Abstract
Official corruption by Communist Party officials and crackdown on cadre corruption has since been an enduring theme of Chinese politics. Wan’s father was caught in this net, and his long term in prison became a painful trial for Wan and her mother. This experience led to their disillusionment with the official ideology. Kinship connections with diaspora Chinese are significant for Wan’s conversion to the Protestant faith. The spiritual lives of her aunt and grandmother became positive examples for her own soul search. Wan ended this story with a sober sense of impending crisis for her generation—ample economic opportunities in the midst of a shifting international political climate may also lead to undesirable changes in the loss of such opportunities.
(Narration by Wan, age thirty five, forest certification specialist)
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Notes
- 1.
From 1947 to early 1950s, communist mobilizers had a violent campaign against the landlord class, accusing them of having oppressed the peasants in rural China. Massive numbers of landlords were executed.
- 2.
See note 14 in the Introduction chapter.
- 3.
This term refers to a job with steady income, benefits, and guaranteed security. In China, such jobs usually include working in state-owned enterprises, military, or the system of civil service.
- 4.
Since early 2018, China and the United States have been engaged in a trade war which shifted the Sino-US relationship into greater uncertainty. Afterward, anti-foreign sentiments arose on China’s state-controlled media.
- 5.
Guoping Jiang, Corruption Control in Post-Reform China: A Social Censure Perspective (New York: Springer Publishing, 2017).
- 6.
MaCabe Keliher and Hsinchao Wu, “How to Discipline 90 Million People,” The Atlantic, April 7, 2015. https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/04/xi-jinping-china-corruption-political-culture/389787/
- 7.
Ruili Huang and Li Yuan, “China Censors Bad Economic News Amid Signs of Slower Growth,” New York Times, September 29, 2018. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/28/business/china-censor-economic-news.html?_ga=2.183795808.798359596.1558545788-869220837.1430796594 Nectar Gan, “The complex reality of China’s social credit system: hi-tech dystopian plot or low key incentive scheme?” South China Morning Post, February 7, 2019. https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/2185303/hi-tech-dystopia-or-low-key-incentive-scheme-complex-reality
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Ma, L. (2019). Lost Sheep. In: Christianity, Femininity and Social Change in Contemporary China. Palgrave Studies in Oral History. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31802-4_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31802-4_3
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