Making A Rural Modern In Early Twentieth Century China

Kate Merkel-Hess, Assistant Professor of History and Asian Studies, Pennsylvania State University

China became a majority urban country only in 2011, and the trend toward urbanization will deepen in the next decade as the government fulfills its plans to move rural populations into cities, razing villages and relocating villagers to suburban high rises. This shift is the end of a story that originated in the 1920s and 1930s, when intellectuals began what turned out to be an almost century-long challenge to the urban nature of modernization, positing, in its place, a rural modern. This alternate vision of modernity got its start among the thousands of Chinese reformers who ventured into the countryside to try to effect rural reconstruction and, in so doing, make a new people. This talk explores not only how reformers imagined remade people and their communities, but also the shifts in rural reconstruction models as government and international interest in the reforms grew, and what had been largely independent or local efforts at reform were increasingly entangled with the developmental state.