Dreaming a Future for China: Visions of Socialism among Chinese Intellectuals in the Early 1930s

The Text Collection and the Notion of “Dreams” in the Context of the Early 1930s

Lu Xun linked the dream approach of his contemporaries to a feeling of “an unstable life,” while Hu Yuzhi, the editor of the collection, in a separate text titled “The Modern Crisis,” compared the current situation with “the eve of a volcanic eruption.” This explosive crisis, according to Hu, was produced by “the conflictual nature (maodunxing), complexity (fuzaxing), and connectivity (lianxixing) of the modern world.” It included the world economic crisis, the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few and widespread poverty of the unemployed, an arms build-up and preparations for war, the Japanese occupation of Manchuria, which was not met with a proper international response, the fragmentation of the world into disparate political and economic systems, and so forth. China, in his view, already was a “China of the world” and thus was affected by global conflicts (Hu, 1932).

A sense of crisis was widespread in the prewar era (Coble, 1991; Yeh, 2007: 135–40; Chin, 2014: 407–8; Sun, 1999: 89–150), but different worldviews certainly produced different emphases on what actually was at stake for China. Possible elements were to be found at both the national and international levels. At the international level, China lacked full sovereignty. Foreign concessions were evidence of its semi-colonial status, and Japanese imperialism posed an ever-increasing threat. In 1931, Manchuria had been occupied, and in January 1932, Shanghai had been bombed. The Chinese press anticipated a second world war caused by the conflicts between the imperialist powers (Guan, 2008: 99–100). In addition, China was affected by the world economic crisis. At the national level, the National Revolution of 1925–1927 had resulted in a split between the GMD and the CCP. Chiang Kai-shek had installed a new regime in Nanjing that represented the interests of a small, privileged segment of society only and suppressed free debate. Instead of fighting the Japanese, Chiang decided to concentrate his forces on exterminating the Communist movement (Eastman et al., 1991; Coble, 1991; Wakeman, 1995). To be sure, not everyone at the time shared the pessimistic view of the left, and various projects of “construction” or “revival” testify to a more optimistic mood among parts of the political elite and the wider public (Esherick, 2000; Li Guannan, 2012). ⁹ In the New Year’s Dream collection, these voices were marginal, though.

Among left-wing intellectuals, the feeling of crisis and conflict produced a heightened sense of temporality. As a historical materialist, Hu Yuzhi saw the advent of crisis as an “omen of the emergence of a new age” (Hu, 1932: 3). For others, China’s perishing was imminent. Lao She declared in his text for the New Year’s Dream collection that his “hope for China’s future is not big,” and Ba Jin even confessed that “there was a time when he believed that China had no future” (Ba Jin in Liu, 1998: 12). ¹⁰ Indeed, the term “future” (weilai or jianglai) figured prominently in Chinese journals of the 1930s, with a peak in the years 1933 to 1936–1937. ¹¹ Future discourse proliferated in step with the declining prospects for China’s future.

But why this call for “dreams”? Hu Yuzhi probably had two reasons for soliciting dreams instead of “realistic” blueprints for a future society. One was GMD censorship and the repressive cultural climate that forced authors and publishers into indirect ways of criticism (Ting, 1974). Hu’s call for dreams indicated that China’s actual situation was far from ideal. At the same time, the project could claim that the texts expressed just dreams and were thus unrelated to reality. The call for dreams as a concealed form of criticism was also a point that led Lu Xun to sympathize with the project. He reasoned that the editor “probably thought that since speech is not free it would be better to talk about dreams” (Lu, 2002: 29). Indeed, the call for dreams was an opportunity for authors to expose the dark side of GMD rule by either explicitly listing the concrete deficiencies of the current government or by depicting a vision for China’s future that could not be read but as a one-to-one response to these problems. Liang Yuandong, for instance, professor at Daxia University, dreamed of a China with society and not the government at the center. If there was a government, it should at least be one that allowed freedom of speech (Liang Yuandong in Liu, 1998: 47). Wu Yugan, economist and advisor to the Shanghai government, for his part, wanted a real state of the “people” (“min” guo) and not a state of the army, of bandits, or of bureaucrats—with the last and their corrupt practices being the primary object of his criticism (Wu Yugan in Liu, 1998: 50–51; see also Li Zongwu in Liu, 1998: 59–60). In the end, even dreaming was too radical for the GMD and Hu Yuzhi did not survive as editor of Dongfang zazhi. In preparing the special issue, Hu seems to have already been warned to avoid such topics. After its publication he left the journal, probably also for political reasons. ¹²

Second, the collection was deliberately utopian. Dreaming of a better world on the first night of the New Year had been an established motif and narrative framework in Chinese utopian novels since the late Qing (Li Yongdong, 2014: 50). In addition, Hu Yuzhi’s editorial remarks reveal that he was interested in “dreams” and in the “hopes and illusions” (chongjing yu huanxiang) (Hu Yuzhi in Liu, 1998: 304) of his contemporaries and not in “sober-minded” reasoning. The latter remark was directed against the “way out” (chulu) debate that dominated future discourse in the early 1930s. ¹³ The search for a “way out” of China’s backwardness and stagnation was marked by the rationality of social science discourse and displayed intellectuals’ knowledge of an increasingly sophisticated international toolbox of development choices: socialism or capitalism, industrialization or agriculture, city or village, democracy or dictatorship, and so on. ¹⁴ The “way out” debate provided a small selection of possible avenues, promises that were abstract at best, and long-term perspectives rather than immediate solutions to China’s problems. Dreaming, by contrast, could ignore the question of feasibility and suspend the causalities of social life. The text collection thus offered a platform where “hopes” could be articulated which, in the context of the time, appeared to be outright “illusions.”

“Hopes and illusions” was also the theme the famous cartoonist Feng Zikai seems to have chosen for the illustrations of the volume. ¹⁵ The front cover shows a boy sitting behind a washing tub and scrubbing a ball-like globe, childishly trying to change global realities. Five additional cartoons depicted the dreams of persons who naively tried to accelerate long-term processes of development and growth: a mother inflating her child like a balloon, a rickshaw coolie running with four legs, an architect planting the seedlings of high-rise buildings, a teacher inculcating knowledge into the head of his student, and a writer with three heads (see Figure 1). ¹⁶

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 1.

Feng Zikai, “An Architect’s Dream” (left) and “A Mother’s Dream” (right), Dongfang zazhi 30, 1 (1933).

The utopian thrust of the project did not go uncontested, though. Hu Yuzhi had to admit that the “real-life actors” did not respond to his call. Pessimists provided rather short texts and spoke of “nightmares” rather than “dreams.” ¹⁷ And realists from various ideological camps pointed either to facts and laws of development or the necessity of human action. Prominent sociologist Tao Menghe, for instance, contrasted dreaming and planning: “Dreaming is the most dangerous thing for humanity. Human life, no matter whether at the level of the individual or the collective, requires people who plan with a cool head and a sober mind. What man needs is rational reflection and ideas that are based on facts” (Tao Menghe in Liu, 1998: 53). Zheng Zhenduo, writer and professor at Yenching University, for his part, envisioned a “great socialist state” and a “great and happy land,” but emphasized that he did not believe in dreams since “the life of humanity evolves according to inevitable laws.” The “happy” China he envisioned would be created by “our own efforts” (Zheng Zhenduo in Liu, 1998: 8–9). Similarly, Zhang Naiqi, at the time a banker at the Zhejiang Commercial Bank in Shanghai, ¹⁸ claimed that his words—a long text on the revolutionary potential of China without any mention of the features of the new state—were a “judgment based on objective conditions” and not his “dreams.” “Political problems,” according to Zhang, “do not tolerate that we dream as we please” (Zhang Naiqi in Liu, 1998: 11–12). His focus on the means of China’s advancement is also reflected in the vocabulary he uses: the “way,” the “way out,” “struggle,” and “revolution” (Zhang Naiqi in Liu, 1998: 10–12). Authors with obvious Communist inclinations emphasized action and violence: writer and scholar Zheng Zhenduo envisioned a “bitter struggle with the devils” (Zheng Zhenduo in Liu, 1998: 9), Marxist scholar Yan Lingfeng spoke of “sanguinary, violent revolution” (Yan Lingfeng in Liu, 1998: 41), and Communist philosopher and legal expert He Sijing expected a “truly heroic battle of blood and iron which will be not only unprecedented in Chinese history but also rarely seen in world history” (He Sijing in Liu, 1998: 57). In fact, by envisioning violence as the way toward revolution, these authors addressed a problem that was central in the relation between utopian socialism and Marxism.

Utopianism, Socialism, and Marxism

The majority of texts in the New Year’s Dream collection are utopian socialist. I call them utopian because the very nature of the project (“What does the future China of your dreams look like”?) rejects notions of realism and considerations of feasibility. Indeed, the texts fit a colloquial understanding of “utopian” as ideal but unrealistic. This is not my ultimate criterion, though, because the feasibility of social visions can never be proved and particular elements in the socialist visions of the early 1930s became reality after 1949. Rather, I follow the more neutral definition of utopian texts as “fictions of an ideal polity” (Saage, 2000: 49) which offer a total vision of an alternative world (Jameson, 2005: 6; Saage, 2000: 33). This total vision is an answer to the totality of the conflicts of a time, or, as Frederic Jameson puts it, the utopian world “must respond to specific dilemmas and offer to solve fundamental social problems to which the Utopian believes himself to hold the key” (Jameson, 2005: 11). Utopianism flourishes in times of rapid change and periods of transition where it forms a “pocket of stasis within the ferment and rushing forces of social change” (Jameson, 2005: 15). ¹⁹ These elements of utopianism are evident in our collection of texts as well. They mirror the feeling of change, instability, and crisis Lu Xun (“Everybody feels that life is not stable”) and Hu Yuzhi (“the eve of a volcanic eruption”) had talked about. In addition, they provide a fundamental approach to China’s future and a total vision of an ideal society in various degrees of concreteness and length.

As utopian socialist, the leftist texts of this collection show tensions that can be observed in the history of socialism worldwide. At a very general level, socialism in China and elsewhere existed and still exists in a great variety of approaches. These variants share the ideals of equality and social welfare and a common language of social revolution; however, once these general ideas are converted into an ideology, a need for ideological “containment” emerges that leads to disambiguations and party strife (Dirlik, 1991: 33–35). More concretely, Marxism and Communist parties, despite their commonalities with earlier and alternative forms of socialism, have been eager to distance themselves from these on a number of grounds. The central point of conflict was the question of the way toward socialism and the class base of the future society. In the Communist Manifesto Marx and Engels took great pains to distinguish Communism from other schools of socialism, which, in their view, simply sought to improve workers’ lot without eradicating the roots of their plight. According to the Manifesto, Communism is superior since it is scientific and, in particular, has correctly marked out the way toward socialism, namely class struggle (Marx and Engels, 1981; Levitas 1990: 57; Saage, 2000: 25). Marx and Engels rejected what they called “conservative” or “bourgeois socialism” for its attempt to solve social problems only to save bourgeois society and bourgeois relations of production (Marx and Engels, 1981: 54–56). As for utopian socialism—they mention St. Simon, Fourrier, and Owen—Marx and Engels acknowledged its position in an early period of the struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat but repudiated it for its lack of trust in the independence of the working class in the historical process and class struggle as the ultimate means of social transformation. Utopian socialists, according to them, tried to avoid revolution and peacefully advance society; they wanted to improve the life of all members of society, including the ruling classes (Marx and Engels, 1981: 56–58).

The avoidance of violence is again a point where Lu Xun chimes in. As a critic of “salon socialists” (Wong, 1991: 89) and a skeptical reader of the Chinese New Year’s Dream collection with its “excessive” but naïve leftism, Lu Xun declares,

Therefore, even though there are people who dream that “everybody has enough to eat,” people who dream of a “proletarian society,” people who dream of a “Datong world,” there are only a few people who see in their dreams the class struggle that comes first, the white terror, bombing, killing through maltreatment, shooting water with chili pepper up the nose, or electrocution. If you don’t dream these things, the good society won’t come. No matter how bright you depict it, it remains a dream, an empty dream. (Lu, 2002: 30)

Lu Xun’s vision of revolutionary violence was a telling counterpart to visions of a future society that ignored the way toward socialism altogether.

A second point of conflict between Marxism and utopian socialism was the question of what the ideal society of the future would actually look like. Indeed, Marxism is marked by a certain aniconism, an abstention from delineating the concrete features of socialist society of the future (Saage, 2000: 26). This is, first of all, due to “Marx’s reluctance to identify communism as a state rather than a process” (Levitas, 1990: 43)—a dynamic view that, by the way, can also be found in the work of Mao Zedong (Knight, 2007: chap. 9). ²⁰ Second, for Marx and Engels it was the working class as an independent historical force that would decide the features of the new society (Levitas, 1990: 43; Geoghegan, 1987: 134–35). In “The Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State” Engels noted: “Once such people appear, they will not care a rap about what we today think they should do. They will establish their own practice and their own public opinion, conformable therewith, on the practice of each individual—and that’s the end of it” (Engels, 1997: 23; Geoghegan, 1987: 32). This tension between Marxist aniconism and utopian socialist visions of the future reappeared in the history of Communist parties whenever the attraction of audiences and the recruitment of followers were at stake. ²¹

The problems and arguments that surfaced in these ideological struggles are mirrored in our Chinese collection as well: Is socialism a concept that points the way toward a better society, a dynamic process, a concept for (violent) revolution? Or is it, rather, a state, a totality of structures and institutions based on the principle of equality? A second set of questions relates to the class base of socialism. Who would decide the features of a future socialist society? What would be the relation between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat in the process of revolution and what would be the fate of those who argued for equality, sympathizing with the “masses” as the future backbone of society, but were not an unequivocal part of them?

The Notion of Datong and Datong Socialism

In the introduction of this article, Liu Yazi was quoted as a proponent of a “socialist society of Datong.” Left-wing female writer Xie Bingying also mixed the traditional notion of Datong with the notion of socialism. ²² After a short positive statement on dreaming, she outlined the features of an ideal society:

In my dream I see a Datong world without national borders and without differences between nations and classes; all people, regardless of sex and age, have to work. They perform this work for themselves, for the needs of their own class and of all of mankind. They spend a very happy life of freedom and equality. There is time for reading, for recreation, and a definite time for rest. They enjoy the right to everything they have produced. Here there is no invasion, exploitation, envy or deception, no war and no slaughter. Instead, there is a common, happy life and a spirit of eagerly forging ahead! Mutual aid, mutual love; the entire world forms an organization. And China is a cell under this organized system. Naturally, this is a socialist state without a state, without classes, with joint work and joint consumption. (Xie Bingying in Liu, 1998: 16)

I subsume these two and other texts under the term “Datong socialism” as a leftist ideal based on moral principles rather than social structures and institutions. What does Datong imply and why were the term and related principles popular among authors in the early 1930s? ²³

The term and notion of “Datong” can be traced back to the Liji (Book of Rites) where it denotes a world of harmony and universal welfare based on the unselfish behavior of all members of society (Callahan, 2003: 233; Bernal, 1976: 11). Throughout the centuries, the idea of Datong was revived, and by the late nineteenth century became incorporated in the ideas of Chinese reformers and revolutionaries (Bernal, 1976: chap. 1). As has been shown by various authors, socialism was present in China in various forms and by the 1930s Datong was a common term in anarchist, socialist, and even early Chinese Marxist texts to describe a future socialist society (Bernal, 1976; Dirlik, 1989; Dirlik, 1991; Zarrow, 1990; Chen, 2014; Wang, 2005; Dong, 2010). Chinese leftists—not unlike their Western counterparts—shared ideas and used an inclusive language that would not become disambiguated until party programs were formulated. Datong, in particular, suited authors who wanted to demonstrate the compatibility of socialism as a foreign idea and indigenous philosophical and political traditions of social equality. In 1913, Jiang Kanghu, for instance, who had established the (short-lived) Chinese Socialist Party, referred to socialism as the “ideology of Datong.” The features of “world socialism” that he delineated were found as well in the thinking of socialists and anarchists and in notions of Confucian Datong, Christian heaven, and Buddhist paradise (Dirlik, 1991: 135–36). And Marxist writer and CCP member Guo Moruo, in a text titled “Marx Enters the Confucian Temple” (Makesi jin wenmiao) published in late 1925, imagined an encounter between Confucius and Marx where the two philosophers of distant places and times agreed that their ideas were compatible. In their dialogue, Marx delineates his vision of a Communist society in a few strokes and Confucius responds: “This ideal society and my Datong world happen to be identical.” After the two had elaborated on their respective ideas, Marx exclaims, “I would never have imagined that two thousand years ago, in the distant East, there had already been such an old comrade. Our two views are totally identical. How can there be people who can say that my and your thought don’t conform to each other?” (Guo, 1925).

In the early 1930s, Datong was popular not because of Kang Youwei’s Datong shu (Book of Great Unity) (Kang, 1958, 2005)—the book was published in 1935 (Yang, 2005: 15)—but as an element in Sun Yat-sen’s Three People’s Principles (sanminzhuyi) as they were explained by Sun in 1924 and as a legacy of Sun’s thought in contemporary GMD propaganda. In fact, a few authors of the New Year’s Dream collection explicitly relate their vision of a Datong society to Sun Yat-sen (Yu Jue [p. 60], and Yang Yi’nan [p. 82], both in Liu, 1998). Sun had touched upon Datong in his lectures on the Three People’s Principles in Guangzhou in 1924. He introduced the chapter on “people’s livelihood” with the words: “People’s livelihood (minshengzhuyi) means socialism (shehuizhuyi) and is also called communism (gongchanzhuyi) and thus is Datongism (Datongzhuyi)” (Sun, 2000: 167). Listeners and readers detached from party politics and its need for ideological clarity could assume that Datong, socialism, and communism were identical concepts, or at least fundamentally compatible. However, scholarship on Sun is split about his relation to socialism (Chang and Gordon, 1991: 116; Bernal, 1976: chap. 3), and the full text of his four lectures on minshengzhuyi reveals his ambiguity about socialism. In the text that follows the above quote, Sun tried for more ideological clarity by acknowledging the contribution of Marx but also distancing himself from him, in particular from the radical concepts of class struggle and the equalization of ownership (Sun, 2000; 176–78, 189). In his lectures on minshengzhuyi, Sun, like political activists elsewhere, focused on how to achieve a better society and left out its concrete features. In the early 1930s, Sun Yat-sen’s reference to Datong was still present within the GMD. As a term, it appeared in the GMD’s party anthem, which later became the national anthem (Tian, 2008: 48). As a concept of reconciliation of interests (as opposed to class struggle), it was mirrored in Chiang Kai-shek’s corporatist approach (Tsui, 2013; Zarrow, 2005: 260). Even organizations of the New Life movement—which took a purely moral approach to China’s problems—could use Datong in their names (Tsui, 2013: 934). ²⁴ It is not surprising, then, that the CCP came to an opposite assessment of Datong. In 1936, shortly after the publication of Kang Youwei’s Datong shu, party ideologist Chen Boda made clear that Kang’s notion of Datong was an expression of bourgeois ideas similar to those of Tan Sitong and the Xinhai ideals of “freedom, equality and universal love” (Chen, 1936: 12). Apparently, the idea of Datong and the principles associated with it were attractive enough among contemporaries to compel the CCP to issue a rebuttal. Since “freedom, equality, and universal love” were exactly at the core of the Datong socialism in our text collection, their authors must have been guilty of “bourgeois” thought, too.

What was the core of Datong for contemporaries? First of all, Datong in its modern use had a clear international dimension and reflected the yearning for national sovereignty in a colonial context. This international perspective and anticolonial thrust in Chinese utopian thought had already been obvious in Cai Yuanpei’s “New Year’s Dream” (Xinnian meng) of 1904 (Li Guangyi, 2013). ²⁵ After the First World War, Datong was related to the right of nations to self-determination as it had been proposed by Woodrow Wilson and the League of Nations (Manela, 2006: 1342–43). Furthermore, Sun Yat-sen seems to have used Datong to refer to the international dimension of a better world (Zhang, 2011; Xu, 2010). In our collection, the quotes of Liu Yazi in the introduction and Xie Bingying above show that Datong meant equality at a global level. And there were more authors who called for an equal position of China in the international order (Gao Jiansi [p. 43], Yu Jue [p. 60], Wu Yanyin [pp. 64–65], Wu Simao [p. 69], all in Liu, 1998).

The second feature of Datong is its moral and idealistic approach, reflected in principles such as freedom, mutual aid, and love. Kaiming publishing house editor Suo Fei, known for his earlier anarchist activities, envisioned for the social world “equality without exception; true freedom will be established and universal love that comes from the heart will develop” (Suo Fei in Liu, 1998: 28). Suo Fei, however, was aware that this dream might be ridiculed as “utopian” (wutuobang) (Suo Fei in Liu, 1998: 28). ²⁶ Indeed, in light of the Communist debates outlined above, Datong socialism was utopian in its appeal to cooperation and harmony, its inclusiveness, and in particular its disregard of a particular role of the working class.

Finally, in many texts, Datong socialism was defined by the absence of phenomena that characterized the existing world, in particular national borders and classes. In a way, it was predominantly defined ex negativo, through what it is not, which is also the reason why it remained much vaguer than the texts that will be introduced in the next section. In GMD administrator Wu Songqing’s “dreamworld” “arms, national borders and races are abolished and we attain Datong” (Wu Songqing in Liu, 1998: 24). And Guanghua publishing house editor Gu Fengcheng stated, “The future China of my dreams is a Datong society without classes and races, with freedom and equality. At that time, the warlords will already have been overthrown by the masses (minzhong) and also imperialism will already have been overturned” (Gu Fengcheng in Liu, 1998: 97).

Principles such as freedom, equality, mutual aid, and mutual love as well as the absence of borders and classes are of course reminiscent of the anarchist tradition in China, which was still not totally extinguished in the Nanjing decade (Zarrow, 1990; Dirlik, 1991). At the same time, the texts by Liu Yazi, Xie Bingying, and others also seem to allude to the practices of current GMD rule, its abuse of power, and its deviation from an earlier, emancipative ethos expressed in Sun Yat-sen’s Three People’s Principles. This is particularly true where authors condemned phenomena such as “iron and blood,” “prisons,” “slaughter,” and so on (Liu Yazi in Liu, 1998: 14; Xie Bingying in Liu, 1998: 16).

The “Soviet Fever” of the Early 1930s and “Soviet Socialism”

Authors who referred to a Datong version of socialism focused on the principles of an ideal society—freedom and equality—and the absence of current ills, while others outlined concrete social structures and institutional features of a future socialist society. They took up typical elements of the international tradition of utopian socialism but were also inspired by the Soviet Union as the first state to put socialism into practice.

Indeed, the resumption of diplomatic relations between China and the Soviet Union in 1932 and the successful—and even early—completion of the Soviet Union’s First Five-Year Plan in the same year had triggered a “Soviet fever” among Chinese intellectuals. Special journals on the Soviet Union were founded, established journals dedicated special issues to the Soviet Union, and countless individual articles depicted the features of a society that was seen as unique. ²⁷ Actually, distrust in liberal capitalism—as the source of the world economic crisis—and an interest in planning was a global phenomenon at that time, irrespective of ideological inclinations (Zheng and Tang, 2008: 54; van Laak, 2008; Schivelbusch, 2005). Chinese intellectuals had even more reason to study the Soviet Union since its development demonstrated that rapid industrialization could enable an economically backward country to catch up with advanced societies. The astonishing figures of growth during the First Five-Year Plan suggested that the Soviet Union might become a model for China (Hu, 1933: 8; Wang, 1933; Zheng and Zhang, 2009: 118, 125). Prominent intellectuals such as Jiang Tingfu, Ding Wenjiang, Hu Shi, Qu Qiubai, Zhang Junmai, Zou Taofen, and also Hu Yuzhi, the initiator of the New Year’s Dream issue of Dongfang zazhi, visited the country and published accounts of their experiences and observations (Feng, 2010: 87). Hu Yuzhi’s travel report had been serialized in Society and Education (Shehui yu jiaoyu) in 1931, and he dedicated the entire second issue of Dongfang zazhi in 1933 to the Soviet Union, including his own contribution (“What the Chinese Should Know about the Soviet Union”), in which he promoted the Soviet Union and defended it against various misunderstandings (Hu, 1933). The travel reports by Hu and others show that they perceived the Soviet Union primarily as a society of industrial production based on a number of principles and provisions that guaranteed both economic success and a decent life for workers. Many of the elements of socialist life mentioned in the New Year’s Dream collection appeared in these reports, too, such as reduced working hours, time and facilities for recreation, and social institutions (Hu, 1931; Feng 2010; Chen, 2009). An example of a text that seems to have been inspired by the Soviet Union is economist (and later CCP member) Zhang Xichang’s sketch of a “new society”:

I think that the China of the future will necessarily be a state of the East with planning and order. In this state, all tools of production will be in the hands of the workers. Uninterrupted production will be adapted to the needs of the masses. The government will be the representative of the workers and will spare no effort to establish a rational new society. Industrial production will enable the workers of the entire nation to receive a proper share. The individual will enjoy a reasonable life within all society. The agricultural producers will break away from the bonds of feudalism marked by individual [producers] and desolation. They will enter a collective and free path and participate in the creation of a great new society that encompasses the entire country. At that time, all culture will have been seized back from the hands of a small number of privileged people and turned over to the masses. I think that this is not a dream but this new society will be realized through the struggle of millions of soldiers today and in the future. (Zhang Xichang in Liu, 1998: 78)

Generally speaking, these leftist authors converged on the vision of an industrialized society based on the “masses,” guided by a planning state, and replete with social and cultural facilities available to everyone. Dongfang zazhi reader Zhang Baoxing, for instance, enumerated six features of future China: economic planning, industrialization, electrification, agricultural collectivization and mechanization, and the gradual socialization of property in the economic field; education for all; access to cultural facilities for all; a social infrastructure—hospitals, public canteens and laundries, kindergartens, movie theaters, theaters, concert halls, clubs, libraries, parks, and public housing—accessible to everybody; the right and duty of everyone to work; and equal economic, political, and social rights for women. Zhang foresaw a transformation of China in two stages, in line with Marxist views. In the advanced stage of the new society, money and police would no longer be needed, and the nature of the government would have changed. In sum, he envisioned “a happy and new China of true freedom, equality and mutual love without classes and without extraction or exploitation” (Zhang Baoxing in Liu, 1998: 71–72)—a view that testifies to his belief not only in socialism but also in the principles of Datong.

As for planning and state intervention, Zou Taofen, left-wing journalist, editor of Shenghuo zhoukan (Life Weekly), and later one of Shanghai’s “seven gentlemen,” ²⁸ held that “the government does not rule the people but is the central mechanism that plans, executes, and protects the joint work and equal distribution for the entire masses at the national level” (Zou Taofen in Liu, 1998: 14). Zhejiang University professor Wei Zhi wrote: “In the China of the future, the economic relations between people will be improved, based on the power of the masses. In this way, they will no longer impede the development of the productive forces. Then, a plan for controlled industrialization will create a new economic fundament” (Wei Zhi in Liu, 1998: 84). ²⁹ Only a few authors mentioned the technical side of this industrialized society. ³⁰ Also, the rural economy and the village were only rarely part of these visions. ³¹ And, finally, authors’ stance on the property question remained vague. Few authors explicitly mentioned public ownership (Wu Yanyin [p. 64], and Yu Jue [p. 61], both in Liu, 1998). ³² Public ownership might have been implied, though, where equal access to all social and cultural institutions was being called for (Luo Shuhe [p. 73], Zhang Baoxing [pp. 71–72], Yan Fuwei [p. 19], all in Liu, 1998).

Social justice was not to be achieved through violent expropriation but through a reorganization of work and a balance of work and recreation. The core notion and actual consensus in the majority of texts on both Datong and Soviet socialism was the principle that everyone had a duty to work. Writer and translator Wu Simao stated, “In all of society, there is not a single person who eats without working” (Wu Simao in Liu, 1998: 70). ³³ The duty to work forms the unifying bond of society in these texts and was directed against the “work parasites” in the existing world (Wang Manduo in Liu, 1998: 96). Authors thus favored a mild and moral solution to alienation, one that is typical of utopian socialism (Levitas, 1990: 37).

Workers’ life in the future socialist society is marked by discipline, order, and conformity, ³⁴ albeit with limited working hours, improved labor conditions and, in particular, ample time for recreation. Time is actually a central notion in some texts, where it figures as both an instrument of order and discipline and a tool for achieving social justice: leisure time in exchange for labor time. An extreme example is the text by Yu Jue, an instructor at the Xuzhou Girls’ Normal University and “supporter of Mr. Sun Yat-sen’s Datong world,” which, in Yu’s interpretation, was one without private property and class differences. Yu envisioned both a tightly structured day and distinctive age groups with their respective place and duty in society. In his view, people between the age of 20 and 40 should work, those below 20 should be in school, and those over 40 would spend their lives in “caring homes (yiyang yuan) where they can enjoy the rest of their years” (Yu Jue in Liu, 1998: 61). In his vision, daily life was strictly regulated as well, with the factory’s clocking-in card as the literal entrance ticket to recreation facilities:

There is no difference between mental and physical work; everybody has to work for only four hours a day and has two hours for free research, besides eight hours of sleep. The rest of the time is for leisure. The most frequent place for recreation is the music hall, then come the theater and sports fields, etc. The daily clocking-in card serves as a common entrance ticket. This means that after an appropriate amount of work one is entitled to enjoy some comfortable recreation. (Yu Jue in Liu, 1998: 61)

In these socialist visions, work is not a means of fulfillment but the condition for leisure. Another extreme view is social science scholar Jiang Jiesheng’s:

[People] work for only four to six hours a day. When the electric bells all over the country signal the start of work, they have already reached the collective work places without one single minute of delay. During work, they are mentally tense like on a battlefield. But when they spent time on working that has not yet exhausted them they have a matching time for recreation and rest. When the electric bells signal the end of work, they rush off in pairs or groups to their preferred places of entertainment. . . . So-called human life is marked, on the one hand, by planning and discipline; on the other hand, one can follow one’s instincts and enjoy everything to the full. (Jiang Jiesheng in Liu, 1998: 52)

Some authors listed concrete places of recreation such as theaters, movie theaters, parks, libraries, sports stadiums, and so on—facilities that figured prominently in the reports of travel to the Soviet Union. Access should be free and cultural activities should thus no longer be the privilege of a small minority (Yan Fuwei [p. 19]; Zhang Baoxing [pp. 71–72]; Luo Shuhe [p. 73]; Yan Fuwei [p. 19], all in Liu, 1998). This is true particularly for education, which should be free to everyone. On the other hand, the intellectual authors of the text collection did not ponder the question of which activities would actually fit workers’ needs and wishes. Frequent mention of books and libraries reveals a certain bias toward high culture (Xie Bingying [p. 16], and Zhang Baoxing [p. 72], both in Liu, 1998). ³⁵ Only one author was aware of analphabetism and called for an alphabetization movement (Zhang Baoxing in Liu, 1998: 71). The “masses” in intellectuals’ vision of socialism were disciplined, cultured, and civilized.

Social institutions were mentioned, too, but received less attention. Like work, social welfare was ruled by the principle of equal access (Zhang Baoxing [p. 71], and Wu Yanyin [p. 64], both in Liu, 1998). Political forms were omitted almost altogether—probably also due to an awareness of GMD censorship. ³⁶ Social questions such as gender and family that are typical topics in utopian socialism and anarchism were only rarely mentioned. ³⁷ Clearly, socialism in these visions was a society of industrial production, dominated by work, with recreation as its necessary compensation and with all members of society having an equal share in both work and leisure.

Whose Future? Intellectuals and the “Masses”

For most authors, socialism was a society of industrial production made up and sustained by the “masses.” This emphasis on the “masses” was typical of the time and reflects intellectuals’ turn toward the left in the early 1930s. As Peter Zarrow astutely explains, “in a sense, intellectuals no longer trusted themselves. . . . This was something of a paradox. If wisdom lay with the masses, what was the role of intellectuals?” (Zarrow, 2005: 290). Indeed, the relation between intellectuals and the masses was addressed in a number of discussions among left-wing intellectuals at the time (Ip, 2005; Zhu, 2011; Feng, 2013; Wong, 1991). The problem was particularly relevant for the mass literature movement of the early thirties where the class standpoint of (potentially bourgeois) authors in relation to proletarian literature was debated (Zarrow, 2005: 291). At a more general level, it was related to the question of the subjects of utopia, in particular to Marx’s reluctance to speak on behalf of the proletariat as the masters of the society of the future. How did the intellectual authors of the New Year’s Dream collection elaborate on mass society and their own place in it? How radical were their visions in a potential spectrum from intellectual privilege to their extinction as part of the bourgeois class? Since Hu Yuzhi had also solicited texts on authors’ dreams for their individual lives, his collection provides some valuable answers to these questions.

First of all, the notion of “the masses” in our text collection was expressed by a variety of Chinese terms that the authors seem to have used interchangeably: dazhong (Zhu Ziqing in Liu, 1998: 5), minzhong (Gu Jiegang in Liu, 1998: 35), and qunzhong (Zheng Zhenduo in Liu, 1998: 9). This undifferentiated use of terms again indicates the ideological vagueness of the texts. ³⁸ Two potential meanings of the “masses” can be extracted, though. One is simply that of the majority of the people—sometimes in explicit opposition to privileged groups—as part of an argument for social equality (Qi, 2012: 131). Da wanbao (Evening News) journalist Shao Zhanghan stated, “After the political power of the masses (minzhong) has been consolidated, China will no longer have privileged classes such as warlords, bureaucrats, compradors and capitalists, no extracting class, no parasitic class” (Shao Zhanghan in Liu, 1998: 35; see also Zhou Huan in Liu, 1998: 47). Shao listed the obvious outsiders in the new society—a sovereign, unified, and socialist nation—without further defining the groups that actually make up the minzhong. A second meaning is that of the working masses in the term dazhong (Qi, 2012: 131) or in compound terms such as “hard-working masses” (qinlao dazhong, laoku dazhong) (Lou Shiyi [p. 7], and He Sijing [p. 57], both in Liu, 1998) or “producing masses” (shengchan dazhong) (Yan Fuwei in Liu, 1998: 19). At first glance, these terms seem more radical in that they specify the character of the new society. At the same time, however, authors who used these terms did not provide a full-fledged class analysis of a society of the dazhong, let alone a vision of class struggle. The term “masses,” like “Datong,” was employed in a vague, inclusive, and cross-class way. Even Chiang Kai-shek could relate to the “well-being” of the “hard-working masses” (Liu, 2013: 55).

The intellectual authors of our texts seem to have seen themselves as part of these cross-class masses. With the exception of a number of escapists, ³⁹ they were willing to integrate into the society of the masses and to contribute to its purpose, namely work. They neither claimed privileges nor a leading role. Again, our two typical representatives of Datong socialism are cases in point (see also Zou Taofen in Liu, 1998: 124). Xie Bingying depicted the dream for her individual life in the following way:

In this free, equal, perfect and happy society I want to be a common person (laobaixing) [based on the principle of] “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” I will work every day and lead a happy and disciplined life in the group. During the time outside work, I will try hard to study literature and education and do my best to enjoy the joys and pleasure which we have created through our struggle and sacrifice. (Xie Bingying in Liu, 1998: 101)

Liu Yazi had also referred to the Marxian principle “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” Personally, he hoped to be a member of the Datong confederation he was dreaming of and to “do six hours of technical work of copying or proofreading every day” (Liu Yazi in Liu, 1998: 101).

Actually, the quote from Marx appears in a number of texts and legitimized an intellectual and cultural niche for intellectuals in a society of industrial production (Lou Shiyi [p. 129], and Luo Shuhe [p. 136], both in Liu, 1998). After all, these leftist intellectuals were, in Hung-yok Ip’s words, “individuals with multiple positions—as radicals, persons harboring non-political concerns, desires and preferences, and educated members of Chinese society” (Ip, 2005: 18). Writer Yu Dafu even spoke of the use of “special gifts” (teshu tiancai)—he mentioned astronomy, singing, drawing, and even natural beauty—for the common good of the new, classless society (Yu Dafu in Liu, 1998: 5). Others claimed such special contributions for themselves: economist Yang Xingfo, proponent of a “Datong society” who later joined the CCP, wanted to build a kindergarten (Yang Xingfo in Liu, 1998: 8, 139); Yan Lingfeng, who foresaw a “sanguinary, violent revolution” for China, wanted to be employed in a big world library where he would also have time to do his own reading (Yang Lingfeng in Liu, 1998: 41, 120); Zhou Huan, a professor at a college of law and politics, also wanted to build a library (Zhou Huan in Liu, 1998: 123); and Wu Yanyin, an official in the Ministry of Education, wanted to teach in a village school (Wu Yanyin in Liu, 1998: 132).

It is in these individual visions that authors revealed their intellectual inclinations and, in some cases, even their notions of the educational mission for the new society. Ip’s observation that there was a “paradoxical co-existence of elitism with anti-elitism” in the identity of radical intellectuals is true for the New Year’s Dream collection as well. The socialism in these texts was cultured and civilized, a blueprint for a society made up of workers but tending toward high culture. Workers were the backbone of the new society but remained the objects of intellectuals’ dreams, subordinated to a vision of discipline and order. The masses as the subject of dreaming a better future for China were lacking in the collection, and this was actually its major flaw. According to editor Hu Yuzhi, “the more than 90 percent of the Chinese population made up of peasants, workers and shop clerks” were not represented since “their oppression in reality is too great. Because they work all day long to the point of exhaustion, they only have nightmares and not [positive] dreams. Even if they had some dreams, they wouldn’t have the ability and leisure to write them down. This can indeed be seen as the biggest national disgrace!” (Hu Yuzhi in Liu, 1998: 304). In the final analysis, intellectuals’ dreams of the future—a mere product of their “leisure” (xianxia)—could not obliterate the nightmares of the masses.

Only one text, informed by the study of Marxism and thus close to Marx and Engels’s view on the independence of the proletariat as a historical force, reversed the relation between intellectuals and the masses. He Sijing also employed the term “hard-working masses” (laoku dazhong), but not in an inclusive sense. In his perspective on class analysis, he as an intellectual belonged to a privileged class that “has no future” and was doomed to perish:

I do not dare dream, I do not have the courage. It is only through my investigations into Marxist social sciences over the last three to five years that I have realized that my own status is that of a member of the privileged class and that this privileged class has no future. Unfortunately, as a member of this privileged class, the only thing that remains is that I will completely perish in the stream of time. . . . The China of the future belongs to them—they are the class that is today repressed and exploited. They—workers, peasants, and all hard-working masses—will forge an alliance and will ruthlessly and fiercely fight against imperialism and its dark forces in China. . . . Intellectuals with nothing to look forward to will fear and curse this fight. . . . But since knowledge won’t help the liberation of China, why then curse this great number of people who seek liberation? Who in the end shouldn’t do so? Ah, how pitiful it is that intellectuals know nothing! (He Sijing in Liu, 1998: 57)

But even He Sijing remained ambivalent. While he “did not dare dream” when it came to the future of China, he answered the question on the dreams for his individual life without reservation. He wanted to be able to travel the world and pondered the mundane question of how to finance his trips (He Sijing in Liu, 1998: 57). Even a radical understanding of Marx could not destroy the dream of—in Marxist parlance—a “bourgeois” niche in the future proletarian society.

Conclusion

The socialist visions of urban intellectual elites in the early 1930s were all variants of modern Chinese socialism, different from the CCP’s ideology of the time and also different from the later course of the Communist revolution. The texts mirrored the leftist turn among intellectuals in the early 1930s, bore traces of a particular leftist repertoire of the time, and proposed either the principles of a Datong socialism or the organizational structures of Soviet-style socialism as the ideal society of the future. These leftist visions, together with disillusionment with the GMD’s ability to lead the country, help explain the acceptance of a socialist system among Chinese intellectuals when the CCP came to power. ⁴⁰ At the same time, the texts and their political and discursive contexts reveal the underlying tensions in leftist thought between utopian visions—“dreams”—of social equality on the one hand and Marxist ideology and Communist party programs on the other. The former could ignore the problem of the way toward a better society and, in our case, revealed a mild notion of justice—everybody’s equal share in work and leisure—and an elitist conception of intellectuals’ role in the society of the “masses.” The latter remained almost silent on the features of the future socialist society but elaborated on the path toward socialism: class struggle. ⁴¹ In a Marxist perspective and for those who refused to ignore the problem of the way toward socialism, our texts appear simply as “utopian socialism” (Marx and Engels), “empty dreams” or products of “salon socialism” (Lu Xun), or “bourgeois” (August Bebel [Toth, 2012], Chen Boda). Intellectuals, in this radical perspective, were not part of the masses, but as He Sijing had warned, a “privileged class” doomed to perish. This hostility toward intellectuals was already present in CCP thought in the early 1930s (U, 2013b: 625–27). It was to become one of the most problematic aspects of CCP rule after 1949 (U, 2013b; Goldman, 1967, 1981).