From Covert to Overt: Everyday Peasant Politics in China and the Implications for Transnational Agrarian Movements

Abstract

This contribution spotlights overt collective action as the form of everyday peasant politics in post‐socialist China. It first considers the interlinking in the post‐socialist period of global neoliberal capitalism and internal (so‐called) primitive accumulation by corrupt officials and eager entrepreneurs. Against this background it examines the collective protests of the last 20 years, focusing first on the issue of corrupt local power and then on land seizures. It argues that the emergence of sustained rural contention has been informed by China's socialist legacy as well as older peasant ideologies, and it has involved the coalescence of a shared class perspective among the poor and dispossessed. The final portion of the article considers the implications of these everyday peasant politics, especially land struggles, for transnational agrarian movements.