The sinews of state power: the rise and demise of the cohesive local state in rural China

Discovering dating violence in China -- Chinese intersectionality : a critical review of gender-based violence research and gender studies in China -- Dating landscape, power struggles, and love geography -- Sassy girl and tender boy : the transformation of doing gender -- Virginity loss, sexual coercion, and the unfinished sexual revolution -- Remapping the landscape of dating, gender, and violence.

Based on original fieldwork, The Sinews of State Power seeks to understand continuous rural instability in China despite national reforms in the post-2000s. It offers a fresh perspective by revisiting the fundamental components of a capable government - a coherent and robust local leadership - and tracing its rise and demise since the Maoist era.

Based on original fieldwork, 'The Sinews of State Power' seeks to understand continuous rural instability in China despite national reforms in the post-2000s. It offers a fresh perspective by revisiting the fundamental components of a capable government - a coherent and robust local leadership - and tracing its rise and demise since the Maoist era.

"The Sinews of State Power seeks to explain why rural China has been so unstable since 2000, despite numerous national reforms. Using original fieldwork, it traces the rise and demise of cohesive local states in rural China since the Maoist era. It shows that, the county, township, and village levels of government, when in alliance, have facilitated economic growth and caused social grievances. However, national reforms redressing local deviation, together with individual responses from each level of administration, have dismantled elite alliances, and consequentially undermined the extractive, coercive, and responsive capacity of the state. This book forms dialogue with two fields of inquiry in China studies and comparative politics. First, researches on farmer protest often either focus on farmers' grievances, organizations, and strategies, or examine responses from the state as a uniform entity. This book, instead, highlights the anthropology of the state by looking into elite cohesion across administrative levels that determines the exercise of state capacity. Second, studies of regime stability or endurance have stressed holistic factors, such as institutional adaptability, political culture, or epidemic corruption. The Sinews of State Power instead revisits the fundamental components of a capable government - a coherent and robust local leadership that enables the function of a state. "--

Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Dedication -- Table of Contents -- List of illustrations -- Acknowledgements -- Abbreviations -- 1. Discovering dating violence in China -- Two anecdotes -- When love hurts -- APEC Blue and Beijing Smog: imagined paradise -- Structure of the book -- Notes -- 2. Chinese intersectionality: A critical review of gender-based violence research and gender studies in China -- Gender-based violence: the past and present -- The shift of gender-based violence mapping -- The frontier and cutting-edge feminist activism -- When dating is struggling with violence -- Gender, state, and market -- Victimization of women and their representation -- Women, nation and modernity in question -- Women's images in neo-liberal China -- Feminist interaction between local and global -- The rise of intersectionality -- Indigenous endeavor and the dislocation of Confucian ideas -- Chinese intersectionality as a new framework -- Notes -- 3. Dating landscape, power struggles, and love geography -- Dating: pattern, process, and hierarchy -- College students: the matrix of job selection and dating choice -- 'Looking forward' or 'looking only at money'? -- Uncle-Lolita Complex -- Peacock girl and phoenix boy: dating between Beijingers and waidiren -- Thriving in the cosmopolitan city? New Beijingers' everyday conflicts -- Floating population: out of place -- International dating: choice of skin color -- Long-distance relationships: can love stand the separation? -- Conclusion -- Notes -- 4. Sassy girl and tender boy: The transformation of doing gender -- Pattern, types, and interpretations -- The paradox of My Sassy Girl -- Willful and therefore 'normal' -- Transformation of aggressive women images -- 'Harmless' due to love, tolerance, and arrogance -- 'Can you just do what I say?' -- Masculinity in flux