ABSTRACT
When China's leaders began plotting a new future for their country, some two decades ago, the pattern of China's past began to shift as well. Once we were inclined to ask whether the Communist victory in the Civil War was an inevitable outcome of military, diplomatic and fiscal developments in the nineteenth century, or of new cultural, economic and social forces that had emerged over the first half of the twentieth century. Now that Beijing has repudiated the idiosyncratic political style and policy directions of Mao Zedong, we are left wondering whether the Communist revolution was a necessary precursor to China's modernisation, internationalisation and democratisation. The current path of statist capitalism, assertive nationalism and tentative domestic liberalisation was, after all, first plotted by the Nationalist Government decades before the Communists came to power. Admittedly, a revolution can be inevitable without being necessary. But inevitability is no longer the point at issue. To ask whether something is inevitable is to inquire into its causes. To ask whether it is necessary is to evaluate its purpose and direction in the light of subsequent events. In reflecting on the political history of the Civil War, we might well ask whether the two great protagonists – the Nationalist and the Communist movements – were significantly different in purpose and direction, and whether these differences have any bearing
on the future of the People's Republic however it may be plotted in Beijing.
