STATE FORMATION IN CHINA AND TAIWAN : bureaucracy, campaign, and performance

This is an ambitious comparative study of regime consolidation in the 'revolutionary' People's Republic of China and the 'conservative' Republic of China (Taiwan) in the years following the communist victory against the nationalists on the Chinese mainland in 1949. Julia C. Strauss argues that accounting for these two variants of the Chinese state solely in terms of their divergent ideology and institutions fails to recognise their similarities and their relative successes. Both, after all, emerged from a common background of Leninist party organization amid civil war and foreign invasion. However, by the mid-1950s they were on clearly different trajectories of state-building and development. Focusing on Sunan and Taiwan, Strauss considers state personnel, the use of terror and land reform to explore the evolution of these revolutionary and conservative regimes between 1949 and 1954. In so doing, she sheds important new light on twentieth-century political change in East Asia, deepening our understanding of state formation. La 4e de couverture indique : "What makes for states that are well consolidated, with high levels of capacity for engaging in the kinds of actions essential for governing and legitimacy? Is there a general formula, or at least a common set of patterns, that distinguish states that are relatively successful in these ways, and conversely, is there a comparable core of problems and institutions that are widely shared by states that are not well consolidated with high levels of capacity? To what extent, if any, do subjective "soft" factors like norms, ideology, and the prior existence of traditions of governance render it easier or more difficult for those involved in state making to create, stabilize, or transform state institutions? Does the way in which chosen policies are implemented matter for the institutionalization of the state organizations that are doing the implementing?" "What makes for states that are well consolidated, with high levels of capacity for engaging in the kinds of actions essential for governing and legitimacy? Is there a general formula, or at least a common set of patterns, that distinguish states that are relatively successful in these ways, and conversely, is there a comparable core of problems and institutions that are widely shared by states that are not well consolidated with high levels of capacity? To what extent, if any, do subjective "soft" factors like norms, ideology, and the prior existence of traditions of governance render it easier or more difficult for those involved in state making to create, stabilize, or transform state institutions? Does the way in which chosen policies are implemented matter for the institutionalization of the state organizations that are doing the implementing?"-- Provided by publisher Title Pages 1 Dedication 5 Contents 7 Figures 8 Acknowledgments 9 Introduction. Modalities of State Building and Institution Building: Bureaucracies, Campaigns, and Performance 15 1 Virtue and Talent in Making Chinese States: Heroes and Technocrats in Sunan and Taiwan, 1949–1954 48 2 Comparative Terror in Regime Consolidation: Sunan and Taiwan, 1949–1954 90 3 Performing Terror: Lenience, Legality, and the Dramaturgy of the Consolidating State 134 4 Repertoires of Land Reform Campaigns in Sunan and Taiwan, 1950–1954 182 5 Theaters of Land Reform: Bureaucracy, Campaign, and the Show, 1950–1954 219 Conclusion 257 Appendix 1: List of Interviewees 273 Appendix 2: List of Archives 275 Documentary Collections, Reports, and Periodicals 276 Bibliography 279 Index 289