Collective Killings in Rural China during the Cultural Revolution [Paperback]

This book is the first to systematically document and analyze the atrocities surrounding the Cultural Revolution in China.Although it was one of the monumental events in the world's communist history, the Cultural Revolution remains one of the most understudied political mass movements. This book will reshape the scholarship on the Cultural Revolution, both because of its stark treatment of political violence and its focus on events in the Chinese countryside. Past models of mass killings conceptualize them as an outcome of state policies. But as the case in rural China demonstrates, genocide depends on the dynamics of local communities.Although it was one of the monumental events in the world's communist history, the Cultural Revolution remains one of the most understudied political mass movements. This book will reshape the scholarship on the Cultural Revolution, both because of its stark treatment of political violence and its focus on events in the Chinese countryside. Past models of mass killings conceptualize them as an outcome of state policies. But as the case in rural China demonstrates, genocide depends on the dynamics of local communities.The violence of Mao's China is well known, but its extreme form is not. In 1967 and 1968, during the Cultural Revolution, collective killings were widespread in rural China in the form of pubic execution. Victims included women, children, and the elderly. This book is the first to systematically document and analyze these atrocities, drawing data from local archives, government documents, and interviews with survivors in two southern provinces. This book extracts from the Chinese case lessons that challenge the prevailing models of genocide and mass killings and contributes to the historiography of the Cultural Revolution, in which scholarship has mainly focused on events in urban areas.1. Kill thy neighbor; 2. On the record; 3. Community and culture; 4. Class enemies; 5. Mao's ordinary men; 6. Demobilizing law; 7. Framilc{