Why Did It Go So High? Political Mobilization and Agricultural Collectivization in China

Abstract

This paper tries to explain the relative lack of resistance during China's agricultural collectivization campaign, in contrast to the Soviet Union experience in which agricultural collectivization encountered much heavier social resistance. Five factors are analysed: the effects of the Land Reform; the innovative class system; the social control system; the basic-level Party apparatus; the legitimizing discourse. Analyses of these factors reveal that the High Tide in rural China was an organizational success: the organizers were dense, cohesive and efficient, the organized were divided, dependent and spatially paralysed, and the two were well connected through historical experiences and symbolic discourse, all of which point to the success of mass mobilization.