Organizer: Joshua Goldstein, University of California, San Diego
Chair: Dorothy Ko, Rutgers University
Discussant: Joseph Esherick, University of California, San Diego
This panel breaks the "1949 barrier" to explore the intended and unintended consequences of Chinese efforts at rural reform. While the regions and specific foci of the reforms treated in these papers are quite disparate, these stories all ultimately involve attempts to modernize rural communities while retaining their fundamentally agricultural nature. All, in a sense, attempted to escape the gravity of history through a powerful modern rural utopianism.
Each panelist will begin by analyzing the idealistic vision of a specific rural reform movement, then go on to describe how specific communities responded to the programs. None of the cases are clear-cut successes or failures, but all reveal important oversights on the part of the reformers which led to unforeseen consequences. To what extent were these consequences products of community resistance to reforms deemed invasive or disempowering? In their attacks on "feudal" practices, did the reformers throw out the good with the bad? Did these reforms perhaps all face similar limitations, deep structures of rural social organization that they could not alter or all overlooked? On the other hand, Land Reform, Hetao settlements and silkworm reform all aimed at constructing new forms of village or group solidarity. Did they succeed? Is it possible that the types of communities these reforms shaped could become too constraining of their members? Did these reforms sometimes rigidify boundaries between communities in a manner detrimental to the reformers' heartfelt nationalistic and developmental goals? These are the themes the panelists will stress in their presentations.
Republican Era Reforms of Jiangnan Seri-Culture
Julie Broadwin, University of California, San Diego
This paper analyzes the interplay between rural silk-worm raisers' traditional culture and 1920s and 1930s efforts to reform the sericulture industry. Specifically, I look at how reformers viewed the superstitions, folk customs, and work routines of home sericulturalists, who in the majority of cases were women, and how reformers defined certain aspects of traditional culture as obstacles to sericulture's modernization.
The nationalistic goal of increasing China's silk production was to be accomplished through several channels: silkworm disease prevention through improved hygiene; feeding schedules and temperature control of silkworm rooms; better control of the production and selling of silkworm eggs; and the adding of an autumn crop to the silkworm season. The diverse methods used to effect these reforms included the setting up of experimental silkworm egg stations and home-visits by reformers to model new techniques. Peasants reacted both positively and negatively to reform attempts which improved their harvests, cost more money, and threatened their way of life. Unlike previous work on the sericulture industry (Lillian Li, Robert Eng, and Linda Bell), I pay particular attention to the cultural meaning of silkworm work and reform by using diaries of sericulture reformers and articles from contemporary journals on the lives of women silkworm raisers. These materials collected during a 1995-96 CSCC research trip to China and interviews conducted with several elderly reformers and peasants while there form the basis of this study.
Han Village Settlements in Republican Suiyuan
Joshua Goldstein, University of California, San Diego
The settling of migrant Han farmers in the Yellow River bend region, or Hetao, began back in the late Qing, but after the extension of the Peking-Suiyuan rail-line to Baotou in 1923 the rate of settlement increased dramatically. Despite political turmoil in the area over the next 15 years, the policy of vigorously promoting Han migration was something Feng Yuxiang, Yan Xishan, and the GMD all held in common.
This paper discusses the ideals and outcomes of various village settlement programs organized by warlords and patriotic elites during the 1920s and 1930s. It traces the settlement process from the drafting of contracts with peasants in Shandong, Hebei and Henan, to the construction of new villages in Hetao complete with schools, post offices and local militias. The plans were colored by rosy idealism, promising to make the desert bloom, establish cooperative industries, build a "living Great Wall" against Japanese invaders, and, most fundamental of all, make Han peasant settlers feel like Hetao was their real home. The paper provides a thick description of these images of a Han colonial modernity and evaluates their intended and unintended consequences.
Donkey Cadres: The Marriage Law, Sexual Corruption and Political Critique in
Rural China, 1950-1968
Neil Diamant, Tel Aviv University
Certainly one of the most radical changes in the history of political reform was the PRC's Marriage Law. While not historically unprecedented-France and the Soviet Union enacted new family laws after their respective revolutions-the Marriage Law was unique in its idealism, scope, and impact on the rural Chinese family. According to the law, so-called "commercial" and "arranged" marriages should give way to those based on mutual affection, love and common political standpoints; families should desist from arguing and fighting; and women, with the help of the state, should stand up for their rights against abusive husbands and in-laws. In 1950 and 1953, party members nationwide were mobilized to implement this new vision of the family, but even after the end of the 1953 Marriage Law campaign, the law continued to shape family and political dynamics in rural society.
This paper examines some of the unintended political and social consequences of the Marriage Law from the year of its enactment until the end of the first phase of the Cultural Revolution in 1968. In particular, it focuses on how state officials-male and female-took advantage of the clauses and language of the law to pursue family and sexual relationships considered unorthodox, apolitical, and even illegal by official standards. This paper also explores how these practices shaped forms of collective action and political critique during the Cultural Revolution.
By emphasizing the long term impact of the Marriage Law and the role of sexual politics during the Cultural Revolution, this paper departs from previous studies in two important ways. First, previous scholarship on the Marriage Law argues that after the 1953 campaign, the law was essentially a dead letter. As we will see, however, the law continued to shape family dynamics long after the early 1950s. Second, the literature on conflict during the Cultural Revolution has tended to emphasize either socio-economic and political cleavages, such as those between "good" and "bad" classes. My paper argues that sexual politics might be as important in explaining political conflict in the Cultural Revolution as the above two factors.
Early Communist Policy, Village Development and Path-Dependence in Jinghai County
Tamara Perkins, University of California, San Diego
When the Communist government officially took power in 1949, villages all over China embarked on a path of development built on a host of policies-mostly tested through trial and error over the short term. Beginning with Land Reform, these policies were meant to radically re-mold the Chinese countryside into a modern, classless example of the superiority of communism. Perhaps more importantly, many of these policies were a concerted effort to break the hold of the "semi-feudal" rural political and economic structure. What policymakers did not foresee, however, was how their policies actually created further constraints on how villages could develop over the longterm.
Based on village accountant records, informant interviews and household surveys from 1949-1995, my paper will explore the ramifications of early Communist policy from a 1990s perspective on developments in the twenty-three villages of a former Tianjin-Hebei commune. For most of these villages, the fundamental nature of village economic conditions just prior to Communist takeover were "locked in" by early Communist policy. In the wake of Dengist reform, the nature of the village economy in these villages continues to remain remarkably similar to that of the pre-commune era.