Les etiquetes de classe

HUANG, S.-m. (1998). The Spiral Road. Change in a Chinese Village trough the eyes of a Communist Party Leader. Boulder, Westview Press. Pàg. 45"

After Liberation Lin Boting was classified a rich peasant, not a landlord. The first thing our government did after 1949 was to divide peasants into a classification determined by a complex formula called 'levels of exploitation.' Every rich family was measured for its exploitation level, considering the amount of farmland, the number of dependents, the number of family laborers who participated in farming family land, the number of long-term or short-term laborers hired to work the land, and how long they had hired workers or leased out land to tenants. After some careful calculation, Lin Boting's exploitation level was determined at 27.3 percent, slightly below the 30 percent required to be classified as a landlord. He escaped this 'landlord' stigma and avoided some harsh treatment given to former landlords. But his miseries were far from over, even without the landlord label, until the tragic end of his life."

"How important were these class labels to a person's life?" I asked.
"Very, especially the distinction between rich and middle peasant. It was the demarcation line between two different worlds. Rich peasants, by virtue of leasing out part of their farmland to tenants or hiring a few farmhands before the Liberation, were regarded as practicing exploitation against the poor, although their sin was considered not as grave as the landlords'. During major political campaigns, and especially when public rallies were organized by higher-level authorities to 'struggle against' class enemies, the rich peasants-along with former landlords, officials of the previous regime, criminals, and counter-revolutionaries all those 'bad elements' (huai fenzi)-would be dragged up to the podium and attacked, either verbally or physically, by the masses. But during minor political campaigns the rich peasant families could sometimes be spared. Only the real landlords and anti-revolutionaries would be attacked. The real punishment for the rich peasants was that, because of their class label, their children would have few chances to receive advanced education or to join the People's Liberation Army. By contrast, the middle peasants could avoid all these limitations because of their non-exploitative nature."

"With the elimination of class labels in the countryside, a major problem has been solved. Everyone is now on equal standing. There are no more divisive forces to tear them apart. I consider this policy, the abolishment of pre-Liberation class labels, the most important contribution our Party has made to the people of China. In 1982, when we transcribed the household registers from the old record books to the new ones, we eliminated all descriptions of class origins. In doing so, we erased the last vestige of past conflicts based on pre-Liberation divisions. New harmonious social relationships now flourish in Lin Village, making reforms possible.