Abstract Agriculture has been the cornerstone of China’s economy since imperial times. Oxen, therefore, were primarily classified as working companions rather than food, granting them a unique role and status in China’s ecological and moral systems. This article examines how conceptual and technological changes influenced people’s centuries-old symbiotic relationship with oxen and blurred the ethical boundaries between what is considered edible and inedible in modern China. By analyzing the manipulation of the “oxen protection” discourse during the Republican period in relation to the power dynamics between competing interest groups, this article traces the trajectory of Republican government policies – from contrasting “oxen” with “non-oxen” and “protected cattle” with “non-protected cattle” to ultimately adopting the term “beef cattle” in 1933. At the discursive level, the Republican governments reiterated their responsibility to protect oxen so as to safeguard the country’s agricultural development and the livelihoods of peasants. However, the intention behind these policies was to justify and capitalize on the beef economy, revealing how the government had become increasingly alienated from the interests of the peasants.

Abstract This article examines how PRC judges ruled on inheritance disputes during the Mao period (1949–1976). In fact, China not only rejected a draft succession law in 1956, it also did not promulgate any law governing succession until 1985. In part, this has contributed to the conventional characterization of China in the Mao period as a “lawless society” dominated by radical Maoist and Marxist ideologies. By using newly available archival documents and internal publications of local courts and legal cadres, this article reveals that PRC judges rejected the codification of law because the legal principles stipulated in the 1956 draft succession law could not be applied to the complex social reality of rural China at the time. Therefore, court rulings became products of the long-standing efforts of judges to reconcile the principles of justice inherent in the 1956 draft succession law and complex social realities in order to deliver judgments that all litigants could accept as fair. This article highlights how such efforts finally led to a codified law of succession in 1985. Hence, the Succession Law of 1985 was not a departure from the previous “lawless” Mao era, but the completion of PRC judges’ long process of amending the “incomplete” 1956 draft.

Abstract Against the background context of the First United Front between the Chinese Communist Party and the Guomindang, the main significance of Mao Zedong’s “Report on the Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan” was to affirm the place of mass movements in the countryside, which was a clearly different position from that of the leadership of the United Front. It was also different from the emphasis on cities of the Communist Party led at the time by Chen Duxiu. In the several years following, the core problem in Mao Zedong’s search for a strategy for rural social revolution was how at the same time to trigger the activism of the poor peasants and gain the support of the middle peasants. Mobilizing middle peasants would come to be the foundation of how he came to view mass movements. Over the long term, with the rise of Mao Zedong, mass movements would become the central theme of the revolution. The “mass line” of “from the masses, to the masses” would profoundly shape the Chinese Communist Party’s mode of organization and of epistemology.

Abstract The adjustment of class status, as a key component of correcting excesses in land reform, holds a significant position in the history of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) land reform movement. During a critical period that would determine the fate of China, the ability to correctly revise class designations and unite the broadest segments of the population had a direct impact on the overall success of land reform and the future of the CCP’s revolution. From the end of 1947 to the first half of 1948, the Central Committee of the CCP and various liberated areas made substantial efforts to address this issue. Among them, Guo County in the Jin-Sui Border Region, through a process of ideological mobilization followed by the division of land and issuance of land certificates, conducted a thorough review of class statuses. This process corrected errors in the previous class categorization and ensured appropriate restitution of benefits, ultimately receiving full approval from Mao Zedong, the highest leader of the CCP. In fact, it was through the successful implementation of the “Guo County Experience” that the CCP curbed the leftist tendencies that had emerged during the land reform process and strengthened the state’s effective control over the society at the rural grassroots level.

Abstract This article analyses Wang Ruqi’s 王汝琪 (1912–1990) contribution to the drafting of the 1950 Marriage Law, the first codified law promulgated by the People’s Republic of China (PRC). It argues that Wang–who had been a legal specialist and a female political activist dating back to the 1930s and 1940s–was the actual author of the law’s first draft. In rehabilitating Wang’s long-forgotten contribution to the making of the Marriage Law, this study highlights that, first of all, lawmaking in the early years of the PRC was characterized by legal “professionalism,” rather than the “vernacularism” that scholars in recent years have tended to ascribe to this period. Second, Wang was an exemplary figure of a new breed of “state feminists” in the PRC, which we term “state-legal feminists.” State-legal feminists, like state feminists in general, were brought into the PRC state apparatus and took advantage of their role in the state to advance sociopolitical agendas. However, they differed from their fellow state feminists because they firmly believed that the state’s will and intent could be best articulated and exercised through codified laws and legal institutions. The making of the Marriage Law thus exemplifies the state-legal feminist approach insofar as it resorted to a codified law to push for the political agendas of women’s emancipation and restructuring families in China. While recent scholarship highlights the politicization of the law in the 1953 campaign to promote the Marriage Law, this study inverts this by addressing the legalization of political and social movements.

Abstract Contrary to the existing academic consensus that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) shifted from strict purges to more lenient “education” in response to paralysis and other negative impacts on its cadre force during the land reform and party rectification, this paper posits that the process of addressing the pessimism, negativity, and work-shirking of cadres was not as simple as “education,” but rather a relatively difficult journey, with historical realities proving to be far richer and more complex. In face of the severe problem of cadre work-shirking during land reform and party rectification, the CCP gradually formed a clear understanding of the situation. While acknowledging mistakes, clarifying responsibilities, and striving to win back the cadres, the party also endeavored to eliminate ideological confusion, delineate right from wrong, and deal decisively with opportunists. For grassroots cadres, this also represented a transformative improvement adapted to revolution and societal development and changes. The resolution of the problem of cadre work-shirking highlights the wisdom and courage of the CCP as it confronted the negative impacts produced by miscalculations during land reform. It also illustrates the party’s internal aspirations and practical needs to vigorously develop production and achieve a smooth transition from “war” to “peace.”

Abstract Max Weber came to see his “rational bureaucracy” as also something of an “iron cage.” The reliance on regularized paperwork can result in a separation of the administrative procedure from actual substance, and the level-by-level transmission of documents can result in the resolution of problems on paper only. The complex specialized and standardized procedures of the formal, hierarchical bureaucracy are therefore often ineffective because they have lost touch with reality. In China, the problem of the “involution” of public power found by central inspection teams 中央巡视组 during the course of their inspections is in essence the “formalist” 形式主义 response of bureaucracy when supervised and reviewed. Weber believed that the iron cage of bureaucracy, or the irrationality of rationality, needs an outside “charismatic” authority to check and counterbalance it. The practice of the central inspection teams, however, shows how bureaucratic organizations only further intensify formalism to preserve themselves in the face of such outside authority. That is to say, if the charismatic authority does not break through the trap of bureaucratized patterns of thought and behavior, the iron cage will only be further strengthened and perpetuated.

Abstract The theory of “state involution,” first proposed by Prasenjit Duara, has been used to explain the expansion of power of the modern Chinese state. However, some scholars argue, on the basis of regional studies, that the concept of state involution was at most only applicable to North China and did not pertain to the practice of the Guomindang regime, which had built a complete administrative system down to the grassroots level. In 1946, Zhejiang province decided to reduce the number of townships to cut fiscal expenditures. With Huangyan county as a regional case, we investigate the implementation of the policy of reducing the number of townships and find that the theory of state involution is still applicable to explaining grassroots politics in Zhejiang under the Guomindang, showing that the theory has a wider range of applicability than some scholars believe. The development of state involution in this period is closely related to the governance capacity and patterns of the Guomindang regime at the grassroots level. It is thus inappropriate to see just the establishment and expansion of a grassroots administrative system as a sign that state involution had been overcome.

Abstract An analysis of the Class Background Registers of Yanshan county, Hebei, shows that households of landlord and rich peasant status accounted for less than 10 percent of the local population and possessed less than 15 percent of the land, while households of poor and lower-middle peasant standing owned about half of the land. Overall, land distribution was relatively balanced, as seen in the Gini coefficient of 0.3–0.4 in the distribution of land rights and the fact that about half of the households owned 2–5 mu of land per capita. But the economic condition of the rural population was not determined by the factor of land distribution alone; in places where the natural endowment was poor, off-farm income-making activities mattered a great deal to local residents. Such activities took various forms, which could improve as well as worsen people’s livelihood. An analysis of social mobility in this area further shows the perpetuation of the existing class structure. Those whose grandparents had lived in poverty found it difficult to move up socially. On the whole, the rural area under study shows a prolonged trend of deterioration, which is meaningful for understanding the land reform.