Chinese peasantry | DisamKB

Chinese peasantry

E40660

agrarian community rural population social class

The Chinese peasantry were the vast rural farming population whose mobilization and support were crucial to the success and social character of the Chinese Revolution.

Statements (50)

Predicate	Object
instanceOf	agrarian community → rural population → social class →
associatedEvent	Chinese Civil War → Chinese Revolution → Cultural Revolution → Great Leap Forward → Land Reform Campaigns in the early 1950s → People’s Commune movement →
country	China →
culturalCharacteristic	practice of ancestor worship → strong attachment to lineage and village traditions → use of local dialects →
demographicCharacteristic	majority of China’s population in the late imperial and Republican periods → organized in extended family households → predominantly living in villages →
economicCondition	dependent on seasonal agricultural cycles → low income → vulnerable to famine and natural disasters →
historicalRole	base of support for the Chinese Communist Party → beneficiary of land redistribution after 1949 → key force in the Chinese Revolution → main social base of Mao Zedong’s revolutionary strategy → major participant in land reform movements → participant in mass campaigns during the Mao era → participant in the Chinese Civil War through support for Communist forces → target group of Communist mobilization campaigns →
ideologicalRepresentation	depicted as victims of feudalism and landlordism → portrayed as the most revolutionary class in Maoist propaganda →
landTenure	often tenants under landlords before 1949 → recipients of confiscated landlord land after Communist victory →
language	various Sinitic languages and dialects →
organizationalForm	later organized into mutual aid teams and cooperatives → later organized into people’s communes → organized into peasant associations by the CCP →
politicalSignificance	central to Maoist theory of revolution → considered the main revolutionary class in Maoism → contrasted with the urban proletariat in Marxist debates about China → subject of CCP land reform and class struggle policies →
primaryOccupation	agriculture → subsistence farming →
religion	Buddhism → Chinese folk religion → Daoism →
socialStatus	largely poor → often landless or with small landholdings → subject to landlord exploitation before 1949 →
timePeriod	People’s Republic of China after 1949 → Republican era (1912–1949) → late Qing dynasty →

Referenced by (1)

Subject (surface form when different)	Predicate
Chinese Revolution →	mainParticipant