Juan Wang’s insightful review of Force and Contention in Contemporary China is most welcome and demonstrates a clear understanding of my project. Wang raises three important issues about the book related to the role of memory, resistance, and the relationship between the two.

First, Wang wonders whether inframemories—that is, memories held by individuals who suffered at the hands of the state—resonate with younger people who did not directly experience Mao-era traumas. She suggests that the larger social context plays an important role by preserving individual autographic memories, allowing them to take a collective form and thus mobilizing groups to resist power. My oral history fieldwork suggests that individual memories of younger villagers were formed independently of group memories and do not depend on the latter for their power or durability. However, shared group memories might, as Wang suggests, strengthen individual memories. Thus, future research should explore both the factors that facilitate this strengthening effect and the variability in the political consequences of such fusion. My limited evidence from interviews with young villagers showed that some were reluctant to believe that the Maoists were as monstrous as older villagers claimed. At the same time, these youths were appalled that their parents and grandparents had not put up a stronger fight against Mao’s cadres and insisted that they themselves would have thwarted Maoist cruelties with more potent resistance.

Next, Wang questions whether it was the Great Leap Forward per se or the later waves of Maoist political campaigns that turned villagers against one another and occasionally the regime itself. No doubt the later political campaigns mattered, but I focused on memories of the Great Leap to underscore an often overlooked point: the political methods of Communist Party cadres—their habitual lying, arbitrary rule, false accusations against opponents, blatant corruption, theft of private and state property for personal gain, cover-ups of officials’ crimes, gross violations of due process, and a deeply entrenched sense of entitlement that justified greed and grasping inside and outside of China—crystallized during the Great Leap Forward, and the features of this particular authoritarian work style remain a core aspect of this particular single-party regime’s relationship with society in many parts of rural China today.

Finally, Wang asks about the mediating role of village officials—why they sometimes follow the national government’s orders regardless of the consequences for local society and at other times sympathize with the needs and claims of villagers even if these are at odds with center policy directives. In my discussion of the post-Mao village party secretary who professed sympathy for the villagers, I note that he openly stated that his purpose was to serve the Communist Party first and rural society only second, even if the members of this society are his kin or neighbors. Thus, when the push of national policy collides with pushback from local social forces, he sides with the national Communist Party. Wang also poses the question of how this oscillation on the part of village officials affects villagers’ perceptions of the regime and its national policies. Many innovative and sophisticated political science studies have examined this relationship. My own fieldwork adds an interesting observation: although the villagers I interviewed in Hua Country, Henan Province, have access to People’s Daily (the “state newspaper” in the PRC), they seldom read it; instead, they use it to wrap freshly caught fish or even as toilet paper, silently expressing their gratitude that the state and its policy news are at least useful for something!