Huanyin Li provides a comprehensive and systematic study of rural life after the founding of PRC. Drawing on villagers' oral narratives and scarce village-level materials such as account books, records of meetings, village cadre notebooks and official documents from Qin village in Dongtai municipality, Jiangsu province, Li traces the history of the village, and rural China more generally, from 1948 to 2008. The book is refreshing in its theoretical perspective, compelling in its arguments and meticulous in the extensive details it presents of peasants' lives and production in rural China.
Besides the introduction and conclusion, the book has four parts, organized chronologically. The first three address village life under socialism, recounting in rich detail villagers' involvement in agricultural collectivization, participation in collective production and responses to waves of political campaigns and policy shifts. Part four deals with agricultural de-collectivization and rural development during the post-socialist period after 1979. The author examines the relationship between state and village, grassroots cadres and ordinary villagers, and the problem of economic incentives and farming efficiency under the collective system, as well as new developments during the reform era. Thus, the book illuminates the complexity and diversity of motivations of Chinese villagers within different institutional settings, and highlights the importance of villagers' actions in production and policy-making processes. According to Li, the efficiency of team production in China was not as low as is widely believed. The shared interests of team cadres and ordinary members in the collective allowed them to maintain the necessary level of production in collective farming. Villagers in post-1949 China played a key role in shaping the state's agrarian policies through their righteous resistance. This resistance was justified by peasants as “rightful activities” to secure their livelihood, making use of language from official media and the means allowed by the government. In response to such resistance, the state changed its strategy from antagonism to conciliation in handling villagers during the socialist period.
Compared with other research on rural China, a refreshing feature of this book is its detailed analysis of peasants' behaviour in one village over a long period of time. The abundance of village-level documents (accountant books, meeting records and cadre notebooks), local government archives and interviews enrich the study. Another important contribution is the author's emphasis on informal and often invisible institutions such as social relations, customs, work norms, collective consciousness and identities. Based on Qin village, Li underlines the importance of such informal institutions in shaping the relationship between villagers and grassroots cadres and in maintaining farming efficiency under the collective system. What is also unique is the book's perspective on the history of PRC. Rather than accentuating the contrasts in rural economic conditions and sociopolitical relations between the two periods of socialism and post-socialism, Li emphasizes the continuity of the rural economy during these two periods and points out the impact of collectivization on the rapid economic growth in post-socialist era.
Despite its contributions, several questions arise from the book. First, even though the author builds the case mainly on Qin Village, through incorporating information from other villages and sometimes engaging in explicit comparative study, he consistently attempts to extend his conclusion to rural China as a whole. Considering the huge discrepancies between regions, it is questionable that the conclusion reached from one village can be applied to the whole nation. Second, the conclusion that “villagers played a key role in shaping the state's agrarian policies” is also debatable. The peasants did not voluntarily take part in the collectivization of agriculture, especially the transfer from “advanced cooperatives” to “people's commune” which was imposed by the government. The peasants' “defiance” between 1955 to 1957 made the government adjust its policies to some degree, but did not stop the successive waves of collectivization, such as the Great Leap Forward, the Socialist Education movement and the “Learn from Dazhai” campaign. In the context of a planned economy, agricultural production was under the control of government; crop choices were not based on the needs of peasants, the production team or even the commune, but on the government's plan. Under the policy of “state's unitary procurement and sales,” peasants had no way to sell their products on the market. The government bought low-price agricultural products monopolistically and generated extra profits by raising the prices of industrial products, thus ensuring the demand for funds in developing heavy industry as a top priority. From the micro-perspective, the author points out that peasants could act righteously and rightfully to oppose the local government and the wrongdoings of grassroots cadres, but it is overstating the case to claim that the peasants had a key policy-shaping role. Third, the author defines the two halves of new China's history from 1948 to 2008 as socialism and reform, which is also debatable. On the one hand, according to the Chinese government, China became a socialist country in 1956, not in the year of the founding of People's Republic China in 1949. On the other hand, using two standards of socialism and reform to define one period of history is confusing.
Overall, Village China under Socialism and Reform is the most systematic and rigorous study of rural China to date, contributing significantly to the micro-history of rural China, collectivization of agriculture, economy and politics under collectives and post-Socialist China.
