COMPTES RENDUS - AFEC

Comptes rendus
lights the continuities with the pre-1949 period, arguing that much of the
root cause of Red Guard violence during the Cultural Révolution can be
understood in thèse terms.
The final three chapters of Peasants Without the Party concentrate
more on the peasants interaction with the CCP, though more frorn the
perspective of the peasant. As already noted, Chapter 11 considers the rôle
of the peasantry during the War of Résistance to Japan, 1937-1945. This is
a masterful summary of the revisionist post-Cultural Révolution research
to the early 1990s that finally should set to rest once and for ail the notion
that peasants were 'revolutionary' at that time, and that poorer peasants
were somehow more revolutionary than others. Drawing on the research of
Chen Yung-fa, Gregor Benton, and the contributors to the collection edited
by Kathleen Goldstein and Steven Goldstein (Single Sparks) Bianco highlights
me reluctance of the peasantry to be involved in the CCP's révolution
rather than their willing participation. (Or even according to Ralph
Thaxton - in China Turned Rightside Up - the totally flawed argument
that the CCP was itself radicalised by the local peasantry of North China.)
More récent research by Odoric Wou (Mobilizing the Masses) Pauline
Keating (Two Révolutions) and others (many of whom hâve written in
Feng Chongyi's edited collection North China at War) does not substantially
alter this analysis, merely emphasising Bianco's point about the
centrality of the CCP to the revolutionary procès s.
In his considération of peasant résistance to the state after the Mao
dominated era of China's politics (Chapter 12 and Chapter 13) Bianco
returns to the mêmes that hâve already been encountered. The historical
continuities of rural violence are ail too clear, but so too is the rôle of
political authority in determining the shape and trajectory of peasant résistance.
In the reform era this has become an important argument to keep in
mind, for some académie commentators hâve once again turned to the
peasantry as agents of progressive social change. In his considération of
the analysis of both Daniel Kelliher (Peasant Power in China) and Kate
Zhou (How the Farmers Changea China), Bianco has avoided throwing
me baby out with the bathwater, but urges caution. The peasants may hâve
extended and even to some extent radicalised the reform process in rural
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