Pub Date : 2022-09-05DOI: 10.1163/22136746-12341286
Song Li (李松), Huangkun Wu (吴煌琨), Ping Liu (刘苹)
From 1979 to 1991, Modern China, a landmark journal of Chinese studies, published a large number of articles in the field of peasant studies. These articles are of two types: studies of peasants in premodern China, which focus on the rural economy, politics, and ideology; and studies on the history of “peasant studies” itself, which focus on the problems, paradigms and directions of the field. Taken together, all these articles reveal the influence of three major approaches to history: the longue durée perspective of the French Annales school, the “bottom-up” approach to lived experience of the British new social history movement, and the time, space, and demography frame of reference of G. William Skinner.
{"title":"Peasant Studies in the Journal Modern China, 1979–1991","authors":"Song Li (李松), Huangkun Wu (吴煌琨), Ping Liu (刘苹)","doi":"10.1163/22136746-12341286","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22136746-12341286","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 From 1979 to 1991, Modern China, a landmark journal of Chinese studies, published a large number of articles in the field of peasant studies. These articles are of two types: studies of peasants in premodern China, which focus on the rural economy, politics, and ideology; and studies on the history of “peasant studies” itself, which focus on the problems, paradigms and directions of the field. Taken together, all these articles reveal the influence of three major approaches to history: the longue durée perspective of the French Annales school, the “bottom-up” approach to lived experience of the British new social history movement, and the time, space, and demography frame of reference of G. William Skinner.","PeriodicalId":37171,"journal":{"name":"Rural China","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-09-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46740724","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 : 2022-09-05DOI: 10.1163/22136746-12341287
Xu Wang (王旭)
The development of the Chinese revolutionary movement in the early twentieth century absorbed cultural resources from traditional secret societies and associations. The White Lotus, the Tiandihui, the Gelaohui, the Triad, and the various secret societies that had emerged in the Taiping and the Boxer rebellions were all incorporated into the discourse system of revolutionary history. The secret societies’ slogans of “overthrow the Qing and restore the Ming” and “rob the rich to help the poor” merged with the revolutionaries’ platform of “drive out the Manchus” and “relief for people’s livelihood,” and finally advanced the success of the Xinhai Revolution and was turned into a coherent historical narrative. After the founding of the Republic of China, Sun Yat-sen and Song Jiaoren carefully assessed the function of secret societies and distinguished them from modern political parties. On the other hand, leaders of the Communist Party, such as Mao Zedong, Qu Qiubai, Yun Daiying, and Chen Duxiu, emphasized the ideological transformation of secret societies and the suitable role they could play in the revolution, thus showing a dynamic strategy of allying with these organizations. The history of the relationship between the Chinese revolution and secret societies reflects the changing characteristics and logic of the underclass of Chinese society.
{"title":"An Interpretative View of the Origin of the Early Chinese Revolution from the Perspective of Secret Societies: Retrospect and Reflections from the History of Social Thought, Part II","authors":"Xu Wang (王旭)","doi":"10.1163/22136746-12341287","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22136746-12341287","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 The development of the Chinese revolutionary movement in the early twentieth century absorbed cultural resources from traditional secret societies and associations. The White Lotus, the Tiandihui, the Gelaohui, the Triad, and the various secret societies that had emerged in the Taiping and the Boxer rebellions were all incorporated into the discourse system of revolutionary history. The secret societies’ slogans of “overthrow the Qing and restore the Ming” and “rob the rich to help the poor” merged with the revolutionaries’ platform of “drive out the Manchus” and “relief for people’s livelihood,” and finally advanced the success of the Xinhai Revolution and was turned into a coherent historical narrative. After the founding of the Republic of China, Sun Yat-sen and Song Jiaoren carefully assessed the function of secret societies and distinguished them from modern political parties. On the other hand, leaders of the Communist Party, such as Mao Zedong, Qu Qiubai, Yun Daiying, and Chen Duxiu, emphasized the ideological transformation of secret societies and the suitable role they could play in the revolution, thus showing a dynamic strategy of allying with these organizations. The history of the relationship between the Chinese revolution and secret societies reflects the changing characteristics and logic of the underclass of Chinese society.","PeriodicalId":37171,"journal":{"name":"Rural China","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-09-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42414275","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 : 2022-09-05DOI: 10.1163/22136746-12341288
Jingzhi Yue (岳靖芝)
Grassroot communities are critical fields of governance. To enhance the development of local government and to mobilize, organize, and arm the people to fight against the Japanese invaders, the Communist Party employed a number of methods in the base areas during the Anti-Japanese war. Among them, holding meetings was an effective method to get the work done and to forge leadership in local governance in the base areas, and it built a space of power that incorporated and displayed both group and individual experiences. Though the endless rounds of meetings can be seen as a kind of formalism, they provide a pivotal angle to observe the operation of power in the Northwest Shanxi Anti-Japanese Base Area. For the Communist Party, whose purpose was to reshape the countryside, the implementation of policies was far more important than their formulation. The villages were the critical places where the Party interacted with the people, where most of the meetings occurred, and where most of the policy directives were implemented. Grassroot meetings in the base areas revealed directly the willingness of the people to participate as well as their on-site performance, and indirectly the response of the people toward the Party’s policies and how the Party dealt with that response. Making decisions, mobilizing and organizing the people, and implementing policies were the basic functions of meetings. The establishment of the institution of meetings and the twists and turns of its practice reflected the gaps between the Party’s ideal and practice, and between the Party and the people.
{"title":"Meetings: The Operation of Grassroots Political Power in the Northwest Shanxi Anti-Japanese Base Area","authors":"Jingzhi Yue (岳靖芝)","doi":"10.1163/22136746-12341288","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22136746-12341288","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Grassroot communities are critical fields of governance. To enhance the development of local government and to mobilize, organize, and arm the people to fight against the Japanese invaders, the Communist Party employed a number of methods in the base areas during the Anti-Japanese war. Among them, holding meetings was an effective method to get the work done and to forge leadership in local governance in the base areas, and it built a space of power that incorporated and displayed both group and individual experiences. Though the endless rounds of meetings can be seen as a kind of formalism, they provide a pivotal angle to observe the operation of power in the Northwest Shanxi Anti-Japanese Base Area. For the Communist Party, whose purpose was to reshape the countryside, the implementation of policies was far more important than their formulation. The villages were the critical places where the Party interacted with the people, where most of the meetings occurred, and where most of the policy directives were implemented. Grassroot meetings in the base areas revealed directly the willingness of the people to participate as well as their on-site performance, and indirectly the response of the people toward the Party’s policies and how the Party dealt with that response. Making decisions, mobilizing and organizing the people, and implementing policies were the basic functions of meetings. The establishment of the institution of meetings and the twists and turns of its practice reflected the gaps between the Party’s ideal and practice, and between the Party and the people.","PeriodicalId":37171,"journal":{"name":"Rural China","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-09-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48326023","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 : 2022-09-05DOI: 10.1163/22136746-12341289
Jing Du (杜靖)
During the collectivization period, the price of the bull was higher than the price of the cow on the fixed asset registration form in Lingqian Village, Linyi City, Shandong Province. The workpoints of male labor were also higher than those for female labor. Therefore, there was a gender difference that applied to both cattle and humans, but the former was not simply the social projection and cultural metaphor of the latter; rather they shared the same natural difference in terms of economic value in that given system. Namely, the values of humans and cattle depended entirely on their contribution to agricultural labor, not on gender discrimination. The reason for this phenomenon is that the ecological environment and living conditions shaped people’s psychology, which then determined the internal classification structure of gender in humans as well as animals. The classification attitude of the values of humans and animals was thus a result of adaptation to the natural environment and living conditions, and, as such, was a collective survival strategy, but it was also the product of a particular economic system. This phenomenon resulted from the fact that the privately owned land of individual families had been collectivized, revealing some characteristics of the cattle-raising mode under the collective economic system. The case of Lingqian Village in Shandong Province contributes to world anthropology by illustrating one particular system of social livelihood, with cattle as the reference point.
{"title":"A Study on the Different Values Assigned to Bulls and Cows under the Structure of Male and Female Workpoints in Collectivist China: The Practice of Lingqian Village in Shandong Province","authors":"Jing Du (杜靖)","doi":"10.1163/22136746-12341289","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22136746-12341289","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 During the collectivization period, the price of the bull was higher than the price of the cow on the fixed asset registration form in Lingqian Village, Linyi City, Shandong Province. The workpoints of male labor were also higher than those for female labor. Therefore, there was a gender difference that applied to both cattle and humans, but the former was not simply the social projection and cultural metaphor of the latter; rather they shared the same natural difference in terms of economic value in that given system. Namely, the values of humans and cattle depended entirely on their contribution to agricultural labor, not on gender discrimination. The reason for this phenomenon is that the ecological environment and living conditions shaped people’s psychology, which then determined the internal classification structure of gender in humans as well as animals. The classification attitude of the values of humans and animals was thus a result of adaptation to the natural environment and living conditions, and, as such, was a collective survival strategy, but it was also the product of a particular economic system. This phenomenon resulted from the fact that the privately owned land of individual families had been collectivized, revealing some characteristics of the cattle-raising mode under the collective economic system. The case of Lingqian Village in Shandong Province contributes to world anthropology by illustrating one particular system of social livelihood, with cattle as the reference point.","PeriodicalId":37171,"journal":{"name":"Rural China","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-09-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41423831","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 : 2022-09-05DOI: 10.1163/22136746-12341291
Wei Shi (石伟), Guoli Dong (董国礼)
The practice of power of the village governance body is an important perspective from which to understand the form of local governance as well as a crucial aspect of the capacity of local governance. In local government building, the village governance body has the special feature of supportive agency – that is, the secretary of the village Party committee has only incomplete governance power, but he/she does have the power to allocate resources in the village. Different from the personalization of power in an oligarchy, the power of a supportive agent is something that local rural elites rely on to gain resources. They then use those resources as a hook to draw in other participants and use public rules to embed themselves into the governance of village affairs, thereby forming the power structure of the grassroots community. The network of power and interests in the interaction between township and village and the pattern of profit-sharing in the village constitute the basis for this practice of power under supportive agency. The supportive relationship between local government and village cadres has led to a separation between the cadres and the peasants, a rupture of the state-peasant relationship, increasing social differentiation, and weakened village autonomy. The practice of supportive agency reflects changes in the logic of local governance – local autonomy has been turned into local governance statization. Thus, in these circumstances, in order to achieve a successful transition to modernized local governance, the linkage between the state and the peasants should be rebuilt, and the local organization of governance should be reshaped.
{"title":"Supportive Agency and the Statization of Local Governance: The Practice of Power of the Village Governance Body in the Context of Transformation","authors":"Wei Shi (石伟), Guoli Dong (董国礼)","doi":"10.1163/22136746-12341291","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22136746-12341291","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 The practice of power of the village governance body is an important perspective from which to understand the form of local governance as well as a crucial aspect of the capacity of local governance. In local government building, the village governance body has the special feature of supportive agency – that is, the secretary of the village Party committee has only incomplete governance power, but he/she does have the power to allocate resources in the village. Different from the personalization of power in an oligarchy, the power of a supportive agent is something that local rural elites rely on to gain resources. They then use those resources as a hook to draw in other participants and use public rules to embed themselves into the governance of village affairs, thereby forming the power structure of the grassroots community. The network of power and interests in the interaction between township and village and the pattern of profit-sharing in the village constitute the basis for this practice of power under supportive agency. The supportive relationship between local government and village cadres has led to a separation between the cadres and the peasants, a rupture of the state-peasant relationship, increasing social differentiation, and weakened village autonomy. The practice of supportive agency reflects changes in the logic of local governance – local autonomy has been turned into local governance statization. Thus, in these circumstances, in order to achieve a successful transition to modernized local governance, the linkage between the state and the peasants should be rebuilt, and the local organization of governance should be reshaped.","PeriodicalId":37171,"journal":{"name":"Rural China","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-09-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47967771","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 : 2022-09-05DOI: 10.1163/22136746-12341290
Xingang Guo (郭心钢)
From the end of the 1950s to the early 1960s, the Party Central made positive adjustments to the people’s commune system. Each tier of the system was downsized. Existing scholarship has mainly provided macro-narratives or policy analyses of this episode of history from the perspective of political history or institutional history. Using archives on “dividing up brigades and teams” of the communes in Pucheng county in Shaanxi province, this article contends that, during the collectivization period, the state neglected the pre-existing environmental, social, economic, and cultural characteristics of villages, as well as the relationships among the villages, in the process of integrating them into larger units of collective production with a higher degree of public ownership, thus engendering new conflicts and ruptures in local society. During the process of “dividing up brigades and teams,” individuals and collectives used their legitimate rights of division to maximize their own interests, during which multiple forces were at play. To some extent, this led to a return to long-standing village traditions. These findings are crucial for us to understand the history of the adjustments in the people’s commune system and to reflect on the institution of agricultural collectives in the pre-Reform era.
{"title":"Moving Closer to Village Tradition: Analysis of the Problem of “Dividing up Brigades and Teams” in the Early 1960s","authors":"Xingang Guo (郭心钢)","doi":"10.1163/22136746-12341290","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22136746-12341290","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 From the end of the 1950s to the early 1960s, the Party Central made positive adjustments to the people’s commune system. Each tier of the system was downsized. Existing scholarship has mainly provided macro-narratives or policy analyses of this episode of history from the perspective of political history or institutional history. Using archives on “dividing up brigades and teams” of the communes in Pucheng county in Shaanxi province, this article contends that, during the collectivization period, the state neglected the pre-existing environmental, social, economic, and cultural characteristics of villages, as well as the relationships among the villages, in the process of integrating them into larger units of collective production with a higher degree of public ownership, thus engendering new conflicts and ruptures in local society. During the process of “dividing up brigades and teams,” individuals and collectives used their legitimate rights of division to maximize their own interests, during which multiple forces were at play. To some extent, this led to a return to long-standing village traditions. These findings are crucial for us to understand the history of the adjustments in the people’s commune system and to reflect on the institution of agricultural collectives in the pre-Reform era.","PeriodicalId":37171,"journal":{"name":"Rural China","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-09-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45071250","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 : 2021-08-13DOI: 10.1163/22136746-12341275
Cheng-Hui Wei, Yansen Ding
Building a modern grassroots governance system synchronized with national development has become a significant part of China’s rural revitalization strategy. To cope with the overlapping of property rights, social identities, and work and living space in China’s villages, the villager group 村民小组 has been endowed with relatively complete governance power. Regional social networks, the moral constraints of reputation in the village, and the administrative incentives provided by the government constitute the incentive structure of villager group governance. At the same time, granting group cadres official authority and social power enables them to better coordinate the relationship between state and society, safeguard the rights and interests of villagers in the group, and provide low-cost public goods through their structural position in “the last kilometer” 最后一公里. However, they may also bring about the political risk of group confrontation, the economic risk of embezzling collective assets, and the moral risk of negligence and political inertia. To ward off these risks requires strengthening the leadership of grassroots party organizations, making full use of social supervision, ensuring that cadres operate in an open and above-board fashion, and introducing the notion of the rule of law, thus forming a compound risk-prevention mechanism for grassroots power and building a solid foundation for national governance.
{"title":"Villager Groups and Self-Governance in China: Power, Incentives, and Risk Prevention","authors":"Cheng-Hui Wei, Yansen Ding","doi":"10.1163/22136746-12341275","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22136746-12341275","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Building a modern grassroots governance system synchronized with national development has become a significant part of China’s rural revitalization strategy. To cope with the overlapping of property rights, social identities, and work and living space in China’s villages, the villager group 村民小组 has been endowed with relatively complete governance power. Regional social networks, the moral constraints of reputation in the village, and the administrative incentives provided by the government constitute the incentive structure of villager group governance. At the same time, granting group cadres official authority and social power enables them to better coordinate the relationship between state and society, safeguard the rights and interests of villagers in the group, and provide low-cost public goods through their structural position in “the last kilometer” 最后一公里. However, they may also bring about the political risk of group confrontation, the economic risk of embezzling collective assets, and the moral risk of negligence and political inertia. To ward off these risks requires strengthening the leadership of grassroots party organizations, making full use of social supervision, ensuring that cadres operate in an open and above-board fashion, and introducing the notion of the rule of law, thus forming a compound risk-prevention mechanism for grassroots power and building a solid foundation for national governance.","PeriodicalId":37171,"journal":{"name":"Rural China","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-08-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42908625","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 : 2021-08-13DOI: 10.1163/22136746-12341276
Zhanping Hu
Centering on the terms of “deagrarianization” 去农化 and “depeasantization” 去小农化, this article aims to reinterpret socioeconomic changes in rural China from a theoretical and global perspective. Deagrarianization and depeasantization interwove to shape the dynamic process of rural transformation. Throughout the reform era, rural China underwent a transition from “deagrarianization without depeasantization” to “salient depeasantization.” In the end, deagrarianization led to a continual process of rural deterioration and at the same time turned rural China into a space of complexity. Depeasantization has been diversifying Chinese agriculture into multiple organizational forms. The mode of “part-time worker and part-time farmer” that emerged in the process of deagrarianization is gradually yielding to the specializing mode of “full-time farmer” or “full-time worker” during depeasantization. The strategy of rural revitalization should be adjusted dynamically on the basis of a recognition of these two interwoven processes.
{"title":"Deagrarianization and Depeasantization: A Dynamic Process of Transformation in Rural China","authors":"Zhanping Hu","doi":"10.1163/22136746-12341276","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22136746-12341276","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Centering on the terms of “deagrarianization” 去农化 and “depeasantization” 去小农化, this article aims to reinterpret socioeconomic changes in rural China from a theoretical and global perspective. Deagrarianization and depeasantization interwove to shape the dynamic process of rural transformation. Throughout the reform era, rural China underwent a transition from “deagrarianization without depeasantization” to “salient depeasantization.” In the end, deagrarianization led to a continual process of rural deterioration and at the same time turned rural China into a space of complexity. Depeasantization has been diversifying Chinese agriculture into multiple organizational forms. The mode of “part-time worker and part-time farmer” that emerged in the process of deagrarianization is gradually yielding to the specializing mode of “full-time farmer” or “full-time worker” during depeasantization. The strategy of rural revitalization should be adjusted dynamically on the basis of a recognition of these two interwoven processes.","PeriodicalId":37171,"journal":{"name":"Rural China","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-08-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42495591","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 : 2021-08-13DOI: 10.1163/22136746-12341278
Yulong Guo
The itinerant notary system was an important measure taken by the Nationalist government in Nanjing to enhance its control of grassroots society in rural China. There was no intent to challenge the central government’s wishes of “enlarging government revenues for the benefit of the state treasury” and safeguarding the integrity of the central government’s jurisdiction, which made smooth implementation of the itinerant notary system possible. It was against this background that the court of Linxia, Gansu province, expanded its reach to local business centers, selected superintendents of public notaries from among local gentry elites, and offered awards for notary services. The itinerant notary system thus combined a “modern” legal institution transplanted from the West with endogenous resources, and turned out to be an experiment conducive to overcoming the either/or binary of Western vs. Chinese, exploring a pluralistic and less disruptive path of institutional development.
{"title":"Notaries and Basic-Level Society: A Study of the Itinerant Notary System during the Republican Period","authors":"Yulong Guo","doi":"10.1163/22136746-12341278","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22136746-12341278","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000The itinerant notary system was an important measure taken by the Nationalist government in Nanjing to enhance its control of grassroots society in rural China. There was no intent to challenge the central government’s wishes of “enlarging government revenues for the benefit of the state treasury” and safeguarding the integrity of the central government’s jurisdiction, which made smooth implementation of the itinerant notary system possible. It was against this background that the court of Linxia, Gansu province, expanded its reach to local business centers, selected superintendents of public notaries from among local gentry elites, and offered awards for notary services. The itinerant notary system thus combined a “modern” legal institution transplanted from the West with endogenous resources, and turned out to be an experiment conducive to overcoming the either/or binary of Western vs. Chinese, exploring a pluralistic and less disruptive path of institutional development.","PeriodicalId":37171,"journal":{"name":"Rural China","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-08-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46467257","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 : 2021-08-13DOI: 10.1163/22136746-12341273
Philip C. C. Huang
The article reviews the history of the word “involution,” the empirical basis of the concept of “agricultural involution,” and the mechanisms operating behind that phenomenon. It then considers the very different empirical bases and mechanisms of “bureaucratic involution.” State and peasant might interact in a positive way that leads to development – as when the state in the Reform era gave peasants the power and right to respond to market stimuli and develop the “labor and capital dual intensifying” “new agriculture” that has led to genuine development, demonstrating how small peasants have been the true primary subjects of Chinese agriculture and the true key to genuine agricultural development. By contrast, if bureaucratic involution should force on peasants policies that run counter to realities, it can lead to malignant “ultra-involution.” Similar consequences can be seen in spheres with scarce opportunities relative to the number of people seeking them, once they are placed under the forces of bureaucratic involution, as in the “examinations-above-all-else education system” as well as in similar (public and private) enterprise management. That is why the word “involution” has recently triggered such widespread resonance among so very many people. What is needed is state-party policies that truly accord with the interests of the people and draw their active participation. That kind of combination is what can check tendencies toward ultra-involution.
{"title":"Agricultural Involution and Bureaucratic Involution: Types, Concepts, Empirical Generalizations, and Theoretical Mechanisms","authors":"Philip C. C. Huang","doi":"10.1163/22136746-12341273","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22136746-12341273","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000The article reviews the history of the word “involution,” the empirical basis of the concept of “agricultural involution,” and the mechanisms operating behind that phenomenon. It then considers the very different empirical bases and mechanisms of “bureaucratic involution.” State and peasant might interact in a positive way that leads to development – as when the state in the Reform era gave peasants the power and right to respond to market stimuli and develop the “labor and capital dual intensifying” “new agriculture” that has led to genuine development, demonstrating how small peasants have been the true primary subjects of Chinese agriculture and the true key to genuine agricultural development. By contrast, if bureaucratic involution should force on peasants policies that run counter to realities, it can lead to malignant “ultra-involution.” Similar consequences can be seen in spheres with scarce opportunities relative to the number of people seeking them, once they are placed under the forces of bureaucratic involution, as in the “examinations-above-all-else education system” as well as in similar (public and private) enterprise management. That is why the word “involution” has recently triggered such widespread resonance among so very many people. What is needed is state-party policies that truly accord with the interests of the people and draw their active participation. That kind of combination is what can check tendencies toward ultra-involution.","PeriodicalId":37171,"journal":{"name":"Rural China","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-08-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42285428","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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