Disciplining Capitalists in Communist China

Juan Wang, McGill University

For a post-revolution and post-civil war regime such as China, the new government prioritized eliminating loyalists of previous regimes in the process of building a new political order. However, it was poorly prepared for governing water and the population living on it. The mobility of such population and its long-standing tradition of social order rendered change difficult. Primarily relying on original police department reports in a county in Southern China between 1949 and 1964, this paper investigates the process whereby the new Communist regime attempted to establish the authority of the new state and to reform old social order. This study contributes to the scholarship of revolution and post-revolution by illustrating how a revolutionary regime created new social conflict as it established institutions to replace an old social order through violence and intelligence.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 201. The Encoding and Monitoring State