Entraide spontanée, entraide provoquée en Chine rurale : l'intervention communiste (1943-1944)

Spontaneous and Instigated Mutual Help in Rural China : the Communist Intervention (1943-1944) In 1943, Mao Zedong launched the "production movement" in the communist anti- Japanese bases in northern China. This two-year spell of "cooperativization" in the Chinese countryside foreshadowed the successive waves of collectivization during the following decade. Although the communists were trying to gain a foothold in village society by making use of ancient customs, their intervention revealed the gap between their collectivist, totalitarian design and the traditional structures of the Chinese peasantry. This divergence became patently obvious with the establishment of "instigated mutual help" organizations. The similarity of names and structure between the two sorts of groups cannot disguise the fact that the new organizations rejected a system of spontaneous mutual aid that had fostered local solidarity centered on networks of family ties.Aubert Claude, Cheng Ying, Leung Kiche. Entraide spontanée, entraide provoquée en Chine rurale : l'intervention communiste (1943-1944). In: Annales. Économies, Sociétés, Civilisations. 37ᵉ année, N. 3, 1982. pp. 407-433