Pub Date : 2019-02-28DOI: 10.1163/22136746-01601006
Lianchao Yu, Mingbao Yuan
It is widely assumed among economists that farmland transaction, as a means of optimizing the reallocation of resources, contributes to farmers’ income. Unfortunately, farmers received little protection in farmland transaction and the restructuring of resources. Investors, bureaucrats, and social elites were all involved in the reallocation of agricultural resources and competed for the newly available resources injected from the top down, thus becoming new types of entrepreneurial rural elites that controlled farmland-related interests. As farmland, a basic form of social security for decades, was gradually transformed into a transactable commodity, the principles of equity and subsistence intrinsic to the original equal distribution of farmland also yielded to the realities of seizure by force and possession by capital, hence leading to the restructuring of social relations embedded in the farmland. Rural elites of various backgrounds (profiteering investors, rent-seeking bureaucrats, or market manipulators) all sought to seize the resources newly allocated by the state, hence the new phenomena of “the scramble for farmland by the elites” and “profit-sharing” among them.
{"title":"Farmland Transaction, Resource Reallocation, and the Rise of Land-Seizing Rural Elites","authors":"Lianchao Yu, Mingbao Yuan","doi":"10.1163/22136746-01601006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22136746-01601006","url":null,"abstract":"It is widely assumed among economists that farmland transaction, as a means of optimizing the reallocation of resources, contributes to farmers’ income. Unfortunately, farmers received little protection in farmland transaction and the restructuring of resources. Investors, bureaucrats, and social elites were all involved in the reallocation of agricultural resources and competed for the newly available resources injected from the top down, thus becoming new types of entrepreneurial rural elites that controlled farmland-related interests. As farmland, a basic form of social security for decades, was gradually transformed into a transactable commodity, the principles of equity and subsistence intrinsic to the original equal distribution of farmland also yielded to the realities of seizure by force and possession by capital, hence leading to the restructuring of social relations embedded in the farmland. Rural elites of various backgrounds (profiteering investors, rent-seeking bureaucrats, or market manipulators) all sought to seize the resources newly allocated by the state, hence the new phenomena of “the scramble for farmland by the elites” and “profit-sharing” among them.","PeriodicalId":37171,"journal":{"name":"Rural China","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-02-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49173324","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 : 2019-02-28DOI: 10.1163/22136746-01601004
Jiayan Zhang
According to class struggle theory, rural China before 1949 featured two contrasting classes, the exploiting class and the exploited class. Some current research tends to—from the perspectives of market relations and moral economics—focus on the harmonious aspect of the rural society of that time. Based on different surveys and their associated discourses on tenancy and employment relationships in the Jianghan Plain in the late Qing, the Republic of China, and the 1950s, this article argues that different discourses emphasized different aspects of rural society. The surveys of the late Qing and some surveys of the Republic are closer to reality, while the CCP surveys of the 1950s and the gazetteers compiled in the 1950s, influenced by political propaganda and policy, are heavily loaded with ideological biases and exaggerate the landlord-tenant conflict. This kind of influence has gradually weakened since the 1980s, and the gazetteers compiled afterward are closer to reality. Those new studies that deny exploitation and evil landlords are overcorrecting. The Jianghan experience of tenancy and employment relationships demonstrates that in the early twentieth century, exploitation among classes, market competition, and moral economics all existed at the same time. Because the Jianghan Plain was prone to frequent water calamities, we also need to add the specific influence of the environmental factor to our understanding of tenancy and employment relationships in this region.
{"title":"Discourse, Reality and Rural Society: The Case of Tenancy and Employment Relationships in the Early Twentieth-Century Jianghan Plain","authors":"Jiayan Zhang","doi":"10.1163/22136746-01601004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22136746-01601004","url":null,"abstract":"According to class struggle theory, rural China before 1949 featured two contrasting classes, the exploiting class and the exploited class. Some current research tends to—from the perspectives of market relations and moral economics—focus on the harmonious aspect of the rural society of that time. Based on different surveys and their associated discourses on tenancy and employment relationships in the Jianghan Plain in the late Qing, the Republic of China, and the 1950s, this article argues that different discourses emphasized different aspects of rural society. The surveys of the late Qing and some surveys of the Republic are closer to reality, while the CCP surveys of the 1950s and the gazetteers compiled in the 1950s, influenced by political propaganda and policy, are heavily loaded with ideological biases and exaggerate the landlord-tenant conflict. This kind of influence has gradually weakened since the 1980s, and the gazetteers compiled afterward are closer to reality. Those new studies that deny exploitation and evil landlords are overcorrecting. The Jianghan experience of tenancy and employment relationships demonstrates that in the early twentieth century, exploitation among classes, market competition, and moral economics all existed at the same time. Because the Jianghan Plain was prone to frequent water calamities, we also need to add the specific influence of the environmental factor to our understanding of tenancy and employment relationships in this region.","PeriodicalId":37171,"journal":{"name":"Rural China","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-02-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/22136746-01601004","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47125572","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 : 2019-02-28DOI: 10.1163/22136746-01601002
Weiqiang Ma, Hongqin Deng, Lichao Yang
William Hinton’s widely influential Fanshen is notable for its nuanced description of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) consolidation and land reform in Long Bow village (Hinton’s pseudonym for Zhangzhuang 张庄). But how representative was Long Bow? What was the situation in other villages? Did Hinton accurately describe what really happened in the party consolidation and land reform? Or did he miss important points? Scholars have either considered the situation in Long Bow as representative of the general situation of party consolidation and land reform in northern China or else have left these questions open, and thus have failed to distinguish between pilot programs of party consolidation and the overall consolidation of the party. Based on documents from the Communist Party Committee of Lucheng county and pilot villages including Long Bow, this article seeks to clarify the sequence of events surrounding party consolidation and land reform in Long Bow and its role in the pilot program of land reform and party consolidation in Lucheng county by setting Long Bow in the context of the larger administrative region of which it was part and reviewing the historical process of the land reform and party consolidation pilot program. In this way, this article reveals the historical significance of land reform and party consolidation for rural political change and democratic development.
{"title":"The Pilot Land Reform Program and Land Reform in Pilot Villages: A Study of Pilot Land Reform and Party Consolidation in Lucheng, Shanxi","authors":"Weiqiang Ma, Hongqin Deng, Lichao Yang","doi":"10.1163/22136746-01601002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22136746-01601002","url":null,"abstract":"William Hinton’s widely influential Fanshen is notable for its nuanced description of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) consolidation and land reform in Long Bow village (Hinton’s pseudonym for Zhangzhuang 张庄). But how representative was Long Bow? What was the situation in other villages? Did Hinton accurately describe what really happened in the party consolidation and land \u0000reform? Or did he miss important points? Scholars have either considered the situation in Long Bow as representative of the general situation of party consolidation and land reform in northern China or else have left these questions open, and thus have failed to distinguish between pilot programs of party consolidation and the overall consolidation of the party. Based on documents from the Communist Party Committee of Lucheng county and pilot villages including Long Bow, this article seeks to clarify the sequence of events surrounding party consolidation and land reform in Long Bow and its role in the pilot program of land reform and party consolidation in Lucheng county by setting Long Bow in the context of the larger administrative region of which it was part and reviewing the historical process of the land reform and party consolidation pilot program. In this way, this article reveals the historical significance of land reform and party consolidation for rural political change and democratic development.","PeriodicalId":37171,"journal":{"name":"Rural China","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-02-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/22136746-01601002","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49210083","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 : 2019-02-28DOI: 10.1163/22136746-01601003
Xuefang Pan
Based on the “Preliminary Records of Land Reform in Wanglinyang” created during the Land Reform, this article reconstructs land ownership and utilization in Wanglinyang village of Huangyan county, Zhejiang, prior to the reform and analyzes class relations, especially landlords and rich peasants, in the village in order to explicate the formation of precapitalist landlordism. It has long been assumed that “landlords and rich peasants, accounting for less than ten percent of the rural population, possessed seventy to eighty percent of the arable land.” It was on the basis of this estimate of land ownership in rural China that the Land Reform was conducted. Wanglinyang village, however, saw no high-level concentration of the land and the attendant polarity in social differentiation; nor was there a class struggle between landlords and peasants. Nevertheless, because of restructuring by the Land Reform, this village appeared to become a rural community with all the features associated with precapitalist landlordism.
{"title":"The Formation of Precapitalist Landlordism: The Case of Land Reform in Wanglinyang Village","authors":"Xuefang Pan","doi":"10.1163/22136746-01601003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22136746-01601003","url":null,"abstract":"Based on the “Preliminary Records of Land Reform in Wanglinyang” created during the Land Reform, this article reconstructs land ownership and utilization in Wanglinyang village of Huangyan county, Zhejiang, prior to the reform and analyzes class relations, especially landlords and rich peasants, in the village in order to explicate the formation of precapitalist landlordism. It has long been assumed that “landlords and rich peasants, accounting for less than ten percent of the rural population, possessed seventy to eighty percent of the arable land.” It was on the basis of this estimate of land ownership in rural China that the Land Reform was conducted. Wanglinyang village, however, saw no high-level concentration of the land and the attendant polarity in social differentiation; nor was there a class struggle between landlords and peasants. Nevertheless, because of restructuring by the Land Reform, this village appeared to become a rural community with all the features associated with precapitalist landlordism.","PeriodicalId":37171,"journal":{"name":"Rural China","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-02-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44091759","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 : 2019-02-28DOI: 10.1163/22136746-01601001
Philip C. C. Huang
This article is based on the introduction-summary of the author’s new book awaiting publication. It deals mainly with the realities of China’s “informal economy” (understood as laboring people with little or no legal protection), to be distinguished from misleading and obfuscating “mainstream” theory’s construction and discourse about them. The working people of the “informal economy” today come mainly from the “half cultivator half worker” peasant families, and with them, make up a distinctive social formation that is very different from the expectations of both neoclassical economics and Marxist political economy. It cannot be understood in terms of the conventional categories of “mainstream” theory and needs new conceptualization and theory to grasp. The “informal economy’s” latest manifestation is the rapid spread of “dispatch workers,” who need also to be understood in terms of new theoretical concepts.
{"title":"The Practice and Theory of China’s Informal Economy","authors":"Philip C. C. Huang","doi":"10.1163/22136746-01601001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22136746-01601001","url":null,"abstract":"This article is based on the introduction-summary of the author’s new book awaiting publication. It deals mainly with the realities of China’s “informal economy” (understood as laboring people with little or no legal protection), to be distinguished from misleading and obfuscating “mainstream” theory’s construction and discourse about them. The working people of the “informal economy” today come mainly from the “half cultivator half worker” peasant families, and with them, make up a distinctive social formation that is very different from the expectations of both neoclassical economics and Marxist political economy. It cannot be understood in terms of the conventional categories of “mainstream” theory and needs new conceptualization and theory to grasp. The “informal economy’s” latest manifestation is the rapid spread of “dispatch workers,” who need also to be understood in terms of new theoretical concepts.","PeriodicalId":37171,"journal":{"name":"Rural China","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-02-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47635975","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 : 2019-02-28DOI: 10.1163/22136746-01601005
Jianlei Zhang
Based on field investigation in County B of Shanxi Province, this paper explores the relationship between technology and organization by examining the complex interactions between the government (technology supplier) and the differentiated agricultural managers (technology recipients) and the subsequent transformation of the agricultural economy. Past studies have argued that government intervention can significantly improve economic management, and the government-led, highly organized model of agricultural technology promotion can effectively solve the problem of social cost in technology application by rural households. However, when technology promotion driven by political mobilization is over, the application of new technologies by rural households encounters difficulties because of the growing capitalization of technological factors on the one hand and the households’ limited capital accumulation and consumption structure on the other. The government, for its own part, also redirects its technological services to the more capitalized, large-scale managements, which are considered to be able to accelerate the application of new technologies and the realization of the government’s economic objectives. Nevertheless, the importance of rural households should never be ignored in the government’s economic planning. It is possible that, with the support of the government, large-scale agricultural managements can integrate rural households into their growth model that combines production with marketing by outsourcing technological service. This will bring about profound changes in the local agricultural technology promotion system and accelerate the transformation of the agricultural management system.
{"title":"The Organizational Logic of Technology: An Analysis of the Transformation of the Agricultural Economy in County B, 1986–2016","authors":"Jianlei Zhang","doi":"10.1163/22136746-01601005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22136746-01601005","url":null,"abstract":"Based on field investigation in County B of Shanxi Province, this paper explores the relationship between technology and organization by examining the complex interactions between the government (technology supplier) and the differentiated agricultural managers (technology recipients) and the subsequent transformation of the agricultural economy. Past studies have argued that government intervention can significantly improve economic management, and the government-led, highly organized model of agricultural technology promotion can effectively solve the problem of social cost in technology application by rural households. However, when technology promotion driven by political mobilization is over, the application of new technologies by rural households encounters difficulties because of the growing capitalization of technological factors on the one hand and the households’ limited capital accumulation and consumption structure on the other. The government, for its own part, also redirects its technological services to the more capitalized, large-scale managements, which are considered to be able to accelerate the application of new technologies and the realization of the \u0000government’s economic objectives. Nevertheless, the importance of rural households should never be ignored in the government’s economic planning. It is possible that, with the support of the government, large-scale agricultural managements can integrate rural households into their growth model that combines production with marketing by outsourcing technological service. This will bring about profound changes in the local agricultural technology promotion system and accelerate the transformation of the agricultural management system.","PeriodicalId":37171,"journal":{"name":"Rural China","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-02-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/22136746-01601005","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48130665","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 : 2018-08-30DOI: 10.1163/22136746-01502002
Qianhou Yue, Aolong Qiao
Kangzhan Ribao (War of Resistance Daily) was the cornerstone of the CCP’s ideological propaganda among its troops in the Shanxi-Suiyuan Base Area, which the Party established in early 1940. In response to the Party’s call for publishing newspapers for and by all party members and the masses, this newspaper maintained a large network of reporters while relying on those at the grassroots as its authors and turning the illiterate and semi-literate populace into its faithful audience. All these made the newspaper a remarkable success in the history of Chinese journalism.
{"title":"The Principle of “Party Newspaper Committed to the Party” in Practice: A Micro-Analysis of Kangzhan Ribao","authors":"Qianhou Yue, Aolong Qiao","doi":"10.1163/22136746-01502002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22136746-01502002","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Kangzhan Ribao (War of Resistance Daily) was the cornerstone of the CCP’s ideological propaganda among its troops in the Shanxi-Suiyuan Base Area, which the Party established in early 1940. In response to the Party’s call for publishing newspapers for and by all party members and the masses, this newspaper maintained a large network of reporters while relying on those at the grassroots as its authors and turning the illiterate and semi-literate populace into its faithful audience. All these made the newspaper a remarkable success in the history of Chinese journalism.","PeriodicalId":37171,"journal":{"name":"Rural China","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-08-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/22136746-01502002","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45785896","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 : 2018-08-30DOI: 10.1163/22136746-01502006
Shou-li Yeh
This article discusses the relationship between the contemporary Taiwanese peasant household economy and agricultural technology innovation, taking the economic development process involving the Dongshi annual grafting pear as an example. The “annual grafting pear” is the result of a fruit cultivation model pioneered by the peasants of Dongshi in order to overcome the constraint of climate. Temperate pears have a high market value, but raising them in a subtropical region comes at the cost of a several fold increase in labor. Although the government’s local agricultural extension station generally believes that growing annual grafting pears is not in line with the trend of modern agricultural development, peasants have stuck with this labor-intensive fruit cultivation model. Today, annual grafting pears have become the mainstay of Taiwan’s pear industry. Combining participant observation, oral history, and ethnography, this article analyzes the tensions between household consumption needs and labor self-exploitation. It argues that the peasant family economy does not operate according to a purely capitalistic business logic, and that Dongshi’s grassroots agricultural technology innovation will move in the direction of labor-intensifying diversified crops rather than labor-saving single crops. This direction of development is a response to Taiwan’s agricultural crisis, the urban-rural relationship, and the market structure. The birth of annual grafting pears as a product of the collective creation of the peasants in Dongshi reflects a situation common in Taiwan’s rural areas and helps us to rethink the “hidden agricultural revolution” and urban-rural relationships in East Asian industrialized societies.
{"title":"The Birth of the Annual Grafting Pear: Peasant Household Economy and Agricultural Technology Innovation in Dongshi, Taiwan","authors":"Shou-li Yeh","doi":"10.1163/22136746-01502006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22136746-01502006","url":null,"abstract":"This article discusses the relationship between the contemporary Taiwanese peasant household economy and agricultural technology innovation, taking the economic development process involving the Dongshi annual grafting pear as an example. The “annual grafting pear” is the result of a fruit cultivation model pioneered by the peasants of Dongshi in order to overcome the constraint of climate. Temperate pears have a high market value, but raising them in a subtropical region comes at the cost of a several fold increase in labor. Although the government’s local agricultural extension station generally believes that growing annual grafting pears is not in line with the trend of modern agricultural development, peasants have stuck with this labor-intensive fruit cultivation model. Today, annual grafting pears have become the mainstay of Taiwan’s pear industry. Combining participant observation, oral history, and ethnography, this article analyzes the tensions between household consumption needs and labor self-exploitation. It argues that the peasant family economy does not operate according to a purely capitalistic business logic, and that Dongshi’s grassroots agricultural technology innovation will move in the direction of labor-intensifying diversified crops rather than labor-saving single crops. This direction of development is a response to Taiwan’s agricultural crisis, the urban-rural relationship, and the market structure. The birth of annual grafting pears as a product of the collective creation of the peasants in Dongshi reflects a situation common in Taiwan’s rural areas and helps us to rethink the “hidden agricultural revolution” and urban-rural relationships in East Asian industrialized societies.","PeriodicalId":37171,"journal":{"name":"Rural China","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-08-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/22136746-01502006","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42278443","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 : 2018-08-30DOI: 10.1163/22136746-01502003
Aiming Zhang, Ying-Hwa Hu, Matthew Z. Noellert
Shanxi experienced a severe population shortage after the late Qing Dingwu famine. The frequent disasters and warfare of the Republican era further increased population movements in north China, and in addition to northeast China, Shanxi became a major destination for migrants. In this period over two million migrants settled in Shanxi. Those that settled in the countryside formed a unique social group of immigrant households. The kinship and territorial bonds of north Chinese villages are well known, and such villages are often considered to have been very insular and xenophobic communities. Migrant households found it difficult to join the village community, and often had no choice but to live precarious lives on the outskirts of villages. Migrant households had to acquire “settlement rights” in the village in order to have any chance of survival and development. But settlement rights could not be achieved overnight; they were not only a matter of time, but also involved certain requirements and favorable circumstances. Through a close examination of “class background registers” compiled during the Four Cleanups movement (1963–1966), this article shows how migrant households in late Qing and Republican China used famine as an opportunity to gradually acquire settlement rights. On the one hand, migrants used wage labor, tenancy, and credit to form dependent relations through land with resident households. On the other hand, they used social relations, adoption, and uxorilocal marriage to form kinship relations with resident households. Compared to south China, where village settlement rights emphasized recognition of common ancestry, settlement rights in north China villages emphasized common lived experience. This difference is an important factor in explaining rural social formation and development in north China.
{"title":"Rural Migrants and Settlement Rights in Early Twentieth-Century Shanxi: A Study of “Class Background Registers”","authors":"Aiming Zhang, Ying-Hwa Hu, Matthew Z. Noellert","doi":"10.1163/22136746-01502003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22136746-01502003","url":null,"abstract":"Shanxi experienced a severe population shortage after the late Qing Dingwu famine. The frequent disasters and warfare of the Republican era further increased population movements in north China, and in addition to northeast China, Shanxi became a major destination for migrants. In this period over two million migrants settled in Shanxi. Those that settled in the countryside formed a unique social group of immigrant households. The kinship and territorial bonds of north Chinese villages are well known, and such villages are often considered to have been very insular and xenophobic communities. Migrant households found it difficult to join the village community, and often had no choice but to live precarious lives on the outskirts of villages. Migrant households had to acquire “settlement rights” in the village in order to have any chance of survival and development. But settlement rights could not be achieved overnight; they were not only a matter of time, but also involved certain requirements and favorable circumstances. Through a close examination of “class background registers” compiled during the Four Cleanups movement (1963–1966), this article shows how migrant households in late Qing and Republican China used famine as an opportunity to gradually acquire settlement rights. On the one hand, migrants used wage labor, tenancy, and credit to form dependent relations through land with resident households. On the other hand, they used social relations, adoption, and uxorilocal marriage to form kinship relations with resident households. Compared to south China, where village settlement rights emphasized recognition of common ancestry, settlement rights in north China villages emphasized common lived experience. This difference is an important factor in explaining rural social formation and development in north China.","PeriodicalId":37171,"journal":{"name":"Rural China","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-08-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/22136746-01502003","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45535132","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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