“While the CCP had little presence in Hunan, peasants nonetheless staged a spontaneous and radical agrarian revolution. In Jiangxi, although the CCP directly created a revolutionary situation, peasants there remained passive and conservative,” writes Baohui Zhang in his new book (p. 35). And yet, socioeconomic conditions and broad political situation were strikingly similar in the two provinces during the disturbed decade reviewed. To resolve that “puzzle,” Zhang Baohui has rejected classical theories of agrarian revolution (outlined on pp. 35–52). He first argues against the Marxist class exploitation thesis: if poverty and exploitation breed peasant revolutions, how can it be that peasants' reactions were so different in Jiangxi and in Hunan, when the level of exploitation was similarly high in both provinces? He then criticizes James Scott's moral economy approach: the precapitalist rural economy of Jiangxi and Hunan had been weakened long before the imperialist aggression of the 19th century, and in any case the subsistence ethic system of traditional peasant society had not been a closed system. Zhang also questions Samuel Popkin's rational choice theory: if peasants weighed up the pros and cons – on one side the selective benefits they could receive from the revolution and, on the other, the risks attached to joining it – they responded differently in Hunan and in Jiangxi, although the advantages and privileges offered by the CCP to its followers were similar. As for structural theories, the author's objection arises from the contrast between passive, conservative peasants in Jiangxi and from insurgent peasants in Hunan, facing equally high tenancy rates and rent rates.

In chapter six, Zhang proposes his own approach to solving this puzzle: the fact is that different communal organizational principles have different legitimacy among peasants, and agrarian revolutions can be explained as an attempted effort at organizational change. For the Jiangxi peasants, patrilineally organized communities were legitimate. In Hunan, peasant communities had been organized during the Taiping rebellion around an elaborate system of militias (tuanlian). But the gentry landed class later developed the tuanlian into an oppressive class institution, so it was no longer legitimate. This explanation is supported by recent and valid Chinese sources, such as the Hunan lishi ziliao (Historical Materials of Hunan; Changsha, Hunan renmin chubanshe, 1979–1981); Zhongyang geming genjudi shiliao xuanbian (Selected Historical Materials on the Central Revolutionary Base Area; Nanchang, Jiangxi renmin chubanshe, 1982); and Zhonggong zhongyang wenjian xuanji (Selected Documents of the CCP Central Committee, vols. 2, 3 and 5; Beijing, CCP Central Party School Press, 1989, 1990).

Zhang Baohui's bright and stimulating book is unconvincing for three reasons. First, its geographical base is too narrow. For instance, Kathryn Bernhardt's illuminating book Rents, Taxes and Peasant Resistance: The Lower Yangzi Region 1840–1950 (Stanford University Press, 1992) follows a structural approach which Zhang criticizes. It should have been quoted and eventually criticized, yet it does not even appear in the 18-page bibliography. My second criticism concerns Zhang's analysis of revolutionary events in his two chosen geographical bases. In Hunan, Zhang quotes the famous “Investigation report on the peasant movements in Hunan” by Mao Zedong as proof of the peasant militancy, but ignores Roy Hofheinz's critical remarks laid out in his Broken Wave: The Chinese Communist Peasant Movement 1922–1928 (Harvard University Press, 1977). Hofheinz shows clearly that Mao's report was too optimistic on the revolutionary strength of Hunanese peasantry, limited to the Xiang Valley and stimulated and often created by the arrival of the National Revolutionary Army. As to the demonstration of the conservative stand of peasants in Jiangxi and of the weak impact of communist activism there, it must be noted that all the documents were written during an ultra-Leftist period in the history of the CCP. Above all – my third and final criticism – Zhang surprisingly omits mention of Lucien Bianco's Peasants without the Party: Grass-roots Movements in Twentieth-Century China (M.E. Sharpe, 2001) and his Jacqueries et révolution dans la Chine du XXe siècle (La Martinière, 2005). Using hundreds of case studies in the whole of China, Bianco described the feeble class consciousness and the defensive, conservative character of peasant activities and also the extraordinary facility of the CCP for adapting and exploiting social tensions during the next decade, to make a revolution which was not a peasant revolution but a revolution made with peasants as building material. Those conclusions are different from Zhang Baohui's and should have been analysed or criticized, but not ignored.