Rural Reconstruction during the Nanking Decade: Confucian Collectivism in Shantung

Abstract

“Recently, amid clamor and cries of ‘rural bankruptcy’ and ‘rural collapse,’ the slogans ‘rural reconstruction’ and ‘rural revival’ reverberate through the entire nation; this is really a kind of sudden awakening of government and people.” Thus, the major chronicler of rural reform movements during the Republican period began his 1934 compendium. Another reporter counted almost 700 distinct organizations devoted to rural work of various sorts. The pens of the intelligentsia churned out hundreds of monographs and specialized periodicals, and thousands of articles on the rural problem and the rural reconstruction solution. The powerholders – the Nanking regime itself, the provincial governments under its control, and the semi-independent militarist provincial governments – were concurrently formulating policies, instituting measures, establishing agencies, reorganizing local government structures, and generally manifesting great concern for the giant rural sector of Chinese society they had previously ignored.