Collectivisation and Village Reconstruction

Abstract

The peasants’ spontaneous cooperation by no means persisted after the founding of the PRC. Hinton (1967: 625–630), during his discussion of mutual-aid teams (MATs), wrote that when the Party Branch and the Peasants’ Association in Changgong Village (his area of study in Shanxi Province) brought the problem of MATs to the table for the first time, nearly all the peasants thought they were a good but impractical idea. The situation was similar in Xiaogang. The MATs were difficult to manage. This was particularly true in the allocation of farm work, as nobody would cooperate with a lazy worker. Also, it took a lot of time to arrange meetings and it was not easy to organise production; as a result, the MATs were quickly mobilised into more coercive bodies. This chapter will explore the bio-politicisation of the villagers through cooperativisation and collectivisation. The village and the nation coincided; mobilisation of the villagers was regarded as the representation of the nation. In such a context, Foucauldian bio-politics coincided with the increasing politicisation of villagers’ bodies and lives. In this chapter, I will also show the embeddedness of resistance in this process. Villagers’ survival-oriented opposition and strategies partially subverted the all-encompassing sovereign power, which laid the foundation for the era of decollectivisation.