Catholics vs. Communists in Rural China: The Tunliu Rebellion & Faction Warfare in Shanxi, 1946-47
Minh-Hoang Ngo challenges the conventional interpretation of peasant resistance
Wednesday, March 10, 2004
12:00 PM - 1:45 PM
10383 Bunche Hall
UCLA
Using unpublished CCP local archives, Dr. Minh-Hoang Ngo describes how a rebellion of Catholics that spread from the county of Tunliu, in southeastern Shanxi province, developed into factional warfare during the Land Reform movement from autumn 1946 to spring 1947. Dr. Ngo’s research calls in question the literature on peasant resistance. She analyzes, first, how the local Catholics and gentry mobilized in order to oppose the CCP, and second, how the powerful resistance of the Catholics, gentry, and peasants convinced the CCP to resort to its old means of mobilizing the rural gentry by organizing one faction against another. In other words, she explains how powerful resistance caused the local CCP leadership to disregard the nationalist line laid down by CCP policy while paradoxically appealing to nationalism in the fight against the Catholics. Finally, she shows that this ultimate paradox explains why, during the Anti-Japanese War, the CCP nationalist leadership failed to establish its power in the core of the county.
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Minh-Hoang Ngo received a bachelor’s degree in Chinese language and civilization from the Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales, a master’s degree (summa cum laude) in history from the Sorbonne, a diploma (summa cum laude) in advanced studies in international relations and the Cold War from the Sorbonne, a diploma (summa cum laude) in advanced studies on contemporary and modern China from the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, and (in 2003) a Ph.D. (summa cum laude) in modern and contemporary Chinese history from the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales.
Dr. Ngo was a research fellow at Centre d’Etude Français sur la Chine Contemporaine (in Hong Kong) in 2000–01, and has received an appointment as a post-doctoral research fellow at Waseda University (Tokyo), a position she will take up this April. Her publications, in French, have ranged from articles on Léon Blum and Marxism, to Charles de Gaulle and the problem of Chinese unity, to the making of the party-state and the militarization of rural society of northern China, 1937-1949. She is completing a book, based on unpublished CCP archives, on China’s Rural Rebels: A New Understanding of the CCP Revolution.
For more information please contact
Richard Gunde
Tel: 310 825-8683
gunde@ucla.edu
www.international.ucla.edu
Sponsor(s): Center for Buddhist Studies
