Land and Retribution: Morality, Mobilization, and Violence in China’s Land Reform Campaign (1950-1952) The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Javed, Jeffrey Arshad. 2017. Land and Retribution: Morality, Mobilization, and Violence in China’s Land Reform Campaign (1950-1952). Doctoral dissertation, Harvard University, Graduate School of Arts & Sciences. Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:41141689 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA Land and Retribution: Morality, Mobilization, and Violence in China’s Land Reform Campaign (1950-1952) A dissertation presented by Jeffrey Arshad Javed to The Department of Government in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the subject of Political Science Harvard University Cambridge, Massachusetts May 2017 ! © 2017 Jeffrey Arshad Javed All rights reserved. ! Dissertation Advisor: Professor Elizabeth J. Perry Jeffrey Arshad Javed Land and Retribution: Morality, Mobilization, and Violence in China’s Land Reform Campaign (1950-1952) Abstract China’s land reform campaign was the most extensive and violent redistribution of land in history, with estimates of millions of people killed or otherwise persecuted through mass mobilized “class struggle.” Yet it is unclear how the new regime managed to mobilize local communities, many of which lacked salient class divisions, to participate in this massive episode of class violence. I argue that the Party mobilized mass participation in violence by emphasizing and sensationalizing the moral transgressions of a subset of the landed elite, while simultaneously emphasizing the virtue and victimhood of the masses. Through this process of moral mobilization, the Party delineated a new moral boundary between the “oppressed” masses and the cruel and corrupt landlord class; it was on the basis of this new moral boundary that the Party galvanized popular outrage and participation in retributive violence against members of the landed elite and other perceived moral transgressors. Drawing on archival documents, internal Party publications, oral histories, memoirs, and a unique historical dataset of 124 local county gazetteers gathered over twelve months of fieldwork, I explore how the Party used moral mobilization to mobilize mass violence across localities in Anhui and Jiangsu provinces. By comparing localities situated in contrasting geographic regions under the same political jurisdiction, I illustrate how the targeting and ! iii intensity of moral mobilization varied at the local level. I find that the specific social categories of people targeted and punished in a locality differed according to the predominant moral norms that governed social relations between the landed elite and the local community. My analysis of local patterns of violence reveals that economic inequality and other socioeconomic indicators do not predict the intensity, or amount, of violence mobilized. Rather, local governments’ dual capacity to mobilize and control violence affected how much violence a locality endured. ! iv Table of Contents List of Figures vi List of Tables vii Acknowledgements viii Chapter 1 Introduction 1 Chapter 2 Moral Governance and the Cultural Genealogy of Moral Mobilization 56 Chapter 3 Moral Mobilization in Huaibei and Jiangnan 90 Chapter 4 Selecting Targets 145 Chapter 5 Unleashing and Restraining the Masses 189 Chapter 6 Comparative Perspectives and Conclusion 230 Bibliography 256 Appendix A. Abbreviations for Major Archival and Documentary Sources 273 Appendix B. Notes on Methodology 274 Appendix C. Chapter 4 Appendix 276 Appendix D. Chapter 5 Appendix 281 ! v List of Figures Figure 1.1: The Process of Moral Mobilization Figure 1.2 A Meta-relational Model of Moral Mobilization Figure 1.3 Predominant Moral Norms and Major Targeted Categories in Moral Mobilization Figure 1.4 The Regions of Jiangnan and Huaibei in Anhui and Jiangsu Provinces Figure 2.1 The Struggle Session Scene from The White-Haired Girl Figure 3.1: The Post-1949 Land Reform Campaign’s Procedure for Mobilizing Class Struggle Figure 4.1 Struggle Targets as a Percentage of the Landlord Population by County Figure 4.2 Histogram of Landholdings Among 39 Struggle Targets in Three Districts of Baoshan County Figure 4.3 Percentage of Households Labeled Landlords by Region Figure 5.1. Standardized OLS Coefficients (95% CI) for Determinants of the Number of Targets during Land Reform Figure 5.2 Histogram of Percent of Total County Population Arrested during the Campaign to Suppress the Counterrevolutionaries in Anhui and Jiangsu Figure 5.3 Standardized OLS Coefficients (95% CI) for Determinants of the Number of Arrests during the Campaign to Suppress the Counterrevolutionaries Figure 5.A Missingness Map for All Variables in the County Gazetteer Dataset ! vi List of Tables Table 1.1: Distribution of Per Capita Landholdings Before and After Land Reform in the East China Bureau by Class Label Table 3.1 Number of Attendees, Struggle Targets, and Accusers at the Village- and Township- Level in a Township in Lutang District, Fengyang County Table 3.2 Regional Descriptive Statistics for Jiangnan and Huaibei Table 3.3: Differential Punishment of Struggle Targets in Gaoqiao Township, Jiangdu County Table 3.4 Percentage Breakdown of House Arrests and Executions During Land Reform in Northern Anhui by Target Identity (1951) Table 3.5 Percentage Breakdown of Arrests and Executions During Land Reform in Northern Jiangsu by Target Identity (1951) Table 4.1 Summary Statistics of Case Study Counties and Their Corresponding Regions Table 4.2 Percentage of Collective Action Incidents in Jiangnan from the Late-Qing through Nationalist Period that Targeted Landlords, Officials, or Private Tax Collectors/Dunners Table 4.3 Breakdown of Land Reform Struggle Targets by Identity, Baoshan County (1950) Table 4.4 Breakdown of Land Reform Struggle Targets by Class Label, Baoshan County (1950) Table 4.5 Breakdown of House Arrestees by Class Label in Panshi Township, Baoshan County, 1950 Table 4.6 Punishment of Criminals During Land Reform by Class Label, Baoshan County (1950) Table 4.7 Punishment of Criminals During Land Reform by Alleged Crime, Baoshan County (1950) Table 4.8 Logit Regression Coefficients for the Determinants of Severe Punishment of Struggle Targets in Three Districts of Baoshan County Table 4.9 Breakdown of Land Reform Struggle Targets by Identity, Fengyang County (1951) Table 4.10 Execution of Land Reform Struggle Targets by Identity, Fengyang County (1951) Table 4.A Register of Landlords Struggled Against in Three Districts of Baoshan County Table 5.A Descriptive Statistics Table 5.B OLS Regression Coefficients for Determinants of Violence during the Land Reform Campaign in 124 Counties in Anhui and Jiangsu Provinces (Multiply Imputed & List-Wise Deleted) Table 5.C OLS Regression Coefficients for Determinants of Violence during the Campaign to Suppress the Counterrevolutionaries in 124 Counties in Anhui and Jiangsu Provinces (Multiply Imputed & List-wise Deleted) ! vii Acknowledgements A dissertation is fundamentally a collaborative effort. The blending of my own ideas with those of my mentors, other scholars, friends, family, and even strangers defies attempts at disaggregation. Of course, though I acknowledge the myriad influences on this project, all mistakes herein are mine and mine alone. It is only fitting for me to begin with my dissertation committee. I was intellectually spoiled: I could not have asked for a more insightful and generous group of scholars. Grzegorz Ekiert provided valuable perspectives on theories of social mobilization and moral economy, and indulged my sociological proclivities. Peter Hall shaped the theoretical direction of this project tremendously, and often articulated my arguments better than I could myself. Yuhua Wang gave me wonderful advice on how to frame and situate this project in the greater political science literature, and he generously provided additional historical data for my county-level analysis. Elizabeth Perry, my committee chair, deserves special thanks and my profound gratitude. As my intellectual guide since my first days at Harvard, her openness and guidance have helped me navigate the many twists and turns this project took. Moreover, it was through her that I was able to connect with the many Chinese scholars who so deeply shaped my research and aided me in my fieldwork. Most significantly, she believed in me when I could not believe in myself. Realistically, this project could not have come to fruition without her. Outside of my committee, many other scholars, at Harvard and abroad, provided feedback on the project in some way or form. Here I would like to thank Bart Bonikowski; Nara Dillon; Frances Hagopian; Iain Johnston; and Michele Lamont. In China, I enjoyed incredible support and guidance from a number of Chinese historians and social scientists. Zhou Xiaohong and Li Lifeng generously welcomed and hosted me at Nanjing University. During my time in ! viii Nanjing, Zhou Haiyan was particularly crucial to sustaining my mental wellbeing while I dealt with the many barriers to carrying out this research. At East China Normal University, Zhang Jishun gave me invaluable advice