It is widely shared by scholars that before the rule of the communist government, the traditional state did not reach below the level of the county (xian).
Yamen, a state administrative organization, set up at county level, was the representative of the state. The Yamen office symbolized the relationship between the state and society. There the leaders of society and the officers of the government met. The traditional state was mainly concerned with the maintenance of order and the collection of tax. The agrarian economy was chiefly an object of taxation, and peasants were chiefly a source of tax revenue. Aside from tax collection, the traditional state did not interfere much with agriculture and peasant life. During most of Chinese history, the state let society organize itself. Villages developed various forms of cooperation based on kinship, religion and other social ties (e.g. Huang, 1990, Duara, 1988; Schunnann, 1968; Zweig, 1989; Hsiao, 1960).
If these interpretations of relationship between the traditional state and rural society are right, we will find that the new regime was more ambitious than simply extracted surplus from the countryside. In last three decades, the CCP and its state machine’s chief effort had been to reach out to control more and more aspects of economy, polity and culture. In Zweig’s word, ‘at no time in the past 350 years has
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the state exercised as much power over the lives of its citizens” (1989:151). The land reform introduced by the CCP was designed to destroy the traditional elite and the local gentiy, and to free people from tradition and superstition through redefining the social relations and meaning of life, as well as the redistribution of land. The collectivization further transformed rural China by integrating private property into the collective and creating an all-village collective economy, in order to produce food for its growing population and provide savings for industrialization. The state not only extended its vertical reach down to the village, but also the horizontal scope of its powers to the daily life of Chinese peasants, e.g. dress, sexuality, diet, health, and spiritual well being (Shurmann, 1968; Huang, 1990; Shue, 1988, Mueggler, 1991). The party branch committee secretary became the post-revolutionary equivalent o f the old administrative village head(s). Based on my informants1 recollection and other scholars’ accounts, the power of local society was shared by different parties, e.g. local elite, elders, gentiy, baozhang, clerks, and religious specialists. In the commune system, real power rested with the Party which made decisions in regard to all major activities of the rural society. The Party organization paralleled the formal apparatus of the government at every level. It represented the ideology of the central government and the link between the leadership and the masses.
The collectivization had not eliminated the fact that a new privileged class had emerged. The village cadres became the new patrons of rural society, who derived authority from their ability to monopolize resource distribution and to influence the life chance of peasants. In the collective, villagers lost their control on resources and means of production , their labour process, their products and interaction with the market. Participation in collective production became the only source of subsistence. So the villagers economically depended on their production, and personally depended on the village cadres for more benefits. For loyalty and support from the peasants in the political campaign, the local cadres exchanged resources with the villagers. So as Oi point out, the structure of the socialist system determined the patron-client relation in rural China (Oi, 1989).
The role of the new patron, in socialist society, however, was somewhat different from the traditional one. Many scholars have mentioned the dilemma of local cadres in rural China (e.g. Shue, 1988; Zweig, 1989; Huang, 1990; Oi, 1989).
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Some scholars (e.g. Shue) argued that the local cadres in Mao’s era somehow still acted as traditional gentry who often protected the local interest of their fellow villagers by employing different kinds of strategies such as withholding the truth, mis- reporting data and other strategies to resist the state policy. Shue stated very clearly in her small book The Reach o f the State:
It seems quite clear that local cadres in horizontally regarding or regional units who stayed in their positions for any length of time inevitably came to identify with and represent the interests of their localities and regions. Their own careers and reputations were, after all, intimately tied to the fates of those areas and regions. The mind set of these local officials was strongly characterized by an inclination to pursue the interests of their own areas against other areas and, when necessary, against the demands of the vertical state apparatus (1988:56).
Zweig held a similar view. As he stated:
The cadres monitored local activities and used their party authority to dominate village politics. They were also the major agents of state interests in the countryside. However, team and brigade officials’ positions in local society also force them to consider the interests of their fellow villagers (1989:155).
Although there were some similarities between local cadres and traditional gentiy or patrons, we still could recognize the difference between the two. As Schurmam point out, the gentry’s economic power was based on land ownership, its political power was based on its relationships to the state bureaucracy, and its social power was based on its traditional status (1968:497). In additional, their legitimacy in villages was granted by villagers based on their ability to hold expensive ceremonies, make large religious contributions and give personal loans and donations (Duara, 1988). In contrast, the authority of village cadres derived from their positions in the administrative hierarchy. The structural limitation lowered their incentive to protect the interests of the village. When the policy was imposed from the upper government, they often complied with the requirements of the state.
I am not interested in the debate of whether village cadres still play the role of traditional elite or not. To me, the role of the village cadres is never static, but dynamic and fluid. They situationally decided which role they want to play. In the case of Ku Village, sometimes the local cadres colluded with the state; sometimes
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they colluded with their co-villagers. It mostly depended on the situation in different campaigns. They would calculate the cost and benefit of their choice. When they ensured that their collusion was safe, they would do their best to protect the interests of the village. So I would not say that the common clan or lineage guarantees the collusion between the villagers and the cadres. The sense of identity and solidarity among the villagers should not be romanticized as something autonomous and given. It is also dynamic and fluid. In the villager’s narration, I knew that sometimes village solidarity and identity forced the cadres to refuse to implement the state policy properly; but sometimes it did not matter anymore.
Moreover, the case of Ku Village suggests that the achievement of collectivization was superficial, without obtaining consent from below. The everyday narrative of Mao's past can be also treated as part of their cultural resistance. Their discussion of rural relations before and during Mao's era discredits the official discourse on class struggle that is still taught in schools throughout China. To the villagers, the village was not made up of wealthy landlords and rich peasants pitted against a ruthlessly exploited mass of decent poor and lower-middle peasants. It was common poverty, not exploitative class relations and class polarization, that characterized village life. In the eyes of the villagers, the class-struggle campaigns imposed by party outsiders were always counterproductive, because the rigid class labels divided rather than united the community, which hurt the ganqing and guanxi among the villagers. Although the compulsory commune system had replaced the traditional rural organization, the social relation or the traditional guanxi had been redefined in terms of ‘comradeship’, and religious belief had been banned under the ideology of atheism or materialist Marxism, we could find the CCP government could not totally change the villagers' worldview, their conception of morality and guanxi ties. People’s guanxi ties still influenced their operations in everyday life, e.g. job distribution. The quick revival of the traditional organization and religious activities further proved the failure of the CCP government in cultural project. I will discuss it in Chapter 8. Villager’s eveiyday resistance in collective production also reflected their dissent from the policy of the socialist government. There were no open and noisy confrontations because the state had controlled the means of production and forces. As Havel states, people kept in silence in the socialist country not because
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they had been persuaded, but due to the police force, coercion, violence and threat (Havel, 1991), They always resisted in hidden, umioticeable, and safe ways. It was the "hidden transcript", in Scott’s term (Scott, 1990). It also reflected what Gramsci said, domination without hegemony (Gramsci, 1991).
In short, this chapter just aims to, understand how the Ku villagers read their history and how they perceived their life in Mao’s era. The question of how history was consumed by the villagers, and served for the present purpose, will be discussed in coming chapters.
3.1. slogan I
3.2. slogan II
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