Organizer: Xiaolin Guo, University of Aarhus
Chair: Jean Chun Oi, Stanford University
Discussant: Kevin J. O’Brien. Ohio State University
As China’s reforms enter the third decade, rural society is witnessing the extension of land contracts, expansion of rural industry and escalation in urbanization. Along with these developments, agricultural transformation and intensified exploitation of land resources have brought conflict between local governments and peasants to the fore. At the same time, the rapid growth of local industry and its economic importance have strengthened the symbiotic relations between local administrators and business elites. The reforms have not only transformed local economic structures but also the cultural lives of local populations—folklore and entertainment enterprises are locally promoted and regulated to generate revenue and to create an image of modernization, while revived religious activities are gathering momentum to pose new challenges to local economic development.
Papers in this panel will show that as reforms are deepening, the role of local elites becomes multi-dimensional and increasingly prominent in all political, economic and cultural spheres. Here we see a combination of authority, selectivity and flexibility in the official and unofficial conduct of local elites. While institutional foundations largely constitute the basis of the incentives responsible for government behavior, coercive or persuasive, local history, economic infrastructure and ecological environment provide explanations to variations that influence implementations of reforms in localities, the manner in which local conflicts arise and are accommodated. In striving for economic growth, the interplay between different forces of local elites can be ideologically contradictory and has significant social consequences.
Squabbling Over Land: Political and Moral Dilemmas in Local Development
Xiaolin Guo, University of Aarhus
This paper deals with land utilization and management. It sets out to explore changes in crop farming and peasant household consumption as consequences of rural industrialization and urbanization in China’s southwest hinterland over the past years, and to analyze intensified conflicts between local government and peasants over land resources at the time when land contracts were being renewed.
The conflicts in focus ensued from the local government taking over farmland from villages for urban development in the 1990s. The core of the conflicts lies in the common interests that both the local government and peasants have in land—to the former land development generates revenue; to the latter land is a vital source of livelihood. The clash of interests resulted in confrontations between peasants and local officials. The paper will show that in the economic rights asserted by the peasants there is a moral issue of subsistence; in the economic goals pursued by the local government there is a political agenda centered on administrative achievements.
That the squabbles over land ended with a victory on the government side has many implications for our understanding of the institutional basis of government performance and property rights. In land management, the village administrations played a crucial role. Shared interests in local economic development formed the basis for a partnership between village administrations, township and county governments, which speaks for why the unpopular policy of land development has prevailed.
A Second Stage of Rural Industrialization: Elite Formation and Stratification in Taicang (Jiangsu) and Xuanwei (Yunnan) Compared
Frank N. Pieke, Oxford University
The commercialization and industrialization of the countryside in the People’s Republic of China is usually spoken of as the first steps on a uniquely Chinese path to fully modern economy and society. Although it is by now generally accepted that rural industrialization started well before 1978, much less account is taken of the fact that even after 1978 more than 20 years have elapsed, during which rural entrepreneurship has faced many ups and downs and changes of direction.
The most recent downward swing of rural (and in particular collective) enterprises since 1996 has been much worsened by the effects of the East Asian crisis since 1997, heralding in, I will argue, a new stage of economic development that is fundamentally different from what has been before. This paper will explore this theme by looking at the impact of this prolonged economic crisis on rural enterprises and their relations with local government in two very different places, Taicang in southern Jiangsu and Xuanwei in Northeastern Yunnan. The former is dominated by strong local government and collective enterprises, the latter by weak local government and private enterprises. The result of this exercise will be a fresh look at the well-worn theme of "township and village enterprises" and glimpses of the new forms of social inequality and distribution of power that are currently taking shape in China.
Cultural Life and Cultural Control: Where Is the Party?
Stig Thogersen, University of Aarhus
Often overshadowed by the remarkable results of economic reform, cultural life in rural China has gone through a correspondingly dramatic transformation. In Xuanwei in northeastern Yunnan the old county-level bureaucratic system of cultural control centered around the Cultural Bureau and the Propaganda Department still exists, but its distribution network for films, books and theatre has lost out to what is now termed the market culture. Within the last few years forms of cultural consumption such as night clubs, dance halls and video shops which used to be found only in larger cities have taken over the night life of Xuanwei. At the same time modern "men of culture" (wenren) draw on traditional Chinese high culture in their defence of values they see vanishing in a wave of commercialism, and the newly rich put their distinctive mark on cultural and religious life, while, on the fringe of the cultural scene, the festivals of the Yi and other ethnic groups are being reconsidered as a possible object for tourism. The paper will discuss the production and consumption of culture in Xuanwei as an expression of the socio-political diversification and polarization of the 1990s. The focus will be on how political, cultural, and economic elites interact in this field, and how the local party-state struggles to control cultural expressions under the new conditions. The presentation will be based on interview data as well as on analysis of local journalism, fiction, and performances.
Han and Tibetan Cultural Elites: Does Ethnicity Make a Difference?
Mette Halskov Hansen, University of Oslo
During the last twenty years, religious groups and elites in many of China’s rural areas have re-emerged. Some of them have re-established and renewed their local position and now influence local development through their engagement in economic activities made possible by the economic reforms. In this process, some have started to challenge pre-reform patterns of local political control over cultural life and production. In Xuanwei County in Yunnan as well as in Xiahe County of Gansu, religious leaders are actively taking part in economic and cultural activities that go beyond the "purely" religious ones. In areas of, for instance, cultural production, marketing of culture, tourism, and hotel business, these religious groups and leaders sometimes constitute a competitor, and even a threat, to the cultural and economic interests of the local government. In Xuanwei and Xiahe, religious elites play different roles and occupy very different positions in relation to the local peasants as well as the local government. This is partly due to the fact that unlike Xuanwei, Xiahe is a Tibetan area with a very strong Tibetan religious elite that is engaged in a wide range of economic activities based on its own constructions of, and ability to make use of, what is regarded as local culture and characteristics. This paper discusses to what extent the ethnic factor (Han or Tibetan) plays a role in contesting local elites’ ways of engaging in combined economic and cultural activities and, furthermore, how local peasants (Han and Tibetan) regard and respond to these elites.