William H. Hinton
Encyclopedia
William Howard Hinton was an American
farmer and prolific writer. A Marxist, he is best known for his book Fanshen, published in 1966, a "documentary of revolution" which chronicled the land reform conducted by the Chinese Communist Party
in the 1940s in Zhangzhuangcun (张庄村, pinyin: Zhāngzhuāngcūn), sometimes translated as Long Bow Village, a village in Shanxi Province
in northern China. Sequels followed the experience of the village during the 1950s and Cultural Revolution
. Hinton wrote and lectured extensively to explain the Maoist approach and, in later years, to criticize Deng Xiaoping
's market reforms.
. His father, Sebastian Hinton, was a lawyer who committed suicide; his mother, Carmelita Hinton
, was an educator and the founder of The Putney School
, an independent progressive school in Vermont
. He was a nephew of novelist E. L. Voynich (1864–1960), whose 1897 book The Gadfly sold over a million copies and became the number one American bestseller in the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
Before graduating from Cornell University
, Hinton attended Harvard
, where he was captain of the ski team. In 1939 he raced the famous Inferno race from the summit of Mt Washington, skiing behind Toni Matt, who famously schuss
ed the headwall
. Hinton commented in 1996 that "he knew Matt did something special, as a huge roar came up from the crowd."
since the 1920s had alternated between uncertainty and hostility. Most U.S. 'experts' on communism
were baffled by the appeal of a Marxist-Leninist
party to Asian peasant
s. Some diplomats considered the Communist Party of China "agrarian reformers" who labeled themselves revolutionaries. They were uncertain whether or how closely the Communists were tied to the Soviet Union
.
Given the attention lavished on the Kuomintang
(KMT) by both U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the media, especially Henry Luce
's Time Magazine, the U.S. public was slow to take notice of the Communists' rise in importance in China. When the U.S. joined China and the other Allied Powers of the Second World War
in the War against Japan
, there had been little contact between U.S. diplomats and the CPC, even though the KMT-led United Front against Japan made the Communists an implicit ally.
At the time of Hinton's first visit to China in the mid-1930s, a handful of U.S journalists, such as Edgar Snow
, Helen Foster Snow
, and Owen Lattimore
, had sneaked through the KMT blockade into Communist territory. All praised the high morale, social reform, and commitment to fighting Japan that they observed.
Along with academic colleagues, Hinton made similar observations when he served from 1945-1953 during his subsequent visit to China. Hinton was a staff member of the U.S. Office of War Information and was present at the Chongqing peace talks between the Kuomintang
and the Communist Party of China
, where he met Zhou Enlai
and Mao Zedong
. Hinton later accepted a post as an English teacher at the Northern University in Southeast Shanxi
province, near Changzhi
City, in a liberated district.
Hinton then worked for the United Nations
as a tractor-technician, providing training in modern agricultural methods in rural China. When the Communist party liberated the province in which he was working in 1948, he asked to join the university-staffed land reform work team in the village of Long Bow on the outskirts of Changzhi.
Hinton spent eight months working in the fields in the day and attending land reform meetings both day and night, and during this time he took careful notes on the land reform process. He assisted in the development of mechanized agriculture and education, and mainly stayed in the CPC-ruled northern Chinese village of Long Bow, forging close bonds with the inhabitants. Hinton aided the locals with complicated CPC initiatives, especially literacy projects, the breaking up of the feudal estates, ensuring the equality of women, and the replacement of the imperial-era magistrates that governed the village with councils in a symbiotic relationship with the landed gentry class. Hinton took more than one thousand pages of notes during his time in China. In the 1980s, Hinton's daughter Carma
returned to Long Bow to make a series of documentary films, including Small Happiness and To Taste 100 Herbs.
in 1953, Hinton wanted to chronicle his observations of the revolutionary process in Long Bow. But on his return, at the height of McCarthyism
, customs officials seized his papers, and turned them over to the Senate Committee on Internal Security (chaired by Senator James Eastland
). Hinton was subjected to continual harassment by the FBI, his passport was confiscated, and he was barred from all teaching jobs. At first permitted to work as a truck mechanic, he was later blacklisted and denied all employment. He then took up farming on some land inherited from his mother, and farmed for a living for some fifteen years. During this period Hinton continued to speak out about the successes of the Chinese Revolution and waged a long (and eventually successful) legal battle to recover his notes and papers from the Eastland Committee.
After the government returned his notes and papers, Hinton set to writing Fanshen, a documentary account of the land reform in Long Bow village in which he had been both observer and participant. After many mainstream U.S. publishers had turned it down, it was published in 1966 by Monthly Review
Press and was a stunning success, selling hundreds of thousands of copies, with translations in ten languages. In the book, Hinton examines the revolutionary experience of the Long Bow village, painting a complex picture of conflict, contradiction and cooperation in rural China.
After the death of Edgar Snow
, Hinton became the most famous American sympathetic to the People's Republic of China, and he served as the first national chairman of the US China Peoples Friendship Association
from 1974-1976. The Association published his controversial interviews with Chinese premier Zhou Enlai. Hinton cooled toward official policy as market reforms under Deng Xiaoping
moved away from the type of socialism originally associated with Mao Zedong. Eventually he wrote Shenfan (read as the opposite of Fanshen) and The Great Reversal, and became an outspoken opponent of the Socialism with Chinese characteristics and Chinese economic reform
that the current CPC continues today.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
farmer and prolific writer. A Marxist, he is best known for his book Fanshen, published in 1966, a "documentary of revolution" which chronicled the land reform conducted by the Chinese Communist Party
Communist party
A political party described as a Communist party includes those that advocate the application of the social principles of communism through a communist form of government...
in the 1940s in Zhangzhuangcun (张庄村, pinyin: Zhāngzhuāngcūn), sometimes translated as Long Bow Village, a village in Shanxi Province
Shanxi
' is a province in Northern China. Its one-character abbreviation is "晋" , after the state of Jin that existed here during the Spring and Autumn Period....
in northern China. Sequels followed the experience of the village during the 1950s and Cultural Revolution
Cultural Revolution
The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, commonly known as the Cultural Revolution , was a socio-political movement that took place in the People's Republic of China from 1966 through 1976...
. Hinton wrote and lectured extensively to explain the Maoist approach and, in later years, to criticize Deng Xiaoping
Deng Xiaoping
Deng Xiaoping was a Chinese politician, statesman, and diplomat. As leader of the Communist Party of China, Deng was a reformer who led China towards a market economy...
's market reforms.
Background and education
Hinton was born in ChicagoChicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
. His father, Sebastian Hinton, was a lawyer who committed suicide; his mother, Carmelita Hinton
Carmelita Hinton
Carmelita Hinton was an American progressive educator. She is best known as the founder in 1935 of The Putney School, a progressive boarding school in Vermont.-Early life:...
, was an educator and the founder of The Putney School
The Putney School
The Putney School is an independent high school in Putney, Vermont. It was founded in 1935 by Carmelita Hinton. It is a co-educational, college-preparatory boarding school, with a day-student component, located outside of Brattleboro, Vermont. Emily Jones is the director...
, an independent progressive school in Vermont
Vermont
Vermont is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. The state ranks 43rd in land area, , and 45th in total area. Its population according to the 2010 census, 630,337, is the second smallest in the country, larger only than Wyoming. It is the only New England...
. He was a nephew of novelist E. L. Voynich (1864–1960), whose 1897 book The Gadfly sold over a million copies and became the number one American bestseller in the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
Before graduating from Cornell University
Cornell University
Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...
, Hinton attended Harvard
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
, where he was captain of the ski team. In 1939 he raced the famous Inferno race from the summit of Mt Washington, skiing behind Toni Matt, who famously schuss
Schuss
In alpine skiing, a schuss or schussboom is a straight downhill run at high speed, contrasting with a slalom, mogul, or ski jumping.Schuss was also the unofficial mascot of the 1968 Winter Olympics in Grenoble, France, featuring a cartoon character wearing skis. Ever since then, every Olympic Games...
ed the headwall
Headwall
In physical geography and geology the headwall of a glacial cirque is its highest cliff.In civil engineering, a headwall is a small retaining wall placed at the outlet of a stormwater pipe or culvert....
. Hinton commented in 1996 that "he knew Matt did something special, as a huge roar came up from the crowd."
Experiences in China
Hinton first visited China in 1937. At the time, prevailing U.S. views of the Communist Party of ChinaCommunist Party of China
The Communist Party of China , also known as the Chinese Communist Party , is the founding and ruling political party of the People's Republic of China...
since the 1920s had alternated between uncertainty and hostility. Most U.S. 'experts' on communism
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
were baffled by the appeal of a Marxist-Leninist
Marxism-Leninism
Marxism–Leninism is a communist ideology, officially based upon the theories of Marxism and Vladimir Lenin, that promotes the development and creation of a international communist society through the leadership of a vanguard party over a revolutionary socialist state that represents a dictatorship...
party to Asian peasant
Peasant
A peasant is an agricultural worker who generally tend to be poor and homeless-Etymology:The word is derived from 15th century French païsant meaning one from the pays, or countryside, ultimately from the Latin pagus, or outlying administrative district.- Position in society :Peasants typically...
s. Some diplomats considered the Communist Party of China "agrarian reformers" who labeled themselves revolutionaries. They were uncertain whether or how closely the Communists were tied to the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
.
Given the attention lavished on the Kuomintang
Kuomintang
The Kuomintang of China , sometimes romanized as Guomindang via the Pinyin transcription system or GMD for short, and translated as the Chinese Nationalist Party is a founding and ruling political party of the Republic of China . Its guiding ideology is the Three Principles of the People, espoused...
(KMT) by both U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the media, especially Henry Luce
Henry Luce
Henry Robinson Luce was an influential American publisher. He launched and closely supervised a stable of magazines that transformed journalism and the reading habits of upscale Americans...
's Time Magazine, the U.S. public was slow to take notice of the Communists' rise in importance in China. When the U.S. joined China and the other Allied Powers of the Second World War
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
in the War against Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
, there had been little contact between U.S. diplomats and the CPC, even though the KMT-led United Front against Japan made the Communists an implicit ally.
At the time of Hinton's first visit to China in the mid-1930s, a handful of U.S journalists, such as Edgar Snow
Edgar Snow
Edgar P. Snow was an American journalist known for his books and articles on Communism in China and the Chinese Communist revolution...
, Helen Foster Snow
Helen Foster Snow
Helen Foster Snow was an American journalist who reported from China in the 1930s under the name "Nym Wales" on the developing revolution in China and the Korean independence movement...
, and Owen Lattimore
Owen Lattimore
Owen Lattimore was an American author, educator, and influential scholar of Central Asia, especially Mongolia. In the 1930s he was editor of Pacific Affairs, a journal published by the Institute of Pacific Relations, and then taught at Johns Hopkins University from 1938 to 1963...
, had sneaked through the KMT blockade into Communist territory. All praised the high morale, social reform, and commitment to fighting Japan that they observed.
Along with academic colleagues, Hinton made similar observations when he served from 1945-1953 during his subsequent visit to China. Hinton was a staff member of the U.S. Office of War Information and was present at the Chongqing peace talks between the Kuomintang
Kuomintang
The Kuomintang of China , sometimes romanized as Guomindang via the Pinyin transcription system or GMD for short, and translated as the Chinese Nationalist Party is a founding and ruling political party of the Republic of China . Its guiding ideology is the Three Principles of the People, espoused...
and the Communist Party of China
Communist Party of China
The Communist Party of China , also known as the Chinese Communist Party , is the founding and ruling political party of the People's Republic of China...
, where he met Zhou Enlai
Zhou Enlai
Zhou Enlai was the first Premier of the People's Republic of China, serving from October 1949 until his death in January 1976...
and Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong, also transliterated as Mao Tse-tung , and commonly referred to as Chairman Mao , was a Chinese Communist revolutionary, guerrilla warfare strategist, Marxist political philosopher, and leader of the Chinese Revolution...
. Hinton later accepted a post as an English teacher at the Northern University in Southeast Shanxi
Shanxi
' is a province in Northern China. Its one-character abbreviation is "晋" , after the state of Jin that existed here during the Spring and Autumn Period....
province, near Changzhi
Changzhi
Changzhi is a prefecture-level city in Shanxi Province, People's Republic of China. It lies between the city of Huozhou in Shanxi and the city of Hebi in Henan....
City, in a liberated district.
Hinton then worked for the United Nations
United Nations
The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...
as a tractor-technician, providing training in modern agricultural methods in rural China. When the Communist party liberated the province in which he was working in 1948, he asked to join the university-staffed land reform work team in the village of Long Bow on the outskirts of Changzhi.
Hinton spent eight months working in the fields in the day and attending land reform meetings both day and night, and during this time he took careful notes on the land reform process. He assisted in the development of mechanized agriculture and education, and mainly stayed in the CPC-ruled northern Chinese village of Long Bow, forging close bonds with the inhabitants. Hinton aided the locals with complicated CPC initiatives, especially literacy projects, the breaking up of the feudal estates, ensuring the equality of women, and the replacement of the imperial-era magistrates that governed the village with councils in a symbiotic relationship with the landed gentry class. Hinton took more than one thousand pages of notes during his time in China. In the 1980s, Hinton's daughter Carma
Carma Hinton
Carma Hinton is a documentary filmmaker and Clarence J. Robinson Professor of Visual Culture and Chinese Studies at George Mason University, in Fairfax, Virginia, United States. She was born and raised in Beijing, China, by American parents, and lived there until she was twenty-one. Chinese is...
returned to Long Bow to make a series of documentary films, including Small Happiness and To Taste 100 Herbs.
Return to the United States
On his return to the United States after the conclusion of the Korean WarKorean War
The Korean War was a conventional war between South Korea, supported by the United Nations, and North Korea, supported by the People's Republic of China , with military material aid from the Soviet Union...
in 1953, Hinton wanted to chronicle his observations of the revolutionary process in Long Bow. But on his return, at the height of McCarthyism
McCarthyism
McCarthyism is the practice of making accusations of disloyalty, subversion, or treason without proper regard for evidence. The term has its origins in the period in the United States known as the Second Red Scare, lasting roughly from the late 1940s to the late 1950s and characterized by...
, customs officials seized his papers, and turned them over to the Senate Committee on Internal Security (chaired by Senator James Eastland
James Eastland
James Oliver Eastland was an American politician from Mississippi who briefly served in the United States Senate as a Democrat in 1941; and again from 1943 until his resignation December 27, 1978. From 1947 to 1978, he served alongside John Stennis, also a Democrat...
). Hinton was subjected to continual harassment by the FBI, his passport was confiscated, and he was barred from all teaching jobs. At first permitted to work as a truck mechanic, he was later blacklisted and denied all employment. He then took up farming on some land inherited from his mother, and farmed for a living for some fifteen years. During this period Hinton continued to speak out about the successes of the Chinese Revolution and waged a long (and eventually successful) legal battle to recover his notes and papers from the Eastland Committee.
After the government returned his notes and papers, Hinton set to writing Fanshen, a documentary account of the land reform in Long Bow village in which he had been both observer and participant. After many mainstream U.S. publishers had turned it down, it was published in 1966 by Monthly Review
Monthly Review
Monthly Review is an independent Marxist journal published 11 times per year in New York City.-History:The publication was founded by Harvard University economics instructor Paul Sweezy, who became the first editor...
Press and was a stunning success, selling hundreds of thousands of copies, with translations in ten languages. In the book, Hinton examines the revolutionary experience of the Long Bow village, painting a complex picture of conflict, contradiction and cooperation in rural China.
After the death of Edgar Snow
Edgar Snow
Edgar P. Snow was an American journalist known for his books and articles on Communism in China and the Chinese Communist revolution...
, Hinton became the most famous American sympathetic to the People's Republic of China, and he served as the first national chairman of the US China Peoples Friendship Association
US China Peoples Friendship Association
The US–China Peoples Friendship Association describes itself as "a nonprofit, tax-exempt, 501 educational organization" whose "goal is to develop and strengthen friendship and understanding between the peoples of the United States and China....
from 1974-1976. The Association published his controversial interviews with Chinese premier Zhou Enlai. Hinton cooled toward official policy as market reforms under Deng Xiaoping
Deng Xiaoping
Deng Xiaoping was a Chinese politician, statesman, and diplomat. As leader of the Communist Party of China, Deng was a reformer who led China towards a market economy...
moved away from the type of socialism originally associated with Mao Zedong. Eventually he wrote Shenfan (read as the opposite of Fanshen) and The Great Reversal, and became an outspoken opponent of the Socialism with Chinese characteristics and Chinese economic reform
Chinese economic reform
The Chinese economic reform refers to the program of economic reforms called "Socialism with Chinese characteristics" in the People's Republic of China that were started in December 1978 by reformists within the Communist Party of China led by Deng Xiaoping.China had one of the world's largest...
that the current CPC continues today.
Works
- 1966, Fanshen: A Documentary of Revolution in a Chinese Village, Monthly Review Press, ISBN 0520210409, ISBN 0853450463, ISBN 0394704657, ISBN 1583671757.
- 1970, Iron Oxen - A Documentary of Revolution in Chinese Farming, Monthly Review Press, ISBN 0394713281, ISBN 0853451222.
- 1972, Hundred Day War: The Cultural Revolution at Tsinghua University, Monthly Review Press, ISBN 0853452814, ISBN 0853452385.
- 1972, Turning Point in China: An Essay on the Cultural Revolution, Monthly Review Press, ISBN 0853452156.
- 1984, Shenfan, Vintage, ISBN 0394723783, ISBN 0330283960, ISBN 0394481429.
- 1989, The Great Reversal: The Privatization of China, 1978-1989, Monthly Review Press, ISBN 0853457948, ISBN 085345793X.
- 1995, Ninth Heaven to Ninth Hell: The History of a Noble Chinese Experiment (with Qin Huailu and Dusanka Miscevic), Barricade Books, ISBN 1569800413. About Chen YongguiChen YongguiChen Yonggui was a politician of the People's Republic of China...
and Dazhai. - 2006, Through a Glass Darkly: American Views of the Chinese Revolution, Monthly Review Press, ISBN 1583671412. A critique of Edward Friedman, Paul G. Pickowicz, Mark SeldenMark SeldenMark Selden is a Coordinator of the open access journal The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, a Senior Research Associate in the East Asia Program at Cornell University, and Bartle Professor of History and Sociology at Binghamton University. He graduated from Amherst College with a major in...
, Chinese Village, Socialist State, Yale University Press 1991, ISBN 0300054289.
Literature
- Juliet de Lima-Sison (ed.), Dao-yuan Chou: Silage Choppers & Snake Spirits. The Lives & Struggles of Two Americans in Modern China. Ibon Books, Quezon 2009, ISBN 971-0483-37-2.
See also
- Joan HintonJoan HintonJoan Hinton was a nuclear physicist and one of the few women who worked for the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos. She lived in the People's Republic of China after 1949, where she and her husband Erwin Engst participated in China’s efforts at developing a socialist economy, working extensively in...
– William Hinton's sister who came to China in 1948 and lived until her dealth - Carma HintonCarma HintonCarma Hinton is a documentary filmmaker and Clarence J. Robinson Professor of Visual Culture and Chinese Studies at George Mason University, in Fairfax, Virginia, United States. She was born and raised in Beijing, China, by American parents, and lived there until she was twenty-one. Chinese is...
– William Hinton's daughter, a documentary filmmaker (Morning Sun, The Gate of Heavenly Peace) - Sebastian Hinton - Son of Sebastian Hinton, lawyer and inventor of Jungle Gym
- Carmelita HintonCarmelita HintonCarmelita Hinton was an American progressive educator. She is best known as the founder in 1935 of The Putney School, a progressive boarding school in Vermont.-Early life:...
- Son of Carmelita Hinton, American progressive educator and founder of Putney School in Putney, VT - George BooleGeorge BooleGeorge Boole was an English mathematician and philosopher.As the inventor of Boolean logic—the basis of modern digital computer logic—Boole is regarded in hindsight as a founder of the field of computer science. Boole said,...
- Great-Grandson of George Boole, English Mathematician and inventor of Boolean Algebra
External links
- http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,936255,00.html TIMETimeTime is a part of the measuring system used to sequence events, to compare the durations of events and the intervals between them, and to quantify rates of change such as the motions of objects....
magazine article critical of Hinton, 1954 - Obituary (Guardian UnlimitedGuardian Unlimitedguardian.co.uk, formerly known as Guardian Unlimited, is a British website owned by the Guardian Media Group. Georgina Henry is the editor...
) - Obituary (Monthly ReviewMonthly ReviewMonthly Review is an independent Marxist journal published 11 times per year in New York City.-History:The publication was founded by Harvard University economics instructor Paul Sweezy, who became the first editor...
) - Background Notes to Fanshen
- "William Hinton, Author Who Studied Chinese Village Life, Dies at 85" by Christopher Lehmann-Haupt (The New York TimesThe New York TimesThe New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
)