Local clan communities in the Four Cleanups Movement and the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution

This chapter discusses local clan communities during the Four Cleanups Movement and the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (GPCR). The time span covered is from 1963 to 1979. During the two campaigns, the collective administration system entered a stable period. The land reform destroyed the organizational structure and economic or physical base of local clans, while the GPCR gave a heavy blow to clan culture, or the spiritual and ideological base of local clans. The GPCR profoundly altered the hierarchical order of Chinese patriarchal society and disseminated the consciousness of equality throughout the rural areas.