Rural violence in socialist China

Patterns of rural unrest in two quite different periods, the 1950s and the 1980s, are explored. By comparing the first with the most recent decade of the PRC, the paper aims at contributing to an understanding of changing interactions between state and peasant in contemporary China. Pivotal role of the grassroots Communist Party cadre in forestalling or facilitating rural violence. Traditional beliefs and behaviour have not disappeared from the Chinese countryside. (DÜI-Sen)