Copying, Counterfeiting, and Capitalism in Contemporary China: Jingdezhen’s Porcelain Industry
Eight months of ethnographic fieldwork in Jingdezhen between 2003 and 2006 revealed that copying and counterfeiting dominated porcelain production. Ideas about markets and the organization of production encouraged ceramists to copy and counterfeit in search of profit. At the same time, producers responded to others’ fraudulent acts by personalizing their market participation. Their network building was motivated by the belief that individuals with whom you shared a personal connection would not cheat you. Ideas about atomized individuals and dishonest markets, on the one hand, and strategies to personalize market activity, on the other, characterized contemporary capitalism in Jingdezhen (and perhaps China more broadly). This contradiction exemplifies a dual process by which capitalism affects how people think and what they do, while at the same time preexisting ideas and practices inform how capitalism operates in a particular setting.
The Legacy of China’s Wartime Reporting, 1937-1945: Can the Past Serve the Present?
Japan’s invasion of China in the summer of 1937 dealt a devastating blow to Chinese journalism. Yet despite the hardships, China’s wartime reporters produced a legacy of vivid writing. In the face of a series of major defeats, the journalists attempted to shore up morale and stressed the heroic resistance of Chinese forces. They reported on Japanese atrocities such as the Rape of Nanjing, but not to such an extent that might erode morale. During the Maoist era, the legacy of this war reportage largely faded from a public memory which privileged the revolution. When a “new remembering” of the war emerged in the reform era, the heroic resistance narrative from war reportage dovetailed nicely with the new nationalism of today’s China. But this literature has been less helpful in developing the theme of Chinese victimhood, a key component of the new memory of the war. Finally, memoir literature, so common in most combatant nations, has been problematic in China. Those who remember their war experiences do so through the prism of later traumas, particularly the Cultural Revolution.
Between Business and Bureaucrats: Pingtan Storytelling in Maoist and Post-Maoist China
This article examines the complex relationship of the state, market, and artists in pingtan storytelling in post-1949 China. By focusing on Su Yuyin, a pingtan storyteller, and his performing career, this article explores the persistence of cultural markets after the Communist victory in 1949 and argues that the market continued to play a significant role in shaping China’s popular culture, which the government was keen on patronizing and politicizing. By comparing the regime’s management of pingtan storytelling before and after the Cultural Revolution (1966—1976), this article further argues that the regime’s censorship of popular culture in the 1950s and 1960s was handicapped by its lack of financial resources and the continued existence of cultural markets. The result was that censorship was not as strictly and efficiently enforced as has been assumed.
Between Tradition and Revolution: Fan Wenlan and the Origins of the Marxist Historiography of Modern China
Focusing on the writings of Fan Wenlan, a leading historian in post-1949 China, this article examines the origins of the “revolutionary narrative” in the Marxist historiography of modern China in the context of political and intellectual struggles between the Nationalists and Communists and within the Communist Party in the 1930s and 1940s. The author argues that Fan’s new account of modern China emerged primarily as a product of the Communists’ resistance to the “modernization narrative” in Nationalist historiography. It was also a product of the Chinese Communists’ challenge to the “orthodox” Marxist interpretation of modern Chinese history prevailing in Russia and among Chinese Marxists in the 1920s and 1930s. But Fan’s background as a philologist, his poor training in Marxism, and his nationalist commitment greatly weakened his analysis of history from a Marxist perspective.
Informal Lenders and Rural Finance in China: A Report from the Field
Chinese farmers need loans. It’s hard for them to borrow from formal lenders like banks or even the rural credit cooperatives. Thus, to satisfy their financial needs, farmers borrow from informal lenders. While farmers have benefited from the post-Mao reform in many respects, financial reforms of the past three decades have failed to create an effective system in which farmers can borrow from formal lenders. To create an effective and efficient financial system that can meet farmers’ needs, it is necessary for informal lenders to play an active role in rural finance. China’s rural finances face four key problems: asymmetric information, a lack of collateral, the unique structure of costs and risks, and the nonproductive use of loans. Informal lenders have an advantage in solving these problems. This article proposes the creation of a financial system in which informal lenders play an active role in lending to farmers and formal and informal lenders cooperate with each other. It develops the argument based on the first author’s field research in the provinces of Guangdong, Henan, Jilin, Shaanxi, Shandong, and Shanxi.
Maoist Discourse and the Mobilization of Emotions in Revolutionary China
This article focuses on how Maoist discourse engineered revolutionary emotions as a method of political mobilization. Based on personal memoirs and eyewitness accounts, it argues that the Maoist discourse can be disaggregated into three themes, each aimed at provoking one type of emotion: the theme of victimization, which mobilized indignation in struggle campaigns; the theme of redemption, which generated guilt in thought reform campaigns; and the theme of emancipation, which raised euphoria in social transformation campaigns. It also argues that Maoist discourse propagation employed three techniques——personalization, magnification, and moralization—and emphasizes that these techniques of propagation are as important as the content of the three themes in the production of passions.
Between Business and Bureaucrats: Pingtan Storytelling in Maoist and Post-Maoist China
This article examines the complex relationship of the state, market, and artists in pingtan storytelling in post-1949 China. By focusing on Su Yuyin, a pingtan storyteller, and his performing career, this article explores the persistence of cultural markets after the Communist victory in 1949 and argues that the market continued to play a significant role in shaping China’s popular culture, which the government was keen on patronizing and politicizing. By comparing the regime’s management of pingtan storytelling before and after the Cultural Revolution (1966—1976), this article further argues that the regime’s censorship of popular culture in the 1950s and 1960s was handicapped by its lack of financial resources and the continued existence of cultural markets. The result was that censorship was not as strictly and efficiently enforced as has been assumed.
Between Tradition and Revolution: Fan Wenlan and the Origins of the Marxist Historiography of Modern China
Focusing on the writings of Fan Wenlan, a leading historian in post-1949 China, this article examines the origins of the “revolutionary narrative” in the Marxist historiography of modern China in the context of political and intellectual struggles between the Nationalists and Communists and within the Communist Party in the 1930s and 1940s. The author argues that Fan’s new account of modern China emerged primarily as a product of the Communists’ resistance to the “modernization narrative” in Nationalist historiography. It was also a product of the Chinese Communists’ challenge to the “orthodox” Marxist interpretation of modern Chinese history prevailing in Russia and among Chinese Marxists in the 1920s and 1930s. But Fan’s background as a philologist, his poor training in Marxism, and his nationalist commitment greatly weakened his analysis of history from a Marxist perspective.
Informal Lenders and Rural Finance in China: A Report from the Field
Chinese farmers need loans. It’s hard for them to borrow from formal lenders like banks or even the rural credit cooperatives. Thus, to satisfy their financial needs, farmers borrow from informal lenders. While farmers have benefited from the post-Mao reform in many respects, financial reforms of the past three decades have failed to create an effective system in which farmers can borrow from formal lenders. To create an effective and efficient financial system that can meet farmers’ needs, it is necessary for informal lenders to play an active role in rural finance. China’s rural finances face four key problems: asymmetric information, a lack of collateral, the unique structure of costs and risks, and the nonproductive use of loans. Informal lenders have an advantage in solving these problems. This article proposes the creation of a financial system in which informal lenders play an active role in lending to farmers and formal and informal lenders cooperate with each other. It develops the argument based on the first author’s field research in the provinces of Guangdong, Henan, Jilin, Shaanxi, Shandong, and Shanxi.
Maoist Discourse and the Mobilization of Emotions in Revolutionary China
This article focuses on how Maoist discourse engineered revolutionary emotions as a method of political mobilization. Based on personal memoirs and eyewitness accounts, it argues that the Maoist discourse can be disaggregated into three themes, each aimed at provoking one type of emotion: the theme of victimization, which mobilized indignation in struggle campaigns; the theme of redemption, which generated guilt in thought reform campaigns; and the theme of emancipation, which raised euphoria in social transformation campaigns. It also argues that Maoist discourse propagation employed three techniques——personalization, magnification, and moralization—and emphasizes that these techniques of propagation are as important as the content of the three themes in the production of passions.
