Challenging the Mandate of Heaven: Social Protest and State Power in China: Social Protest and State Power in China

by Perry,Elizabeth J.

• ISBN13: 9780765604453
• ISBN10: 0765604450
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 2002-01-31
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Social science theories of contentious politics have been based almost exclusively on evidence drawn from the European and American experience, and classic texts in the field make no mention of either the Chinese Communist revolution or the Cultural Revolution -- surely two of the most momentous social movements of the twentieth century. Moreover, China's record of popular upheaval stretches back well beyond this century, indeed all the way back to the third century B.C. This book, by bringing together studies of protest that span the imperial, Republican, and Communist eras, introduces Chinese patterns and provides a forum to consider ways in which contentious politics in China might serve to reinforce, refine or reshape theories derived from Western cases.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	vii
Introduction	ix
Predators and Protectors: Strategies of Peasant Survival	3	(44)
Protective Rebellion: Tax Protest in Late Qing China	47	(29)
Heterodox Rebellion? The Mystery of Yellow Cliff	76	(32)
Predatory Rebellion: Bai Lang and Social Banditry	108	(26)
Skilled Workers and the Chinese Revolution: Strikes Among Shanghai Silk Weavers, 1927-1937	134	(36)
Labor Divided: Sources of State Formation in Modern China	170	(36)
Contradictions under Socialism: Shanghai's Strike Wave of 1957	206	(32)
Working at Cross-Purposes: Shanghai Labor in the Cultural Revolution	238	(37)
Rural Violence in Socialist China	275	(34)
Casting a Chinese ``Democracy'' Movement: Legacies of Social Fragmentation	309	(24)
Index	333