‘Decolonisation’ in China, 1949-1959

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.