Search

Your search keyword '"HOWLETT, JONATHAN J."' showing total 13 results
Start Over Author "HOWLETT, JONATHAN J."
13 results on '"HOWLETT, JONATHAN J."'

1. Creating a new Shanghai : the end of the British presence in China (1949-57)

Author

Howlett, Jonathan J., Thompson, James, and Bickers, Robert

Subjects
951.132
Abstract

This thesis provides a fundamental reassessment of the limits of the power of the Chinese Communist Party in the years following its takeover of China in 1949 through an examination of its policies towards eliminating British businesses from Shanghai. In the early years of the People's Republic of China, the Party sought to eliminate all foreign influence. It wanted to reset completely China's foreign relations following what was portrayed as a century of 'national humiliation'. It has previously been assumed that the CCP went about this task in a pre-planned and thoroughly ruthless manner, and that their policy making was primarily motivated by their anti-imperialist sentiments. This thesis argues that the CCP decided to take a long-term and pragmatic approach in order to prevent economic instability. Revolutionary transformative goals were compromised in order to preserve short-term stability. Rather than having a grand plan for the elimination of British businesses, the CCP's policy was often contingent and provisional. Policies directed at Chinese businesses were often adapted to pressure British businesses. The CCP lacked skills, knowledge, resources and manpower. This thesis contributes to a growing literature on China in the early 1950s by suggesting that the CCP was not strong, it was in fact weak, but that its great strength lay in its awareness of its own weaknesses and in its ability to work around them.

Published
2012

5. Ordering the city: revolution, modernity and road renaming in Shanghai, 1949–1966.

Author

Howlett, Jonathan J.

Abstract

Between 1949 and 1966, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)-led municipal government of Shanghai renamed more than one in seven of the city's roads. Renaming was an important marker of revolutionary change in China's largest and most foreign-influenced city. Road renaming in socialist China has been commonly understood to have been extensive. This article argues, however, that the nature and extent of renaming in socialist Shanghai was less dramatic than has been assumed. It demonstrates that renaming was not simply an iconoclastic process, but rather involved the pragmatic weighing of symbolic change against potential disruption. Further, it contends that renaming was driven by a desire to order the city, in line with the CCP's modernist worldview. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Published
2022
Full Text
View/download PDF

8. The Shanghai News (1950–1952): New Democracy and External Propaganda in Early 1950s Shanghai.

Author

Howlett, Jonathan J.

Subjects
*NEW democracies, *PROPAGANDA, *COLD War, 1945-1991, *COMMUNIST parties, *BUSINESS models
Abstract

The Shanghai News was the People's Republic of China's (PRC's) first English-language newspaper. The News played an important, but forgotten, role in the development of the PRC's "external propaganda" apparatus, used to fight the ideological Cold War. The News was unusual in that it adopted a commercial business model and juxtaposed vehement anti-imperialist propaganda with advertising for multinational companies from "imperialist-capitalist countries." This article argues that the News was a product of "New Democracy," the central political paradigm of the PRC between 1949 and 1953. New Democracy, a policy of cross-class cooperation in the name of national reconstruction, is often dismissed as cynical tactic deployed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to diminish resistance during the takeover of China. The author argues for taking the real world impacts of New Democracy on life and work in early 1950s Shanghai seriously and cautions against teleological narratives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Published
2021
Full Text
View/download PDF

12. Creating a new Shanghai : the end of the British presence in China (1949-57)

Author

Howlett, Jonathan J and Howlett, Jonathan J

Abstract

This thesis provides a fundamental reassessment of the limits of the power of the Chinese Communist Party in the years following its takeover of China in 1949 through an examination of its policies towards eliminating British businesses from Shanghai. In the early years of the People's Republic of China, the Party sought to eliminate all foreign influence. It wanted to reset completely China's foreign relations following what was portrayed as a century of 'national humiliation'. It has previously been assumed that the CCP went about this task in a pre-planned and thoroughly ruthless manner, and that their policy making was primarily motivated by their anti-imperialist sentiments. This thesis argues that the CCP decided to take a long-term and pragmatic approach in order to prevent economic instability. Revolutionary transformative goals were compromised in order to preserve short-term stability. Rather than having a grand plan for the elimination of British businesses, the CCP's policy was often contingent and provisional. Policies directed at Chinese businesses were often adapted to pressure British businesses. The CCP lacked skills, knowledge, resources and manpower. This thesis contributes to a growing literature on China in the early 1950s by suggesting that the CCP was not strong, it was in fact weak, but that its great strength lay in its awareness of its own weaknesses and in its ability to work around them. 1.

Published
2012

13. ‘Decolonisation’ in China, 1949-1959

Author

Howlett, Jonathan James, Bickers, Robert, and Howlett, Jonathan J.

Abstract

In this chapter Jonathan Howlett adopts perspectives and models from wider literatures on decolonisation to explore the Chinese Communist Party’s elimination of the British semi-colonial presence from China after the revolution of 1949 and to place it within its global context. He focuses in particular on the CCP’s attempts to address the economic, cultural and human legacies of semi-colonialism within a comparative context. In so doing, the author seeks to complicate our understanding of the Sino-British relationship by exploring one of its most dramatic phases and to further illuminate this neglected period in Chinese history.

Published
2016

Catalog

Books, media, physical & digital resources
See catalog results