Reflection And Exploration On The New Countryside Of Shanxi In1930s

The Chinese countryside was experiencing a transition phase from tradition to modern in1930s when the agriculture was seriously impacted by the foreign forces in China and marketization and the agricultural economy was undergoing unprecedented changes. Meanwhile, the blow of natural disasters on the small-scale peasant economy and the turbulence and split of state politics both caused the frequent crises in countryside of China. Hence, the central government and elite class tried to save the countryside crisis as an exploration to resolve the Chinese predicament. Under the influence of this kind of social and political ecology, the Yan Xishan government of Shanxi began to put a hand in managing the economic construction in order to reverse the declination of the countryside from top to bottom. Meanwhile, the rural education improvement also was raised by the intelligentsia represented by Huang Liquan who tried to strive for rural rejuvenation through educational innovation. Both of them were hoping to resolve the problems which bothered the whole Chinese countryside although in different ways.This study takes the magazine which was published by the Shanxi Rural Educational Improvement Press and edited by Huang Liquan-New Countryside as the sample to discuss about the significance of rural economy and rural construction of Shanxi Province in1930s, and further to make deep reflection and exploration on the new countryside construction at that time and to get some valuable experiences. Through the analysis on the true state of the rural society and economy of that time as well as the survey data of New Countryside, this thesis tries the best to restore the real features of the Shanxi countryside under the inertia effect of the long governance of Yan Xishan government so as to know the feasibility of the Shanxi Village-governance System both on design and on practice, and also to make comparison between the rural construction of Yan Xishan government and the rural educational improvement of the intelligentsia so as to understand the relation between the rural construction and rural society improvement.