Battle for China's Past : Mao and the Cultural Revolution

THE BATTLE FOR CHINA’ S PAST
taged in China. Others I have mentioned include Li Changping, Yu
Jianrong and Cao Jingqing. But as early as 1968 an educated youth
from Beijing, Zhang Musheng, wrote a manuscript Zhongguo nongmin
wenti xuexi: guanyu Zhongguo zhidu de yanjiu (A study of Chinese rural
problems: a research study of the Chinese system), which questions the
Chinese government’s exploitation of the peasantry. The manuscript
was circulated widely in the form of mimeographs and handwritten
copies (Yang Jian 2002).
Finally, let me point out an insight of Wang Xiaotao (2004) to
conclude this chapter. Wang rejects Vivienne Shue’s (1988) thesis that
local rural officials are also rational actors defending the interest of the
local residents, Helen Siu’s (1989) argument that these officials are
loyal to the state, and Jean Oi’s (1989) argument that rural local officials
act both as agents of the state and as representatives of local interests.
Rather he argues that the conflict in rural China is no longer between
the state and farmers, but between farmers and local officials. It is the
state that has to face the dilemma of choosing between them. In other
words, the local officials do not represent farmers, nor are they agents
of the state. They have rapidly become a powerful class of their own.
Whether the state can mould them into state agents who are institutionally
accountable is a crucial question for the stable development of
rural China. The so-called grassroots democracy – village elections that
have been experimented and have been supported internationally, for
example by the Carter Foundation – has so far failed to achieve such an
outcome.
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