Lineage Solidarity and Rhetorical Resonance: Village Strategies to Retain Primary Schools in Rural China

• Published in: The China quarterly (London) Vol. 249; pp. 239 - 258
• Main Authors: Tian, Felicia F., Song, Jing, Du, Shichao
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge, UK Cambridge University Press 01.03.2022
• Subjects: Cadres; Compulsory education; Counties; Cultural tourism; Elementary schools; Feasibility; Fertility; Grass roots movement; Inequality; Lineage; Local economy; Local government; Politics; Population decline; Poverty; Rural areas; Rural schools; School closures; Schools; Social cohesion; Socioeconomic factors; Teaching; Tourism; Towns; Villages; China; rural China; 宗族团结; 撤点并校; rhetorical resonance; poverty alleviation; 话语共鸣; 扶贫; school consolidation; lineage solidarity; 中国农村
• ISSN: 0305-7410; 1468-2648
• DOI: 10.1017/S0305741021001065

As the state has shifted its priorities towards social harmony and poverty alleviation, this study finds rhetorical resonance, combined with strong lineage solidarity, as an emerging strategy for villages to compete for government resources and investments. By articulating grassroots needs as being in line with local cadres’ performance goals, villages have successfully converted their needs into development proposals and mobilized lineage solidarity to persuade local cadres of the feasibility of such proposals. Drawing on three villages’ school-saving efforts in Fujian province, our fieldwork illustrates how one village retained its school by mobilizing lineage solidarity and converting education into a “model” village project to boost cultural tourism. Others failed to do so and lost their schools. Under the target-based cadre management system, the bottom-up competition for government support is largely shaped by the villages’ pre-existing development and resource structures, which may maximize management efficiency but may also reinforce socioeconomic inequalities between villages.