"Making Capitalism Red: Cadres, Capitalists, and Culture in China, 1949-1958"

William C. Kirby (advisor), Henrietta Harrison, and Elizabeth J. Perry

Contemporary China’s transformative growth has riveted the world as among the greatest stories of our time. Although analysts have detailed its scope and explained its proximate causes, its deeper roots remain an historical puzzle. How could the Communist Party and the society it sought to contain so rapidly reorient themselves, pioneering the turn from plan to market in the 1980s?

My dissertation enhances our understanding of that surprising process by broadening both our chronological and analytical perspective. Specifically, it turns to the 1950s and the intertwined realms of social and cultural history to show how capitalism was made red, and came to define the early People’s Republic from within. This unrecognized legacy provided both the practical precedent and cultural reference point on which China pivoted in 1978. In short, I argue that the story of China’s present boom began with the ‘socialization’ of Chinese capitalism in the 1950s.

Background

Chapters