Maoism at the Grassroots: Everyday Life in China’s Era of High Socialism

Maoism at the Grassroots challenges state-centered views of China under Mao, providing insights into the lives of citizens across social strata, ethnicities, and regions. It reveals how ordinary people risked persecution and imprisonment in order to assert personal beliefs and identities, despite political repression and surveillance.

Table of Contents:
Cover Title Copyright Contents Introduction / Jeremy Brown and Matthew D. Johnson Everyday Life The Grassroots High Socialism Part I. Crimes, Labels, and Punishment 1. How a “Bad Element” Was Made: The Discovery, Accusation, and Punishment of Zang Qiren / Yang Kuisong A Bright Future A Guilty Conscience Historical Problems Looking for Trouble Alarmed but Unharmed Falling In with the Wrong Lot Confessing His Problems Confronting His Past A Failed Suicide Attempt Pouring Out Beans from a Bamboo Tube Reeducating a Nonpolitical “Bad Element” through Labor The Road to Prison 2. Moving Targets: Changing Class Labels in Rural Hebei and Henan, 1960–1979 / Jeremy Brown Remedial Democracy Four Cleanups Policy and Revising Class Labels Registration Forms and Class Files Going Down Going Up Fighting an Unfavorable Change in Class Status Removing Labels, Correcting Errors 3. An Overt Conspiracy: Creating Rightists in Rural Henan, 1957–1958 / Cao Shuji A Failed First Attempt to Air Views in Tongbai County, Autumn 1957 Speaking Out in Tongbai, Winter 1957 Luring the Snakes out of Their Lair: How Rural People Became Rightists Willingly Coming Out of the Lair: Those Who Sacrificed Themselves to Air Their Views Opening One’s Heart to the Party 4. Revising Political Verdicts in Post-­Mao China: The Case of Beijing’s Fengtai District / Daniel Leese A Plethora of Problems Case Revisions in Fengtai District Part II. Mobilization 5. Liberation from the Loom? Rural Women, Textile Work, and Revolution in North China / Jacob Eyferth Textiles and Women’s Work in Guanzhong Cotton and the Socialist State Women’s Work under Socialism The Experience of Work under the Collectives Revolution and Everyday Life 6. Youth and the “Great Revolutionary Movement” of Scientific Experiment in 1960s–1970s Rural China / Sigrid Schmalzer State Vision: Science as Opportunity State Vision: Youth as Intellectuals State Vision: Science as Revolutionary State Vision: Failure as the Mother of Success Youth Experience: Science as Opportunity? Youth Experience: Science as Revolutionary . . . and Romantic Youth Experience: The Pain of Failure Epilogue: Bourgeois Science? The Post-1978 Transformation of Youth and Science 7. Adrift in Tianjin, 1976: A Diary of Natural Disaster, Everyday Urban Life, and Exile to the Countryside / Sha Qingqing and Jeremy Brown Surviving the Earthquake and Its Aftermath Waiting to Leave for the Countryside Tongshan in the Countryside Part III. Culture and Communication 8. Beneath the Propaganda State: Official and Unofficial Cultural Landscapes in Shanghai, 1949–1965 / Matthew D. Johnson State Culture at the Grassroots Official Culture: The Institutional Perspective Limits to Growth, Profit over Politics, and the Defiance of Cultural Management The Great Leap Forward Crisis The Resurgence of Unofficial Culture Cultural Manias and Youth Culture: The Hong Kong Film Craze Involution and Corruption in Projection Work 9. China’s “Great Proletarian Information Revolution” of 1966–1967 / Michael Schoenhals 1949–1966: Organization as “Spontaneous Counterrevolution” August 1966: “It Is Right to Rebel against Reactionaries” “Exchange of Intelligence” Collecting and Processing Current Information Sample Contents 1 Sample Contents 2 Dissemination September 1967: Enforced Dissolution Appendix: Five-Point Agreement 10. The Dilemma of Implementation: The State and Religion in the People’s Republic of China, 1949–1990 / Xiaoxuan Wang State and Religion in Pre-1949 Ruian Land Reform, the Conversion of Religious Space, and Resistance, 1949–1957 Intensified Coercion and the Clandestine Advance of Religion,1958–1978 The Boom of Religion and the Accommodative State Part IV. Discontent 11. Radical Agricultural Collectivization and Ethnic Rebellion: The Communist Encounter with a “New Emperor” in Guizhou’s Mashan Region, 1956 / Wang Haiguang Ethnic Relations in Mashan How Collectivization Assailed Ethnic Minority Lifestyles The “Empress Mother” Spreads Rumors That an Emperor Will Emerge From Rumors of an Emperor to an Armed Uprising Forcefully Suppressing the Uprising Attempting a “Peaceful Resolution” Temporary Resolutions 12. Caught between Opposing Han Chauvinism and Opposing Local Nationalism: The Drift toward Ethnic Antagonism in Xinjiang Society, 1952–1963 / Zhe Wu Han Chauvinism and Its Opponents, 1952–1955 1956: Saifudin Azizi Strikes a Delicate Balance Preludes to Conflict 1957: The Turning Point From Attacking Rightists to Combating Local Nationalism Rectification and Assimilation, 1958–1959 Local and Party Responses Communizing and Desovietizing Xinjiang, 1958–1962 1962: The Ili-Tacheng Incident and an End to Moderation Crisis and Aftermath 13. Redemptive Religious Societies and the Communist State, 1949 to the 1980s / S. A. Smith The Survival of the Societies The Appeal of the Societies The Politics of the Societies Perpetuating the Tradition Epilogue: Mao’s China—Putting Politics in Perspective / Vivienne Shue Politics in Command The Dustbin of History Ruling Agonistically and over Rough Social Terrain Putting Politics in Perspective Notes Contributors Acknowledgments Index