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Negotiating Socialism in Rural China: Mao, Peasants, and Local Cadres in Shanxi 1949-1953 Xiaojia Hou Ithaca, NY : Cornell University Press , 2016 viii + 275 pp. $25.00 ISBN 978-1-939161-79-6
Book Reviews
In the annals of Chinese history, 1953 seems an unlikely choice as a year of great significance. But that autumn the Chinese Communist Party launched a mass campaign to build agricultural producers' cooperatives, signalling the beginning of the end for the private landholding system that had endured for millennia. The move to collective farming in Shanxi, the subject of Xiaojia Hou's excellent book, provided a model that was followed throughout the Chinese countryside. In just a few short years peasants were forced to hand over their landholdings, setting the stage for the disaster of utopian communes and the Great Leap Forward. Scholars have followed the Party line and seen the move to collective farming in 1953 as the logical next step following successful experiments with mutual aid teams. Hou's focus on Shanxi, the vanguard of collective farming, demonstrates that collectivization was doomed from the start. Her close attention to how cadres doctored and exaggerated agricultural investigations makes this impeccably researched book a must read for scholars interested in the...