The People’s Republic of China (PRC) was founded in 1949 following the Chinese Communist Revolution, which had a profound impact on China’s political, social, and economic spheres. The Chinese community has seen a long-term impact as a result of the establishment of a new age and regime following the 1949 revolution, straight from the social strata to its economic center. This paper seeks to review the existing pieces of literature on the impacts of the 1949 communist revolution on the Chinese communities.
A study on the long-term effects of the Communist Revolution on social stratification in modern China was undertaken in 2019 by Xie and Chunni. They made use of data analysis based on social mobility over three generations in modern-day China. The outcomes demonstrated a considerable influence of the communist revolution on China’s social position. The essay shows how the revolution disrupted the generational transmission of the predominant social stratification at the time of the revolution by enhancing the social standing of children from the red, poor-peasant, and working class and denying those from privileged classes. The study discovered a tendency for reversal, which reduced the advantages of the revolution in the third generation in favor of the socioeconomic status of the grandparents’ generation (Xie and Chunni 2019). It did not, however, suffice to offset the government’s class-based reform measures.
In other words, the grandchildren of the lower and middle class benefited more from having grandparents with higher levels of education than the workers and peasants. The impact of the revolution on the educational level of the descendants by class shortly after the revolution, however, is still felt today, even though it has been sixty years (Xie and Chunni 2019). Depending on the cohort, the influence of the revolution was different, being more noticeable for those who were born immediately after it and less noticeable for those who were born recently.
Manke conducted research on the impact of the 1949 Chinese Revolution on a group of Chinese citizens living in Latin America in 2018. The study demonstrates how the social and political environment of the Chinese and Cuban revolutions had a significant impact on the change in power in the Chinese community (Manke 2018). Both incidents took place during the Cold War, which at the time was greatly affected by American politics. The Chinese Revolution of 1949 had a considerable impact on Chinese expatriate groups in the Americas, in addition to the widespread inter- and transnational exchange advocated by both the leadership of the PRC and politicians and revolutionaries throughout Latin America.
The political opportunity frameworks that influenced the decisions made by the Cuban Chinese population were constrained by the regional, national, and local politico-ideological dynamics of the Cold War, as well as the internal power structures in each of their local communities. The study claims that between 1959 through the end of the Sino-Soviet split, the Cuban Revolution influenced how the Chinese Revolution affected the American continent because it provided communist Latin Americans with a channel for communication with the PRC. This was the PRC’s first opportunity to establish official diplomatic connections with a country in Latin America (Manke 2018). The study found that both the diplomatic contacts with Taiwan that were cut in reaction to the Cuban Revolution and their restoration had a significant impact on Chinese society. According to the statistics presented in the study, the Cuban Revolution’s effects on the reformulation of ideas and strategic orientation in Cold War geopolitics led to the formation of a new framework for an opportunity. Further, the article claims that the revolution divided the Chinese minority who were living in Havana, creating a social divide among the various Chinese societies.
Li also researched the revolutionary echoes during the Mao era with an emphasis on radios and loudspeakers. He claims that just one million radio sets, mostly found in metropolitan “bourgeois” residences, existed in China before the communist revolution in 1949 (Li 2020). On the other hand, after the revolution, the Communist Party quickly expanded its listenership through a radio reception network, and by the 1970s, it had built a wired broadcasting architecture with more than 100 million speakers that had transformed, politics, and daily life in the Chinese community. According to the essay, reverberant loudspeakers contributed to the “sound and the fury” of the Cultural Revolution by fostering rivalry among supporters of Mao, terrifying those who opposed it, and establishing sacred acoustic places (Li 2020). The development of a broadcast network made possible by the widespread use of radios and loudspeakers in both public and private settings gave the Chinese people access to previously imagined new means of communication with their local and international communities.
In socialist China, local radio was regularly employed to provide amusement for local purposes as well as to enforce daily rhythms and routines, mobilize the community, and disseminate official propaganda. Public address systems in factories and connected radio in rural counties were used to achieve this (Li 2020). Furthermore, the simultaneous nationwide broadcast of national radio programs through continuous loudspeakers contributed to the shared simultaneity of experience important to Benedict Anderson’s definition of the modern community.
Wielink also conducted a study on gender equality before and after the communist revolution. She starts by pointing out that the Chinese revolutions of the twentieth century had varying impacts on women’s rights. According to the research, after the Communist Party seized power, women in China earned social position and value (Wielink 2020). Before the revolution, women had not yet attained social autonomy, equitable self-determination, or equality. This reveals the oppression that women faced, from the male chauvinist society that existed before the revolution. It shows that before the revolution women were viewed as house workers and had no say in the technical job opportunities.
However, a study of Mao’s leadership throughout the communist era shows that both rural and urban women were capable of challenging social, cultural, and economic gender segregation. Mao saw “women’s equality” as a dynamic force with the unstoppable ability to contribute to the establishment of a Chinese Communist State. In the end, he makes the authoritative rhetorical assertion that women support the sky. Implied by fostering equality and dismantling gender segregation. The article further concludes that gender disparity in Chinese societies has greatly decreased as a result of these reforms, which have also altered the status quo.
The social and political effects of the communist revolution on the Chinese communities are the only topics covered in any of the publications examined in this paper. They emphasize political issues, social stratification, and gender equality. They left out the revolution’s economic effects, which created a contextual hole in their analysis. Therefore, more research must concentrate on the economic effects of the communist revolution since they were left out of the current study.
References
Li, Jie. “Revolutionary echoes: Radios and loudspeakers in the Mao era.” Twentieth-Century China 45, no. 1 (2020): 25-45.
Manke, Albert. “The impact of the 1949 Chinese Revolution on a Latin American Chinese community: shifting power relations in Havana’s Chinatown.” Revista Brasileira de Política Internacional 61 (2018).
Wielink, Michael. “Women and Communist China Under Mau Zedong: Seeds of Gender Equality.” The General: Brock University Undergraduate Journal of History 4 (2019): 128-142.
Xie, Yu, and Chunni Zhang. “The long-term impact of the Communist Revolution on social stratification in contemporary China.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 116, no. 39 (2019): 19392-19397.