Occupying the Periphery: The Chinese Communist takeover 1949-1950
Questions:
What were some of the key challenges that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)
faced as it moved from its base in Yan’an to frontier areas like Tibet, Xinjiang,
Guizhou?
How did the Korean War influence takeovers of frontier areas?
Guizhou:
How did the CCP establish control in the peripheral province of Guizhou?
How did the campaign to mobilize support for the Korean War aid the CCP’s efforts
to consolidate control over local society in Guizhou province?
Xinjiang:
What strategies did the CCP pursue to ‘peacefully liberate’ Xinjiang?
Is what happened in peripheral lands best characterised as ‘liberation’ or ‘occupation’?
(What were the benefits brought to people by the new state? At what cost?)
Main Reading:
Jeremy Brown, “From Resisting Communists to Resisting America: Civil War
and Korean War in Southwest China, 1950-1951” in Brown and Pickowicz, ed.
Dilemmas of Victory: The Early Years of the People’s Republic of China (Harvard
University Press, 2007) p. 105-129.
Gao, J. (2007) The Call of the Oases: The "Peaceful Liberation" of Xinjiang,
1949-53. In: Brown, J. & Pickowicz, P. (eds.) Dilemmas of victory: the early years
of the People's Republic of China. Ch.8, pp. 184-204. Available as through library
course extracts
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/services/library/main/electronicresources/extracts/hi/hi16
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