‘Gangster capitalism’ and peasant protest in China: The last twenty years

Abstract

This article first reviews the alliance of money and power in post-socialist China, arguing that it has generated a peculiar form of the (so-called) primitive accumulation of capital–‘gangster capitalism’ – based primarily on a plundering of public wealth by power-holders and their hangers-on. It then examines the tidal wave of peasant protest in China over the last twenty years. It analyzes this rural social movement, however, as not simply a reaction to the power of the market, but also an independent elaboration of community, articulation of socialist/non-capitalist vision, and critique of urban-centered development.