History 334 Modern China


Wang Guangyi
Great Castigation Series: Coca-Cola
1993

    In the 19th and 20th centuries China faced a series of interconnected crises. The most obvious crisis was foreign imperialism, which threatened to divide China into colonies of foreign powers. As the Chinese struggled to find a response to this problem they discovered a host of others: a weak dynasty, a corrupt government, overpopulation, a backward economy. A host of solutions to these problems were debated, and a series of revolutionary changes were carried out.
    This course is about these revolutions and their effects on ordinary Chinese people. In some respects it is a success story. Today China controls its own borders and is recognized as a world power, and many believe that China will dominate the world in the 21st century. Many of China's problems remain, however, and the price that the Chinese people have paid for such success they have had has been staggering. We will attempt to understand the nature of China's problems, the solutions that have been proposed and how they have worked or not worked. Hopefully by the end of the course we will in a better position to understand the position of contemporary China and to make predictions about the future.

Professor Alan Baumler 216 Keith phone 7-4066  E-mail baumler@iup.edu Office Hours Office Hours MWF 10:30-11:30, TR 11:30-12:30  and by appointment.

Books
Schoppa, R. Keith.Revolution and its Past:  Identities and Change in Modern Chinese History. Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River NJ, 2002.
Henrietta Harrison  The Man Awakened From Dreams: One Man's Life in a North China Village 1857-1942. Stanford, 2004
Lao She Rickshaw: The Novel Lo t'o Hsiang Tzu. Hawaii, 1979
Wang Shuo Please Don't Call Me Human, Hyperion, 2000.


Attendance, reading and writing
I will not be taking roll, and there is no penalty as such for not attending class. On the other hand, since the class meets only once a week by missing one night you are missing 1/13 of the class and will not be able to turn in any of the assignments and will almost certainly fail the exams.  Attendance does not just mean showing up. You have to have done your reading and completed whatever written assignment is due that day so that you can actively contribute to the class.

8/31 The world of the Qianlong emperor
Ways of looking at modern China, periodization and such. Emperor and elites. Merchants and economy. Peasants, rice and geography.

-How do Chinese and western historians periodize modern China? What do these periods mean?
-Does it matter that the Qing emperors were Manchus?
-What is the difference between a shi, an official and a merchant? How were these categories changing in the Late Imperial period?
-What is a peasant? Were there any peasants in China?

Shoppa, 1,2
Exam System

For next time please read one of these three articles and write a brief (3-4 page)
review of it. For guidelines on how to do the review, look here
All of these articles can be found on Project Muse , which you can find on the library website
-Yingcong Dai , "The Qing State, Merchants, and the Military Labor Force in the Jinchuan Campaigns" Late Imperial China 22.2 (2001) 35-90.
-Blaine Gaustad, Prophets and Pretenders: Inter-Sect Competition in Qianlong China Late Imperial China 21.1 (2000) 1-40.
-Cynthia J. Brokaw, "Commercial Publishing in Late Imperial China: The Zou and Ma Family Businesses of Sibao, Fujian" Late Imperial China 17.1 (1996) 49-92

9/7 China in Crisis and responses
Forces of disorder, Uprisings and secret societies. The shi : statecraft and local society.Auto-organization and state attempts to maintain stability.

-When did the Qing dynasty start to decline? What does that mean?
-How did ordinary Chinese express their unhappiness with life? How did the state respond to this?
-How did members of the Chinese elite understand the changes that were going on? What methods did they use to maintain stability?
Debate on opium

9/14 Opium, foreigners and the treaty ports
The foreigners and their empires. The world of the treaty ports. Missionaries, compradors and coolies.

-Who were the foreigners and what did they want from China?
-Was the First Opium War the beginning of Modern China?
-Was opium a good thing for China or a bad thing?

Shoppa, 3; Opium and the Exotic East

9/21 Taipings and self strengthening
The great rebellion and the foreigners. Li Hongzhang and the provincial reformers. Ships and guns and ti and yong. Sino-Japanese War, 100 Days Reforms and the Boxers.

-Were the Taipings a result of the opium war? Why were they defeated?
-Who helped the court to get rid of the Taipings? How was the dynasty different when they were gone?
-What was Self Strengthening supposed to accomplish? How did it change China?
-How did coastal China fit into the rest of China in 1830? In 1903?

Schoppa 4 and 5; Harrison, Entire

9/28 New Policies and the Wuhan revolution
Abolition of the exams, schools and foreign study. The New Army, provincial assemblies and Constitutionalism. Sun Yat-sen and the revolution.

-What were the New Policies intended to accomplish? How successful were they?
-Why did the Qing dynasty fall? What did Sun Yat-sen have to do with this?
-Why did Liang Qichao turn against the dynasty?

Shoppa 6 and 7
Revolutionary Army

10/5 Warlordism and disintegration.
Yuan Shikai and the 21 Demands. Bandits, Shanghai and peasant immiseration.

-What is a warlord? How would Feng Yuxiang react if you called him that?
-Why was the warlord era a Golden Age?
-How bad was the warlord era? What specific problems did it create and why?

Schoppa, 8;  Hanchao Lu "Away from Nanjing Road: Small Stores and Neighborhood Life in Modern Shanghai"Journal of Asian Studies 54.1 (Feb, 1995): 93-123. (In JSTOR)
 
Mid-term exam handed out in class

10/12 May Fourth, new youth and New Youth
New culture and the Treaty of Versailles. Bai hua, science and democracy and attacks on religion. The family and liberation of women.

-What was wrong with China and how were vernacular poems supposed to save it?
-How were the personal and the political connected in the May Fourth period? 
-Why was Communism so important intellectually for the May Fourth generation?

Schoppa, 9; Rickshaw, entire

10/19 Canton, Northern Expedition and the Nanjing decade
The Comintern and China's first revolutionary government. Sun and harnessing May 4th. Chiang, the warlords, and National Reconstruction.

-Why was Sun Yat-sen able to bring together so many disparate elements in Canton? How important were Sun's legacy and Russian material and organizational aid to the success of the Northern Expedition?
-Who supported the Nanjing government? Why?
-What were Chiang's strategies for re-building China after 1927? How successful were they?

Schoppa, 10,11; R. Keith Schoppa "Contours of Revolutionary Change in a Chinese County 1900-1950" Journal of Asian Studies 51.4 (November 1992) in JSTOR

Rickshaw papers due

10/26 Peasants, Nation and Revolution
    Peasant immiseration and the meaning of China. Mao's peasant strategy and creating classes. People's War and making power out of nothing. The rural Soviets, class struggle and the Mass Line.

-How did the situation in rural China change between 1900 and 1945? How did Chinese governments try to deal with this?
-What is Maoism? How is it different from Marxism-Lenninism?
-How did the Soviets work? What were the main disputes between Mao and the other leaders?
-What did class mean, in theory and in practice, in the Soviet areas?

Report on an investigation of the peasant movement in Hunan
"Mud" by Mao Dun  (on e-reserve)
Schoppa, 12.

11/2 War, occupation and collaboration
Japan, colonialism and the war. China as a Great Power.

-How did Chiang deal with the Japanese and the Communists? How successful was he?
-What did the Japanese want in China? Why did this lead to war?
-Why did Chinese collaborate with the Japanese?
-What kind of a war was this? What problems and opportunities did it present for Chinese?

Schoppa, 13,14; Mao Zedong "On Protracted War" you only have to do the section on Political Mobilization for the War of Resistance

11/9 War, Civil war and Communist consolidation
      Final revolutionary civil war. Land Reform and the New China. China's new International position

-Why did the Communists win? Why did the Guomindang loose?
-Who won the Korean War? Who lost?
-How did Mao and the Communists consolidate their power? How did they deal with the problem of regionalism and the Russians?

Schoppa 15-16; Opium in Yanhe
Kang Zhou "The First Step" on e-reserve

11/16 100 Flowers, the Great Leap, and the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution
Maoist reforms and self-criticism. Making the revolution permanent. Campaigns, red vs. expert and the series of disasters.

-What is a campaign? Why were they so popular with the Communists?
-How did Mao want to re-make China? Why was he disappointed with his government?
-Which was a bigger disaster for China, the Great Leap or the Cultural Revolution?

Schoppa 17, 18
Propaganda posters

11/23 No class. Thanksgiving break

11/30 China under reform
Deng Xiaoping and cats. Export-led growth and the iron rice bowl. Tiananmen and the Fifth Modernization.

-Why were the Reforms successful? What problems did they create?
-Why did the Tiananmen movement demand Democracy? What did they mean by this?
-How did the Reforms effect different groups of people in China?

Schoppa 19, 20; Please Don’t Call Me Human, entire

12/7 China and the world
Taiwan and democracy. The Pacific century. China as manufacturer to the world. Re-legitimizing the party. A China that can say no.

-How has the party tried to re-legitimate itself? How successful has it been?
-How has China tried to deal with the rest of Asia? How well received has this been?
-How have Taiwan and Hong Kong changed since 1945? What do people in there think of re-unification?
-Why are Americans so annoying?

Schoppa, 21, 22, and 23.
To screw foreigners is patriotic

Grades
Quizzes and in-class assignments 250 points
Mid-term 200 pts
Final 250 pts
Harrison Review 200 pts
Article Review 100 pts

Total of 1000 points, 900+ is an A, etc.

Exams
There will be two exams, a mid-term and a non cumulative final. Note that to write a good exam answer you need to be able to answer question thoroughly and give examples to support your points.

Papers
Each of you will a write brief (6+ page) review of the Harrison book. Each of you will also write a review of one of the articles listed in week 2. All papers that are turned in on time are eligible to be revised for a higher grade. See the Book Review Guidelines for more help on writing book reviews, and the Article Guidelines 1269  for help on doing the article reviews.

Quiz Points
 There will be various small assignments during the semester. All of these are part of your quiz points. You can also  get more quiz points by doing additional article reviews or book reviews, or by doing movie reviews 1269 which are worth up to 50 points. You can write on any book, article, or movie that is appropriate for the class. You must get my approval before you start any quiz point assignments.  You can keep doing quiz assignments until  you have a total of 250 points, The quiz points are in some respects the most fun part of the grade, in that you can write about whatever you are most interested in. They also make it easy to get a good grade in the class, since you can keep doing assignments until you have 250 points. They can also really mess up your grade, since if you don't do anything you will end up with no points.  All quiz point assignments must be turned in by December 7.

-Attendance policy-- You are expected to come to class every day, but the point is not just to come to class, but to come having done your reading and being ready to talk about it.

-Academic dishonesty-- All students are required to abide by the University's policies on Academic Integrity, as found in the catalogue.

INTASC standards