Frank Dikotter, the historian of modern China, has a relatively simple method for research. He travels to local and provincial archives to seek access to papers. In Beijing, his request might be referred up the Chinese bureaucracy, eventually ending in a no. But, in local archives, he is granted access more often than not.
Photo: AFP
So Dikotter, the Professor of Humanities at the University of Hong Kong, builds his books often from the ground up, rather than top down. In his award-winning Mao’s Great Famine, he arrived at a very different – and much higher – figure of the number of Chinese who starved to death in the 1950s (45 million) by counting from local sources, rather than relying on records in the capital.
His latest book, China after Mao; the rise of a Superpower, is mostly concerned with political power and the economic development of China – and it has the same strengths. It is as much about provincial leaders in Gansu, Guangzhou and Ginzu trying to develop their areas like there is no tomorrow, as it is about leaders in Beijing trying to control the frenzy.
Mao Zedong (1893-1976) Photo: CHINE NOUVELLE / AFP
His conclusion is that China’s rise was not well-planned and certainly not strategic. It was chaotic, and local.
“China resembles a tanker that looks impressively shipshape from a distance, with the captain and his lieutenants standing proudly on the bridge, while below deck sailors are desperately pumping water and plugging holes to keep the vessel afloat.”
There is no doubt that the rise of China is remarkable, one of the most significant changes in modern history. When the Great Helmsman died in 1976, China’s standard of living was lower than when he took power in 1949. When Dikotter brings his account to a close in 2012, China is challenging the US as a global superpower and the world’s economic powerhouse.
According to Dikotter, the Communist Party decided from the late 1970s to devolve some power to local officials hoping for a kickstart to the moribund economy. What they got were fiefdoms. Deng allowed special economic zones to sprout to attract investment. Factories, new building projects, infrastructure building mushroomed, regardless of whether China needed them or not. The result was massive overproduction. One year, China produced 36 million tv sets; it needed 15 million.
It was paid for by debt. Local party officials pressured China’s banks to loan more for even more projects, knowing Beijing could never allow a bank to fail and risk business failures that led to unemployment and protests. Dikotter even quotes a local official saying it was easier to get money on loan out of a bank, rather than go home if you forgot your wallet. Ministers fretted, often powerlessly, about the extraordinary buildup of local debt in the system; it dwarfed total economic output. To this day, China has huge local debt.
China entered the World Trade Organisation in 2001 and the system went bang. All the oversupply could be exported around the world. Out flowed surplus goods, in flowed foreign funds.
But while China got richer, it never became more democratic. Western leaders hoped China would reform its politics, as the economy boomed, and a middle class grew. Dikotter argues Party leaders were determined that would never happen. Deng announced that China needed to use “capitalist tools in socialist hands” and the Party put more power into its hands, putting cadres into businesses, rather than less. Laced through the book are instances of the Party telling the West what it wanted to hear but internally declaring China would never deviate from Marxist-Leninism.
Photo: AFP / Ben Pipe Photography
Sometimes the book is not easy reading; explaining communist economics does not make for a summer beach read. Equally, the chapter on Tiananmen Square is a master class of history writing. As events spiral towards tragedy, Dikotter’s writing has the sombre drum beat of unfolding doom.
One of the features of the book is Dikotter’s decision to give as much prominence to Jiang Zemin, the former leader who died in November, as Deng Xiaoping. There is a current Chinese saying that Mao unified China, Deng made it rich and Xi is making it powerful. Dikotter thinks Jiang’s policies shaped modern China; his emphasis on big state-owned enterprises, his determination to put Party comrades at their top and his decision they should “go out” to the world and compete.
At times, Dikotter has been accused of being overly negative about modern China, an historian for the prosecution against the Party. And there is no doubt he is firm in his views that the Party was never going to reform and that the economic growth of China was remarkable but not part of a visionary plan. But views of China have recently gone through a change from optimism about reform to western pessimism about Chinese competition. Dikotter’s China after Mao is like a distillation of that change.
China after Mao: The rise of a Superpower
Frank Dikotter
Bloomsbury
