Social change and radical currentsin republican China, 1912–49

Abstract

The spring 1989 antigovernment demonstrations and the June Fourth Massacre at Tiananmen Square require that most scholars rethink their conceptions of Chinese political culture and the Chinese revolution. Did the rise to power of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) at the head of a social revolution give it legitimacy? What does it take to maintain that legitimacy? What are the roots of the state created since 1949? Decollectivization and economic reforms since 1976 may have won the CCP further support. Yet to what extent, at least in rural areas, have “local bullies,” with or without implicit state backing, returned? Is the state increasingly dependent on coercion? How rationalized are the lower echelons of the bureaucracy? These problems became manifest early in the twentieth century.

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Notes on contributors

Peter Zarrow

The author would like to thank Mark Selden, Diane Scherer, and Marilyn Levine for their careful and critical readings of an earlier draft of this review.