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Title:
Political Symbols on Wheels: The Role of Automobiles in Early Auto Industrialization in China
Abstract:
While acknowledging the vulnerable industrial foundation left after the civil war, the CCP began to build an independent automobile industry in the early 1950s. These initial years' car manufacturing was primarily a means to fulfill its path to heavy industrialization, which followed the Soviet Union’s model. Motor vehicles like trucks produced were primarily for logistical purposes, thereby preparing for potential warfare. However, this industrialization strategy did not readily introduce passenger cars to the Chinese people. While an independent automobile industry had contributed to the CCP’s industrialization and modernization, it had little connection with everyday mobility. Meanwhile, China issued the household registration system in 1958 to formally restrict population mobilization. In this paper, I argue that at a time when mobility was slow and restrictive, cars paradoxically became a political symbol of the party cadre’s socio-economic privilege and the CCP’s ultimate power. On the one hand, the missing connection between the car and the people, or simply put, the lack of a “people’s car” in the Mao period, demonstrates the CCP’s designer’s role in China’s automobility system. On the other hand, the role of the automobile remained open to redefinition as cars began to enter the everyday lives of the Chinese people.
