Organizer: Ralph A. Thaxton, Jr., Brandeis University
Chair: Richard Madsen, University of California, San Diego
Discussants: Richard Madsen, University of California, San Diego; Wang Shaoguang, Yale
University
This panel focuses on popular resistance to various aspects of political abuse in post 1949 China, paying special attention to the formation and effectiveness of such resistance in the decades spanning the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. The emphasis of the panel is on how various elements of the populace used their resistance to reposition themselves and their organizations vis-à-vis political authorities in order to enhance the pursuit of their fundamental social interests and on the implications of this process for political stability vs. instability in contemporary China.
Ralph A. Thaxton, Jr., Brandeis University
Based on oral history and historical records, this paper focuses on how village people survived the radical dearth of the Great Leap Forward. It identifies and describes the most effective peasant strategy of survival. It goes on to analyze the extent to which this strategy was sanctioned by ordinary peasants and local village leaders and to ask whether this strategy, when combined with others, became an effective means of inflecting state appropriation of the harvest, both in the years 1958-1961 and in the Cultural Revolution decade to follow.
Xiaoxia Gong, Harvard University
Gong's paper traces the emergence of a little known labor movement during a stage of the Cultural Revolution. Unlike the much studied rebel or conservative factions of the Red Guards, the workers in this grass roots movement did not victimize people. Rather, they won temporary recognition from central authorities for organizational demands that were the product of a kind of proto trade unionism. Using evidence from scores of workplaces, Gong pays special attention to how these workers interacted with different levels of authority in pursuit of their interests.
Dongping Han, Brandeis University
This paper explores political and economic changes in Ji Mo County during the Cultural Revolution, Han focuses on whether the Cultural Revolution started a process of effective discourse between villages and leaders. He documents a process whereby corrupt local cadres were denounced and abusive local authorities lost power. Through interviews and local records, Han elucidates some understudied aspects of the political campaigns that brought material improvement to the peasantry and that, in some cases, provided spiritual uplifting for rural people. He focuses on a few specific areas (such as control over education) in which villages were empowered, however temporarily, during this period.
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