Pub Date : 2023-09-20DOI: 10.1163/22136746-12341299
Philip C. C. Huang
Abstract In socialist China today, neoliberal economics has actually come to wield institutionalized hegemonic power in academic evaluations of economic studies, while in neoliberal America, there is actually considerably more pluralism in the practice of academic evaluations of economic studies. The origins of this state of affairs lie not in just a simple matter of ideology or policy choices, but rather in different tendencies in the actual practices of two different systems of governance. While China leans strongly toward centralized bureaucratism, along with scientism and numericalism, the U.S. leans more toward multi-centered pluralistic practices. What scholarship needs is pluralistic contentions for sustained long-term development.
{"title":"Whither Economic Studies in China?","authors":"Philip C. C. Huang","doi":"10.1163/22136746-12341299","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22136746-12341299","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In socialist China today, neoliberal economics has actually come to wield institutionalized hegemonic power in academic evaluations of economic studies, while in neoliberal America, there is actually considerably more pluralism in the practice of academic evaluations of economic studies. The origins of this state of affairs lie not in just a simple matter of ideology or policy choices, but rather in different tendencies in the actual practices of two different systems of governance. While China leans strongly toward centralized bureaucratism, along with scientism and numericalism, the U.S. leans more toward multi-centered pluralistic practices. What scholarship needs is pluralistic contentions for sustained long-term development.","PeriodicalId":37171,"journal":{"name":"Rural China","volume":"27 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136379702","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-09-20DOI: 10.1163/22136746-12341300
Philip C. C. Huang
Abstract Kenneth Pomeranz and Li Bozhong have recently conceded that they had been wrong that “the great divergence” between China and the West occurred only after 1800, but they continue to insist that when it came to agriculture and its labor productivity, their earlier argument still holds. This article summarizes the broad differences between eighteenth-century England’s crops cum animal husbandry agriculture and China’s crops-only agriculture to demonstrate the fundamental differences between the two. It is time we recognize fully how very different the two were and are, and how and why each follows an entirely different pattern to modern development. It is simply wrong to continue to obscure those basic differences by insisting on equivalence between them.
{"title":"Revisiting “the Great Divergence”: Clarifying the Two Major Modes of Agricultural Change in China and the West","authors":"Philip C. C. Huang","doi":"10.1163/22136746-12341300","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22136746-12341300","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Kenneth Pomeranz and Li Bozhong have recently conceded that they had been wrong that “the great divergence” between China and the West occurred only after 1800, but they continue to insist that when it came to agriculture and its labor productivity, their earlier argument still holds. This article summarizes the broad differences between eighteenth-century England’s crops cum animal husbandry agriculture and China’s crops-only agriculture to demonstrate the fundamental differences between the two. It is time we recognize fully how very different the two were and are, and how and why each follows an entirely different pattern to modern development. It is simply wrong to continue to obscure those basic differences by insisting on equivalence between them.","PeriodicalId":37171,"journal":{"name":"Rural China","volume":"165 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136379700","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-09-20DOI: 10.1163/22136746-12341304
Kailin Yuan
Abstract The land tax was a major source of local fiscal revenue in southern Jiangsu during the Japanese puppet regime era. It involved a complex tug-of-war between the puppet “central” and local governments and was closely tied to rent affairs. At the onset of the “Rural Pacification,” the simultaneous imposition of rent and taxes by the Japanese puppet regime infringed upon various stakeholders’ interests but did not aid in increasing land tax revenue or stabilizing the economy. Instead, the regime could only profit from local surcharges via the embezzlement case in Changshu County. In the process of grabbing land taxes and constructing tax collection standards, both the puppet regime and the rent-collecting groups pursued their own interests, colluding and competing with each other. In the meantime, the puppet regime, aiming at extracting land output, disrupted the existing rent-tax management method, thereby reconstructing the urban-rural relationship in southern Jiangsu and increasing the peasants’ burden. The rent-tax issue in Changshu County during the occupation period reflects the entanglement of the three-fold relationships – “central” vs. local, “official” vs. civilian, and landlord vs. tenant – under the Japanese puppet regime. Yet, the acute landlord-tenant contradiction was ultimately replaced by social conflicts provoked by the Japanese puppet regime’s intervention in land ownership and usage rights.
{"title":"The Puppet Regime, Rent-Collecting Groups, and Rent-Tax Relations in Changshu County, Jiangsu Province, during the Japanese Puppet Regime Era","authors":"Kailin Yuan","doi":"10.1163/22136746-12341304","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22136746-12341304","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The land tax was a major source of local fiscal revenue in southern Jiangsu during the Japanese puppet regime era. It involved a complex tug-of-war between the puppet “central” and local governments and was closely tied to rent affairs. At the onset of the “Rural Pacification,” the simultaneous imposition of rent and taxes by the Japanese puppet regime infringed upon various stakeholders’ interests but did not aid in increasing land tax revenue or stabilizing the economy. Instead, the regime could only profit from local surcharges via the embezzlement case in Changshu County. In the process of grabbing land taxes and constructing tax collection standards, both the puppet regime and the rent-collecting groups pursued their own interests, colluding and competing with each other. In the meantime, the puppet regime, aiming at extracting land output, disrupted the existing rent-tax management method, thereby reconstructing the urban-rural relationship in southern Jiangsu and increasing the peasants’ burden. The rent-tax issue in Changshu County during the occupation period reflects the entanglement of the three-fold relationships – “central” vs. local, “official” vs. civilian, and landlord vs. tenant – under the Japanese puppet regime. Yet, the acute landlord-tenant contradiction was ultimately replaced by social conflicts provoked by the Japanese puppet regime’s intervention in land ownership and usage rights.","PeriodicalId":37171,"journal":{"name":"Rural China","volume":"19 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136379704","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-14DOI: 10.1163/22136746-12341296
Zaixing Wang (王再兴), Qianqian Huangfu (皇甫倩倩)
The “origin” narrative of left-wing rural literature, especially the “revolution” narrative, has by and large not received sufficient historical reflection and specific intertextual discussion. In the early left-wing rural novels composed from 1928 to 1932, what changes did the “revolution” bring about in rural society? How was the configuration of power reformulated? How did the revolutionaries image the ideal post-revolution society? The historical discussion of this complex process in the early left-wing rural novels is closely related to the historical facts of the rural areas, the subjective experiences of the peasants themselves, and the review of the writer’s narrative style. Revisiting this historical topic, we can see that the structural relationships contained in literary trends, such as the entanglement between literature and history, ideals and practices, truth and fiction, etc., last far longer than writers’ and readers’ imaginations. It may be the key to making the retelling of the rural “revolution” in the new century profound and far-reaching.
{"title":"Changes, Reconfiguration, and Imagination of Rural Society in Early Left-Wing Fiction (1928–1932)","authors":"Zaixing Wang (王再兴), Qianqian Huangfu (皇甫倩倩)","doi":"10.1163/22136746-12341296","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22136746-12341296","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000The “origin” narrative of left-wing rural literature, especially the “revolution” narrative, has by and large not received sufficient historical reflection and specific intertextual discussion. In the early left-wing rural novels composed from 1928 to 1932, what changes did the “revolution” bring about in rural society? How was the configuration of power reformulated? How did the revolutionaries image the ideal post-revolution society? The historical discussion of this complex process in the early left-wing rural novels is closely related to the historical facts of the rural areas, the subjective experiences of the peasants themselves, and the review of the writer’s narrative style. Revisiting this historical topic, we can see that the structural relationships contained in literary trends, such as the entanglement between literature and history, ideals and practices, truth and fiction, etc., last far longer than writers’ and readers’ imaginations. It may be the key to making the retelling of the rural “revolution” in the new century profound and far-reaching.","PeriodicalId":37171,"journal":{"name":"Rural China","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43120233","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-14DOI: 10.1163/22136746-12341297
Yunlong Chen (陈云龙)
In response to the academic debate about the “individualization” of the patterns of love and marriage in contemporary China, this article takes the spousal selection and marriage and love practices of peasants in northern Zhejiang since China’s reform and opening up as the basis of field study, and explores the roles and functions of love and gender relations and their relationship to ethical factors in the overall process of “spousal selection→marriage→family→giving birth.” We also find that although the “love” factor has become more and more important in the marriage practice of recent generations (especially among rural women) and has even become an indispensable key to starting marital family life, it has not fully established its own independent space and value. It has in fact been boosted, guided, and controlled by, and incorporated into, the traditional marriage and family pattern. This traditional pattern, with its own unique resilience, has integrated love into the family life cycle, gradually pulling it into the orbit of traditional marriage and family, and successfully carrying on the “sacred undertaking” of the ancestors. This overall characteristic is more pronounced in developed eastern coastal villages (among young women) than in less developed central and western rural areas (among young women). In terms of theory and methodology, the “individualization” of love and marriage among contemporary Chinese peasants needs to be put back into the framework of “familism” for in-depth reflection, rather than simply being understood from the standpoint of “individualization” and from the binary opposition between “individualism” and “familism.”
{"title":"Love and Gender Relations from the Perspective of Familism: Based on Fieldwork in Contemporary Rural North Zhejiang","authors":"Yunlong Chen (陈云龙)","doi":"10.1163/22136746-12341297","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22136746-12341297","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000In response to the academic debate about the “individualization” of the patterns of love and marriage in contemporary China, this article takes the spousal selection and marriage and love practices of peasants in northern Zhejiang since China’s reform and opening up as the basis of field study, and explores the roles and functions of love and gender relations and their relationship to ethical factors in the overall process of “spousal selection→marriage→family→giving birth.” We also find that although the “love” factor has become more and more important in the marriage practice of recent generations (especially among rural women) and has even become an indispensable key to starting marital family life, it has not fully established its own independent space and value. It has in fact been boosted, guided, and controlled by, and incorporated into, the traditional marriage and family pattern. This traditional pattern, with its own unique resilience, has integrated love into the family life cycle, gradually pulling it into the orbit of traditional marriage and family, and successfully carrying on the “sacred undertaking” of the ancestors. This overall characteristic is more pronounced in developed eastern coastal villages (among young women) than in less developed central and western rural areas (among young women). In terms of theory and methodology, the “individualization” of love and marriage among contemporary Chinese peasants needs to be put back into the framework of “familism” for in-depth reflection, rather than simply being understood from the standpoint of “individualization” and from the binary opposition between “individualism” and “familism.”","PeriodicalId":37171,"journal":{"name":"Rural China","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44548910","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-14DOI: 10.1163/22136746-12341295
Jinke Yang (杨金客)
It was once believed that land rights in the Huaibei region were highly concentrated and that large ownership of land was extremely common. However, in recent years, more and more scholars have come to believe that there was no such tendency of serious land concentration in modern China. Republican-era statistics on land ownership in Huaibei are extremely rare. In contrast, the “Land and Real Estate Ownership Certificate Stubs” 土地房产所有证存根 collected by the Suixi County Archives in the early years of the People’s Republic provide detailed records on the land ownership distribution in this county. Using these materials, we calculate the Gini coefficient of land ownership distribution for each village. It turns out that most of the villages had a Gini coefficient lower than 0.35, which indicates only a moderate differentiation of land occupation. It shows that large landownership did not prevail in rural Suixi. Rather, it was a world of small-scale landowners.
{"title":"The Distribution of Land Rights in Huaibei from the Republican Period to the Early Years of the People’s Republic of China: A Case Study Based on the Suixi County Archives","authors":"Jinke Yang (杨金客)","doi":"10.1163/22136746-12341295","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22136746-12341295","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000It was once believed that land rights in the Huaibei region were highly concentrated and that large ownership of land was extremely common. However, in recent years, more and more scholars have come to believe that there was no such tendency of serious land concentration in modern China. Republican-era statistics on land ownership in Huaibei are extremely rare. In contrast, the “Land and Real Estate Ownership Certificate Stubs” 土地房产所有证存根 collected by the Suixi County Archives in the early years of the People’s Republic provide detailed records on the land ownership distribution in this county. Using these materials, we calculate the Gini coefficient of land ownership distribution for each village. It turns out that most of the villages had a Gini coefficient lower than 0.35, which indicates only a moderate differentiation of land occupation. It shows that large landownership did not prevail in rural Suixi. Rather, it was a world of small-scale landowners.","PeriodicalId":37171,"journal":{"name":"Rural China","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46842633","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-14DOI: 10.1163/22136746-12341292
Jiang Zhengyang (蒋正阳)
Max Weber came to see his “rational bureaucracy” as also something of an “iron cage.” The reliance on regularized paperwork can result in a separation of the administrative procedure from actual substance, and the level-by-level transmission of documents can result in the resolution of problems on paper only. The complex specialized and standardized procedures of the formal, hierarchical bureaucracy are therefore often ineffective because they have lost touch with reality. In China, the problem of the “involution” of public power found by central inspection teams 中央巡视组 during the course of their inspections is in essence the “formalist” 形式主义 response of bureaucracy when supervised and reviewed. Weber believed that the iron cage of bureaucracy, or the irrationality of rationality, needs an outside “charismatic” authority to check and counterbalance it. The practice of the central inspection teams, however, shows how bureaucratic organizations only further intensify formalism to preserve themselves in the face of such outside authority. That is to say, if the charismatic authority does not break through the trap of bureaucratized patterns of thought and behavior, the iron cage will only be further strengthened and perpetuated.
{"title":"Understanding Bureaucratic Involution through Weber’s Bureaucracy: China’s Central Inspection Teams in Practice","authors":"Jiang Zhengyang (蒋正阳)","doi":"10.1163/22136746-12341292","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22136746-12341292","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Max Weber came to see his “rational bureaucracy” as also something of an “iron cage.” The reliance on regularized paperwork can result in a separation of the administrative procedure from actual substance, and the level-by-level transmission of documents can result in the resolution of problems on paper only. The complex specialized and standardized procedures of the formal, hierarchical bureaucracy are therefore often ineffective because they have lost touch with reality. In China, the problem of the “involution” of public power found by central inspection teams 中央巡视组 during the course of their inspections is in essence the “formalist” 形式主义 response of bureaucracy when supervised and reviewed. Weber believed that the iron cage of bureaucracy, or the irrationality of rationality, needs an outside “charismatic” authority to check and counterbalance it. The practice of the central inspection teams, however, shows how bureaucratic organizations only further intensify formalism to preserve themselves in the face of such outside authority. That is to say, if the charismatic authority does not break through the trap of bureaucratized patterns of thought and behavior, the iron cage will only be further strengthened and perpetuated.","PeriodicalId":37171,"journal":{"name":"Rural China","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48003663","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-14DOI: 10.1163/22136746-12341294
Hui Cao (曹辉)
The theory of “state involution,” first proposed by Prasenjit Duara, has been used to explain the expansion of power of the modern Chinese state. However, some scholars argue, on the basis of regional studies, that the concept of state involution was at most only applicable to North China and did not pertain to the practice of the Guomindang regime, which had built a complete administrative system down to the grassroots level. In 1946, Zhejiang province decided to reduce the number of townships to cut fiscal expenditures. With Huangyan county as a regional case, we investigate the implementation of the policy of reducing the number of townships and find that the theory of state involution is still applicable to explaining grassroots politics in Zhejiang under the Guomindang, showing that the theory has a wider range of applicability than some scholars believe. The development of state involution in this period is closely related to the governance capacity and patterns of the Guomindang regime at the grassroots level. It is thus inappropriate to see just the establishment and expansion of a grassroots administrative system as a sign that state involution had been overcome.
{"title":"“State Involution” Revisited: An Analysis of the Reformulation of Townships in Huangyan County, Zhejiang, 1946–1947","authors":"Hui Cao (曹辉)","doi":"10.1163/22136746-12341294","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22136746-12341294","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000The theory of “state involution,” first proposed by Prasenjit Duara, has been used to explain the expansion of power of the modern Chinese state. However, some scholars argue, on the basis of regional studies, that the concept of state involution was at most only applicable to North China and did not pertain to the practice of the Guomindang regime, which had built a complete administrative system down to the grassroots level. In 1946, Zhejiang province decided to reduce the number of townships to cut fiscal expenditures. With Huangyan county as a regional case, we investigate the implementation of the policy of reducing the number of townships and find that the theory of state involution is still applicable to explaining grassroots politics in Zhejiang under the Guomindang, showing that the theory has a wider range of applicability than some scholars believe. The development of state involution in this period is closely related to the governance capacity and patterns of the Guomindang regime at the grassroots level. It is thus inappropriate to see just the establishment and expansion of a grassroots administrative system as a sign that state involution had been overcome.","PeriodicalId":37171,"journal":{"name":"Rural China","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"64583184","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-14DOI: 10.1163/22136746-12341293
Huihuang Lin (林辉煌), Ying Zhao (赵颖)
In the less developed regions of China, except for cross-regional transfers to achieve horizontal poverty alleviation, which can increase peasants’ income to a certain extent in the short term, government-led rural residential land transfer does not significantly increase peasants’ income and may even reduce it. In developed regions, because peasants do not primarily depend on agriculture for their livelihoods, and because local governments have relatively ample financial resources to provide adequate compensation for rural residential land transfer, government-led rural residential land transfer can indeed raise the income of the poor to a certain extent. Essentially, the income from the transfer of rural residential land depends on the unit price and the area of rural residential land available for transfer, which should be used as the basis for determining rural residential land policies in such a way as to protect the vital interests of the greatest number of peasants.
{"title":"Can Rural Residential Land Transfer Raise Peasants’ Income?","authors":"Huihuang Lin (林辉煌), Ying Zhao (赵颖)","doi":"10.1163/22136746-12341293","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22136746-12341293","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000In the less developed regions of China, except for cross-regional transfers to achieve horizontal poverty alleviation, which can increase peasants’ income to a certain extent in the short term, government-led rural residential land transfer does not significantly increase peasants’ income and may even reduce it. In developed regions, because peasants do not primarily depend on agriculture for their livelihoods, and because local governments have relatively ample financial resources to provide adequate compensation for rural residential land transfer, government-led rural residential land transfer can indeed raise the income of the poor to a certain extent. Essentially, the income from the transfer of rural residential land depends on the unit price and the area of rural residential land available for transfer, which should be used as the basis for determining rural residential land policies in such a way as to protect the vital interests of the greatest number of peasants.","PeriodicalId":37171,"journal":{"name":"Rural China","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47796787","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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