Village Politics

Abstract

During the 1970s, there was a growing conviction that ‘too large a dose of socialism had been imposed upon too backward a countryside’ (Chan, Madsen and Unger 1992: p. 270) and that rational, self-interested, farmers could do a great deal better for themselves and the food supply if they were left to their own devices. Communes were abolished; agriculture was decollectivised; and the egalitarian but incentive-sapping system of work-points and the collective distribution of income was replaced by the near-universal adoption of the ‘household responsibility system’.

My understanding of village politics has been facilitated as a result of research in three county towns and eight Fujian villages in July 1992, and attendance at a conference convened by the Ministry of Civil Affairs that brought together Chinese officials and foreign scholars with an interest in the implementation of the Organic Law of Villagers’ Committees. I should like to thank the Ministry and the Ford Foundation for enabling me to take part in this research, and I acknowledge the help I received from Wang Zhenyao, Bai Guangzhao, Jonathan Hecht, Tyrene White, and Kevin O’Brien.