Peasant Power In China

From 1979-1989 rural life in China was transformed: communes were dismantled and government domination eased. From field work in Hubei and south-central China, Kelliher traces the orgins of reform in family farming, marketing and private entrepreneurship and shows how peasants instigated reform.

Between 1979 and 1989, rural life in China was transformed: the communes were dismantled, tiny family farms were created, government domination of commerce and enterprise was eased, and many entrepreneurial ventures were brought to life. China's rural reform was arguably the most massive single act of privatization in history. Although Deng Xiaoping's government claimed credit for the dramatic innovations, Daniel Kelliher shows that it was the peasants themselves--with no organization or legal political voice of their own--who instigated the most radical changes of the reform era. Drawing on his fieldwork in Hubei Province and neighboring provinces in south-central China, Kelliher traces the origins of reform in three areas--family farming, marketing, and private entrepreneurship--and details the local conspiracies, deceptions, and illegal experiments that peasants used to push state policy in new directions. He also addresses the larger issue of how disenfranchised peasants could affect politics at all under a strong state like that of China. Analyzing the evolution of state socialism in China, Kelliher explains how state ambitions for modernization in the post-Mao era made the state-socialist system vulnerable to rising peasant power. He also shows why the state seized upon economic privatization as a way of securing its political base among the peasantry. The book not only offers a wide-ranging portrait of rural politics in contemporary China but also uses the Chinese case to illuminate state-peasant relations, reform in state socialism, and privatization in other third world nations.

This author researches the Chinese Communists' wartime expansion, according to the documentation recorded by Japanese intelligence, then compares that expansion with that of the Yugoslav Communists.

The role of the peasant in society has been fundamental throughout China's history, posing difficult, much-debated questions for Chinese modernity. Today, as China becomes an economic superpower, the issue continues to loom large. Can the peasantry be integrated into a new Chinese capitalism, or will it form an excluded and marginalized class? Alexander F. Day's highly original appraisal explores the role of the peasantry throughout Chinese history and its importance within the development of post-socialist-era politics. Examining the various ways in which the peasant is historicized, Day shows how different perceptions of the rural lie at the heart of the divergence of contemporary political stances and of new forms of social and political activism in China. Indispensable reading for all those wishing to understand Chinese history and politics, The Peasant in Postsocialist China is a new point of departure in the debate as to the nature of tomorrow's China.

This landmark study of Zengbu, a Cantonese community, is the first comprehensive analysis of a rural Chinese society by foreign anthropologists since the Revolution in 1949. Jack and Sulamith Potter examine the revolutionary experiences of Zengbu's peasant villagers and document the rapid changeover from Maoist to post-Maoist China. In particular, they seek to explain the persistence of the deep structure of Chinese culture through thirty years of revolutionary praxis. The authors assess the continuities and changes in rural China, moving from the traditional social organization and cultural life of the pre-revolutionary period through the series of large-scale efforts to implement planned social change which characterized Maoism - land reform, collectivization, the Great Leap Forward, and the Cultural Revolution. They examine in detail late Maoist society in 1979-80 and go on to describe and analyse the extraordinary changes of the post-Mao years, during which Zengbu was decollectivized, and traditional customs and religious practices reappeared.

"The role of the peasant in society has been fundamental throughout China's history, posing difficult, much-debated questions for Chinese modernity. Today, as China becomes an economic superpower, the issue continues to loom large. Can the peasantry be integrated into a new Chinese capitalism, or will it form an excluded and marginalized class? Alexander F. Day's highly original appraisal explores the role of the peasantry throughout Chinese history and its importance within the development of post-socialist-era politics. Examining the various ways in which the peasant is historicized, Day shows how different perceptions of the rural lie at the heart of the divergence of contemporary political stances and of new forms of social and political activism in China. Indispensable reading for all those wishing to understand Chinese history and politics, The Peasant in Post-Socialist China is a new point of departure in the debate as to the nature of tomorrow's China."--Page ii.

Kay Ann Johnson provides much-needed information about women and gender equality under Communist leadership. She contends that, although the Chinese Communist Party has always ostensibly favored women's rights and family reform, it has rarely pushed for such reforms. In reality, its policies often have reinforced the traditional role of women to further the Party's predominant economic and military aims. Johnson's primary focus is on reforms of marriage and family because traditional marriage, family, and kinship practices have had the greatest influence in defining and shaping women's place in Chinese society. Conversant with current theory in political science, anthropology, and Marxist and feminist analysis, Johnson writes with clarity and discernment free of dogma. Her discussions of family reform ultimately provide insights into the Chinese government's concern with decreasing the national birth rate, which has become a top priority. Johnson's predictions of a coming crisis in population control are borne out by the recent increase in female infanticide and the government abortion campaign.