Rural China has been the subject of intense study by Chinese and non-Chinese scholars for several decades. While some examine rural China as a whole, others investigate rural China by focusing on a single village. Studies in the latter category include Chinese Village, Socialist State (1993) by Edward Friedman, Paul Pickowicz, Mark Selden and Kay Ann Johnson; Revolution, Resistance, and Reform in Village China (2005) by Edward Friedman, Paul Pickowicz, and Mark Selden; and Chen Village: Revolution to Globalization (2009) by Anita Chan, Richard Madsen, and Jonathan Unger.Footnote ¹ Like these studies, A Century of Change in a Chinese Village explores changes in a single village, Lengshuigou, which is located in the suburbs of Jinan—the provincial capital of Shandong province. This study is the outcome of a large research project designed and supervised by Lin Juren, professor of sociology at Shandong University, with the collaboration of Yang Shanmin and Xie Yuxi of the sociology department. This study is also distinct in that it covers a much longer period (from the 1940s to the 2010s) and is based on extensive historical studies and contemporary interviews. Moreover, Lengshuigou is the site where Japanese researchers conducted extensive interviews with villagers during the early 1940s, which resulted in the publication of a six-volume survey entitled Chūgoku nōson kankō chōsa (Survey of Chinese Village Customs). As the authors point out, this survey served as the core material for Ramon Myers's analysis of agricultural development (1970), Philip C.C. Huang's examination of social change (1985), and Prasenjit Dura's investigation of state power and village organization (1988).Footnote ² It is worth noting that A Century of Change in a Chinese Village was first published, in Chinese, in 2013.

The authors seek to “analyze comprehensively and systematically the history and development of Lengshuigou over the last century” (xxxix), by focusing on politics and elites, lineage and family relations, social structure and social life, cultural traditions and cultural values, social relations and social networks, and economic structure and development. To achieve their objectives, the authors adopt a diachronic approach, with parallel descriptions and analysis of each of these subjects during four time periods: the early 1940s; the three decades from 1949 to 1978; the early reform period from 1978 to the 1990s; and the late reform period from the late 1990s to 2010.

After presenting background information in Chapter 1, the authors describe changes in village politics and village elites in Chapter 2. In their view, Lengshuigou had enjoyed relative autonomy with local gentry managing village affairs. Beginning in the last decade of the Qing dynasty, the state initiated efforts to formalize the practice of local governance. Later, the Guomindang (GMD) regime strengthened these efforts with limited success. It was not until after 1949 that the new communist regime succeeded in extending the reach of the state to local society at the village level. The land reform in the 1950s and subsequent political campaigns radically changed the structure of village power, leading to the replacement of traditional gentry by peasant cadre as village leaders. After the Cultural Revolution ended, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) introduced new policies, including a “household responsibility system,” which brought an end to collective land cultivation and the revival of household-based production. Eventually, as class status ceased to be a condition for office-holding, and as the village economy became increasingly market-oriented, a new diversified village elite based on political, economic, cultural, and social qualifications emerged, even though the CCP party branch continued to dominate village politics.

In Chapter 3, the authors turn their attention to lineage and family relationships. They argue that wars and conflict, the Chinese Revolution and various political campaigns after 1949, and reform policies in recent decades have had a major impact on the lineage and family. Before 1949, lineage played a stabilizing role, helping to integrate the village while providing support for families and individuals. Beginning with land reform in the early 1950s, lineage came under attack as the new state created an institutional framework in which loyalty of families and individuals was transferred to the collective and to the state. The loss of lineage land during land reform took away the economic foundation for lineage activities, and subsequent political campaigns attacked the hierarchical and particularistic principles of lineage leadership, replacing it with new forms based on class. The attack on kinship-based relationships reached its highest point during the Cultural Revolution, when the lineage system suffered a lethal blow. It was not until after the introduction of Reform and Opening Up Policies in the late 1970s that lineage began to experience revival—only to be weakened again as a result of the expansion of market-oriented economy in recent decades. Over time, acquired status came to play a more important role than ascribed status, giving villagers new possibilities for improving their lives. So far as changes in family structure is concerned, the once-dominant, large extended family structure declined and was eventually replaced by the nuclear family.

Social structure and social life are the subjects of Chapter 4. From the authors’ perspective, Lengshuigou did not have sharp class distinctions before 1949, for the village consisted mostly of poor and middle peasants. Although a few villagers engaged in handcrafts, mental labor, or managerial work, the number of people in these occupations was small. Beginning with land reform and continuing through collectivization and the establishment of the people's communes, the reorganization of rural society after 1949 radically transformed traditional class and status systems. Under the CCP regime, political factors and expressions of ideological commitment came to play a central role in determining an individual's status. For several decades, villagers were classified not only into categories such as cadres and commune members but also into categories such as landlords and rich peasants who enjoyed few rights and opportunities. More generally, villagers had no opportunity for geographical mobility due to restrictions created by the household registration system. In the decades after 1978, the system of assigned statuses was dismantled and the various labels used to classify villages were removed. Gradually, a new system of stratification based on occupation emerged, leading to the division of village dwellers into agricultural laborers, rural workers, hired laborers, rural intellectuals, independent laborers, private entrepreneurs, rural enterprise managers, and rural administrators. In comparison with earlier eras, there was greater social mobility, with the market playing an important role in fostering this. There was also a dramatic improvement of living standards and quality of life, with many households having or having access to Western or Western-inspired products such as air-conditioners, color TVs, refrigerators, cell phones, computers, and the Internet.

Cultural tradition constitutes the theme for Chapter 5. The part of Shandong where Lengshuigou is located belonged to the state of Lu, which was the home of Confucius and Mencius. It is little wonder, then, that Confucianism exerted a pervasive influence in that part of Shandong for many centuries. Confucianism came under attack during the May Fourth Campaign in 1919 and after the Chinese Revolution of 1949. For several decades after 1949, Communist ideology, including Mao Zedong Thought, replaced Confucianism as the dominant and even exclusive ideology of the new party-state. Through repeated political campaigns, especially those launched during the Cultural Revolution, the CCP sought to remold the mental model of villagers by attacking the “four olds”—old ideas, old customs, old culture, and old habits. After the Cultural Revolution ended, the CCP shifted its attention to the country's modernization, urbanization, and integration into the global economy. Over time, the implementation of these policies not only radically altered rural social structure but also contributed to a loosening of the bonds of earlier cultural norms. Rural culture became diversified, with new attitudes toward work, filial responsibilities, and so forth. As part of this shift, the elder generations, who had long been the chief transmitters of cultural practices and norms, were displaced as voices of authority, and younger generations increasingly took the lead.

Social relationships and network structures, which is the focus of Chapter 6, also changed over the same period. During the first half of the twentieth century, social relations were based on kinship and locality, and they were shaped by an extreme form of particularism, which constrained individuals from birth in consanguineous, ethnical, and social networks. After 1949, agricultural collectivization and the establishment of the communes led to the creation of a new form of social relations in which members of rural society were incorporated into a bureaucratic hierarchy consisting of the commune, brigade, and work team. For more than two decades, the work-team-defined relationships coexisted with the more traditional relationships defined by kinship and locality. With the implementation of the Reform and Opening Up Policies since the late 1970s, state power gradually retreated in the countryside, and market principles and mechanisms penetrated many areas of rural life, causing significant modification of traditional social relations and social networks. While relationships based on kinship continued to hold a central position in the villagers’ networks, they declined in importance. By contrast, relationships with people who were not related rose in importance. Finally, membership in social networks has become much more diverse in recent decades.

The last substantive chapter, Chapter 7, deals with economic structure and development. At the beginning of those seven decades, Lengshuigou was a farming community characterized by subsistence agriculture where the prevailing system of landownership was private ownership. Most peasant households lived in a self-sufficient economic world where production of grain and handicrafts was primarily for family consumption. In addition, state policies, market mechanisms, or links with the urban economy had relatively little impact on households’ decisions on how to allocate land, labor, and capital. Later, agricultural collectivization resulted in the abolition of private landownership and the establishment of state landownership. Correspondingly, local state authority took over the responsibility of allocating land, labor, and capital as well as subjecting villagers to effective state control. After the Cultural Revolution ended, the state began to loosen its control over the rural economy and adopted the household responsibility system. Lengshuigou began implementing this system in 1983, which contributed to an increase in household production, greater household autonomy in the allocation of labor, land, and capital, the cultivation of commercial crops, further involvement in the market, and the transfer of land from agricultural use to industrial use. Recent years have brought even greater change to the once-farming community.

Written from a multidisciplinary perspective and using extensive primary and secondary sources, this study makes a valuable contribution to the study of rural China because of the insight it provides into the process and dynamics of change in Lengshuigou and, by extension, in rural China. The work's value is partly due to its incorporation of unpublished primary sources drawn from the large research project designed and supervised by the authors, and of published primary sources gathered by foreign and Chinese researchers in their repeated visits to Lengshuigou over many decades. It points to the necessity to explore the changes that occur over a longer temporal span and to examine the breakdown, emergence, growth, modification, replacement, and transformation of the connective tissues that constitute the cultural and institutional fabric of society, so that we can better understand the nature and dynamics of change. It is essential reading for anyone interested in studying social change in general and social change in China in particular. At the same time, the authors’ work raises important questions about the pattern of change and contributes to the Great Divergence debate. What does the case study of Lengshuigou reveal about the nature and character of change? How does this case study help us understand the issue of divergence and convergence in Eurasian civilizations and rural China's distinct pattern of evolution in Eurasian historical context?

In creating knowledge about the past and present, scholars recognize two basic patterns of change. One pattern is characterized by radical, revolutionary, and transformative change; the other is distinguished by gradual, evolutionary, and incremental change.Footnote ³ More recently, this reviewer has introduced a third pattern of change, which is defined by the simultaneous occurrence of radical, revolutionary, and transformative change and gradual, evolutionary, and incremental change during a given period of time.Footnote ⁴ This reviewer also extended his analysis of the Chinese Revolution in regional economic institutions to his study of China's public economy during the twentieth century and beyond, arguing that ideological, institutional, and organizational changes throughout the decades from 1928 to 2008 were closely linked and characterized by both transformation and evolution.Footnote ⁵

In the current important study, the authors show that the Chinese Revolution resulted in radical, revolutionary, and transformative changes in Lengshuigou. Although the GMD regime strengthened the late Qing effort to formalize local governance, and endeavored to extend the reach of the state to local society in rural China, it was the Chinese Revolution that gave rise to a more centralized and bureaucratic party-state, which was dedicated to the destruction of the institution of private property and the social structure based on private property rights, and to the establishment of a communist utopia based in effect on state ownership of land and other resources. For more than three decades, the CCP regime subjected all factors of production—land, labor, and capital—to state control. The CCP regime also bound peasants to the land through its household registration system. It was not until after 1978 that the CCP regime gradually loosened its control over factors of production by implementing the household responsibility system.

The authors also succeed in demonstrating the transformation of the farming community, where families made their own economic decisions in a system shaped by the market economy in the decades after breakup of the communes in 1984 due to the development of rural industry and urbanization. At the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century, in most families one member worked in non-agricultural activities and most families earned most of their income from non-farm work. And modernization of communications and transportation linked the village to the outside world. Lengshuigou also featured a large dairy farm, industrial parks, apartment complexes, and service industries. On the other hand, the authors recognize the gradual, evolutionary, and incremental nature of change. Although the government implemented the household responsibility system, land was still owned by the central and local state. Although the government refrained from exercising direct control of labor, villagers still faced serious obstacles in achieving upward mobility, due to the continued enforcement of institutional arrangements made during earlier decades, including the household registration system, employment system, personnel system, and social security system. Although the party-state no longer subjected villagers to strict ideological and behavioral control, the CCP continued to make policies that define and confine rural change as well as implement policies through village party branches.

Finally, this study has important implications for understanding the issue of divergence and convergence in Eurasian civilizations and for understanding rural China's distinct pattern of evolution in the Eurasian historical context. In recent years, as scholars have expanded their intellectual reach to include comparison between political economies of Western Europe and East Asia, they have discovered similarities and differences between the two ends of Eurasia and have developed different interpretations concerning the issue of divergence. For example, R. Bin Wong suggested that the two ends of Eurasia were economically similar. For Wong, important Smithian dynamics (productivity gains result from division of labor and specialization) of expansion were shared by both early modern Europe and late imperial China. A sharp economic divergence did not emerge until after the Industrial Revolution.Footnote ⁶ Kenneth Pomeranz, another scholar of the so-called California School, concurs. He argues that a series of comparisons show surprising similarities in agricultural, commercial, and proto-industrial development among various parts of Eurasia as late as 1750. For Pomeranz, given the very similar processes of commercialization and proto-industrial growth occurring in various core areas in Asia, the “great divergence” has to be explained by factors external to Europe, including New World resources.Footnote ⁷ As late as 2011, Jean-Laurent Rosenthal and R. Bin Wong still contends that China and Europe were probably more alike economically than their institutions or cultures would suggest.Footnote ⁸

Other scholars take issue with these interpretations. Philip C.C. Huang, for example, argues that, in contrast to the English agricultural regime of mixed cropping with animal husbandry, China's Yangzi delta was virtually a crops-only economy. And, in further contrast to the growing capitalization of eighteenth-century English agriculture, the Yangzi delta was moving in the opposite direction of ever-greater labor intensification. For Huang, the result was diminishing marginal returns to labor of what he called involution.Footnote ⁹ Robert Brenner and Christopher Isett also disagrees with the arguments advanced by scholars belonging to the California School. In their view, from the dawn of the early modern period, the institutional framework or system of social-property relations that structured the English economy was radically different from that of the Yangzi delta during the Qing (1644–1912). As a consequence, the main economic agents in England and the Yangzi delta faced sharply differing constraints and opportunities and therefore found that it made sense to adopt very different economic strategies. In the Yangzi delta, both of the main economic agents—peasants and landlords—possessed direct, non-market access to the means of their economic reproduction. As a result, they were under no compulsion to buy necessary inputs on the market, could therefore avoid dependence upon the market, and were thus freed from the necessity to enter into competitive production to survive. Thus shielded from the pressure of competition, they were enabled to allocate their resources so as to pursue goals that were in their own interest but that were nonetheless non-economic in the strict sense of maximizing the gains from trade. In England, by contrast, economic agents of the sort found in the Yangzi delta, such as possessing peasants, had been largely eliminated. Thus, the main economic agents throughout the economy were separated from their full means of economic reproduction, specifically the land. They were therefore dependent on the market for key inputs, obliged for that reason to produce competitively in order to survive, and thus compelled to adopt a profit-maximizing approach to their microeconomic decisions concerning the allocation of their resources, especially the land. Brenner and Isett concluded that the aggregate outcome was that England's path of economic evolution diverged decisively from that of the Yangzi delta over the course of the early modern period (1500–1750). It was this already existing decisive divergence, not England's capacity to gain access to the American colonies, that explains why the two economies distanced themselves ever increasingly from the middle of the eighteenth century.Footnote ¹⁰

Although the authors of this study do not directly address the above-mentioned issues, and although North China in the twentieth century was different from Yangzi delta during the eighteenth century, the evidence introduced by the authors of this study lends strong support to the argument advanced by Philip Huang and Robert Brenner and Christopher Isett, suggesting that England and North China were centuries apart in social, economic, and institutional development. Several centuries after the transformation of English agrarian economy into a capitalist economy characterized by security of private property rights and market dependence, North China continued to have a non-capitalist agrarian economy distinguished by self-sufficiency and market-independence.Footnote ¹¹ Although private landownership prevailed or is assumed to have prevailed in China before 1949, rights to landed property in China may have been deeply and perhaps inherently insecure, as it was abolished and replaced with a system of state landownership within a few years after the establishment of the CCP regime. To put it differently, England and North China, and by extension all of China, have followed radically different and divergent paths of development for centuries, a fact that makes it difficult to accept the argument in favor of identifying the Industrial Revolution as the beginning of a great divergence. Furthermore, the different trajectories of social, economic, and institutional development between the two ends of Eurasia over many centuries make it difficult to imagine anything like full convergence of English and Chinese patterns of rural change in the foreseeable future. Partial convergence between English and Chinese patterns of rural change, if it exists at all, did not even begin to occur until the last decade of the twentieth century, when the Chinese government declared its intention to establish a socialist market economy. What A Century of Change in a Chinese Village does reveal is the gradual emergence in recent decades, in the context of accelerated economic globalization, of a distinct new pattern of rural change with Chinese characteristics, a pattern that is defined by modification and transformation of existing culture, practices, and institutions, the restoration and rejuvenation of elements of centuries-old culture, practices, and institutions, and the extensive use of Western or Western-inspired technology in daily life.