This book documents how China's rural people remember the great famine of Maoist rule, which proved to be the worst famine in modern world history. Ralph A. Thaxton, Jr., sheds new light on how China's socialist rulers drove rural dwellers to hunger and starvation, on how powerless villagers formed resistance to the corruption and coercion of collectivization, and on how their hidden and contentious acts, both individual and concerted, allowed them to survive and escape the predatory grip of leaders and networks in the thrall of Mao's authoritarian plan for a full-throttle realization of communism - a plan that engendered an unprecedented disaster for rural families. Based on his study of a rural village's memories of the famine, Thaxton argues that these memories persisted long after the events of the famine and shaped rural resistance to the socialist state, both before and after the post-Mao era of reform.

Thaxton argues that the memory of the great famine under Mao shaped villagers' resistance to the socialist state.

About the Author
Ralph A. Thaxton, Jr, is a Professor of Politics and the Chairman of the East Asian Studies Program at Brandeis University. He is the author of Salt of the Earth: The Political Origins of Peasant Protest in China (1977) and China Turned Rightside Up: Revolutionary Legitimacy in the Peasant World (1983). He was named a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the University of California Berkeley Center for Chinese Studies (1974-5) and a Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study (2002) and has won numerous prizes and fellowships, including a Harry Frank Guggenheim Fellowship, a Chang Ching-kuo Foundation International Fellowship, and the United States Institute of Peace Fellowship.

Reviews
'... Thaxton is very good at tracking the shifts of power and influence in the small community he is studying, and the phases through which these went. ... bold and profound ...' The Royal Society for Asian Affairs
'This is a micro history, and it will be up to future studies to find commonalities with other parts of rural China. Yet the insight we gain from Da Fo village into the nature of state-society interactions significantly challenges previous interpretations of that relationship, making this book required reading for scholars and students of modern Chinese history.' Europe-Asia Studies
'Highly readable and informative ... essential reading ...' Journal of Asian Studies



Book Information
ISBN 9780521897495
Author Ralph A. Thaxton, Jr
Format Hardback
Page Count 406
Imprint Cambridge University Press
Publisher Cambridge University Press
Weight(grams) 710g
Dimensions(mm) 240mm * 160mm * 30mm