This is the first monograph in English on how China's agricultural collectivization began. In 1953, the Chinese Communist Party launched a system of agricultural collectivization to lean the countryside toward socialism. It led to the Utopian Commune Movement in 1958 and was followed by the worst famine in human history. Surprisingly, however, its beginnings are poorly understood and often regarded as Mao Zedong's imposition from above. This book challenges the conventional wisdom and explores how the national policy emerged from complex bureaucratic interactions among central, regional, local governments, and peasants.
Описание: Using a wide variety of sources previously unavailable, Hong Yung Lee offers for the first time a theoretical and historical perspective on China's ruling elite, examining their politics and the bureaucratic system in which they participate. He traces the evolution of these cadres from the guerrilla fighters who first joined the communist movement and founded the new regime in 1949 to the technocratic specialists who wield power today. In the revolution the Communist leaders built a peasant-based party organization whose members were largely recruited from uneducated poor peasants and hired laborers. Even after they became the founders of a new regime, their rural orientation and revolutionary experiences continued to affect the political process. Lee shows that the requirements of modernization have compelled the state to replace the revolutionary cadres with bureaucratic technocrats. Selected from the postliberation generation, the new leaders are more committed to problem-solving than to socialism. Despite uncertainties in the immediate future, this elite transformation signifies an end to modern China's revolutionary era. Lee argues that it seems only a matter of time before China will have a bureaucratic-authoritarian regime led by technocrats possessing a managerial perspective and a pragmatic economic orientation. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1991.
Описание: This book examines labor protest in authoritarian states through a study of the evolution of migrant labor protests in China over the past three decades. It explores the economic, political, and demographic changes that have influenced migrant labor protest activity, how migrant workers engage in protest today, and protest strategies they employ.
