William H. Hinton
William Hinton | |
---|---|
Born | February 2, 1919 |
Died | May 15, 2004 (aged 85) Concord, Massachusetts, U.S. |
Education | Cornell University (BS) |
Occupation(s) | Writer, political scientist |
Movement | Marxism, Maoism |
Spouses | |
Children | 4, including Carma |
Parent |
|
Relatives | Charles Hinton (grandfather) Ethel Voynich (aunt) Joan Hinton (sister) |
William Howard Hinton (
Early life and education
Hinton was born on February 2, 1919, in
Hinton attended Harvard University for two years, where he was captain of the ski team. In 1939, he raced the famous Inferno race from the summit of Mount Washington, skiing behind Toni Matt, who famously schussed the headwall. Hinton commented in 1996 that "he knew Matt did something special, as a huge roar came up from the crowd." Hinton earned a Bachelor of Science degree in agronomy and dairy husbandry from Cornell University in 1941.[7]
Career
Experiences in China
This section needs additional citations for verification. (April 2022) |
Hinton first visited
Given the attention lavished on the
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 to 1953 during his subsequent visit to China. Hinton was a staff member of the U.S.
Hinton then worked for the United Nations as a tractor-technician, providing training in modern agricultural methods in rural China.[8] When the United Nations program in the communist-led area ended in 1947, he accepted a position teaching at a Party-run university.[8] Shortly thereafter, roughly half the faculty and staff left to join land reform work teams.[8] Hinton asked to join the university-staffed work team going to the village of Zhang Zhuang (now popularly rendered in English as Long Bow, due to Hinton's writing), which was within walking distance of the university[8] and on the outskirts of Changzhi. By 1948, his then-wife Bertha Sneck had also joined him in China.
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 CCP-governed northern Chinese village of Changzhi, forging close bonds with the inhabitants. Hinton aided the locals with complicated CCP 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.
Return to the United States
This section needs additional citations for verification. (April 2022) |
On his return to the United States after the conclusion of the
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 and was a 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. Hinton's book did not shy away from discussing the violence of land reform in Long Bow.[10] In Hinton's view, peasant liberation justified class struggle.[10]
After the death of Edgar Snow, Hinton became the most famous of Americans 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 to 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 socialist market economy ("socialism with Chinese characteristics") and Chinese economic reform that the CCP continues today.
Personal life
In 1945, Hinton married Bertha Sneck, a writer and translator. They had one daughter, Carma Hinton, an academic and documentary filmmaker.[11][12] Hinton and Sneck divorced in 1954. In 1958, Hinton married Joanne Raiford, a metallurgical technician, and had three more children. Raiford died in 1986, and Hinton married Katherine Chiu, an employee of UNICEF, in 1987.
In 2004, Hinton died in Concord, Massachusetts at the age of 85.[13]
Works
- 1966, Fanshen: A Documentary of Revolution in a Chinese Village, Monthly Review Press, ISBN 1-58367-175-7.
- —— (1970). Iron Oxen; a Documentary of Revolution in Chinese Farming. New York: Monthly Review Press.
- —— (1969). "Fanshen" Re-Examined in the Light of the Cultural Revolution. Boston, MA: New England Free Press.
- 1972, Hundred Day War: The Cultural Revolution at Tsinghua University, Monthly Review Press, ISBN 0-85345-238-5.
- 1972, Turning Point in China: An Essay on the Cultural Revolution, Monthly Review Press, ISBN 0-85345-215-6.
- 1984, Shenfan, Vintage, ISBN 0-394-48142-9.
- 1989, The Great Reversal: The Privatization of China, 1978-1989, Monthly Review Press, ISBN 0-85345-793-X.
- 1995, Ninth Heaven to Ninth Hell: The History of a Noble Chinese Experiment (with Qin Huailu and Dusanka Miscevic), Barricade Books, Dazhai.
- —— (2003). "Background Notes to Fanshen". Monthly Review. 55 (5): 45. .
- 2006, Through a Glass Darkly: American Views of the Chinese Revolution, Monthly Review Press, ISBN 0-300-05428-9.
See also
Notes
- ^ a b Lehmann-Haupt, Christopher (22 May 2004). "New York Times Obituary". The New York Times. Retrieved 2014-10-07.
- ISBN 0-312-29502-2.
- ^ Hinton's original patents for the "climbing structure" are U.S. patent 1,471,465 filed July 22, 1920; U.S. patent 1,488,244 filed October 1, 1920; U.S. patent 1,488,245 filed October 1, 1920; and U.S. patent 1,488,246 filed October 24, 1921.
- ^ "Charles Howard Hinton: He Wrote Science Fiction Before the Genre Existed". Princeton Alumni Weekly. 2019-11-04. Retrieved 2020-12-14.
- ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2020-12-14.
- ^ "A Tale of Two Brothers: One in China, Other in US". The World from PRX. Retrieved 2020-12-14.
- ^ Cornell Alumni New. January 29, 1942. Vol. 44, No. 16. p. 215
- ^ OCLC 1048940018.
- ^ "William H. Hinton v. the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau Ofinvestigation, Appellants, 844 F.2d 126 (3d Cir. 1988)". Justia Law. Retrieved 2020-12-14.
- ^ OCLC 1048940018.
- ^ "History and Art History | Faculty and Staff: Carmelita Hinton". History and Art History. Archived from the original on 2021-12-06. Retrieved 2020-12-14.
- ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2020-12-14.
- ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2020-12-14.
References
- "Investigations", Time, 1954, archived from the original on November 16, 2010 Article critical of Hinton.
- Gittings, John (2004), "William Hinton: Eyewitness to the Revolution in a Chinese Village", Guardian Unlimited
- Mage, John (2004), "William H. Hinton (1919-2004)", Monthly Review
- Lehmann-Haupt, Christopher (2004), "William Hinton, Author Who Studied Chinese Village Life, Dies at 85", The New York Times
Further reading
- Dao-yuan Chou (2009). Juliet de Lima-Sison (ed.). Silage Choppers & Snake Spirits. The Lives & Struggles of Two Americans in Modern China. Quezon: Ibon Books. OCLC 419266594..