Schoolhouse Politicians: Locality and State During the Chinese Republic (review)

Reviews 73 "did not lead to radical consequences, but the social vision that informed it was quite radical" (p. 69). Itwas an expression ofwidespread views of education and social change which for a time found an institutional home. With the publication ofthis book, few questions remain about the history of Laoda. An entire monograph devoted to a universitywhich lasted barely four years and graduated just a few hundred students may seem like scholarly overkill. This reviewer could have done without complete lists ofdepartment chairmen (there was a lot ofturnover) and the hours oflibrary reading rooms. However, Schools into Fields and Factoriesis remarkably suggestive on both higher and mass education, the Chinese labor movement, and the GMD and the CCP, and perhaps above all it presents an important and underappreciated slice ofmodern China's radical discourse—as well as ahistory ofLaoda which will allow comparisons with other universities. A particularly worthwhile feature of this book is its recreation of the intellectual and political circumstances which gave rise to Laoda. The goal of eliminating the gap between mental and manual labor lies deep in modern Chinese history, and Chan and Dirlik also show that later Maoistviews ofindividual transformation through labor cannotbe dismissed as simple anti-intellectualism. Mencius first justified the gap between mental and manual labor: modern intellectuals and activists are still seeking to lessen that gap. Education is the key. Peter Zarrow Vanderbilt University Helen R. Chauncey. Schoolhouse Politicians: Locality and State During the Chinese Republic Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1992. xi, 300 pp. copyright1994 by University of Hawai'i Press Helen Chauncey's book examines the political dimensions oflocal educational leadership in Republican-era Jiangsu Province. While the title gives no hint ofthe precise geographical focus ofthe book, the work targets a ten-county area bounded by the Grand Canal in the west, the Huai River basin in the north, the Yangzi River in the south, and the Yellow Sea in the east. Further, although the study concerns itselfwith "local elites" broadly writ, the author's main interest is in members of"education circles," especially those associated with lower-primary schools. Chauncey spotlights elites whose home turfwas outside county seats— in the many "local municipalities," as she calls these towns that were administratively subordinate to counties. Chauncey is to be congratulated for shining a light on elites in this litde-studied stratum in the hierarchy of central places. According to the author, education-related elites in Jiangsu s local munici- 74 China Review International: Vol. ?, No. ?, Spring 1994 parities were not just reactive to pressures from central or provincial governments , but rather were proactive, as they went about the business of establishing and maintaining their own institutions—particularly, for her purposes, lower primary schools. She encourages the reader to think of these schools not just as educational institutions, but also as political resources for subcounty elites. Such institutions, many of them supported by subcounty commercial taxation, provided prestige and income for school officials. Despite the statements of the author about the proactiveness of educationrelated elites in local municipalities (pp. 5-6), much ofher attention is on various bids by provincial authorities to exert control over local educators as well as on those local educators' reactions to such attacks on local autonomy. Chauncey describes, for example, an attempt by provincial-level authorities in 1918 to control local education by sending out inspectors, demanding registration ofall educational associations, and enforcing qualification standards on educators (p. 141). Another unsuccessful provincial stab at subordinating local educators came in the mid-i920s. The author argues that between 1927 and 1937 the Jiangsu provincial government of the Chinese Nationalist regime pursued a relentless administrative program of"coercive control" of local educators and schools that ultimately alienated those educators. By contrast, Chauncey believes that the Chinese Communist Party, during the War of Resistance, followed a largely mobilizational strategy . By setting aside a percentage of seats in the CCP-led provincial assembly and in some county assemblies for representatives of"educational circles," the CCP co-opted some of these subcounty elites into its service (pp. 177-178). The CCP similarly encouraged teachers to serve on work teams to promote the party's policies for rent and...