Modernisation as Discourse, 1949 to the Great Leap Forward: Zhou Enlai, Chen Yun, and Mao Zedong

Abstract

This thesis examines the discursive and intellectual architecture of modernisation (xiandaihua) in the People’s Republic of China from 1949 to the end of the Great Leap Forward by juxtaposing the ideological and philosophical underpinnings of the discourses of Zhou Enlai, Chen Yun and Mao Zedong. Methodologically, the study employs a discursive analysis that begins by de-sedimenting established scholarly and historiographical frameworks. It combines close textual analysis of both established and more recently released primary sources to foreground temporality, subjectivity, and conceptual differences that animated the discourse of modernisation. It demonstrates that modernisation emerged through three distinct visions: (1) Zhou Enlai’s linear, Soviet-inspired teleology that cast heavy-industry precedence as historical necessity; (2) Chen Yun’s recursive, balance-oriented pragmatism that privileged systemic viability and embodied socialism in the here-and-now; and (3) Mao Zedong’s ruptural ‘Great Leap’ dialectics that re-imagined modernity as a process of continuous, partial qualitative transformations. By recasting xiandaihua as a unifying keyword that masked these deep ideological divisions, the thesis unsettles mainstream narratives that reduce early PRC development to a binary of Stalinist mimicry versus Maoist voluntarism. It positions temporality and agency as central analytics for socialist modernity and demonstrates that divergent readings of dialectics were not academic quarrels but concrete drivers of historical changes.