system be based on fundamental values/rights of freedom, equality, and the concept of universal rights. It also demanded democratic political structures, separation of powers, and protection of private property, among other negative freedoms like speech and religion, to provide the foundation for a "real" Chinese modernization.

Liu Xiaobo

Liu is best known as a Chinese democracy activist and was also a prominent intellectual. Liu was present at the events of Tiananmen, doing his own hunger strike on June 2nd. He ultimately helped broker a deal that saw many students leave the square before the PLA reached the area. He continued to champion democracy, helping to promulgate Charter '08 in 2008 for which he was arrested and imprisoned for 11 years. He received the nobel peace prize in 2010, the first Chinese person to ever do so -- an affront to the party who had wanted someone more 'official' that the nation could take pride in.

50 cent party

This refers to internet users and influencers who are paid by the party to spread official messages on the internet that the party wants disseminated and approved, but in a way that is not obviously coming from the party. This is one of the many "soft" methods by which the party has aimed to shape the internet to its own control and uses.

Document #9

This was a CCP document from 2013 that discussed the seven taboos that could not be discussed online. 1. Western democracy 2. neoliberalism. 3. historical nihilism (questioning the party's positive role in Chinese history) 4. questioning reform 5. western journalism 6. civil society 7. promoting universal values.

Many of the elements of charter '08 may have inspired this kind of crackdown. It illustrates how much of a threat the internet could be to the party.

#Metoo (china)

An incident of a female student being sexually assaulted on Beijing U. that the authorities did not take seriously. This took the internet by storm and opened up discussions of wider societal failures toward women and sexual crimes. Internet played a key role in coalescing these discussions and allowing for criticisms against a wider system that has failed to address these kinds of problems. Difficult to organize offline though.

White Paper protests

Spawned by the social and economic stress of Xi's zero covid policy. Across several sectors of society, including students, people held up blank pieces of white paper to protest the government's handling of the crisis. Internet helped to spread and share this idea and method of protest across China. Not a revolutionary movement, but seems to have helped pressure Xi's government to end the policy before it had planned to do so.

Global context of protest: Even may fourth had its beginnings in tokyo in 1918 -- students who were privy to Japan's side of the story return to China to help spark protest. Even today, the internet allows for such global connections and spread of ideas that means no protest happens in isolation. Extraterritorial or exceptional spaces help incubate these kinds of movements and can help start the movement toward change.