Constructions of the Socialist City in the 1950s: A View from the Interior

• In Event: Cities in 1950s China: Socialist Visions, Soviet Models, and Urban Communities

Abstract

This paper is part of a larger project that aims to uncover the history of Sino-Soviet interactions and socialist internationalism from the perspectives of the Chinese and Soviet professionals who remade Chinese cities in the early years of the PRC, as well as the residents of Chinese cities. One goal is to analyze how socialist urban planning was affected by the contemporary realities of Chinese cities. This paper explores the career of Li Jieren, who is most famous today as a novelist but who was appointed vice mayor of Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan, in 1951. In the ten years before his death in 1962, he played a significant role in urban planning in Chengdu. The influences on his thinking about cities included his experiences in Paris in the early 1920s, the transformation of Sichuan cities during the war with Japan, and his study of Soviet urban theory and practice. Even more significant, however, was his deep knowledge of Chengdu history, gained while writing his historical fiction. Thus, the “socialist city” imagined in Chengdu took on, though the influence of Li Jieren, some of the qualities of the late imperial city. Local experience and knowledge interacted with and affected the reception of internationalist socialist ideals in 1950s China, moderating the volatility that some might have feared from socialism but also blurring visions of more radical social and spatial transformation.

Author

• Kristin Stapleton, University at Buffalo, SUNY