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Book
Review |
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Friedman, Edward, Paul G. Pickowicz and Mark Selden. Revolution, Resistance
and Reform in Village China (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005).
368 pp, $45.00.
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China Revolution, Resistance, and Reform
in Village China goes to the heart of China, its countryside, in search
of "the contested relationship between village and state"(inside dust cover).
What emerges is an illuminating inside look at one rural Chinese village
during pivotal years. Well researched, insightful and honest, this is not
light reading, but will reward the China enthusiast and the historian of
modern China. |
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A follow-up to their Chinese Village, Socialist
State this book was twenty-five years in the making. It traces the story
of Wugong village in Hengshui province located about 200 kilometers south
of Beijing. Wugong was one of the Mao-era "model villages", whose primary
goal was to prove the collective effort was more important and ultimately
more successful than other options most notably capitalism. Starting in
the late 1950's during the "Great Leap Forward", Friedman and his colleagues
offer an insider's look as the villagers of Wugong struggled to meet ever
higher demands for grain output from a central bureaucracy which knew little
of the hardships they faced. Famine, flood, corruption and inter-family
feuds are all here. So too are the dark years of the Cultural Revolution,
the emergence of China's modern economy, and the tremors from distant Tiananmen
Square. Through it all, the village, led by the politically astute
Boss Geng Changsuo and such memorable characters as Zhang Duan the Ox, Tigress
Xu and Geng Xiufeng, stays afloat even as massive upheaval sweeps away other
"model villages." |
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There is much here for undergraduates to consider,
starting with abrupt changes in the marching orders from Beijing.
In the 1950's, for example, villagers were told to produce rice. Later,
they were ordered to switch to sorghum, then, fertilizer and and finally,
in the 1970s and 1980s, pigs. Individual profit making was condemned
in the 1960's only to become a symbol of party loyalty thirty years later.
As one veteran mechanic noted, "If they say it's good, we say it's good.
If they say it's bad, then we say it's bad." |
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Factional cooperation was central to Wugong's
survival. Wugong was composed of three major sections; the Geng and
the Li families shared control of the northern and southern sections, while
the Geng controlled the central section alone. Unlike many villages that
whose family feuds resulted in bloodshed, especially during the Cultural
Revolution, Wugong's factions avoided both the turbulence typical of some
cities and the rural massacres which tore provinces such as Guangxi asunder.
When the Li family was given control of the local militia in Wugong, their
archrival, Boss Geng "…went before the young loyalist and asked for
criticism. He scolded himself and asked for criticism. He scolded himself
for the slow development of the village. Others defended him and praised
village progress. Order reigned. It was socialist theater." Students may
assess why Wugong remained so peaceful? There is good material for class
discussions here on state legitimacy, corruption and factionalism.
Was Wugong's relative harmony a result of its special status as a "model
village," because Boss Geng was not as corrupt or brutal as leaders in other
areas, or because he handled a potentially fatal confrontation so skillfully?
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Revolution, Resistance and Reform
emphasizes as well the changing roles of women. Tigress Xu, Boss Geng's
wife, is the family's maternal authority, unafraid to exercise her power.
Family and political connections ultimately win for Huijuan, daughter of
Xu and Boss Geng, the position of deputy director of health care in Shijiahuang,
a position "for which she had no training." Meanwhile the luckless and abused
writer Shi fails to get a divorce yet organizes a school system for local
children. Though these women's voices will appear archetypal to those familiar
with recent Chinese history, students new to the subject will find them
fascinating. Here too students will see how China's one child policy,
birth control and forced sterilizations impacted rural Chinese women and
their families. |
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Because it is drawn largely from personal
interviews, Chinese Village can also engage students in assessing
bias and source reliability. Students can also examine the relationship
between political legitimacy and historical legitimacy. For example, when
rewriting village history yet again during the Soviet-China War, " positive
references to the Soviet Union were excised [while] negative references
to the United States were removed." Writing history, it seems, was
politically expedient. |
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This is not a book that offers much
in the way of national context; Mao and his cadres are very much outsiders.
Chinese Village puts Wugong at the center of the story. Missing too
are the voices of the average worker. Instead, the authors stress
the importance of the community's movers and shakers. Further, students
reading Chinese Village will need other sources if they are to comprehend
the drastic differences between city, rural town and village during these
years. |
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Revolution, Resistance and Reform
in Village China is history in a very small place. Even so, students
will find within it much wider lessons. |
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James M. Hatch
Fukuoka International School Japan |
