Co-optation and Its Discontents: Seventh-Day Adventism in 1950s China

Most studies of Christianity in the early PRC have focused on the politicization of religious practices under the Three-Self Patriotic Movement, explaining how the Christian faith empowered people to resist the state’s atheistic propaganda. In fact, both Communist officials and Christians invoked ideas about transcendent power and moral purpose, blurring the boundary between secular and religious concerns. The state-sanctioned patriotic religions had greatly impacted the political and theological orientations of Chinese Christians in the Maoist era. This article looks at the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Shanghai, one of the first Protestant denominations to be denounced in the Three-Self Patriotic Movement. When the state infiltrated the Adventist institutions, some of the pro-government Adventist leaders worked with the officials to bring the church closer to the socialist order. Most of the Adventists, however, resisted the state and organized themselves into a diffused network of house churches. This study highlights the fluid and complex political environment that the Adventists experienced, and the ways they interacted with the Maoist state. The reorientation of theological concerns, the new strategies for evangelization, and the growth of autonomous church networks enabled the Adventists to be a fast-growing religious movement.     

Buddhist Manifestations of Patriotism during the Korean War

A great deal of research on the Korean War has focused on the military, politics, economy and international affairs, and far less on the religious, particularly the Buddhist, perspective. The Korean War exerted a tremendous impact on institutional Buddhism, and consequently Buddhists were heavily involved. This paper examines the history of Chinese Buddhist participation in the ＂Resisting America and Assisting Korea Campaign＂ from Buddhist perspectives such as political propaganda, material donations especially the donation of the ＂Chinese Buddhist Airplane,＂ and the enlistment of young monks into the People＇s Volunteer Army （the PVA）. The paper will then look into social and political factors involved in Buddhist leaders＇ reinterpretation of Buddhist doctrines to justify participation in the campaign, as a response to the surge of patriotism in Chinese society. This kind of investigation may shed light on the relationship between institutional Buddhism and politics in the new socialist society of China after 1949.     

Policy Blending,Fuzzy Chronology,and Local Understandings of National Initiatives in Early 1950s China

This article proposes the concept of policy blending to improve our understanding of the densely interactive quality of political initiatives in early 1950s China. Using three cases studies, I argue that policy blending, defined as the process by which previous political experiences shaped the implementation and interpretation of those subsequent to them （sometimes in ways contrary to the government＇s intentions）, occurred frequently during this period, to the extent that people＇s understanding of the first years of Chinese Communist Party rule cannot be separated from this phenomenon. Using examples from marriage registration, the Marriage Law and the national discussion of the 1954 draft Constitution, I advance the historiographical argument that the early 1950s should not be demarcated by, or taught mainly with reference to, ＂temporally encapsulated＂ policies with clear beginnings and ends （i.e., policy ＂a＂ occurred in year ＂b,＂ followed by policy ＂c＂ in year ＂d＂）. Rather, policies seeped into each other, producing a blurry--but sometimes accurate--＂impression＂ of state power. I further suggest that the concept of policy blending can be helpful in understanding subsequent political initiatives as well.     

Reorganization of Guilds and State Control of Small Business: A Case Study of the Teahouse Guild in Early 1950s Chengdu

This paper attempts to investigate the decline of Chinese guilds in the early 1950s and to show how political change altered economic life in China. Although the socialist transformation of private ownership started in 1954, the new government used state power to gradually weaken private ownership far before that time, building a foundation for the full-scale socialist transformation later. The reorganization of the Teahouse Guild in Chengdu reflected the general policies of the Communist Party that changed traditional social and economic organizations. The new guild almost became a representative of the government in the teahouse profession, which no longer maintained the nature of the traditional guilds. Actually, the guilds existed in name only after the reorganization of the early 1950s, and the teahouse guild disappeared after 1953. The death of the guild was a result of decline among social organizations and the growing strength of state power.     

In the Shadow of Great Power Politics: Why Nehru Supported PRC's Admission to the Security Council

In early 1950s, India's Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru turned down suggestions that India become a Security Council Permanent Member. As per suggestions, India would either take China's seat occupied by Republic of China (RoC) or become the sixth member alongside RoC. Nehru turned down these overtures arguing that People's Republic of China (PRC) should occupy China's seat at the Security Council. This study ascertains why India turned down apparently good offers and instead championed PRC's cause at a time when there existed marked political differences between them. While some have analyzed India's stand strictly in bilateral terms, this study casts the net wider. By closely examining Nehru's writings and correspondences, it argues that Nehru's support was based on his understanding of PRC and its position as a great power in international relations. Early twentieth-century developments had taught him that great powers that were ostracized became a source of instability. In an era that saw the unveiling of nuclear bombs, the cost of a dissatisfied PRC would be tragic. To stabilize the system, it was necessary to accommodate PRC within the Security Council and provide it with the veto. This would assuage PRC and check its revisionist tendencies.     

可疑的繁盛——日军阴影下的都市女性文化探析

Wartime Shanghai (1937–1945) was a crucial period in women’s Yue opera history, during which the opera took roots in the city and was transformed into a modern art form. The opera established itself as a dominant presence in the city’s popular entertainment in the first half of the 1940s and gained national and international influence in the 1950s and 1960s with its masterpiece plays such as The butterfly lovers and Dream of the red chamber. The rise of women’s Yue opera in wartime Shanghai was more a ramification of long-term developments in urban migration, urban cultural transformation, and women’s integration into society that ran through the entire Republican even the early PRC periods. Translated and revised from Huadong Shifan Daxue Xuebao 华东师范大学学报 (Journal of East China Normal University), 2008, (2): 56–67     

侨乐村:南京国民政府救助难侨措施的新尝试

论文探讨了20世纪30年代初的难侨问题及特点、侨乐村的筹办与运作模式、侨乐村推广之困境等问题;对侨乐村与华侨农场这两种难侨安置模式进行了比较分析。面对30年代初出现的大批难侨问题,以往常规的救助政策已经不能应对新情况。南京国民政府试图通过建立、推广侨乐村,从根本上实现对归国难侨的救济。侨乐村的创办具有救助难侨、开垦荒地繁荣经济的双重目的,然而在实际管理、运行中,却过度注重国家利益而忽视垦民诉求;加之其他外部环境的影响,侨乐村最终未能得到广泛推广。但通过垦荒安置难民的思路和举措被社会各界认同。侨乐村模式对抗战时期难侨、难民救助及后世华侨农场的建设都有着重要意义。     

20世纪五六十年代的东南亚华侨问题与美国对华遏制政策

中国革命的胜利以及中美对抗格局的形成,使原已存在的东南亚华侨问题更加复杂。美国旋即从遏制中国的角度介入该问题,并制定了详尽的政策。例如,鼓励台湾当局争取华侨支持;排斥中国在华侨教育中的影响;鼓吹“中国威胁论”,破坏中国与东南亚国家的关系;充分发挥香港在华侨政策中的独特作用;等等。1960年,美国又根据形势发展,调整了它对东南亚华侨的政策。但是,不管美国的政策如何变化,其遏制中国的基本目标却始终如一。     

Between Religion and Superstition: Buddhism and Daoism in Guangzhou,China, 1900–1937

This paper illustrates how Buddhist and Daoist monasteries in Guangzhou, with their legal religious status, situated themselves within the new concept of the modern nation‐state, and how the distinction between religion and superstition affected ordinary people's religious lives. There were inherent tensions between religion and the modern nation‐state, and the survival of Buddhism and Daoism was determined by their subordination to the state ideology and to political authorities’ regulation. However, the government did not regulate the form of worship in government‐approved religious sites. Due to the syncretic nature of Chinese religion, the select few of the Buddhist and Daoist monasteries in Guangzhou, with government recognition as symbols of “true religions,” paradoxically served as a protective umbrella for the people to carry on with their “superstitious” practices. At the level of praxis, the line between religion and superstition was not as distinguishable as the government had envisioned.     

党组织、党员与群众——华北土改期间的整党运动

在土地改革期间,中国共产党针对基层党员干部发动了广泛而深入的整党运动。整党运作的基本特征在于让党外群众介入其间,并对基层党员干部行使审查评议之权,即所谓"开门整党"。整党运动中党组织、党员与群众之间的关系,表征了乡村权力结构和共产党乡村治理模式的深刻变化。借助群众力量进行整党,不仅可以实现对基层政治精英的有效监控,也有助于将乡村民众整合到党和国家的权力体系中来,因而对乡村治理目标的实现具有重要意义。     

Muslims' nation‐building process in socialist Bosnia and Herzegovina in the 1960s

During the 1960s, the Yugoslav Socialist authorities gradually recognised Bosnia and Herzegovina's Muslims as a nation. Interestingly, in the 1940s, the Yugoslav Communist leaders refused to consider Muslims even as an ethnic group and saw them only as a religious community whose members had to designate themselves as Serbs or Croats. Why did the regime decide to recognise Muslims as a nation in the 1960s, whereas 20 years earlier they supported the opposite position? To understand the shift, this nation‐building process must be understood as the result of a dual dynamic on the federal and the republican level, where important changes occurred. At the federal one, the Communist authorities initiated a decentralisation process within the context of Yugoslav self‐management in the 1950s, which significantly reinforced the republic elites. This coincided with the resurgence of the national question in the whole of Yugoslavia. Simultaneously, in Bosnia and Herzegovina, a new elite progressively rose to power in the 1960s and put the ‘Muslim question’ on the political agenda. This led to the gradual increase in status of the Muslims from a religious community to an ethnic group at the beginning of the 1960s and then to a nation at the end of the decade.     

Women,Bodily Transformation and Rebirth in the Pure Land in the Writings of Chinese Buddhists in the Eighteenth Century

This article discusses the multiple expressions of women's agency through the case study of Tao Shan (1756–1780), a Chinese Buddhist laywoman in the eighteenth century. By focusing on the poems of Tao Shan and her life and afterlife accounts composed by Peng Shaosheng (1740–1796), a Buddhist layman and Tao Shan's religious mentor, this study aims to reveal how Tao Shan diverged from Peng Shaosheng with respect to androcentric discourses in Buddhism and approaches to promoting Pure Land belief and practice. This article argues that Tao Shan's agency was constituted and demonstrated not through confrontational challenges to the patriarchal structure, but through dismissing and benignly ignoring the Buddhist and Confucian concepts that degraded women in order to embrace and uphold the concepts that justify gender equality.     

Evangelical Church polity and the nuances of white flight: a case study from the Roseland and Englewood neighborhoods in Chicago

Present patterns of residential segregation have been proven to have antecedents in the so-called white flight of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. Close scrutiny of this social phenomenon has yielded results that indicate complicated impetuses and call into question sweeping assumptions about white flight. A case study of seven congregations from a denomination called the Christian Reformed Church in North America (CRC) who left the Englewood and Roseland neighborhoods of Chicago during the juncture in question further reveals the dubious role of religious practices and arrangements in the out-migration of white evangelical Christians. By utilizing church histories, council minutes, and field interviews, it became readily apparent that the departure of the members of these congregations found sanction within the hierarchical apparatus (or lack thereof) of the church. The response of these CRC congregations exemplified how the political structures (congregational polity) and social networks of a particular denomination could allow for an almost seamless process of white flight.     

Internationalisation of the Chinese subnational state and capital: the case of Yunnan and the Greater Mekong Subregion

This article examines the participation of China's Yunnan Province in the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) in order to understand the dynamics behind the regionalisation and internationalisation strategies adopted by a Chinese subnational state. It argues that the Yunnan case demonstrates the outflow of state capital—both national and provincially based—to have been instrumental in harnessing Beijing's and Kunming's political support for programs of subregional economic cooperation. This political support has led to a state capital alliance underpinning the economic expansion of provincial state capital into the GMS. It also argues that subregional governance arrangements, such as those featuring in the GMS, embed the competitive advantage of state capital through new forms of extra-territorial governance that ostensibly de-emphasises the political dimensions of state capital. The internationalisation of Yunnan subnational state is reflected in its political strategy of subregional governance. These changes point to complex rescaling of not just national state but also subnational states in Asia that find expression in variegated regional and subregional political projects.     

老一代革命家在中华人民共和国开国过程中的历史贡献

中华人民共和国建国初期 ,中国共产党老一代革命家成功地解决了国体、政体、经济建设方针、民族政策和对外政策等一系列重大问题 ,当时制定的相关政策不仅符合那时中国的国情 ,使中国得到稳定和发展 ,而且经得起时间的检验 ,为我国此后的发展奠定了一个坚实良好的基础。过渡时期总路线同样是在当时工农业生产发展的基础上提出和实施的 ,是得到了绝大多数人民的拥护的。“后之视今犹今之视昔” ,我们要以历史唯物主义的眼光看待历史 ,研究国史、写好国史。     

Drawing a line in the Taiwan Strait: 'Strategic ambiguity' and its discontents

The Bush administration's continuing emphasis on US military deterrence of the PRC on behalf of Taiwan threatens to undermine the posture of 'strategic ambiguity' that the United States has proclaimed since 1979. This article argues for the retention of 'strategic ambiguity' and traces the origins of revisionist sentiment towards this effective conflict avoidance mechanism to reactions within the US foreign policy community to the 1995-96 Taiwan Strait crisis. Case studies of this crisis and its predecessors in 1954-55 and 1958 demonstrate that US military deterrence was not a decisive factor in their resolution. US and PRC initiatives and responses in the 1950s crises introduced the essential elements of 'strategic ambiguity' into the triangular relationship between themselves and Taiwan. In particular, they established a precedent for the United States and the PRC in circumscribing the issue of Taiwan so as to achieve a political accommodation.     

The evolution of the Chinese Communist Party's policy on the bourgeoisie (1949–1952)

From its very beginning, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) had a shifting policy towards the bourgeoisie. Until the early 1940s, it maintained a relatively stable policy which successfully isolated the monied classes in China and helped it overthrow the rule of the KMT. But with the establishment of the new regime, the CCP Central Committee came under conflicting pressures: on the one hand it continued its former policy out of political expediency; on the other hand, based on traditional socialist political theory and Soviet experience, it kept a close watch on the bourgeoisie and even proposed targeting them as the chief enemy of next revolution. After the establishment of the PRC, as a result of the failing economy and the new government's lack of economic support and political experience, the CCP firmed up its policies on the bourgeoisie. However, with the bourgeoisie and capitalism still prominent elements in Chinese society, the communists became uncertain about which direction to take. As the CCP Central Committee had anticipated, officials of both the party and the government often gave way to corruption after taking over major cities. The Central Committee regarded this particular combination of money and power as a “violent attack” against the new communist regime by the bourgeoisie as a whole. In order to tighten its grip on national power, the Central Committee launched two anti‐corruption movements known as the Three‐Antis and the Five‐Antis. These movements were in fact aimed at the bourgeoisie as a whole, and succeeded in destroying the basis for capitalist business in the New China. Encouraged by this outcome, the CCP launched a policy of socialist transformation aimed at depriving Chinese capitalists of their means of production. Thus the CCP gradually and inevitably moved away from its original policy of cooperation with the national bourgeoisie.     

佛教寺庙旅游者类型研究——基于观察法的实证分析

佛教寺庙旅游者类型研究是宗教旅游市场开发与管理的基础。本文选取湖南衡阳雁峰寺为实证景区,研究了佛教寺庙旅游者类型。通过观察法收集了204名寺庙旅游者样本数据,聚类分析结果表明寺庙旅游者可以分为5种类型,分别命名为虔诚香客、开光客、许愿香客、许愿游客和观光游客。本文分析了5种不同类型旅游者在寺庙内的旅游行为特征,并绘制了“佛教寺庙旅游者分类轴”。不同类型的寺庙旅游者分别位于该轴的不同位置,并可能沿着轴从行为特征的世俗端向神圣端转化。     

从新民主主义国营经济到社会主义国营经济--关于毛泽东新中国国营经济性质思想演变的历史考察

毛泽东的新民主主义理论是在中国共产党只是掌握了中国革命的部分领导权的特殊历史背景下提出的。第二次国共合作破裂后,中国共产党掌握了中国革命的全部领导权。由此,毛泽东的新民主主义理论也就转变成为初级社会主义理论。作为这一理论转型的中心环节之一,毛泽东在延安时期提出的新民主主义国营经济理论,这时也转变为西柏坡时期的社会主义国营经济理论。按照毛泽东的真实想法,我国建国初期将实行的,实际上并不是延安时期所设想的以新民主主义国营经济为主导的新民主主义的经济制度,而是以社会主义国营经济为主导的、五种经济成分并存的初级社会主义的经济制度。但毛泽东出于策略上的考虑,还是称之为“新民主主义经济”。这就是近半个世纪来人们普遍地误认为这种经济制度就是所谓“新民主主义经济制度”的直接原因。     

Visual Memory of the 1911 Revolution,edited by Yang Tianshi and Tan Xufeng

The history of religious societies under the puppet Manchukuo regime has not been studied to a great extent. By examining the historical materials of the Red Swastika Society, an eclectic religious association that blended Daoist and Buddhist practices and notions, this article attempts to delineate the activities of that religious organization in northeast Chinese society, and argues that the apolitical and non-partisan philanthropic activities of the Red Swastika Society were challenged by both nationalism and imperialism. Prior to World War II, collaboration between the Red Swastika Society and a new Japanese religion, ōmotokyō, had been politicized by right-wing Japanese politicians. During the period of Japanese rule in Manchukuo, the Red Swastika Society had to abandon its political neutrality after being politically suppressed. To some extent, it was transformed into a propagandistic society that advocated the legitimacy of the puppet Manchukuo regime, of which it became a vassal.