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Following the history of western constitutional history, studies of Chinese constitutionalism have tended to focus on its intellectual origins, or, more commonly these days, its failure to restrain official behavior. Drawing upon new archival materials, this article takes a different tack. I zero in on a critical period of constitutional gestation, when officials read the 1954 constitution in draft form, posed questions about its text and suggested revisions. How did officials react when told that citizens, many of whom were recently persecuted, now enjoy “freedom of assembly”? These materials allow us to see “the state” in real time: How did officials understand core legal concepts such as “right,” “constitution” and “citizen” as well as their role in the new polity? In many respects, the discussion surrounding the draft constitution turned out to be a venue for officials to talk about the meaning of the revolution they had just experienced.
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1 “Taiyuan, Wuhan deng diqu gejie renmin dui xianfa cao'an de fanyin” 太原,武汉等地区各界人民对宪法草案的反应, Neibu cankao, July 7, 1954, 107.
2 On terrified reactions among elites see Neil J. Diamant and Xiaocai Feng, “Textual Anxiety,” forthcoming in Cold War Studies.
3 I have repeatedly encountered much skepticism in China about any research about their “useless” constitution.
4 This fallacy has inspired many labels: “presentism,” Whig History, and the “mythology of prolepsis.” Quentin Skinner defines the latter as occurring “when the historian is more interested—as he may legitimately be—in the retrospective significance of a given historical work or action than in its meaning for the agent himself.” See “Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas,” History and Theory 8.1 (1969), 22 .
5 State building includes bolstering domestic and international legitimacy. As noted by Jan Behrends, Bolshevik-style constitutions were less concerned with the establishment and functioning of institutions (often concealing where real power lay by not mentioning the Party) than “attempt[ing] to reach out to the population and to international opinion in order to create a strong sense of statehood and legitimate use of power.” See “The Stalinist Volonté Générale: Legitimizing Communist Statehood (1935–1952): A Comparative Perspective on the USSR, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Germany,” East Central Europe 40 (2013), 44 . In the PRC, the constitution can be interpreted as a “mass line” or information gathering policy initiative given the numbers of people involved in the discussion.
6 Even though there was significant textual similarity between the Chinese and Soviet constitutions and the CCP copied the idea of holding a constitutional discussion from them, the notion that modern political power (which China did not enjoy) required a constitution was far older, stretching back to the late Qing and developing further under the Guomindang. Mao, without whose support there would not be a constitution, was surely influenced by Liang Qichao 梁啟超 (1873–1929), who argued that “a constitution that provided for popular participation in government would actually strengthen the state.” On Liang see Nathan, Andrew, Chinese Democracy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), 54 . In addition to Soviet influence, key elements of the PRC constitution are also in the Guomindang's.
7 There is, in contrast, excellent literature about judicial and political elites. For example, see Dayuan, Han 韩大元, Waiguo xianfa dui 1954nian xianfa zhiding guocheng de yingxiang 外国宪法对1954年宪法制定过程的影响, Bijiao fa yanjiu 比较法研究 4 (2014), 51–64 ; Tiffert, Glenn, “Epistrophy: Chinese Constitutionalism and the 1950s,” in Building Constitutionalism in China, edited by Balme, Stéphanie and Dowdle, Michael W. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 59–76 .
8 These materials owe their existence to the CCP's decision to emulate the former Soviet Union and conduct a national “discussion” within workplaces and then to dispatch intelligence agents/reporters into these meetings. Fortunately, the government also transcribed and preserved them in county, district, city and provincial archives (I have relied primarily upon the Guangdong Provincial Archive, the Shanghai Municipal Archive, and several district archives in the Shanghai area [Songjiang, Baoshan, Huangpu, Yangpu]). What makes these materials particularly fascinating is that the Communist Party encouraged “discussion” as well as “questions and suggestions for revision.” The constitution, after all, was presented as a “draft” open to public input, and the national discussion was propagandized as evidence that socialist constitutions, unlike their capitalist counterparts, authentically manifest the “will of the people.” On the Soviet case see Fitzpatrick, Sheila, Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times: Soviet Russia in the 1930s (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), and Siegelbaum, Lewis and Sokolov, Andrei, Stalinism as a Way of Life (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000). Soviet internal security organs such as the NKVD monitored the discussion of the 1936 discussion of the “Stalin Constitution” and reported upwards. These materials, Fitzpatrick notes, “generated a mass of useful information on public opinion on a wide range of topics, including some that were rarely addressed in other forums” (178). Such discussions have also taken place in Vietnam, Cuba, and Poland. In China, intelligence reports were published in Neibu cankao from roughly April to September 1954. For a rosy depiction of the constitutional discussion see Wong, Kam C., “Human Rights and Limitations of State Power: The Discovery of Constitutionalism in the PRC,” Asia-Pacific Journal of Human Rights and Law 1 (2006), 6nn20,21. Citing only Mao, he writes that the constitutional discussions produced “overwhelming popular support” that “reflected common experience and registered collective concerns.” This, of course, was the official line. According to Jennifer Althenger, reporters, report-givers, and officials were warned “not to report publically on any controversies or disputes.” See “Through the Legal Looking Glass: Propaganda Work and the PRC's 1954 Draft Constitution,” paper presented at the Association for Asian Studies Annual Conference, Toronto, Canada, March 2017 (monograph forthcoming from Harvard University Press).
9 The study of constitutional history has a long pedigree in Chinese law. For a recent effort to place constitutionalism in the context of the political transition between the Qing and Republican era, see Zarrow, Peter, After Empire: The Conceptual Transformation of the Chinese State, 1885–1924 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2012); Peng-yuan, Chang, “Constitutionalism in the late Qing: Conception and Practice,” Zhongyang yanjiu yuan jindaishi yanjiusuo jikan 中央研究院近代史研究所集刊 18 (1989), 95–113 . The best work to date about the 1954 constitution is Dayuan, Han, 1954 nian xianfa yu xin Zhongguo xianzheng 1954 年宪法与新中国宪政 (Changsha: Hunan renmin chubanshe, 2004).
10 Hand, Keith, “Constitutionalizing Wukan: The Value of the Constitution Outside the Courtroom,” China Brief 12.3 (February 2012); Creemers, Rogier, “China's Constitution Debate: Context, Content and Implications,” The China Journal 74 (July 2015), 91–109 .
11 In June 1954, Xinhua News Agency reported that “two million copies in pamphlet form are on sale in bookstores throughout North China” and the pamphlet was being reprinted to meet large demand. See “Large Quantities of Draft Constitution Text Printed” (June 29, 1954), in Selections of Mainland Chinese Press, # 840, 26. In Foshan, Guangdong, the county propaganda department distributed 10,280 copies of the constitution. This could mean that as many as 1 in 30 people might have received a copy there. See Guangdong Provincial Archives 235-1-339, 15. It cost one mao. By the end of the discussion period, People's Daily (Oct. 26, 1954) reported that 12,500,000 copies had been printed (3).
12 Migdal, Joel S., “Introduction,” in State Power and Social Forces: Domination and Transformation in the Third World, edited by Migdal, , Kohli, Atul and Shue, Vivienne (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).
13 Equally problematic, we often learn about the state from citizens’ encounters with its officials. This perspective is important, but still partial. On this methodological issue see Scoggins, Suzanne and O'Brien, Kevin J., “China's Unhappy Police,” Asian Survey 56.2 (March/April 2016), 230 . Historians have done a better job than political scientists capturing the voices of low-level officials, especially the police. See, for example, Stapleton, Kristin, Civilizing Chengdu: Chinese Urban Reform, 1895–1937 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center, 2000), 86–95 ; Strand, David, Rickshaw Beijing: City People and Politics in the 1920s (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 79–89 .
14 Christopher Rea has noted that mockery and satire were common sources of laughter in the Republican period, and that Mao is on record, in his original and revised editions of his Yanan Talks on Art and Literature, approving satire as “always needed” (even though satirists could rarely find safe targets). See The Age of Irreverence: A New History of Laughter in China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2015), 160–62.
15 See, for example, the case of local mediators in Diamant, Neil J., “Conflict and Conflict Resolution in China: Beyond Mediation Centered Approaches,” Journal of Conflict Resolution, 44.4 (2000), 529–33.
16 Most of the archival materials are from the files collected by the local (provincial, county, and district) branches of the national “Discuss the Draft Constitution Committee.” They include summary reports, handwritten minutes of meetings, investigations, propaganda materials, budgets, plans, and documentation of “responses” by a wide swathe of the population, including officials. Neibu cankao, in contrast, is an official, Soviet-style (see note 8 above), national-level publication based on reporting by journalists and security agents that circulated among high-level officials. Its articles tend to focus on the topics the journalists and editors thought would be of greater interest to top leaders, such as potential subversion by “class enemies,” social disturbances such as protests and riots, public opinion, and problems in administration that result in instability or other social problems (starvation, suicide, etc.). While archival materials tend to be privileged as a primary source these days, I would argue that Neibu cankao and archives should be used in tandem, if only because the former provides national-level data that is usually unavailable at local archives, and is easier to read for those pressed for time. With new restrictions on archival research in mainland China, Neibu cankao is refreshingly available at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (but nowhere else). For another article that relies heavily on Neibu cankao (with more detail about its reporting and distribution) see Li, Hua-yu, “Reactions of Chinese Citizens to the Death of Stalin: Internal Communist Party Reports,” Journal of Cold War Studies 11.2 (Spring 2009), 70–88 .
17 Sources reveal many different “takes” on xian (Modern Law 现法, County Law 县法, Before Law 先法, Restrictive Law 限法, Law to Prevent a French Invasion 限法 [“Fa” here refers to France, which was in the news because of the Geneva Convention], Law of the Immortals 仙法) and variants in Shanghai dialect (death law 死法, magic trick law or theater law 戏法, referring to lack of trust in CCP legislation or the notion that the party's quest for societal control even extended to legislation about theaters).
18 “Chongqing shi you yixie xianfa cao'an de baogao yuan cuowu de jieshi xianfa cao'an de neirong” 重庆市有一些宪法草案的报告员错误地解释宪法草案的内容, Neibu cankao, July 3, 1954, 43–4.
19 “Panyang shi ge jiguan gongchang dui taolun xianfa cao'an zhong de pianxiang he ge jieji renmin de sixiang dongtai” 潘阳市各机关工厂讨论宪法草案中的偏向和各阶级人民的思想动态, Neibu cankao, July 10, 1954, 161–62. Panyang (Shenyang) established 117 committees and discussion groups for the draft constitution and dispersed over 1,000 baogao yuan.
20 See “Revitalizing the State's Urban ‘Nerve Tips,’” The China Quarterly 163 (September 2000), 806–20.
21 Today it is difficult to get these positions without a high school or university education.
22 Shanghai Municipal Archive A79-2-381, 1, 133. Mid-level officials in the city did not know what “society” meant. See Shanghai Municipal Archive B2-2-61, n.p.
23 On the exhaustion of Women's Federation officials in rural China see Hershatter, Gail, The Gender of Memory: Rural Women and China's Collective Past (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011).
24 Huangpu District Archives 48-2-113, 29.
25 Shanghai Municipal Archive B2-2-58, 14.
26 Shanghai Municipal Archive A80-2-309, 34.
27 Shanghai Municipal Archive B2-2-58, 30. This was also noted in Shanghai's rural suburbs. There, officials complained that discussions around the constitution were a “burden,” lasted too long, and that they “could not understand its language” (yuyan bu tongsu 语言不通俗). They complained they could not remember its content because it failed to “connect” to their own circumstances. See Shanghai Municipal Archive A71-2-974, 125.
28 Shanghai Municipal Archive B2-2-61, n.p.
29 Guangdong Provincial Archives 235-1-399, 8.
30 Huangpu District Archives N7-1-455, 95. Cadres used familial metaphors in a somewhat different way, calling the constitution the eldest child (laoda 老大) the Labor Law the first born (lao'er 老二), and the Marriage Law the third born (laosan 老三). Others deployed naturalistic images, depicting the constitution as a large wormwood tree and other laws as small ones. See “Heilongjiang sheng bufen diqu zai xianfa cao'an xuanchuan zhong chansheng bushao quedian” 黑龙江省部分地区在宪法草案宣传中产生不少缺点, Neibu cankao, August 5, 1954, 77. Depicting ownership systems, they drew four horse heads for a cooperative, a lone peasant with a shovel for a private economy, and a fat businessman for capitalism.
31 Shanghai Municipal Archive B2-2-63, 28.
32 Guangdong Provincial Archives 225-2-29, 117.
33 “Controlled polarization” refers to the state's purposeful activation or encouragement of strife among social groups as a way of preventing the formation of a united front against it. It was deployed by the CCP in its “base areas” prior to 1949 and continues to be a hallmark of its governing strategy. See Chen, Yung-fa, Making Revolution: The Communist Movement in Eastern and Central China, 1937–1945 (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1986); Perry, Elizabeth J., “Studying Chinese Politics: Farewell to Revolution?,” The China Journal 57 (January 2007), 1–22 .
34 In Cao 曹 village, Ding 定 county, in Hebei, cadres wrote on a blackboard that the constitution was the country's “Basic Law,” but in a meeting said it was “our country's highest program” that was important because it “was written in martyrs’ blood.” They understood its primary goal to be “lawfully protecting laborers’ lives and property and suppressing counterrevolutionary activities.” Still, most were “not able to say what very many of the articles were actually about.” See “Hebei sheng Ding xian Cao cun xuanchuan xianfa cao'an de qingkuang” 河北省定县曹村宣传宪法草案的情况, Neibu cankao, July 31, 1954, 520.
35 “Zhejiang sheng geji ganbu pubian bu zhongshi xianfa cao'an de xuexi” 浙江省各级干部普遍不重视宪法草案的学习, Neibu cankao, July 31, 1954, 518.
36 Shanghai Municipal Archive A22-2-1525, 14.
37 Shanghai Municipal Archive A71-2-975, 2.
38 Shanghai Municipal Archive A71-2-973, 29.
39 “Zhejiang sheng geji ganbu,” Neibu cankao, July 31, 1954, 518.
40 Shanghai Municipal Archive A71-2-973, 29
41 “Wuhan, Kunming jiguan ganbu qiye ganbu dui xianfa cao'an de fanyin 武汉,昆明机关干部企业干部对宪法草案的反应,” Neibu cankao, June 29, 1954, 350. To be sure, these reactions surely have an element of simply announcing loyalty to the regime and flattering the higher-ups. Still, given the unprecedented nature of the national discussion campaign their befuddled reactions seem to represent their authentic feelings as well.
42 Guangdong Provincial Archives 225-2-29, 75. These were officials in the Cultural Bureau.
43 “Panyang shi ge jiguan,”162.
44 Shanghai Municipal Archive A38-2-144, 2
45 “Quanguo gedi renmin dui xianfa cao'an de fanyin” 全国各地人民对宪法草案的反应, Neibu cankao, July 24, 1954, 397.
46 “Zhejiang sheng geji ganbu,” 518.
47 Culp, Robert, Articulating Citizenship: Civic Education and Student Politics in Southeastern China, 1912–1940 (Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 2007); Strand, David, An Unfinished Republic: Leading by Word and Deed in Modern China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011).
48 This does not imply that favored status, such as proletarian, was easily achieved. As noted by Sheila Fitzpatrick, “there is no known process of enrollment in Marxist classes.” See “Ascribing Class: The Construction of Social Identity in Soviet Russia,” Journal of Modern History 65 (December 1993), 745 .
49 According to Tiffert, drafters considered “people” as a sociopolitical concept and “citizen” as a legal one. See “Epistrophy,” 69. Between these two concepts, citizen was used more frequently in the Constitution largely because it came to replace the concept “national” in the Common Program. As noted by Xiaocai Feng, people's confusion was caused by the abrupt changes in official vocabulary. See “Political Labels and Societal Reactions: The ‘People’ and ‘Nationals’ in the Early Years of the People's Republic of China,” paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Association of Asian Studies, Toronto, Canada, March 2017, 14.
50 This martial notion of citizenship (junguomin 軍国民) emerged out of German- and French-inspired discourse (usually via Japan) during the late Qing and Republican eras. According to theorists such as Liang Qichao, Cai E 蔡锷 (1882–1916), and Jiang Baili 蔣百里 (1882–1938), all male Chinese citizens were potential soldiers, and all modern states needed to have some system of conscription. See Schillinger, Nicolas, The Body and Military Masculinity in Late Qing and Early Republican China: The Art of Governing Soldiers (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2016), 255–67.
51 Guangdong Provincial Archives 225-2-29, 32.
52 “Taiyuan, Wuhan deng diqu,” 107.
53 Huangpu District Archives N7-1-455, 95; Shanghai Municipal Archive A79-2-381, 1 (Jing'an); Baoshan District Archives 9-6-1, 2.
54 Shanghai Municipal Archive A38-2-144, 28. This view was roundly criticized as a mistake “in principle.” Others mistakes were less serious. In Yangpu district officials forgot the word “constitution,” and instead talked about the “PRC Draft.” See Yangpu District Archives 11-4-7, 26.
55 “Zhejiang sheng geji ganbu,” 519.
56 Shanghai Municipal Archive A71-2-973, 28.
57 Shanghai Municipal Archive A79-2-381, 3.
58 Shanghai Municipal Archive A79-2-381, 133.
59 Shanghai Municipal Archive B2-2-61, n.p.
60 Guangdong Provincial Archives 235-1-399, 8. Such cadres were described as somewhat too “left.”
61 Shanghai Municipal Archive A71-2-974, 200.
62 Shanghai Municipal Archive A71-2-974, 39.
63 Shanghai Municipal Archive B2-2-62, n.p.
64 Shanghai Municipal Archive A71-2-974, 46.
65 Guangdong Provincial Archives 225-2-29, 91.
66 Shanghai Municipal Archive A22-2-1851, 56.
67 Shanghai Municipal Archive B2-2-65, 2. In Jiangxi, “not a few” rural cadres were quite bitter about other “contradictions” in the constitution, most notably between the promise to “protect” peasants’ interests and the state's requisitioning of land and productive resources: “If the state wants to build a road through my land and I don't agree, what would we eat? Is this considered protecting property rights?”; “If peasants themselves dig a pond, does it then belong to the state?” They were also displeased that the state was concerned about workers’ rest and leisure (as “laborers”), but ignored peasants entirely. Military families, of whom there were quite a few in Jiangxi, were “worried” that there was no provision in the constitution for their “care” (zhaogu 照顾). See “Jiangxi sheng de xian, shi renmin daibiao dahui de daibiao dui xianfa cao'an de fanyin” 江西省的县,市人民代表大会的代表对宪法草案的反应, Neibu cankao, Aug, 19, 1954, 263–64. In a village near Shanghai, cadres asked “why are peasants’ lives restricted?” (weisha nongmin shenghuo shoudao xianzhi 为啥农民生活收到限制) and why they “do not rest.” See Shanghai Municipal Archive B2-2-61, n.p.
68 Shanghai Municipal Archive B2-2-61, n.p.
69 In the official English translation the drafters of the constitution used “honor” instead of “glory” for guangrong 光荣.
70 Shanghai Municipal Archive B2-2-66, 73.
71 Shanghai Municipal Archive A71-2-973, 79.
72 Elsewhere I have called this “the bumbling state.” See Revolutionizing the Family: Politics, Love, and Divorce in Urban and Rural China, 1949–1968 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000). Andrew Walder, in Fractured Rebellion: The Beijing Red Guard Movement (2009) has offered a comparable image of Red Guard behavior during the Cultural Revolution.
73 The question of readership is somewhat different from state efforts to “spread” the constitution via propaganda and publishing, about which Jennifer Altehenger has written. I do not dispute that the state devoted substantial resources to constitutional education, but would be interested in finding more information about the reading public, particularly at lower levels of society.
74 Heilmann, Sebastian and Perry, Elizabeth, “Embracing Uncertainty: Guerilla Policy Style and Adaptive Governance in China,” in Mao's Invisible Hand: The Political Foundations of Adaptive Governance in China, edited by Heilmann and Perry (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2011), 1–29 .
75 Guangdong Provincial Archives 235-1-339, 16.
76 Shanghai Municipal Archive A22-2-1525, 17; Shanghai Municipal Archive A71-2-975, 2. Police annoyance at procedural limitations has continued unabated. Writing about the contemporary situation, Suzanne Scoggins and Kevin O'Brien note that “older cops complain bitterly about procedural changes that make it harder to conduct investigations and interrogate suspects.” See “China's Unhappy Police,” 227.
77 Shanghai Municipal Archive B2-2-63, 27.
78 Guangdong Provincial Archives 225-4-104, 24. In the Shanghai suburbs some asked, “Will middle peasants be eliminated (bei xiaomie 被消灭) after the rich peasants?” See Shanghai Municipal Archive A71-2-973, 74. But other cadres were not sure which class rich peasants belonged to and how they would be eliminated (ruhe xiaomie 如何消灭). See Shanghai Municipal Archive B2-2-61, n.p.
79 Guangdong Provincial Archives 204-3-43, 114.
80 Guangdong Provincial Archives 225-4-104, 32. Previous attempts to limit police power provoked similar reactions. As noted by Stapleton in her study of late Qing legal reforms, “the Police Bureau did not surrender its judicial authority to the new courts readily.” See Civilizing Chengdu, 158.
81 Guangdong Provincial Archives 204-3-43, 114. Here the fear of “excessive democracy” dovetails with the more traditional official apprehension about litigation tricksters and the contemporary fear of “rights protection” (weiquan 维权) lawyers. Were officials in the 1950s influenced by the long legacy of Confucian-inspired fear of litigation? Drawing such a line is tempting, but ultimately speculative, particularly given the class origins of many of these officials.
82 Shanghai Municipal Archive A22-2-1525, 17; “Beijing ge jieceng renmin dui xianfa cao'an de fanyin 北京各阶层人民对宪法草案的反应,” Neibu cankao, June 23, 1954, 281.
83 “Quanguo gedi renmin,” 403.
84 Michael Dutton has an excellent summary of the challenges facing the police force in the early 1950s, but largely adopts the state's critical view of their performance (tempted by corruption, high-handed, less than competent) rather than the subjective experience and feelings of individual police officers. Nor does he mention the cultural challenges facing cops as they tried to enforce political goals. See Policing Chinese Politics: A History (Durham: Duke University Press, 1995), 144-50.
85 Dutton, Policing Chinese Politics. However, some did benefit from other aspects of the constitution. As stipulated by the constitution's Article 105, there was now an official national emblem. Policemen, otherwise not ideal marriage prospects because of their poverty and reputation, thought that wearing this “glorious” emblem on their uniform would make it “easier to get married.” Recent research on contemporary police officers finds that they continue to struggle in the marriage market. One complained, “The work is too hard and the pay is too low… my girlfriend wishes I had never become a policeman.” See Scoggins and O'Brien, “China's Unhappy Policemen,” 231. As in the past, wearing a spiffy uniform was seen as a definite plus (232).
86 Shanghai Municipal Archive B2-2-62, n.p. This fear might have been warranted. In Chengdu, a former KMT officer (“reactionary”) said (boasted?) that “the next time a hukou official comes to my dorm room to ask for my documents just because he feels like it, I'll complain.” See “Chengdu shi didui jieji fenzi dui xianfa cao'an jinxing wumie xuanchuan” 成都市敌对阶级分子对宪法草案进行污蔑宣传, Neibu cankao, July 3, 1954, 43.
87 Shanghai Municipal Archive B2-2-62, 4. Officials were also aware that the CCP was behaving unconstitutionally by preventing citizens from travelling to Hong Kong and abroad, and by preventing peasants from entering cities. See Shanghai Municipal Archive B2-2-61, n.p.
88 “Jiangxi sheng bufen ganbu zai taolun xianfa cao'an zhong de sixiang qingkuang” 江西省部分干部在讨论宪法草案中的思想情况, Neibu cankao, July 22, 1954, 352. In Shanghai, low-level Women's Federation cadres also feared being on the wrong end of a lawsuit “if they did not follow the constitution.” See Huangpu District Archives 48-2-133, 29.
89 Shanghai Municipal Archive B2-2-62, 4; Shanghai Municipal Archive A22-2-1525, 17.
90 Shanghai Municipal Archive A26-2-304, 41.
91 They also justified this violation of the constitution by pointing out the makeup of the judicial system, noting that there were many Guomindang holdovers in it.
92 Shanghai Municipal Archive B2-2-62, n. p.
93 Shanghai Municipal Archive B2-2-61, 12.
94 “Jiangxi sheng de xian,” Neibu cankao, August 19, 1954, 265.
95 Shanghai Municipal Archive A79-2-381, 2.
96 “Taiyuan, Wuhan dengdi gejie renmin,” Neibu cankao, July 7, 1954, 106.
97 “Jiangxi sheng de xian,” Neibu cankao, August 19, 1954, 265.
98 Guangdong Provincial Archives 204-3-43, 114.
99 Guangdong Provincial Archives 225-2-29, 32. For similar fears about state protection of religious freedom during the national discussion in the USSR see Fitzpatrick, Everyday Stalinism, 180.
100 Shanghai Municipal Archive B2-2-65, 2.
101 Shanghai Municipal Archive B2-2-62, n.p. Policemen who had worked on security detail for minority peoples’ representatives “looked down on them” because they “lacked culture” and were “backward.” They also despised their dancing.
102 “Taiyuan, Wuhan dengdi,” Neibu cankao, July 7, 1954, 106.
103 “Jiangsi sheng,” August 19, 1954, 266.
104 Shanghai Municipal Archive B2-2-61, n.p.
105 Shanghai Municipal Archive A22-2-1531, 56; Shanghai Municipal Archive A22-2-1525, 8, 15; Shanghai Municipal Archive B2-2-65, 4; Shanghai Municipal Archive A71-2-974, 99; Shanghai Municipal Archive B122-2-31, 18.
106 Guangdong Provincial Archives 225-2-29, 32, 101. In Shanghai, male cadres were perturbed that all the constitutional language about women referred to their rights and not their obligations. See Shanghai Municipal Archive B2-2-61, n.p.
107 See, for instance, “Quanguo gedi renmin,” Neibu cankao, July 24, 1954, 398-9; Shanghai Municipal Archive C48-2-702, 20.
108 “Jiangxi sheng bufen ganbu,” Neibu cankao, July 22, 1954, 353.
109 This suggests the question: After 1954 did officials stop asking controversial and challenging questions about the state and its relationship to society? If so, this would certainly have contributed to “self-blinding” as policy radicalized in the late 1950s and 1960s.
110 That said, I am not certain if this study fits many of the criteria for “grassroots history” even though it highlights low-level officials and draws upon archival sources that “cut against the grain of established narratives.” Jeremy Brown and Matthew Johnson note that, methodologically, grassroots history is “aligned with subaltern studies and other approaches to ‘history from below,’” and that it should highlight the experiences of ordinary people during “everyday life.” Low-level police and baogao yuan, however, were not exactly powerless, and their interactions with higher-level officials during the constitutional discussion were not “everyday” sort of experiences. Moreover, the discussion does not seem to be the sort of “‘contact zone’ where nonelite individuals interact with more powerful social structures” that Brown and Johnson describe for this historical approach. See Maoism at the Grassroots: Everyday Life in China's Era of High Socialism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2015), 5 .
111 On this issue see Perry, Elizabeth J., “The Promise of PRC History,” The Journal of Modern Chinese History 10.1 (2016), 114 .
112 Among recent works in PRC history, arguments and concepts proposed by political scientists about the nature of the state, authoritarian regimes (especially their Leninist variant), and how they can be productively studied have been in disappointingly short supply. Similarly, works by social scientists on the Mao era have not been integrated as fully as they should be, resulting in inflated claims to novelty. For a recent critique of such work see my review of Li's, Jie Shanghai Homes: Palimpsests of Private Life (The China Journal 76 [2016], 128–30. Many of the examples of “even more diversity and variety in behavior” that the “grassroots historical approach” claims to “add” to existing understandings of the Mao era were, in fact, previously documented (including gay relationships, secret societies, people cursing Mao etc.). See Brown and Johnson, eds., Maoism, 2–3.
113 See Liu Dan 刘丹, “Lingdao ganbu xianfa yishi: wenjuan diaocha yu shizheng fenxi” 领导干部宪法意识:问卷调查与实证分析, Guojia xingzheng xueyuan xuebao 国家行政学院学报, May 2004, 67. A bit over 50 percent said that the most important consideration in guiding their political decisions was whether or not it was legal.
* I am grateful to David Strand, Nan Ma, Kevin O'Brien, Gail Hershatter, Xiaocai Feng, Keith Hand, Jennifer Altehenger, and Eddy U for insightful conversations and comments on previous drafts and presentations. I also owe a debt to the journal's editors and anonymous reviewers, whose close reading of the manuscript resulted in a clearer articulation of the way this article, written by a political scientist, fit into the field of Chinese history. Funding for this research came from Dickinson College's Research and Development Committee.
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