Nationalisation, Peasantry and Rural Integration in China II 9781032325415, 9781032325422, 9781003315537

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Nationalisation, Peasantry and Rural Integration in China II

This two-volume set examines the process of rural integration in modern China. In short, this is how the state penetrates the countryside and transforms the rural population, thus consolidating the foundation of modern state governance. Drawing on contemporary examples of state integration while observing the background of traditional China, this book systematically examines the entire process of rural reconstruction of China over the course of 100 years since the late Qing dynasty. In addition, the book discusses the special characteristics of each period and current societal trends in the Chinese countryside. This volume explores the following aspects of contemporary state integration: economic, fiscal, cultural, social, lifestyle, and technological. The book will be essential reading for scholars and students in Chinese Studies, Political Science, Rural Studies, and those who are interested in the rural reconstruction of China in general. Xu Yong is Professor at Central China Normal University who currently serves as Chief of its Political Science Department. He has been devoted to the research of rural China and Chinese politics, and has had a significant influence on the research on the relationship between the state and the country based on field study. His representative works include Unbalanced Chinese Politics: A Comparison of City and Country (1992), Villager Autonomy in Rural China (1997), and The State: In the Change of Social Relations (Volume I and II) (2020).

China Perspectives

The China Perspectives series focuses on translating and publishing works by leading Chinese scholars, writing about both global topics and China-related themes. It covers Humanities & Social Sciences, Education, Media and Psychology, as well as many interdisciplinary themes. This is the first time any of these books have been published in English for international readers. The series aims to put forward a Chinese perspective, give insights into cutting-edge academic thinking in China, and inspire researchers globally. To submit proposals, please contact the Taylor & Francis Publisher for the China Publishing Programme, Lian Sun ([email protected]). China and Africa in Global Context Encounters, Policy, Cooperation and Migration LI Anshan China and the Pursuit of Harmony in World Politics Understanding Chinese International Relations Theory Adam Grydehøj and Ping Su Politics of Democratic Breakdown Gangsheng Bao Nationalisation, Peasantry and Rural Integration in China II Xu Yong Geostrategic Psychology and the Rise of Forbearance JIANG Peng China’s Aid, Trade and Investment to Africa Interaction and Coordination Wang Xinying For more information, please visit www.routledge.com/China-Perspectives/bookseries/CPH

Nationalisation, Peasantry and Rural Integration in China II Xu Yong

First published in English 2023 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2023 Xu Yong Translated by Yang Zikun and Chow Cheng The right of Xu Yong to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. English version by permission of Jiangsu People’s Publishing House. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-1-032-32541-5 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-32542-2 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-31553-7 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/b23055 Typeset in Times New Roman by Apex CoVantage, LLC

Contents

1

Planning, Market, and Service: Rural Economic Consolidation

2

Extraction, Distribution, and Investment: Rural Fiscal Integration

21

3

Propaganda, Education, and Literature: Cultural Integration in the Countryside

42

4

Class, Collective, and Community: Rural Social Consolidation

68

5

Consumption, Fertility, and Health: Life Integration in Rural Society

90

6

Discourse, Transportation, and Information: Rural Technological Consolidation

110

Conclusion: The Growing Modern Country and the Fading Traditional Rural Society

125

Epilogue

134

Index

135

1

1

Planning, Market, and Service Rural Economic Consolidation

The production of material goods constitutes the most fundamental human activity. The most prominent feature of traditional rural society, the dispersiveness of agricultural economic activities, in turn, contributes to a high degree of decentralisation of social organisations. Upon the establishment of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), a significant approach for the state to integrate the highly diffused countryside was to extend its power deeply and directly into rural economic activities and implement a planned economic system. Even though the methods of state consolidation underwent significant changes along with the systematic transition from a planned economy to a market economy, the state still maintains its distinctive way of existence and exerts influence on rural society through economic activities within villages.

I From Natural Freedom to Planned Interference Economic activities in the traditional Chinese rural society, by nature, belong to the disseminated natural economy. The state neither directly intervened nor interfered with daily economic operations other than the construction of large-scale public engineering protections. People engaged in agricultural productions at their will and conducted simple exchanges, self-distribution, and consumption. Professor Fei Xiaotong considered this conventional rural politics as “an inactive government (无为政治),” whose economic roots derived from this fact: rural society is a small peasant economy. [E]ach peasant household can become self-sufficient, except for a few items of daily necessity [salt and iron], [and] the household may simply close its doors on the larger economy. . . . if necessary. (Fei, 1998:63) This was also the fundamental reason that propelled Sun Yat-sen to describe China’s social situation as “a sheet of loose sand (一盘散沙).” Natural and free economic activities of the rural society without external intervention continued into the 20th century. While the national government attempted to improve the traditional agricultural economy after founding the Republic of DOI: 10.4324/b23055-1

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China and establishing specific agricultural institutions, their primary functions concentrated on agricultural rejuvenation rather than the renovation of rural economic organisations and operations. Around the forming of the PRC, the CCP, implementing the land reform revolution, distributed lands to the peasants. However, the production model utilising households as basic units remained unchanged, except that this extensive land reform laid down the foundation for the state’s subsequent economic integration of the rural society. Li Fangchun considers that “it is not odd for power and production to create connection, since all regimes, out of financial demands, would concentrate on production” (Li, 2005:247). However, this power-production connection differed in form, channels, closeness, and other aspects. The imperial power symbolically exhibited its attentions to production via worshipping of the heaven, spring ploughing, praying for rains, and additional rituals. Its direct connection with production often limited to levying agricultural taxes without systematic penetration in production areas. In comparison with its imperial counterpart, this connection between modern party power and production demonstrated differences in nature: it concentrated attentively on how to develop production, actively interfered with its procedure, and strived eagerly to take a lead of production. (Li, 2005:247) Soon after its founding, the young PRC initiated the sweeping socialist transformation movement dominated by industrialisation. This social transition unfolded under the stage of severe resource shortages. In order to allocate resources to places with the utmost urgency in national objectives, the state enacted the planned economic system through which it could directly control resources and organise economic activities. While it originated in industrial productions, the planned economy soon expanded rapidly to the agricultural economy and rural society since industrialisation relied on villages as providers for its resources. Consequently, the planned economy, accompanied by organisational alternations inside villages, extended comprehensively to the countryside. The state now interceded head-on in peasants’ daily economic operations and, by this means, enacted unprecedented integrations of rural society. Key features of a planned economy comprised a state’s seizure of economic resources and domination of economic activities in order to obey and serve national economic objectives. After the PRC’s establishment, the state carried out a land reform revolution followed by agricultural cooperative movements, whose primary purposes remained winning peasants’ support and improving the efficiency of agricultural production, but refraining from straight interference and intervention into daily economic operations of villages. The state’s implementation of a planned economic system in the rural areas was related to the policy and state monopoly for purchasing and marketing grains and other agricultural products. At the beginning of the 1950s, the state, with the purpose of directly curbing scarce food resources, started the practice of collective purchase and marketing, or

Planning, Market, and Service 3 planned purchase and supply (计划收购和计划供应), in the literal expression. An administrative order of the government-planned purchase assigned missions accordingly to the lower-level peasants, demanding them to complete these tasks, and obtained the mandatory nature. This policy demanded rural economic operations to adapt to national objectives, thereby enabling the economic system to infiltrate deeply into economic activities in the countryside, formulating a stateoriented/dominant managerial system, and constructing national cognitions of the peasants. The first aspect of rural economic consolidation featured the nationalisation of production activities. As a managerial system, the planned economy depended on ownership for support. During the implementation of this system, the ownership of the villages’ means of production transferred from the initial peasants’ agricultural cooperatives to collective ownership dominated by the state. This was precisely as follows: the establishment of a system of effective control at the production stage . . . through the pathway of cooperation, [which] not only acted in the convenience of hoarding excessive agricultural labour resources and stabilise the peasants on their lands, but also enabled villagers to arrange agricultural productions (with grains as priority) in a timely manner in accordance with national plans, ensuring compatibility between supply of primary produces and demands of the state. (Chen, 1993:575) Planned production in rural areas came from this national policy of collective purchase and marketing. Produce of the peasants constituted the origin of monopolised purchase, whose fulfilment relied on the confirmation of peasants’ land and products as the necessary steps. Under the three fixed quotas (粮食三定) policy— fixed quotas on production, procurement, and marketing—promulgated in 1955, villagers must accomplish missions of national procurement. Subsequent people’s communes further functioned as the consequential organisational support for the planned economy in the countryside. First, the most significant difference between people’s communes and agricultural cooperatives was this integration between governmental administration and economic management (政社合一), or incorporation of political and economic organisations into an integral unit/part, which made political regimes directly wield the right to economic management. Second, people’s communes were regional territorial organisations. In other words, people within a particular administrative territory all became members of this organisation, remained subject to its jurisdiction, and were unable to exit automatically. Production brigades and teams adjudicated by people’s communes were all organisations of production that implemented the vertical and top-down management. Managerial objectives (at the commune level) obeyed and served in the interests of their national counterparts. Production organisations under the planned system employed semi-military management with a collective command of starting and ending the work. Through this management model, the state organised the peasants

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dispersing in production for a long time and enacted collective labour, forming a pyramidal organisational structure with the vast number of peasants as the basis. The will of the state directly intervened at an unprecedented level in the daily production operations of peasants, whose economic activities and behaviours succumbed to state planning and orders. As argued by Li Fangchun, “modern power, instead of generating connections with production in a passive manner, perceived it as the consequential political arena to construct rural leadership authority” (Li, 2005:248). The second aspect manifested the nationalisation of exchange activities. Despite the limited amount of remaining products, the peasant economy still possessed simple economic exchange out of life necessity or the goal of fulfilling more requirements, thus resulting in certain regional markets. These markets, in essence, were a type of location for natural economic exchanges subject to little government intervention. At the beginning of the PRC’s establishment, peasants’ supply and marketing cooperatives emerged in some areas. Though backed by the government, they remained cooperative organisations by nature among peasants. After the implementation of collective purchase and marketing, grains and other agricultural produce fell under the state monopoly operations, and products of the peasants belonged to their collectives, leaving the villagers no right to free dominion. Only some of those products generated by peasants utilising time beyond collective production could expect the possibility of free exchange. The third aspect remained the nationalisation of distributing activities. In traditional China, the state refrained from interrupting peasants’ distribution activities of their products other than tax collections. Along with the establishment of state monopoly purchase and sales, especially given collective ownerships of primary agricultural produce, distribution activities of villages were incorporated into the state system, with the will of the state penetrating straightforwardly into these operations. First, the founding stage of the people’s commune system witnessed the conceiving of a supply system under which collectives provided means of subsistence for individual peasants but differed in scope and types of supply. Collective labour followed the principle of a work point system, which prescribed the calculation of work points according to the amount of collective labour contributed and the apportionment of product according to points and populations. Therefore, allotment of major production was integrated into the national system. Second, the state-first principle was practised in ranking the order of assignment. Agricultural produce belonged to three groups—the state, collectives, and individual peasants—and formed distribution relations based on their destinations and attributes. The rule of these activities was that the state went first, collectives came the second, and then follows those individual villagers (先国家, 再集体, 最后是农民个人). Even those regions with relatively low production quantities still needed first to achieve missions planned by the state, which then evaluated the situations to return their produce, also known as resold grains (返销粮). Because of the collectivisation of products, the right to dominate produce fell within the hands of collectives rather than producers themselves, and collectives’ leaders were capable of determining quantities of products allocated to villagers. This allocation relationship

Planning, Market, and Service 5 resulted in peasants’ strong dependence on the state and collective organisations, who would otherwise lose sources of livelihood. Despite upholding the work point system, amounts of distribution adjudicated by work points were also decided by state actions. The fourth aspect pointed to the nationalisation of consumption activities. Consumption itself was an extremely personal action. With families serving as the basic consumption unit, the consumers choose what and how much to consume. However, these activities rested with sources exploitable for consumption. Under the commune system, since the domination of distribution belonged to collectives, consumption activities were inevitably controlled by these organisations, which influenced what, how much, and how to consume. For instance, in the face of relatively few products, families of peasants would employ the consumption model of “eating solid rice during the busy time and watery porridge during the leisure time (农忙吃干, 农闲吃稀).”1 Particularly, when the people’s communes began to surface, many regions implemented collectivisation of consumption, with collectives unitarily presenting consumer goods, thereby depriving families of purchasing functions. The most typical case was the running of public canteens, an action that had to be halted due to the drastic waste of products it created. Yet the concept of eating from the same big pot (大锅饭), which described the scenario of people consuming the same kind of food regardless of their labour conditions, was nevertheless passed down today. It was precisely through these series of economic activities that enabled the state to deeply infiltrate into the daily behaviours and activities of the daily life of the peasants with whom the state thereby constructed vertical connections. Villagers experienced the presence and influences of the state wherever and whenever in everyday scenarios. Within 20 years, China constructed a highly centralised and unified economic system on the basis of an extremely dispersed rural society, enabling the state power to expand drastically.

II   Autonomous Actions Beyond the Grand Unification  大一统 (大一统) Upon the establishment of the PRC, the planned economic system under the state’s control dominated the society comprehensively. However, unlike urban factories and enterprises, the planned economy in the rural society did not receive a warm welcome and high recognition from peasants. The pursuit of a high degree of uniformity and homogeneity was the key characteristic of this new system. On the other hand, the rural society depended predominantly on nature, and diverse situations in various regions resulted in disparate demands and behaviours of these villagers. Particularly, the staff of the state-owned enterprises received national salaries and enjoyed corresponding welfare, whereas the peasants could only earn work points through their labour and faced great difficulty in availing of public welfare provided by the state. Whether they recognised the state, coercive/mandatory economic consolidation relied on a fundamental baseline: to satisfy the basic needs for livelihoods and the continuously increasing life demands. This situation

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determined that villagers endeavoured to ensure and expand their interests and fulfil their demands by themselves through autonomous economic activities, thus incentivising autonomous actions of the peasants breaking through the system of grant unification, which featured the excessive concentration and regimented governance of the state. As the state comprehensively penetrated and interfered with rural economic activities, the state-peasants connection became the primary and direct economic relation. Villagers straightforwardly faced the state, which dominated the rural society. Since the early 1950s, the state conducted thorough revolutions and transformations in the countryside, and implemented the state-first strategy and system. Expansion of the ruling of executive orders to a certain extent cast shadows over the interests of villagers, who acquired distinctive approaches to express their discontents. From the end of the 1950s to the early 1960s, the rural areas experienced severe economic difficulties due to high quotas, excessive requisition (高指 标, 高征购), and other reasons. To address these struggles, states’ economic policy towards the villages loosened considerably, allowing the farmers to exploit this space and shed off systematic limitations and constraints through their actions, thereby influencing the state’s rural social integration. The first pathway to break through the grant unification was the autonomy within contracted farmland (责任田). The highly concentrated barrack-like management system would inevitably result in messiness, like a swarth of bees (一窝蜂); only empty talks and slogans with little outcome (大呼隆) in production operations; and egalitarianism (平均主义) in distribution activities, thus undermining the efficiency of production. Besides their passive resistance, such as loafing at work, peasants benefited more from the loosening of national policy to discover spaces to satisfy their interests and needs since slacking off would ultimately have a direct impact on the life of the peasants’ community. The most prominent of their proactive behaviours was the contracted lands for autonomous production and operations, which established the tightest connection between their labours within the system and their incomes. At the beginning of the 1960s, the peasants and cadres on the primary level in Anhui and other regions broke the commune system in response to the great Chinese famine (大饥荒), secretly contracted these lands to individual households, and received direct support from some senior leaders. In order to seek legitimacy of this performance, this form of action was termed as contracted farmland. Because it fractured people’s communes’ three-level system of ownership with the production team as its basis (三级所有, 队为基础), contracted land was characterised as land division and labour individualism (分田单 干) and was abolished resolutely. However, villagers’ active productions on their contracted lands indeed generated impacts on the system of grand unification, preventing it from further polarisation, which could generate the absolute nationalisation of production activities. First, the central government issued in-text ordinances and principles to officially confirm the communes’ managerial institutions of the three-level system of ownership with the production team as its basis and emphasised production teams as the basic accounting units, thus correcting and stopping both the ownership-oriented calculation units and the tendency—the

Planning, Market, and Service 7 bigger those accounting units, the better. Second, although production groups constrained to their collective nature could not extend beyond the bottom line of policy and system, various forms of production, including contracting works and produce, were still available within these groups. More importantly, the enthusiasm and activeness demonstrated by the peasants on their contracted lands laid down the groundwork for the subsequent breaking of systematic integrity. The second pathway sheds light on the autonomy within (private) family plots (自留地). The planned economy was a system of mandatory national prescriptions. In rural areas, what to grow, what not to grow, and even when to grow depended fully on the decision of the top government, and producers acquired neither autonomy of production and operations nor dominations over their products. Yet collectives with all means of production belonging to the state control faced substantial difficulties in ensuring the normal life of the villagers. In the early 1960s, one of the most significant approaches to the state’s adjustments in rural principles was to allocate a certain number of (private) family plots to the peasants. Individual peasants within these (private) family plots and reclaimed uncultivated lands obtained not only complete production and operation autonomy but also absolute right to product domination. Therefore, a considerable amount of farmers in autonomous territories fully demonstrated their enthusiasm for production. After the mid-1960s, while (private) family plots, as a component of the “three privates and one contract (三自一包),”2 became the primary manifestation of the non-socialist tendency and were subject to criticisms; they were not cancelled from a systematic perspective. On the contrary, the activeness exhibited by farmers within these (private) family plots constituted indispensable evidence of the holistic breakthrough against the grand unification system. The third pathway referred to the autonomy of the free market. According to the planned economy, exchanges of products were primarily under the state control, and spontaneous markets formed in villages for a long term gradually shrank but did not go extinct completely. Especially during the era of economic adjustment in the early 1960s, trades in rural markets continued to become increasingly active along with the revival of agricultural productions. In market trading activities, the peasants, as the subject of economic operations, conducted trades of their own will to satisfy their needs. These spontaneous and autonomous trades among farmers were perceived as free markets and prone to criticism during the mid-1960s when substantial amounts of village markets were outlawed. The state harshly combated criminal activities of speculation and profiteering (投机倒把) into which these peasants-oriented spontaneous and automatic trades fell squarely. “Markets regulations and cleansing of ‘speculation and profiteering’ had always amounted to the consequential content of economic affairs addressed by the state” (Feng, 2015). However, despite the absence of visible markets, invisible market trading activities continued to survive stubbornly under severe political coercion. Peasants, especially those in Zhejiang Provinces, marched beyond their hometowns and exploited various economic cracks, which could not be comprehensively covered or controlled by the national economy of grand unification, entering cities and visiting

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villages to exchange commodities. These activities of free exchange, which were extremely primordial and grew under the extensive pressure, went beyond the limitations and constraints imposed by the planned economy “ruling all the land,” and developed new economic components, which “became the ‘kindling’ for Deng Xiaoping’s revolution when it came to the post-Mao era” (Feng, 2015:38–53). The fourth pathway pointed to the autonomy of industrial and sideline production. The monopoly of purchase and marketing demanded the peasants to prioritise providing primary agricultural produce to the state and conducting production activities in adaptation to the national requirement. However, adjusting economic policies in the early 1960s still left some room for farmers’ autonomous development of productions, with its core content being permission for families to develop sideline projects. Work Regulations for the Rural People’s Communes (Revised Draft) (农村人民公社工作条例(修正草案)), promulgated in 1961, specifically listed a chapter on commune members’ sideline projects (社员家庭副业). In the mid-1960s, the state emphasised taking grain as the key link (以粮为纲), and some regional cadres concerned that family sidelines would influence food production chose to suppress these side projects and even took coercive measures against chicken and duck raising, claiming to cut off the tail of capitalism (割资本主义尾巴). Yet due to the demands of daily life, family sidelines of the peasants still existed in the long term. In particular, industrial sideline projects, developed in a collective form by some communes and groups, were able to grow rapidly, evolving into a dark house suddenly rising to break through the planned economic system. From the early 1960s to the late 1970s, the planned economy became tighter, with the state power trying harder to penetrate the rural society. On the other hand, the state policy continued to be modified, and the planned economic system did not completely grip the rural economy, whose arenas still maintained spaces for the peasants to act freely. The critical reason behind this situation was that this nationally planned economic system was a coercive integration, which experienced hardships in winning the complete support of villagers if it failed to present them with benefits accordingly. In contrast, it was the peasants themselves that relied on their autonomous actions to compel the loosening of national policy, confront the system of great unification, and alter methods of the state’s rural economic consolidation.

III

Market-Oriented Reforms to Reconstruct Peasants’ Identity

Though the peasants from the 1960s to 1970s fought for more space for survival through their autonomous behaviours and suppressed the absolute nationalisation of economic activities in the countryside, their influences and outcomes remained limited since the highly centralised system did not undergo a fundamental change. Meanwhile, the clash between farmers’ expanding free actions and the system also accumulated great momentum of revolution, waiting for the appropriate moment to burst.

Planning, Market, and Service 9 The systematic breakthrough of the peasants dates back to the late 1970s rural reforms. The essence of these revolutions was to offer them production and operation autonomy to go beyond the traditional planned economy, and marketisation became the trend of direction for reforms. First, the villagers evolved into the subject of production and operation. People’s communes were both production and political units, resulting in agricultural productions and operations directly listening to and complying with the state’s domination. Implementation of household contracting operations rendered village households as independent units. Farmers themselves, evolving into subjects of production and operation activities, determined what to grow, what not to grow, when to grow, and what other specific affairs to do. Daily activities of production and living, such as working hours and breaks, no longer needed delegates of the state and leaders of rural collectives to issue unified commands. The peasants, therefore, obtained distinctive and independent personalities autonomously controlled by themselves rather than relying on the state authority for everything. This was the most consequential change in rural reforms and was termed the second liberation of the peasants, thereby establishing the micro foundation for the marketisation of the rural economy. Second, the peasants acquired spaces for free exchange. One principal outcome of rural economic reform was the alternation of the state monopoly of purchase and marketing, which had been carried on for over 20 years. In 1985, the CPC Central Committee and the State Council issued Ten Policies for Further Invigorating the Rural Economy (《关于进一步活跃农村经济的十项政策》) (or No. 1 Document, hereinafter Ten Policies). The first policy specifies that from 1985, the state stopped sending missions of unified and fixed purchase of agricultural products except for a few types and conducted contracted order and market procurement according to different situations. Produce outside the contract of purchase could go on the market freely. The alternation of collective purchase and marketing not only enabled the peasants to exchange their products at their will but also empowered them to make independent and autonomous decisions of production according to market demands and receive more revenues. Therefore, the state withdrew from the field of micro-production and no longer cast direct interventions on villagers’ particular production activities. The 1985 No. 1 Document explicitly speculated that “no institutions can issue mandatory and prescriptive production plans to the peasants” (Editorial Office of Agricultural Cooperation Campaign in Contemporary China, 1992:1108). Third, the status of the peasants as the subject of distribution was established. Rural economic reforms, by nature, were readjustment of interest relations between the state and the peasants, and this remodelling confirmed the status of villagers as subjects of both production and distribution. The biggest drawback of this traditional system was the rupture between production and distribution. Family operations that predominantly contracted quotas to each household, from a fundamental perspective, were integration of production and distribution to the greatest extent under conditions of collective ownership of means of production. As precisely described by villagers during rural revolutions, “submitting enough for the state,

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reserving enough for the collectives, and the remaining were the peasants (交够 国家的, 留足集体的, 剩下都是自己的).” Under the new system, farmers were entitled to the right to dominate their products, whose subject of distribution were no longer the collectives but individuals. Fourth, the peasants’ consumption underwent complete industrialisation. Consumptions were determined by production and distribution. While farmers’ families under the traditional system remained independent consumption units, the content and form of consumption had no other way but to be dominated by collectives’ productions and distributions. In the post-reform era, the peasants evolved into production and distribution subjects, and their consumption activities became fully personalised and individualised. What and how much to consume hinged on their productivity and preference for consumption. On the whole, compared to the cities and industry sector, villages and agricultural sectors witnessed relatively weaker controlling forces exerted by the system of the national planned economy. Consequently, rural reforms were enabled to achieve the first breakthrough on the national level, and the state basically retreated from the stage of rural microeconomy. However, this action of state exit only meant that it would no longer directly interfere with villagers’ economic activities. The outcome was not weakening the state’s influence but reconstructing peasants’ identification with the nation. The first reason behind this identity-reshaping was the compatibility between reforms and villagers’ demands. Since the 1950s collectivisation, peasants had ceaselessly explored systematic advancement in order to reap more benefits. Unfortunately, constrained by traditional systems and policies, their autonomous actions faced consistent limitations, compelling them to express their requests and interests through passive resistance, which not only was incapable of acting in the state’s favour but also continued to encroach on their self-interests. While rural reforms as an integral systematic transformation were subject to top-down dominations and promotions, they comported well with villagers’ demands and, therefore, received positive espousals from them. From a fundamental perspective, farmers’ support and enthusiasm for reforms derived from the benefits they extracted from these revolutions. Reforms started within the impoverished regions. Through these adjustments, peasants from the impecunious places could live on a full stomach, and their counterparts with no threat of poverty could live a wealthier life, thus reinforcing their recognition and identification with these reform policies. Villagers in the 1980s attributed the improved living standards to “effective policies and the help of the nature (政策 好, 天帮忙).” This expression reflected their support of these reform policies, thereby enhancing the state’s attractiveness to the peasants and their centripetal forces towards the state. While initiating the economic arena, rural reforms directly altered the statepeasants relations. The major outcome was peasants’ entitlement to autonomy during this procedure of power decentralisation. The effectiveness of state consolidation depended on consent and recognition of subjects of integration. Though the state attempted to consolidate scattered rural society into an integral entity during

Planning, Market, and Service 11 the era of peoples’ commune, this integration manifested strong externality and functioned at the sacrifice of farmers’ interests and resulted in a situation of compacted society without inner conformity, as the peasants failed to genuinely identify with the national system in a ceaseless manner. The essence of rural reform was power decentralisation that turned them into subjects of production and operation, and enabled them to receive and enjoy the right to autonomy. “Submitting enough for the state, reserving enough for the collectives, and the remaining were the peasants.” In fact, the idiom indicated the demarcation of certain boundaries between the state, the collectives, and the individuals, and the establishment of a right, which allowed farmers themselves to determine their productions and distribution within the scope of contracted plots. As a result, this means an alternation in the foundation of the state’s rural social consolidation: the obligatory consolidation with externality evolved into internal power consolidation, which depended mainly on decentralising power and transferring interest to the people in order to obtain the peasants’ identification with the state.

IV State Control During the Marketisation Procedure Since the 1980s, the overall tendency of rural reforms was marketisation, through which villagers obtained more and more economic autonomy. Some borrowing from the state-society dichotomous theory summarised this trend as a “retreat of state power and advance of peoples’ power (国权退, 民权进).” This narrative obviously was too simple. In the process of marketisation, despite the state’s withdrawal from the micro-production sector, it did not walk away from the rural society but rather exhibited deeper penetration through a new format to reconstruct the state’s rural social consolidation. The controller of power decentralisation was the state. In fact, China’s marketisation procedure did not emerge spontaneously from the economic society but remained a product of the state’s decentralisation of power, which in turn constructed independent producers of commodities. As a result, the process of marketisation manifested a strong state-led feature. The same logic applied to rural reforms, which by nature documented the state releasing a portion of power down to institutions and the peasants on the primary level. However, how much to deliver, in what ways, and when to delegate were largely determined by the state actions, providing and confirming the scope only in which villagers were able to make autonomous decisions. For instance, the term of farmers’ contraction of land was set by the state for 15 years at first and continued for several years. Rural reforms also altered the state monopoly of purchases and marketing that was immune to change for a long time but failed to achieve a complete opening of agricultural produce operation. Different policies were implemented based on various kinds of produce, some state-ordered purchase and others being completely open and subject to free trade of peasants. The state even enacted monopoly operations towards grain for a while during the 1990s, when it experienced a relative shortage of grains and other critical agricultural products.

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The state initiated to explore new approaches to build economic ties with the peasants and guide rural economic lives. Prior to the revolution, the government regulated the economy in the countryside through a single-direction approach. State monopoly of purchase and marketing, for example, was a top-down obligation under which villagers, to a greater extent, fulfilled an obligation. In the postreform era, the state confirmed and recognised their status as dominant players and began to establish the state-peasant relations via a two-way or mutually more acceptable way, with adaptation from coercive state monopoly purchase to contracted purchase and reward system as the critical symbol. The Ten Policies promulgated by the Central Committee and State Council in 1985 specified “to cancel the collective purchase of grains and cotton and switch to contracted procurement. Commercial departments would shoulder the responsibility to negotiate with villagers before sowing seasons and sign contracts of purchase.” Compared to requisitions, contractual systems enjoyed a greater sense of equality and imposed certain constraints on both parties. Meanwhile, the state also directed farmers’ production and operation activities through a system of incentives. Especially entering the 21st century, it directly subsidised grains and other crucial agricultural products, turning peasants’ productions and operations more favouring the state interests. Systems of contracts and rewards emerged as a novel economic tie formulated between villagers and the state, which exploited contracts, benefits, and other soft power (软性权力) to penetrate and influence the economic activities of the former, and conducted economic integration of the rural society. The prominent fruit of rural reforms was the opening of a market that enabled farmers to participate more in the market economy and transform into a primary player. Therefore, peasants’ role as market dominators in China was modelled by the state to a large extent. To give an example, a specialised household (专业户), large grain-planting household (种粮大户), 10,000 yuan household (万元户), and other concepts all exhibited backgrounds shaped or protected by the government. Deng Xiaoping eloquently expressed this when summarising the reform procedure: In the initial stage of the rural reform, there emerged in Anhui Province the issue of the “Fool’s Sunflower Seeds (傻子瓜子).” Many people felt uncomfortable with this man who had made a profit of 1 million yuan. They called for action to be taken against him. I said that no action should be taken because that would make people think we had changed our policies, and the loss would outweigh the gain. (Deng, 1993:371) National policies and systems still cast impacts on and constrained behaviours of the peasants, who were incapable of becoming the sole Homo economicus, who were irrelevant to policies and institutions of the state and able to dominate themselves based on sole economic rationality. In contrast to the state-led planned economy, the market counterpart presented considerable autonomy and spontaneity. During China’s marketisation process,

Planning, Market, and Service 13 orders and disciplines necessary to the functioning of the market economy not only were formulated by the markets themselves but also paid attention to the regulations and norms of the government. Together with the development of the rural market economy, the national administrative authority for industry and commerce initiated to extend into the countryside and fulfilled its function of management and supervision towards rural economic life. Meanwhile, other state executive authorities in relation to the market economy also expand into the countryside. Chinese rural marketisation procedure was full of paradoxes. The government strived to establish market subjects on the one hand and often interfered with rural economic life straightforwardly on the other hand. While the government, after the rural reform, usually refrained from imposing mandatory production plans downwards, various government economic missions still existed in a sheer quantitative magnitude. The accomplishment of top-down governmental economic quotas and assignments remained the obligation of primary institutions and the villagers. To exemplify, though adjustment of economic structure ought to be a peasant-owed task subject to only the government’s guidance, the state frequently took advantage of its specialised power and sphere of influence to demand villagers to refine the economic structure in the rural economy. Yet the peasants became the economic subject after the reform, thereby undermining the effectiveness of these direct governmental economic interventions.

V Servicing Penetrations of the State in Rural Economy It was the general trend of modern state-building for the state power to infiltrate into the rural society and consequently transform and consolidate dispersed and backward traditional rural society. Discussion on the state’s construction of villages in the academia was often anchored around state regime crafting, which in turn focused on the sinking of national institutions and organisations. In fact, modern states’ penetrations into rural society continued to diversify. Except for controlled penetration advanced by regime institutions, there existed another crucial way: by providing public services, the government injected its power into rural society to form peasants’ mechanisms of dependence, compliance, and identification with the state. During the procedure of a series of national controlled and regulatory penetration, such as the regime downward to rural units, the political party entering the countryside, policy penetration into villages, and legal infiltration (政权下乡, 政党 下乡, 政策下乡, 法律下乡), China came up with another particular method of state entanglement—to deliver public services to the peasants through seven stations and eight bureaus (七站八所), and other institutions, thus infiltrating the state power into daily production and living of the peasants during services. The establishment of the PRC was a major landmark in its modern state-building. First, the state enjoyed unprecedentedly strong managerial power that could extend to every arena of the society and stretched all the way to villages and the countryside, which were beyond the reach of traditional China. Second, the state attached excessive significance to productions. Though revolution for a long time constituted the main theme of the nation, production continued to occupy fairly

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remarkable positions, even during the radicalised era of the Cultural Revolution that also emphasised galvanising revolutions and promoting production (抓革命, 促生产). Third, regime institutions directly commending and organising productions in order to invigorate productions contributed to the national collectivisation of peasants’ productions and livings. Fourth, in response to the demand for production incentivisation and improvement of producing and living conditions, the state enjoyed an unparalleled function of social management. In addition to implementing large-scale public infrastructures, the most conspicuous difference between modern China and its traditional predecessor was that public services, along with the downward of regime power, also penetrated into rural units, whose main character was the founding of seven stations and eight bureaus. The so-called seven stations and eight bureaus is a general term referring mainly to institutions of social management and public services established at the county level or public service organisations often known in China. Falling under government administration, these institutions are different from their managerial counterparts under the government, as they perform the duty of social regulations and public services instead of political dominations. Seven stations and eight bureaus did not exist on their own but were extensions of corresponding state institutions to the rural society, continuing to increase their numbers along with the state’s comprehensive interventions into rural economic and social life. The establishment and development of seven stations and eight bureaus epitomised the rapid expansion of the state’s functions of social management and public services, which directly expanded into rural society and constituted the service downwards to the rural units (服务下乡). Service downwards is a way for the state to penetrate the countryside. If regime infiltration into the rural units described the state’s exploitation of the regime’s coercive power to control the rural society, service infiltration portraited its power extension through delivering public services to the peasants, remained a major complement to the regime downward, and was capable of playing the roles unable to be fulfilled by the state’s regime consolidation. First, seven stations and eight bureaus belonged to institutions above the county level or the functional department (条条). A multilayered Chinese government manifested vertical functional and horizontal regional (块块) relations between the central committee and regional levels. In the countryside, primary-level governments demonstrating strong characteristics of localisation and relatively concentrated consanguineous colour could possibly resolve the top-down vertical power. Seven stations and eight bureaus created to facilitate these top-down counterparts were mainly responsible for higher-level competent business units and acquired more unique publicity. Able to satisfy the needs of more people via their public services, they could also reinforce the state’s hierarchical consolidation of the rural society. Second, the functions of seven stations and eight bureaus had penetrated deeply into the daily production and living activities of villages, formulating a network of service with which the peasants’ daily production and life constantly interacted. While villagers did not need to contact government institutions every day, they could neither live without water and electricity nor stay away from technological

Planning, Market, and Service 15 promotion and supply and marketing of products. Since seven stations and eight bureaus were all state-administrated, the result of their service was to bring state powers into the daily life and productions of the village communities. This nexus of power enabled farmers to constantly experience the existence of the state. Third, seven stations and eight bureaus, especially the creation of service institutions, reinforced the peasants’ reliance on the government. Through enacting service delivering agents, the government provided villagers with public service products that were beyond their self-sufficient capacities to alter their daily operations. For instance, in rice-producing regions, governmental institutions supplied farmers with seeds for hybrid rice, contributing to the wide promotion of topquality and high-yield paddy. The government organised farmers to establish reservoirs that allowed more regions prone to drought to water their lands and improve their output. Peasants encountering pest disasters in economic activities turned to the government for technical support and purchased their agricultural equipment and machinery from government branches, which they also asked for assistance for repairing. Fourth, the founding of the seven stations and eight bureaus was also beneficial for strengthening the peasants’ identification with the state. The effectiveness of political ruling is ultimately established upon the consent of the governed. If traditional state identification relied on some kind of natural heritage, its counterpart for the modern state was determined more and more by services provided to the citizens. This was also a critical reason the PRC, upon its establishment, always emphasised the government as the people’s government and considered serving the people as the purpose. In rural society, the services of the seven stations and eight bureaus could directly satisfy the demands of the peasants, who, through receiving this service, sensed the national characters of the government, thereby constructing their national identity. By creating the seven stations and eight bureaus, the state, on the one hand, unprecedentedly disseminated public services to the rural society and facilitated the development of rural economic society, and brought the state power into the countryside through public services to achieve the state’s further consolidation of the rural society on the other hand. It was fair to say that the service downward to the rural units was not coercive but more effective soft integration. However, the establishment and development of the seven stations and eight bureaus also brought forward some new problems that undermined the state’s effective rural social consolidation. One, institutions increased rapidly. Some of their main functions were not service but management. While seven stations and eight bureaus, in general terms, referred to public service institutions on the country level, in reality, their quantities continued to be augmented with their duties of management exceeding those of services. For instance, forestry stations, traffic regulation stations, land management stations, police stations, finance stations, taxation stations, and others shouldered more of the duties of management. Even water conservatory stations, power supply stations, family planning service stations, and other stations also obtained managerial functions. Since stations belonged to a governmental sequence and

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often centred around core governmental duties in their actual works, they perceived compliance to and service for government management as main objectives. Two, the government-operated nature of the seven stations and eight bureaus resulted in a single channel of public service whose quality could not fully satisfy the need of farmers. This was due to the fact that top-down established stations received their incomes paid by their higher authorities, to which they remained responsible. The unitary nature of the subject of service provided farmers with no more choices, and service providers themselves were also unable to improve their service quality through competition in order to fulfil the demands of the objects of services. Especially government-operated nature, it could easily result in the bureaucratisation of service institutions. The object of service could only ask for someone, find connections, and pull the network (托人, 找路子, 拉关系). Whether institutions were able to provide electricity or water, or how much to provide, was determined by managers rather than service targets. Three, services entirely provided by the government would necessarily demand an increase in its expenditure. The more service products needed for rural economic and social development, the more service products were provided by the government, whose expenditure continued to increase. However, more and more public institutions and personnel did not guarantee the proportionality of service provided and experienced the situation of people floating in the workplace. Particularly after the rural social reform, regional and primary financial resources remained relatively weak to satisfy the functional and operational demands of service institutions. Consequently, these institutions plagued by financial shortages went to the peasant for payments, thus surfacing the phenomenon of self-interesting of service as charging. Due to the unitary and government-run nature of service institutions, their fees were also arbitrary and did not require competition from multiple entities to establish service prices, contributing to lower service quality and higher service prices, which increased the burden on farmers. The increasing fee-based services evolved into a heavy financial burden for farmers, which not only hampered their identification with the state but also caused them to refuse services and generate a centrifugal force with the state.

VI

Realising State Reconstruction During Public Service Improvement

Given onerous burdens on the peasants’ shoulders, the state initiated rural tax reform in 2002, particularly abandoning agricultural tax that had been passed down years after years. After this annulment, some regions began to conduct township reforms and village-county integrations to reduce the number of employees maintained by national finance and bring down financial expenses. During this procedure, governmental service organisations as service deliverers of rural economic activities also ranked among the reforms, and certain regions started the whole campaign by reforming service institutions. This situation greatly reduced governments’ capacity of penetration to serve the village economy and presented new

Planning, Market, and Service 17 challenges in front of rural governance. It was also the main reason rural reforms failed to achieve any effective results and triggered general discussions in the new century. Perceived as the second rural reform, rural tax reform often became an analogy of the first rural reform, which mainly prioritised family operations and was considered as a reform by retreating state power and advancing people’s power (国权退,·民权进). This analogy was obviously oversimplified because the state obtained more than one character. From the functional perspective, it could be divided into controlling the state and servicing the state. As rural economic society continued to develop, direct state interferences during the era of the planned economic system would gradually reduce, whereas its service to economic activities in the countryside would become more and more, indicating that the state needed to actualise its rebuilding while improving public services. The development of rural economic society resulted in the swiftly increasing demands for social services. Household operations prevailed after the rural reform. Chinese rural households were small in terms of their populations or production scales and could be called small farmers (小农户). Meanwhile, connections between rural economic activities and external environments continued to grow, resulting in the rapid socialisation of means, procedures, and outcomes of production, known as the “socialised small agricultural economy” (Xu, 2006:2–8). Providing more opportunities for economic development to the peasants, socialisation of production also brought forward more risks comprised of both natural and more social risks, which evidently appeared unbearable and unresolvable to peasants themselves in the unit of households and relied more on social services exogenous to rural households. Following the rural reform, due to household operations, the self-serving capacity of the community established on the basis of a collective economy weakened dramatically. This capacity derived from village collectives’ profit reduction and reserving continued to deteriorate to a greater degree. Public services formed from rural economic and social development were also beyond the limits of rural communities, including seeds, pesticides, agricultural machinery, pest controls, water conservancy projects, roads, and others, all of which required more subjects to fulfil farmers’ requirements of socialisation of productions, with the government being the most critical service subjects. Therefore, the agricultural economy remained a decentralised economic field with slim profit margins and a relatively longer cycle of production. The general profit-oriented market subjects were unusually less inclined to participate in service production, thus rendering the government, the main supplier of public services, as the consequential subject of service. At the same time, from the angle of modern state-building, the state functions were able to change. One, along with economic and social developments, the state’s economic integrations leaned closer and closer to providing public services to the society rather than through direct economic intervention. The state primarily constructed the national authority via public services, portraying itself as an indispensable useful entity rather than a by-product of the society. In terms of pathways of modern state-building, many states pursued power penetration and

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service-producing simultaneously, exploiting service to obtain legitimacy of power infiltration. Yet these two actions in China were mismatched. For a considerably long period, the state more often extracted rather than provided. This historical debt needed to be paid in a timely manner. Two, from the governmental hierarchy perspective, the state’s feature of political governance became stronger on the higher levels, whereas its feature of public services was more and more prominent on the lower level. The basic duties of governments on the primary level were supplying public services to their respective regions. It was precisely this ubiquitous service that channelled the state authority deeply into general daily life and engaged in the economic consolidation of dispersed households of small farmers. Since China’s pathway of modern state-building operated under the urban-rural binary social structure to a large extent and even developed on the foundation at the expense of the interests of the peasants, national public services did not move downward together with regime construction. In the face of the promotion of modern state construction and increasing autonomous consciousness of farmers, the prior approach was too difficult to maintain and must go through reforms. Due to the reasons stated earlier, the rural governing system after rural tax reform underwent critical exchange—functions of primary-level government transferred from management-oriented to a service-oriented model, demanding further strengthening rather than diminishing rural public services. During this procedure, the service penetration of the state towards the rural society evolved to be more prominent. Of course, the state should reinforce the effectiveness of service instead of simply retaining or establishing institutions during this service downward. This demanded the reconstruction and improvement of the system of rural public service through the reform of village and county systems. The first layer of reform demanded the establishment of a primary governmental system oriented by public services. For a considerably long period, governments’ function of public service was relatively weakened. Instead of interest arbitrators, they played the role of stakeholders and even interest competitors with the people, thereby necessarily influencing the peasants’ identification with the government and even causing the state-peasant antagonism. The Report to the 17th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (The Editorial Team of This Book, 2007) proposed to “accelerate the reform of the administrative system and build a service-oriented government,” and emphasised that “we need to improve the government responsibility system and the public service system, promote e-government and strengthen social management and public services.” The first step of county and village systematic reform ought to be the positioning of village and county governments or creating a system of public-service-oriented governments on the primary level. The amount of effective public service provided to the local sites constituted mainly objectives and obligations of primary governments. The second layer of reform called for an institutional setup that centred around the goal of public services. The establishment of institutions obtained a heritage. Since the PRC’s founding, the creation of governmental institutions, including seven stations and eight bureaus, was anchored around the order of political governance, economic development, social regulation, and public service. Together

Planning, Market, and Service 19 with the goal-setting of a service-oriented government, the institutional setup of a grassroots governmental system is also required to turn its focus on public service, whose functions ought to be and should be shouldered by the government instead of being pushed to the general society. Meanwhile, institutions and functions of public services should be divested from previous government management in order to achieve their simplification, professionalisation, and specialisation, thus avoiding weakening public services by operating around the central work of the township party and government. The third layer of reform formulated diversified service subjects and operational mechanisms. Subjects of services before were mainly state-led and inevitably rendered bureaucratisation of operational models. Reform and improvement of the rural public service system demanded categorisation based on service demands, a feature of service products, and other elements to achieve this variation of service subjects and operational mechanisms. Services in small quantities depended on cultivating personnel to support the service. More services could rely on the method of government procurement to introduce a competition model into public services, “supporting services rather than the personnel,” to ensure that service subjects were able to provide service products with lower prices and better qualities. In addition to governments, economic organisations, communities, and individual persons were all allowed to participate in supplying public services and become service subjects to satisfy these multi-layered and diversified service demands of the peasants. The fourth layer of reform pointed to public finance to support public services. The reason the traditional system of public service encountered shocks during systematic reform of the country and villages was fundamentally the shortage of financial resources. Sustaining public affairs or personnel required the guarantee of public service. Implementing the strategy of encouraging industry to support agriculture in return for agriculture’s earlier contribution to its development and encourage cities to lead rural areas (以工业反哺农业, 以城市带动乡村), the state initiated to increase its investment to the rural society, and the majority of spending was used for public service. Of course, compared to the increasing demand for public services, public financial capacity always remained limited. In the countryside, crowdfunding of villagers for public welfare undertaking also constituted the major financial source to fulfil their demands for public services, especially the need for differentiated services. To be sure, this collective fundraising remained supplementary to governments’ public finance and could not become a reason for the state to reduce public financial investments. The fifth layer of reform considered the demands of services as the criteria for service provision and the satisfactory level of service objects as the benchmark of service effectiveness. The traditional system of public service was a top-down operational mechanism, which caused a mismatch between services and the peasants’ actual demands, and service products needed not receive testing and approval from service recipients. Transforming the operational mechanism of public service was indispensable to reforming and improving this system. Service providers should base their actions on service needs and provide what the peasants need.

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Their product needed to be verified and recognised by service recipients, whose satisfaction level became the primary standard to test the service work.

Notes 1 This so-called consumption model of eating solid rice during the busy time and watery porridge during the leisure time refers to this situation: consuming cooked rice at the labour-intensive period of agricultural activities can resist hunger. Drinking watery porridge during the relaxing period of agricultural activities with a lower labour intensity can save the grains. 2 The term three privates and one contract (三自一包) refers to a policy during the national economic adjustment in the 1960s. The three privates refer to plots for private use of families, free markets, and the sole responsibility for profits and losses. The one contract means contracting to households. In the mid-1960s, this policy was perceived as the capitalist pathway and received criticisms.

Reference List Chen, J., et al. (1993). Rural Socioeconomical Changes in China (1949–1989), 1993 Edition. Shanxi: Shanxi Economy Press. Pp. 575. (陈吉元等:《中国农村社会经济变迁 (1949–1989)》, 山西经济出版社1993年版, 第575页。). Deng, X. (1993). The Selected Works of Deng Xiaoping, Vol. 3. Beijing: People’s Publishing Press. (《邓小平文选》第3卷, 人民出版社1993年版, 第371页。). Editorial Office of Agricultural Cooperation Campaign in Contemporary China. (1992). Historical Materials of Agricultural Cooperation since the Founding of the People’s Republic of China. Beijing: CPC History Press. (《当代中国农业合作化》编辑室:《 建国以来农业合作化史料汇编》, 中共党史出版社1992年版, 第1108页。). The Editorial Team of This Book. (2007). Supplementary Reading of the Report to the Seventeenth National Congress of the Communist Party of China, 2007 Edition. People’s Publishing Press. (本书编写组:《十七大报告辅导读本》, 人民出版社2007年 版, 第31页。). Fei, X. (1998). From the Soil: The Foundations of Chinese Society-the Institution of Reproduction, 1998 Edition. Beijing: Peking University Press, Pp. 63. (费孝通:《乡土中国 生育制度》，北京大学出版社1998年版，第63页。). Feng, X. (2015). “A Study of Free Market Policy of the CPC from 1958 to 1963,” CPC History Studies 2015(2), Pp. 38–53. (冯筱才:《一九五八年至一九六三年中共自由市 场政策研究》,《中共党史研究》2015年第2期，第38–53页。). Li, F. (2005). “‘Fanshen’ and ‘Production’ in the Northern Land Reform: On the DiscourseHistory Contradiction Related to the Modernity of the Chinese Revolution,” in Huang, Z. (ed.) Rural China, Vol. 3. Beijing: Social Science Academic Press, Pp. 247, 248. (李放春:《北方土改中的“翻身”与“生产”—中国革命现代性的一个话语历史矛盾 溯考》 , 收于黄宗智主编《中国乡村研究》第三辑 ,社会科学文献出版社 2005年 版,第247、248页。). Xu, Y. (2006). “Farmer Household Re-Cognition and Socialized Small Agricultural Economy Construction,” Journal of Huazhong Normal University (Humanities and Social Sciences) 2006(3), Pp. 2–8. (徐勇《“再识农户”与社会化小农的建构》,《华中师范 大学学报(人文社会科学版)》,2006年第3期，第2–8页。).

2

Extraction, Distribution, and Investment Rural Fiscal Integration

The concept of finance (财政) in Chinese contains two elements: finance (财) and politics (政), with the former laying down the foundation of the latter. The state relies on the fiscal capacity both for its establishment and penetration of society. Citizens thriving on national finance turn it into a base for nurturing their national identity and recognition. The state-building phase of the modern state is a procedure of financial centralisation and infiltration. However, it all starts with a rural society with a relatively weaker fiscal capacity.

I Imperial Grains, National Taxes:1 State Extraction and Penetration Since the 20th century, one of the significant changes in the state’s rural governance is the comprehensive deepening penetration of state power organisations into the rural society. (State’s rural governance underwent a significant change: the comprehensive deepening penetration of state power organisations into the rural society.) Accompanying this trend was the drastic increase of personnel who needed to be maintained by taxes. Meanwhile, wars in successive years resulted in the hypergrowth of the military expanse. Invasion of foreign states also exacerbated the scarcity of the state’s financial resources. The first half of the 20th century epitomised the financial crisis faced by the state. On the one hand, while the production could not proceed normally, traditional agriculture continued to function as the major source of national financial income. On the other hand, the rapid expansion of the fiscal expanse prevented the government from making ends meet, thereby compelling the state to extract more financial resources from the rural areas. As this extraction went way beyond the scope of tolerance of the rural society and was subject to no systematic limitation, violent extract remained the predominant method and was envisaged as the endless exploitation of the country through coercive force. Together with the state power’s infiltration into the rural society was the escalating burden on the shoulders of the peasants. Not only was this penetration incapable of effective rural integration/consolidation, but it also contributed to the deviation of the rural society from the state power. This was precisely the reason behind the governance failure of the warlords and the Kuomintang (KMT) after the Qing dynasty. Consequently, American scholar Philip Kuhn DOI: 10.4324/b23055-2

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perceives national taxes and the relevant agency problem as the “fundamental question” of modern state-building (Kuhn, 2003:22). The second half of the 20th century witnessed a prominent breakthrough in the state’s fiscal consolidation in rural society. Starting with the land system, the government eradicated the landlord class, directly connected national taxes with rural populations, and turned straightforwardly into the production area in order to extract financial resources. Only until the Communist Party of China (CCP) came into power did the national finance enter a new and relatively stable era in the 20th century. Since the founding of the CCP, it has paid attention to the idea of realising benefits to the tiller (耕者有其利) while achieving the goal of the land to the tiller (耕者有 其田). In the revolutionary base areas, the CCP distributed lands to peasants and levied taxes according to land and crops harvested at the same time. Tax at that time was paid in the form of public grains (公粮). The term “public grains” continued to be used in the founding of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Following the state formation was the land reform, the destruction of the landlord class, and the socialist rebuilding of agriculture, which implemented the collective ownership of land, product, and labour. In 1958, the PRC promulgated the Regulations concerning the Agricultural Taxes of the People’s Republic of China (《农 业税条例》). Since then, rural population, rural land, and agricultural production have become closely integrated, rendering it the consequential method for the state to extract financial sources and consolidate rural society. Upon its establishment, the PRC was still an agricultural state. The agricultural population constituted the majority of the population, and agriculture remained the source of key financial income. Primitive accumulation of large-scale industrial construction thereupon also came predominantly from agriculture. Therefore, the PRC has placed a high value on agricultural production since the founding of this young state. If physiocracy advanced by traditional rulers were merely symbolic rituals, then the emphasis on agricultural production came into practice after the PRC acceded to power. The regime power of the party and the state expanded all the way to rural society and organised peasants through the organisational structure of production. Under the rural people’s commune, production brigades and teams were established, and every rural population was a member of the production organisation. The state managed production in an administrative way, assigning production tasks and promoting agricultural production. Benefiting from the state’s strong promotion, agricultural production developed rapidly and laid down the foundation that enabled the state to obtain more financial income from the agricultural arena. Both agricultural development and resources extracted by the state from agriculture were unprecedented after 1949. Another characteristic exhibited by the state in rural resource extraction after its establishment is the close linkage between the agricultural production population with agricultural taxes. In traditional society, the state designed the household registration (户口) with the purpose of obtaining taxes. However, there was no direct relation between the former and product distribution. After 1949, the policy of state monopoly for the purchase and marketing of agricultural products began

Extraction, Distribution, and Investment 23 to take place. Policies of household registration, agricultural taxes, and state monopoly of agricultural trades envisaged into a trinity. The national household registered populations were divided into households specialising in growing marketable grain and non-agricultural registered residences or non-agricultural households and agricultural households. All agricultural households must devote themselves to agricultural production and fulfil the obligation to pay agricultural taxes simultaneously. By restraining a large number of populations on the land to perform agricultural production, the state ensured the extraction of more resources from the agricultural discipline. The formation of the people’s commune organisation provided great convenience to the state’s resource extraction from rural areas. In the traditional society, where the state power system had not reached the countryside, the central government obtained relatively fewer controlling forces over those regions. One significant reason was that the agricultural surplus was too little to support the substantial administrative system. Along with this was the low degree of organisation in the countryside. The excessively high cost of national taxation, in turn, hampered the state’s capability to consolidate the rural society. While implementing the land reform policy with the coming of the 20th century, the state realised that great cost persisted in the face of hundreds of millions of peasants or the subject of tax payment. After the enactment of the socialist rebuilding of agriculture, the rural population entered the people’s commune organisation, which belonged to organisations “integrating governmental administration with economic management (政社合一).”2 All the state needed to do was to establish connections with tens of thousands of subordinate organisations. The product distribution of commune organisations followed the principle of the state went first, collectives came the second, and then follows those individuals (先国家, 后集体, 再个人). This principle ordered households to submit public grains first, following the surplus grains, and the rest of the corps became the food of peasants. Collective organisations were units of taxation, thereby presenting consequential organisational convenience for the state to acquire resources from the countryside. In addition to products, the state was also able to obtain non-reimbursable labour resources from rural areas. Labours required for the state to construct large-scale public works came predominantly from the non-reimbursable supply of the rural population. The reason behind this phenomenon was that the labour of commune members belonged to the communes themselves. Although no payment fell on the shoulders of the state, members’ compensations were afforded by communes, whereas this type of reimbursement still originated from the production of both commune organisations and peasants. The establishment of the PRC brought forward the unprecedented increase in the state’s fiscal extraction capability and the elevated strength of financial penetration. The explanation lies in the fact that the Chinese Revolution was a peasantcentred democratic revolution, and the PRC is a state depending on the peasantry and the workers on a class basis. Resources extracted by the state belonged not to the emperor but to the people, essentially, and this constituted the major reason public grains as national taxes replaced the imperial grains and national taxes in

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the traditional society. Following the state’s resource extraction from the countryside, a considerable amount of resources again returned to the rural areas, specifically transforming into the input for constructing water conservatory and hydraulic engineering projects. The building of hydraulic projects, highways, and other infrastructure in rural areas has been unparalleled since 1949. Not only did these public projects facilitate agricultural production, but they also enabled peasants to observe the national investment, thereby bringing the state image into peasants’ daily working and living. Apparently, compared to the state extraction, the relatively less state input imposed heavier burdens on peasants, whose lives were not improved accordingly, and hindered their enthusiasm for production. The rural revolution emerged in this result. With the Household Contract Responsibility System being the main component, the rural reform was a comprehensive reform of the rural regulation system and a readjustment of the state-peasant relation. It brought forward alterations in the state’s fiscal consolidation/integration of the rural society, emphasising the protection of peasants. The revolution initiated in 1978 experienced a significant change in the macroenvironment compared to its counterpart in the 1950s. After almost three decades of development, a considerable industrial scale had been formed, and industrial production had made an appreciable contribution to national financial income. In other words, the source of the state’s financial income was no longer limited to agriculture but expanded into a more non-agricultural domain. Meanwhile, the cleavage between the industry and agriculture, and the urban-rural divide, continued to expand steadily. To address pressing problems of agriculture and the countryside, and mobilise the enthusiasm of peasants, the state attempted to refrain from rural resource extraction amidst the rural revolution and enacted the guideline of giving more, requiring less and giving more freedom (多予少取放活), or lowing taxes and reducing corvée, resting with the people (轻徭薄赋, 与民休息) in the traditional society. Since the rural reform, the central government’s rural fiscal extraction reduced gradually, whereas the investment in the countryside continued to escalate. The 1978 revolution advanced substantial alterations to the pattern of rural resource extraction for the state. First, after the termination of the people’s commune organisation system, the Household Contract Responsibility System turned rural households into both production and business entities, and subjects of taxation. The Household Contract Responsibility is derived from the responsibility system in production. This responsibility meant that peasants not only could automatically produce and acquire the income of production and management, but they also accomplished tasks of the government, including those of paying various taxes. Second, the state, after the revolution, instituted administrative centralisation and fiscal decentralisation. Finance at the subnational government level remained relatively independent. Fiscal burdens of subnational governmental administration fell on local populations and rural populations in agricultural areas. Although agricultural taxes levied by the central government did not increase, various charges generated by the subnational government taking a free ride on

Extraction, Distribution, and Investment 25 agricultural taxes escalated endlessly, with the amount excessively exceeding the resources extracted by the central government. If following the principle of power unity, and integration of administrative and fiscal power, the central government should shoulder the necessary administrative costs of subnational governments. The disunity between administrative and fiscal authority/power undoubtedly resulted in the different ratios of rural resource extraction owing to differences in regional industrial structures. Resources absorbed from rural areas in coastal developed regions constituted a very small percentage of the whole picture, whereas resources extracted from the countryside in the middle agricultural regions accounted for a greater percentage. Third, the national industrialisation and urbanisation process accelerated, and more and more state goals emerged gradually after the revolution. Many objectives were set from the perspective of state modernisation, resulting in the booming of various target-hitting and upgrading activities. However, the finance for actualising these targets in the rural areas came mostly from the peasants. For instance, the nine-year compulsory education (九年制义 务教育) implemented in the 1990s by the state demanded the improvement of facilities of rural primary and middle schools. Fees for facility renovation came from fundraising among peasants, a rural resource extraction activity in the name of the state. Consequently, while the state desired to rest with the people and reduce resource extraction from the rural society after the reform, in reality, it still absorbed a large amount of wealth, only exhibiting considerable changes in the method and direction of this type of extraction. It was precisely the overextraction of resources and severe urban-rural divide that impeded peasants’ enthusiasm. With the coming of the 21st century, the state abolished agricultural tax entirely. The 2,000-year-old history of levying taxes on the rural population came to an end. The state’s fiscal consolidation/integration of the rural society entered a new era. Fundamentally, this practice was put into power with the aim of protecting peasants and agricultural production under industryagriculture and urban-rural cleavages. Thereafter, the state’s fiscal consolidation/ integration of rural society evolved from extraction to investment.

II

Burden: Fiscal Legitimacy and National Identity

The method of peasant national taxation demonstrated the prominence of the state’s fiscal consolidation of the rural society while also strengthening the peasant-state relationship. Taxation remained the major linkage between peasants and their state, especially under the decentralised small-scale peasant economic conditions, and it became a natural tradition for peasants to submit taxes to the state. However, this tradition was not boundless. While peasants were obligated to submit taxes, the amount they had to pay was subject to certain limitations. Peasants exhibited approval to the state if the taxes’ amount was within their scope of tolerance, and they displayed opposing attitudes if the national taxation became unbearable, thereby generating the so-called fiscal legitimacy issue. Fiscal legitimacy is a concept of political legitimacy understood from the financial perspective. It mainly refers to people’s recognition of the state’s ruling due

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to national finance and comprises both the fundamental financial system and specific financial actions.3 In traditional China, peasants agreed with the basic financial system of the state and perceived the submission of imperial grains and national taxes as an unalterable and perfectly justified principle. However, they held a different attitude towards specific financial activities, which faced certain limitations. This boundary was their existence’s need. Taxes levied by the state could not threaten the basic existence of peasants, who would demonstrate disapproval or opposition otherwise. Since taxes in traditional states were mainly an obligation of peasants, and there were also far too many kinds of commitments, we choose the term “peasants’ burdens” to encompass taxes paid and labour provided under peasants’ obligations in general. In traditional China, the foundation of legitimacy in state ruling was directly correlated to the peasants’ burden. Specifically, the lesser the peasant burden, the stabler the state governance became. Heavy/ponderous peasants’ burdens that dragged people deeper into dire situations resulted in turmoil/upheaval in the political society. The Great Learning (《大 学》) goes as follows: Hence, the accumulation of wealth is the way to scatter the people, and the letting it be scattered among them is the way to collect the people (财聚则民 散, 财散则民聚). (Legge, 1971:376) The severity of taxation is directly tied to popular support as well as the prosperity and stability of the state. China, in the first half of the 20th century, was plagued by wars and chaos. After the collapse of imperialism, the state found itself caught in the phase of warlord governance. The first modern party—the Kuomintang (KMT) and its antecedent— shouldered the responsibility to establish the new system for the republic under the premise of terminating the warlord governance and uniting the nation politically. Through this procedure, the state capacity penetrated deeper into the rural society, and the bureaucracy expanded rapidly. However, the reformation of regional warlord governance raised substantial costs in both finance and human resource. Meanwhile, the ruling of the KMT failed to overcome the intractable corruption of the traditional system. All these factors exacerbated the plight of peasants, whose burdens continued to augment instead of decrease, as promised by the establishment of the new ruling and constituted a key reason behind vehement peasants’ resistance against the KMT, laying down foundations for the emergence of the CCP. Upon its establishment, the CCP had considered peasants as a subject of reliance, with its basic system after fundamental principles beneficial to this group, who gave their wholehearted support to the party. However, occasional fiscal activities that exceeded their capacity of tolerance were still rejected by the peasants. This demonstrated that the peasants’ burden remained the principal criteria of villagers’ political identity and legitimacy of governance regardless of the rulers.

Extraction, Distribution, and Investment 27 The situation of the peasants’ burden went through a lot of changes after the establishment of the PRC in 1949. From the institutional perspective, the state abolished the 2,000-year feudal land tax system, replaced it with the system that collected taxes based on the crops’ yield of the land, and strived to stabilise the peasants’ burden within a certain range. The 1958 Regulations concerning the Agricultural Taxes of the People’s Republic of China (《中华人民共和国农业税条 例》) (hereinafter Regulations) specified 15.5% of the normal annual yields from the plantation as the national average tax submitted by the peasants, rendering it a little bit higher than the historical one-tenth tax policy (十一而税), which ordered agricultural taxes to be one-tenth of the total yields. The stipulation of the peasants’ burden by the Regulation thereby institutionalised this concept, which was referred to as the reasonable burden. However, the limit of the institutionalised burden was often disrupted by its non-institutionalised counterpart. The peasants’ burden was ponderous under the people’s commune system after 1958, whereas this burden often appeared in an invisible way. There were two major reasons behind this phenomenon. One, the state utilised the “price scissors”4 between industrial and agricultural products (工农产品价格剪刀差) to procure produce of the peasants with a low price through its monopoly of purchase and marketing, rendering it hard for the peasants to realise the actual existence of this burden. Two, the burden unit went through changes. Since communes organised the peasants from every single household, the peasants’ burden manifested in relation to the organisation instead of individual villagers. In other words, peasants did not engage in a direct tax relationship with the state. All their labour activities were paid by salaries and physical goods in the form of work points, despite the extremely low return in disproportion to their contribution. Consequently, although peasants under the people’s commune system faced heavy burdens and extremely slow increases in their incomes, they seldomly experienced the ponderousness of the burden, which fell on commune organisations as the burden unit and did not animate direct opposition of these individuals. However, the commune organisation’s invisibilities of burden did not equate to no burden at all. Peasants often perceived their burden by contrasting expenses with incomes. Yet labour activities in the commune organisations often resulted in high labour expenses and very few incomes. The existence of the private plots of lands especially demonstrated the cost-benefit disproportionality to the peasants, who gradually lost their enthusiasm for labour in collective organisations. Invisibility of the peasants’ burden under the commune system/institution rendered their deidentification inconspicuous as well, as they became slack on the job to express their dissatisfaction indirectly. The slack ultimately prevented both the state and the peasants from obtaining their ideal outcomes, thereby resulting in the rural reform initiated at the beginning of the 1980s. The purpose of the rural reform was to evoke the peasants’ activeness. The other element of reform besides household business operation was the state’s reduction of the peasants’ burden. This attempt was similar to the historical practice of land division for produce increment, tax reduction for expenditure cut (分地以增收, 减税以节支). However, one of the significant consequences after abolishing the commune system was that villagers became the unit of production and business

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and [that] of burden simultaneously, thereby resulting in the manifestation of the peasants’ burden, whose existence could be sensed and experienced, even though its weight was not necessarily heavy. To further regulate the peasants’ burden behaviours, the State Council issued Regulations concerning the Management of the Peasants’ Burden (《农民负担管理条例》), whose core content ordered that the ratio of the peasants’ burden to the net income of the previous year should not exceed 5%. Yet the burden on farmers continued to become heavier and heavier during the 1990s and demonstrated several distinctive characteristics. The first was the diversification of providers of the peasants’ burden. Besides the central agricultural tax, local governments and primary organisations constituted the principal subject/entity to deliver the burden. The second featured the diversification of burden’s type. In addition to taxes and other regular burdens were a large number of irregular burdens, such as various apportion and fundraising. Third, there existed more and more non-institutional factors for the peasants’ burden. Unlike the regular burden that had certain scope and limitation, the irregular burden was known for its considerate flexibility and unpredictability. The popular saying in the villages elaborated this: the first tax (the agricultural tax received by the central government5) was light, the second tax (withdraw, retain, and collective planning by the village or township) was heavy, and all kinds of apportions constituted an abysm (头税(中央政府收到的农业税) 轻, 二税(提留统筹) 重, 各种摊派无底洞). More significantly, various apportions suffered from the lack of legitimacy, obtaining neither the traditional legitimacy enjoyed by the imperial grains, national taxes, nor the de facto legitimacy on which the central documents relied. Therefore, this irregular burden could easily trigger opposition from the peasants. Since the mid1990s, regional peasants’ actions of disapproval of the burden began to appear, with the practice being perceived as a peasants’ struggle. The situation of peasants directly resisting and opposing burden-imposing local and primary governments through their own confrontational behaviours was rare since the establishment of the PRC, an issue that compelled the central government to attach great importance. Reduction of the peasants’ burden was repeatedly demanded by the central government. The premier at the time, Rongji Zhu, even warned that people were boiling with resentment because of unsatisfied peasants under the burden, a problem that nevertheless remained severe (民怨沸腾). However, unlike the previous experience, the peasants’ dissatisfaction with the burden manifested as passive resistance besides direct struggle: abandoning the land and working away from their hometown. Becoming migrant workers provided peasants with an alternative way out of their ponderous burden, thereby significantly reducing or countering their dissatisfaction with the government. Yet the outflow of peasants who left their land, on which they depended for survival and living, would ultimately undermine both agricultural production and national food security. In order to resolve the peasants’ burden fundamentally, the central government decided to abolish the agricultural tax, together with all kinds of derivative taxes.

Extraction, Distribution, and Investment 29 This policy effectively defused the rife between the government and peasants, and received a round of applause from the latter, who found the idea of farming for free (种田不交钱) actualising in the 21st century unimaginable for generations.

III

Collective Economy: Grassroots Finance

The life support of Chinese peasants lies within the rural community, the agent between the state and the peasantry. State actions need to rely on the rural community to reach out to peasants and achieve the state’s rural consolidation. Peasants also depend on the rural community to complete their life experience and actualise self-management. In order to distinguish this concept from the community of nations, some scholars refer to the rural community as a small or microcommunity. A community will generate the corresponding finance, while this type of finance falls out of official state institutions and comes more from the rural society, thereby being called grassroots finance (草根财政). Given its relation to the state, this grassroots finance remains the significant content of the state’s fiscal consolidation of the rural society. In traditional states, taxes collected from the peasants by the state would not return directly to the peasants themselves. Most of the daily lives were required to occur within and resolved through the rural community. Considering maintaining the stability of the community, the state allowed and supported the rural community to own collective properties and use them for communal affairs. Those hosting public welfare with family properties were commended with public recognitions and even encouraged by conferring national honorary titles. Capable of owing collective properties and using them to maintain the normal life of the organisation, the rural community was able to achieve the goals that were hard to succeed in the state’s fiscal consolidation of the rural society, rendering it an indirect but effective method of integration/consolidation. Since the founding of the PRC, the rural society formulated the institution of people’s commune through the establishment of cooperatives. Distinguishing itself from the household economy throughout history, the people’s commune was a completely new economic organisation, which was referred to as the collective economic organisation. Its main feature was that the means of production, which previously belonged to villagers, was now owned by the collective, formulating the so-called collective ownership. All members of the rural community were members of the collective economic organisation, worked together, and acquired means of subsistence according to populations and labours. The collective economic organisation completely replaced the previous household economy and emerged as the unit of production, business operation, taxation, and residential life. Not only did it possess lands and other forms of collective assets, but it also conducted revenue distribution and shouldered education, pension, and other social affairs and public welfare, thereby advancing the collective economic organisation’s finance. Despite its differences from national finance, it remained more direct and significant to the daily life of the peasants. Given the fact that lands belonged to the collective, members must conduct labour activities within the

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collective organisations to obtain a means of subsistence. The organisation did not strictly follow members’ labour for distribution. A considerable section of the revenue ought to be submitted to the state in the form of public grains; another section of the collective income should be the retention funds for reproduction, with the additional section reserved for social welfare activities. These funds were usually extracted in the form of provident funds (公积金) and public welfare funds (公益金). Because the agricultural production resulted predominantly in income in kind, the collective economic organisation, thus, also engaged mainly in distribution in kind. In addition to distribution according to work performed, distribution in kind also took place based on the number of people. It was precisely under this institution that members of the rural community formulated a high degree of dependence on the collective economic organisation. Neither could they leave the organisation as they pleased, nor could they arbitrarily act within the organisation. Their lives and life processes were closely related to the collective economic organisation’s process of income and expenditure. The people’s commune was both the collective economic organisation and the grassroots governmental organisation featuring the principle of integrating governmental administration with economic management. From a fundamental perspective, the collective economic organisation was subordinated to the state’s governmental organisation. Through the former entity, the state engaged in fiscal consolidation of the peasant, making them formulate collective national identities. The better the collective revenue, the better the members’ life would be. Otherwise, bad collective revenue contributed to the lack of centripetal force and cohesion among collective members. Under the people’s commune system, the state accumulated excessive or too much agricultural surplus through the collective. This practice, together with equalitarianism in income distribution, further accounted for the missing enthusiasm/activeness among workers, the lack of internal cohesion for the majority of collectives, and the ultimate abolishment of the system itself. The eradication of the commune system originated in the uprising of the system of household business operation. The post-rural-reform household economy was drastically different from its traditional counterpart. After the rural reform, the ownership of land and means of production still belonged to the state, with the collective organisation being the contractor. Some villages possessed collective assets and property incomes other than lands. These assets and their revenues also belonged to the collectives and demanded distribution among the collective members. This depicted the scope of the post-reform collective economy, often noted as the small/micro collective economy, in contrast to the large collective economy, which referred to the collective ownership of all means of production, assets, and labour gains under the people’s commune system. After the abolishment of the commune system, the collective economy presented more in regions with relatively developed non-agricultural industries, whereas most of the agricultural areas obtained few, if any, collective economies. Farming households turned into both the unit of production, business operation, accounting, and taxation and daily life. However, the commune-oriented duty of the collective economic organisation to

Extraction, Distribution, and Investment 31 take charge of social management and affairs continued to exist and fell on the shoulders of the post-reform villagers’ committees and governments of villages and towns, who also undertook the function of economic development. In response to the fees demanded by the implementation of these economic and non-economic functions that required costs, the primary/local governments accordingly proposed the system of three deductions and five charges (三提五统). The principle of the so-called three deductions and five charges referred to fees reserved by the villagers’ committees and village governments according to their duties. “Village reservation” was the generic term describing fees extracted from peasants’ total production by the village collective economic organisation according to regulations in order to maintain or expand reproduction, host public affairs, and cover daily management costs at the village level. It comprised three categories: public reserve funds, public welfare funds, and management funds. Village balance maintaining fees refer to money collected by the village (town) cooperative economic organisations from affiliations (including the village, village enterprises, joint-household enterprises) and farming households. It would be used for establishing the two-level education institutions in villages and towns (i.e., additional charges for rural education), family planning, special care and preferential treatment, militia training, construction of village and township roads, and other funds for civilian-run and public subsidised affairs. Since most villages and townships had neither collective nor cooperative economic organisations after the reform, the main entities charging the three deductions and five charges were villagers’ committees for villagers’ self-governing organisation and township governments as the grassroots administrative organisations. Besides the three deductions and five charges, an institutional regulation, villagers’ committees and township governments also often charge fees in the name of developing the economy and social affairs. These fees often appeared in the form of fundraising and apportion, and demonstrated strong flexibility. Since the household contract responsibility system provided peasants with not only autonomous products and operations but also duties and obligations that came along, three deductions and five charges were tied together with other fees directly charged by grassroots governments and organisations, and the central-ordered agricultural tax, evolving into a significant constitutive element of the peasants’ burden. This was the new financial relationship between the state and peasants formulated after the implementation of the household contract responsibility system throughout the rural reform. The system of three deductions and five charges came to an end together with the abolition of the agricultural tax. Upon its termination, many villagers’ committees and townships, which depended on this system and its relevant incomes to maintain their operations and fulfil their obligations, were caught up in financial crises. Lots of villages became empty-shell villages (空壳村) with no sources of finance. It was against this background that some regions engaged in the integration of villages and townships, and conducted township institutional reforms to reduce the fiscal expenditure and alleviate financial crises on the one hand. On the other hand, the state utilised the financial transfer payment to maintain operations and carry out the basic functions of villagers’ committees and township

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governments. Apparently, the novel system of the central and higher-level financial transfer payment significantly reduced the peasants’ burden but also weakened the financial relationship between local organisations and governments and the farmers. The state’s method of integration, a thousand-year-long approach that relied on taxation to connect with the peasants, had encountered new challenges.

IV Autonomy and Heteronomy of Grassroots Finance Just like national finance was dominated and controlled by the state, national fiscal coordination/integration of the rural society was also a state-dominated action. Grassroots finance was the self-born/self-generated product by the rural society on whose capacity it depended for governance and administration. Its administrative methods and effects were also closely related to the effectiveness of the states’ fiscal consolidation/integration of the countryside. In traditional society, there were neither that many collective properties and incomes that belonged to the rural community nor the institutional governing regulations. Traditional rural community was formed with morality as the bond, and managers of public properties and public incomes often obtained relatively higher moral characteristics. Individuals attempting to promote their private interests under the guise of serving the public as a fig leaf of their private gains would lose their moral appeals. Because public properties and incomes came from members of a particular clan of a specific village in the town, their acquirement and expenditure often needed to obtain members’ consent as the prerequisite. One of the core functions of ancestral temples was holding councils for members to discuss official business. Management results and cost-expanse situations of some construction of public works and public welfare would be announced in certain ways, even engraved on stone tablets, in order to declare this to both the public and their descendants. This financial disclosure and villagers’ supervision constituted the traditional form of democratic finance. It ensured the operation of traditional grassroots finance, exerted a positive influence on the normal function of the rural community, and was recognised by the state. Entering the people’s commune system, the collective economic organisations became the unit on which peasants depended for their living, and there was unprecedented expansion in the scope and quantity of grassroots finance. Since the commune was itself a state-dominated establishment, the state came up with corresponding/appropriate regulations to better manage collective properties and incomes, thereby compelling grassroots finance to become institutionalised or thereby resulting in the institutionalisation of grassroots finance. Because the nature of collective economic organisations featured members’ collective ownership, collective financial management comprised characteristics of both collective self-governance and democratic financial management. Work Regulations of Rural People’s Communes (《农村人民公社工作条例》) (hereinafter Regulations)6 emphasised the principle of the “democratic establishment of the commune (民主办社)” and recognised members’ right to participate in the collective financial management. Per the Regulations, communes “must

Extraction, Distribution, and Investment 33 publicly disclose their finance and report financial work to the general meeting of the members’ representatives on schedule.” Moreover, “All accounts of receipts and payments” of production brigades “shall be cleaned daily and settled monthly and announced to commune members on a monthly basis” (Editorial Office of Agricultural Cooperation Campaign in Contemporary China, 1992:633– 634). However, the people’s commune was also the local governing organisation that “integrated governmental administration with economic management” and was actually the extension of state power to the primary levels. Therefore, in addition to organising its internal self-management, the commune organisation also needed to comply with the management of the higher level, including its financial management as well. The Regulations ordered that the financial regulation function of the people’s commune ought to be subordinate to and “accept leadership and supervision of public financial departments of counties,” and “lead and supervise financial works of every production brigade” below. “Production brigades should often urge, inspect, and assist production teams to perform well in financial works and material management.” Consequently, the financial management of the people’s commune also obtained the top-down feature of government management. From the systematic perspective, the heteronomous feature of the commune’s finance was more conspicuous compared to its autonomous characteristic. However, this top-down financial heteronomy became looser and looser towards the primary level, especially regarding management below production brigades. Since the commune-level finance was completely incorporated into the financial management of counties, cadres of brigades were also state functionaries, whereas financial managements below brigades were predominantly self-managements. This autonomous self-management required a well-established democratic supervision system. However, in a rural society without a history of democratic institutions, this system/institution of democratic supervision not only found itself hard to establish but also discovered its effects unable to manifest rapidly. A few years after the publication of the Regulations, the central committee detected problems of cadres being out of touch with the people, spending and taking more than one’s share, and having chaotic financial management at the grassroots level of the rural society, and promoted these problems to the height of the class struggle. Believing that these problems remained unsolvable through the villages’ own capacity, the central government initiated the Four Clean-ups movement (四清运动) that addressed rural issues by expatriating cadres to mobilise the populations. The Four Clean-ups was the socialist education movement and was aimed mainly at cleansing politics, economy, organisation, and ideology (清政治、清经济、清组织、清思想). At the grassroots level of villages, the clean-up economy became the main content of this movement as economic problems related directly to the interests of the collective members. Not until the end of the Four Clean-ups did the more radical cultural revolution movement start. Therefore, the people’s commune after the 1960s depended mainly on ceaseless political movements, which connected higher and primary levels, and integrated the interior with the exterior, to maintain and ensure its financial management and supervision.

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Entering the 1980s, the system of people’s commune was abolished, and the state commenced the era that took economic development as the central task and no longer engaged in large-scale political movements. Although households became fundamental units of production and operation after the abolition, collective properties and incomes continued to exist in rural areas, such as public reserve funds, public welfare funds, and management funds extracted by village collectives according to institutional orders. Additionally, there was a large number of various incomes and expenditures ordered by non-unified institutions, such as water fees/bills altogether charged by village collectives in rice-cultivating areas in the South. Specifically, in coastal areas or villages adjacent to cities, land transfer and the establishment of enterprises produced substantial collective properties and incomes. Unlike the era of the commune, income expenditure of village collectives after the rural reform existed in the form of currency rather than fine goods, imposing higher requirements on financial management. However, the post-reform financial management of villages was relatively loose in contrast to its predecessor under the commune institution. At the end of the 1980s, following the promulgation of The Organic Law of the Villagers Committees of the People’s Republic of China (for Trial Implementation) (《中华人民共和国村民委员会组 织法(试行) 》), the rural society began to organise villagers’ committees by law and establish corresponding village collectives’ system of financial management. Since villagers’ committees belonged to mass organisations of villagers’ self-government, the key content of autonomy was the financial management of village collectives and enforcement of village financial self-governance. With villages’ collective property and finance being the issues of most concern to the villagers, the state attached greater significance to rural public affairs and democratic management in the 21st century. In a nutshell, after the rural reform, the state entitled the right to financial autonomy to villagers’ committees and villagers themselves through national legislation in order to conduct democratic management of village collective finance. Yet this internal management did not rapidly live up to the effects expected by the law. Similar to villagers’ autonomy of many regions that transferred into village cadres’ autonomy, village financial autonomy, in fact, was determined by a few village cadres, thereby resulting in managerial chaos of villages’ finance and lots of complaints from villagers. Villagers had no trust in their cadres, who also lacked the necessary authorities. Therefore, in some regions, township governments interfered with the management of villages’ collective finance, enforcing township management of village finance (村财乡管), which contained various forms. Some took place as instructions in line with the spirit of the law; others manifested indirect controls that, in reality, undermined the financial autonomy of villages. The arrangement of villagers’ self-governance developed in alignment with the direction of village financial autonomy. Despite the limited participation, it did open the gate for villagers to participate in financial management and, therefore, formulate a political identity. Only through transparency and supervision could financial management win the trust of villagers. This participative financial management began to expand to the level of government management. Since the 21st

Extraction, Distribution, and Investment 35 century, a participative budget (参与式预算) emerged in some regional villages of Zhejiang Province, where villages took part in village financial management through the townspeople’s congress. Participative financial management had become a new approach to the state’s fiscal consolidation of the rural society.

V A Transfer From Agricultural Finance to Public Finance At the beginning of the 21st century, the state’s fiscal consolidation/integration of the rural society stepped into a new historical moment symbolised/signified by the national nullification of agricultural tax: the transformation from agricultural finance to public finance. National finances were not only extracted from the rural areas but, more importantly, invested in the villages. As for the rural society, agriculture remained the dominant and even the only industry, and nature was the major source of national finance. Therefore, the rural society was consistent with agricultural finance. Especially under the traditional nation-state with authoritarian regimes, agricultural producers acted as the main bearer of agricultural taxes. The state relied on violence and traditions to extract fiscal resources from villages and seldom reinvested these resources back into the rural society. China remained an agricultural state with its major taxes originating from agriculture until 1949. While the nature of the state had changed fundamentally after the establishment of the PRC, the social structure of the rural finance did not follow suit accordingly, thereby enabling the rural finance to pass on its distinctive characteristics in novel forms. Rural finance exhibited two distinctive features: The first feature was the extractive model, or the state’s extraction of fiscal resources from the rural society through agricultural taxations and other methods, and its rare investment in return. After 1949, the state not only needed its extraction of rural fiscal resources to sustain national governance but also faced the tasks of supporting its industrialisation and urbanisation. Consequently, the quantity of the state’s rural fiscal extraction has been unprecedented since 1949. Through a series of institutional arrangements, the state, enjoying a substantial enhancement of the extraction capability, was able to accomplish overt-absorption/excessive-derivation, such as “the purchase of the excessive grain (征收过头粮).”7 It was precisely this excess and surplus taxation that animated the severe rural famine from 1959 to 1961. Needless to say, the state’s rural investment after 1949 was unimaginable and far out of reach for traditional nation-states. Yet this investment was limited within the field of agricultural production and continued to serve and comply with this specific arena. Without this investment, the state was unable to extract more fiscal resources from villages, which otherwise became the locus of power on which a large number of investments in public goods of the rural society depended. The second feature was the obligatory nature or the state’s taxation based on land and population. This taxation was determined by the industry and

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Extraction, Distribution, and Investment remained the dominant and even the sole source of finance. As a result, the state could levy taxes on peasants according to the means of agricultural production—land and populations engaging in agriculture. Populations that obtained lands or undertook agricultural works must pay national taxes and would otherwise face legal sanctions. However, the state’s fiscal revenue and expenditure needed not to receive taxpayers’ consent. In other words, the peasants only shouldered obligations to pay taxes but enjoyed no entitlements to question income expenses and enjoy financial products.

Entering the 21st century, the state nullified the agricultural tax, constituting a turning point in history. Not only did it signify the abolition of the tradition of the agricultural tax that lasted for thousands of years, but it also commenced a new area in which rural finance transferred to public finance. Publicness comprised both universality and equality. The key feature of modern states was equal rights enjoyed and equal positions occupied by national members and public finance that constituted their financial foundation. National finance was collected from all members, especially those with relatively higher incomes, and they were also the subject of national expenses, particularly members with lower revenues. Since the 21st century, a transfer from rural finance to public finance has manifested predominantly in two aspects: First, supportiveness, as the rural society received more financial support from the state. These rural financial supports included the following: 1

2

Investments into rural infrastructures. During the people’s commune system before 1978, the state provided unprecedented investments into infrastructures of agricultural productions with the aim of obtaining more agricultural products. Especially as the people’s commune nationalised works of the peasants, the state could organise the large-scale infrastructure building through the commune. This type of construction depended largely on the labour investments of peasants and did not require too much of the state’s direct financial investments. After 1978, the termination of the people’s commune system eliminated the foundation of commune-dependent rural infrastructural investment, while the household operation management after the rural reform drastically increased the difficulty in large-scale rural infrastructural constructions. Not only did this situation compel existing infrastructures into disrepair, but it also hindered the establishment of novel infrastructures indispensable for rural development, which was subject to its influences and constraints. In response to this scenario, the construction of post-reform rural infrastructures depended predominantly on national financial investments. Following the state’s proposed task of building a socialist new countryside, the state increased inputs of rural infrastructural constructions and significantly improved the infrastructural conditions of the villages. Direct subsidiaries of productions of agricultural produce. In the 1950s, the state extracted financial resources from the rural society through industrial-agricultural price scissors to implement national industrialisation.

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3

To animated peasants’ activeness and enthusiasm for production, the state provided them with production rewards, such as giving fertilizers as prizes to those with high yields. Since 1978, the intensity of these rewards became greater, although award policy was yet to be institutionalised and generalised. In the 21st century, the consequential measurement of the state’s financial support of the rural society was to provide direct subsidiaries to produce grains and other agricultural products. The policy of subsidiary not only instigated peasants’ activeness in agricultural production but also strengthened the relationship between the state and peasants, who were enabled to directly sense national public finance’s support in the sphere of production. Support for the construction of the rural society. Social constructions before the rural reform hinged mostly on the internal accumulation of villages. Despite its relatively low level, this type of accumulation was supported by organisations of the people’s commune. In the post-reform context, due to the abolition of commune institutions, peasants experienced the swift externalisation of their schooling and hospitalisation, services which now demanded providers from outside of the villages. However, the drastic price appreciation of external schooling and hospitalisation greatly exceeded that of peasants’ agricultural products. Meanwhile, peasants raised the standard of their demands for education and medical services, which now faced hardships given the factors mentioned earlier. Historically, families themselves shouldered the responsibility of elderly care. Whereas the people’s commune provided certain institutional conditions to support individuals struggling to achieve family care for the elderly, its termination advanced the gradual waning of the capacity of elderly care on the family basis, rendering it a significant social problem. In the new century after the rural reform, constructing the rural society to resolve peasants’ schooling, medical service, elderly care, and other issues of livelihood constituted a consequential aspect of the state’s rural financial support. The nine-year compulsory education turns into a statutory objective of the state, with its cost covered completely by the national finance. The outstanding feature of the new rural cooperative medical care system was the state’s coverage of certain funds. The state also implemented the unforeseen system of new-type social endowment insurance for rural areas, the recipient of national financial support.

National financial support to rural areas facilitated the closer daily economic connection between peasants and the state. As the state deposited various subsidies directly into the accounts of farmers, it enabled them to realise the existence of the state everywhere in their daily life, shower themselves with the sunshine of national public finance, and strengthen their national identity on a daily basis. Unlike peasants of traditional states that perceived tax receivers as the foundation of national identity, their counterparts in modern states considered receiving national financial support as the understructure of national recognition.

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Second, equality or the principle of impartiality that ordered urban and rural populations to pay taxes and enjoy the same financial advantages. Back in the era of rural finance, the expenditures of the peasants were out of proportion with their incomes. Although the original goal of abolishing the agricultural tax was to encourage farmers’ enthusiasm for production, its direct outcome was the establishment of public finance in the modern state. Modern public finance exhibited a key characteristic: the principle of taxpaying only after income (所得才所交). Peasants as a collective did not have enough income to reach the urban individual income tax cut-off point/threshold. After terminating the agricultural tax, the state did not collect individual income tax from rural populations and especially those undertaking agricultural works, thereby demonstrating the modern financial principle of fair tax obligations. The era of rural finance exhibited the rural-urban divide of public services, which were provided by national finance in the cities and were self-supported in rural areas, whose service level naturally remained low. Following the eradication of the agricultural tax, the state proposed the urban-rural equalisation of basic public services and delivered fundamental public services uniformly to both cities and villages, enabling the peasants to share national financial benefits. The fact that peasants were bathed in the sunshine of public finance demonstrated their entitlement to equal civil rights as they began to obtain the same status (as that of urban populations). They were no longer equal national members only in the name of the constitution but could exist as members with equal rights in daily life. The latter identity was more direct and tangible for them. Consequently, a transfer from rural finance to public finance not only meant that peasants could obtain financial benefits from the state but, more importantly, indicated the state’s ability to conduct organic consolidation of the rural society through the means of public finance. Emphasising the state’s offering to the peasants, this consolidation could win over villagers’ recognition. Therefore, abolishing the agricultural tax did not break peasant-state connections but could instead re-establish and reinforce this bond through public finance, contributing to a more direct and general reliance/dependence of peasants on the state in daily life.

VI

Public Governance: The Construction of Village Public Finance

After the abolition of the agricultural tax, the state-peasants relationship went through a significant change, with the more direct connection being one of the consequential features. Support to the rural areas by the state was actualised through indirect subsidiaries. Therefore, among peasants themselves, primary organisations of the rural society, and the state, the financial function of low-level rural social organisations weakened drastically for three reasons. First, without the agricultural taxes, the daily expenses of primary governments and organisations in rural areas were addressed by transfer payments of the higher-level governments, rendering lower-level entities unable to collect fees from the peasants at will. Second, as governments mostly delivered financial support directly to rural households, governments and organisations on the local level did not have the use

Extraction, Distribution, and Investment 39 right. Third, after the abolition of the agricultural tax, the government attempted to implement the method of one project, one policy (一事一议) to resolve the lack of funding for operating communal public welfare activities but encountered lots of obstacles. Apparently, while the peasants could enjoy the sunshine of public finance after its implementation, it was still impossible for the state to run the whole show and arrange everything for the rural society. Substantial numbers of affairs regarding peasants’ daily working and living still relied on the village collectives for solutions. For instance, even though the state could send out subsidiaries of agricultural products directly to the peasants, the production itself required water conservatory facilities, traffic roads, endemic preventions, and other public goods. These public goods could not be provided and addressed on a household basis, and could sometimes present challenges, which governments also found difficult to resolve effectively. The direct payment of salaries to village cadres themselves could result in their straightforward subordination to higher-level governments, thereby lacking awareness of serving the peasants below. Some primary organisations, therefore, turned into maintenance organisations with nothing but institutional existence. Without peasants providing funds themselves, public welfare in the rural area not only found itself hard to actualise but could further debilitate the sense of community among villages. The state’s effective integration of the decentralised rural society also needed to rely on the rural community, whose formation, in return, demanded corresponding fiscal capacity. After the eradication of the agricultural tax, regional and primary cadres of the rural area generally reported that peasants, to whom a large number of central funds were allocated, were unwilling to provide these funds for establishing communal activities, resulting in funds dispersion and inefficiency. They hoped that the central government could hand agriculture-related funds to local governments and primary organisations for collective arrangement and usage. It was doubtless that this idea was indeed reasonable. Nevertheless, why did the central government directly allocate funds to the peasants? The major reason was the trust issue. The existence and continuation of the community are rooted in the trust of communal members. In the post-1949 area of rural finance, especially after the 1979 rural reform, lots of funds fell into the hands of local governments and primary organisations to manage and utilise. Despite peasants’ heavy burdens, the central government did not obtain too much from the agricultural tax. A large amount of finance controlled and used by local governments and primary organisations received no effective supervision from both the central government and the farmers, which, as a result, displayed distrust of these lower-level governments and organisations. This suspicion lasted after the nullification of the agricultural tax. The central government worried that agriculture-related taxes allocated could be misappropriated by local counterparts for other purposes. The peasants, on the other hand, displayed stronger eagerness to directly receive funding from the central government and fretted about local governments and organisations not investing the fund for rural development and peasants’ benefits.

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Obviously, tackling thorny issues of rural trust was the prerequisite for constructing rural public finance. This, in turn, required the founding of the public financial governance institution. The principle of what was taken from the people should be used for the people (取之于民, 用之于民) was the feature of public finance. There must be a corresponding system to achieve this goal. The financial governance system back in the era of rural finance was government administration. In China, a state with multilevel governments, government administration could easily result in the problem of financial abuse. The turn from rural to public finance was not only an alternation in situations of financial income but also a change in the system of financial governance—from singular government management to multisector governance in order to ensure publicness of finance. Particularly, peasants were not only beneficiaries of finance but also its governors. Only through this could rural public finance be constructed. The era of public finance witnessed more and more the application of the government’s public funds to the rural area. (Entering the era of public finance, more and more public finance of the government was applied to the rural area.) However, every governmental public finance was limited in the face of the rural demands. A considerable section of public welfare established in rural communities could be supported through internal fundraising within these communities. After the rural tax and fee reform, the state attempted to resolve problems of rural public affairs through the one project, one policy approach. However, challenges remained substantial, with the major reason being the lack of a public governance system to win over the trust of the funders. The mechanism of opening financial affairs and democratic administration initiated in the rural areas in the 1990s could play a better role in the public finance area.

Notes 1 The term “Imperial Grains, National Taxes” (皇粮国税) refers to China’s 2,600-year-old agricultural tax, which was officially abolished on January 1, 2006. For a detailed background and discussion, see Kennedy (2007:43–59). 2 The interpretation of zhengshe heyi varies among scholars. A common explanation is the “integration of government administration with commune management” (He, 2021). Yet the author’s definition was different, as demonstrated in the author’s original footnote 2 on page 30: “the so-called zhengshe heyi was the integration of governmental origination and economic organization [所谓” 政社合一 “就是政权组织与经济组织合为一体]” (He, 2021:30). 3 Baoyu Ren is the first scholar to examine financial issues from the perspective of political legitimacy. The concept of fiscal legitimacy that he conceived was used to describe and investigate the financial system of a county (Ren, 2008). 4 “Price scissors” refers to the decreasing ratio of agricultural products to industrial products. See Carter and Zhu (2009) for a full discussion. 5 Various fees paid by the farmers for overall township planning and village reserve. 6 Also known as The Sixty Articles in Agriculture (农业六十条) (Eisenman and Yang, 2018). 7 This translation came from Luo (2006).

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Reference List Carter, C. A., and Zhu, J. (2009). “Trade Liberalisation and Agricultural Terms of Trade in China: Price Scissors Revisited,” 2009 Conference, August 16–22, Beijing, China 51636, International Association of Agricultural Economists. Editorial Office of Agricultural Cooperation Campaign in Contemporary China. (1992). Historical Materials of Agricultural Cooperation since the Founding of the People’s Republic of China. Beijing: CPC History Press. (《当代中国农业合作化》编辑室: 《建国以来农业合作化史料汇编》,中共党史出版社1992年版,第633–634页。). Eisenman, J., and Yang, F. (2018). Organizational Structure, Policy Learning, and Economic Performance: Evidence from the Chinese Commune. Socius. He, X. (2021). Improving Village Governance in Contemporary China. Leiden: Brill. Kennedy, J. (2007). “From the Tax-for-Fee Reform to the Abolition of Agricultural Taxes: The Impact on Township Governments in North-West China,” The China Quarterly 189, Pp. 43–59. Kuhn, P. (2003). Origins of the Modern Chinese State. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. ([美]孔飞力:《中国现代国家的起源》, 陈兼、陈之宏译,生活,读书, 新知三 联书店2013年版,第22页。). Legge, J. (1971). Confucian Analects, the Great Learning, and the Doctrine of the Mean. ACLS Humanities E-Book. New York: Dover Publications. Luo, P. (2006). “‘The Great Debate’ on State Monopoly in Purchase and Sale in 1957,” Academic Journal of Jinyang 9, Pp. 98–103. Ren, B. (2008). Fiscal Politics: An Examination of Fiscal Legitimacy under the Perspective of Finance “Going to the Countryside”. Beijing: China Social Science Press. (任宝玉 《财源政治: “财政下乡” 视角下的财政合法性研究》, 中国社会科学出版社2008年 版。).

3

Propaganda, Education, and Literature Cultural Integration in the Countryside

Cultural characteristics distinguish traditional China from modern countries, while the culture is tightly connected with the scattered rural society in China. Hence, one way for modern countries to integrate scattered rural societies is to transform the culture of traditional countries, import new cultural concepts into rural society, and reorganise rural society culturally. Modern China extends national actions to the rural grassroots level and, more importantly, imports the national consciousness to the rural grassroots level and reforms the peasants’ ideology. Therefore, the state has a solid foundation for integrating rural society.

I

Propaganda to the Countryside: Class, Political Party, and National Consciousness

The 20th century was the century when China revolutionised rural society through reforms and established a modern country. To achieve this goal, bringing propaganda to the countryside (宣传下乡) was an effective strategy during this process. In brief, it has been attributed that the establishment of China’s modern state resulted from a radical revolution based on propaganda initiated/started by a select group of elites. Sun Yat-sen, the forerunner of the Chinese Revolution, divided people into three categories when he initiated the revolution to overthrow the rule of the autocratic dynasty: the people with foresight (先知先觉者), with hindsight (后知后觉者), and without consciousness (不知不觉者). The revolution requires the foresight group with their new consciousness to enlighten, educate, mobilise, influence, and lead the latter two groups. The Revolution of 1911, which overthrew the rule of a thousand-year dynasty, was initiated by Sun Yat-sen and other prophets. The Revolution of 1911 and the subsequent national revolution led by the Kuomintang played an essential role in changing the ideology of the Chinese people. China is a country where peasants account for the majority of the population, and thus, propaganda to the majority of peasants is undoubtedly a critical mission of the Chinese Communist Party. After the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) shifted the focus of the revolution from the city to the countryside, it attached more attention to the organisation and propaganda of the vast rural population, and bringing propaganda to the countryside was initiated. DOI: 10.4324/b23055-3

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The purpose of the CCP bringing propaganda to the countryside was to carry out extensive rural mobilisation and organise the vast number of scattered peasants under its banner. Since the CCP achieved its goals by employing armed struggle, the vital function of bringing propaganda to the countryside was to organise and integrate dispersed peasants, and to elevate peasants from a self-contained class to a self-acting class, and eventually, to spur them to become a revolutionary class with class consciousness and ideology. Peasants with low economic status are natural and instinctive opponents of the old order. However, due to the decentralisation of production methods, the peasants lacked class self-consciousness and, therefore, were naturally conservative. In China, the existence of clan and patriarchal relationships weakened the peasants’ class self-consciousness. The warmth of humane and ethical relations between the clan and the villagers diluted the conflicts caused by class interests. The CCP’s propaganda in the countryside was intended to inspire and strengthen peasants’ understanding of class, class opposition, and class conflict. As early as on the eve of the founding of the CCP, the Communist Monthly No. 3 of 1921 (《共产党月刊》1921年第3号) published “Message to the Chinese Peasants” (《告中国农民书》), explaining that the Chinese peasants, who make up the vast majority of China’s population, played a prominent role in both the preparation and implementation of the revolution. The possibility of achieving our social revolution and realising communism would increase if they had class consciousness and could rise for class struggle. To help them gain class consciousness, it was necessary for us to propagandise among them. In his famous “Analysis of the Classes in Chinese Society” (《中国社会各 阶级的分析》), Mao Zedong began with the following statement: “Who are our enemies? Who are our friends? These are questions of the first importance for the revolution.” At the same time, Mao (People’s Publishing House, 1991a:3&7) argued that “they are the worst off among the peasants and are highly receptive to revolutionary propaganda.” Class consciousness was brought into rural society for the first time through CCP bringing propaganda to the countryside, which divided members of rural society into classes with clear boundaries, and raised and strengthened their class consciousness through propaganda. For example, during the period of the Agrarian Revolution (土地革命), slogans, such as “down with the local tyrants and evil gentry” (打倒土豪劣绅) and “all power to the peasant union” (一切权力归农会), were often seen in the countryside. In particular, slogans, such as “break the concept of local and surname” (打破地方观念, 打破姓 氏观念) and “no distinction between surname and local, only between rich and poor” (不分姓氏地方, 只分穷人富人), were raised (Yuan, 1999:111). Bringing propaganda to the countryside was a political mobilisation led by the CCP in order to organise scattered peasants into a revolutionary force under its leadership. The CCP’s propaganda campaign brought to the countryside, which brought party consciousness into rural society unprecedentedly, implanted and strengthened peasants’ party consciousness. To begin with, peasants were instilled with the ideology and guideline principles of the CCP through propaganda, so they understood that the CCP could represent their interests and, therefore, formed the consciousness of following it. As a second step, the CCP

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developed those peasants with class consciousness into members to further the party’s education and strengthen the party’s consciousness within the organisations. The CCP is a proletarian party by nature, but the majority of its members were peasants for a long time. As members of the CCP, their party consciousness gradually replaced the consciousness of the peasants under the CCP’s propaganda and education. The CCP gained state power and established the PRC through the mobilisation of the peasants. Strengthening national awareness became an essential part of bringing propaganda to the countryside. As early as the eve of gaining national power, Mao Zedong put forward the idea that “the serious problem faced by the new state was the education of the peasants” (People’s Publishing House, 1991b:1477). To educate the peasants means to transform their sense of small private ownership (小私有) and small production (小生产), and to strengthen the national and collective consciousness. Therefore, bringing propaganda to the countryside that was formed during the revolution continued after the reforms. However, its content was mainly to strengthen the peasants’ consciousness of the socialist state, and to reinforce that the consciousness of the state and the collective came before that of the individuals. The propaganda that the peasants are the masters of the country (农民是国家的主人) and the small streams rise when the mainstream is high; when the mainstream is low, the small streams run dry (大河无水 小河干, 大河有水小河满) were classic examples of this situation. The consciousness of the political state began to permeate the peasants’ daily life and psychological activities. All three concepts—class, party, and state—are holistic. In terms of the mode of production, peasants are individual producers and are born with individual consciousness. However, with CCP bringing propaganda to the countryside, the peasants’ individual consciousness was weakened and transformed. In the absence of a fundamental transformation of the mode of production, bringing propaganda to the countryside successfully integrated hundreds of millions of scattered individual peasants into the overall system of class, party, and state; reorganised and transformed the rural society; and connected the dispersed and decentralised rural society with the party and state.

II

Mechanisms for Transforming and Reconstructing Vernacular Ideology

Traditionally, Chinese society was characterised by a separation between the upper and lower classes, while its ideology promoted a concept of separation within an integrated framework. The CCP was able to transform the vernacular ideology formed for thousands of years by bringing propaganda to the countryside and was able to construct a new ideology, which obtained a distinctive feature of propagating out to the bottom of society and extending to the depths of people’s souls; opening up the channel between the top and the bottom, the state, and rural society; and creating an integrated and interconnected spiritual consciousness network. A series of propaganda mechanisms reflect this feature.

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(I) Propaganda Organisation Propaganda is done by personnel. The CCP bringing propaganda to the countryside achieved remarkable results through the formation of a complete organisational system. Propaganda is a vital function of the CCP. Wherever the political party organisation extends, so does the propaganda organisation. Along with the political parties to the countryside (政党下乡), not only did the leaders of rural party organisations attach great importance to political propaganda, but they also set up propaganda organisations with specialised personnel. The CCP’s political propaganda organisation penetrated all the way to the production team, the most grassroots production and living unit in the countryside, especially in the 1960s and 1970s. In addition to the production team leader, the production team also had a political team leader responsible for political propaganda and education. In addition to the party organisations, mass organisations led by the CCP also shouldered the responsibility for propaganda. Work teams from outside rural society were brought into rural villages by the CCP to mobilise, transform, and rebuild rural society. Propaganda and mobilisation were two of the main functions of these teams. Having lived in the countryside, the rural party members had become constantly influenced by the vernacular consciousness inside their minds, while the vernacular consciousness less influenced the work teams from outside the countryside, and its primary function was to spread the CCP’s consciousness. Work teams played a significant role in transforming and reconstructing vernacular consciousness, as well as propagandising in the countryside for the CCP. A central government work team would travel to the countryside whenever a major policy was being implemented for propaganda and mobilisation. For example, during the period of land reform, there were work teams for land reform (土改工作队). During the period of people’s communes, there were work teams for Four Clean-ups (“四清”工作队) and primary line education work teams (基本路线教育工作队), and there were work teams for moderate prosperity (小康工作队) and work teams for new rural construction (新农村 建设工作队) after the reform and opening-up. During the Four Clean-ups (“四 清”运动), more than 1.5 million cadres at all levels participated in the work teams (Li and Yang, 2007a:180). All these work teams had the function of propaganda, mobilisation, and ideological and political work, and their main mission was to instil the external CCP’s consciousness into the rural society. (II) Forms of Propaganda The CCP developed a series of highly effective forms of propaganda to reach rural areas. The slogan was a necessary form of bringing propaganda to the countryside. Clear and straightforward words were used in the slogans, making them visually intriguing, easy to understand, and eye-catching. Historically, rural people were not very literate, and more than 90% of peasants were illiterate before 1949.

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They could not accept and understand the profound political theories. The majority of the CCP came from rural society, and they knew that peasant understanding and acceptance were limited. Therefore, slogans became an important means of propaganda and education. As Mao Zedong put it, “Simple slogans, cartoons, and speeches have produced such a widespread and speedy effect among the peasants that every one of them seems to have been through a political school” (People’s Publishing House, 1991a:35). The contents of these slogans were all around the central work of the CCP and reflected the will of the party. The emphasis of slogans varied in accordance with each important period. For example, during the period of the Agrarian Revolution, the slogans were “down with the local tyrants and evil gentry” (打倒土豪劣绅) and “all power to the Soviets” (一切权力归苏维埃). During the period of land reform, the slogans were “the land goes home” (土地回家) and “the peasants turn over” (农民翻身). During the period of the people’s commune, the slogan was the “People’s Commune is good” (人民公社好). After the reform and opening-up, it was “get rich and get well” (致富奔小康). There were particularly many slogans when the CCP Central Committee devoted special attention to ideological and political work. This concise and straightforward slogan was easy to accept and understand for peasants. In particular, slogans could form a public opinion with solid influence, guide the rural public, and build a new social consensus. In the past, vernacular consciousness was strongly self-transmitted, with little external influence, making it challenging to create a public opinion that continually stimulated society. As a modern political party, the CCP attached particular importance to transforming, changing, and influencing people’s opinions through public opinions. The slogan in bringing propaganda to the countryside was an essential tool. Through this public opinion, people were told what to do and what the consequences were if they failed to do it. Considering that rural areas were acquaintance society (熟人社会) and moral society (道德社会), deviations from these slogans could make one an object of intolerance by public opinion and result in rejection by society. Therefore, although the slogans were simple in form, they were effective. Mao Zedong, in the Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan, described it graphically: Down with imperialism! Down with the warlords! Down with the corrupt officials! Down with the local tyrants and evil gentry! These political slogans have grown wings, they have found their way to the young, the middle-aged and the old, to the women and children in countless villages, they have penetrated into their minds and are on their lips. (People’s Publishing House, 1991a:34) Because of this, in order to achieve the purpose of propaganda, the contents in some slogans would go to extremes and even become brutal and straightforward. Despite their external deterrence, such shocking slogans could not reach the human soul. Therefore, top CCP leaders rarely endorsed the usage of crude and extreme slogans.

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The meetings (开会) played an essential role in bringing propaganda to the countryside. In general, there were few public gatherings among traditional peasants. Usually, some clans and villages held gatherings at festivals without any political content. Along with the CCP’s political party’s downward penetration of the countryside, the modern political form of meetings was introduced to the countryside. The primary purpose of these meetings, as opposed to the joint meetings, was propaganda and education. Meetings usually had a convener, which was usually the CCP and the organisations it had entrusted. The contents of the meeting usually included the will of the CCP and the government, and the target of the meeting was usually the audience attending the meeting. With these meetings, the CCP’s will was transmitted to the rural public, and through the repeated meetings, the CCP’s will was also implanted in the people’s soul. During the revolutionary period, there was a common saying in the countryside that “the taxes demanded by the Kuomintang were high, and the meetings held by CCP were many (国民党 税多, 共产党会多).” During the time of the National Government of the Republic of China, high taxes inevitably led to opposition from the peasants. In contrast, CCP’s meetings mobilised this peasants’ opposition, which formed an organised opposition force. The CCP still relied on meetings to spread and instil its political agenda after the establishment of the PRC. For instance, during the period of the people’s commune, meetings became an integral part of production activities. Meeting participation could lead to work points and a paycheque, just like production activities. Meetings were also more accessible to attend than productive work, thus attracting people to participate actively in them, despite many of them not genuinely care about the topic. Public communication became an essential vehicle for bringing propaganda to the countryside. As there was no public communication tool in traditional rural society, the information among villagers was spread mainly from mouth to mouth. The ancient rural society rapidly adopted public communication tools in the 20th century, especially after 1949. The main reason was that the CCP and the government attached great importance to transmitting political information to the countryside so as to construct a new vernacular ideology. In the vernacular society, three significant advances in public communication tools occurred after 1949. Firstly, the big-character poster (大字报) was used as the carrier of propaganda in the late 1950s. In “Introducing a Co-operative” (介绍一个合作社), Mao Zedong said, “The big-character poster is a handy new weapon” (Central Party Literature Press, 1992:178). The big-character poster should be widely used to mobilise and propagate the masses in rural areas. “During the rectification campaign (整风整社), the rural areas in Guangdong province put up 120 million big-character posters” (Luo, 2001:90). Secondly, there was cable broadcasting during the Cultural Revolution. The Cultural Revolution was considered by its initiators to be a revolution that touched people’s souls, and propaganda and education were of great importance. For this reason, with the support of the state, cable broadcasting in rural areas developed rapidly. In most rural areas, every household had a broadcast loudspeaker. Apart from a small amount of local agricultural activities, the contents of the broadcasts were mainly the voice of the central government. It was precisely

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these loudspeakers that enabled peasants to hear the voice of Chairman Mao and the CCP Central Committee, which penetrated the hearts and minds of the peasants year after year and day after day. Thirdly, there was the Extending Radio and TV Broadcasting Coverage to Every Village Project (村村通工程) after the reform and opening-up. After the abolition of the people’s commune, the cable broadcasting system attached to it also disappeared, and there was relatively little political information communication between peasants and the state. In order to change this situation, the state organised the Extending Radio and TV Broadcasting Coverage to Every Village Project, which aimed to enable every village to receive television signals, and every household could watch television as one of its main purposes. Television, largely provided by the government, mainly shouldered the function of propaganda and education. This kind of cultural integration through public communication was unprecedented since it allowed the will of the CCP and government to be quickly and conveniently conveyed to peasants. The peasants heard the voice of the CCP and state leaders every day, and saw the image of the CCP and state leaders, thus significantly strengthening their consciousness of the CCP and state. (III) Propaganda Activities Propaganda refers to a series of behavioural activities that influence the psychological behaviour of the human mind. Activities in bringing propaganda to the countryside had distinctive characteristics. First, the political campaign. Political campaigns are organised and conducted by a political party or group of a specific class to pursue a political goal with a clearly defined purpose, strict planning, and strict organisation. The CCP launched and continued its revolution and new social construction in a country where the people were ignorant of politics for a long time, and political campaigns were a critical way to achieve its political goal. These campaigns were widespread, mass, and regular. As early as the 1920s, Mao Zedong listed “spreading political propaganda” as one of the significant achievements of the peasant campaigns in his famous Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan. Even after the establishment of the PRC, the CCP, as the ruling party, was still accustomed to using political campaigns to achieve political goals, such as land reform, the co-operative campaign (合 作化运动), the Four Clean-ups, and the Cultural Revolution. The political campaign itself was a process of mobilising and educating the masses, with the characteristics of large scale, high degree of participation, and fierce power. Through the regular political campaigns, the will of the CCP was strongly imparted to the rural society, which transformed the existing rural consciousness and constructed a rural consciousness in line with the will of the CCP and the state. Second, psychological guidance. Peasant consciousness was formed through a long history, which was not easy to change fundamentally. The stormy political campaign could quickly change the people’s consciousness on the surface, but it was not easy to reach the deep psychology of people. This deep psychology is the internal mechanism that governs people’s behaviour. The CCP bringing

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propaganda to the countryside did not only impart the CCP’s consciousness into rural society from the outside through mass political campaigns but also changed people’s deep psychology through a series of political campaigns that fit the psychological characteristics of peasants. The mobilisation of peasants under the CCP’s leadership was a vital mission of bringing propaganda to the countryside, and it also remained the basis for the party to gain and consolidate power. For this purpose, the CCP mobilised the peasants during the era of the revolutionary war by giving them economic benefits, such as the equal distribution of land (均分田地) and reduction of rent and interest (减租 减息). However, peasants, influenced by thousands of years of traditional thinking, did not dare to accept the benefits, believed that their sufferings were a mandate of heaven (天命), and believed that the landholders supported them. In response, the CCP, by bringing propaganda to the countryside, addressed the question of “Who feeds peasants?” through the means of logical deduction (算账). The first step was to enlighten peasants with the question of “Where did the landlords get their land?” Then according to the means of production and labour input, the CCP made peasants understand the fact that if the poor did not cultivate, the land owner would have no source of income. The land owner cannot become rich without the labour of the poor. Peasants fed land owners rather than land owners themselves, and therefore, it was rational to share their land and reduce rent and interest. The land reform was a radical transformation of rural society by the CCP. The peasants’ consciousness of class and class struggle was first built up in the land reform process. However, in the rural lineage society (农村家族社会), kinship consciousness usually prevailed over class consciousness, thereby rendering building up a class consciousness a difficult task. Therefore, the work team of land reform led by the CCP constructed and strengthened peasants’ consciousness of class and class struggle by means of complaining of suffering (诉苦). Under the traditional social system, the poverty of the poor peasants existed objectively. However, this objective fact was regarded as an inherent and unchangeable fate, and people had nowhere to talk about their sufferings but lived their life in a repressed way. During the land reform, the work team convened meetings to allow poor peasants to discuss their sufferings. In order to promote land reform, the CCP Central Committee requested that “local newspapers should find more stories like The White Maiden (白毛女) and serialise them continuously, and publish the facts of the typical and moving grievances and sufferings at the meetings” (Luo, 200516). The following was during the land reform in the liberated areas of Hebei Province: the more they [peasants] complained sufferings [during the meetings], the more they felt their pain; the more pain they felt, the more sorrow they shared; the more sorrow they expressed; the more grief they had; the more grief they shared; the more powerful they were. So the mood of the masses was elevated by complaining of sufferings, and the struggle was easy to start naturally (越 诉越痛, 越痛越伤, 越伤越气, 越气越起火, 越起火劲越大, 经过诉苦, 群众 的情绪高起来, 斗争自然易于掀起). (Li and Yang, 2007b:121)

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Their bitterness gave vent to their deep-seated grievances, leading them to hate the oppressive class and the corresponding social system responsible for their suffering, and to understand that their situation was caused by class oppression clearly. Thus, peasants gained their class consciousness, and sprouted and strengthened their consciousness of class struggle. The following happened in China: the transformation of individual physical and mental suffering into class suffering and class hatred occurred only after the revolutionary regime entered rural society, and it was through the guidance such as complaining of suffering and digging up the roots of suffering (挖苦根) that peasants’ class consciousness was tapped, thus enabling the attribution of suffering. (Guo, 2013:47) Thus, “the meetings full of complaining of suffering (诉苦会) built up the class consciousness of peasants and paled the long-held view that peasants were politically unaware in comparison to the new regime” (Chen, 2006:291). After the land reform, peasants were given land and became small private owners and producers. However, in order to fundamentally transform the traditional society, the CCP soon implemented collectivisation. This collectivisation directly touched the peasants’ small private ownership mentality (小私有心理) and was not accepted by them voluntarily. After the land reform, the CCP’s ongoing political campaigns were to transform the peasants’ small private ownership mentality. In the political campaigns to strengthen the sense of collectivisation, recalling one’s past sufferings and contrasting them with present happiness (忆苦思甜) was an important activity. The peasants’ production mainly relied on the experience accumulated in history, and their thinking was accustomed to looking backwards and retroactively, namely, comparing the present with the past and seeking the pivot point of life compared to the past. At the same time, since peasants’ production methods were highly dependent on nature, their harvests and livelihoods relied on the gifts of nature, so they had a strong sense of gratitude. The activity of recalling one’s past sufferings and contrasting them with present happiness is precisely adapted to the characteristics of peasants’ thinking. By recalling their painful life in the past, they could feel the happiness of today’s life. The happy life today was brought by the CCP, so they ought to thank the party, follow it forever, “never forget the man who dug the well after drinking water, and never forget the CCP after becoming emancipated serfs (吃水不忘挖井人，翻身不忘共产党).” Third, setting an example. China has traditionally been a moral society that uses moral models to educate its people. Therefore, the emperor often honoured those who fulfilled the moral standards in order to actualise spiritual and cultural integration. With the CCP bringing propaganda to the countryside, it was an important activity to influence society by setting an example through the propagation of various role models who had made a consequential contribution to the society. In every period, the CCP set examples in accordance with its primary will and standards, appraising them and guiding people to learn from them. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the benefits of the people’s commune system were questioned when the

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Chinese countryside experienced severe economic difficulties. At a time when the party leadership witnessed some differences of opinion concerning rural policies, the Dazhai brigade (大寨大队) in Shanxi Province, led by Chen Yonggui, secretary of the brigade’s branch, not only overcame difficulties but also achieved an agricultural bumper harvest relying on collective strength. This story soon caught the attention of the top leadership of the CCP and became a model of rural collectivisation so as to call for the whole country to learn from Dazhai in agriculture (农业学大寨). In December 1964, the premier of the state council, Zhou Enlai, summarised the Dazhai experience at the first session of the Third National People’s Congress (三届全国人大一次会议), stating this: The principle of politics and ideological work in the first place, the spirit of self-reliance and hard work, and the communist style of loving the country and the collective, which the Dazhai brigade adhered to, are all worthy of promotion. (Editorial Office of Agricultural Cooperation Campaign in Contemporary China, 1992:794) Since then, “the learning from Dazhai in agriculture” became a political campaign that lasted for more than ten years. Fourth, ideological struggle. The CCP needed to obtain state power through the peasant class while transforming traditional society and rebuilding it. The first step to achieving this goal was changing people’s minds, especially if the peasant consciousness had formed for a long time and could not easily be changed. In addition to influencing people’s ideology with propaganda, the CCP bringing propaganda to the countryside was accompanied by political campaigns, which initiated struggles against thoughts and ideologies at odds with the will of the party. During the height of rural collectivisation in 1957, the CCP Central Committee issued a document entitled On the Conduct of a Large-scale Socialist Education Program for the Entire Rural Population(《关于向全体农村人口进行一次大规模的社会主义教育的 指示》) on August 8, in order to promote collectivisation rapidly. The document demanded the modes of great debates to lead the peasants on the socialist pathway and fight against all kinds of problematic ideas and thoughts. In the 1960s, the CCP launched the Four Clean-ups campaign in the countryside, whose important content was to clean up the ideology and fight against cadres’ wrong ideas. The Four Cleanups followed the Cultural Revolution, a revolution that touched people’s souls, and the ideological struggle was even more intense (触及人的灵魂的大革命). In addition, various political studies were also accompanied by ideological struggles. Objectively speaking, the CCP bringing propaganda to the countryside effectively transformed traditional rural consciousness and constructed class, party, and national consciousness. It brought the scattered rural society into a unified spiritual and cultural system, established a spiritual channel between the rural grassroots society and the state ideology, and transformed the traditional consciousness of people who used to care only about their own family instead of the state (只知有 家不知有国) into a modern consciousness under which the state and the family are

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connected (国与家相连). However, there were limitations since political campaigns and economic pressures accompanied the propaganda. In other words, people tend to obey specific ideas based on external pressure rather than their own inner spontaneousness. Following the reform and opening-up, bringing propaganda to the countryside brought forward a new phenomenon. For example, the meetings accompanied by the people’s commune system were no longer as influential as they used to be. Peasants engaging in family business held meetings inactively, and in many places, there had been no meetings (会荒) for more than ten years. The diversity of information transmitted by public communication also had diversified people’s ideologies, and the simple and one-way propaganda indoctrination was no longer widespread. Particularly, the vernacular consciousness, which originated from vernacular production activities and life, and was once criticised, has been rapidly revived, such as family consciousness and vernacular beliefs.

III

Education to the Countryside: From Private Schools to Universal Education

Consciousness, thinking, and concepts of individuals are acquired rather than innate. This situation, thus, gives rise to education that demands educators to make sure their influence on the educated is purposeful, planned, and organised so that the latter will become people needed by certain societies. In terms of integrating rural society, education as an individual-shaping action has become an important activity for the country. In traditional China, the upper class of the state and the lower class of society were isolated from each other, mainly due to the education system that contributed to the separation of the literate bureaucrats and the illiterate people. The peasants who worked on the farm in traditional rural society needed no specialised education to acquire specific book knowledge. Within a narrow sphere of production and life, they could meet their daily needs simply by relying on their mouth-to-mouth experiences. They lived in a simple social environment and interacted mainly through familiar and straightforward words, without the need for written knowledge or specialised education. Bringing the literacy to the countryside (文字下乡) and the construction of the modern state accompanied universal education in China. The Western world, sustained by the industrial civilisation, invaded China in the mid-19th century, threatening it with national and ethnic annihilation. Some scholars believed that the main reason for this was the illiteracy of the people. They did not know how to write, could not read or write, only knew that there was a family but not a nation, and did not understand the general trend of the world. Thus, they were, to some extent, blind (睁眼瞎) and could not see the world with their eyes open, let alone for them to form a united whole. In order to save the nation, it was necessary to enlighten the people and promote education. For example, Liang Qichao proposed the New People’s Theory (《新民说》) and believed that “enlightening people is the most urgent task in China today” (新民为今日中国第一急务). To create the new people (新民), it was indispensable to organise education, especially transforming the

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traditional education system. From the late Qing dynasty, China began the process of bringing literacy and universal education. First, special educational institutions were established. The government-sponsored local schools, known as public schools (公立学校) and national schools (国立学校), and education became accessible to the public. Second, the new learning (新学) was introduced. Principle contents of education were empowering people primarily to become literate and to obtain the knowledge required by modern society. Third, formal social education systems were established. In 1906, the Qing government promulgated the Regulatory Framework of the School of Persuasion (《劝学所章程》), which stipulated that “each prefecture, state, and county (各府厅州县) shall divide the school districts within its jurisdiction,” and “each district shall have an officer, who shall be responsible for persuading students to learn within the school district,” and shall be vertically subordinate to the state and county school of persuasion (劝 学所).1 “This was the earliest official creation in the establishment of district and township administration in modern China” (Wei, 2004:122). Later, along with the administration to the countryside (行政下乡), educational institutions evolved into critical administrative institutions. In the first half of the 20th century, the process of writing for the countryside and universal education in China was extremely slow that it failed, especially in penetrating rural society. Formal schools were established mainly in cities above the county level, and the degree of education among rural people still remained low. Therefore, one of the most important things the CCP did in the rural revolutionary base areas was teaching peasants to read and write, and eradicating illiteracy. The mass popularisation of education in China came after 1949. Firstly, the school system was extended to the countryside. Although rural schools belonged to private education (民办教育) for a long time, the education policy, education content, and education system were all part of the state education, which differed from their rural counterparts only in the funding channels. In particular, after the 1980s, the state passed laws related to compulsory education, making the popularisation of nine-year compulsory education a universally abiding law. Secondly, after the 21st century, free and compulsory education had been fully implemented, which meant that the rural population, under relatively backward economically and culturally conditions, obtained more opportunities to receive an education. By the end of the 20th century, China realised the basic universalisation of the nineyear compulsory education. In the 21st century, the focus was on strengthening and developing education in rural areas, and incorporating compulsory education into the scope of financial protection. Thus, compulsory education entered a new stage of consolidation, improvement, and complete universalisation. Education in the countryside and universal education played a consequential role in the state’s integration of the scattered rural society. With knowledge, the children of peasants are able to know the nation through written characters, which link the individual to the state and facilitate the recognition of national identity. Knowledge could also change fates. Whereas in the past, only a few children of wealthy and influential families acquired the upward social mobility to enter the upper classes through exams; today, the children of ordinary families can also

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change their fates that can last for generations through study. If an individual can move upward through formal channels, he or she tends to identify with the national system rather than rebel against it.

IV Political Socialisation Mechanism of Rural Education An activity that shapes people, education is also a crucial mechanism of political socialisation. In particular, education in China has been organised by the government since the very beginning. A significant feature of Chinese education was to shape people into the kind of citizens that fulfil the needs of the state in order to achieve national integration through educational activities. In traditional China, knowledge learning greatly overlapped with ideological education and was embedded in the learning of ideological education (且寓于思 想教育知识学习之中). The reason the rulers emphasised learning in the government (学在官府) was that they could carry out educational activities according to the will of the government. The Qin and Han dynasties stressed the importance of rural leaders in education in the form of three older adults being in charge of education and culture (三老掌教化). Especially after the Han dynasty, Confucianism was the only venerated philosophy, and the state-led schools mainly taught Confucian classics necessary for state governance. The core of Confucianism was to build and maintain the established order. Although rural education was mainly carried out through private schools (私塾), the contents of education were in the same vein as Confucianism. For example, the standard textbooks in private school were “Three, Hundred, Thousand, and Thousand” (三、百、千、千), namely, Three Character Classic (《三字经》), Hundred Family Surnames (《百家 姓》), Poems of One Thousand Writers (《千家诗》), Thousand Character Classic (《千字文》), The Classic of Girls (《女儿经》), Teaching Children’s Classic (《教儿经》), Instructions for Children’s Education (《童蒙须知》), and so on. The students further studied the Four Books and Five Classics (四书五经) and the Ancient Literature (《古文观止》). Even though the private schools provided the most fundamental education and focused chiefly on literacy and character learning, the process of obtaining literacy also reflected Confucian values and laid the foundation for further educational development. At the same time, a series of etiquette rules were included throughout the learning process. Therefore, in terms of learning content and purpose, private and government schools were the same, and both functioned as essential mechanisms of political socialisation. After the modern era, the critical difference between the new learning (新学) and old Chinese learning (旧学) was that knowledge was divorced from politics. Natural sciences were not related to political values, and some social sciences also acquired relative independence. However, from the very beginning of modern Chinese education, it was closely related to state-building. Old Chinese learning was replaced by new learning because it could no longer protect the country and preserve ethnics (保国保种). Bringing the literacy to the countryside and universal education were both aimed to save the nation from subjugation and ensure its survival (救亡图存). Li Shulei says this:

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The new schools in China were closely tied to the idea and entity of the nationstate from the very beginning. The abolition of the imperial examination and the establishment of the school in 1905 were a response to the critical situation in China under the guidance of the new concept of the nation-state. The new school itself was the product of national self-awakening. (Li, 1999:9) This was especially true as the party penetrated the countryside, where education shouldered political education functions. A party-oriented education programme (党化教育) was carried out by the National Government of the Republic of China. In 1928, the National Government of the Republic of China defined the Three Principles of the People as “the aims of education in the Republic of China (中华 民国教育宗旨).” During the time of the National Government of the Republic of China, the educational institutions were mainly located above the county level, and the function of political socialisation later was brought into rural education by the CCP instead. Education in the countryside had an apparent purpose: to serve the revolutionary struggle and to form new generations with communist beliefs. After the establishment of the PRC, the national education policy was established and implemented throughout the country, along with the popularisation of education. When the socialist transformation of the means of production was basically completed in 1956, Chairman Mao Zedong proposed that “our educational policy needs to enable everyone who receives education to develop morally, intellectually and physically and become a worker with both socialist consciousness and culture” in On the Correct Handling of Contradictions among the People. The Education Law of the PRC, adopted in 1995, stipulated that “education needs to serve socialist modernisation, be integrated with productive labour, and cultivate builders and successors of the socialist cause who are well-rounded in moral, intellectual and physical development.” Meanwhile, it also specified that “the state shall educate the educated in patriotism, collectivism and socialism, as well as in ideals, morality, discipline, the legal system, national defense and national unity.” In 2004, the Opinions of the State Council and the CCP Central Committee on Further Strengthening and Improving the Moral and Ethical Development of Minors (《中共中央国务院关于进一步加强和改进未成年人思想道德建设 的若干意见》) was promulgated, especially putting forward specific requirements on how to provide moral and ethical education for the minors. Universal education in rural areas played a significant role in integrating the scattered rural society and was an essential mechanism for the political socialisation of the state in rural areas. It was mainly composed of the following parts: (I) Schools School is a specialised institution for education. Traditional societies had educational institutions, like private schools, but they were informal ones and did not exist everywhere. In particular, private schools, with significant autonomy and flexibility, were

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not part of the government schools without political socialisation’s direct instrumental properties. The rulers perceived children’s education as the primary responsibility of parents, thereby only encouraging and guiding private schools to a limited extent. Private schools were not regulated by the government and were allowed to develop at their own pace. Currently, in China, with the popularisation of education, there are schools in almost every village, and the establishment of schools belongs to the state’s actions. Although village schools were financed by peasants and rural communities for a certain period, their education contents were still part of the state education system and manifested strong national attributes. As a Marxist scholar, Louis Olsasser said, “School is a kind of state machine” (Blackridge, 1989:178). In accordance with the Education Law of the PRC, schools should fulfil their obligations of “obeying the law and regulations, implementing the state directives on education, practising the state educational, and teaching standards and guaranteeing the quality of teaching.” In contemporary China, even throughout the period of the people’s commune, state institutions did not reach deeply to the grassroots. In contrast, there was a school in almost every village in the countryside. The schools used to implement the state’s education policy were the embodiment of the state’s will in rural areas. In particular, it shaped every village member and built the most basic political consciousness for them to enter society. This kind of function could never be achieved by a special state institution. (II) Teachers Teachers are the ones who impart knowledge. Since education plays an important role in political socialisation, teachers enjoy a relatively high social status. In traditional Chinese society, the memorial tablets worshipped included the heaven and the earth, the king, the parents, and the teacher (天地君亲师). Respect for teachers was tied with emphasis on teaching, and even the supreme emperor had great respect for their own teachers. In rural society, teachers were respected by the general public because they were rare intellectuals. However, in traditional society, teachers in private schools in the countryside were not nationalised and professionalised, and they were not supported financially by the state. Therefore, it was difficult for the state to ask them to make political contributions. In the 20th century, along with the popularisation of education, teachers becoming more professionalised and nationalised were civil servants and received compensation from government-sponsored schools. Even in a certain era when rural teachers were mainly private teachers rather than public civil servants, they needed to comply with the will of the local government and its agents so they could teach, and they had to obey the educational requirements proposed by the government in their educational activities. The Teacher Law of the PRC published in 1993 clearly states this: teachers are professionals who exercise the functions of education and teaching and are charged with the duty of imparting knowledge and educating people, training builders and successors for the socialist cause and enhancing the quality of the nation. Teachers shall devote themselves to the educational cause of people.

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Teachers’ obligations include as follows: abiding by the Constitution, laws and professional ethics, and being paragons of virtue and learning; implementing the educational policies of the State, observing relevant rules and regulations, carrying out schools’ teaching plans, fulfilling teaching contracts and accomplishing educational and teaching tasks; conducting education among students in the basic principles defined in the Constitution, education in patriotism, national unity and the legal system, and education in ideology, morality, culture, science and technology, and organising and leading students to engage in beneficial social activities. The state respects teachers and regulates September 10 every year as Teacher’s Day. Teachers must, however, meet specific state qualifications, and only those who meet these requirements can qualify as teachers, with one of the important factors being their ideological and political conditions. The teachers, thus, become the embodiment of the national will. When teachers perform educational activities in standard manners, they are actually acting the role of the agents of the state. They perform acts of political socialisation by personal example as well as verbal instruction (言传身教). Since teachers are the only literate people in the countryside with also a relatively stronger political consciousness, some of them can be selected as village cadres and play a further role in political education. (III) Textbooks Textbooks are the materials used to spread knowledge, skills, and ideas to students. In traditional society, the contents of textbooks in private schools of villages were generally the same. However, since education was privately organised, there was a certain amount of autonomy and flexibility in terms of what and how much that students learnt. With the spread of education after the 20th century, textbooks carried an important function in political education, and they reflected the various will of the state at different times. The Chinese class for primary school students originally focused primarily on character-learning and essay composition. The contents of the textbooks should meet specific national requirements and be recognised by the state. Students learn the same contents at the same time with standardised national textbooks, which can facilitate the spread of the national will to the educated. (IV) Curriculum Curriculum refers to the total number of subjects that students should study at school as well as the way these subjects are arranged. In traditional China, the curriculum of private schools in the countryside was more flexible, and ideological and political education was included in the learning of knowledge. With the start of bringing literacy to the countryside and the popularisation of education, the ideological and political curriculum became specialised and fixed. From the curriculum on the Three Principles of the People (三民主义) of the National Government of the Republic of

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China to the socialist education of the PRC, relevant ideological and political education was always a special curriculum that occupied an important position. Even after the reform and opening-up, primary schools also established special ideological and moral curriculums. Courses other than the natural sciences also needed to be nationally recognised and comprised contents beneficial to political socialisation. (V) Ceremony The form of ceremony is the process of learning and standardising human behaviour. Traditional rural private school education in China attached great importance to etiquette, but this kind of etiquette was mainly the worship of teachers without national attributes in general. Since the 20th century, the process of education popularisation has been to formalise and nationalise school ceremonies. For example, the flag-raising ceremony is held before the classes begin. The flag is raised as the national anthem is sung by the students, who will know more about the nation through this procedure. The flag-raising ceremony has become an important school activity, despite the poor conditions of some rural schools. Besides forming students’ national consciousness, this ceremony also affects rural society as a whole. In general, in the countryside, even village schools often raise the national flag, and the national flag and anthem in village primary schools become the main, even the only, representation of the state in rural society. (VI) Model With a special influence and exemplary nature, a model is a person or thing that can be used as a standard to learn and follow. Private schools in traditional China also gave certain encouragement to students who performed well academically. In particular, those who obtained national fame through hard work could be honoured by the state, and bring honour and prestige to their ancestors. However, such people remained very few and often had nothing to do with ordinary families. With the popularisation of education, schools set examples in accordance with staterecognised standards and called on others to learn from them, as exemplified by the Merit Student (三好学生) selected every year. Because of the popularisation of education, there were students in almost every family. Therefore, the impacts of role models recognised by the state spread to every family, thus bringing political socialisation into the daily life of the peasants.

V Literature and Art to the Countryside: The Grassroots Peasants Became the Protagonists of Literature and Art The reconstruction and integration of ideological values are the foundation of national reconstruction and integration. Along with China bringing propaganda to the countryside and literacy to the countryside were bringing literature and art to the countryside. The use of literature and art to transform people’s minds and create new images of peasants was an important way for the CCP to mobilise politically and integrate the dispersed rural society.

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Bringing professional literature and art to the countryside took place under the promotion of the CCP, and peasants became the protagonists of literary and artistic creations for the first time in this process, creating a positive and active image of themselves. In the early 1940s, as the CCP established anti-Japanese revolutionary base areas in Northern Shaanxi, a large number of urban intellectuals, and literary and artistic creators, went into these areas. While familiar with urban life, they had no knowledge of rural life and especially lacked an understanding of the revolutionary era. Therefore, in 1942, the literature and art forum at Yan’an was led and held by the CCP, where Mao Zedong delivered two speeches. He pointed out that the crux of the matter for the correct development of revolutionary literature and art was “problems of working for the masses and how to work for the masses.” In particular, he emphasised that “This question of ‘for whom?’ is fundamental; it is a question of principle,” proposing the policy that literature and art should serve the workers, peasants, and soldiers. He pointed out that “all our literature and art are for the masses of the people, and in the first place for the workers, peasants and soldiers; they are created for the workers, peasants and soldiers and are for their use” (People’s Publishing House, 1991c:853, 857, 863). At that time, there were few workers in Yan’an, and the army was mainly composed of peasants. Therefore, to serve workers, peasants, and soldiers was, essentially, to serve peasants. This policy fundamentally changed the orientation of literature and art that used to serve the rulers throughout history. For the first time, peasants became the service object of literature and art, and the protagonists of literary and artistic creations. Moreover, literary and artistic creations should positively portray the peasants. Mao Zedong believed that peasants also had backward ideas, but “we should not ridicule them wrongly or even be hostile to them when we see only one side.” For this reason, the ideology and emotions of the creators needed to be changed. It was necessary for them to go deep into the life and better know about peasants, and “the thoughts and feelings of our writers and artists should be fused with those of the masses of workers, peasants and soldiers” (People’s Publishing House, 1991c:849 and 851). After the forum on literature and art, writers and artists embarked on the countryside to feel and experience rural life. For the first time, peasants not only went into the vision of literary and artistic artists but also became the main characters of literary and artistic works. For example, the opera The White Maiden and the long narrative poem Wang Gui and Li Xiangxiang (《王贵与李香香》) exhibited the antagonism between the peasants and the landlords, and the peasants’ resistance. The biographical novel The Story of a Woman’s Turnaround (《一个女人翻身的故事》) and the long narrative poem “The River of the Zhanghe” (《漳河水》) told examples of rural women’s suffering and their experiences of resistance. The novella Li Youcai’s Story (《李有才板话》), the full-length novel The Sun Shines on the Sangan River (《太 阳照在桑干河上》), and The Storm (《暴风骤雨》) demonstrated peasants’ movement to reduce rent and interest and land reform under the leadership of the CCP in order to overthrow the landlord class. The full-length novel The Story of Planting Grain (《种谷记》) depicted the struggle of peasants to escape poverty, recover, and develop production, and described collective productive labour in rural areas after liberation. There were also short stories, such as the Marriage of Xiao Er Hei

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(《小二黑结婚》) and My Two Landlords (《我的两家房东》), that depicted social reform in rural areas and the struggle to change old ideas and customs within the peasant community. Peasants understood and could read these works, which were based on their lives and the languages of their own. In particular, they profoundly reflected the voices of the peasants and could both evoke resonance and touch their deepest emotions. For instance, when The White Maiden was staged, the peasants and soldiers regarded the characters in the play as real because they were emotionally involved. In this way, “peasants began to realise not only that they were suffering, but also that they could find a way to change their suffering. Nothing could be more revolutionary than this awareness” (Huntington, 2008:245). Bringing literature and art to the countryside led by the CCP in the Yan’an base area was provisional and only one part of the whole landscape. After gaining national power in 1949, the CCP was able to promote literature and art to the countryside throughout the whole nation, especially by using the power of the state. In July 1949, the first Chinese National Congress of Literary and Art Creators (中华全国文学艺术工作者代表大会) was held. The congress adopted Mao Zedong’s ideas on literature and art as the basic guidelines for the new literature and art, and called on literary and artistic creators to struggle for the construction of the people’s literature and art of the PRC (为建设中华人民共和国的人民文 艺而奋斗). Literature and art in the countryside thus became a regular activity promoted by the CCP and the government. Bringing literature and art to the countryside enabled peasants to enjoy professional literary and artistic creations that were previously only available to the upper classes and urban society. In particular, peasants became the protagonists of literary and artistic creations. This reflected the historical revolution in which peasants became masters of their own country and had helped to shape their political and national consciousness. Peasants constructed their awareness of and identification with the CCP and the state precisely during the widespread and frequent celebration of literary and artistic creations. For example, the song Sing a Folk Song to the Party (《唱支 山歌给党听》) goes like this: “Sing a folk song to the Party; I compare the CCP to my mother. My mother only gave birth to me; the light of the CCP shines in my heart.” For peasants, parents give them birth, but this song conveys the idea that the CCP is greater than their parents and families. At the same time, many literary and artistic creations featuring peasants were in line with their reading psychology and habits of appreciation. There was a strong spirit of the time, an enriched flavour of life, and distinctive national characteristics in these works, which were easily accepted by peasants with low education levels and could make a deep and wide impact. For example, Zhao Shuli and Zhou Libo tried to write in the words of the peasants (用农民的语言写作) in their novels, which had a widespread impact. The sales volume of Marriage of Xiao Er Hei (《小二黑结婚》) reached 30,000 to 40,000 copies in one district of Taihang. In the evaluation of literature and art in the period of Yan’an, Fairbank said this: In the areas led by the CCP, chorus was combined with an ancient rural dance, which produced a new art form called Yangko (秧歌), a poor man’s opera

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including speech, singing, and dance. Simple melodies, folk tunes, a series of dance steps, propaganda stories and themes of daily life are included in Yangko, which entertains the public in a way that gives the audience a sense of liberation and political education at the same time. (Fairbank, 1999:282–283) With bringing literature and art to the countryside, many written works were adapted into artwork and operas, and made into films to influence the peasants in a more visualised and intuitive way. For example, the peasants themselves adapted Marriage of Xiao Er Hei into an opera, and The Great Change in the Mountain Country (《山乡巨变》) was revised into a set of four comic books with 396 pictures.

VI The Image of Peasants Shaped by Politics and Its Mechanism The 20th century was a time of dramatic reform for China’s rural areas and peasant society. Rather than driven by a huge revolution in the mode of production, this reform originated mainly from political reform. The precursor and important driving force of political reform was the ideological revolution, which was closely related to the reform of literature and art. Particularly, ideological reform in China was not only for a few elites but was instead transformed into the minds and consciousness of the masses accompanied by political campaigns. Literature and art, which express emotions, thoughts, and consciousness through the creation of images, played an important role in this process. Especially for the masses of peasants who had a low level of literacy and were mostly illiterate, visual and figurative literature and art were far more effective and influential than ideological and political learning and formal schooling. Against this backdrop, the CCP, which led the grassroots workers and peasants in social reform, attached particular importance to the political attributes of literature and art, and focused on using literary and artistic creations to influence peasants. When the CCP led literature and art to the countryside, peasants became the protagonists of literature and art unprecedentedly. However, this image of peasants was shaped by politics to some extent, reflecting the political ideas and tendencies of the creators and performers. Literature and art influenced and affected people’s ideas, consciousness, and emotions by shaping typical images. With bringing literature and art to the countryside, there were two main types of images of peasants shaped by politics: the first kind of image was directly related to the theme of the time. A common feature of this kind of peasants’ images was their positive response to the tasks at different stages led by the CCP, thereby creating people’s political consciousness of the CCP and the state. This group of peasants was made up of the following four types: The revolutionary peasants. Small peasant economies were fragile, making the old peasants helpless and compelled to passively succumbed to their fate. Even the peasants in Lu Xun’s novels belonged to this category. However, in

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The second image of peasants reflected the theme of time and political value. Their common feature was that they demonstrated the changes brought by the CCP to the lives and destinies of peasants through literature and art images, thus building up peasants’ love, loyalty, and identification with the CCP and the state. This type of peasant was made up of the following categories: The suffering peasants. For a long time, peasants had been plagued by poverty and hardship. The new literature represented by Lu Xun also created a series of images of suffering peasants. However, literature and art under the leadership of the CCP had their distinctive features. In the first place, it typified the suffering peasants; extracted, summarised, and refined their deepest sufferings; and even polarised them. Additionally, the peasants’ suffering was attributed to the hostile ruling class.

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The portrayal, typification, and polarisation of such images magnified their suffering, building up their class feelings and identification with their own class leaders, the CCP. For example, the portrayal of the images in the four most influential class struggle works included the suffering peasants Yang Bailao and Xi’er, the bullying landlord Huang Shiren who turned people into ghosts, and the butler Mu Renzhi in the opera The White Maiden; the worker and the landlord Zhou Bapi in the Midnight Rooster Crow (《半夜鸡》); the suffering peasant Wu Qiong Hua and the bullying landlord Nan Baitian, who brutally oppresses peasants in the opera The Red Army of the Maiden; and the suffering peasant who paid rent and the landlord Liu Wencai who forced the peasants unable to pay rent to sit in water jail in the clay sculpture Rent Collector (《收租院》); and so on. Four landlords became typical examples of the landlord class, thus reinforcing people’s sympathy for the peasants and hatred of the landlords, and galvanising them to support the leadership of the CCP to overthrow the landlord class. This image was also compatible with the traditional thinking of the peasants, who maintained a simple black-white binary in their judgements, and could easily spread among people. The happy peasants. Peasants lived a miserable life in China for most of its long history. The literature and art led by the CCP not only further explored the suffering of peasants but, more importantly, depicted the happy life and the aspiration for a happy life obtained through the people’s struggle under the party’s leadership. As a result, peasants not only highly respected the leadership of the CCP but also believed that the party would guide them to better living standards, thus strengthening their faith in the CCP. In this way, the new society, the new peasants, and the new life were closely related. For example, Xiao Er Hei and Xiao Qin, who were given freedom of marriage in the Marriage of Xiao Er Hei during the Yan’an period, reflected the happiness brought to the peasants by the new society. Songs reflecting the happiness of the peasants in the new society were the most popular, and there were such popular songs in different periods, such as The Peasant Slave Sings(《翻身 农奴把歌唱》) and On the Field of Hope (《在希望的田野上》). The grateful peasants. Peasants in China lived at the bottom of society for a long time. They were grateful for the opportunity to survive under difficult conditions and for the limited happiness in their lives. A key element of peasant psychology was gratitude, as well as an expectation of life. Some operas in history were liked by peasants because they were closely related to their attitude of appreciation. The new literature and art led by the CCP did not only describe the happy life of peasants but also reflected their gratitude to the CCP for bringing them a happy life. Moreover, these kinds of grateful literary and artistic creations were more influential and persuasive when they appeared in the form of folk literature and art. Among peasants who were not highly educated, emotion was more important than reason. They were able to be moved and touched by visual, literary, and artistic creations more than rationalised theoretical works. CCP promoted literature and art to the countryside, integrated hundreds of millions of scattered peasants under its leadership, and made them a powerful force for social reform. This is also rare

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in the modern world, and this integration process was constructed by a set of mechanisms. (I) Literature and Art Policy Literature and art guidelines are the principles and policies that guide the work of literature and art, reflecting certain values and ideas. Rooted in revolutions at the bottom, the CCP began building the modern nation. It had to rely on the grassroots, especially peasants, who comprised the majority of the population. In his speech at the Yan’an Forum on Literature and Art, Mao Zedong distinctly raised the fundamental question of to whom literature and art were for, emphasising that literature and art should serve the people, first and foremost the workers, peasants, and soldiers. This established the CCP’s basic policy on literature and art, incorporated literature and art into the political sphere, and clearly associated literature and art with political attributes. Political correctness became the primary criterion for measuring literary and artistic creations. Therefore, bringing literature and art to the countryside became an organisational behaviour and a large-scale movement, and it was possible for peasants, the small figures in history, to go into the vision of literature and art, and become the protagonists of literary and artistic creations. (II) Literature and Art Organisations The CCP is a highly organised political party. Social organisation and social mobilisation through the political party are important functions of the CCP. To organise and mobilise society, the CCP not only put forward clear guidelines on literature and art but also established literature and art organisations led by the party to organise literature and art personnel to implement the CCP’s guidelines on literature and art. (III) Literature and Artistic Creators Along with political changes and mobilisation, literature and art have become increasingly important tools since the 20th century, enhancing the status of artists and writers, and becoming more and more dependent on politics and government at the same time. Literary and artistic creators evolved to be part of the party and the government, and are financially supported by it, which helped implement the CCP’s guidelines on literature and art. To ensure that literary and artistic creators were not financially threatened, the government provided economic resources. As early as the Yan’an period, the literary and artistic creators who came to Yan’an did not rely on their own commercial spiritual production but instead relied on the financial resources of the base area, and they were supported by the government. With bringing literature and art to the countryside, it was impossible for literary and artistic creators to go deep into rural life and experience it, and to create and perform literary and artistic creations featuring peasants without stable economic assurance. This was also unthinkable in the areas ruled by KMT. After the

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establishment of the PRC, literary and artistic creators became national public officials, and along with professionalism came administration. As state officials, it became a matter of course for them to carry out the CCP’s guidelines for literature and art in accordance with state requirements. Literary and artistic production, like other material production, became a task required by the government. (IV) Literature and Art Rewards and Criticism The state and the political party are both organisations with coercive powers, and the policies established by political parties and the state are backed by the power to achieve them. This power to reward or punish, or reward and criticise literature and art, has a great impact on the creation and dissemination of literature and art. Bringing literature and art to the countryside activities after the Yan’an Literature and Art Forum took place after repeated political mobilisations. Most people acted autonomously, but there was also some involuntary consciousness and behaviour that may have been caused by some pressure. By contrast, works and their creators adhering to the CCP’s literature and art guidelines may receive more encouragement. Especially after 1949, the CCP was able to use the state’s organisational and coercive power to implement the literature and art policy. On the one hand, it rewarded and supported those literary and artistic creations and creators that conformed to the CCP’s literature and art policy or kept up with the current situation. On the other hand, literary and artistic creations and creators failing to conform to the CCP’s literary policy were criticised. After the establishment of the PRC, along with the socialist transformation of agriculture, the CCP and the government adopted a series of mechanisms to create a new image of peasants and to appeal to peasants in order to actualise cultural integration of the countryside. However, this mechanism was formed in a series of political struggles and finally resulted in unsatisfactory outcomes. Firstly, the integration function of literature and art was overstated. For the peasants, in particular, material life always came first, and what they looked forward to after entering the new society was a change from their long-standing poor lifestyles. Although literary and artistic creations played an inspiring role, their function was limited, and a large number of peasants were still illiterate, who found many literary and artistic products difficult to comprehend. Secondly, it was divorced from the reality of life and thought of the vast majority of peasants. After all, Chinese peasants were the products of a long historical process. Although they entered the new society, their ideas and culture still retained elements brought by history. For them, they had to face various problems in daily life and even were worried about life. However, some works portraying the peasants as bright figures were beyond life, becoming too far away from the real life of peasants and were unattainable. This problem, thus, contributed to its limited artistic impact as a result. As Peng Dehuai said, “Popular works are rare which were written out of mass investigation.” Thirdly, it ignored the diverse needs of peasants. To mould the new peasants after 1949, the creators were overly specialised, and the works were too homogeneous and focused too much on ideology rather than the diversified needs of the peasants’ culture.

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Especially during the Cultural Revolution, not only were there few literary and artistic products with rural themes, but they were also fairly one-sided. Finally, literature and art in the countryside were less effective. The rulers of the PRC repeatedly emphasised that literature and art should serve workers and peasants, and attempted to construct a mechanism to do so. Due to the excessive focus on shaping the mechanism, including promoting its operation by means of struggles, cultural creators became more influenced by the ideology of the upper class and failed to produce more literary and artistic creations that were welcomed by the masses. As early as the mid-1970s, Mao Zedong was aware of the problems in the field of literature and art, and called for an adjustment of literature and art policy. However, the literature and art policy were not fundamentally reformed until the reform and opening-up, and they now depict the image of peasants in a far more diversified way.

Note 1 A department in charge of persuading students to attend schools. [Notes from the translator]

Reference List Blackridge, D. (1989). Contemporary Schools of Educational Sociology: Sociological Explanations of Education. Translated by Wang, B., et al. Shanxi: Chunqiu Publishing House. ([英]戴维·布莱克莱吉：《当代教育社会学流派—对教育的社会学解释》, 王波等译,春秋出版社1989年版,第178页。). Central Party Literature Press. (1992). Mao Tse-tung’s Manuscripts since the Founding of the People’s Republic of China, Vol. 7. Beijing: Central Party Literature Press. (《建国 以来毛泽东文稿》第7册, 中央文献出版社1992年版, 第178页。). Chen, Y. (2006). Revolution and Countryside: A Study on the Construction of Rural GrassRoots Political Power in the Early Period of the Founding of the People’s Republic of China from 1949 to 1957. Shanghai: Shanghai Academy of Social Science Press. Pp. 291. (陈益元：《革命与乡村—建国初期农村基层政权建设研究：1949–1957》, 上海 社会科学院出版社2006年版, 第291页。). Editorial Office of Agricultural Cooperation Campaign in Contemporary China. (1992). Historical Materials of Agricultural Cooperation since the Founding of the People’s Republic of China. Beijing: CPC History Press. (《当代中国农业合作化》编辑室: 《建国以来农业合作化史料汇编》, 中共党史出版社1992年版, 第794页。). Fairbank, J. K. (1999). The United States and China. Translated by Zhang, L. Beijing: World Affairs Press. ([美]费正清：《美国与中国》, 张理京译,世界知识出版 社1999年版, 第282–283页。). Guo, Y. (2013). The Story of Suffering: The History of Ji Village and One Logic of the Civilization. Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press. (郭于华：《受苦人的讲述：骥村 历史与一种文明的逻辑》, 香港中文大学出版社2013年版,第47页。). Huntington, S. P. (2008). Political Order in Changing Societies. Translated by Wang, G., et al. Shanghai: Shanghai People’s Publishing House. Pp. 245. ([美]塞缪尔·P．亨廷顿：《变 化社会中的政治秩序》, 王冠华、刘为等译, 上海人民出版社2008年版,第245页。).

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Li, D., and Yang, S. (2007a). Communist Party of China’s Ideological and Political Education in Rural Areas. Beijing: China Social Science Press. Pp. 180. (李德芳、杨素稳: 《中国共产党农村思想政治教育史》, 中国社会科学出版社2007年版, 第180页。). Li, D., and Yang, S. (2007b). The Experience Introduction of the Party Committee of Central Hebei Province on Some Problems in the First Stage of Land Reform. (1946, December 1). Communist Party of China’s Ideological and Political Education in Rural Areas. Beijing: China Social Science Press. Pp. 121. （《中共冀中区党委关于土地改革第一 阶段几个问题的经验介绍》, 1946年12月1日，载李德芳、杨素稳《中国共产党农 村思想政治教育史》, 中国社会科学出版社2007年版,第121页。）. Li, S. (1999). “Country” in Village: Village School in Cultural Change. Zhejiang: Zhejiang People’s Publishing House. (李书磊：《村落中的“国家”—文化变迁中的乡村学 校》, 浙江人民出版社1999年版,第9页。). Luo, P. (2001). Qiangshang Chunqiu. Fujian: Fujian People’s Publishing House. (罗平汉: 《墙上春秋》, 福建人民出版社2001年版, 第90页。). Luo, P. (2005). History of Land Reform Movement. Fujian: Fujian People’s Publishing House. (罗平汉: 《土地改革运动史》, 福建人民出版社2005年版, 第16页。). People’s Publishing House. (1991a). Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung, 2nd Edition, Vol. 1. Beijing: People’s Publishing House. （《毛泽东选集》第1卷, 人民出版社1991年 第2版, 第3、7页。）. People’s Publishing House. (1991b). Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung, 2nd Edition, Vol. 4. Beijing: People’s Publishing House. （《毛泽东选集》第4卷, 人民出版社1991年 第2版, 第34、35、849、851、853、857、863、1477页。）. People’s Publishing House. (1991c). Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung, 2nd Edition, Vol. 3. Beijing: People’s Publishing House. （《毛泽东选集》第3卷, 人民出版社1991年 第2版, 第853、857、863页。）. Wei, G. (2004). Official Governance and Self-Government: County System in China in the First Half of the 20th Century. Beijing: The Commercial Press. (魏光奇：《官治与自 治—20世纪上半期的中国县制》, 商务印书馆2004年版, 第122页。). Yuan, Z. (1999). Research on Ideological and Political Work in the Central Soviet Area. Nanchang: Jiangxi Universities and Colleges Press. (袁征主编: 《中央苏区思想政治 工作研究》, 江西高校出版社1999年版, 第111页。).

4

Class, Collective, and Community Rural Social Consolidation

In the era of traditional agricultural civilisation, the structure of the rural society displayed a high degree of dispersiveness, and it was precisely this socioeconomic dispersity that resulted in the decentralisation of the state. During China’s modernisation procedure, one of the consequential tasks of the state was to organise the highly dispersed rural society through social consolidation to form societal communities, which were both mutually related and obtained the centripetal forces towards the nation-state. This community was the social foundation of modern states’ rural governance. The process of the PRC’s modernisation relied mainly on the logic of class-collective-community to reconstruct society and achieve rural social consolidation.

I

Class Labelling (划成分): 划成分 From Family Society to Class Society

Since the beginning of human society, social members have emerged into different groups. The rural society, especially, remained in the stage of dispersion and isolation. Individual members lacked organic horizontal connections and suffered from a low degree of organisation. Social consolidation refers to the means of social organisations and connections to integrate differentiated and dispersed individuals into a whole. The purpose is to promote solidarity and enable various social elements to form a state. The first step of social consolidation of the rural areas in China was a transfer from an isolated family society to a class society with broader connections. China’s modern state-building dates back to the 1911 revolution. The 1911 revolution overthrew the state’s superstructure of imperialism but did not strike the social foundation, a duty shouldered instead by the CCP. The CCP is the advanced party armed with Marxism. In modern China, the party needed to topple the old system and establish a new society, on the one hand, while engaging in broadbased social mobilisation and searching for forces to rely on to achieve its goals on the other hand. In industrialised states in Western Europe, the class foundation of Marxist parties was predominantly the working class. However, the rural population counted for 90% of the total Chinese in the first half of the 20th century. Members of the CCP armed with Marxism emphasised class analysis at the very DOI: 10.4324/b23055-4

Class, Collective, and Community 69 beginning. In his “Analysis of the Classes in Chinese Society” (《中国社会各阶 级的分析》), the prominent article published in 1952, Mao Zedong explicitly emphasised, “Who are our enemies? Who are our friends? This is a question of the first importance for the revolution” (People’s Publishing House, 1991a:3). He also perceived peasants, who constituted the majority of the Chinese population, as solidary forces for revolution. In 1927, Mao further considered peasants as pioneers of evolution, believing that “the peasants have accomplished a revolutionary task which had been left unaccomplished for many years and have done an important job for the national revolution” (People’s Publishing House, 1991a:18–19). Consequently, he elevated attitudes towards poor peasants to attitude towards the revolution. Chinese Revolution followed the path of “encircling the cities from rural areas (以农村包围城市).” This path determined that the CCP must initiate social mobilisation in villages and find forces of reliance: the peasants who lived poor lives under the traditional order. However, during its rural social mobilisation, the CCP soon realised those peasants obtained no self-consciousness of classes, despite their lower-class status and impoverished life objectively. The significant reason behind this phenomenon was the clan consciousness long formulated within the rural society throughout history. While villages experienced differentiation between the wealthy and the poor, the age-long blood relations and consciousness of consanguinity considerably diluted differentiations and oppositions. All kinds of blood relations existed between landlords and peasants and between kulak peasants (rich peasants) and poor peasants. In The Struggle in the Chingkang Mountains (《井冈山的斗争》), Mao wrote this: The economy in the border area is agricultural. . . . The unit of social organisation everywhere is the clan, consisting of people having the same family name. In the Party organisations in the villages, it often happens that a branch meeting virtually becomes a clan meeting, since branches consist of members bearing the same family name and living close together. Such members do not quite understand when they are told that the Communists draw no sharp line of demarcation between one nation and another or between one province and another, or that a sharp line should not be drawn between different counties, districts and townships. (People’s Publishing House, 1991a:74) But as the feudal family system prevails in every county, and as all the families in a village or group of villages belong to a single clan, it will be quite a long time before people become conscious of their class and clan sentiment is overcome in the villages. (People’s Publishing House, 1991a:69) While the peasants, according to their economic status, belonged to the same class, dispersed economy and family society prevented them from formulating a class with national connections, thereby depriving them of self-consciousness as a distinctive class. They were more prone to the family blood relations and regional

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clan consciousness, both of which were formed naturally throughout history. Consequently, the CCP needed to rally these widely spread peasants around its flags and establish a social entity with national connections, strengthen the class and class consciousness, and implement class differentiation in the rural society. Classification describes the process of turning an objective class into one with subjective consciousness. On the one hand, it differentiated various classes among members of the rural society, searching for reliable class foundations and a force of solidarity. On the other hand, it engaged in class education for rural social members, intensified their class consciousness, established class identity and recognition, and obtained class attributes as a result. Unlike Sun Yat-sen’s application of the concept of nationalists (国民) in the national revolution, the CCP placed special emphasis on the concept of class based on common interests. The rationale behind this was that “the acquirement of ‘common interest’ not only cultivated class consciousness of peasants and workers, but also facilitated them to form a unity for their common thoughts and actions” (Chen, 2018:53–63). Building on his empirical research, Miao Wu pointed out that the important approach used by the state to establish the new rural society was to “use ‘class’ to sever connections and bonds among peasants and simplify the rural social structure” (Wu, 2007:281). Specifically, class labelling was the significant method to construct the collective class that transcended clan-oriented and narrowly confined socio-organisational connections. Class labelling enabled the CCP to confirm the identities of members of the rural society and determine their statuses and destinies. Determining the nature of social members from the class perspective was a procedure of social reform, reconstruction, and reconsolidation in the meantime. In the “Analysis of the Classes in Chinese Society,” Mao provided a detailed differentiation of strata and classes of Chinese society. In the Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan (《湖南农民运动考察报告》), he continued to argue that peasants should be divided into different classes and groups. The CCP’s rural social mobilisation and consolidation were accompanied by land reform. Land reform was a revolution of the land system, facing readjustment of land relations and redistribution of land resources. In 1933, Mao composed “How to Differentiate the Classes in the Rural Areas” (《怎样分析农村阶级》), an article written specifically for the land reform in the revolutionary base of the Chingkang Mountains, and perceived it as the criteria for class differentiation in the rural society. This article divided rural social members into the landlord, the rich peasant, the middle-class peasant, the poor peasant, and the worker. Following its acquirement of the national regime and precedented enforcement of rural land reform, the CCP applied the power of the state regime for national class labelling in the rural areas. On August 20, 1950, the Government Administration Council of the Central People’s Government issued Decisions Concerning the Differentiation of Class Status in the Countryside (《关于划分农村阶级成份的决 定》) (hereinafter Decisions),1 engaging in national class differentiation in the rural areas. According to the regulations, landlords, referring to individuals who owned the lands, did not engage in labour themselves and made a living by exploitation,

Class, Collective, and Community 71 mainly in the form of land rent extraction. The rich peasants had a land of their own or rented land from others and obtained relatively better instruments of production and liquid capital. While engaging in a small amount of labour themselves, they depended on the exploitation of wage labours for the majority of their living. The middle-class peasants owned parts of their land and rented the rest. They had a fair number of instruments and made a living by directly engaging in their own labour. The poor peasants rented land from others for farming, owned no instruments of their own, and were prone to the exploitations of the landlords and rich peasants. Those having completely no land and instruments, and making a living through selling their labour power were workers (including hired labours). Upon the regulations of the Decision, kids under 18 years old and juveniles enrolled in schools were not differentiated by classes but rather by family origins. The landlords and rich peasants who complied with legal ordinance after the rural reform and tried hard to produce without any reactionary actions for five consecutive years or over three years could change their class differentiation according to the relevant procedures. Class labelling not only established the identity of social members but also acquired corresponding treatments. It was this method on which the CCP relied to confirm this line: depending on the poor peasants and solidifying the middle peasants to eradicate the system of feudal exploitation step-by-step and in a differentiated manner (依靠贫农, 团结中农, 有步骤地, 有分别地消灭封建剥削制度, 发 展农业生产). Based on this line, the CCP distributed the land confiscated from the landlords to the poor peasants gratuitously. Consequently, “class differentiation, for the first time, produced a class stratification with tremendous discrepancy for the traditionally rural society that used to be in warmth” (Chen, 2006:291). Class labelling acted as the foundation of constructing class consciousness. As a method of resource redistribution, it decided that some would gain and some would lose. Material productions and means of subsistence constituted the basis of individual existence, and interests were the most fundamental social relations. While kinship could dilute the benefit relations, it could not alter the objective existences of interests. Since class differentiation was able to bring real interests to people, they were more willing to recognise the certain class labelled for them rather than a particular surname. Moreover, classes could transcend blood, geographical, and business relationships and their boundaries, therefore forming a national society as a whole. As Huning Wang pointed out, “the class consciousness went beyond blood relations from the ideological perspective. It no longer differentiates identities based on people’s positions in blood relations but rather determine it according to individuals’ status in socioeconomic-political relations” (Wang, 1991:52). A traditional rural society with a dispersive nature, thus, became a holistic society with class connections. Since class differentiation and resource redistribution were implemented under the direction of the regime-controlling CCP, the holistic society with class connection was organised and led by the CCP

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and became the foundation for the party’s rural social governance. As a result, Kuangzheng Ye (2007) pointed this out: class differentiation could be said to alter the social relationship and structure in the rural areas. The old social order rooted in clans, education, wealth, and reputation, all of which were overturned by the new concept of “class.” Landlords and rich peasants who used to dominate the rural society were the object of criticism and denouncement (批斗) and accusation during the Land Reform Revolution, and objects of controls and suppression for a long time following. Not only did it destroy the social and economic foundation of rural elites, compelling them to “lose their authority, have their land divided, and ruin their reputations (权威失落, 土地被分, 声望扫地),” but it also entitled various classes with discrepant political power to actualise the goal of social mobilisation and control. Class differentiation was actually the first step to reassemble the state power. The purpose was to target a small group of class enemies to demonstrate the power of both the new regime and people who used to be poor. In addition to the class differentiation’s division of regimental power was the division of members’ self-identity. During the land revolution and land reform, while members of the rural society were labelled into different classes, they still lacked the self-consciousness of classes. Consequently, the process of class differentiation was one for the construction of the class identity. The major approach was inspiring and elevating class awareness. As a result, the CCP dispatched working groups to villages to conduct class education and reinforce people’s class consciousness. First, it asked the question of “who supported whom (谁养活谁)?” from an economic perspective, inspiring peasants to realise that they were supporting the landlords from whom land should be taken, an activity that was right and proper. Second, it “fought the landlord (斗地主)” from a political perspective, eradicating the authority of this group. For peasants, “struggle would intensify their idea of antagonism. This face-to-face form of struggle, which often resulted in disgraceful face-loosing, rendered rural authorities to fall from the top level to the bottom all of a sudden” (Chen, 2006:291). Third, it emphasised that “class differentiated the closeness (亲不亲阶级分).” People from the same classes were relatives, while those from different classes were enemies. It is precisely this series of class education that diluted people’s family consciousness and strengthened class consciousness. As this consciousness was given by the CCP, peasants with class awareness, thus, became the party’s relying forces in the rural area and constituted a classbased national political community. The rural area transformed from a family society to a class society, and the CCP thereby consolidated the wide and dispersed rural society under its organisation and leadership. Lisheng Wang articulated this: when peasants encountered the concept of “class” and recognised their class identities, the general connection among them immediately went through the fundamental change. It was no longer the loose connections that were not indispensable among individual peasants but a very tight and firm one among

Class, Collective, and Community 73 members within classes. The collective action capacity formulated by this relation reconstructed China. (Wang, 2006:94–98) Consequently, the Chinese peasants obtained their political identity for the first time through the symbol of classes rather than nationals.

II

Removing the Hats (摘帽子): 摘帽子 Polarisation and Dissolution of Class Society

Class differentiation was the recognition of rural social members’ class identities. Despite the objectiveness of class attributes, labelling was an arbitrary action of determination. As pointed out by Haijing Li (2011:102), “class attributes did not grow spontaneously within villages and were not chosen by the peasants autonomously. Instead, they resulted from the construction by socio-political power exogenous to both the villages and farmers.” This construction was based on a certain social purpose and remained a product at a particular stage. However, after the founding of the PRC, the social consciousness of class gradually became polarised. According to Marxist theories, class is associated with means of production, ways of life, and corresponding social status. Following the transformation of ownership of the production means was the alternation of class attributes of social members accordingly. It was precisely this theory on which the Decisions issued by the Government Administration Council on August 20, 1950, explicitly stated this: kids under 18 years old and juveniles enrolled in schools were not differentiated by classes but rather by family origins. The landlords and rich peasants who complied with legal ordinance after the Rural Reform and tried hard to produce without any reactionary actions for five consecutive years or over three years could change class differentiation according to the relevant procedures. However, this decision announced by the Government Administration Council did not manifest in real life. The underlying reason was that class differentiation came along with the redistribution of interests, especially in coercive form. Before the PRC’s establishment, Mao had articulated this: the aim of the land reform is to abolish the system of feudal exploitation, that is, to eliminate the feudal landlords as a class, not as individuals. Therefore, a landlord must receive the same allotment of land and property as does a peasant and must be made to learn productive labour and join the ranks of the nation’s economic life. (People’s Publishing House, 1991b:1314) At the beginning of the PRC’s establishment, as far as the ruling party perceived, the class of exploitation consisted of landlords, rich peasants, and others who lost their

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means of production and social status, who would undoubtedly become resentful, thereby advancing challenges and opposition against the existing order and engaging in class retaliation (阶级报复). Consequently, only those without any reactionary actions for five consecutive years or over three years could change class differentiation according to the relevant procedures. Yet after the land reform, the party in power continued to reorientate the rural society with the aim of establishing and consolidating the socialist system. In the eyes of the party, the procedure of socialist reconstructions and revolution was still full of classes and class struggles. Though landlords, rich peasants, and other members of the exploitative class were deprived of production means, they continued to oppose the current regime and the socialist path, and should necessarily be subject to supervision and reform. Class attributes, therefore, became the signal of individuals’ political identity and status with longterm continuation. The entitlement of certain class attributes to people was like putting a hat which was not only easy to be discerned but also hard to get rid of. Class labelling or putting on the class hat was a practice that continued to reinforce the class nature of social members after a completed transformation of ownership of production means. However, this class nature was not connected with the means of production but with actual performances and manifested in daily life. The period of socialist transformation witnessed the limitations on people who used to belong to the classes of landlords and rich peasants, a group constrained from participating in the rural cooperatives. After all, rural land was owned by the socialist collectives, former landlords, rich peasants, and other members of these classes that could enter the people’s commune system. But unlike commune members from the middle and poor peasants, they could only transform through labour work, were subjected to mass management, and could not enjoy the same treatment as the ordinary member. Particularly, when the social path supported by the people’s communes experienced frustrations during the late 1950s, the leadership in power believed that the rural areas contained struggles between two classes and two paths, emphasising not to forget class struggles, whose targets remained the former landlords, rich peasants, and other social members to whom the party imposed more restrictions. In 1963, Some Concrete Policy Formulations of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party in the Rural Socialist Education Movement (《中 共中央关于农村社会主义教育运动中一些具体政策的规定(草案) (hereinafter Some Concrete Policy Formulations) explicitly specified “to conduct a review of” landlords, rich peasants, counter-revolutionary, bad elements, and the following: four category elements and practices reinforce the regular supervision and transformation of these groups. Four elements after label removal but engaging in reactionary activities that demanded a class relabelling could “wear the hats” again after the approval of the people’s committee on the county level. (Editorial Office of Agricultural Cooperation Campaign in Contemporary China, 1992:776) They were unable to attend meetings and participate in other social activities as others and should shoulder more obligatory labour.

Class, Collective, and Community 75 In general, class is connected with individuals’ positions within the economic structure. However, the class after 1949 related closely to socio-identity. Identity refers to one’s origin and social status, could not be altered in accordance with alternations of economic rankings, and would continue to influence their descendants. Social members with class attributes of former landlords and rich peasants themselves could not enjoy the same social status as others, and their offspring became a special group unable to join the military and participate in militia training. Some Concrete Policy Formulations specified that “children of landlords and rich peasants could not take the role as the local primary cadres and generally ought to take the role of accountants, scorekeepers, custodians, and other important positions” (Editorial Office of Agricultural Cooperation Campaign in Contemporary China, 1992:774). “[We] should strengthen the education and transformation of children of landlords and rich peasants . . . striving for their departure from their classes of origin” (Editorial Office of Agricultural Cooperation Campaign in Contemporary China, 1992:776–777). It also revealed that some local areas did the following: imposed various kinds of restrictions on the issue of marriage between young party members, league members, middle and poor peasants as a group and children of landlords and rich peasants as another, prohibiting the former to marry the latter. Those already married with the latter group would be considered losing their positions and were prone to punishments by organisations. (Editorial Office of Agricultural Cooperation Campaign in Contemporary China, 1992:777) Although being perceived as inappropriate by Some Concrete Policy Formulations, these actions could not be limited under the atmosphere of intensifying class struggles (Li, 2011). Class labelling reinforced the class consciousness of social members by limiting individuals and their offspring who previously belonged to classes of landlords and rich peasants. Meanwhile, it implemented various approaches towards members of former middle and poor peasant classes, continuing to buttress the class consciousness of this group, which acted as the relying class for the party. First, it emphasised the class status of this group. Only middle and poor peasants or individuals with these origins could have more possibility of joining the CCP and becoming cadres. Meanwhile, it established organisations of middle and poor peasants, facilitating them to consolidate together and reinforce their political and social status. Second, it triggered their historical memories by comparing past suffering from present happiness (忆苦思甜), thus retaining their class nature. The investigation of Letian Zhang discovered that “in different historical period and social occasions, [the tactic of] ‘recalling the hardship suffering and contrasting them with the current happiness’ was often used to excite the gradually thinning class sentiments of the peasants” (Zhang, 2012:9). Third, it consolidated local cadres through the means of political movements. While originating from poor and middle-class peasants, some cadres, after obtaining powers, diverted from their

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own classes and became degenerated elements (蜕化变质分子), who should be targets of cleansing politics, economy, organisation, and ideology. The hats acquired considerable figurative meaning. It was not a symbol with physical meaning but one with symbolic implications. For instance, although landlords no longer possessed land to obtain incomes, they still had to put on the hat of landlords due to their class origin, thereby rendering their descendants children of landlords, even though they had never seen lands that used to belong to their ancestors. This symbolic identity demonstrated strong constructive nature rather than physical existence. The verb “putting on” before “hats” reflected this phenomenon in the most suitable way. The continuation of wearing hats after the abolishment of the class of exploitation aimed to constantly strengthen the class nature among members of the rural society, unite 95% of peasant populations, and consolidate the society through the class. However, this consolidation itself was reproducing social contractions and conflicts ceaselessly, rendering it hard to achieve consistency among members of the society. If reinforcement of class consciousness during the revolution period was able to alter the kinship-dominant social relations embedded in the previous social structure and to construct a holistic society with a class nature, prolonged fortification of class identity amidst the alternating ownership of means of production could result in re-differentiation and re-decentralisation of the society. First, class differentiation was a policy with discriminatory treatment. In 1955, Mao elaborated this in the report entitled On the Co-operative Transformation of Agriculture (《关于农业合作化问题》): For the next few years in all areas where co-operative transformation has not been basically completed, landlords and rich peasants must definitely not be admitted into the co-operatives. In areas where it has been basically completed, however, the consolidated co-operatives may, on certain conditions, admit by stages and in groups former landlords and rich peasants who have long since given up exploitation, who engage in labour and are law-abiding, and may allow them to take part in collective labour while continuing to reform them through labour. (Editorial Office of Agricultural Cooperation Campaign in Contemporary China, 1992:250) Under this discriminatory policy, elements of former classes of exploitation faced difficulties in changing their status through active hardworking, and their children ought to shoulder historical burdens caused by them. According to the CCP Central Committee’s Some Concrete Policy Formulations, “children of landlords and rich peasants counted for around 10% of the total youth in the rural areas” (Editorial Office of Agricultural Cooperation Campaign in Contemporary China, 1992:776). These people occupied socially excluded positions and had problems formulating recognition of the new order. Meanwhile, “the entire class of middle and poor peasants concerned about being locked out of the gate of socialism and being perceived as landlords and rich peasants” (Chen, 2006:236–237). Second, the class

Class, Collective, and Community 77 consciousness of poor and middle-class peasants, objects of party reliance, began to fade. The consciousness of individuals was ultimately attributed to their economic status and interests. During the period of the land reform revolution, the formation of class identity was credited to material interests behind this practice. People with identities of poor and middle-class peasants were able to acquire considerable benefits. Although they and their children continued to enjoy certain advantages, marginal utilities of these benefits decreased gradually. In other words, the more times one repeatedly obtains the same amount of payments in the recent period, the less value the additional portion of these payments will create for him. Particularly, after the land reform, the overall economic situation of the peasants experienced few changes. Although they could acquire some benefits in their daily life, these advantages were dwarfed in comparison to the overall life situations in reality. For instance, at the beginning of the 1960s, people starving also included children of poor and middle-class peasants. The result of this situation was that some poor and middle-class peasants more often recalled sufferings from hunger in the early 1960s during sessions of recalling suffering in the past and contemplating happiness at present (忆苦思甜). Third, the ceaseless political movement had placed primary-level cadres under consistent concerns, as they were unsure which movement would expel them outside of the political system, rendering them the newly emerged class enemies. The effectiveness of class differentiation without economic support was indeed limited. Discourses of class in practice sometimes could only stay on the level of public space discourse, and were dissolved by villagers’ logic of daily life and rationality of rural survival, therefore unable to dominate villagers’ thoughts and actions and daily operations of villages. (Ma, 2018:75–82) As demonstrated earlier, continuing to strengthen class and class struggles after accomplishing the transformation of ownership of production means were averse to social consolidations and harmful to unity, and mobilised the enthusiasm of as many social members as possible. The Third Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee of the CCP, commenced in 1978, decided to stop the path of “taking class struggle as the key link (以阶级斗争为纲).” On January 11, 1979, the Central Committee of the CCP issued The Decisions on Issues regarding Label Removal of Landlords and Rich Peasants and Elements of their Children (《关于 地主, 富农分子摘帽问题和地, 富子女成分问题的决定》) (hereinafter The Decisions). The Decisions stipulated that, with the extremely few numbers of people as exceptions, the state would remove the hats of land owners, rich peasants, reactionary elements, and bad elements, who now receive the same treatment as members of the people’s communes. From now on, their political performances in school enrolment, admission, joining in the army, the Communist Youth League, the CCP, and job assignments mattered the most and should be subject to no discrimination. Children with family origins as former landlords and rich peasants replaced these class backgrounds with a new identity as commune members

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(Party Literature Research Centre, CPC Central Committee, Development Research Centre of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China, 1992:12–13). The Decisions believed that this regulation was beneficial for motivating all kinds of positive factors and transferring negative factors into positive ones. Meanwhile, the People’s Daily also published a particular editorial to criticise the excessively left policy or the following: the reactionary bloodline theory that treated children of landlords, rich peasants, reactionary actors, and bad elements as the same way as those categories still under transformation, and even saved landlords’ and rich peasants’ class label for their third and fourth generation of decedents. “Driving the fish into deep water and the sparrows into the thickens (为渊驱鱼, 为丛驱雀),”2 this policy intended to deliberately design separation within the people and destroyed the hearts and minds of the younger generation. (People’s Daily Editorial, 1979) Along with the implementation of decisions by the Central Committee, members of the rural society were perceived collectively as commune members, whose class identity consequently faded and tended to disappear eventually. The structure of social members severed by classes achieved the integration due to the collective identity of social members, thereby establishing a holistic political community.

III

Collectivisation: From Individual Society to Collective Society

After the label removal of land owners and rich peasants, members of rural society were collectively addressed as commune members (社员). The title never appeared in the long-term history; commune members were the product of the people’s commune during the process of rural collectivisation. In addition to the rural classification of the political society, the rural collectivisation of the economic society was also a significant component of the social consolidation of the rural society. Rural social consolidation, besides the departure from family society to class society, was also accompanied by the transformation from individual society to a collective society. The concept of collectivisation existed in contrast to individuality. Since the Qing dynasty, Chinese villages have implemented the household-oriented mode of production and operation. This method of production determined the dispersiveness of the rural society and political decentralisation. Consequently, the rural society was perceived as a heap of loose sand (一盘散沙). Not only was there a lack of connection among rural members, but the state also found it difficult to enter the rural society, resulting in a state of suspension (悬浮) for the regime. The CCP organised the peasants through classification and achieved the reorganisation of the rural society. However, the household-based production method was inherited after the land reform revolution. Additionally, because of the eradication of land owners, the historical connections between the peasants and

Class, Collective, and Community 79 landlords disappeared as well, reducing the horizontal linkages of the rural society and resulting in a stronger individual dispersiveness. Hence, the CCP initiated to promote collectivisation in the rural areas along with the land reform revolution. The party’s rapid implementation of collectivisation after the reform was to consolidate the decentralised rural society from an economic perspective. It had a three-fold goal. First, it strived to prevent new (forms of) social diversion. Even though peasants after the reform obtained land, the production capacity of each household differed drastically, and peasants with weaker capacities might not be able to sustain their living and even lose the land because of problematic operations, while others may become so-called new rich peasants. The CCP that perceived the abolition of the class of exploitation as its own responsibility was unwilling to witness this situation, which also hindered the outcome of the social integration through the means of eradicating the exploitive class. Second, it satisfied the need to consolidate the state’s regime on the primary level. The land reform revolution manifested the CCP’s policy design to lead the peasants to engage in rural social integration. Although regime organisations and party organisations penetrated downwards to the village level, if the rural area maintained the household-based independent operations, individuals would place more emphasis on the interests of households, enabling the burgeoning and reinforcement of peasants’ selfish consciousness. In the course of time, this self-interest preference would result in the lack of the centripetal forces towards the regime organisations and produce political decentralisation. Before the establishment of the PRC, the CCP’s leader, Mao Zedong, had highlighted the need to prevent this tendency and articulated that “educating the peasants remained a severe problem.” However, education itself was far from enough, and it was necessary to approach the economic foundation to target the origin of this tendency. Third, it aimed to meet the need for national industrialisation. The CCP proposed the general line of achieving industrialisation soon after the rural land reform. The accumulation of industrialisation demanded agriculture to provide support. As members of the CCP perceived, the production capacity of the individual economy was too limited to satisfy the needs of national industrialisation. Meanwhile, the operational model of the individual economy was not effective for the state in directly acquiring produce from the rural area. In the early 1950s, the state enacted the policy of monopoly on the purchase and marketing of agricultural produce (统购统销政策). However, in the face of hundreds of millions of scattered rural households, the policy implementation became extremely difficult and demanded solidarity and united the rural society as a base of support. Based on these conditions, China embarked on the unprecedented process of rural collectivisation soon after the land reform. The CCP found itself inexperienced in conducting collectivisation on the foundation of individual economy, which was embedded in the history. As the pioneer of socialist states, the Soviet Union provided the only model: the system of kolkhoz or collective farms (集体 农庄制). Despite the Soviet precedence, China’s collectivisation also experienced a procedure constituted by various stages.

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The first step was mutual aid groups. Despite China’s long history of individual production, households could not finish their production and living procedure completely, and engaged in mutual assistance, which was based on the requirements and will of the peasants. Areas with insufficient individual economic capacity witnessed the existence of more social mutual help. China’s land reform first took place on revolutionary bases with relatively backward economic and natural conditions. In these regions, after the revolution, mutual assistance emerged among the peasants, which transcended the organisation of individual production, and received praises and encouragement from leaders of the CCP. The second step was cooperatives. Mutual aid groups were merely labour assistance among peasants, who remained the owners of their means of production. Cooperatives, in contrast, were agricultural economic organisations that went beyond the individual economy. These organisations were divided into elementary cooperatives and advanced cooperatives. The former was developed based on mutual aid groups and demonstrated several features: peasants following the principle of voluntary participation and reciprocity submitted their land, farm animals, large farm tools, and other major means of production to the cooperatives for collective operation and usage. They received an appropriate dividend on the land shared based on the quality and quantity of land submitted, and accepted certain payments for other production means that joined these cooperatives. Elementary cooperatives organised collective labour based on members’ cooperation and division of labour. Members obtained payments based on the principle of distribution according to work, and products were subject to collective management by cooperatives. Elementary cooperatives acquired certain public accumulation. Compared to the mutual aid groups, they actualised unified operation of land and other means of production, accumulated certain public property, and engaged in collective labour under the plan by cooperatives, and achieved the principle of distribution according to one’s performance (按劳分配原则). Partially altering individual ownership, they constituted the primary form of the collective economy. While the establishment of cooperatives demanded voluntary participation and free will, elementary cooperatives recognised as socialist organisations consequently received multifaceted encouragement and support from the government, and soon transited into advanced cooperatives. Unlike their elementary counterparts characterised by land pooling and collective operation (土地入股, 统一经营), advanced cooperatives featured collective ownership of land, farm animals, largescale farm tools and additional production means, abolition of land payment, and practice of distribution according to work. People’s communes were the third step (of economic collectivisation). Either elementary or advanced cooperatives remained organisations of economic collaboration, which were paralleled by political regimes. People’s communes were organisations that integrated governmental administration with economic management. Not only were they basic social units and organisations of collective economy, but they also functioned as primary units of the state regime in the rural areas. Under the system of people’s commune, all means of production belonged to the collectives (which later allowed the peasants to save a small amount of land for

Class, Collective, and Community 81 personal needs to satisfy the demands of daily life). The system conducted collective operations, and the fruit of labour belonged to the communes. Members obtained their means of subsistence from the communes according to their own labour and must fulfil obligations of production promulgated by the collective organisations. The system of people’s communes was an extreme form of rural collectivisation under which individual peasants’ economic foundations and spaces of action basically vanished. Everyone was a commune member who belonged to collective organisations. They were inseparable from the collectives, from birth to death, from production to daily life. Even reservations of the extremely small portion of individual economy and activities were perceived as incongruent with socialist collectives and were prone to suppression. People’s commune was a significant form of the state’s social consolidation of scattered villages in the rural areas. Through the commune, the state rapidly and completely organised dispersed individual peasants, establishing a unified rural society. As demonstrated by Shengxiang Chen, “the movement of collectivisation transferred hundreds of millions of peasants into homogenous members of communes” (Chen, 2015:71). There existed no social divisions within the collectivised rural society, where everyone was a commune member. While land owners and rich peasants could not enjoy the same treatment as other members, they still worked within the communes, resided, and accepted supervision. Members’ activities were highly unified by the collectives, leaving no space for individual activities. Commune members’ daily life depended extremely on the collective organisations, without which the individuals’ possibility of survival remained extremely low. Meanwhile, various organisations formed during the collectivisation procedure were new forms of organisations that transcended their traditional counterparts. “The principle of coordination of the new organisation was the one that went beyond family structure. . . . It positioned family members within organisations based on social status rather than kinships as a basis of coordination” (Wang, 1991:52), reconstructing a new type of rural society.

IV Household Responsibility System (大包干): 大包干 Collective Society on Family Basis Due to the rural collectivisation’s nature of government’s facilitation and dominance, the will and rights of individual peasants were not adequately respected. Consequently, some peasants lacked enthusiasm for the collectives from the beginning. This situation, however, was only perceived as backward individual consciousness and was even elevated into adversarial class consciousness subject to suppression. Yet the self-consciousness existing throughout the historical period could not be simply eradicated with the help of national (coercive) force. Specifically, after peasants entered the collective organisational system, their lives did not undergo fundamental changes, whereas the motivation of collective labour continued to wane. Peasants’ enthusiasm for collective labour was drastically dwarfed by their activeness within the land for personal needs owned by individuals. This

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phenomenon was determined by the logic of survival, which featured the farmers’ hope to meet their need for subsistence through labour. It was precisely the same logic that compelled peasants to break through the system of the people’s communes or the practice of production contracted to each household (包产到户) that accompanied the commune system. This action of peasants demanding a fixed farm output quota for each household was not recognised by the Central Committee until the early 1980s. The household operation was a form of production and operation with families as basic units. Its rise directly resulted in the abolition of the people’s commune system. In 1983, the national constitution demanded the establishment of country governments in the rural area and the villagers’ committees on the sub-country level. As the system of the people’s commune collapsed naturally, the rural society, established based on this system, experienced alternations correspondingly. The fundamental symbol of this change was that families became the entity of production and operation, and the basic unit of economy and living. The daily life of people depended more on families, which emerged as foundations of individuals’ living, the rural society, and the state’s consolidation of the rural areas. Obviously, after eradicating the system of the people’s commune, the rural society did not return to the pre-commune era despite the restoration of families’ fundamental status. The underlying reason was that ownership of land as the predominant means of production still belonged to the collectives, and peasants acquired merely rural land contracted management rights. Collective ownership of production means enabled the continued existence of the collective society, which only now relied on families as the foundation. Families were both fundamental units of production and operations and stakeholders. In order to adapt to this special characteristic, the state implemented the system of self-governance by the villagers on the basis of peasants’ spontaneous creations through which it attempted to conduct rural social consolidation. According to the villagers’ selfgovernance system, contraction of land and other production means ought to be determined after discussions of villagers’ delegates meetings. The villagers’ committee, as representatives of collective assets, shall be produced by villagers’ elections and accept their supervision. Only amidst the procedure of self-governance did the villagers really sense and experience their existence as owners of village collectives. For peasants, this type of collective society was real rather than fictional and was self-determined rather than externally imposed, thereby being able to strengthen their identity and sense of belonging. Compared with the social integration of the people’s commune, social consolidation based on household operation and villagers’ self-governance placed greater emphasis on the subjectivity and will of the peasants. After the implementation of the household responsibility system, the meaning of the collective economy underwent significant changes. There existed no individual family operation but only the collective economy unitedly operated by the collectives under the system of the people’s commune. The unified collective operation persisted besides the household operation after the people’s commune system was eradicated. The economy operated in a coordinated manner by

Class, Collective, and Community 83 the collectives was referred to as the collective economy. Particularly, along with industrialisation and the development of urbanisation, the collective economy achieved long-term existence in certain regions and continued to expand, therefore forming new collective societies. Within this collective society, members of the rural society produced and lived within the collectives from which they also received unprecedented social welfare.

V Communalisation (社区化): 社区化 From Family Society to Communal Society Household operations after the rural reform, from the perspective of the mode of production, shared similarities with their historical counterparts. However, unlike the era of the individual economy back in history, the post-reform period manifested a great diversification of peasants’ social life and demands. Single-unit families faced difficulties establishing broad social connections and were too incompetent to satisfy the needs of peasants’ life. Consequently, entering the 21st century, the Chinese government consolidated single households together through community construction based on farmers’ spontaneous creations and designed the community of rural social life, thereby actualising the transformation from a family society to a communal one during the rural communalisation process. Starting in the 21st century, the state abolished the agricultural tax in order to address the increasingly severe three dimensional rural issues (三农问题) of agriculture, rural areas, and farmers. In response to the need to alleviate peasants’ burden and consolidate achievements of the rural taxes and administrative reform, many regions implemented the policy of combining villages into groups. The scope of village groups expanded, and the cadres of these groups decreased, rendering the rural public welfare undertaking more and more difficult to be carried out. Against this backdrop, villagers of Yanglinqiao town under Zigui County of Hubei Province voluntarily organised to construct roads that connected to other villages outside. This practice received substantial attention from local leaders and was promoted widely in the name of the rural community. Communities and community councils were established within the original jurisdictions of villagers’ committees following the principle of geographical proximity, industrial convergence, interests sharing, moderate scale, and volunteering of the people (地域相 近、产业趋同、利益共享、规模适度、群众自愿). Their primary functions contained administrating public affairs and welfare undertakings, arbitrating social disputes, and maintaining social security and others (Xu, 2006:8–11). In China, communities enjoyed a considerable degree of constructiveness. Community constructions of the 1990s first took place in cities, mainly aiming to address the daily problems of residents without supporting institutions and integrate dispersed people who scattered outside of their work units. In accordance with the taxes and administrative reform in the 21st century, villagers’ committees unable to withdraw and retain largely reduced their capacity for conducting public welfare undertakings. Meanwhile, peasants’ public life expanded rapidly, and they had actualised experiences of administration of their own issues through

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community establishments. More importantly, as the novel procedure of industrialisation, informalisation, urbanisation, and agricultural modernisation with Chinese characteristics continued to accelerate, the rural society was undergoing profound changes, and social governance at the primary rural level faced various novel situations and problems: the structure of the rural population experienced compounded alterations; the number of residents without household registration in certain regions increased drastically, rendering the problem of their social integration more and more distinctive; the phenomenon of village hollowing manifested in some areas, and communities of left-behind elderly, left-behind women, and left-behind children continued to expand; rural stakeholders gradually diversified, and so was the services demanded by villagers; the development of social welfare programmes lagged explicitly; the social management and public service ability were hard to adapt; and so forth. As a result, the state came up with the demand to implement community construction in the rural area, thus rendering rural community construction a governmental action promoted nationwide. Community construction within villages refers to the establishment of a communal organisation under the leadership of the village party branch and villagers’ committee in order to implement communal public welfare service, improve communities’ sanitary conditions, prosper communal recreational and sports activities, decorate the communal environment, resolve civil disputes, uphold the communal spirit of mutual assistance, cultivate great social ethos, establish good personal relations, and manage villages into new countryside featuring democratic management, safe and secure conditions, beautiful environments, and civility and harmony. While the Report of the 16th CCP National Congress, commenced in 2002, only applied the concept of community to cities, the subsequent Report of the 17th CCP National Congress in 2007 utilised community going to the countryside and came up with “a view to turning urban and rural neighbourhoods into communities of social life that are well managed, supported by complete services, and filled with civility and harmony” (The Writing Team of This Book, 2007:28). In 2015, the General Office of the CPC Central Committee and the General Office of the State Council issued the Opinions on Guidance of Further Promoting Pilot Work of Rural Community Construction (《关于深入推进农村社区建设试点工作的指 导意见》). Apparently, the community differed from rural families, peoples’ communes, the following villagers’ committees, and other social organisations. It was a new type of community of rural social life whose main functions were resolving problems in rural social life and establishing social connections among families throughout the procedure to actualise social consolidation of the dispersed and isolated family society. Community construction itself meant the arbitrary planning of establishment. In certain regional areas, the community became the new gathering point of rural populations collectively planned and created by the government. Social service remained essential within rural communities. Peasants after the rural reform experienced rapid changes, one of which was higher and higher degrees and demands of socialisation. However, a household society was unable

Class, Collective, and Community 85 to resolve issues of socialisation’s requirements. Rural community construction aimed mainly to present completed social services, whose format, however, remained a combination of the government’s public service and self-service of peasants. For a long time, social services in the rural area depended predominantly on the power of the villages. After the reform of agricultural taxes and administration, the state explicitly articulated extending basic public service to rural areas and achieving comprehensive coverage of urban-rural public services. Given this background, the government invested public resources into the rural areas, which were then relied on as platforms for resource allocation. Previously, the statepeasants connection was mainly maintained by agricultural taxations, whose eradication reduced linkages between the government and villages. By expanding public services to the rural area through community construction, the government was capable of re-establishing its association with the rural society and cementing peasants’ centripetal forces towards the state. In addition to public services provided by the government, peasants could reinforce self-service during the rural community construction, which mainly strived to satisfy the daily needs of villagers and galvanise their sense of participation. It was precisely the collective activity participation that strengthened organic connections among the peasants and integrated the individual villagers together. Consequently, the procedure of rural community construction was also one of actualising social consolidation.

VI

Mobility: Social Consolidation of Rural-Urban Integration

Given the dispersiveness of agricultural production, the rural society was composed of each distinct habitat—villages. The social consolidation of the rural areas, whether it was a class society, collective society, or communal society, was completed within villagers themselves. A consequential characteristic of this consolidation was the organisation and gathering of rural social members according to the peasant-land connection. The traditional rural society was one in the absence of fluidity. As demonstrated by Xiaotong Fei, “life in rural society is very parochial. Villagers restrict the scope of their daily activities; they do not travel far; they seldom make contact with the outside world; they live solitary lives; they maintain their own isolated social life” (Fei, 1998:9). Therefore, Fei perceived this country as the “earth-bound China (被土地束缚的中国)” (Fei, 1988:158). Since 1949, policy implementation of monopoly on the purchase and marketing of agricultural produce and the associated formation of the household system, especially in the 1950s, contributed to the structural solidification of the rural-urban binary. Peasants had few, if any, possibilities of leaving the land and villages in which they lived. A significant result of the rural reform was to liberate peasants from their land and grant them not only autonomy to produce and operate but also the right to freedom of movement. Since the 1980s, a significant amount of rural population flowed from land and villages to cities and other places, accompanying industrialisation and urbanisation. This phenomenon brought the revolutionary

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significance of altering the traditionality of Chinese peasants to the fore. As precisely pointed out by Xiaoping Deng, “In any event, peasants should not be confined to small plots of land forever. If they were, how could they prosper?” (Deng, 1993:214). However, because of the long-term existence of the urban-rural dualism, even though a considerable number of peasants did not remain in villages, their household registration relations were still in the rural areas, preventing them from integrating into the urban society. This phenomenon contributed to the emerging concept of migrant works compatible with the binary the rural and urban areas. Since the reform and opening-up, the number of Chinese migrant workers has reached more than 200 million. As far back as the early 1990s, the investigation by Rui Wen and colleagues had discovered that, on average, one member per rural household in the Jiangxi-Fujian-Guangdong border region had left home to become a migrant worker (Wen and You, 2001:141). The word “migrant workers” itself manifested the status of rural social members’ movements between urban and rural areas. The majority of them resembled migratory birds, flocking to cities after the Chinese New Year and returning to villages before the New Year, staying in villages during the busy crop season and leaving during the off-seasons. In addition, the development of the market economy also facilitated the mobility of rural populations. The rural society was positioned amidst the large-scale and ceaseless movements across villages and cities. This was an unprecedented phenomenon unforeseen by Chinese rural society. From the state’s perspective, mobility was beneficial to achieving comprehensive social consolidation. It was capable of breaking the traditional rural-urban binary that severed the society, compelling people to turn from the confined regional identity to the social identity of the collective state. However, this primordial dichotomy did not dissolve in response to the mobility, whereas movement itself reflected the existing bifurcated urban-rural structure and brought forward novel challenges and problems for social consolidation. The first dilemma was weakening connections among members of the rural society. A rural social community emerged because of the land. Members established members’ shared benefit relations, ways of living, behavioural norms, and emotions on account of the land, the basis on which they created interconnection and identities in villages. Yet within a mobile society, most interest relations and social activities of a considerable number of members took place outside of their villages. Families and village society lost their previous condition of integrity. Although families sustained their format, their daily life conditions, thanks to mobility, remained incomplete, as demonstrated by the presence of large numbers of elderly, women, and children left behind. A village society comprised of fragmented families was also incomplete. Additionally, there was a consequential part of villages that lived elsewhere than their villages every year, and they belonged to the so-called empty-hang-on-household (空挂户).3 Interconnections between members of traditional rural society were halted, and a considerable portion of them lacked recognition and identity in their villages.

Class, Collective, and Community 87 The second problem was that the migrant population had yet established new social connections. Rural populations flooding into cities and other cities, thinking of obtaining new job opportunities, were unable to enjoy the same treatment as those entitled to urban populations or local residents and were, for long, considered as outsiders in the shadow of discrimination and exclusion by the urban society. Migrant rural populations faced great obstacles to establishing organic social connections with residents of their workplaces and could not construct new identities and recognitions. This situation, thus, resulted in a dual personality for this group: they longed for urban areas and other cities when it came to income but could not bear to leave villages and hometowns emotionally. The issue of mobility contributed to the absence of villagers’ prior social connections and failed to generate novel relations within the society, thereby witnessing the emergence of distinct social dispersiveness and decentralisation. Plenty of populations is positioned at the blind spot of social regulations and support, rendering themselves a challenge to the social order. Consequently, consolidation was in great need with regard to a mobile society, and the essential approach was to facilitate urban-rural integration. Integration of the rural and urban sectors, first and foremost, dissolved the longexisting binary social structure and promoted social incorporation. During four decades, from the 1950s to 1990s, a systematic rampart lay across villages and cities, whose society repelled the entrances of rural members. Since the 21st century, this systematic physical barrier gradually crumbled, whereas its invisible counterpart regarding regional norms still existed, thus preventing a large number of rural populations, who entered cities for employment and were also in demand by the urban society, from integrating into this novel community. Particularly, a substantial portion of the new generation of migrant workers had no plan of returning from cities to their villages. The inability of urban social assimilation, if exhibited, would render severe challenges to the current order. Consequently, some regions accelerated the outsiders’ procedure of integrating into the urban society. Some cities in Guangdong Province even forbade the usage of migrant workers and outside populations, which were replaced by the new population of (the city), an expression beneficial for rural members to assimilate to cities, eradicate social exclusion, and promote social solidarity. Second, rural-urban integration provided equal public services to cities and villages, narrowed discrepancies between the two sectors, and reduced mobility. The reason behind the consequential influx of rural population to cities, except for the ineptitude of the land to accommodate more villagers, was the persistence of the urban-rural gap, which was increasingly conspicuous from the perspective of public services. Thus, other than the development of productivity and growth of rural income amidst the construction of new countryside, it was more consequential to deliver more comprehensive public service and enable rural populations to enjoy the same condition of living as their peers in cities. Only when the living conditions of the two sectors approximate each other can the real urban-rural integration be actualised and achieved.

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Notes 1 This translation comes from Sun (2013). 2 This is a Chinese proverb often used to describe the ineffective policy that drives friends to the side of the enemies. 3 This term refers to village members who keep their household registration at the villages but choose to live elsewhere with their families throughout the years.

Reference List Chen, H. (2018). “The Conceptual Evolution, Understanding, and Construction of ‘Class’ in the Revolutionary Discursive System of the CPC,” CPC History Studies 4, Pp. 53–63. (陈红娟《中共革命话语体系中“阶级”概念的演变、理解与塑造(1921–1937)》, 《中共党史研究》2018年第4期。). Chen, X. (2015). The Study of Illusion of Chinese Peasants’ Land Ownership. Beijing: China Social Sciences Press. (陈胜祥:《中国农民土地产权幻觉研究》, 中国社会科 学出版社2015年版,第71页。). Chen, Y. (2006). Revolution and Countryside: The Research on Rural Primary RegimeBuilding at the Beginning of Founding of the People’s Republic of China: 1949–1957. Shanghai: Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences Press. Pp. 291. (陈益元:《革命与乡 村—建国初期农村基层政权建设研究:1949–1957》, 上海社会科学院出版社2006年 版, 第236–237、291页。). Deng, X. (1993). The Selected Works of Deng Xiaoping, Vol. 3. Beijing: People’s Publishing House. (《邓小平文选》第３卷,人民出版社1993年版,第214页。). Editorial Office of Agricultural Cooperation Campaign in Contemporary China. (1992). Historical Materials of Agricultural Cooperation since the Founding of the People’s Republic of China. Beijing: CPC History Press. (《当代中国农业合作化》编辑室: 《建国以来农业合作化史料汇编》,中共党史出版社1992年版, 第250、774、776、77 7页。). Fei, X. (1988). Selection Collection of Xiaotong Fei. Tianjin: Tianjin People’s Publishing House. (《费孝通选集》, 天津人民出版社1988年版, 第158页。). Fei, X. (1998). From the Soil: The Foundations of Chinese Society-the Institution of Reproduction. Beijing: Peking University Press. (费孝通:《乡土中国 生育制度》, 北京大学 出版社1998年版, 第9页。). Li, H. (2011). Identity Politics: The Identity Construction during State Consolidation: Taking Hong County of North Hubei Province Since the Land Reform Revolution as Object of Analysis. Beijing: China Social Science Press. (李海金:《身份政治:国家整合中的 身份建构—以土地改革以来鄂北洪县为分析对象》, 中国社会科学出版社2011年 版, 第102页。). Ma, W. (2018). “Class Discourses and Daily Life: The Identity of Rural Cadres and the Masses and their Relationship for Constructing History in the Collectivisation Era,” China Agricultural University Journal of Social Sciences Edition 1, Pp. 75–82. (马维 强:《阶级话语与日常生活:集体化时代干群身份及其关系的历史建构》,《中国农 业大学学报(社会科学版)》2018年第1期，第75–82页。). Party Literature Research Centre, CPC Central Committee, Development Research Centre of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China. (1992). Collection of Important Literature on Agricultural and Rural Work in the New Era. Beijing: Central Party Literature Press, pp. 12–13. (中共中央文献研究室、国务院发展研究中心编《新时期农业 和农村工作重要文献选编》, 中央文献出版社1992年版, 第12–13页。).

Class, Collective, and Community 89 People’s Daily Editorial. (1979). “A Major Decision to Adapt to Changing Circumstances,” People’s Daily, January 29. (人民日报社论：《适应情况变化的一项重大决策》, 《人民日报》1979年1月29日。). People’s Publishing House. (1991a). Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung, 2nd Edition, Vol. 1. Beijing: People’s Publishing House. （《毛泽东选集》第1卷, 人民出版社1991年 第2版, 第3、18、19、69、74页。）. People’s Publishing House. (1991b). Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung, 2nd Edition, Vol. 4. Beijing: People’s Publishing House. （《毛泽东选集》第4卷, 人民出版社1991年 第2版, 第1314页。）. Sun, F. (2013). Social Suffering and Political Confession: Suku in Modern China. Beijing: World Scientific. Pp. 18. Wang, H. (1991). The Culture of Family and Clans of Villages in Modern China: An Exploration of Chinese Social Modernisation. Shanghai: Shanghai People’s Publishing House. Pp. 52. 王沪宁:《当代中国村落家族文化—对中国社会现代化的一项探索》,上海 人民出版社1991年版,第52页。. Wang, L. (2006). “On the Social Foundations of China Rural Modernisation: An Analytical Framework,” Scientific Socialism 4, Pp. 94–98. (王立胜:《论中国农村现代化的社会 基础—一个分析框架》,《科学社会主义》2006年第4期，第94–98页。). Wen, R., and You, H. (2001). Labour Mobility and Economic Transition of the Rural Society: The Empirical Research on the Jiangxi-Fujian-Guangdong Border Region of the 20th Century. Beijing: China Social Science Press. (温锐、游海华:《劳动力的流动 与农村社会经济变迁—20世纪赣闽粤三边地区实证研究》,中国社会科学出版 社2001年版,第141页。). The Writing Team of This Book. (2007). A Hundred Question on the Learning Guidance of the Report of the Seventeenth CCP National Congress. Beijing: Xuexi Publishing House, Party Building Books Publishing House. (本书编写组:《十七大报告学习辅导百问》, 学习出版社、党建读物出版社2007年版,第28页). Wu, M. (2007). Rupture-State Building of the New Rural: Practical Expression of Zhongxin County, Jianghan Plain. Beijing: China Social Science Press. (吴淼《决裂—新农村的 国家建构:江汉平原中兴镇的实践表达(1949–1978)》, 中国社会科学出版社2007年 版,第281页。). Xu, Y. (2006). “Rural Micrognisation Remaking and Community Self-integration: The Experience and Revelation of Yangling Qiao’s Rural Community Building in Hubei,” Henan Social Sciences 5, Pp. 8–11. (徐勇:《农村微观组织再造与社区自我整合—湖 北省杨林桥镇农村社区建设的经验与启示》,《河南社会科学》2006年第5期, 第8–11页。). Ye, K. (2007). “The Study of the Land Reform: Class Differentiation,” Southern Weekly, September 13, 2007. (叶匡正:《土改学:划阶级成分》,《南方周末》2007年9月13日。). Zhang, L. (2012). Farewell to Ideals—Research on the People’s Commune System. Shanghai: Shanghai People’s Publishing House. (张乐天:《告别理想——人民公社制度研 究》,上海人民出版社2012年版,第9页。).

5

Consumption, Fertility, and Health Life Integration in Rural Society

Basic necessities, including clothing, food, shelter, and transportation (衣食住行), as well as life trajectories of birth, senility, illness, or death (生老病死), are embedded into everyday life activities. During the historical period of traditional agricultural civilisation, daily life in the countryside was free, far from politics, and belonged to a private domain that the government had not influenced. As the modernisation process in China developed, especially after 1949, a vital characteristic of the state’s integration of rural society was its ability to enter and advance its will in rural daily life. With citizens’ life activities integrated into the government’s agenda, the government is able to transmit the state’s will, and penetrate rural society and become a part of everyday rural life.

I

Public Canteens: Collectivisation of Life

The change in consumer behaviour is a historical process, just as people do not exist in isolation. Although humanity began by producing and consuming together, people are increasingly devoting their consumption activities to their families as a unit, demonstrating a powerful and stronger sense of privacy in the process of becoming a family-governed monarchy (天下为家). The traditional Chinese system of separating families at a certain age is particularly prevalent in a society with individual households as the production unit. Separate dining (分灶吃饭) is a sign of household independence, and the concept of the family as an independent consumer unit is widespread and entrenched. Therefore, consumer behaviour is a form of self-activity, and consumer activities belong to the private realm. The daily lives of peasants have become closely linked to the establishment of the modern country. As Giddens explained, “Only with the development of the modern state did the state’s administrative authority begin to connect with all people, and then begin to integrate its activities with everyone’s lives” (Giddens, 1998:195). The privatisation of daily consumption in rural China was altered along with the collectivisation of production and is marked by the establishment of public canteens, a symbol of collectivism. Modes of production are closely connected to lifestyles. Rural cooperatives advanced rapidly in the mid-1950s, and peasants produced through collective labour. Peasants in some cooperatives practice collective cooking and dining during DOI: 10.4324/b23055-5

Consumption, Fertility, and Health 91 busy farming seasons, though this was a temporary and voluntary practice. In 1957, China experienced a climax of agricultural production and proposed a tremendous leap forward in agriculture and rural work, especially initiating water conservatory establishment in winter. Building water conservancy projects required many labourers, making it impossible for people to dine and consume based on individual families. The result was a construction site canteen equipped with special cooking personnel and a unified dining area. With the expansion of production after 1958, the contradiction between collective production and private consumption became more prominent, and public canteens emerged as the times required. After the rise of people’s communes, public canteens became an issue of lifestyle adapted to the communes’ context and escalated into the state’s will and actions. During the Beidaihe Conference on August 21, 1958, Mao Zedong said, “The people’s commune possesses the seeds of communism. . . . The public canteen, when you don’t need money to eat, is communistic” (Xin, 2005:85). The People’s Daily published an editorial titled “Operate a Good Public Canteen” on October 25, 1958. The following is according to the editorial: Looking ahead to the future, what are the nation’s key concerns now that the country is almost essentially communal? It is a matter of distribution; it is a matter of managing collective welfare, especially regarding public canteens and nurseries; it is the implementation of militarization of organization, fighting of actions, and the collectivization of life. If public canteens and child welfare are not adequately addressed, consolidation of collectivization of life is impossible, and women cannot be freed from household work without affecting the entire production process. Conducting communal welfare undertakings, especially public canteens, has become a critical mission in the current movement of people’s communalization and a key to strengthening the people’s communes. The editorial highlighted that “the establishment of a good public canteen is not only a valuable economic mission but also an important political one. Every people’s commune should operate the public canteen efficiently” (Editorial Office of Agricultural Cooperation Campaign in Contemporary China, 1992:508–509). The promotion of the ruling party and the state was responsible for establishing public canteens and making them a vital part of the commune system. The Resolution on Several Issues concerning the People’s Communes passed by the Sixth Plenary Session of the Eighth Central Committee of the Communist Party of China in 1958 stated, “The production, exchange, consumption, and accumulation of the people’s communes must be planned, and these plans must be incorporated into the plan of the state and subject to state management” (Editorial Office of Agricultural Cooperation Campaign in Contemporary China, 1992:518). The public canteen was the mode of consumption in a commune that demonstrated two prominent features. First and foremost, the collectives enjoyed dining together and consumed big pots of rice (大锅饭) rather than small pots of rice (小锅饭)1 that peasants traditionally consumed. Second, big pots of rice originated from the

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produce of collective productions and embodiment of the distribution of collectively produced products. In this way, canteens served as a gathering place of consumption for producers and rural residents. The establishment of public canteens was a result of the collectivisation of life. Not only did it represent a change in consumption patterns, but more importantly, the state fully intervened in the daily operations of rural members of society, changed the peasantry in daily life, and integrated scattered rural members of society into the national system. Public canteens brought the state into the daily lives of rural residents. For a long time, eating was the top priority of the Chinese, and people’s production activities were ultimately geared towards meeting their own consumption needs. Production and consumption were private matters. Eating as a matter of consumption also remained within the private sphere. Though forced to pay special attention to the issue of eating, the rulers mainly focused on taxes and did not interfere with the daily consumption of rural residents, caring much less about how people ate and whether they were able to eat correctly. Consequently, for those who had to cope with the daily grind (柴米油盐), the state was more external and distant from people and their daily lives, resulting in a more detached individual-state relationship. The establishment of public canteens under the promotion of the state resulted in the emergence of a daily consumption place, rendering these two institutions interdependent and non-separable, and forming a highly integrated state in the entire country. The questions of dining and how to eat became part of the national will and activities. In order to integrate the peasants disseminated among households into the nation-state, local and central governments issued several documents designed to guide and require the effective functioning of public canteens. Furthermore, when the practice of public canteen transformed from people’s spontaneous and voluntary behaviour to the will and behaviour of the local government and even the country, this process was accompanied by top-down propaganda, mobilisation, and education, which publicised and illustrated the superiority of public canteens. The procedure also brought the state’s will into rural social life to strengthen national consciousness. Third, when public canteens became part of the people’s commune system as a top-down political behaviour, it turned into a political issue that escalated to the level of class status and political baseline. This transition indicated some degree of mandatory existence. In other words, problems surfaced in the process, and different understandings would develop since public canteens were a major event that had never occurred in history. However, different opinions could not be tolerated at public canteens since they were associated with socialism and communism, and political struggle was chosen to resolve disagreements. Consequently, attitudes towards public canteens became a matter of class and baseline, and some local cadres were criticised as well. At the same time, the class line was introduced into the establishment of public canteens. The Henan Provincial Party Committee issued instructions to select party members, league members, poor peasants, and lower-middle-class peasants with a high level of socialist and communist consciousness to serve as the cooking management of public canteens, which also

Consumption, Fertility, and Health 93 excluded landlords and rich peasants from the management team. From the life activities of the public canteens, the people were again able to acquire and strengthen the class consciousness of state-building. Last but not least, public canteens served not only as places for consumption but also as a means for distribution, whose rights remained in the hands of the cadres. Public canteens relied on a no-money-for-food (吃饭不要钱) supply system, which was provided by a uniform distribution of the products produced by the communes. Xin Yi (2005:100) suggested that “Public canteens are institutional arrangements in which the canteens control the most important food source for rural areas-grain. With the establishment of canteens, various places have created systems to control food distribution through these canteens.” Under this system, collective labour products were allocated by collectives or their cadres, and the people had no choice but to consume them in public canteens, thereby establishing their conformance to cadres that represented the government orders. A survey of rural public canteens in Hebei Province reported this: Some cadres use canteens to control the masses and prescribe many measures to restrict the people. There are no free meals for those who do not work; passive workers eat less, and patients and children are not allowed to eat for free. People claim that “they are entitled to food, but they were reprimanded” (吃饭 无权, 挨吹受克), and are very unhappy with that. (Luo, 2001:120)

II

Big Pots of Rice: Dispersal and Return

At the beginning of their establishment, public canteens were attractive to peasants who had difficulty sustaining enough food and clothing for a long period. Their desirability became even greater, especially when they were connected with the supply system and evolved into big pots of rice of no-money-for-food and eating without inhibition (放开肚皮吃) during this procedure. While peasants in the past ate small pots of rice at home, there would be a food shortage from time to time. Public canteens provided more than enough food for the three meals of an average person, who not only enjoyed no-money-for-food but also practised eating without inhibition. For the poor peasants who had been living on the edge of hunger for thousands of years, this was a blessing that they had never dreamed of. They were excited about this situation and expressed their gratitude sincerely to the ruling party and the government. As a result, public canteens, similar to people’s communes, could be set up in less than a year since they were closely related to the attitude of compliance among peasants. It illustrated how eager the people at the bottom of society, with no means of satisfying their basic needs with food and clothing, were to change their lives. Nevertheless, everything emerged and continued under certain conditions. The prerequisite for consumption was the existence of goods, and the prerequisite for the supply system was the supply of goods. The implementation of public canteens so that everyone could eat big pots of rice had something to do with the experience

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of the supply systems of the ruling party during the war. However, the wartime supply system was limited to the army, whose supply also needed to be provided by producers. Public canteens were generally established nationwide, and producers directly enjoyed pots of rice, which required even greater conditions. The essential requirement was the ability to satisfy the needs of consumers continuously. Yet it was precisely this requirement that failed to be fully guaranteed. The founding of public canteens was related to the illusion of a food surplus, which was caused by the satellite launching (放卫星)2 activities during the Great Leap Forward period. The food surplus bubble caused by the satellite launching soon showed its fragility. The actual increase in food production failed to guarantee that everyone could continue to eat until they were full in public canteens. This situation first emerged in some places, leading rural residents to demonstrate a centrifugal tendency to oppose public canteens. However, quite a few leaders did not believe public canteens themselves were problematic and tried to maintain them by various means. Only until the food shortage crisis intensified did the public canteens become so unsustainable that so many of them were closed quickly and without warning. Liu Shaoqi, the leader of the Chinese Communist Party, stated in the investigation, “The public canteens were reluctantly set up, which were extremely unpopular. On this issue, we made a mistake and did not understand after three years of reckless work” (Research Office of Party History of the CPC Central Committee, 2011:579). Mao Zedong was also aware of the problems after the establishment of public canteens, saying this in a speech: Some canteens are unsustainable. The party secretary of a brigade in Guangdong said that running a canteen has four major disadvantages: one is the destruction of the forest; the other is a waste of labour; the third is that there is no meat to eat (because the family cannot raise pigs), and the fourth is that it is not conducive to production. The first three points are not conducive to production, and the fourth is a summary. The question raised by this comrade is worth noting. If these problems are not resolved, public canteens will have to dissolve. It will not dissolve this year, and it will have to dissolve next year. Nobody can barely manage it even if it runs for ten years. Without firewood, the bridges were demolished, houses were chopped, and trees were cut down. Such canteens are anti-socialist. It seems that there are several forms of canteens. Some people can eat all year-round canteens, and most people can eat farming canteens. The canteens in winter in North have to disperse, and let everyone go home to eat, because there is a heating problem. (People’s Publishing House, 1999:254) The ruling party adjusted its policies based on extensive investigations. The Regulations on the Work of Rural People’s Communes (Amendment Draft) issued by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China in 1961 stipulated that whether to run a canteen in a production team was entirely up to the members to discuss and decide. The rations of the members should be allocated to the

Consumption, Fertility, and Health 95 households and controlled by them, regardless of whether the canteen is open or not. The provision actually returned the peasants’ consumption rights to themselves, especially those of consumption goods, such as rations. Peasants no longer felt enthusiastic about them, having experienced hunger and pain associated with public canteens. Upon loosening this policy, public canteens in the form of big pots of rice were quickly disbanded, and peasants’ daily consumption returned to small pots of rice in individual households, with families remaining the units of consumption. Each household would inevitably develop its own consciousness as a consumption unit. In this context, the state’s attempt to solve the private consciousness problem through public canteen consumption was unsuccessful. The unsustainable nature of the people’s communes may also be due to this reason. Despite the fact that public canteens were novel inventions, the conditions for their generation and perpetuation had not been met, so it was difficult for them to replace the original way of life.

III

Family Planning: National Policy for Reproductive Behaviour

Human society, according to Marxist theory, has two types of production. One is material production, and the other is population reproduction, which refers to reproductive behaviour. Childbirth has been a natural behaviour of individuals for thousands of years, and it is not controlled by an external force, in other words. The People’s Republic of China, founded in 1949, entered a period of relative peace, during which its population increased rapidly. The population of China was 430 million in 1850 and 530 million in 1949. As of June 30, 1953, when it conducted the first census, the total population of China was 60,193,805, and it was expected that the population would increase by 12 million to 13 million each year, with a growth rate of 20%. Ma Yinchu, a well-known economist and president of Peking University, was intrigued by the census. After three years of investigation and research, he found that China’s population grew by more than 22% per year, and in some places, it reached 30%. Due to conflicts between a substantial number of people and limited lands, even the essential food supply would become problematic. Therefore, he presented his research results in Controlling Population and Scientific Research and developed the written article into a drafted speech at the Second Session of the First National People’s Congress in July 1955. The representative of the People’s Congress Zhejiang Group discussed and solicited opinions on this draft. However, at the time, this opinion was not taken seriously, and it was even regarded as Malthusian, which seemed highly outdated. This was attributed to the phenomenon that Westerners sincerely believed that the excessive Chinese population caused poverty, and Mao Zedong, the leader of the CCP, once explicitly criticised this belief. From 1949 on, China’s Leaning to One Side (一边 倒) policy was implemented, learning from the Soviet Union, such as encouraging childbirth and treating mothers with many children as heroines (英雄母亲). Leaders of the ruling party eventually became concerned about rapid population growth. In 1956, Premier Zhou Enlai stated in his report to the Eighth National

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Congress of the Communist Party of China, “We support birth control to protect women and children, educate them well, and benefit the health and prosperity of the country.” Population and fertility issues since then became open to discussion. Mao Zedong delivered the following speech at the 11th (enlarged) meeting of the Supreme State Council in February 1957: I believe human beings are the least capable of managing themselves. There are plans for these activities for the production of factories, the production of cloth, the production of tables, chairs and benches, and the production of steel. Human beings are not produced in a planned way, which is anarchism. Humans must control themselves and achieve planned growth, sometimes allowing them to grow a little and sometimes pausing. I propose to establish a committee, the birth control committee. (Literature Research Office of the CPC Central Committee, 1994a:104) Ma Yinchu once again expressed his opinion on the issue of population control: “Our socialism is a planned economy. If the population is not included in the plan, the population cannot be controlled, and family planning cannot be implemented, then it will not be a planned economy.” Democrat Shao Lizi also said that modern people could have plans for work, study, life, and reproduction. Therefore, the concept of family planning was introduced and captured the attention of Mao Zedong, the top leader of the CCP. Population growth continued to accelerate as the peaceful years continued. Eight hundred million people were living in the country by 1970. Such rapid population growth also put heavy pressure on those rulers in power. The first problem was that a large number of urban youths born after 1949 were underemployed. The second problem was that the rural population increased rapidly, but the production of goods was limited, rendering the rural poverty situation challenging to improve. On July 8, 1970, the State Council forwarded the Report on Doing a Good Job in Family Planning to the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Commerce, and the Ministry of Fuel Chemical Industry. For the first time, it included population growth control indicators in the national economic development plan. According to the Report, except in sparsely populated areas, all governments should strengthen their leadership over family planning. After the 1980s, as the party and the country’s focus shifted to economic construction, family planning was given unprecedented attention and was escalated into a basic national policy. The Communist Party of China Central Committee issued the Open Letter to All Communist and Communist Youth League Members on the Issue of Controlling China’s Population Growth in September 1980, advocating that a couple should only have one child. The National People’s Congress established a National Family Planning Commission in 1981 and incorporated it into government orders. In 1982, the newly revised constitution stipulated this: “Both husbands and wives have an obligation to implement family planning.” In 1991, the Communist Party of China’s Central Committee and the State Council adopted the Decision on Strengthening Family Planning and Strictly Controlling Population Growth. The Ninth National

Consumption, Fertility, and Health 97 People’s Congress passed the Population and Family Planning Law of the People’s Republic of China in December 2001, and the basic national family planning policy became a basic national law. As the country’s basic policy and basic law, family planning was a certain means used by the state to bring population fertility into a controlled range so as to integrate scattered and independent reproductive behaviour into a unified national system. Family planning led to a nationalisation of fertility practices among peasants. First, family planning introduced the state into peasants’ most profound lifeworld. Traditionally, Chinese peasants considered offspring, particularly boys, to be sacred and perceived them as lifeblood (命根子). It occupied a particularly significant position in the lifeworld and spiritual world, and it is also a field in which the state has never intervened. The family planning policy, thus, brought the state into this field. Issues on how many births there are, whether they are boys or girls, and when they are born, all of which fell squarely under natural affairs within the individual sphere before, turned into state-dominated political affairs, making peasants feel the power and strength of the state. The word “plan” embodied the will of the state, thus linking the peasants’ lifeblood affairs to the state’s policies. Second, when transforming childbirth from individual behaviour to state behaviour, a special person must oversee implementation in order to bring state organisations into the lives of the peasants. Family planning was recognised as necessary by the ruling party in the 1950s. During the early 1960s, specialised agencies were established at the national level, but they remained at the upper levels. For the strict implementation of family planning, the state established a particular agency only after the 1980s, extending to the grassroots level in rural areas. County governments set up family planning committees, and township governments set up offices for family planning. Some township agencies had a quarter of their staff in family planning offices (Wen, 2018). Rural villagers’ committees have set up special positions to handle family planning, create face-to-face contact with farmers, and directly implement family planning policies. At the same time, as part of the country’s grassroots government and grassroots organisations, the party and government leaders of towns and villages were made the first person responsible for family planning. Family planning became the primary indicator of their work evaluation, and the one-vote veto system (一票否决制) was introduced.3 A considerable amount of family planning work was entrusted to village cadres (Mou, 2008:156). It was precisely through grassroots organisations that the country brought its will and image into the lives of peasants. Third, the ruling party implanted national consciousness into peasants’ minds through various propaganda methods. It is evident that China, a state that has a concept that more children bring more blessings (多子多福) and has a tradition of adoring male births, would have difficulty implementing family planning. Accordingly, the ruling party realised this hardship and adopted various propagating methods. Official and formal propaganda was often advocacy in nature. The idea of advocating propaganda led by grassroots cadres so that peasants could have direct exposure was one way to propagate. The text of the grassroots propaganda was

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simple and straightforward in order to leave a deep impression on the peasants, but it was often rough and blunt in its content. Fourth, family planning policies were implemented using mandatory means so that peasants could sense the country’s authority and coercion directly. It was extremely hard to transform long-standing laissez-faire childbirth into family planning when it involved peasant lifeblood, and sole reliance on persuasion, education, and propaganda was not enough. Therefore, the grassroots cadres considered family planning the most challenging job in the 1990s. In order to promote family planning, the state adopted mandatory measures. The first was the adoption of formal family planning laws. The Population and Family Planning Law of the People’s Republic of China came into effect on September 1, 2002. A citizen who bears children in violation of the provisions of Article 18 of this Law shall pay the social upbringing charges according to law. Where the social upbringing charges that should be paid are not paid in full within the prescribed time limit, additional late fees shall be charged according to the relevant provisions of the State from the day of the delayed payment; where still no payment is made, the administrative department of family planning that decides the charge shall apply to the people’s court for forcible punishment. The second was that, in order to complete their tasks, grassroots cadres established explicit and implicit coercive measures, such as binding family planning together with other rights of peasants.

IV Overbirth Guerrilla (超生游击队 (超生游击队): Escape and Adaptation As a basic national policy, family planning was implemented by the state through various methods, and its intensity was sporadic. The plan compelled peasants to adjust their reproduction activities and arrange their own family planning according to the requirements. Long-term laissez-faire fertility practices began to be incorporated into national policy and, as a result, strengthened peasant nationalism from the depths of the heart and soul. However, it was complicated to alter the reproductive behaviour formed over time. First, in rural areas, childbirth involved issues of life security, insurance, and care for the elderly. The absence of children, especially the lack of boys, meant that the elderly had no life support and no one would send them to the grave. Second, Chinese surnames are based on blood relationships. Life is difficult to live without any children, especially males; incense (香火) is challenging to carry; and the soul cannot be at peace. Furthermore, in China’s rural areas, the family functions as the unit of living, and there is a strong competitive relationship between families. If the family has no children, especially no boys, it will not be able to make a name for itself in the neighbourhood, which involves the face issue (面子 问题). It is also linked to the problem of weak power after disputes arise. The most

Consumption, Fertility, and Health 99 unsound and painful thing for the other party to hear was to die without descendants (断子绝孙) in daily disputes in rural areas. Thus, unlike the country’s family planning policy, which “promoted one child, prohibited two, and eliminated three,” many peasants’ awareness was that “one is too little, two are not enough, three are not too many, and four are appropriate, and boys are better” (Mou, 2008:156). Many peasants implemented the family planning policy in various ways to achieve the goal of having more children, especially boys, despite the strong pressure of the policy. The so-called overbirth guerrilla came into being. A witty skit called Overbirth Guerrilla was popular in China in the 1990s. The content featured dialogues and complaints between a rural couple who left their hometown to avoid family planning policies and struggled to have a son after giving birth to three daughters. When the skit aired on China Central Television’s New Year’s Day Gala in 1990, it swept the country for a while and had a great deal of influence. Apart from the actors’ acting skills, this work reflected the real life of some peasants who evaded the family planning policy. People’s Daily has a special report: Guiyang has more than 80,000 temporary residents, 82% of whom are women of childbearing age; of the babies born out of schedule in 1987 in Zhejiang Province, 80% are migrant babies (Li, 1989). The Overbirth Guerrilla first portraited the peasants’ behaviour to reproduce beyond family planning regulations. The family planning policy itself implied the restriction and control of reproductive behaviours. Article 18 of the Population and Family Planning Law of the People’s Republic of China stipulates that the state stabilises the existing birth policies, encourages citizens to marry and bear a child at a late age, and advocates that one wife bears only one child; those meeting the conditions prescribed by laws and regulations may request to bear a second child. For a considerable number of peasants, this type of restrictive regulation is unacceptable, as they still hope to achieve their own childbearing goals, even if the family planning policy does not permit such a goal. Second, the presence of overbirth guerrilla also means that some peasants achieved their goals by migration. As part of the rural reforms of the 1980s, the household contract system was implemented, the people’s communes were abolished, and peasants gained personal autonomy. Consequently, peasants were able to achieve the goal of overbirth by mobilising and evading the family planning policy. In the skit Overbirth Guerrilla, the daughters born outside of their hometown were named after the three names of Hainan Island, Turfan, and Shaolin Temple. Despite their exaggeration, these names reflected the reality of moving around to achieve the goal of overbirth. However difficult this kind of mobility was, it could be tolerated as long as they could give birth to a boy. Overbirth Guerrilla also show that the behaviour was still confined to a few people, especially when this behaviour obtained no legality. In addition, the implementation of family planning would be distorted in reality. In some areas, nonfamily planning could be granted as long as a payment was made. While some peasants avoided family planning, the government’s strong measures led to the effective implementation of the policy. The momentum of rapid population growth has been brought under control, the long-term laissez-faire

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fertility behaviour has been incorporated into the track of the national plan, and population growth has entered a period of relaxation. More importantly, with the support of preferential policies for family planning, especially the modernisation of rural society, the new generation of peasants’ reproduction concepts have significantly been changed, and the awareness of fewer births and better births (少生 优生) is increasingly strengthened, remaining consistent with national consciousness. The state has adjusted its family planning policy in response to changes in the population. One, it altered from restricting population birth to limited liberalisation, and fertility is even promoted and encouraged in some places. Two, it integrated childbirth into the daily health and hygiene work, rather than a mandatory work assessment indicator for family planning agencies. Third, the idea is to make family planning publicity more guidance-oriented. In 2007, the state launched the facewashing project (洗脸工程) for family planning slogans, cleaned up indifferent slogans, and used new and more humane slogans, such as “fewer births and better births contribute to a happy life (少生优生, 幸福一生)” (Tencent Net, 2013). With the adjustment of the family planning policy and the change of peasants’ concept, the peasant’s reproduction behaviour entered a period of adapting to the will of the state, and the country’s compulsory childbirth policy faded out of the peasant’s life.

V Patriotic Public Health Campaign: Medical Treatment to the Countryside Population, territory, and government are the three components of a country. A country cannot exist without a population, and the health of a country depends directly on the health of its population. Human beings are inevitably afflicted by diseases. Birth, senility, illness, or death are daily events. As the Western powers entered China, they encountered the situation of the “Sick Man of East Asia” (东亚病夫). The sick man existed for quite some time. However, the Chinese were powerless to do anything about it, were accustomed to it, and even turned a blind eye to it. Only when the sick man repeatedly fought and failed in front of the great power could it ignite the reflection of the prophets, who connected disease and population physique to national strength and national fortune. In modern times, particularly since the 20th century, the state has created special medical and health institutions, and the treatment of common diseases has become a national responsibility. Therefore, the treatment of diseases and public health were indissolubly linked to politics and the country. The rural population of China has been a significant component of the country’s population until the 21st century, and it has been a weak point in the linkage between the medical and healthcare systems. Yan Yangchu and others regarded Chinese peasants as having four significant problems during the first half of the 20th century: poverty, weakness, stupidity, and selfishness, with the weak body constitution being included in the category of weakness. They hoped to improve the health of peasants using their own power, but their efforts had minimal effect.

Consumption, Fertility, and Health 101 The Chinese Communist Party, however, has long considered healthcare and disease treatment a government responsibility. In 1933, Mao Zedong pointed this out in his article “Changgang Township Survey”: “Disease is a big enemy in the Soviet area because it weakens our power. Like Changgang Township, it launched a public health campaign to reduce and even eliminate diseases. It is the responsibility of every township Soviet” (People’s Publishing House, 1982:321). The Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia border region government included the development of a health campaign as one of its policy programmes during the Anti-Japanese War and the War of Liberation. An epidemic prevention committee was founded in the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia border region in 1941 to conduct a military-civilian health campaign targeting flies and rodents, as well as the military-civil operation for the prevention of plague and cholera. From 1949 on, the country attached great importance to the people’s health as a sign of their love and patriotism for the country. The reason behind these dates back to the Korean War, soon after the founding of the PRC, that used bacteria, which were hazardous to people’s health. Mass sanitation and epidemic prevention campaigns were deeply developed as part of the wave of protecting the country and the home. This movement was called “the patriotic public health campaign (爱国卫生运动),” whose establishment was endorsed by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, which instructed agencies at all levels to set up a special committee to manage the campaign. The number of participants, the scale of the movement, and the remarkable results were unprecedented. Under the leadership of the ruling party and the government, the Patriotic Public Health Campaign was promoted as a mass movement that the Chinese Communist Party was adept at. Since this movement directly affected the lives and health of the people, it was widely welcomed. The continuous development of this movement also represented the deep and extensive penetration of the country’s will into the rural society. While the Patriotic Public Health Campaign obtained universal features and focused on prevention, diseases were individual problems that needed to be treated on an individual basis. Since 1949, a nationwide medical system has gradually been established. However, from a national perspective, the distribution of medical resources was seriously unbalanced, mainly because of the lack of medical resources in the vast rural areas, where it was difficult for the rural population to receive adequate healthcare. Mao Zedong addressed this problem in a speech on June 26, 1965, calling for medical and health works to be concentrated in the countryside. Getting medical resources from the city to the countryside became a matter of deep concern throughout the country. Evidently, it was difficult for the rural population, which constitutes the majority of the population, to obtain the necessary medical care, and it was not realistic for the state to fully handle the medical issues of the peasants. Cooperative medical care and barefoot doctors (赤脚医生) emerged as a result. With the help of collective economic organisations, cooperative medical care directly targeted peasants. This system, which emerged during the procedure of agricultural cooperation, developed over the course of the 1960s. The nationwide

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cooperative medical care coverage rate reached 10% in 1958, 50% in 1962, and 90% in the mid-1970s, making rural areas more accessible to medical care. Cooperative medical care disseminated medical resources throughout the countryside in an unprecedented manner. For example, the commune has a health centre, and the production brigade has a health room. The medical and health personnel, and their treatment, shall be borne by collective economic organisations, except for the portion borne by the state. To ensure that the vast rural population could obtain the necessary treatments, apart from sending medical staff from the cities, it was necessary to select and train medical staff from the countryside. The resources of medical personnel were mainly private doctors who graduated from middle school or high school without much medical knowledge and young intellectuals who participated in the Up to the Mountains and Down to the Countryside Movement. As these people lacked formal medical training, maintained agricultural household registrations, participated in agricultural production, and still earned work points through engaging in some agricultural labours, they were sometimes called barefoot doctors to distinguish them from professionals who specialised in medical work. By the end of 1977, 85% of the production brigade in the country had implemented cooperative medical care, and the number of barefoot doctors was once more than 1.5 million. The number of persons engaging in medical and health work in rural areas reached more than 5 million, exceeding the total number of personnel (2.2 million) of the original health technology from the Ministry of Health by more than twofold. (Wang, 2005) The medical system is accompanied by national construction. As a result of the rapid growth of financial resources in the country after 1978, the medical system had undergone substantial improvements. Even so, the long-standing urban-rural medical divide continued to exist. Notably, rural residents have not been able to receive the treatment they deserve due to the market orientation of medical treatment. Inadequate and overly expensive medical services (看病难, 看病贵) have become a prominent problem. Entering the new century, with the advancement of the country’s strategy of sustainable agriculture with industry, the need for state support for rural communities has become an important national issue. Establishing and promoting a new type of rural cooperative medical care was the best way to accomplish this. In addition to co-organisation, guidance, and support by the government, it was financed by individuals, collectives, and governments, and it was supported through a mutual medical assistance system and mutual aid programmes for severe illnesses. Sending medical resources to the countryside (送医下乡) was a new form of cooperative medical care. One of its remarkable features was that the state directly afforded a portion of the medical costs of peasants, and the state’s direct expenses were constantly going up. By providing medical treatment to the countryside,

Consumption, Fertility, and Health 103 China could further strengthen its presence in rural areas. Meanwhile, state subsidies allowed peasants to have better medical security and more medical services with more outstanding quality. As a result of the direct subsidies from the state, peasants had more direct contact with the government, rendering the penetration of the country and the peasant-state integration level stronger.

VI

Changing the Prevailing Habits and Customs for a Civilised and Healthy Life

Social custom is an inertial force in the village, the standard psychology and behaviour that keeps the village together, and an inward-looking hidden force. Creating a modern state has required integration within the state since the beginning of the 20th century, primarily through revolutions and transformations. Traditional social customs must also be transformed in order to integrate scattered and closed villages into the political system and reform traditional rural society. Modern times have seen a change of old customs associated with the national construction of saving the nation from subjugation and ensuring its survival (救亡 图存) from the very beginning. As progressive ideas spread out, people became aware of the backwardness of traditional customs, many of which even harmed people’s health and interfered with their everyday lives, such as the tradition of foot binding (缠足) among women. Fairbank (1999:22–23) described this: Rural women are generally illiterate, and they have few, or even no property rights. Many years have passed since the beginning of this century, and their submissive status is manifested by bad habits of foot binding and deepened by them. From the age of 5 to 15, girls use cloth belts to wrap their feet tightly to prevent their normal development. This bad habit of making their feet incompetent seems to have begun around the 10th century. Kang Youwei strongly opposed foot binding and other customs because he believed that foot binding was one of the causes of the country’s weakness. He once wrote to the Qing emperor: Try to look at people in Europe and the United States. The body is strong, and their mothers do not bind their feet, and the seeds are easy to be strong. Looking back at the people of our country, the weak and slender, the feet of mothers are bound, and their offspring are weak. In the age of conscription, the whole country competes with all nations, and it is especially worrying to keep this weak seed. (Jie, 2008:101–108) With this insight, many people thought the premise for changing the old ruling order was to change the social norms attached to it. Although the national government proposed and advocated the New Life Movement, its impact was minimal, and it did not affect the daily lives of people in rural areas.

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Breaking old customs became an essential part of the revolution as the advanced Chinese Communists entered rural society. As early as the 1920s, Mao Zedong described in the Hunan Peasant Movement Investigation Report the prevailing habits of believing in Bodhisattva (菩萨), Fengshui (风水), and Eight Characters (八字) in the rural areas of Hunan. In the peasant movement, these trends received severe criticisms and clashes (People’s Publishing House, 1991b:31–34). After the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, it embarked on a large-scale transformation of rural society to destroy the old order and establish a new order. The social customs from the ancient traditions were also regarded as attachments and maintainers of the old order and were mopped up. The important slogan of social transformation was changing the prevailing habits and customs (移风易俗), or removing all customs and habits related to traditional society and forming a new fashion consistent with the requirements of the new society. From the 1950s to the 1980s, changing the prevailing habits and customs was considered a national act, and this campaign was pushed to extremes in the 1960s. Firstly, during the revolutionary period, the ruling party perceived anti-feudalism as its historical mission. The traditional customs that influenced and dominated China were viewed as feudal factors and were opposed. For example, the drama Xiao Er Hei Marriage (小二黑结婚), which the ruling party admired during the revolutionary period, changed traditional life and customs, and greatly influenced the masses. Fairbank (1999:358) noted that “Traditional Chinese concepts of family unity, filial piety, and respect for the ancestors have long been eroded, and the liberation of the Communist Party has hastened this process.” Secondly, the ruling party demanded the establishment of a new society utterly different from the traditional one after taking office, and the constituents of this new society were new people. New people were those who acquired new concepts and ideas in line with the requirements of the new society. Traditional customs, old ideas, and old beliefs must be changed in order to obtain new ideas and new thoughts. Finally, everyone faces everyday life issues, such as eating, drinking, housing, and clothing (吃喝住穿), marriages and funerals (婚丧嫁娶), as well as birth, old age, sickness, and death (生老病死), all of which enable them to establish customary habits to govern their behaviour. The country could penetrate into the most substantial inner world of the peasants by changing their daily habits. Due to the reasons mentioned earlier, after the founding of the People’s Republic of China and the socialist transformation of agriculture, traditional habits began to change, and the important way was to change the bad habits of traditional life. The country promulgated the Marriage Law in 1950 in an effort to reform old customs and reshape people’s marriage lives according to national laws. The Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (Notice of the CPC Central Committee on Ensuring the Implementation of the Marriage Law to the Whole Party, 1950) pointed this out: The promulgation of the Marriage Law in 1950 not only completely denied the old feudal marriage system that lasted for thousands of years, but also

Consumption, Fertility, and Health 105 established a new marriage system, new family relations, new social life and new social morals to promote the development of political, economic, cultural, and national defence construction in a new democratic China. Mao Zedong proposed this in his speech at the Third Plenary Session of the Eighth Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on October 9, 1957: The habit of eating and drinking extravagantly, and being poor at housekeeping should be changed through open debates, and the bad habits and wastes in the weddings and ceremonies should be resolved gradually through debates. Is it possible to complete the reform in 10 years? (Literature Research Office of the CPC Central Committee, 1994b:592) On October 26, 1957, The Central Committee of the Communist Party of China issued the Outline for National Agricultural Development from 1956 to 1967, which clearly stated that “In the rural areas, we should keep everything simple and change unreasonable customs and habits” (CPC Central Committee, 1957). A political movement centred on class struggle swept the countryside in the 1960s. The vital content was breaking the four olds and establishing the four news (破四旧立四新). On June 1, 1966, the People’s Daily editorial, “Sweeping All Monsters, Ghosts and Snakes,” put forward the slogan “to get rid of the old ideas, culture, customs, and habits that have poisoned the people caused by all exploiting classes for thousands of years.” The Decision on the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (referred to as the 16 Articles) adopted by the 11th Plenary Session of the 8th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China held from August 1 to August 12, 1966, also clearly stipulated that the four olds and four news were crucial issues of the cultural revolution. The breaking of the four olds was more intense than the general customs change. A large number of material and cultural representations of traditional cultures and thoughts were destroyed. Genealogy and other things were considered feudalism, and Chinese festivals, such as the Dragon Boat Festival, Spring Festival, and Double Ninth Festival, were also criticised. After 1949, through the changing of customs, the country was able to bring the power of the state into everyday life for the first time, thereby strengthening the people’s national consciousness. People’s daily lives, such as food, drink, housing, clothing, weddings and funerals, birth, ageing, sickness, and death, had become a national affair, and even national standards had been developed. The state also played a considerable role in changing people’s daily habits. Without the promotion of the state, it was challenging to eliminate some old rules and bad habits. Among them, many deep-rooted habits had been changed, such as disrespect or even discrimination towards women. Furthermore, some traditional customs no longer received legal support and acquiescence but were subject to legal restrictions, such as the abandonment of female infants. “It is with the help of the continuous intervention and shaping of the peasants’ marriage and family life that they have gradually left in their minds a powerful and authoritative image of the party and the country” (Chang, 2013:85–94).

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However, the customs of life could take a long time to form and could not easily be changed. It permeated people’s daily life and was rooted in the social-psychological structure with solid resilience. Lenin sighed when talking about the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat: “The habitual force of millions of people is the most terrifying force” (People’s Publishing House, 1986:24). The customs and habits formed in the long-term history needed to be changed in the long-term historical process. During the Great Revolution, Mao Zedong was cautious about the changes in customs. He believed that the Communist Party’s propaganda in such matters were as follows: should be “draw the bow without shooting, just indicate the motions (引而不 发，跃如也).” It is for the peasants themselves to cast aside the idols, pull down the temples to the martyred virgins and the arches to the chaste and faithful widows; it is wrong for anybody else to do it for them. (People’s Publishing House, 1991a:33) After 1949, the country mainly relied on political campaigns to promote changes in customs. A mass political movement of this kind was compelling. However, it was difficult to consolidate the results of changing customs due to the cessation of the movement. In addition to the voluntary behaviour of the subject of custom, changing the prevailing habits and customs was also a forced behaviour in political movements, as people may be punished if they failed to change the original customs. For example, in the 1960s, in addition to the original landlord and rich peasants, who were classified as political dissidents, the rural areas also added the category of bad elements, whose considerable part became political deviants (政治另类) because of the spread of so-called feudal superstition. It was possible to change people’s consciousness and behaviour through political pressure in a relatively short period, but it was challenging to eliminate longstanding customs and habits in the end since the soil for the existence of rural customs was the daily life of rural society which was not interrupted by a violent revolution. Rural customs had profound social and historical roots, were needed by rural life, and were endogenous to people’s everyday life. For example, the organisation of weddings and funerals was based on rural human society (人情社会). While households were the basic units of production and living in rural areas, peasants could not carry out all their life activities within a singlefamily unit. Peasants also needed to establish extensive contacts with society and build mutual trust and intimacy through human relations. To a certain extent, festivals, weddings, and funerals provided an opportunity for households to establish intimate relationships with the outside world. The government or a political movement could not easily change this habit, and some traditional practices had an element of reason in them. Agricultural civilisation had long produced traditional festivals, such as the Spring Festival, which were of great importance for preserving traditional culture, consolidating family reunions, and promoting social harmony. It would be hard to work if they were simply denied or even abandoned.

Consumption, Fertility, and Health 107 Peasants’ responses to state-led efforts to change customs were complex. Aside from positive responses, there was also a negative side to coping. The first strategy was to work around it. During political movements, peasants generally did not resist in an open confrontation with powerful national forces and instead flexibly followed traditional customs and habits. For example, a traditional ceremony of respecting the ancestors would be performed during the Spring Festival. Regardless of the strength of the external force, this flexible approach was universal since it was impossible to extend the supervision within each family. The second one was revival. After entering the reform and opening-up, the country mainly promoted the transformation of customs through construction and guidance, especially the positive role of traditional culture, and even established traditional festivals through the government’s legal method. From recessive existence to dominant recovery, traditional customs were quickly revived in this context. In the face of this situation, the state proposed constructing culturalethical standards. It was mainly the selection of civilised families and the construction of civilised villages and towns in rural areas. Civil organisations, such as the Red and White Council (红白理事会), had also been established in some areas. Its purpose was to form village customs and folk customs consistent with the state’s cultural-ethical standards in the countryside. Despite not directly intervening in rural social customs, the state still guided village customs to conform to its requirements.

Notes 1 The big pot of rice (大锅饭) indicates the form that people eat together, while the small pot of rice (小锅饭) indicates people eat separately. [Note from the translator] 2 During the socialist construction campaign, false reports of wheat satellites were widespread in China; these false reports, as well as other similar acts in various industries, were universally referred to as launching satellites. [Note from the translator] 3 The one-vote veto system was an important mechanism for rural grassroots work in the 1990s, which aimed to include a certain task in the evaluation of cards. Without it, all tasks would be denied, causing leaders and public servants to place the highest value on the task. [Note from the translator]

Reference List Chang, L. (2013). “Shaping Marriage and Forming the Concept of Peasant State: Taking the Implementation of Marriage Law of 1950 as the Object of Investigation,” Academic Journal of Jinyang 3, Pp. 85–94. (常利兵：《塑造婚姻与农民国家观念的形成—以 贯彻1950年《婚姻法》为考察对象》，《晋阳学刊》2013年第3期。). CPC Central Committee. (1957). “National Program for Agricultural Development from 1956 to 1967,” People’s Daily, October 6, 1957. (中共中央：《1956年到1967年全国 农业发展纲要》,《人民日报》1957年10月26日。). Editorial Office of Agricultural Cooperation Campaign in Contemporary China. (1992). Historical Materials of Agricultural Cooperation since the Founding of the People’s Republic of China. Beijing: CPC History Press. (《当代中国农业合作化》编辑室：《建国 以来农业合作化史料汇编》，中共党史出版社1992年版，第518、508–509页。).

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Fairbank, J. K. (1999). The United States and China. Translated by Zhang, L. Beijing: World Affairs Press. ([美]费正清：《美国与中国》，张理京,世界知识出版社1999年版， 第22–23、358页。). Giddens, A. (1998). The Nation-State and Violence. Translated by Hu, Z. and Zhao, L. Shanghai: SDX Joint Publishing Company. ([英]安东尼•吉登斯：《民族国家与暴 力》，胡宗泽、赵力涛译，生活 读书 新知三联书店1998年版，第195页。). Jie, A. (2008). “State Discourse and the Creation Mechanism of Chinese Women’s Liberation Discourse,” Journal of Zhejiang University Humanities and Social Sciences 4, Pp. 101–108. (揭爱花：《国家话语与中国妇女解放的话语生产机制》,《浙江大学 学报（人文社会科学版）2008年第４期，第101–108页。》). Li, B. (1989). “Manage Overbirth Guerrilla,” People’s Daily, May 10, 1989. (李北陵:《管 管“超生游击队”》，《人民日报》1989年5月10日，第4版。). Literature Research Office of the CPC Central Committee. (1994a). Selected Literature of Importance since the Founding of the People’s Republic of China, Vol. 10. Beijing: Central Party Literature Press. (中共中央文献研究室编：《建国以来重要文献选编》 （第10册），中央文献出版社1994年版，第104页。). Literature Research Office of the CPC Central Committee. (1994b). Summary of Mao Tse-tung’s Speech at the Third Plenary Session of the Eighth CPC Central Committee: Selected Literature of Importance since the Founding of the People’s Republic of China, Vol. 10. Beijing: Central Party Literature Press. (毛泽东在中共八届三中全会上的讲 话提纲（1957年10月9日）。转引自《建国以来重要文献选编》第10册，中央文 献出版社1994年版，第592页。). Luo, H. (2001). Big Pots Rice: The Story of Public Canteens. Guangxi: Guangxi People’s Publishing House. (罗平汉：《大锅饭—公共食堂始末》，广西人民出版社2001年 版，第120页。). Mou, C. (2008). Ideology Transition of Chinese Peasants: As a Case of a Village in East of Hubei Province. Wuhan: Hubei People’s Publishing House. (参见牟成文《中国农民 意识形态的变迁—以鄂东A 村为个案》，湖北人民出版社2008年版，第156页。). “Notice of the CPC Central Committee on Ensuring the Implementation of the Marriage Law to the Whole Party,” People’s Daily, May 1, 1950. (《中共中央关于保证执行婚 姻法给全党的通知》,《人民日报》1950年5月1日。). People’s Publishing House. (1982). Collection of Mao Tse-tung’s Rural Survey. Beijing: People’s Publishing House. (《毛泽东农村调查文集》，人民出版社1982年版， 第321页。). People’s Publishing House. (1986). The Collected Works of Lenin, Vol. 39. Beijing: People’s Publishing House. (《列宁全集》第39卷，人民出版社1986年版，第24页。). People’s Publishing House. (1991a). Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung, Vol. 1. Beijing: People’s Publishing House. Pp. 33. (《毛泽东选集》第1卷，人民出版社1991年版， 第33页。). People’s Publishing House. (1991b). Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung, Vol. 1. Beijing: People’s Publishing House. Pp. 31–34. (《毛泽东选集》第１卷，人民出版社1991年 版，第31–34页。). People’s Publishing House. (1999). Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung, Vol. 8. Beijing: People’s Publishing House. (《毛泽东文集》第八卷，人民出版社1999年版， 第254页。). Research Office of Party History of the CPC Central Committee. (2011). History of the Communist Party of China, Vol. 2. (1949–1978). Beijing: CPC History Press. (中共中 央党史研究室:《中国共产党历史》第2卷（1949–1978），下册，中共党史出版 社2011年版，第579页。).

Consumption, Fertility, and Health 109 Tencent Net. (2013). Changes of Family Planning Propaganda Slogans. Retrieved from https://news.qq.com/a/20131121/013552.htm. Access on November 22, 2013. (《计划 生育宣传标语变迁》，腾讯网2013年11月22日。). Wang, X. (2005). “Zhoujing Xunliao, Huimin Youju, and Barefoot Doctors,” Guangming Daily, December 1, 2005. (王香平：《“州境巡疗”、“惠民药局”和赤脚医生》， 《光明日报》2005年12月1日。). Wen, D. (2018). Witnessing 40 Years of Family Planning: Rural Discovery in China. (Issue. 1). Hunan: Hunan People’s Publishing House. (文栋梁《见证计划生 育四十年》，收于《中国乡村发现》2018年第1期，湖南人民出版社2018年版。). Xin, Y. (2005). Study on the Distribution System of Rural People’s Commune. Beijing: CPC History Press. (辛逸:《农村人民公社分配制度研究》，中共党史出版社2005年 版，第85、100页。).

6

Discourse, Transportation, and Information Rural Technological Consolidation

In the era of traditional agricultural civilisation, villages and peasants remained distanced and dispersed from the state. To a certain degree, this situation was attributed to the state’s lack of necessary technical means to transmit state capacity to the vast and decentralised rural society. Along with the constructions of modern states came the more and more advanced technological methods, which could be utilised by the state to consolidate dispersive villages and peasants, and incorporate them into the national system.

I

Literacy for All: Simplifying Chinese Characters

From a historical point of view, China has a written language very early. However, the number of people capable of recognising Chinese characters and communicating with the state remained limited. On the one hand, rural society throughout history relied predominantly on word-of-mouth experiences that were able to sustain production and life. According to Fei Xiaotong (1998:14–16), rural society was one whose members knew each other very well (熟人社会) and depended on direct face-to-face communications, rendering characters unnecessary for life. On the other hand, schooling was indispensable for systematically mastering Chinese characteristics, while the general population lacked the capacity to acquire opportunities to accept systematic education in school. Following the founding of the republic, the government started to establish modern schools, especially within the broad rural regions, to bring literacy to the countryside, which began to demonstrate nascent political influence. Mao Zedong described the situations of villages in Hunan Province in the Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan (《湖南农民运动考察报告》): “Some of the peasants can also recite Dr Sun Yat-sen’s Testament. They pick out the terms ‘freedom’, ‘equality’, ‘the Three People’s Principles’ and ‘unequal treaties’ and apply them, if rather crudely, in their daily life” (People’s Publishing House, 1991:34). In 1929, the nationalist government in Nanjing promulgated An Outline of Literacy Movement Propaganda (《识字运动宣传计划大纲》) to propose compulsory education and promote mass education and literacy campaigns. However, this movement was merely a formality and failed to penetrate deeply into rural society on a broad basis. DOI: 10.4324/b23055-6

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Using villages as its revolutionary bases, the CCP considered political propaganda the magic wand for mobilising populations. Hence, in order to enable the illiterate peasants to understand the party’s proposals and policies, it was necessary for them to learn characters. In the 1940s, the CCP, assisted by the political power of the people, initiated the exceptional mass movement for illiteracy eradication (扫盲活动) in the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia border region. The government of the border region articulated the willingness to “liberate mass population from illiteracy, broadly promote education, and enable everyone within Border Region to gain educational opportunities.” The political programme of the border region government further identified the duty of “developing mass education and eradicating illiteracy (发展民众教育,消灭文盲)” (Wang, 2010:69–75). Character learning activities promoted by the government, targeting unlettered masses and peasants, lasted for years and unfolded in various formalities, and were closely connected to strategies and policy guidelines of the party and governments, thereby greatly enhancing peasants’ political consciousness. At that time, a drama entitled A Couple Learning Characters (《夫妻识字》) reflected this movement and received a broad sphere of influence. Discourses and expressions in this drama illustrated the reasons and motivations behind peasants’ desire to study characters. Here’s an example: why should villagers learn characters? Without characters we could never know great things. Since we were illiterate in the old society, we were unconsciously bullied and exploited. Now that we had stood up, it was intolerable to be blind people with their eyes wide-open (睁眼瞎). Learning and education were the most urgent things. Peasants’ literacy provided them with a solid foundation to participate in the political activities of the border region’s government. After the establishment of the PRC, the ruling party initiated nationwide illiteracy eradication movements, given the fact that 80% of the national population remained uneducated. In 1950, the party and government held the National Education Meeting of Workers and Peasants, confirming the inauguration of illiteracy eradication movements. On May 24, 1952, the state initiated large-scale literacy for all movements, whose climax continued all the way until the end of the 1950s. Since the general population were mostly illiterate, the state-led movements of character learning were faced by the regular mass, especially the peasants. To achieve their goals, these movements were closely integrated into villagers’ productions and daily life. In order to correspond to the state-operated agricultural cooperative movement, governments at various levels started with the local reality of their own villages and counties, and created plans for illiteracy eradication after consulting with the people, striving to situate the whole procedure within programmes of the cooperative movement. The Textbook for Learning Characters and Recording Works (识字记工课本) was popular during that period, starting with the names of peasants themselves and continuing with names of land, various agricultural tasks, farm implements and livestock, and the formality of

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bookkeeping. As this textbook was closely related to farmers’ daily lives, it would take only two to three months of spare time for peasants to preliminarily master accounting and work recording skills. This approach presented a relatively better solution for the question illustrated by Fei Xiaotong: bringing literacy to the countryside (文字下乡) should be combined with the population. From Fei’s observation (1998:23), “If China’s rural foundations were to change, then-and perhaps only then-literacy would come to the countryside.” The consolidation of the literacy for all movements with the agricultural cooperative movement prevented illiterate peasants from adapting to changes within the fundamental rural society, providing them with internal motivations. Besides, whereas women constituted half of the rural populations, they had been away from knowledge and culture for a long time, had since become primary targets of literacy movements, and had demonstrated the most prominent effects. In order to empower regular people to learn and use characters with ease, the state implemented the Chinese characters simplification (汉字简化) scheme. Chinese characters emerged out of a long history and were often used by the minority population. Since the modern era, from 1840, some believed that Chinese characters, with reference to their foreign counterparts, exhibited three multiplicities and five difficulties (三多五难): “three multiplicities” referred to multiple character numbers, strokes of characters, and pronunciations; “five difficulties” were the difficulty to recognise, read, memorise, write, and use. These challenges to read and write were perceived as the essential reasons for the low literacy rate in China and were directly related to the state’s prosperity. In 1922, Qian Xuantong and others proposed the specific character simplification scheme for the first time. On August 21, 1935, the Ministry of Education of the Republic of China issued Ministerial Order No. 11400, officially announcing the first collection of simplified characters. After the founding of the PRC in 1949, character reform became a significant task connected to socialist development. On October 1, 1953, the central government established the Language Reform Committee. On January 28, 1956, the 23rd State Council Plenary Meeting passed the Resolution Regarding the Promulgation of the “Chinese Character Simplification Scheme (《关于公布‹汉字简化方案›的决议》).” Character simplification was a method of character reform by reducing the stroke numbers, and regulating the simplified and colloquial form of characters as standardised words. The state promulgated simplified Chinese characters multiple times until the 1980s, generating substantial debates throughout this procedure. While the effectiveness of character reforms remained hard to be evaluated, these simplified characters indeed made certain contributions to the convenience of the general public to understand and master characters, and the rapid eradication and elimination of illiteracy. Given a large national population and underdeveloped economy, the new illiterates also emerged during illiteracy eradication. Consequently, literacy for all became a national policy constantly upheld by the state and was fixated in the form of law. The Constitution of the People’s Republic of China (《中华人民共和国 宪法》) published in 1982 explicitly promulgated that “the State develops educational facilities in order to eliminate illiteracy.” After 50 years of persistent hard

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work, the national illiteracy rate decreased from over 80% in 1949 to 6.72% in 2000. Literacy for all schemes after the 1950s unfolded predominantly through the form of compulsory education with schools as vehicles. Every village established schools to achieve the goal of universal compulsory education. However, for a considerably long time, the peasants shouldered most of the financial burdens to set up schools, known as non-state schools. Limited fiscal power and increasingly onerous burdens of villagers resulted in a disconnect between education and peasants’ actual production and daily life. A considerable number of students dropped out early and remained at the lower cultural level after they grew up. Not only did the learning of characters prepare the peasants with conditions to foster connections with the state, but more importantly, the process of character studying constituted the procedure of building state consciousness. Cultural education in the traditional society manifested a high degree of diversity, comprising substantial private old-style homeschools and other types of non-state schools, such as church schools and others. In comparison, the CCP-promoted anti-illiteracy movements were permeated with political consciousness from start to finish. Particularly, after 1949, the state was the principal establisher of schools. Even non-state village schools remained part of the national education system with different sources of fiscal supply. From textbooks to classes to teachers, politics and national consciousness penetrated the whole educational procedure. Students understood national discourses while learning characters and took to heart the idea of following the instructions and guidance of the party (听党 话, 跟党走). Illiteracy eradication and compulsory education actually cultivated political people (政治人) qualified for the state’s goals. Peasants remaining external to politics and members of the state finally evolved into nationals with political and national consciousness, constituting the consequential foundation that enabled the state to penetrate broadly into rural society after the PRC’s establishment.

II   Promoting Mandarin: Official Language and  Local Dialects Traditional rural society acquaintances could sustain without written characters but not without colloquial language. As described by Fei Xiaotong, “at the rural level, there is spoken language but no genuine use for a written language” (Fei, 1998:23). While spoken language was also a tool for communication, it was not as regulated and standardised as written language, which needed to be learned and acquired through formal studying. It is safe to say that as soon as people were born, they could use spoken language to express their thoughts and emotions, and begin to learn to speak and listen. Language emerged under certain conditions and was used under certain circumstances, giving rise to different languages. Early human society lived in a relatively narrow geographical space, and people utilised different languages that could only be known in a relatively small area. This situation was attributed to the then limited

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size of the state. After Emperor Qin Shi Huang united ancient China, an essential task was writing with the same language (书同文) or unifying the culture of writing to enable the state administration to transmit the will of the state to different regions through unified written documents. However, despite his achievement of writing the same text, Qin Shi Huang was unable to actualise speaking with the same tone (言同声), indicating that different regions within the same state had various dialects. He Zhizhang, a poet of the Tang dynasty, had written the well-known poem: “I left home when young and return now old. Unchanged my accent, the thinning my hair (少小离家老大回, 乡音未改鬓毛衰).” “Accent referred to local dialects” (Zhou and You, 2006:3). Not only did dialect manifest locality and regionalism, but different villages within the same region obtained their dialects that were understandable to their own. The Chinese saying often described this phenomenon as “every ten li1 came with a different tone” (十里不同音). Since members of traditional rural society often lived within a ten-mile radius (方圆十里), accents and tones outside of this region would differ in a way. Long-term regional closure contributed to conspicuous discrepancies among various local dialects. The more distant the political centre, the more distinctive the dialect, such as Cantonese. In order to effectively exercise administrative power, the state promoted an official language (官话), demanding regional officials to speak an official language that could be widely used throughout the region. However, official language carrying the will of the state was, after all, a language used only by the upper class, and its scope of application remained extremely limited. The general population still used different dialects. Apparently, the diversity and discrepancy of various dialects undermined the implementation of a unified will of the state. If citizen populations could not understand officials’ language, how were they able to follow the state’s orders? Entering the 20th century, along with state-building, it became a significant mission for both people with the breadth of vision and the state to empower people to comprehend the voice of the state. At the beginning of the 20th century, some pioneers had claimed this: winning the collective hearts and minds was the precondition for China’s selfimprovement, and gathering hearts and minds demanded the shared language (要望中国自强,必先齐人心; 要想齐人心,必先通言语). (Wu, 2017:3) Subsequently, the national language movement (国语运动) surfaced with the support of the intelligentsia. In an article entitled “A Huge Point of Debate in the Issue of National Language,” Liu Bannong expressed this: the national language in my imagination was not somehow a mysterious thing but rather a universal and progressive Chinese official language with local accents (蓝青官话). The character of universalism spoke to the fact that the number of people capable of using official languages remained few in the past. Now, education of official language would be promoted to the majority.

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Progressiveness means that while there was no stable and fixated goal of speaking official languages, now we needed to establish a new objective. Consequently, the essence of the national language was the consciousness of modernity and the state contained inside (Wu, 2017:3). In the 1920s, the nationalist government began to implement the collective national language movement. However, there were a considerable amount of disagreement and disputes around questions of what constituted standard collective language and how to establish this universal language. Particularly, amidst frequent outbreaks of wars and armed conflicts, the promotion of a national language remained fruitless and failed to enter the life of the rural society in poor and backward regions (Cui, 2016:62–73). The capability of empowering the peasants in underdeveloped rural regions to understand the national language reflecting the state’s will was closely related to the transformation of the rural society. The leader of the CCP started to seize the state regime from Northern China. During this procedure, substantial cadres from the North entered the southern regions and became local leaders. Compared to their counterparts from the South further away from the political centre, Northern cadres spoke a language more comprehensible to the general population. Meanwhile, a large number of intellectuals also went to the local region and the primary level. Striving to obtain local leadership, they tried their utmost to appreciate their language to regional dialects. In addition, the rural transformation procedure cultivated a group of cadres from local villages. These aboriginal cadres were gradually able to understand the language of their external colleagues throughout their frequent interactions. This was China’s first era to integrate the national language with dialect. However, on the whole, dialect still occupied the dominant position in rural social life. According to a 2005 survey, there were 310 million population in the national dialect regions, and around 120 million people could only communicate in regional dialects (You, 2010). Since language was a tool for communication, only through frequent interactions could people understand each other and communicate. For a long time, people’s lives were fixated on local villages and areas, interacting more with members of rural communities. Dialects formed at birth faced great difficulties of alteration due to the absence of indispensable interactions. After the reform and opening-up, social interactions gradually became broader and more frequent. The peasants started to leave their hometown and march into wider society. Dialects turned into obstacles restraining peoples’ interactions. Against this backdrop, the state started to promote Mandarin. Law of the People’s Republic of China on the Standard Spoken and Written Chinese Language (《中 华人民共和国国家通用语言文字法》) (hereinafter Law) issued in 2005 specified Mandarin as the standard national language. Mandarin used Beijing accents as standard pronunciation, northern language as the basic dialect, and modern vernacular literature as grammatic principles. Article 2 of the Law stated, “For purposes of this Law, the standard spoken and written Chinese language means Putonghua (a common speech with pronunciation based on the Beijing dialect) and

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the standardised Chinese characters.” Article 3 continued, “The State popularises Putonghua and the standardised Chinese characters.” Article 4 specified this: All citizens shall have the right to learn and use the standard spoken and written Chinese language. The State provides citizens with the conditions for learning and using the standard spoken and written Chinese language. Local people’s governments at various levels and the relevant departments under them shall take measures to popularise Putonghua and the standardised Chinese characters. The key propaganda slogan for Mandarin promotion was “dialects and rural languages were ineffective in communication, and everybody shall speak Mandarin (方言土语难通话, 人人都讲普通话).” Governments, schools, communication, and other issue areas remained the primary target of the state’s advocacy of Mandarin. However, the ordinary peasants as audiences were subject to its influence naturally and gradually mastered Mandarin to better understand official languages. The mass was mostly a recipient of the Mandarin promotion scheme who could understand but was not necessarily able to speak. Yet with the expansion of social interactions, a large number of peasants left their villages of origin and had to use Mandarin to communicate with others, thereby enabling Mandarin to be mastered and applied in farmers’ daily lives. Obviously, given the fact that they grew up under dialect conditions, the Mandarin they learnt and mastered contained various dialectal undertones. Meanwhile, language carried cultural traditions and enjoyed historical continuity. During the promotion of Mandarin, certain regions preserved dialects as means of communication, such as a specific broadcasting channel in local dialects. However, dialects still existed extensively in rural social life. People derived a sense of identity of local folks from dialect, which consequently became a manifestation of nostalgia (乡愁). Especially in the region with ethnic minorities, local languages different from Chinese Mandarin obtained their continuity. Thus, there existed a coexistence of Mandarin and dialects in the reality of rural social life. This situation of coexistence would continue for a considerably long time and would not disrupt the dissemination of the will of the state.

III  All    Roads Lead to the Capital: Official Passages and  Smaller Trails Historically, the agricultural economy of China was a self-sufficient natural economy. The rural society existed in the confined geographical regions without forming extensive and regular connections with the external world and remained closed. Transportation for the rural population relied mainly on small-scale pathways. Although rural pathways were connected to official roads, the majority of rural populations rarely, if ever, passed through the major roads their whole life. Due to the traffic, the state governance found the vast rural areas beyond its reach. As described by Fei Xiaotong (2006:115), “the vast continental transportation

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network was so poor that power was nominally rather than de facto centralized.” This also restrained the state’s power to dominate the rural society and was an essential reason behind the state’s constant division and partition. Entering modernity, transportation skills developed rapidly. A significant symbol was the rise of convenient and fast railways besides traditional land and waterways. Railways were beneficial for both integrating the priorly scattered society into a whole and political governance. China, in the modern era, began to construct railways, which improved transportation conditions and altered the original economic foundation. As Engels (Compilation and Translation Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, 2015) claimed, “Chinese railways symbolised destruction of the entire foundation of small-scale peasant economy and cottage industry.” However, given modern China’s accumulated weakness and poverty, transportation conditions improved slowly. Meanwhile, railway construction in modern China was confined more to the struggle for the right of way, leaving out the railway’s function in state integration (Ma, 2018:166–177). Transportation conditions of the vast rural areas lagged way behind those of the cities. It was precisely against this backdrop that Mao Zedong proposed the revolutionary path of “rural areas encircling the cities.” Because of transportation, the CCP-led revolutions were able to first form an independent red regime (红色割据), establishing revolutionary bases in remote rural areas and seeking subsequent development. After 1949, the state obtained unprecedented unity, which relied on the rapid improvement of the transportation situation as a supporting condition. On the one hand, mileages of railway and roads as modern means of transportation increased promptly. To construct railways, the state transformed parts of the prior military into railway forces through an organisational system and accelerated railway building with specialised troops. In the 21st century, China became the country with the most railways in the world. Railway mileages increased rapidly, while highways also developed drastically. On the other hand, transportation conditions in the remote areas received the most prominent improvement. Tibet used to be isolated from the mainland in the past. After the founding of the PRC, the first major task after troops entered Tibet was constructing roads to connect this remote region with the state. The improvement of transportation conditions greatly altered the isolated status of traditional rural areas, provided conditions for the state power to enter villages to consolidate the scattered rural society, and significantly reduced the distance between the poor and remote countryside with the political centre.

IV Pave Roads to Every Village (村村通): 村村通 State-Peasants Interactions After the establishment of the PRC, the improvement of transportation conditions provided technical conditions for integrating the decentralised rural society. However, for a long time, the improvement of transportation conditions was mainly the construction of major roads, and the rural population still mainly travelled on country roads. On the one hand, this was attributed to the fact that there was a

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process of building roads financed by the state, and at a certain stage, it focused mainly on the construction of main roads. On the other hand, it was because the rural economy and society obtained insufficient interactions with the outside world. Under the people’s commune system, people and land were highly united, and the rural population had no way to survive without the commune land where they lived. As a result, besides the state tasks, the majority of the rural populations had little interaction with the outside world, and people still walked on country roads every day in their daily lives. After the reform and opening-up of the rural areas, the peasants became autonomous and began to leave the countryside to work and conduct business. Especially in the 1990s, when the state implemented the socialist market economy, the degree of commercialisation of the rural economy increased rapidly, and the traditional closed peasants were transformed into socialised small farmers. In other words, although peasants still relied on the family as the unit of production and life, their production life has become increasingly socialised, and interaction with the outside world has become an intrinsic need in their daily life. However, due to the obstacle of transportation, it was difficult to transport a large number of agricultural products out of the rural areas, and the peasants’ connections with the outside world were limited. With the construction of new rural areas, state-led public services had been brought to the countryside, but farmers still needed to travel over the mountains to access public services, which was laborious and time-consuming. This situation was particularly acute in mountainous areas. It is precisely in this context that the national transportation project of paving the road to every village was launched. The paving of the road to every village project was a major initiative of the state to coordinate urban and rural development, and support the construction of new rural areas after entering the 21st century. It was also known as the five-year 100-billion-yuan (五年千亿元) project. The goal of the project was to build asphalt roads or cement roads for all villages in five years, and the roads should be able to accommodate cars and large agricultural equipment to solve the majority of peasants’ travel problems. This project sought to open up the last kilometre. That expression referred to this situation: the state had built the road close to the farmers and connected to the counties and villages, but because of the failure to enter the village into the household, farmers still had difficulties in travel. Consequently, this was commonly known as the last kilometre (最后一公里). China is a vast country, and it costs a lot to make every village accessible by road. The paving the road to every village project clearly stipulated that the project was mainly funded by the central government and the province, with the local finance (municipalities and counties) matching part of the funds and never allowing the mandatory distribution of funds to the peasants. However, China’s local economic development was uneven. The worse the traffic conditions, the more difficult the local finances. At the same time, paving the road to every village was not only a financial problem but also a series of issues, such as land occupation and housing, and farmers also needed to contribute labour. If the main body of the state-funded road was the government, then the main body of the village access

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project was not only the government but also the peasants. Without the participation of the latter, the project was difficult to implement. The participation of farmers depended on their awareness and organisations. In some places, farmers relied on autonomous organisations as a carrier and centred their discussions and consultation around the issue of land occupation, housing, and others to reach an agreement and successfully construct roads. In some places, however, farmers depended more on the government, whom they wanted to take over the road construction. This phenomenon was related to their overdependence on the government formed by their past life experience. Therefore, the implementation progress and quality of paving the road to every village varied from region to region, capturing the embedded interactions between farmers and the state in this procedure. The isolation and scatteredness of the traditional rural society were the results of many factors, among which was transformation inconvenience, an essential reason. In the 20th century, especially after the reform and opening-up, conditions of rural transportation had developed in proportion to the development of the commodity economy, which greatly improved the isolation and fragmentation of rural society, and facilitated state integration. In his survey of remote rural areas along the border of Jiangxi, Fujian, and Guangdong Provinces, Wen Rui found this: before the collectivisation, transportation speed was mainly calculated in “days”. After Reform and Opening-up, especially today at the turn of the century, transportation speed was usually measured in “hours.” The direct transportation distance was relatively the same. Before collectivisation, it was mainly confined to the internal operation of the border areas, but since the 1980s and 1990s, it had become integrated with the national market. (Wen and You, 2001:64) The openness brought by transportation inevitably altered the traditional isolation and fragmentation, as well as interactions between peasants and the state. Transportation was a neutral condition. The state could transmit its will to the rural society through convenient transportation and conduct effective rural integration. At the same time, the peasants found it convenient to express their voices via developed transportation. Since the 1990s, there has been a rapid increase in the number of peasant petitions and visits in China, especially direct petitions to the capital. Although the main cause of this increment remained, indeed, the social tensions in rural areas, convenient transportation also provided conditions for peasants to petition at different levels, especially in the capital.

V Information Dissemination: Listening Directly to the State’s Voices State governance demanded the issuance of orders. The ruling power transmitted the information of orders and policies to the target audience through various means of communication with the purpose of achieving political purposes. Information functioned as the carrier of the state power. Through information, the state

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penetrated its power to every region and enabled objects of governance to hear its voices. Information dissemination and transmission were essential conditions for the state’s consolidation of society. Information transmission in traditional society mainly relied on manual approaches and faced great limitations with regard to transmission objects and speed. The essential function of royal roads (驰道) constructed by Qin Shi Huang after the unification of China was to disseminate ordinances and policies in all directions. However, due to the limited conditions, it was impossible for the state regime to extend royal roads to every corner, especially in rural areas that were vast and decentralised. In contrast to cities that served as fortresses of the ruling, the rural area was an isolated island closed to national information. Meanwhile, the rural society exhibited self-dependent production and life, and rural social affairs depended mainly on the inner forces for solutions. Via face-to-face and word-of-mouth means of communication, the rural population transmitted information that they desired to know. This information was mainly confined to a narrow sphere of peasants’ life, precisely constituting a major reason the rural society remained external to national politics. Entering modern society, the means of information transmission multiplied. Specifically, the emergence of newspapers and books enabled more and more people to receive political information. The state started to integrate the society through information transmission. However, its capacity remained quite limited. For the vast rural areas, the state’s ordinance and policies are still stuck in a state of blockage and restriction. After the establishment of the PRC, accompanying the top-down land reform, the state delegated task forces to workgroups to enter villages and rural households, and bring state ordinances and policies to the rural areas. After the socialist transformation of agriculture, the state organised society through the people’s communes. The people’s communes meant the unity of government and society, integrating governmental administration with economic management and obeying the top-down directives of the state. To make every peasant hear the voices of the state, the state vigorously developed the cable broadcasting service. While villages set up broadcasting stations with loudspeakers, households set up broadcasting boxes capable of receiving information directly from the stations. The connection from the radio box at home, to the radio station of counties and villages, and then to the national radio broadcast, allowed ordinary peasants to directly hear the voices of the central government. Through broadcasting, the state integrated hundreds of millions of scattered peasants into a whole. At a certain moment, all farmers could hear the same national voice. The rural areas during the era of the people’s commune could be described as a broadcasting society (广播社会). Given the underdeveloped road transportation and restricted publication of newspapers and journals, the state connected thousands of households mainly through radios. He Junli described the political influences of radios and loudspeakers through an example of a village, believing this: loudspeakers were a strong symbol of the presence of state power in the rural area. Construction of these instruments meant that the state power had

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entrenched deeper into rural social life, and the presence of the state was more and more prominent. (He, 2018:2–16) Not only did it assist the power centre in building a huge and vast national space, which enabled the remote and isolated borders to keep close contact with the centre at all times, but it also took advantage of the strong influence, wide audience and no textual barriers to gathering all those who can hear the voice, which completes the widest. It also did the following: made use of the advantages of strong infection, audience, and the absence of textual obstacles to gather all people who could hear the voices, thereby completing the broadest social mobilisation and strengthening the general public’s identification with the Party and socialism. (Wang, 2013:31–38) Following the abolition of the people’s communes, the role of radio in the peasants’ daily lives started to weaken. However, a more advanced means of communication, television, rapidly entered the rural areas. The project of paving the roads to every village also included cable TV networks besides roads. Due to its visibility and richness of content, television soon became extremely popular among the peasants and changed their lifeworld. The rural areas departed from a broadcasting society into a television society (电视社会). Watching TV emerged as part of farmers’ daily lifestyle. Through television, the peasants could see images of national and local leaders every day, and hear the voice of the party and the government on a daily basis, greatly reducing the distance between them and the state. Due to the universal promotion of television as a daily necessity, the state was no longer outside of life but rather became an integral part of life. The impact of the popularity of television on state integration and peasants’ identity is complex and multifaceted. National policies could be directly disseminated to farmers through television, enabling them to hear the voice of the state more directly. Ever since the implementation of the policyto the countryside (政 策下乡), the state had mainly relied on cadres at all levels to transmit the voices of the government. Throughout this process, policy information was inevitably intercepted, reserved, and even distorted. Many cadres at the local and primary levels believed that national policies were in their pockets, and the amount and content of national policies could only be taken out based on their wills. The popularity of television contributed to changes in this situation. Central government policies reached farmers directly through television, making it more difficult for local and grassroots cadres to govern through monopolising policy information. For instance, in the 1990s, the China Central Television (CCTV) opened the Focus Report (《焦点访谈》) programme, which often disclosed incidents in which local and grassroots cadres violated central policies and increased farmers’ burdens, thereby enabling farmers to learn more about and better grasp central policies. Meanwhile, the peasants also used their knowledge of policies and laws to

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resist and even fight back against actions that they considered inconsistent with the laws and policies.

VI

Interrelations and Interconnections: Growth of Information Subjects

In traditional society, the peasants served more as passive participants in politics, and their political actions were, to a certain degree, forced by the desire to survive. A major reason behind this was the limitation of information. Peasants neither realised the richness of the external world nor were aware of the fact that their efforts could influence and even change the outside world. Their means of production, ways of living, and method of information passage determined that they could not represent themselves but needed others for representation. For a long time, the executive power of the state dominated the rural society in a top-down manner. Peasants found it difficult to communicate with the government, let alone express their voices to the state. Only without any alternatives would they demonstrate their wills through dramatic actions, while this expression was accompanied closely by social upheavals. The information environment did not change until the modern area. But for a long time, information dissemination was controlled by a minority group. Especially after 1949, information media fell mostly into the hands of governments, which evolved into the principal and even the sole transmitter, leaving the peasants as the single information recipients. This information transformation contributed to the state’s top-down integration. However, as the farmers remained only as recipients of information, their voices faced great difficulty in achieving the bottom-up self-expressions. In the 21st century, the internet surged and extended to the countryside, thereby enabling the vast rural area to transfer from a television society into an internet society (网络社会). Cell phones had become the novel “farm implement”2 for the rural population or an indispensable tool for farmers’ production and daily lives. Internet, including cell phones, functioned as tools of information dissemination, whose main characteristics remained as interconnection and intercommunication, meaning that the recipients of information could also be the releasers simultaneously. In a traditional broadcast society and television society, the peasants took in information passively. However, in an internet society, they started to become the subjects of information, capable of expressing their opinions through the internet. This was attributed to the fact that the internet “provided effective technical means for popular expression and public participation, especially enabling the vulnerable groups to take part in decision-making” (Bao, 2001:145). Openness and diversity of information galvanised the autonomy of peasants who obtained self-interest-oriented choices. Scott used the term “hidden transcript” to summarise this action of the farmers. Despite the state’s “public transcript,” peasants applied discourses that aligned more with their self-interests to express their own wills (Scott, 2007:479). It was this condition that altered their political dilemma of inability to represent themselves and reliance on others (他们不能代表自己,一定要别人来代表他们).

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An internet society was beneficial for the state to promulgate policy through the internet to influence the population. Meanwhile, diversification of the subjects of information publishing resulted in information complexity, thereby constraining the state’s attempt to consolidate the rural society through the means of the internet. Accompanying the formation of an internet society, the state enhanced the internet regulation to guide network public opinions. However, the interconnected and intercommunicated network fundamentally altered the information environment after all and provided the peasants with conditions for political participation. The question of how the state facilitated peasants’ political expression and participation through the internet on which it depended to effectively consolidate the rural areas became an unprecedented novel challenge.

Notes 1 Li is also known as a Chinese mile and is the traditional Chinese unit of distance. 2 See “State Council: Increasing the Training of Information Technology Application for the Rural Population, Turning Cellphones into Peasants’ New Farm Implement.” Chinese News, June 27, 2018.

Reference List Bao, Z. (2001). Internet and Contemporary Social Culture. Shanghai: SDX Joint Publishing Company. (鲍宗豪:《网络与当代社会文化》, 上海三联书店2001年版, 第145页。). Compilation and Translation Bureau of the CPC Central Committee. (2015). Theory of Marx and Engels on China. Beijing: People’s Publishing House. (《马克思恩格斯论 中国》,人民出版社2015年版,第170页。). Cui, H. (2016). “The Ideological Debate on the ‘National Language Unity’ in the 1930s and 1940s: Also on the Theoretical Discourse and Strategy Shift of the Character Reform under the CPC’s Leadership,” CPC History Studies 12, Pp. 62–73. (崔明海:《二十世 纪三四十年代关于“国语”统一的思想争论—兼论中共领导下文字改革的理论话语 与策略转向》,《中共党史研究》2016年第12期。). Fei, X. (1998). From the Soil: The Foundations of Chinese Society-the Institution of Reproduction. Beijing: Peking University Press. (费孝通:《乡土中国 生育制度》,北京大学 出版社1998年版,第14–16、23页。). Fei, X. (2006). China’s Gentry. Beijing: China Social Sciences Press. (费孝通:《中国绅 士》,中国社会科学出版社2006年版,第115页。). He, J. (2018). “The Power Metaphor and Evolution of Tweeter: An Example from Mi Village in North China,” China Rural Survey 4, Pp. 2–16. （何钧力:《高音喇叭:权力的 隐喻与嬗变—以华北米村为例》,《中国农村观察》2018年第4期,第2–16页。）. Ma, L. (2018). “From Salvation to Governance: The Evolution of Modern Chinese Railway Functions under the National Perspective,” Academic Monthly 6, Pp. 166–177. (马陵合:《从 救国到治国:国家视野下的近代中国铁路功能演化》,《学术月刊》2018年第6期。). People’s Publishing House. (1991). Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung, Vol. 1. Beijing: People’s Publishing House. Pp. 34. (《毛泽东选集》第1卷,人民出版社1991年 版,第34页。). Scott, J. (2007). Weapons of the Weak. Translated by Guanghuai Zheng, Min Zhang, and Jiangsui He. Yilin Press. ([美]詹姆斯．C．斯科特:《弱者的武器》,郑广怀、张敏、 何江穗译,译林出版社2007年版,第479页。).

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Wang, H. (2013). “The Power Metaphor of Tweeter in Rural China,” Journal of Nanjing Agricultural University Social Sciences Edition 13(4), Pp. 31–38. (王华:《农村“高音喇 叭”的权力隐喻》,《南京农业大学学报(社会科学版)》2013年第4期。). Wang, J. (2010). “The Campaign of Learning to Read in the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region During the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression,” CPC History Studies 2, Pp. 69–75. (王建华:《抗日战争时期陕甘宁边区的识字运动》,《中共党 史研究》2010年第2期。). Wen, R., and You, H. (2001). Labour Mobility and Economic Transition of the Rural Society: The Empirical Research on the Jiangxi-Fujian-Guangdong Border Region of the 20th Century. Beijing: China Social Science Press. (温锐、游海华:《劳动力的流动 与农村社会经济变迁—20世纪赣闽粤三边地区实证研究》,中国社会科学出版 社2001年版,第64页。). Wu, C. (2017). “Chinese National Language Is Beneficial to the Rise of Modern China,” Chinese Society Science Today, June 20, 2017. Pp. 3. (武春野:《“国语”有助于近现代 中国的兴起》,《中国社会科学报》2017年6月30日,第3版。). You, R. (2010). “Promoting Mandarin, Treating Dialects Well,” Chinese Society Science Today, August 10, 2010. (游汝杰:《推广普通话 善待方言》,《中国社会科学 报》2010年8月10日。). Zhou, Z., and You, R. (2006). Dialects and Chinese Culture. Shanghai: Shanghai People’s Publishing House. Pp. 3. (周振鹤、游汝杰:《方言与中国文化》,上海人民出版 社2006年版,第3页。).

Conclusion The Growing Modern Country and the Fading Traditional Rural Society

The 20th century was a significant turning point in Chinese history. The most notable feature is the growth of a modern country that has never been witnessed before; at the same time, traditional rural society remains large and scattered, hindering the development of this modern country. Given the complicated process of transformation and integration, only by integrating the traditionally dispersed agrarian society into the national system can a growing modern country gain a solid foundation and only through national integration can the traditionally scattered rural areas become a new type of countryside that is coordinated with the contemporary national system, and thereby, the growing modern country can fulfil its historical mission.

I From National Transformation to Rural Construction The civilisation of China was at the fore over a long period of history, which, however, was confined to the time of agricultural civilisation. However, the global structure is undergoing unprecedented changes after entering the 18th century, and China is facing great changes unseen over the last three thousand years (三千年 未有之大变局). The world has entered a period when industrial civilisation has taken over, and China, which had led in agricultural civilisation, quickly fell into the backward state of civilisation. Furthermore, the long-established sacred tradition has been disrupted. According to Marx, the Chinese industry based on hand labour was subjected to competition with the machines. The hitherto unshakeable Central Empire experienced a social crisis (People’s Publishing House, 1962:264). Faced with the challenge of a powerful industrial civilisation, the late Qing Empire, which had entered a downward spiral, lacked the ability to respond. With the advent of the new industrial civilisation, the ills and inertia that accompanied the empire for thousands of years have been exposed. Despite the unprecedented challenges confronted by the late Qing dynasty, China did not passively wait for changes to come. Instead, it exerted a powerful force spurring revolution with the defining rule of saving the nation from subjugation and ensuring its survival (救亡图存), and protecting the country and preserving culture (保国保种). Following the Revolution of 1911, modern China began to grow, and adapting to modern industrial civilisation and pursuing modernisation have become its primary aims. DOI: 10.4324/b23055-7

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The critical conditions that growing modern China has encountered, established, and inherited from the past are that the agricultural population accounts for the vast majority of the people in the country, the rural areas keep silent in the traditional agrarian civilisation system, and the agrarian society determined by the conventional agricultural civilisation is separated from the political state. This situation indicates that the country does not have extensive social forces and is in a passive position when faced with the challenges of the great powers. It would fail to establish a modern country without bringing the fragmented, impoverished, and backward rural society into modern society amid significant changes. Huntington (1989:67) argued this: The distinction between urban and rural areas is the difference between the most modern and traditional parts of society. A basic problem of politics in a modernised society is finding a way to fill this gap and recreate social unity destroyed by modernisation through political means. Therefore, the issue of agriculture, rural areas, and peasants has become a challenge that all people of insight must consider and address throughout the 20th century. There were a group of prophets with more insights and perspectives in contemporary China, and Sun Yat-sen represents such figures. To solve the problem of peasants, he precisely put forward the proposition of agrarianism (平均地权) and land-to-the-tiller (耕者有其田) in his conception of making a new country. The Republic of China government, established after the Revolution of 1911, followed the thinking of Mr Sun Yat-sen and tried to solve the problem of the rural society and peasants. However, the ruling party, Kuomintang, did not succeed in solving the problems of peasants due to the interference of foreign aggression and the limitations of its history and class; instead, it burdened the people with heavy taxes and military obligations. As a result, the life of the peasants was more complex, and the peasants were more alienated from the national government. Thus, a government that cannot accommodate the vast majority of the peasants is obviously unsustainable. With modernisation, industrialisation and urbanisation have become the dominant forces, and the decline of the countryside is a sharp contrast. A group of literati, who initiated the rural construction movement with their ideals and an appreciation for agricultural civilisation, were worried about the decline of Chinese civilisation caused by the decline of the countryside. These ideals and appreciation have lasted to the present day. From Liang Shuming and Yan Yangchu in the Republic of China to the village builders in the new era, they all had different ideas, tried different paths, and worked towards the same goal. However, the literati assistance failed to address the production and development issues that peasants urgently needed while failing to consider the macrotrend of rural society and modernisation. Instead, it advocated returning to a country based on agriculture (以农立国) rather than industrial civilisation. Stimulate and mobilise the subjectivity and enthusiasm of rural areas. Although the literati rescue has admirable

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feelings, it does not achieve the intended outcome. Mr Liang Shuming, the leader of the rural construction movement, lamented the ten-year rural construction movement because, as a result, the “countryside does not move” (Sun, 2012:338). During the rural construction movement of the Republic of China, instead of cultural education and rural social transformation suggested by Liang Shuming and other literati, the theory of taking economic construction as the central task in the industry represented by Lu Zuofu also started to be practised, aiming at seeking people’s livelihood (民生) and protecting people’s enjoyment (民享). However, the background of the times and its own weaknesses made this rural construction movement with the most modern ideological elements aborted. Partial improvements are obviously insufficient in light of the deep crisis of rural peasants. As a city-born party, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) recognised the urgency of rural peasant problems quite early on. With the focus of the revolution shifting to the countryside, the CCP was better equipped to understand the plight of rural peasants. Consequently, the vast rural population is a historical outcast and a subject of the revolution. The CCP gained state power and established a new China by leveraging the organisation of peasants and the power of millions of peasants. It has only been termed the “New China” due to a change in state power, but this emerging power was facing the problem of traditional rural society. Soon after the establishment of the People’s Republic of China, the ruling party proposed the general line of one industrialisation and three transformations (一化三改), the essence of which is to carry out the socialist transformation of agriculture within the context of industrialisation. As a result of the socialist transformation of agriculture, traditional rural areas are adaptable to socialist industrialised countries in terms of economy, society, culture, and politics. At the peak of socialist transformation, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China announced in 1958 that it would build a new socialist countryside. Rural areas and peasants had not been able to overcome poverty and backwardness due to long-term historical reasons and the urban-rural duality pattern created by the advanced industrialisation strategy, and the modern nation was also lacking a solid foundation. The reform and opening-up that started in 1978 liberated a great deal of energy in rural society. Not only did peasants realise food and clothing, but they also began to walk out of the countryside to obtain new development opportunities, which provided new impetus for the country’s modernisation. However, with the advancement of industrialisation and urbanisation in the late 1980s, the problem of imbalance in urban and rural development has become increasingly prominent. The issue of agriculture and rural peasants has become the top priority of the work of the ruling party. In 2006, the ruling party proposed to build a new socialist countryside (社会主义新农村). In 2017, the ruling party proposed a rural revitalisation strategy, and the purpose of this strategy is to solve the problems of agriculture and peasants by coordinating urban and rural development. Following hundreds of years of reform, especially the reform and opening-up following 1978, China’s social structure has undergone fundamental changes: the

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transformation from a rural China, with the majority of the rural population, to an urban-rural China, with an even proposition of rural and urban populations. The more critical issue is that the transformed countryside is no longer a traditional countryside separate from the country but a new socialist countryside integrated with the country. The traditional peasants are also undergoing significant changes, and their sense of autonomy and rights are growing day by day. The traditional countryside is rapidly disappearing, and in its place is a new country which has been absorbed into modern national elements. Those long-lasting traditional peasants quickly disappeared, and the new peasants merged with modern elements snowballed. All this has resulted in a change in the relationship between the state and peasants.

II

One-Way Nationalisation and Complex Peasantry

It was a historical event of great significance in China and around the world when a long and substantial traditional rural society was transformed into a new type of rural society integrated with the modern country. It fundamentally laid the political foundation of a modern country. There were countless peasant resistances in traditional China, but all of them were considered rebellions instead of revolutions (Stavrianos, 1993:318). It was only when advanced parties with modern values emerged that there was an innovative revolution, especially in bringing traditional rural society up to speed. It is also gaining more stability and continuity in modern countries. The endogenous stability of the social structure is accompanied by innovation instead of the periodic turmoil that is accompanied by superstability as in traditional societies. Throughout the history of the world, there has not been a fierce social revolution in countries where urban populations are the majority; on the contrary, fierce social revolutions have primarily occurred in countries where rural populations are the majority. It is not an exaggeration to say that rural integration is of considerable significance to the country, regardless of how high the evaluation is. Nevertheless, we must also remember that such a great historical change was not without setbacks and even came with a heavy price. History has paid the price, but its internal mechanism still needs to be studied. Among them, an essential reason for national integration is the contradiction between unidirectional nationalisation and the complex peasantry. Modern countries are established based on certain ideals. State power has specific goals and will influence or change society according to those goals. People with lofty ideals in modern China regard modernisation, with industrial civilisation as the carrier, as their goal based on the realisation that the ones behind will be beaten (落后就要挨打). Unlike ordinary modern parties, the CCP upholds Marxist theory and considers the transformation of traditional society as its historical mission. As soon as the People’s Republic of China was founded, the CCP proposed one industrialisation and three transformations to carry out the socialist transformation of agriculture to advance industrialisation. Thus, in China, the state’s integration of rural society is a top-down process of comprehensive nationalisation guided by the goals of industrialisation and communism.

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Modern countries have unprecedented transformation capabilities, and the growth of a modern country is a process of continuous expansion and transformation of social capabilities. After a long period of the revolutionary war, the CCP, which won national independence and self-determination from the ones behind will be beaten, gained unprecedented political party authority and national capabilities after establishing state power. Because of this, the CCP put forward ambitious strategic goals as soon as it came to power, and under the support of solid political party authority and national capabilities, it carried out the comprehensive transformation of rural society. The transformation has the characteristics of earthshaking (翻天覆地) and earth-shattering (惊天动地), attempting to achieve its goals through national means. The modern Chinese state integrates rural society by employing the state, which is the main force behind this integration. A modern country is one that fully embodies human will. With unprecedented national capabilities, where those in power can easily accomplish their historic mission in a short period in modern times, China has fallen off a cliff after a long and glorious history, making people with lofty ideals look forward to quickly changing the passive situation of the ones behind will be beaten. The CCP, in particular, has the lofty goal of creating an ideal society in the communist world. The Communist Party of China has a sense of urgency due to the dual urgency of history and the future. Mao Zedong, the leader of the Communist Party of China, said that “ten thousand years are too long; seize the day, seize the hour” (一万年 太久, 只争朝夕), reflecting the aspirations of the party. By launching mass movements and raising the movement’s climax, the ruling party promoted the transformation of traditional rural society after the founding of the People’s Republic of China. A fast pace, thus, characterises the integration process of rural society in China in modern times. The modern state’s integration of rural society is fundamentally a transformation of the traditional peasantry so that scattered peasants with deep historical roots can be integrated with modern society and become members of the modern state organisation system. However, the peasantry is composed of complex factors and has multiple characteristics. Integrating rural society into the modern state is a product of modernisation since modernisation is based on industrialisation. Peasants are traditional social factors contributing to modernisation as beneficiaries, builders, or potential victims. At the same time, peasants continue to exist and develop in a long-term historical process, and the realistic and historical environment shapes their unique personalities. Thousands of years of family economics have shaped the private nature of rural households. The production method is heavily dependent on nature, and the governance method relies on customs for self-governance, making peasants more conservative, while the situation of people having no way to make a living (民不聊生) caused by traditional state rule has also given peasants strong resistance. Top-down, one-way nationalisation is not simple and easy for a rural society with multiple peasant characteristics, and it may even face setbacks. A key difference is the phased approach to construction and transformation promoted by the state from top to bottom, and thus, the social outcomes are

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different. Especially at the beginning of modernisation, the accumulation of industrialisation mainly relied on the provision of traditional rural society, during which the priority strategy of industrialisation may damage the interests of peasants. As early as the founding of the People’s Republic of China, when the CCP proposed one industrialisation and three transformations, Liang Shuming suggested that the interests of peasants should be considered in the process of industrialisation. However, these kinds of suggestions failed to gain enough attention and were instead criticised. The subsequent historical process also shows that whenever peasants’ interests are harmed, the integration of rural society is restricted. Furthermore, the state is dominated by subjective will as it pursues its goals. Due to the solid state capacity, this type of subjective will may exceed the reality, not only not bringing benefits to peasants but also causing disasters and even harming their identification with the country. As a result of severe economic difficulties following the Great Leap Forward, peasants began to doubt the state’s intentions in the late 1950s and early 1960s. To meet the peasants’ demands, the ruling party also needed to adjust its rural policies. Although the transformation of rural society in the country is necessary or even indispensable, the traditions of peasants are formed over a long period, and they, too, must be changed over time. Lenin once pointed out, “It will take several generations to transform the small peasants and their entire psychology and behaviours” (People’s Publishing House, 1995:447). Without taking into account the peasants’ acceptance and affordability, the transformation would not produce the desired results.

III

Simple Integration and Organic Integration

Fei Xiaotong (1998:9) claimed, “In sociology, we often distinguish two different types of societies: one that has no specific purpose, but occurs because of being together; the other is a society that combines to complete a task.” The modern state’s integration of the countryside is to accomplish a task, namely, to create a nation through the integration of rural society into a system with national unity. It is inevitable that rural communities will integrate into modern countries, and the methods used and the results achieved will also differ. After 1949, the state promoted integration primarily by transforming traditional rural society. The integration has a solid intention to transform a long-standing rural society fundamentally. The meaningful way is to eliminate thousands of years of scattered small peasant economy through collectivisation and integrate hundreds of millions of individual small peasants into the people’s commune organisation. Rural society is institutionalised in the country through the people’s commune system, which organises and integrates scattered peasants. Nevertheless, this integration represents a type of simple integration, where peasants were strictly regulated within the commune system. Modern countries are integrating rural society largely through the organisation of individual peasants, while integration is a historical process that requires numerous conditions. A critical condition is the peasants’

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willingness and material conditions. From a historical perspective, traditional peasants will eventually perish, but this is a process, and special attention must be paid not to use violence simply to achieve historical goals. We must, therefore, respect the wishes of the peasants. During the period of cooperation after the founding of the People’s Republic of China, the ruling party valued peasants’ voluntariness and emphasised the right of peasants to join or withdraw from cooperatives. As a result of the government’s vigorous promotion of collectivisation, everything in the countryside, from the means of production to the population, is fully integrated into the collective organisation of the people’s commune. Within a short time, such an organisational system integration has resulted in the integration of rural society in the country. This integration, however, has the characteristics of simple mechanical integration; that is, the state primarily promotes it, and the peasants are relatively passive as the object of integration. American scholar Scott calls it “a simplification of the process of reshaping society” (Scott, 2004:4). The countryside and the peasants are very different, and one top-down management model will inevitably inhibit the vitality of the countryside and the autonomy of the peasants. Additionally, the industrialisation strategy has led to excessive contributions in rural areas, the lives of peasants have not been improved for a long time, and the communal system lacks inherent appeal. The Central Committee of the Communist Party of China pointed this out in the Resolution on Several Historical Issues of the Party Since the Founding of the People’s Republic: Due to insufficient experience in socialist construction, insufficient understanding of the rule of economic development and basic economic conditions in China, and also due to Mao Zedong and many central and local leaders who exaggerate the role of subjective effort and subjective will, without serious study, research, and pilot projects, the Great Leap Forward movement, and the people’s commune were recklessly launched after the general line was proposed, and which has produced a serious flood of Left errors, including high targets, blind direction, and exaggerated wind and communist wind. (People’s Publishing House, 1983:23) In order to consolidate the people’s commune system and solve the problem of peasants’ collective identification, a political ideology movement was launched. However, it ignored that peasants are people with self-interest and self-consciousness. The result of solid integration of externalities is more of a combination than an integration (整而不合). Peasants will be in a centrifugal state against the commune system if the external integration is slack. Integrating strongly failed to achieve the goals of the integrators for a long time, leaving rural society unable to make any fundamental changes, and the peasants paid a hefty price for it. On this basis, the ruling party has made policy adjustments, and the majority of peasants have vigorously responded to the reform of household contracting characterised by distribution (分). In a sense, distribution is the transformation of the previous unification (统) that was too deadly.

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The rural reform with household contracts mobilised and stimulated peasants’ enthusiasm. It also represents a transformation of the country’s way of providing rural social integration, namely from the simple integration of externalities to the organic integration of internal and external integration. In the modernisation process, the country considers peasants as the principal body of interest, respects their autonomy and wishes, and respects their spirit of creativity. This type of integration aims to combine the interests and wishes of peasants with national policies and laws. This is an organic integration in which the peasants actively identify with the country’s integration, and the integration targets can continuously support the integration of the country. After experiencing many twists and turns, the country’s integration of the countryside has undergone significant changes from relying on the integration of administrative forces and movement forces to strengthening interest guidance, service integration, and legal integration. The integration combines the top-down integration of the country with the bottom-up identity of the peasants and transforms from simple integration into organic integration. It should be noted that organic integration is an ideal state. The social structure is composed of organic elements. The following is according to French sociologist Durkheim: The various elements of society not only have different properties, but they also combine in different ways. They are not arranged in rows like annelids, overlapping with each other, but coordinate with each other, subordinate to each other, combine to form an organisation and mutually restricted with other organisations of the organism. (Durkheim, 2016:68–69) However, a historical process is necessary to realise such an ideal state. In light of the increase in peasants’ interests and self-awareness, it is more challenging for the state to integrate rural society and continuously adapt its behaviour. Since 1949, rural society has gone through the unification of people’s communes and the distribution of household contracts, and it is entering a new integration stage. In addition to combining peasants, urban-rural integration and national integration are included in this integration. Integrating organically instead of merely integrating is still a problem that needs to be addressed.

Reference List Durkheim, E. (2016). The Division of Labor in Society. Translated by Lei, S. Beijing: China Commercial Publishing House. ([法]埃米尔·迪尔凯姆:《迪尔凯姆论社会分工 与团结》, 石磊编译,中国商业出版社2016年版, 第68–69页。). Fei, X. (1998). From the Soil: The Foundations of Chinese Society. Beijing: Peking University Press. (费孝通:《乡土中国 生育制度》, 北京大学出版社1998年版, 第9页。). Huntington, S. P. (1989). Political Order in Changing Societies. Translated by Wang, G. and Liu, H., et al. Shanghai: SDX Joint Publishing Company. pp. 67. ([美]塞缪尔

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P．亨廷顿:《变化社会中的政治秩序》,王冠华、刘为等译,生活读书新知三联书 店1989年版,第67页。). People’s Publishing House. (1962). Complete Works of Marx and Engels, Vol. 7. Beijing: People’s Publishing House. (《马克思恩格斯全集》第7卷, 人民出版社1962年 版,第264页。). People’s Publishing House. (1983). Resolutions to Certain Historical Issues about CPC Since the Founding of the People’s Republic of China. Beijing: People’s Publishing House. (《关于建国以来党的若干历史问题的决议》(注释本), 人民出版社1983年 版, 第23页。). People’s Publishing House. (1995). Lenin Selected Works, Vol. 4. Beijing: People’s Publishing House. (《列宁选集》第4卷, 人民出版社1995年版, 第447页。). Scott, J. (2004). Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. Translated by Wang, X. Beijing: Social Sciences Academic Press. ([美]詹姆斯·C．斯科特:《国家的视角—那些试图改善人类状况的项目是如何失败 的》, 王晓毅译,社会科学文献出版社2004年版, 第4页。). Stavrianos, L. S. (1993). Global Rift: The Third World Comes of Age. Translated by Yue, C., et al. Beijing: The Commercial Press. ([美]斯塔夫里亚诺斯:《全球分裂—第三世 界的历史进程》（上）,迟越、王红生等译, 商务印书馆1993年版, 第318页。). Sun, S. (2012). Enlightenment and Reconstruction: Study on Yan Yangchu’s Rural Cultural Construction. Beijing: The Commercial Press. (孙诗锦:《启蒙与重建—晏阳初乡村文 化建设事业研究》, 商务印书馆2012年版, 第338页。).

Epilogue

The translation project of the second volume of Nationalisation, Peasantry and Rural Integration in China is divided as follows: The first, second, fourth, and sixth chapters are compiled by Yang Zikun, PhD Student in Political Science at Cambridge University; and the third and fifth chapters and Conclusion are compiled by Chow Cheng, PhD Student in Sociology at the University of Hong Kong. Chow Cheng and Li Li proofread the first, second, fourth, and sixth chapters and Conclusion; and Yang Zikun and Li Li proofread the third and fifth chapters. Two anonymous scholars of political science from English-speaking countries have edited the chapters separately in the editing process. Li Li, PhD Candidate in Management at Zhejiang University, organised and compiled the second volume. Li Li also participated in the part of the compilation of the first chapter, second chapter, and Conclusion.

DOI: 10.4324/b23055-8

Index

actions, fighting 91 administrative system, reform (acceleration) 18 Agrarian Revolution 46; slogans 43 agricultural cooperatives, people’s communes (contrast) 3 agricultural finance: transfer 35–38; transformation 35 agricultural labour resources, hoarding 3 agricultural produce: productions, direct subsidiaries 36–37; purchase/marketing, monopoly policy 79, 85–86 agricultural production population, agricultural taxes (linkage) 22–23 agricultural taxes: abolition/nullification 39; levy 24–25 agriculture, socialist transformation 104, 127 “all power to the peasant union” 43 “Analysis of the Classes in Chinese Society” (Mao Zedong) 69 Ancient Literature 54 ancient rural dance, chorus (combination) 60–61 Anhui Province, “Fool’s Sunflower Seeds” (emergence) 12 anti-illiteracy movements, CCP promotion 113 anti-Japanese revolutionary base areas, CCP establishment 59 Anti-Japanese War 101 art (countryside) 58–61 art, CCP guidelines (implementation) 64 autonomous actions 5–8 autonomous economic activities 6 autonomous territories, farmers (enthusiasm) 7 autonomy, peasant entitlement 10–11

bad elements, review 74 Bannong, Liu 114 barefoot doctors, emergence 101 Beidaihe Conference 91 Bodhisattva, belief 104 body, strength 103 “break the concept of local and surname” 43 canteens: public canteens 91–93; running, disadvantages 94; unsustainability 94; year-round canteens, eating 94 capital, passages/trails 116–117 cell phones, usage 122 centripetal force, absence 30 ceremony, process 58 “Changgang Township Survey” (Mao Zedong) 101 Chaoyang Ditch (opera) 62 Chen Yonggui 51 childbirth: laissez-faire childbirth 98; transformation 97 children, bearing (violation) 98 China: centralised/unified economic system 5; civilisation, impact 125; education, mass popularisation 53; moral society 50–51; ruling party, anti-feudalism perception 104; rural population, importance 100–101; selfimprovement, collective hearts/minds (winning) 114; social structure, changes 127–128; subjugation, avoidance 103; uniting 114; village accessibility, cost 118–119 China (schools) 55–56; ceremony, process 58; model, definition 58; nation-state idea/ entity, connection 55; teachers 56–57; textbooks/curriculum, characteristics 57 China Central Television (CCTV), Focus Report programme 121–122

136

Index

Chinese characters, simplification 110–113 Chinese Communist Party (CCP): countryside penetration 47; emergence 26; impact 2; importance 46; joining 75; national independence/selfdetermination, winning 129; political campaigns 50; propaganda, purpose 43; revolution, focus (shift) 42; rural social mobilisation 69 Chinese National Congress of Literary and Art Creators 60 Chinese Revolution 23–24, 42 Chinese rural marketisation procedure, paradoxes 13 Chingkang Mountains, revolutionary base 70 chorus, ancient rural dance (combination) 61–62 civilised/healthy life, habits/customs (change) 103–107 clan, social organisation unit (equivalence) 69 class: abolishment 76; attributes 75; awareness 72; countryside propaganda 42–44; discourse 77; labelling 68–74; relabelling, demand 74; retaliation 74; struggles 72–74 class, concept 72; peasant encounter 72–73 class consciousness 43, 71; reinforcement 72, 76 class differentiation 71–73; effectiveness 77 Classic of Girls, The 54 class society: family society, changes 68–73; polarisation/dissolution 73–78 class suffering/hatred, individual physical/ mental suffering (transformation) 50 cloth, production 96 collective action capacity, formulation 73 collective economic organisation, dependence 30 collective economy, grassroots finance 29–32 collective financial management, characteristics 32–33 collective hearts/minds, winning 114 collective identification, problem 131 collective labour, peasant enthusiasm 81–82 collective members, cohesion 30 collective operation 80 collective ownership 29 collective society: family basis 81–83; individual society, change 78–81; reality 82

collective welfare, management 91 collectivisation 78–81, 119; government promotion 131; implementation 79; usage 130 common interest, acquirement 70 communal members, trust 39 communal welfare undertakings, conducting 91 commune-dependent rural infrastructural investment, foundation 36 communes: finance, heteronomous feature 33; strengthening 91; system, termination 36 commune system: abolishment 30–31; eradication 30–31 communism, public canteens (association) 92–93 Communist Party of China, public identification (strengthening) 121 Communist Youth League 77 community: construction 84; existence/ continuation 39 complex peasantry, one-way nationalisation (relationship) 128–130 compulsory education 113; implementation 25; universalisation 53 Confucianism, veneration 54 consolidated co-operatives 76 Constitution of the People’s Republic of China 112–113 construction, phased approach 129–130 constructiveness 83–84 consumption 90; activities, nationalisation 5; prerequisite 93–94 continental transportation network, problem 116–117 contracted farmland, autonomy 6 Controlling Population and Scientific Research 95 cooperative medical care, emergence 101 cooperatives, impact 80 co-operative transformation, partial completion 76 counter-revolutionary, review 74 country/collective, loving (communist style) 51 countryside: CCP downward penetration 47; cooperative medical care, production brigade implementation 102; cultural integration 42; education 52–53; feudal family system, dominance 69; literacy, arrival 52; literature/art 58–61; medical

Index resources, sending 102–103; medical treatment 100–103; propaganda 42–44 Couple Learning Characters, A 111 cultural integration 42 Cultural Revolution 48; cable broadcasting, presence 47–48; Four Clean-ups 51; radicalised era 14 curriculum (China school usage) 57–58 customs, change: Mao Zedong caution 106; state-led efforts, peasant responses 107 daily grind, coping 92 daily life, themes 61 dance steps (Yangko element) 61 decentralised rural society, integration 39 Decision on Strengthening Family Planning and Strictly Controlling Population Growth 96–97 Decision on the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution 105 Decisions Concerning the Differentiation of Class Status in the Countryside 70–71, 73 Decisions on Issues regarding Label Removal of Landlords and Rich Peasants and Elements of the Children 77 defence construction, development (promotion) 105 dialects, diversity/discrepancy (impact) 114 direct transportation distance, measurement 119 discourse 110 distributing activities, nationalisation 4 distribution: domination 5; impact 91; principle 80; production, rupture 9–10 diversified service subjects, formulation 19 Double Ninth Festival 105 “down with the local tyrants and evil gentry” 43 Dragon Boat Festival 105 “draw the bow without shooting, just indicate the motions” 106 earth-shaking/earth-shattering, characteristics 129 economic activities, nationalisation (suppression) 8 economic arena, initiation 10–11 economic life, ranks (joining) 73 economic ties, building 12 economy, border area (agricultural focus) 69

137

education: compulsory education, implementation 25; countryside education 52–54; mass popularisation 53; popularisation 58; rural education, political socialisation mechanism 54–58; spread 57; urgency 111 Education Law of the PRC, The 55, 56 egalitarianism 6 eight bureaus: functions 14–15; government-operated nature 16; term, usage 14 Eighth National Congress of the Communist Party of China (Zhou Enlai report) 95–96 elderly care, capacity (reduction) 37 empty-hang-on-household 86 empty-shell villages 31–32 equality 36 exchange activities, nationalisation 4 Extending Radio and TV Broadcasting Coverage to Every Village Project 48 extractive model 35 extravagant eating/drinking, habit 105 family: private family plots, autonomy 7; relations 105; society, changes 68–73 family-governed monarchy, becoming (process) 90 family planning 95–98; concept (Mao Zedong) 96; peasant avoidance 99–100; policy 97; slogans 100 farmers: free actions/system, clash 8; national voice 120; product domination 10; reform support/enthusiasm 10 farm implement, cell phones (usage) 122 Fei Xiaotong 1, 110, 112, 113, 116, 130 female infants, abandonment 105 fertility 90; practices, nationalisation 97 festivals, production 105–106 feudal exploitation 71; system, abolishment 73 feudal family system, dominance 69 feudal marriage system, denial 104–105 financial management, requirements 34 first tax, usage 28 fiscal legitimacy, national identity (relationship) 25–29 fiscal resources, state extraction 35 five charges system, cessation 31–32 flag-raising ceremony, school activity (importance) 58 Focus Report programme (CCTV) 121–122

138

Index

folk tunes (Yangko element) 61 “Fool’s Sunflower Seeds” (emergence) 12 foot binding, bad habits 103 Four Books and Five Classics 54 Four Clean-ups 48, 51; movement 33; work teams 45 free meals, absence 93 Gao Daquan 62 Gao Zhanwu 62 geographical proximity, principle 83 government: overdependence 119; peasant reliance, service institutions (impact) 15 governmental administration, economic management (integration) 23 grand unification, autonomous actions 5–8 grassroots cadres, central policy violation 121–122 grassroots finance 29–32; autonomy/ heteronomy 32–35 grassroots governmental organisation 30 grassroots governmental system, institutional setup 19 grassroots peasants, literature/art protagonist role 58–61 Great Change in the Mountain Country, The (comic books) 61 Great Leap Forward 130; movement 131; period, satellite launching activities 94 Great Revolution 106 Guo Quanhai 62 habits/customs, change 103–107 HaijingLi 73 happiness, contemplation 77 hard work, spirit 51 hats, removal 73–78 health 90 heaven, worshipping 2 Hebei Province, land reform 49 Henan Provincial Party Committee, instructions 92–93 He Zhizhang 114 hidden transcript 122 high-yield paddy, promotion 15 History of Entrepreneurship (Liang Shengbao) 62 Household Contract Responsibility System 24–25, 31 household operation: management, impact 36; production/operation form 82 household registration, absence 84

household responsibility system 81–83; implementation, impact 82–83 “How to Differentiate the Classes in the Rural Areas” (Mao Zedong) 70 “Huge Point of Debate in the Issue of National Language” (Bannong) 114 human beings, self-management issues 96 Hunan Peasant Movement Investigation Report (Mao Zedong) 104 Hundred Family Surnames 54 Huning Wang 71 identity-reshaping, reason 10 ideological education, learning 54 ideological work, principle 51 illiteracy eradication, mass movement 111 impartiality, principle 38 imperial grains, state extraction/ penetration 21–25 imperial power, attentions (exhibition) 2 income distribution, equalitarianism 30 individual physical/mental suffering, transformation 50 individual society, change 78–81 industrial-agricultural price scissors, usage 36–37 industrial convergence 83 industrialisation: completion 10; domination 2; impact 126 information 110; dissemination 119–122; environment, change 122; openness/ diversity 122; subjects, growth (interrelations/interconnections) 122–123; transmission, means (increase) 120 institutional arrangements 35 institutionalised burden (limit), noninstitutionalised counterpart (impact) 27 institutions, functions 15–16 Instructions for Children’s Education 54 interest, reduction 49 interest relations, readjustment 9–10 interests sharing 83 Jiangxi-Fujian-Guangdongborder region, one member per rural household 86 Jin Guang Da Dao (Gao Daquan) 62 job assignments, importance 77 Kang Youwei 103 Korean War 101 Kuangzheng Ye 72 Kuhn, Philip 21

Index Kuomintang (KMT) 64–65; governance failure 21–22; system establishment, responsibility 26; tax demands 47 labour activities, conducting 29–30 labour individualism 6 laissez-faire childbirth 98 land division 6 landlords: review 74; struggle 72 land pooling 80 land/population, state taxation basis 35–36 land/property allotment, receiving 73 land reform: aim 73; revolution 2, 77; rural society transformation 49; work team, impact 49 Land Reform Revolution 72 lands, private plots (existence) 27 language: emergence 113–114; official language (Mandarin) 113–116 Language Reform Committee, central government establishment 112 large-scale literacy, state initiation 111 large-scale movement 64 large-scale rural infrastructural construction difficulty (increase), household operation management (impact) 36 Law of the People’s Republic of China on the Standard Spoken and Written Chinese Language 115–116 Leaning to One Side (China) 95 learning, urgency 111 Left errors, impact 131 legal infiltration 13 legal ordinance, peasant compliance 73 legal system, principle 57 Letian Zhang 75 Liang Qichao 52 Liang Shengbao 62 Liang Shuming 126–127 Li Fangchun 2, 4 life: collectivisation 90–93; habits/ customs, change 103–107 lifestyles, production modes (connection) 90–91 Lisheng Wang 72 Li Shulei 54 literacy campaigns, promotion 110 literacy, impact 110–113 literature (countryside) 58–61 literature, CCP guidelines (implementation) 64 Liui Shaoqi 94

139

Li Youcai’s Story (novella) 59 local areas, restrictions (imposition) 75 local dialects (Mandarin) 113–116 long-term laissez faire fertility practices, national policy incorporation 98 long-term regional closure, impact 114 loudspeakers, usage 120–121 Lu Xun 62 Lu Zuofu 127 macroenvironment, change 24 managerial objectives, impact 3–4 Mandarin (language), official language/ local dialects (promotion) 113–116 Mao Zedong 46, 48, 73, 131; “Analysis of the Classes in Chinese Society” 69; “Changgang Township Survey” 101; communism, seeds 91; criticism 95; customs changes, caution 106; enemies statement 43; family planning concept 96; “How to Differentiate the Classes in the Rural Areas” 70; Hunan Peasant Movement Investigation Report 104; literature/art 60, 64; medical/health works, concentration 101; peasant education comments 44, 79; public canteens, examination 94; “rural areas encircling the cities” 117; speeches 59; Struggle in the Chingkang Mountains, The 69; Third Plenary Session of the Eighth Central Committee of the Communist Party of China speech 105; Third Plenary Session speech 105 market: economy, functioning 13; regulation/cleansing 7 marketing, state monopoly (alteration) 11 marketisation procedure, state control 11–13 market-oriented reforms, usage 8–11 Marriage Law promulgation 104–105 Marriage Law, promulgation 104 marriage, local area restrictions (imposition) 75 Marriage of Xiao Er Hei (short story) 59–61, 63 martyred virgins, temples (teardown) 106 Marxist theories: CCP upholding 128; impact 73 Marx, Karl 125 mass education: development 111; promotion 110 masses (control), canteens (usage) 93 mass investigation, impact 65–66

140

Index

Ma Yinchu 95–96 medical/health works, concentration (Mao Zedong) 101 melodies (Yangko element) 61 Merit Student 58 micro-production, state withdrawal 9 middle/poor peasants, marriage (prohibition) 75 Midnight Rooster Crow 63 migrant population, social connections 87 migrant workers, impact 28 mobility: benefits 86; impact 85–87 model, definition 58 modern China: broad-based social mobilisation 68; district/township administration, establishment 53; growth/adaptation 125–126; national actions, impact 42; traditional predecessor, contrast 14; transportation, improvement 117 modern country, growth 125 modernisation, impact 126 modernised society, politics (problem) 126 monopoly, policy implementation 85–86 mothers, feet (binding) 103 My Two Landlords (short story) 60 national consciousness 42–44 national controlled/regulatory penetration, series 13 national economy, impact 7–8 National Education Meeting of Workers and Peasants, holding 111 National Family Planning Commission, National People’s Congress establishment 96–97 national identity, fiscal legitimacy (relationship) 25–29 national independence, CCP win 129 national industrialisation: acceleration 25; implementation, industrial-agricultural price scissors (usage) 36–37 nationalisation: consumption activities 5; distributing activities 4; economic activities suppression 8; exchange activities 4; fertility practice 97; one-way nationalisation 128–130; production activities 3, 6; unidirectional nationalisation 128 nationalists, concept (Sun Yat-sen application) 70

national language (universal/progressive Chinese official language) 114–115 national objectives, adaptation 3 national recognition, understructure 37 national self-awakening 55 national taxes, state extraction/penetration 21–25 national transformation 125–128 national unity, principle 57 national will, embodiment 57 nation, demarcation 69 nation-state idea/entity, China schools (connection) 55 natural freedom, shift 1–5 New China, term (usage) 127 New Life Movement, advocacy 103 New People’s Theory (Liang) 52–53 new rich peasants 79 new society (establishment), ruling party (demand) 104 New Year’s Day Gala (China Central Television) 99 no-money-for-food supply system, public canteen reliance 93 non-reimbursable labour resources, obtaining 23 obligatory nature 35–36 official language (Mandarin) 113–116 official language, education 114–115 old society, illiteracy 111 one-vote veto system 97 one-way nationalisation, complex peasantry (relationship) 128–130 On the Conduct of a Large-scale Socialist Education Program for the Entire Rural Population 51 On the Co-operative Transformation of Agriculture 76 On the Correct Handling of Contradictions among the People 55 On the Field of Hope 63 Open Letter to All Communist and Communist Youth League Members on the Issue of Controlling China’s Population Growth 96 “Operate a Good Public Canteen” (People’s Daily) 91 operational mechanisms, formulation 19 Opinions of the State Council and the CCP Central Committee on Further Strengthening and Improving the Moral and Ethical Development of Minors 55

Index Opinions on Guidance of Further Promoting Pilot Work of Rural Community Construction 84 organic integration, simple integration (relationship) 130–132 Organic Law of the Villages Committees of the People’s Republic of China (for Trial Implementation) 34 organisational behaviour 64 organisation, formation 132 organization, militarization (implementation) 91 Outline for National Agricultural Development from 1956 to 1967 105 Outline of Literacy Movement Propaganda, An 110 Overbirth Guerrilla, escape/adaptation 98–100 ownership-oriented calculation units, correction/cessation 6–7 ownership, three-level system 6 participative budget, emergence 35 “patriotic public health campaign” 101 Patriotic Public Health Campaign, universal features/focus 101 patriotism, education 57 peasants: action, impact 82; activeness, evocation 27–28; agricultural cooperatives 3; class concept, encounter 72–73; collective identification, problem 131; complex peasantry, one-way nationalisation (relationship) 128–130; cost-benefit disproportionality, demonstration 27; daily lives, modern country establishment (link) 90; dependence 71; economic ties 12; empowerment, capability 115; enthusiasm 81–82; enthusiasm, mobilisation 24; feeding 49; grassroots peasants, literature/art protagonist role 58–61; historical process, products 65–66; identity (reconstruction), market-oriented reforms (usage) 8–11; image, politics (impact) 61–66; legal ordinance compliance 73; liberation, rural reform result 85–86; low economic status 43; marriage, prohibition 75; mobilisation 49; national taxation 25; resistances 128; rich peasants, review 74; stabilisation 3; state, connection 38; state, interactions 117–119; state tax collection 29; suffering complaints 49;

141

systematic breakthrough 9; taxes, levy 36; television, popularity (impact) 121; turn over 46 peasants, burden 26–27; providers, diversification 28; resolution 28–29 Peasant Slave Sings 63 Peng Dehuai 65 people’s communes: abolition 121; agricultural cooperatives, contrast 3; collective economic organisation/ grassroots governmental organisation 30; organisation 23, 80–81; strengthening 91; system, abolishment 34; system, rural collectivisation form 81 People’s Daily, family planning report 99 people’s power, advance 11 People’s Republic of China (PRC): formation, impact 2; founding 29, 95, 130; socialist transformation movement 2 people (educational cause), teacher devotion 56 pilot projects, usage 131 planned economy: features 2; tightening 8 planned interference, approach 1–5 planned purchase and supply 3 Poems of One Thousand Writers 54 political decentralisation, dispersiveness 78 political legitimacy, fiscal legitimacy (relationship) 25–26 political party (countryside propaganda) 42–44 political socialisation, mechanisms 54 politics, principle 51 Population and Family Planning Law of the People’s Republic of China (passage) 98–99 post-reform collective economy, scope 30–31 post-reform financial management, looseness 34 power: decentralisation, controller 11; imperial power, attentions (exhibition) 2; penetration, state pursuit 17–18; people’s power, advance 11; soft power, impact 12; state power 11, 120–121; top-down vertical power, resolution 14 price scissors, state usage 27 primary-level government, functions (transfer) 18 private family plots, autonomy 7

142

Index

private schools: shift 52–54; teachers, support (absence) 56 production: activities, nationalisation 3, 6; brigades, receipts/payments 33; distribution, rupture 9–10; imperial power attention 2; life, socialisation 118; mode, revolution 61; modes, lifestyles (connection) 90–091; operations, outcome 6; stage, control system (establishment) 3 productive labour, learning 73 products, farmer domination 10 profit-oriented market subjects, service production participation 17 progressiveness, meaning 115 propaganda 42–44; activities 48–52; advocacy, idea 97–98; CCP purpose 43; forms 45–48; importance 45; stories 61 property rights, absence 103 psychological guidance 48–49 public affairs, sustaining 19 public canteens 91–93; establishment 94; Mao Zedong examination 94; practice, impact 92 public communication tools, advances 47 public finance 40; agricultural finance transfer 35–38; usage 19 public health campaign 100–103 publicness, characteristics 36 public service: improvement (phase) 16–20; operational mechanism, transformation 19–20 public services: goal 18–19; public finance support 19 public space discourse 77 public transcript 122 public works/welfare, construction (management results/cost-expanse situations) 32 purchases, state monology (alteration) 11 Putonghua, popularisation 116 Qian Xuantong 112 Qing dynasty 21–22, 78, 125 Qin Shi Huang (emperor) 114, 120 rains, prayers 2 reactionary activities, engagement 74 reactionary bloodline theory, impact 78 rectification campaign, impact 47–48 Red Army of the Maiden, The 62, 63 regional cadres, coercive measures 8

Regulations concerning the Agricultural Taxes of the People’s Republic of China (PRC promulgation) 22, 27 Regulations concerning the Management of the Peasants’ Burden 28 Regulations on the Work of Rural People’s Communes (Amendment Draft) 94–95 Regulatory Framework of the School of Persuasion 53 Rent Collector 63 rent, reduction 49 Report of the 16th CCP National Congress 84 Report of the 17th CCP National Congress 84 Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan (Mao Zedong) 46, 48, 70, 110 Report on Doing a Good job in Family Planning 96 Report to the 17th National Congress of the Communist Party of China 18 reproductive behaviour, national policy 95–98 Republic of China, founding 1–2 resold grains, return 4–5 Resolution on Several Historical Issues of the Party Since the Founding of the People’s Republic 131 Resolution on Several Issues concerning the People’s Communes 91 Resolution Regarding the Promulgation of the “Chinese Character Simplification Scheme” 112 resource allocation, platforms 85 restrictions, local area restrictions 75 rice, pots (dispersal/return) 93–95 rich peasants, review 74 rituals, usage 2 roads, paving 117–119 Rongji Zhu 28 royal roads, function 120 “rural areas encircling the cities” (Mao Zedong) 117 rural areas, social relationship/structure (alteration) 72 rural collectivisation: form 81; government facilitation/dominance 81–82; process 79 rural community: formation 32; social service, importance 84–85 rural construction, national transformation 125–128

Index rural economic consolidation 1, 3 rural economic lives, guidance 12 rural economic reforms, readjustment 9–10 rural economic society, development 17 rural economy, state servicing penetrations 13–16 rural education, political socialisation mechanism 54–58 rural elites, social/economic foundation (destruction) 72 rural famine (1959-1961) 35 rural fiscal integration 21 rural grassroots society, spiritual channel (establishment) 51–52 rural infrastructural construction inputs, state increase 36 rural infrastructures, investments 36 rural integration: conducting 119; importance 128 rural integration/consolidation, problems 21–22 rural land, management rights 82 rural population, structure (alterations) 84 rural reform, household contracts (usage) 132 Rural Reform, legal ordinance (peasant compliance) 73 rural reform, purpose 27–28 rural reforms 12; impact 10, 11; marketisation 11 rural sectors, urban sectors (integration) 87 rural social consolidation 68 rural social life, state power (entrenchment) 120–121 rural social mobilisation (CCP) 69 rural society: CCP transformation 49; construction, support 37; definition 1; dispersiveness 78; fading 125; financial resources, state extraction 36–37; fiscal resources, state extraction 35; institutionalisation 130–131; isolation/scatteredness 119; life integration 90; state integration 129; tolerance 21–22 rural survival, rationality 77 rural tax reform, state initiation 16–17 rural technological consolidation 110 rural trust, issues 40 rural-urban integration, social consolidation 85–87 rural villages, work teams (arrival) 45 rural women, illiteracy 103

143

satellite launching activities 94 scattered rural society, state integration 53–54 scattered villages, state social consolidation 81 schools (China): characteristics 55–56; kids/juveniles, enrollment 73; nationstate idea/entity, connection 55; specialised institution 55–56 second rural reform 17 Second Session of the First National People’s Congress 95 second tax, usage 28 self-consciousness, deprivation 69–70 self-determination, CCP win 129 self-reliance, spirit 51 service institutions: bureaucratisation 16; reforming 16–17 service-oriented government, goal setting 19 service-oriented model, transfer 18 service products, requirement 16 services, demands 19–20 seven stations: functions 14–15; government-operated nature 16; term, usage 14 Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia border region: government, health campaign development 101; illiteracy eradication, mass movement 111 shared language, demand 114 “sheet of loose sand” 1 “Sick Man of East Asia” 100 simple integration, organic integration (relationship) 130–132 Sing a Folk Song to the Paltry (song) 60 social activities, engagement 57 social contractions, reproduction 76 social interactions, impact 115–116 socialised small agricultural economy 17 socialism: gate, peasant lockout 76–77; public canteens, association 92–93 socialist construction, experience (insufficiency) 131 socialist transformation movement, industrialisation (domination) 2 social members, class attributes 75 social mobilisation, completion 121 social mobilisation/control, goal 72 social organisation unit, clan (equivalence) 69 social reform: force 63–64; grassroots workers/peasants, CCP leadership 61; procedure, class perspective 70

144

Index

social service, importance 84–85 social structure, changes 127–128 social unity, re-creation 126 social upbringing charges, payment 98 social welfare activities 30 society: properties 132; re-differentiation/ re-decentralisation 76 soft power, impact 12 Some Concrete Policy Formulations of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party in the Rural Socialist Education Movement 74–76 spiritual channel, establishment 51–52 spoken/written Chinese language, learning/ using 116 spreading political propaganda, achievement 48 Spring Festival 105, 106 spring ploughing, usage 2 standardisation Chinese characters, popularisation 116 state: control 11–13; extraction/penetration 21–25; fiscal capacity reliance 21; functionaries, impact 33; functions, change 17–18; integration, television (popularity) 121; management, impact 91–92; peasants, interaction 117–119; reconstruction (realisation), public service improvement phase 16–20; servicing penetrations 13; social consolidation 81; voices, listening 119–122 state-building: operation (China pathway) 18; origin 68; question 22 state-first principle 4 state-first strategy/system, implementation 6 state ideology, spiritual channel (establishment) 51–52 state-led planned economy, contrast 12–13 state-operated agricultural cooperative movement 111 state-owned enterprises, staff (national salaries) 5–6 state-peasants connection, economic relation 6 state power: organisations, penetration 21; presence, loudspeakers (usage) 120–121; retreat 11 steel, production 96 Storm, The (novel) 59 Stormy Weather, The (Zhao Yulin/Guo Quanhai) 62 Story of Planting Grain, The (novel) 59 struggle, face-to-face form 72

Struggle in the Chingkang Mountains, The (Mao Zedong) 69 students, national consciousness (formation) 58 subnational governmental administration, fiscal burdens 24–25 suffering: peasant complaints 49–50; roots 50 Sunny Day (Xiao Changchun) 62 Sun Shines on the Sangan River, The (novel) 59, 62 Sun Yat-sen 1, 42, 126; nationalists concept, application 70 supportiveness 36 sustainable agriculture, country strategy 102 tables/chairs/benches, production 96 Tang dynasty 114 Teacher Law of the PRC, The (publication) 56 teachers (China schools) 56–57; characteristics 56; obligations 57 Teaching Children’s Classic 54 teaching tasks 57 television, popularity (impact) 121 Ten Policies for Further Invigorating the Rural Economy 9, 12 Textbook for Learning Characters and Recording Works 111–112 textbooks (China school usage) 57 Third National People’s Congress, Dazhai experience 51 Thousand Character Classic 54 Three Character Classic 54 three deductions system, cessation 31–32 three-dimensional rural issues, severity (increase) 83 “three multiplicities” 112 Three Principles of the People: curriculum 57–58; National Government of the Republic of China definition 55 “three privates and one contract” 7 top-down established stations, incomes 16 top-down governmental economic quotas/ assignments 13 top-down vertical power, resolution 14 top-quality paddy, promotion 15 transformation, phased approach 129–130 transportation 110; conditions, improvement 117; direct transportation distance, measurement 119; neutral condition 119; speed, days calculation 119

Index two-level education institutions, establishment 31 unidirectional nationalisation 128 universal education 52–54 universality 36 Up to the Mountains and Down to the Countryside Movement 102 urban areas, rural areas (distinction) 126 urbanisation: acceleration 25; impact 126 urban-rural divide 24 urban-rural gap, persistence 87 urban-rural integration, facilitation 87, 132 urban-rural public services, coverage 85 urban sectors, rural sectors (integration) 87 urban social assimilation, inability 87 vernacular ideology, transformation/ reconstruction mechanisms 44–52 village reservation 31 villagers: Chinese characters (learning) 111; evolution 9; needs 85; prior social connections, absence 87; self-governing organisation 31 villagers, self-governance: arrangement, development 34–35; system 82 villages: accessibility 118–119; financial self-governance, enforcement 34; Party organisations 69; post-reform financial management, looseness 34; public finance, construction (public governance) 38–40 Wang Gui and Li Xiangxiang (poem) 59 Wang, Lisheng 72

145

warlords, governance failure 21–22 War of Liberation 101 wealth, accumulation (impact) 26 welfare, impact 5–6 Wen Rui 119 White Maiden, The 49, 60, 62, 63 work point system, principle 4 Work Regulations for the Rural People’s Communes 32–33 Work Regulations for the Rural People’s Communes (Revised Draft) 8 work team arrival (rural village) 45 Wui Wen 86 Xiao Changchun 62 Xiao Er Hei Marriage 104 Xiaoping Deng 86 Xiaotong Fei 85 Xin Yi 93 Yan’an Literature and Art Forum 65 Yangko (art form) 60–61 Yanglinqiao villagers, organising 83 Yan Yangchu 100–101, 126 year-round canteens, eating 94 Young People in Our Village (Gao Zhanwu) 62 Zhao Yulin 62 Zhejiang Province, participative budget 35 Zhejiang Provinces, peasants (march) 7–8 Zhou Enlai 95–96 Zigui County, villagers (organising) 83