Collective violence in China, 1880–1980

This article began by noting that certain current theories of rural violence, predicated upon the demise of the peasantry, are of limited applicability to China. However, it is not my intention to argue that China scholars should therefore feel free to ignore general theories altogether. Quite the contrary. As the preceding discussion has tried to show, general theories are of considerable value in illuminating our understanding of specific cases of raphy cleaves to a rigid “five modes of production” approach, in recent years alternative arguments have gained some currency. The least innovative of these alternatives is a resurrected Asiatic Mode of Production theory, an approach whose main appeal lies in its claim to Marxist legitimacy. Though Marx and Engels should be credited for the recognition that hypotheses developed to account for West European history may be ill-suited to explain the social history of India or China, their resort to an “Asiatic Mode” has, quite properly, drawn criticism. For one thing, Asian societies differed markedly among themselves. For another, the allegedly despotic political systems of Asian countries did not in fact prevent substantial socioeconomic change over time. Despite these familiar criticisms, however, in some respects the theory is of interest to the student of China. As Marx described it, the foundation of “Oriental despotism” was actually collective property, “in most cases created through a combination of manufacture and agriculture within the small community which thus becomes entirely self-sustaining...” Karl Marx, , ed. E. J. Hobsbawm(New York, 1964), 70. The key to a powerful state, in other words, was the strength and isolation of local corporate communities. The theory is interesting for the attention it focuses upon two elements: the state and local collectivities. Recently in China, a number of theorists - while rejecting many of the assumptions of the Asiatic Mode - have nevertheless retained its concern with state and local society. Some theorists, characterizing the Chinese polity as an “ultrastable system” (chaowending xitong), have stressed bureaucratic continuity. See, for example, Jin Guantao and Liu Qingfeng, “Zhongguo lishishang fengjian shehui de jiegou: yige chaowending xitong” [The structure of feudal society in Chinese history: an ultrastable system], 1 (1980): 5–24. They emphasize the homeostatic properties of the imperial political system: flexibility provided through peasant rebellions, migration, partible inheritance, and the like. Such safety-valves, these theorists suggest, allowed periodic changes in the ruling elite, but no fundamental alteration of the strong state structure itself. Other theorists, emphasizing China's “small-peasant economy” (xiaonong jingji), look to the peculiarities of traditional Chinese agriculture for the key to her historical experience. Chen Ping, for example, identifies the Chinese concentration on grain production, in contrast to Europe or the United States where grain production has been balanced by animal husbandry and forestry, as a critical factor. Chen Ping, “Danyi xiaonong jingji jiegou shi woguo changqi dongluan pinqiong de binggen” [Unitary small-peasant economic structure is the root of China's long-term turmoil and poverty], (16 November, 1979), 3. By his account, the mixture of agricultural pursuits in the West encouraged a division of labor, commercialization, and scientific progress. The Chinese system, by contrast, stunted such developments and served instead as a secure foundation for landlord-bureaucratic domination. According to Chen Ping, it was small-peasant agriculture that constituted an “ultrastable economic structure” (chaowending de jingji jiegou). Although particular dynasties came and went in periodic peasant rebellions, the limiting economic system continued to reproduce despotism. Chen Ping's lessons for contemporary China are basically economic: utilize the international market, diversify beyond grain production to develop an ecologically balanced agriculture, encourage a type of industrialization that complements agricultural needs. Though the critique presented by the “small-peasant economy” theorists remains largely in the realm of economics, another group offers a more directly political challenge. These are the writers who characterize contemporary China as operating under a system of “agricultural socialism” (nongye shehuizhuyi). See, for example, Ying Xueli and Sun Hui, “Guanyu woguo shehuizhuyi gaizao houqi de jige lilun wenti” [Some theoretical questions concerning the later period of China's socialist transformation], 4 (1980): 98–104. According to their analysis, the persistence of small-scale production has given rise to a pernicious bureaucratism that permeates all facets of socialist China. Cadres - chosen for their peasant class origins rather than for any expertise - are said to operate by principles opposed to economic progress. Administrative fiat, maintained by political force, overshadows efficiency as the criterion of operational feasibility. While arguing that the root of the problem lies in small-scale peasant production, the “agricultural socialism” critics insist that bureaucratism has become a major barrier to further development. Limited as these various formulations are, their attention to state and local peasant society resonates with a central theme of this essay. Much more research is needed to delineate the precise structure of state and local collectivities, interactions between them, and variations over time and from one geographical setting to another. But eventually such work promises to take us nearer to the reality of the Chinese case than we can hope to approach through the wholesale transfer of theories devised to explain quite different historical developments. The peasant studies school, whose central thesis hinges - ironically enough - on the demise of the peasantry, offers but partial explanations for a society whose peasants refuse to die.