Chinese Communist Urban Policy

From the Countryside to the Cities. Among the many practical problems with which the Chinese Communists have been recently confronted is that of governing large cities and administering policy in urban and metropolitan areas. Only two years ago the major preoccupation of the Chinese Communist Party was with agrarian policy, with emphases on land redistribution, Party reorganization to strengthen the revolution in rural areas, and the construction and maintenance of “rear bases” to support the fighting front. But in the epochal year beginning with the fall of Mukden on November 2, 1948, the directions and emphases of Chinese Communist policy were substantially modified by the new situation created by the rapid capture of all of the seaports, the most important industrial and commercial centers, and nearly all of the provincial capitals of China. To permit the most effective exploitation of this newly-gained strategic momentum, the Party leadership was obliged, on relatively short notice, to find immediate solutions for problems of urban policy that had previously been anticipated as likely to arise in the future.Urban policy, accordingly, became the urgent question on the agenda of the Second Plenary Session of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, meeting in Shihchiachuang on March 15–23, 1949.