ABSTRACT
Between the second half of the twentieth century and the first several years of the twentyfirst, shifts in China’s political economy have been accompanied by dramatic changes in elite discourse1 about rural women and men. During the Maoist era from the 1950s to the late 1970s, ‘peasants’ were accorded a relatively high status, being seen to stand with industrial workers at the vanguard of the revolution, and ‘peasant women’ were hailed as ‘holding up half the sky’. In contrast, in the 1980s and 1990s, peasants, especially peasant women, were portrayed mostly as a ‘backward’, ‘low-quality’ group, who put a drag on modernization. Since the late 1990s, however, concern has grown that rural-
The author wishes to thank Yang Lichao, Ye Jingzhong and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and advice. 1In this paper, I use the term ‘discourse’ to refer to bodies of knowledge, the concepts, norms and values that underpin them, and the language that frames and communicates them. The term ‘elite discourse’ refers to discourse generated by scholars, state policy makers and advisers, and social activists, the vast majority of whom come from the urban, educated elite. The connections and overlaps between these groups are strong. Together, they play a dominant role in shaping both state policy and public attitudes toward national development.
