The study is an examination of struggles over socialist construction in China between the Tenth National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in 1973 and the arrests of the so-called "gang of four" in 1976. It analyzes the content of debates, the context in which they occurred and policies implemented during the period. The study is based upon materials collected while living in China, observations during participation in various political movements of the period, and on materials from the Chinese print and broadcast media. The dissertation analyzes struggles over industrial development and organization, science and technology policy, rural development, and the role of the education system in socialist society. Issues debated included worker participation in management, cadre participation in labor, labor remuneration policies, the role of scientists and technicians in the production process, the importation of advanced technology, the relationship between scientific theory and Marxism-Leninism, structural and ideological changes in the modernization of agriculture, access to higher education and the role of intellectuals in socialist society. These debates are analyzed from the perspective of Marxian theory. From this analysis the study concludes that in spite of the formal appearance of a debate, genuine and open discussion of policy alternatives and concrete results did not in fact occur. There were a number of conceptions, widely held in China during the mid-seventies, which it is argued were a central factor in thwarting the emergence of real debate. These include the concept of the role of the Communist Party as the "core of leadership" in all spheres of social life, the notion of the "continuation of class struggle" in socialist society, misinterpretation of the relationship between the forces and relations of production in the process of development, misunderstanding of the means by which the division of labor can be transcended and misunderstanding of the nature of Chinese society. The study challenges these conceptions from the point of view of Marxian theory and traces the role they played in the distortion of the debates and the suppression of alternative viewpoints. / Arts, Faculty of / Sociology, Department of / Graduate

Political scientists generally believe that the foreign and domestic conflict behavior of nations are related to the extent that nations experiencing internal difficulties will seek foreign policies of conflict in order to divert the people's attention from serious internal problems. Recent empirical studies, however, have cast some doubt on this generalized relationship. Generally, China scholars agree that increases in the levels of internal conflict has historically led the Chinese to seek foreign policies of conflict. This generalization provides both hypotheses for this study: (1) increases in levels of internal conflict are related to increases in levels of external conflict, and (2) if the two domains are related causally as suggested by the China scholars, then increases in internal conflict should be related to increases in external conflict at points later in time. Data were collected on nine measures of domestic conflict and 12 measures of foreign conflict. The data were collected over a 21 year period, 19S>0-1970, exclusively from the New York Times Index. The results were mixed. The principal finding in the correlations of the raw data and the transformed raw data was that foreign and domestic conflict were not related generally. However, analysis of the annual weighted transformed data did produce a significant relationship between foreign and domestic conflict of .52. Pour additional cross-checks were performed. First, treating the data quarterly, rather than annually, confirmed the finding at .40. Second, using the Spearman rank correlation test (rather than the Pearson product moment) lowered the correlation to .33 "for the annual data and .28 for the quarterly data, but still both correlations were moderately significant (the annual correlation was significant at the .14 level while the quarterly correlation was significant at the .01 level). The remaining two checks (a scattergram for checking linearity and outliers, and the analysis of smaller time-units in order to check for the stability of the relationship over time) produced results suggesting that the initial conclusion of a high relationship be modified to a moderately significant relationship. Thus, the principal finding of this study was that a moderate relationship exists between foreign and domestic conflict behavior in Communist China. Finally, temporal relationships did confirm the China scholar's notion that one conflict domain in China is temporally related to the other, but the relationship was contrary to what was expected: domestic conflict consistently emerged as the dependent variable, appearing to increase and decrease after increases and decreases in foreign conflict. Whether or not the two dimensions of internal and external conflict are related to the degree to which the China scholars believe is a question not totally confirmed nor refuted significantly by this study. The principal finding of a moderate relationship, however, does lend some support to the historical generalizations relating foreign and domestic conflict behavior in Communist China.

This study deals with the legal system of Communist China from 1949 to 1969 with three purposes: to discuss the role of law in Communist China's political development; to discuss the patterns of Communist China's political development as reflected in the patterns of her legal development; and to discuss some aspects of development theories on the basis of the findings of this study.

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In November of 1965, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, was launched in China when a Shanghai newspaper editor, Yao Wen-yuan, published an attack on the play which is translated here, Hai Jui Dismissed from Office. The fact that this event constituted the beginning of what later became a political struggle of vast proportions was recognized only belatedly by most Western analysts. When the Cultural Revolution moved into high gear with the launching of the Red Guard movement in the spring of 1966, vague references were made in some Western commentaries to the fact that the explosion seemed to have been ignited, by the public exposure of a drama which had purportedly satirized the Communist Party and Mao Tse-tung. No one appeared to have any certainty about exactly what the play had said and in what way it satirized Mao and the Party. As far as I am aware, this is the first translation of the entire text of the play, or any part of it, into English. Aside from simply translating the text of the play, the purpose of this thesis is to analyze the events of late 1965 and early 1966 and place them both in chronological order and in political perspective. In this way, it is clearly shown how the attack on Wu Han led to attacks on other "bourgeois" writers and intellectuals. Eventually, this latter group was linked to high officials in the Peking Municipal Committee of the Chinese Communist Party. Finally, the "cultural" aspect of the Cultural Revolution gave way to a full-fledged political battle within the Party itself. / Arts, Faculty of / Asian Studies, Department of / Graduate

Most analysts study leadership succession in communist states as a "crisis" which ensues after the death of a dominant leader. This study takes an alternative approach. It is a survey of provisions for leadership succession in the People's Republic, of China. This involves a comparison of the strategies and motivations of Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping in providing for their own succession. Deng Xiaoping's more extensive provisions for leadership succession during the CCP's transition towards a more institutionalized one-party bureaucratic rule are likely to be more durable than Mao's provisions in the earlier period. Nevertheless, guarantees of smooth and regularized succession, especially of protégés promoted on the basis of personal ties within the leadership core, may be impossible to obtain. Mao's provisions were aimed largely at what he saw as a probable, but deplorable, bureaucratic future of the PRC. Deng, on the other hand, perceives an element of opportunity in the succession process. He has tried to provide leadership that will, in his estimation, be better able to bring about China's modernization. In both leaders' provisions for succession, the elevation to the status of "heir apparent" of individuals has been a political liability to those individuals, especially when their promotion is perceived to be based largely on personal ties to the dominant leader. This liability becomes more pronounced in a period of bureaucratic, collective leadership. Because of his shifting policy preferences, his status as charismatic leader, and the ambitious nature of his protégés, Mao Zedong was unsuccessful in providing for his own succession. Deng Xiaoping, on the other hand, has been successful in cultivating a reserve of young, well-educated cadres. These provisions, because they are extensive and exist in a more subdued, consensus-oriented political environment, may well be Deng's most enduring legacy. / Arts, Faculty of / Political Science, Department of / Graduate

<p>This dissertation identifies an important strategy the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) uses to manage crisis events online: the entertainment-oriented narrative. It appears in three forms: (1) likening the reality to an unreal TV show or a fictional scene; (2) using cute emojis and anthropomorphism to represent crisis-related concepts; and (3) framing the country as a pop star (idol) and encourage citizens to defend it regardless. The CCP uses these tactics to trivialize the importance of crises, deflect public criticism, and discourage the public from critical thinking. Case studies show that this strategy has become a regular practice of the government that worked effectively when the crises do not seriously and massively affect local citizens' lives.</p>

University of Macau / Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities / Department of Government and Public Administration