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Book Synopsis

This is the first monograph in English on how China's agricultural collectivization began. In 1953, the Chinese Communist Party launched a system of agricultural collectivization to lean the countryside toward socialism. It led to the Utopian Commune Movement in 1958 and was followed by the worst famine in human history. Surprisingly, however, its beginnings are poorly understood and often regarded as Mao Zedong's imposition from above. This book challenges the conventional wisdom and explores how the national policy emerged from complex bureaucratic interactions among central, regional, local governments, and peasants.

Negotiating Socialism in Rural China: Mao,

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    A Hardback by Xiaojia Hou

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      Book details

      Publisher Cornell University East Asia Program
      Published 31 March 2016
      ISBN-13 9781939161598
      978-1939161598
      ISBN-10 1939161592
      Also in:
      Far-left political ideologies and movements Left-of-centre democratic ideologies and movements

      Description

      Book Synopsis

      This is the first monograph in English on how China's agricultural collectivization began. In 1953, the Chinese Communist Party launched a system of agricultural collectivization to lean the countryside toward socialism. It led to the Utopian Commune Movement in 1958 and was followed by the worst famine in human history. Surprisingly, however, its beginnings are poorly understood and often regarded as Mao Zedong's imposition from above. This book challenges the conventional wisdom and explores how the national policy emerged from complex bureaucratic interactions among central, regional, local governments, and peasants.

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