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Broken Earth: The Rural Chinese
Having lived for two years among Chinese villagers, an anthropologist illuminates the patterns and details of their lives and analyzes the effects of political corruption, a black market economy, and a campaign of coerced birth control
317 pages, Hardcover
First published September 1, 1983
2 people are currently reading
128 people want to read
About the author
Steven W. Mosher
17 books50 followersSteven W. Mosher is an internationally recognized authority on China and population issues, as well as an acclaimed author, speaker. He has worked tirelessly since 1979 to fight coercive population control programs and has helped hundreds of thousands of women and families worldwide over the years.
In 1979, Steven was the first American social scientist to visit mainland China. He was invited there by the Chinese government, where he had access to government documents and actually witnessed women being forced to have abortions under the new “one-child policy.” Mr. Mosher was a pro-choice atheist at the time, but witnessing these traumatic abortions led him to reconsider his convictions and to eventually become a practicing, pro-life Roman Catholic.
Steven has appeared numerous times before Congress as an expert in world population, China, and human rights abuses. He has also made TV appearances on Good Morning America, 60 Minutes, The Today Show, 20/20, FOX and CNN news, as well as being a regular guest on talk radio shows across the nation.
Articles by Steve have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Reader’s Digest, The New Republic, The Washington Post, National Review, Reason, The Asian Wall Street Journal, Freedom Review, Linacre Quarterly, Catholic World Report, Human Life Review, First Things, and numerous other publications.
Steven Mosher lives in Virginia with his wife, Vera, and their nine children.
In 1979, Steven was the first American social scientist to visit mainland China. He was invited there by the Chinese government, where he had access to government documents and actually witnessed women being forced to have abortions under the new “one-child policy.” Mr. Mosher was a pro-choice atheist at the time, but witnessing these traumatic abortions led him to reconsider his convictions and to eventually become a practicing, pro-life Roman Catholic.
Steven has appeared numerous times before Congress as an expert in world population, China, and human rights abuses. He has also made TV appearances on Good Morning America, 60 Minutes, The Today Show, 20/20, FOX and CNN news, as well as being a regular guest on talk radio shows across the nation.
Articles by Steve have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Reader’s Digest, The New Republic, The Washington Post, National Review, Reason, The Asian Wall Street Journal, Freedom Review, Linacre Quarterly, Catholic World Report, Human Life Review, First Things, and numerous other publications.
Steven Mosher lives in Virginia with his wife, Vera, and their nine children.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
February 16, 2009
While the author lived in China in 1979 through 1980, the book covers life in China from late in Mao's era until 1982. He primarily talks about life in rural southern China, but he also was able to interact with some city Chinese and learn a bit about the conditions in other parts of China. This book is a well-written behind-the-propaganda look into the culture.
The book covers village life and work, the bureaucracy, corruption and crime, unemployment, restrictions on daily life, the education system, the Youth who grew up during the Cultural Revolution, marriage, the role of men and women, forced birth control, the political campaigns, and more. While we do get to see slices of rural life, this book is more a historical view of the political policies and how they affected the Chinese alive at the time the author lived there.
The book was very informative without being dry. In fact, I probably would have read the book through in one sitting if I hadn't had to take a break after every chapter or two so I could process everything I'd just learned. Anyone who thinks the textbook version of communism or socialism looks appealing should read this book to learn the pitfalls of how socialism works out in reality.
The book covers village life and work, the bureaucracy, corruption and crime, unemployment, restrictions on daily life, the education system, the Youth who grew up during the Cultural Revolution, marriage, the role of men and women, forced birth control, the political campaigns, and more. While we do get to see slices of rural life, this book is more a historical view of the political policies and how they affected the Chinese alive at the time the author lived there.
The book was very informative without being dry. In fact, I probably would have read the book through in one sitting if I hadn't had to take a break after every chapter or two so I could process everything I'd just learned. Anyone who thinks the textbook version of communism or socialism looks appealing should read this book to learn the pitfalls of how socialism works out in reality.
December 12, 2013
One of the first researchers allowed in China. So, a snapshot of the era. The Cultural Revolution was over -- the young men and women had grown up in it -- and the Four Modernizations, such as they were, were in full swing, and their anti-population movement had just started the one-child policy. This covers mostly what he saw while settled in the Pearl River Delta. (For his road-trip, see A Journey to the Forbidden China)
So, an overview of that time. Their households and the ease with which people go in and out. How they say not "how are you?" but "have you eaten?" and it's more complimentary to talk of how much food there is than of how good it is. The enormous bureaucracy with its 24 grades -- though only at 17th does it start to acquire privileges, and there's another ramp up at 13th and 7th; 18th and inferior are generally such part of the populace. The rampant corruption and theft. His adventures in first getting a van registered and then (fruitlessly) trying to get his own license.
There was one (1) man who had actually denounced his father in struggles, despite many stories of it in the Chinese press. Furthermore, this man's father had fled to Hong Kong, and remarried without ever again communicating with his first wife and children, so he suffered no harm, and the son probably had more than revolutionary fervor behind his attacks on his landlord father. Nevertheless, this was regarded with contempt.
Children and schooling. One effect of the Cultural Revolution was to bring education into contempt. Nevertheless, it was picking up and getting much more rigorous -- though speaking of the standards of the Cultural Revolution make it clear it was hard for it to get much worse. It also locked children in a college preparatory course when the great majority would never come close. Even those with bad family backgrounds who would never be permitted had to take that course.
The young people who grew up in the Cultural Revolution and what affects it had on them. The courtships and marriages -- you arrange to sit by someone at the movies through a go-between, and after three or four, you are able to talk to each other.
The women, for whom the chief effect of the Revolution is now they have to work in the fields as well as in their households. And now the anti-birth campaigns for which they are now the chief target. Pregnant women forced to meeting where they will be fined if they don't go and lose their days' wage if they do until they "think clear."
And the brief febrile excitement of political campaigns, which then have their life drained out of them by the relentlessly high pitch they are carried to. Some stories of the victims of the Cultural Revolution. And the way the peasants, if you got past the rote responses by asking when life was better, personally, for them, would praise the Republic.
Lots of stuff.
So, an overview of that time. Their households and the ease with which people go in and out. How they say not "how are you?" but "have you eaten?" and it's more complimentary to talk of how much food there is than of how good it is. The enormous bureaucracy with its 24 grades -- though only at 17th does it start to acquire privileges, and there's another ramp up at 13th and 7th; 18th and inferior are generally such part of the populace. The rampant corruption and theft. His adventures in first getting a van registered and then (fruitlessly) trying to get his own license.
There was one (1) man who had actually denounced his father in struggles, despite many stories of it in the Chinese press. Furthermore, this man's father had fled to Hong Kong, and remarried without ever again communicating with his first wife and children, so he suffered no harm, and the son probably had more than revolutionary fervor behind his attacks on his landlord father. Nevertheless, this was regarded with contempt.
Children and schooling. One effect of the Cultural Revolution was to bring education into contempt. Nevertheless, it was picking up and getting much more rigorous -- though speaking of the standards of the Cultural Revolution make it clear it was hard for it to get much worse. It also locked children in a college preparatory course when the great majority would never come close. Even those with bad family backgrounds who would never be permitted had to take that course.
The young people who grew up in the Cultural Revolution and what affects it had on them. The courtships and marriages -- you arrange to sit by someone at the movies through a go-between, and after three or four, you are able to talk to each other.
The women, for whom the chief effect of the Revolution is now they have to work in the fields as well as in their households. And now the anti-birth campaigns for which they are now the chief target. Pregnant women forced to meeting where they will be fined if they don't go and lose their days' wage if they do until they "think clear."
And the brief febrile excitement of political campaigns, which then have their life drained out of them by the relentlessly high pitch they are carried to. Some stories of the victims of the Cultural Revolution. And the way the peasants, if you got past the rote responses by asking when life was better, personally, for them, would praise the Republic.
Lots of stuff.
November 21, 2019
Wow. Mosher’s non-fiction accounts of life in China are fascinating. Because he speaks both Mandarin and Cantonese, he was able to talk directly to peasants. So instead of learning only the propaganda that the Chinese Communist Party shared with American reporters in the 1980’s, we can learn from Mosher what life was really like in Chinese villages after 30 years of revolution and government control. I’ve read four of his books now. This book was written in 1984. Mosher is still writing about and campaigning for human rights in China, though I am sure he will never be allowed back into China since he dares tell the truth about oppression in China.
“‘Before collectivization people worked hard…(Now) everyone works at the same slow pace. People have learned from collectivization to do just enough to get by’” (said a peasant in China)...
“This creation of socialist man out of the stuff of propaganda and production was the core of Mao’s Faustian quest for a China truly Communist. But he reckoned without the tenacity of economic man…
“Forced to share more or less equally what they earned, peasants slacked of, working just hard enough to feed themselves. Hence every potential gain in agricultural production was offset in the making by increasingly shiftless peasants, whose declining labor productivity held them to the subsistence level. Collectivism, which had been held out as the deliverance of the peasantry, had become its curse.” -pp. 40, 42
“Bureaucratic proliferation is the unavoidable consequence of a political system that not only sanctions but mandates official intrusions into every nook and cranny of everyday life...Freedom of choice is narrowly circumscribed in the PRC, where the authority to decide where to live, where to work, what to eat and wear, and even how many children to have has been largely taken out of the hands of individuals and given over to government officials. The economic improbability that is bureaucratic totalitarianism drains the national treasury by forcing the population at large to support an ever-growing army of nonproductive bureaucrats, who justify their existence by busily controlling more and more of the business of everyday life.” -p. 75
----------------
Video of the author testifying before Congress: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Llz4N...
Video of the author discussing China’s horrific organ harvesting from (living) political prisoners (mainly muslims in concentration camps) which is still happening today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhE0l...
“‘Before collectivization people worked hard…(Now) everyone works at the same slow pace. People have learned from collectivization to do just enough to get by’” (said a peasant in China)...
“This creation of socialist man out of the stuff of propaganda and production was the core of Mao’s Faustian quest for a China truly Communist. But he reckoned without the tenacity of economic man…
“Forced to share more or less equally what they earned, peasants slacked of, working just hard enough to feed themselves. Hence every potential gain in agricultural production was offset in the making by increasingly shiftless peasants, whose declining labor productivity held them to the subsistence level. Collectivism, which had been held out as the deliverance of the peasantry, had become its curse.” -pp. 40, 42
“Bureaucratic proliferation is the unavoidable consequence of a political system that not only sanctions but mandates official intrusions into every nook and cranny of everyday life...Freedom of choice is narrowly circumscribed in the PRC, where the authority to decide where to live, where to work, what to eat and wear, and even how many children to have has been largely taken out of the hands of individuals and given over to government officials. The economic improbability that is bureaucratic totalitarianism drains the national treasury by forcing the population at large to support an ever-growing army of nonproductive bureaucrats, who justify their existence by busily controlling more and more of the business of everyday life.” -p. 75
----------------
Video of the author testifying before Congress: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Llz4N...
Video of the author discussing China’s horrific organ harvesting from (living) political prisoners (mainly muslims in concentration camps) which is still happening today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhE0l...
June 11, 2011
I read this many years ago and it still stands out as a book I'm so grateful I read. I learned so much and the lives of these villagers will always pull at my heart. A true account that got the author in a lot of hot water for writing. He is a hero.
January 7, 2022
Moment in time.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews