Organizer: Dachang Cong, University of Texas, Dallas
Chair: Edward Friedman, University of Wisconsin, Madison
Discussant: Mark Selden, Binghamton University
This panel studies varieties, dimensions, and strategies of peasant resistance in the PRC. As the state imposes excessive demands on the peasant life, rural communities ignore official meanings, delay governmental actions, and find ways to combat the state control. Peasant resistance has moral and strategic dimensions and involves cultural, political, and economic considerations. It becomes more effective and expressive when the power of the state is weakened by moral ambivalence, economic liability, cultural incompatibility, and political instability. With the retreat of the state power as witnessed in recent years, peasants may become increasingly defiant and attempt to impose their will on the state. Enlarged social and economic injustice can give rise to bolder resistance and even lead to armed revolts.
Based on personal interviews with village women, Kate Zhou's paper shows how peasants designed various strategies to resist and defeat the one child policy. Zhou also attempts to interpret popular sayings and proverbs as powerful statements of rural resistance. Deriving from fieldwork in Gansu Province, Jing Jun's paper studies the traumatic impact of hydropower stations on the displaced villagers. Jing examines how the victims staged protests and demanded compensations by establishing social memory and highlighting moral arguments. Yuan I's paper is a part of a larger research project on rural resistance in South China. Yuan explores how the villagers used the southern heritage to formulate political consciousness and resist the state dominance. Dachang Cong's paper is an episode of his ethnography on a peasant community in Shaanxi Province. Cong shows how the villagers chipped away at the economic hegemonism of the state by taking advantage of political chaos and composing powerful moral justification.
While presenting their case studies, the panelists address theoretical concerns. What is the relationship between resistance in everyday life and revolts and other forms of more overt resistance? Which type is more significant? How can the peasants advance their interests without armed revolts? How do we compare rural resistance against Mao with that against Deng? Why has there been an upsurge of rural resistance in recent years? Are large-scale revolts likely to happen in the near future? By tackling these questions, the panel hopes to invite further discussions on peasant resistance, which will unfold political dramas in the years to come.
Kate Xiao Zhou, University of Hawai'i
The one child policy became jiben guoce (basic state policy) in 1979. While the state succeeded in enforcing the one child family policy in the cities, it was not able to force rural compliance. After baochan daohu (turning over production to the household), farmers gained relative independence in all aspects of rural life, including reproduction. They developed all sorts of strategies to get around the coercive one child family requirement. These included bribery, cheating, unregistered births, migration, and open defiance. Rural resistance in the early 80s forced the state to change its policy by allowing farmers with no sons to have another try. But farmers paid no attention to the state regulation and continued to have the desired number of children.
One important feature of rural resistance was its unorganized and daily nature. Rural resistance to the one child policy was a spontaneous, unorganized, leaderless, non ideological, and apolitical movement. Despite this unorganized nature, the resistance was everywhere. As a result, the farmers' resistance watered down the one child policy by enlarging the gap between policy goals and actual practice.
Jun Jing, Harvard University
From 1949 to 1985, the Chinese government forcibly relocated 10 million people, mostly rural residents, for the construction of big dams, powerhouses, and reservoirs. Without exceptions, the river basin projects, directly financed and organized by the state, caused the drastic breakup of communities, massive reduction of farmland, and various forms of distress. Social studies dealing with this kind of resettlement were non existent in China until 1988-89, when a project was undertaken by the Institute of Sociology at Beijing University to investigate the socioeconomic impact of three big hydropower stations on the upper reaches of the Yellow River. Relying on personal participation in that research project and an individual follow up study in 1992, this paper focuses on efforts of relocated villagers in Gansu Province to demand retroactive compensations from the county, provincial, and central governments for the economic losses and the hardship of recovery they suffered and endured. Under the general heading of resistance, the two major issues for discussion are the rhetorical discourse of protest and the organizational dimension of sabotage, sit ins, petition drives, and street demonstrations. These issues are to be examined from the perspective of social memory, namely, the ways by which local memories of forced resettlement establish a focal point of moral arguments and organized attempts to hold state authorities accountable for the suffering of the relocated villagers.
I. Yuan, National Chengchi University
South China in the first thirty years after 1949 went through drastic changes in the economy and social life of the southern peasantry. Those changes on the nature of the state and society relations in rural China have been categorized into five models:
This paper, based on corporate lineage and peasant localism, suggests that the southern Chinese peasantry maintained distinctive group consciousness after 1949. The southern mode of corporate lineage developed a deeper political consciousness that extends beyond purely economic considerations. The southern peasant society is still internally segmented and this segmentation is manifested in lineage groups, dialect groups, and religious groups. These southern parochial groups are coterminous and their divisions have persisted throughout the communist era. The southern Chinese corporate lineage group identity exists even in the absence of common property. Common southern dialects, common southern customs, and the manipulation of agnatic relations through seniority and common actions are substantial expressions of group cohesiveness.
In essence, southern Chinese peasant localism deserves special attention. This paper explains the paths of state dominance and the patterns of southern Chinese peasant resistance during the 1950-1978 period. This explanation especially pertains to the absence of revolt, as depicted by general theory on peasant rebellion, by the southern peasantry in response to state dominance and exploitation. It is an analysis of a way of resistance of the southern Chinese peasants who, for decades, have been distinctive from the northerners in terms of dialects and ecology. The southern peasants fought for their own cultural heritage by safeguarding their own unique culture and way of life. They absorbed the shocks of state dominance without relinquishing the essence of their cultural tradition.
Dachang Cong, University of Texas, Dallas
Oak Hills is a peasant community in central Shaanxi Province, China. During the difficult years under Mao, the villagers were struggling for survival. With excessive wheat quotas and closed economic opportunities, the community found it increasingly hard to feed its growing population. Furthermore, the failure of collective economy and the practice of female infanticide caused the escalation of bride price. Many poor bachelors could not afford it. The villagers were angry with the government. They were waiting to address economic injustice. The political anarchy in 1967-68 provided a good opportunity.
In 1967, the local government stalled as military conflicts between rival factions escalated. It was a "great disorder under Heaven." When the checkpoints at mountain passes stopped functioning, groups of men from Oak Hills and other villages adventured into the state owned forests. Most of them were from poor and lower middle peasant families. The stolen trees were sold in the black market to the peasants who lived far from the mountains. With cash and timber, the "tree stealers" bought grains, consumed long noodles, built houses, held weddings, and even made coffins for their aged parents. Many households made an economic recovery from the Great Leap Forward and the following famine years.
Before venturing into the forests, the "tree stealers" carefully weighed gains against possible punishment. They concluded that the government would not be able to punish so many people. In addition, since Mao rendered a high status to the poor and lower middle peasants, punitive measures would be minimal and bearable. Indeed, after this frenzy of cutting trees ended in the spring of 1968, only a small number of "tree stealers" were penalized. They were either gamblers or sons of the "class enemies." To many villagers, stealing trees was a rightful way of addressing economic injustice. The villagers felt bitter that the government squeezed too much wheat from them at low prices, and that the Great Leap Forward impoverished their villages. They further justified their action by claiming that workers and cadres continued to receive their salaries or wages by idling away time during the 1967-68 anarchy.
This episode shows that rural communities can stage effective offensives against the state by taking advantage of political disorder. They are also able to minimize punishment by the government. Peasant China stores a tremendous amount of moral strength and political energy, which can be released in right times by outrage over economic disparity.
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