Showing papers in "China Report in 1988"

The New Development Strategy in China

Abstract: The changes in Chinese society since the end of the 1970s have been striking in their depth and rapidity. Among the significant changes that have occurred in the past seven years, those relating to development policy are particularly interesting. Not only in terms of the relative clarity of the new programme which we can examine more accurately, seeing that it was formulated in its present form by Chinese economists for the future, but also in the extent to which the present programme stands in contrast to the earlier model, that is to say, the strategy of the Maoist period approximately covering the years 195876 A comparative analysis of these two programme-and more broadly, their juxtaposition with the history of other socialist economies-pose specific problems, in so far as the quality of official discourse and power legitimation has been considerably transformed in China these last years. In addition, the interpretation of Chinese contemporary history remains strained by Western ideological a priori, the pendulum having swung in some years from the rationalisations of the extreme left to neo-liberalism. But in the field that

Changes in Tibetan Economy, 1959-76

Abstract: When we talk about industry in Tibet, we must keep in mind its limited scale which is not to discredit China's industrial effort but to keep a proper perspective. It is true that Tibet had no modem industry before 'liberation', but to know why is only to be fair to the ancien regime.

Mao Zedong and the Political Economy of Chinese Development

Abstract: Recent scholarship and political commentary in China and abroad have not dealt kindly with the legacy of Mao Zedong. While the harshest criticisms have centred on Mao’s leadership of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and the Great Leap Forward, they have also extended to his entire stewardship. At the heart of this criticism is not only a political assessment but a cutting economic critique as well. In assessing this criticism it is worth recalling, therefore, the important achievements hitherto widely associated with Chinese and Maoist political economy. A poor agrarian nation in the decades of Mao’s leadership was said to have achieved developmental and socialist goals which defied most post-colonial and developing nations. These included:

Chinese Studies in India: Perspective and Programmes

Abstract: Visva Bbarati’s Cheena Bhavan at Santiniketan celebrated its Golden Jubilee last year. The China programme in Jawaharlal Nehru University (a continuation of the earlier Indian School of International Studies) is more than three decades old. Chinese Studies at the University of Delhi will be twenty-five years old next year. So would be China Report which was published as a bimonthly for many years and has recently become a quarterly. All these events make this year an appropriate occasion to take stock of Chinese Studies in India and to launch new initiatives. A review of Chinese Studies is further warranted by the fact that recent intellectual discourses on India and China have raised several significant questions of civilisational dimensions. Moreover, the development experiences of both the People’s Republic of China and the Republic of India have opened new areas of enquiry in theory and policy, as well as practice. The world views of these two countries and the roles they play in international affairs have raised issues relating to the economic, cultural and political transf.ormation of the world. Thus the three broad dimensions of

The Indo-ribetan Border Today : Some Military Implications

Abstract: We all tbixk of Tibet was a plateau and this leads us subconsciously to think of it as flat land, albeit at a high altitude. In fact, only parts of Tibet are a true plateau, such as the Aksai Chin. The territory opposite Arunachal, for example, is ruggedly mountainous, varying in altitude between 12,000 and 16,000 feet with all the problems of moving and fighting in the mountains. Unfortunately, I have been entirely unable to obtain even half way decent topographic maps but the reader would do well to look at a Landsat map of Tibet if she or he can obtain one. High altitude mountain warfare is very different from plains operations or

M.N. Roy and China: A Testing Ground for Global Revolution

Abstract: Wben M.N. Roy proposed his alternative theses to Lenin’s at the Second Congress of the Communist International, ,he was in fact proposing an alternative strategy for world revolution. Roy’s theses, variously described as ’leftist’, ’Asio-centric’, etc., primarily differed from Lenin’s view that world revolution would be led by Europe. Roy thought that revolution should be organised first in the colonial and backward countries, a strategy which could only lead to the success of revolution in the western world. In order

A Culture in Exile: Tibetan Refugees in India

Abstract: seventh century A.D. to 1959 when Tibet was brought under effective Chinese communist occupation, the life of the Tibetan people was measured by the Buddhist value system which had little in common with the frenetic dynamism of the values which went into the making of the modern world. Consequently, in 1959 (in the aftermath of the abortive anti-Chinese uprising which had engulfed the whole of Tibet) when the Tibetan refugees

Mao, Hua and Charisma-Building

Abstract: In general terms, this paper discusses the problem of succession in societies where a tradition of charismatic authority is firmly established. In particular terms, it investigates the realm of cultural preferences which was used for creating a charismatic aura around Hua Guofeng, the successor of Chairman Mao Zedong. ’Glorification of Hua’2 was accomplished with the concerted attempts of the centrally controlled and meticulously directed mass media and information system. Perhaps this has been the pattern of building the personality cult of a leader in other socialist countries as well. It is our contention that a sociological-cum-historical. enquiry of this cult-building campaign not only yields an understanding of the early phase of post-Mao China, but also helps in delineating cultural preferences according to which an ideal man is defined in China. In other words, it takes us to the idiom of

Implications of Foreign Exchange Control in Post-Mao Economy

Abstract: When Peking first decided in 1979 to put into effect its post-Mao opendoor policy in conjunction with the launching of the Four Modemisations programme, it had in mind, then as now, to tap the material and technological resources of the industrialised capitalist west by way of foreign trade and foreign direct investment. Where the former would in due course improve its balance of payments by earning valuable foreign exchange, the latter should be able to accelerate the modernisation programme and by implication give its billion people a better quality of life in the long run. In both