The First Encounter: Peasant Resistance to State Control of Grain in East China in the Mid-1950s

摘要

Focusing on Dongtai and Songjiang counties in east China, this report examines peasant resistance to the "unified purchase and sale" programme in the 1950s. The heavy procurement burden on most households in the prosperous Songjiang county led to various forms of resistance from peasants that culminated in collective violence. In sharp contrast, the low procurement quota on a limited number of households in the impoverished Dongtai county only caused moderate resistance. In both counties, however, local government leaders faced the increasing inapplicability of the prevailing notion of "class line" to the new realities of rural disgruntlement. As this report demonstrates, in both counties, resistance to the state's grain programme came primarily from ordinary peasants rather than their class enemies of landlords and rich peasants. For the first time, the CCP felt the need to redefine peasant discontent under the socialist state as a new category, later known as "contradictions within the people," which remains valid to date in official representations of rural disturbances.