Abstract
We have pointed out in the previous analysis on China’s traditional contentious politics that group contention is not the norm in rural society, and the contention organizers and participants seldom represent the mainstream crowds of the peasant society. Vigor occurs in the form of contentious politics with local characteristics. In other words, the cultural traditions, ecological environments, and social structures in specific regions all affect vigor. Similarly, in contemporary rural China, though there are structural and local reasons for the formation of vigor, the final manifestation of vigor is a part of contentious politics that results from local factors. Of course, many of the local factors in the traditional society are basically non-existent now. For example, the secret societies of the past had completely disappeared by 1949. Though folk religions have experienced a great degree of revival since the 1980s, they do not posses the features of political contention. Though the large population flow is unprecedented, the long-term stability of the rural land system prevents migrants from becoming displaced persons. However, there are still some traditional factors that exist today, such as some region-specific material pressure, as suggested by Perry (1980). Of course, most of the local factors in question have emerged from the contemporary Chinese background.
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- 1.
We should note that there are already some grassroots organizations that are led by intellectuals from the lower class and involve environmental protection or rural construction. There is a large difference in the operation of the subaltern mobilization by outside intellectual elites with strong concepts and the voluntary mobilization by local interest victims. This book on grassroots mobilization and grassroots leaders mainly refers to the latter one.
- 2.
Yu (2007a) divided the rise of grassroots leaders into three categories: to defend the weak against the strong, to be motivated by drastic alternatives, or a combination of both. Indeed, the cases he analyzed cover few cases of the pure defense of the weak against the strong.
- 3.
Of course, transforming fundraising into investments, as Liangsheng Tian would, greatly increases the enthusiasm of the participating farmers’. Yet, this encouragement mechanism of rational investment is based on the coexistence of morality and justice.
- 4.
Some villages might elect leadership to the village committee after the group incidents, but this benefits the elite politics, as much as it benefits the farmers. The grassroots leaders are still farmers, and the village cadres are elected every 3 years.
- 5.
Bernstein and Lü (2003) classify grassroots leaders into three types: “trouble maker,” civil elite, and village cadres. Their analysis focuses on farmers’ anti-tax activities before the abolition of agricultural tax, while these activities included both farmers’ individual struggles and farmers’ group struggles. Therefore, their classification does not fully consider the special requirements for the grassroots leaders in the group contentious activities. Li and O’Brien (2008) divide grassroots leaders into two categories: one is the “public figures” from the beginning of the contentious activities that have always been interested in politics and have some organizational skills; the other is the normal farmers that are not interested in politics before the contentious activities. They become public figures due to their characteristics, experience (such as army experience), and education. Li and O’Brien’s classification gives us important inspirations and our classification is generally consistent with theirs. But ours has two differences than theirs. The first difference lies in the classification of characters. For example, we place veterans in the first class rather than the second class because the military is a big school and the army gives the soldiers strong political consciousness and awareness of rules. And therefore military training and comradeship allows the veterans to have relatively strong leadership and more social resources. Yu (2007a) also proves this idea. As another example, I did not include religious and clan leaders because though they are parts of the rural folk elites, either the revival of clan or the rise of folk religion is highly sensitive in Chinese society. These religious leaders or clan leaders seldom organize group conflicts directly, or they would be severely attacked for the sake of political heterogeneity. The second difference is that my analysis emphasizes the impact of life history on the complicated characteristics of the first type of grassroots leaders.
- 6.
Some people call the grassroots leaders, “fighting elites.” We should distinguish the meaning of “elite,” in regards to grassroots leaders. According to Pareto, who founded the modern elite theory, the real elite do not refer to the more talented people but those who directly or indirectly allocate and dominate people in politics. The meaning of elite relies on its domination of people. In other words, Pareto is concerned with the direct confrontation between the ruling elites and the powerless people (see Bottomore 1993). Another representative in the elite theory is Mosca (1896). Unlike Pareto, he stressed the diversity of social benefits represented by the elites and the close relationship between the elites and the people through sub-elites or the “new middle class.” Though the concept of “elite” employed by Mosca is a lot broader, he probably still finds it difficult to accept the concept of “peasant elite.” As a result, it makes the stratification of the elite concept, the division between the upper class and the lower class, rather ambiguous. Since the term “elite” has been used to refer to talented people in different classes and in different fields, we should not apply the arguments of “peasant elites” or “rural elites.” However, we should note that there is an important distinction between rural elites and general elites. There is high possibility for general elites to improve, while it is rather impossible for the rural elites to be promoted to general elites. Due to the rigid constraint of the registration system, and also due to the urban-rural division, the Chinese farmers are trapped in the lowest class of society, which has the strongest inheritance, lowest rate of flow, and least opportunity to improve. Therefore, “rural elites” are better defined as “farmers” than “elites.” To avoid confusion, we will not use “fighting elites” in this book but instead use “grassroots leaders,” “grassroots activists,” or “grassroots participants.”
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Ying, X. (2013). The Initial Release of Vigor and the Formation of Grassroots Leaders. In: A Study of the Stability of Contemporary Rural Chinese Society. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-36400-6_5
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