ABSTRACT
The Chinese countryside at the turn of the millennium presents observers with a perplexing puzzle. On the one side, significant increases in agricultural production have been recorded. In the most recent available statistics, the output of grain, for instance, stood 55 percent higher than when Mao died in 1976, 1 while rural industrial production has leaped eightfold during the past decade alone. 2 Yet in the face of these gains, evidence has mounted of increasingly open disgruntlement among villagers in many parts of the countryside, and word has sporadically leaked abroad of violent incidents of protest in the rural hinterlands. Why this widespread discontent?
