Reconstruction and Rectification of the Communist Party in the Shanghai Underground: 1931–34
Recently scholars have shown that Mao's accusations against the Russian Returned Students stemmed from his need to bolster his own legitimacy by discrediting their role in the 1931–34 period. According to the 1945 “Resolution on questions in the history of the Party,” the Returned Students were “doctrinaire sectarians” whose “‘offensive line’ for the Party” and “repeated failures in political work” caused “serious damage to the Party in the White areas.” But closer investigation indicates that in the bastion which they are accused of weakening and decimating, the Returned Students devoted considerable attention to strengthening Party organization, educating cadres and mobilizing mass support. Although factional struggles and aggressive tactics characterized the policies of the Twenty-Eight Bolsheviks in the 1931–34 period, their contributions to the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) eifort to maintain a viable organization in the cities cannot be ignored. That the urban Party, hurt severely by the Kuomintang (KMT), survived at all can be attributed to efforts that Mao later denigrated.
Tradition and Personal Experience
will serve me for the Morningsat Home: I am very sorry for the Fruit: I hope the Gooseberries & Currants will not share the Fate of the Cherries: I hope I shaII see my Cousin in the Holydays, as from the short Time I saw him, I like him uncommonly: I intended to send this Yesterday but could not find Time & as I have nothing more to say, I will concIude, with assuring you that I remain your most dutiful & affectionate Nephew, T. ARNOLD.
Communications and national integration in Communist China
available, and demand for cash to hold was primarily for transactional and precautionary purposes" (p. 233), not for liquidity purposes. I find this a strange sort of logic—that because there are no other financial assets, there will be no demand for money as an asset—and one that is at variance with the experience of other countries. The ratio of currency to GNP is not constant over several years in countries undergoing rapid change as China was in the 1950's and it therefore seems inappropriate to base an index of inflation on the stability of such a relation. While not accepting her measure of inflation, I would agree with her judgment that "the degree of monetary disequilibrium was mild relative to the nation's rate of economic growth," and that what instability there was "cannot be explained by an erroneous monetary policy," but "as results of an eclipse of the stability consideration in favor of other competing economic goals, especially the goal of socialization." This book is very informative about the banking system, and probably the best source for monetary estimates until such time as the Chinese provide some real numbers on money supply, bank credit, etc. It is partly the newly emerging prospect that these may become available that makes one somewhat impatient with all the gyration necessary to arrive at a reasonably consistent set of numbers. But Mrs. Hsiao has done this work well and understandably has wanted to try to use the results to test some hypotheses. She will probably not be too surprised if some of us question whether the numbers are sound enough to provide a good test.