UC San Diego

Although the centralized bureaucracy characterized the imperial state of China, the imperial did not establish a thorough and direct control over the rural area. Chinese communists continued the efforts of various state-builders --the reformers of the Qing court, the Nationalists, and the Japanese--to build up a strong modern state. In 1946- 1952, Chinese communists launched land reform over through China. They claimed to solve the land inequality in countryside through redistributing land. However, this land reform was neither merely for land nor simply about land. Chinese communists endeavored to build up a new state at the grassroots level through the redistribution of land. During this process, the identification and correction of mistakes was a constant agenda. This dissertation argues that the rectification campaigns played a vital role in the communists' efforts to build up a modern state. This dissertation examines the land reform processes of three villages--Xigou, Beiwan, and Nancun. These three villages were taken over by the communists one after another, and their land reform projects were under the guidance of different directives. Therefore, the examination on the land reform projects in these three villages could bring out an overall study on the 1946-1952 communist land reform, from the beginning to the conclusion. In all these three villages, the rectification campaigns were carried out to correct the mistakes of previous campaigns. This dissertation argues that through identifying and correcting mistakes in previous steps, the rectification campaigns provided chances for the communists to educate and train the villagers, local cadres, and policy-makers. These normalizing trainings in the 1946-1952 land reform functioned as a disciplinary revolution for the nascent state, which facilitated the communists to ground their power over local communities