THE MAOIST MESSAGE IN THE CHINESE COUNTYSIDE, 1949–1978

This dissertation focuses on a large body of grassroots propagandists, who were tasked with shaping both the mindscapes and landscapes of the Chinese countryside during the Mao era. Geographically focused on Southeast Shanxi, it explores how this cohort functioned as the nucleus of Mao’s rural propaganda machine, how they empowered themselves with valuable opportunities and upward social mobility, and how they continuously re-drew the boundaries between the state and grassroots Chinese society.
This dissertation is based on previously untouched county archival materials and fresh oral histories. Each chapter spotlights a specific cohort of grassroots propagandists. These agents stood at the nexus of official propaganda departments and the vast rural populace. In exploring their connectedness with both the authorities and the rural people, this dissertation highlights grassroots experiences and individual agency in Socialist China. Centering on the oft-dismissed social dimension of propaganda, this dissertation demonstrates that the effectiveness of Chinese Communist Party’s propaganda in the countryside depended not on ideological persuasion or a new political culture, but on constant and dynamic interactions among the Party, its grassroots agents, and the rural population. Propaganda policies in the PRC politicized daily life and established social control through extremely localized, contingent processes rather than through centrally dictated ideological rhetoric.