6 Introduction Introduction 7 It was not easy for the government to tap local resources in the delta through this maze of social and economic relationships.10 From the mid- cording to principles laid down by the central authority alone. Qing period on,tax officers increasingly relied on established lineages for A closer look at the nature of the tax collection(Ye and Tan 1985b;Katayama 1982).However,estate man- autho ority Mao exercised in the name of socialism shows a parad agers and Indeed,scholars have drawn parallels between gen leaders,who sheltered their relatives.also used thei power to distribute tax burdens uneveny.to collect high interests from the philosophical roots of Mao's version of socialism and China's most despotic and Machiavellian rulers-Qin Zheng.CaoCao,and Zhu Yuan delinquent members,and to pocket the difference.Despite repeated efforts zhang (Yu 1982:Sun 1983).There is by the Qing and later by the Republican governments,tax officers failed ple,between Mao's idealso either to secure an accurate estimate of the fields or to extract the taxes due r the rural commune and Zhu Yuanzhang's (Qiu 1941).Such historical details am us a ing simp political programs in the early Ming-strict household registration to co ixur ofor ndfthe com trol mobility,the reliance on an army directly accountable to the empero and deeply involved with agricultural produc ion revolution.To reach rural society,the imperial state worked through a n,discrimination against commercial activities.state complicated web of social and economic interests. nonopoly of ideology through the establish n rast tolate imperial society,under the ary govern ment villages were controlled by state agents who were exceedingly vul- despotism(Wu 1948:Grimm 1985).To these scholars, nerable to the ideological pressures of the party-state.How could they be under the veneer of the basis of new power structures linking rural communities to the central Mao's slogans a personality cult was built that combined populist fervor with the sh authorities in a way that might obstruct state penetration?I would like to ewd of an absolutist tradition.Moreover,Mao's classical argue that,p ns.the penetration of the Chin se coun basis of a party-state.The product was a system of bureaucratic tryside went hand in hand with the conscious creation of autarkic struc wer that required from its members not only moral sm(Whyte 1974:Schur- tures after 1949.With the step-by-step destruction of the traditional net- mann 1968)but also loyalty toa personalized leadership that was counter- in land tenure,marketing and kinship and religiousaiations peasants in the postre era found that the world 1987) ministratively created collectives had shrunk to a minimum.The team, I hope to show that this system of power rested precisely on the vast brigade,and commune gradually became their sole source of economic livelihood,social identity,and political status.Instead of having access to peasant population that it confined in enclosed units of production and multiple centers of political power,peasants were obliged to turn to rural administration.The rural party cadres I have come across were vulnerable cadres and to the party as hei chan nels of legitimate pol to the power of that bureaucracy even while forming an important link in interaction.Traditional sentiments did surface in political dialogues,but its chain of command.Willing accomplices or not,they incorporated into they were increasingly structured by the ideological terms defined by a this structure of power the cellularized villages they managed. consolidated party-state.Villages might have retained their physical meanng of being changed Political Brokers and State Agents from within by the Maoist paradigm. It seems that Mao replaced the traditional community with a peculiar form of organization.It was not a functionally differentiated entity whose Analytical images of hierarchical systems of power quite naturally draw atention to cultural and political brokers and to the nature of the linkages petitive interdepende nce as Emile Durkhe oned for modern socl they foster between central governments and local society.The dynam ics of these linkages depend on three interlocking facto ety.nor was it governed by the rational though alienating bureaucratic state power as revealed by its ide s:the nature of principles that so concerned Max Weber.Large or small,Mao's organiza- ogy and organization:the complex tion was to be"all-encompassing"(quan),based on a single,unmediated affiliations ofkin.community,and class in which peasants find themselves source of authority and implemented by cadres who were expected to ac dthmoethodhomedae between formal state institutions and the rural populace
Introduction Introduction The role of the Chinese gentry as cultural and political brokers for the the periphery without deviations."However.I would caution that a lack of imperial state is well known.The gentry'sn nce has led historians temate imperial ChinahegeyoctyTherelativestabiiy of the mechanical compliance on the part of party cadres does little to modify Chinese empire is considered to have rested on their brokerage function. Though Janus-faced,the gentry were essential bonding elements in a on cadres to act for them,thus putting themselves at their mercy.Rural political order that was neith cadres were faced with an organized state machinery of which they were a pluralistic nor absolutist.Instead,It was a system of segmental coordination,with the literati generating a politica part.They werealso pr ofa greatly transformed rural socicty.Infact,their very existence has been at the core of that transformation process.In dialogue to mediate conflicts among themselves and between state and surveying the social and educational background of party cadres,Hong- s0 ciety (Lau】975). Historical research on the Pearl River delta shows how local elites were yung Lee (n.d.)observes how thoroughly the traditionally educated elite toact as such political brokers.Through the civils were barred from the postrevolutionary leadership at all levels.In the rura exam areas,the bulk of the cadres remained semiliterate peasants and the literati culture,they drew upon connections with the imperial state whose sole basis of legitimacy was their to anchor their influence in the native communities and among their kin; by virtue of their economic power derived from landholding and the social predicaments,the study tries to describe how they were recruited by the monopoly of edu cation,they also enjoyed the respect of the rural popu party-state to construct and manage collectives for agricultural production. lace.They served as the managers of corporate estates and patronized In doing so they not ony defined the relationship between the arty-state and the rural communities,and between the party and its cadres,but also communal rituals,the local culture that was at once part of and in ambigu- ous opposition to imperial authority.The state expected them to preach its ed themselves from poor peasant activists to powerful managers of local society. authority and depended on them for important administrative func- oca tyouht thcir prtiontncm As the history of Huancheng will show,when the peasants were in creasingly confined to cellular that social,economic and otherwise. and political existence,the The multlple bases of affiliation gave local elites room to maneuver.In cadres entrenched themselves further to be- come an important part of the rural machinery of the party.Conflicts fact,the imperial order was able to maintain a degree of cultural hegemony precisely because paradig between peasants and cadres intensified as early as the mid-1950s.when gm was not the exclusive prerogative of the bureaucracy.Instead.local elites actively sought their alternative channels of social and political mobility were cut by the politi cal ca mpaigns that accompa respective places within the hierarchy by maintaining a constant dialogue anied collectivization,the peasants grew very 9 the co with it.What existed in the Pearl River delta by the turn of the century was ctives were run-for on this their entire live- lihood depended.The cadres,however,were keener to conform to the Jtt iteratl-mediated political economy.Peasants accepted it and dictates of their party superiors,who had become an unchallenged source of authority. ate the delicate balance between autonomy and control in the traditional relationships between state and soclety makes it easy to overestimate what e to time peasants tried to influence the cadres by invoking their loyaies to kin and communty remains of this structure in the postrevolutionary period. If one argues that rural ecor omy and society in the Pearl River delta with the villagers to resist the demands of the state:they served as patrons to friends and relatives.However,there was liter to were cellularized by Maoist policies after the revolution,how would that Though cadres had becor process have changed the nature of political brokerage?Can one justiflably indispensable for policy implementation in the quate the functions of the local gentry with those of rural party cadres countryside,they came to dominate village life when the power of the especially if the bases of powe local society as well as the ns of party was at its height and its ideology most rigid.In fact,thelr ability to legitimation through the central authorities have changed substantially? grant political and economic favors depended to a great extent on how solidly they could link up with the accept the view of Shue (1985)that party cadres should not be seen as party organization.Their power over fellow villa "mechanical transmission belts ready and willing to convey decisions to gers thus ironically rested on their own political dependence Through the anxious maneuvers of these cadres,the party-state gained
10 Introduction Introduction 11 unprecedented organizational power over an increasingly cellularized for individual pilgrimages and life-cycle rituals ofbirthdays,weddings,and rural society.What then was the nature of rural leadership?Were local funerals.The state dominates the public realm of political and symbolic cadres political brokers or state agents?How did they represent state power discourse so effectively that ritual outlets seem to have been driven to the er,in communicating with their deities,the practitioners are aware of the fact that their acts are These questions address the issues raised by Franz Schurmann in his subjected to intervention by a powerful atheistic state.Believers In deities once classic study of ideology and organization in China(1968).Can one that could not save themselves in political purges must accept limitations claim,as Schurmann did,that the success of the Communist government on the powers of the objects of their worship in penetrating rural society was based on the functional similarity ybetween One therefo wonder whether popular rituals today are revivalsor the party cadres and the traditional Confucian gentry in their relationship new interpretations of tradition under the powerful influence of the Marx- to central authority?Or should one focus on the differences in the nature of ist state.I would argue that they are the latter.In the 1980s,I see the their brokerage,because the rise of the cadres has been at once the cause elaborate presence of the party-state making itself felt in social life through and consequence of a drastically changed ideological and social structure? individuals who have inte ed what state po ver means and what one needs to do to cope with it.The way popular rituals are"revived"today Cultural Tissues Reconstituted reminds one not so much of what has been retained,but of how much rural society has been transformed after the revolution. If we choose to think of villages as social cells,then the rich culture of rural A parallel situation can be found in economic activities.De spite effortsto China,much of it expr must be the tiss sue they tin thisalo one mav ask whether mutaion too last de ade,bureaucratic bottlenecks con- tinue to plague the reforms initiated by the party.It would be naive to the cells after 1949 or,conversely,if the practices introduced by the state expect entrenched interests associated with the socialist system to embrace were transplants,partly incorporated into the body politic and partly re. changes that undermine their political capital.It is equally unrealistic to peasants ethese were ways of communic tinitative from a pop that has participat ed same pro a hierarchy of super aformaion for the past thrce decadesand has ivn the natural power that interacted with the social institutions to which peasants existing power structure its compliance as well as its complicity.The re- belonged (Wolf 1974;Ahern 1981).If a delty falled,the believer seldom straintson independent entrepreneurial strategies are partly self-imposed faulted the authority system the deity symbolized.Appeals to deities ex- because every nomic a has in va taken the power pressed faith in the social order.Scholars may point to the revival of the party-state for grant d ions are formed and changed by popular beliefs and rituals and family enterprises in recent years and claim the interlocking,complementary as well as conflicting actions of human that the Marxist state did not manage to destroy traditional culture and agents faced with choices and dilemmas.The difficulty for the party-state society.However,a closer look at what is practiced and what meanings in disengaging itself from the economy and society in the 1980s sh draw from the rituals revealsi guing political implications how much Is power has be en perceived.fel accepted,and reproduced by It is true that popular rituals are observed today no less frequently than those who have both sustained it and been hurt by it.8 Today one can in earlier times,though many young practitioners cannot tell one deity recognize that the party leaders are liberalizing in earnest,but I would like to show from the experience of Huancheng Commune that the structures vidualistic,compe of domination are being continuousl rep and at on by inalvid als to produce new cultural forms.The problem Iwould like their stage in life,are now pursuing them with uncharacteristic fervor. to address is this:In the multifaceted political economy of the Huancheng My own fieldwork in the delta in the 1980s reveals that lineage rituals and area and its delta vicinity,how did a relationship between state and soci- community celebrations are closely scrutinized by the state authorities and ety,which once thrived on a delicate balance between subjectcedioseicaiv autonomy and supp The rituals stand in control,come to assume,in the course of this century,a weighty.colorless sharp contrast to the unusually extravagant practices at domestic altars and monotony that defies both Marxist and Weberian definitions?
12 Introduction Introduction 13 Human Agency and the Structuring of History economically calculating.politically shrewd,and culturally creative.Their sare shaped by self-interested readings of their past as much as To counter social science analyses that view Chinese rural society as a by events beyond their control.Both elites and peasants have acted out repository of a cultural tradition mechanically opposed to an extemal force their moral choices with determination and at times ambivalence.Their (that is,the state).I wish to emphasize in this study their interpenetration structures through time.To do so.i subscribe to the concept of "structuring"'in social which in turn have shape d their options for further action.In the process. new political cultures and economies have been made and shared.My account uses thelocal history ofsouth China to ustrate how the changing the same time that society is a product of human actions (Berger and macrostructures encompassing rural communities have affected them Luckman 1967).Instead of taking social groups and institutions as given through the maneuvers of loca and then explaining the processes that subsequently arise,I stress their Parallel to these changes and often reinforcing them are national ideological currents,in which both elites and continuous,mutual interaction.A related questioni volves how one con peasants have found themselves engulfed,but which they have been able ceptualizes soclal change without externalizing or reducing to a powerless to manipulate occasionally. social decor the structure of meaning that guides human actions (Geertz In sum,however diverse their r intelle ctual 19841. schoars of state agrarian soceties are keenly aware that theives of peas Cultural meaning,the fashioning of market calculations as well as of assand global ants and their elites are worlds apart but nonetheless interlocked in many ways.Particular social groups command the means to extract social sur exploitation.20 G.william Skinner makes a powerful attempt to analyze plus,and the political economy gives them the material basis fr Chinese history in terms of cycles of growth and decline in regional eco- nomic systems(1985a).Yet his understanding of these vital social units in over tho e dependent upon them.They construct dialogues houohcuarpertoire rural China is based on the calculations of cost-distance by economi The process turns their power into a system of authority and rights that maximizers in a given technological and administrative environment. carries some liabilites,requiring compliance as well as complicity from all Cultural strategies based on the histories of settlement,community-and concerned. lineage-building,and the changing local configurations of power are taken into ac arketing cells have been constructed Such a framework seems historical an- thropology.Social change must be seen as the working and reworking of In contrast,Chinese Marxist literature has indulged in explaining social culture and political economy through the creative,conscious actions of change in terms of class interests and their contradictions.The human human beings.Human behavior is neither actors remain one-dimensional.This conceptual scheme provides an- infinite varl ntirely programmed by an rule nor compelled by externalized political other formalist skeleton imposed on local history.In both cases,it is as if and economic forces.If it were,literature would have great difficulty in one were describ ng a forest yet losing sight of the trees and leaves that sustaining a sense of tragedy. give it shape and color. I begin this study by reconstructing a historical baseline for the As a background to my study of recent events,I intend to use the social ry of Huancheng Commune in the Pearl River delta to bring out Huancheng area in order to show how greatly it was transformed after the ions of the that have taken place in the Chine revolution.Next I focus on the consolidation of the post-revolutionary hag9 coun state and the emergence of a new bureaucratic structure.The creation of tryside during the last eighty years:namely,changes in rural social and the new political system involved the systematic"stripping do wof rura economic organizations:changes in the power relationships among the social institutions and of the cultural meanings associated with them. state,the various rural elites,and ordinary peasants:;and changes in the world of bygene multiple bases of authority and autonomy of the traditional rations of rural inhabitants,which ulti ewth the intrediary position of rural cadrsh mately crystallized in perceptions of power and authority.The three as- state agents than as political brokers. pects of this transformation intertwine to form a single but complex struc- eaaenaionaldrcowiectvtzaionprogramsofthe198Cspovol ovoked diverse turing process.At the center of the process are human agents who are reactions from the ion.In this context I will address the
14 Introduction question:To what extent can the party-state extricate itself from theecon CHAPTER 2 omy and more generally the society?Using a historical account Iexamin the cumulative sequence of interacting events that created and trans- Historical Geography formed the Huancheng area,and explore the paradox of state power,the In a limited way.I want to address myselfto the current debates among scholars of China about the nature of state-society relationships,and par- ticularly those concerning the delicate balance between local autonomy and central control in pre-and postrevolutionary China.By focusing on Had one visited the southwestern part of the Pearl River delta at the turn of the dilemr of political agents who century,one ve been mpressed with the visible signs of they had helped to create.my account raises a general question in the study weathoeerith theauntinndthesymbodefesfCouny of peasants.In complex agrarian societies where distinct hierarchies of and township gazetteers as well as genealogies compiled by lineages that power and ideological domination exist,to what extent have peasants settled in the vicinity of Huicheng (the county capital)and a larger city. Jiangmen,describe a varled landscape where arg villages clustered upon Rows of gray-brickhousessomewo were they inevitably drawn into these dramas to become part of their stories high were built with their backs toward the fields outside.Once the unfolding?What follows are the stories of some Chinese peasants in the narrow streets were closed off with gates and village guards posted at the watchtowers and entrances,the settlements became virtual fortresses Clustered at their center were belonging tovarious lineages which demonstrated common descent from a founding ancestor.These halls were expenslve to build.They had wide entrances with carved stone pillars:the high ceilings of the central and side halls were supported by hardwood heams in ted from n Indochina.The cur d str on the gave evidence of official on,and the elaborate rituals peri- odically performed symbolized social unity as well as differentiation.The halls and their rituals were financed by income from ancestral estates. some comprising many hectares of polders in the southe in the neig castem part of Xinhui Co ounty and poring Xiangshan County(known after 1925 as Zhongshan County).Rich and poor,members of these patrilineal descent groups were characteristically drawn together in south China by their shared historical past and their imposing territorial presence. Howev munitics were no xclusive. On the con- ythepandd durin prke days with the bustling activities of peasants,itinerant traders,wholesale and pam and gentry chies a ne or mo periodic markets and twenty-three daily markets in the county.Chaolian xiangzhi (township gazetteer)2 listed nine (1946,79-81).The rural com- munities were linked to one another and to Huicheng and Jiangmen by a