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36 results

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  • French Studies of Contemporary China

  • Lucien Bianco
  • Journal:
    The China Quarterly / Volume 142 / June 1995
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    12 February 2009, pp. 509-520
    Print publication:
    June 1995

  • After belated and uneasy beginnings, French studies of contemporary China have recently matured. Thirty years ago the field was almost non-existent in France. Most sinologists either carried on the once celebrated philological tradition or concentrated on philosophy, religion, classical literature and ancient history. Few were happy to see the sacred field encroached upon by modern historians, whose secular interests they deemed closer to those of reporters than of scholars. Furthermore the tiny bunch of “barbarians” comprised mostly historians, not political scientists, economists or sociologists, and so they were interested in the century that preceded the Communist takeover (1840 to 1949), not in contemporary China as such.

  • 6 - Peasant movements

  • Edited by John K. Fairbank, Albert Feuerwerker
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of China
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    24 July 1986, pp 270-328

  • Summary

    This chapter on the peasant movement could usefully be balanced by one devoted to the peasant condition and its evolution. K'ang-tsu (resistance to land rents) is a privileged category among the non-Communist peasant actions recorded in the People's Republic of China, because it best represents the struggle of the exploited against the exploiters. By the early 1940s, the iniquities of conscription and the exactions of the army had become comparable even to taxation as a factor leading to peasant agitation. The spontaneous peasant movements show three main characteristics. The first is the weakness of class consciousness among the peasantry, a weakness illustrated by the comparative rarity and traditional nature of the social movements directed against the wealthy. The second is their parochialism. The third characteristic of peasant agitation, namely its almost invariably defensive nature. The first encounter between professional revolutionaries and villagers was led by the pioneer of the Communist peasant movement, P'eng P'ai, in two counties of eastern Kwangtung.

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