Concept Rebuilding And Social Changing: A Study Of The Recant Mobilization In The Land Reform (1946-1952)

Peasants, who are both the supporters of current social order and the potential supporters and main participants of anti-order revolution, are responsible for the revolution of modern Chinese history. Thus, the dominant task for CPC is to mobilize them, turn them into the participants of anti-order revolution. Understanding that the farmland acts the key role in rural area, CPC successfully fulfilled this task by launching the land reform. However, different interpretations to this reform have been made among scholars over the world, due to the various recognitions to the driving force of the reform. Being deeply influenced by ideology instill, Chinese scholars could not hold the study without revolution perspective; while foreign scholars, going too far on the way to try to seek the "controlling power" regarding the revolution, neglect the social transition largely. Facing those two prejudiced interpretations, this dissertation tends to believe that that the boomingly increasing population in modern period intensified the tension between people and land disintegrated the conventional rural moral economic system by putting too much stress to peasants who were in the bottom of the society. Known that such disintegration might help the accumulation of recent and the peasants' thirst for farmland might strength such recent, CPC successfully launched the land reform, by which the population-land contradiction was alleviated, and that, the task of reforming the rural society and controlling the political power in rural area was fulfilled.This Dissertation contains four parts:Chapter one studies the influence to the routinely life of peasants caused by the rural social crisis, and the peasants' responds as well. That the increasingly social tension cannot be smoothed without the helping of rural area caused the increasing tension to the peasants. However, such tension did not light the revolution and the peasants still succumbed to the conventional moral economy, which shows that the character of such recent should be studied.Chapter two studies the process started by CPC on integrating the recent and reshaping the peasants' concept. For those peasants, dismantling the conventional moral concept is the promise that they could be reshaped as a reform activist. After establishing the armed force and undertaking the peasant with interests, CPC re-explained the social tension and recent by introducing a kind of "revolutionary" language, by which the Class conflict successfully substituted the conventional moral concept.The third chapter represents the farce of class conflict directed by demonic CPC, studies its mobilization strategy and the reflections among different classes.It can be seen that the coping strategy varied a lot among different classes whose own interest various evidently. The Conclusive chapter mainly discusses the reflections to the social structure and the interrelationships caused by recant mobilization. While enhancing the intensity of contradiction, displaying the political power, recant also plays a role on altering the social structure and interrelationships.