System,Authority And Order

Chao’an county borders on the South China Sea,since the Ming and Qing Dynasties,the narrowly-to-large-scale social conditions have led to a large number of people to make a living outside the motherland.The county has become the“hometown of overseas Chinese” with obvious characteristics in the modern times.At the same time,the clan villages have the universality in consisting of a single surname or several surnames in Chao ’ an.The clans have strong dominance and influence in the daily life of the peasants.Generally speaking,the unique local features of Chao’an in geographical position,cultural tradition and customs enrich the appearance of social transformation in the early days of the founding of New China.This dissertation studies how the Chinese Communist Party initiated the rural transformation inChao’an County from 1949 to 1956 through the induced institutional change and the mandatory institutional change in the fields of land reform and cooperation movement,and how the Chinese Communist Party established its authority through crushing the opposing forces and regulating the Party members,with the research methods of history,anthropology and psychology based on the theories of system,authority and order.The Communist Party realized the transformation of rural politics,economy and cultural mentality,and eventually achieved the reconstruction of social order through the dual powers of institution and authority.The dissertation is divided into five chapters.The first chapter introduces the background for the study,namely,the reason to select the topic,the research value,the resources employed,the current state of research on the topic,the theories utilized in the dissertation,the methodology,and the innovative points.The second chapter introduces the rural order of land ownership,tenancy and social order in Chao’an.In the third chapter,with institutional change as the research center,it reveals the peasants’ participation in the agrarian-led reform movement under the interaction of the induced institutional change,with rent reduction,mortgage reduction,and fruit division as its methods,and the mandatory institutional change,with rooting,complaints,anti-concealment,and class classification as its methods.The Communist Party met the needs of farmers’ interest,and inspired the enthusiasm of farmers to participate in the movement,thus setting off a mighty climax.The fourth chapter takes authoritative establishment as the research angle of view,to explore how the Communist Party guided the peasants through the struggle and suppression against bandits and landlords and other hostile forces,at the same time how the Communist Party carried on the rectification and restriction of the brigade and peasant association,thus establishing its own authority in the region.The fifth chapter focuses on order as the research goal,which is also the staged purpose of the Communist movement in the early days of the founding of New China.Through the agrarian reform movement,the Communist Party destroyed the clan’s land system and reshaped the cultural psychology.The activists during the reform were incorporated into the Party,and became the foundation of the local rural government instead of the traditional rural elites,thus laying a solid foundation for the implementation of the government’s decision in the rural level.Through the series of economic reforms in Peasant Economy,Unified Purchase and Sale,and Agricultural Cooperation,the Communist Party wiped out peasants’ initiative in agricultural production,realizing the unification of rural economy and state building,establishing a new economic order in the countryside.Thus,through the reforms in land ownership at the very beginning of the founding of People’s Republic of China,the Chinese Communist Party successfully set up a New Order in China in the following aspects: land system,cultural psychology,administrative structure,political foundation,and economy.Finding lessons to be learned from historical development has positive significance for the development of our country,our party and our society.The land reform in the early days after the founding of our nation has a far-reaching impact on China’s development.On the one hand,it abolished the land ownership pattern existing in China for thousands of years,realizing the goal of “land to the tillers”,paving the way for the industrial construction and economic development in New China;on the other hand,with the development of society,the side effects of the rural land reform in the early 1950s starts to appear,impeding the further development of rural economy.Today,the issue of “agriculture,rural areas and farmers” remains the basic issue that must be faced and solved in the process of China’s modernization.How to guide farmers in developing agriculture in a stable and orderly manner,and to stabilize the building of rural grass-roots political power and to solve the problems currently facing the rural areas are of practical significance.