Jérôme Doyon - Rejuvenating Communism: Youth Organizations and Elite Renewal in Post-Mao China

Page ii China Understandings Today

Series Editors: Mary Gallagher and Emily Wilcox

China Understandings Today is dedicated to the study of contemporary China and seeks to present the latest and most innovative scholarship in social sciences and the humanities to the academic community as well as the general public. The series is sponsored by the Lieberthal-Rogel Center for Chinese Studies at the University of Michigan.

The Currency of Truth: Newsmaking and the Late-Socialist Imaginaries of Chinas Digital Era

Emily H. C. Chua

Disruptions as Opportunities: Governing Chinese Society with Interactive Authoritarianism

Taiyi Sun

Rejuvenating Communism: Youth Organizations and Elite Renewal in Post-Mao China

Jrme Doyon

Power of Freedom: Hu Shihs Political Writings

Chih-ping Chou and Carlos Yu-Kai Lin, Editors

Righteous Revolutionaries: Morality, Mobilization, and Violence in the Making of the Chinese State

Jeffrey A. Javed

Televising Chineseness: Gender, Nation, and Subjectivity

Geng Song

Resisting Spirits: Drama Reform and Cultural Transformation in the Peoples Republic of China

Maggie Greene

Going to the Countryside: The Rural in the Modern Chinese Cultural Imagination, 19151965

Yu Zhang

Power over Property: The Political Economy of Communist Land Reform in China

Matthew Noellert

The Global White Snake

Liang Luo

Jrme Doyon

University of Michigan Press

Ann Arbor

Page iv Copyright 2023 by Jrme Doyon

Some rights reserved

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Note to users: A Creative Commons license is only valid when it is applied by the person or entity that holds rights to the licensed work. Works may contain components (e.g., photographs, illustrations, or quotations) to which the rightsholder in the work cannot apply the license. It is ultimately your responsibility to independently evaluate the copyright status of any work or component part of a work you use, in light of your intended use. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

For questions or permissions, please contact um.press.perms@umich.edu

Published in the United States of America by the

University of Michigan Press

Manufactured in the United States of America

First published February 2023

A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data has been applied for.

ISBN 978-0-472-07557-7 (hardcover : alk. paper)

ISBN 978-0-472-05557-9 (paper : alk. paper)

ISBN 978-0-472-90294-1 (open access ebook)

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.12291596

The University of Michigan Presss open access publishing program is made possible thanks to additional funding from the University of Michigan Office of the Provost and the generous support of contributing libraries.

Cover image: Devoting youth to the motherland, creating our happy future! Chen Yunhe, October 1957. Courtesy chineseposters.net, Private collection (PC-1957-014).

Page v Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University

The Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute of Columbia University were inaugurated in 1962 to bring to a wider public the results of significant new research on modern and contemporary East Asia.

Digital materials related to this title can be found on the Fulcrum platform via the following citable URL: https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.12291596

Many people have earned my gratitude for their assistance throughout this project. The support of Franoise Mengin and Andrew Nathan has been fundamental in developing this research, and I want to express my appreciation for their mentoring and intellectual openness. At its core, this research was also made possible by the help of China-based colleagues and friends who helped me to get the fieldwork started (Bai Li, Deng Xiquan, Liu Yu, Mi Shoujiang, Wu Qing, Zhang Jian, Zhang Xiaojin, Zheng Huan), as well as the academics, officials, and students who gave their time to answer the many questions I put to them and whose names will remain unmentioned.

Very much like the young people I follow in this study, I had the chance to meet excellent and caring mentors and colleagues across academic communities, whose support has been instrumental in my research. In France, scholars from various horizons and traditions have provided me with their time and energy. I want to thank in particular Elisabeth Alls, Stphanie Balme, Jean-Philippe Bja, Jean-Louis Briquet, Jean-Pierre Cabestan, Rmi Castets, Yves Chevrier, Jean-Luc Domenach, Mathieu Duchtel, Chlo Froissart, Franois Godement, Emmanuel Jourda, Jean-Louis Rocca, and Sebastian Veg. From my time in New York, I am especially indebted to Kimuli Kasara, Timothy Frye, and L Xiaobo for their teaching and guidance.

As I moved to the United Kingdom, the Oxford School of Global and Area Studies, Oxford China Centre, and Wolfson College communities welcomed me with open arms, and I am grateful for their fellowship (thank you: Gordon Barrett, Paul Chaisty, Matthew Erie, Miriam Driessen, Giulia Falato, Rosemary Foots, Chris Foster, Chris Gerry, Erin Gordon, Coraline Goron, Todd Hall, Henrietta Harrison, Pamela Hunt, Paul Irwin Crookes, Kyle Jaros, Anna Lora-Wainwright, Zaad Mahmood, Nayanika Mathur, Chris Mittelstaedt, Rana Mitter, Rachel Murphy, Annie Nie, Clare Orchard, Tim Power, Hamsa Rajan, Yvan Schulz, Melissa Shorten, Vivienne Shue, Mamti Sunuodula, Hannah Theaker, Patricia Thornton, Chigusa Yamaura, Zhou Yunyun). Page xiv Beyond Oxford, I am beholden to Steve Tsang and Kerry Brown for involving me in their respective institutes at SOAS and Kings College London, widening my horizons.

Finalizing this book as a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School, I could rely on the excellent guidance and insights from Edward Cunningham, Tony Saich, Wang Yuhua, Daniel Koss, Lucy Hornby, as well as the help of the broader Ash Center and Cambridge China Politics Research Workshop circles.

In the course of writing, I have burdened close friends and family members with reading drafts of chapters or even the whole manuscript. For enduring this dry task, I am particularly indebted to Nathanel Amar, Judith Audin, Jrmie Bja, Paul Caussat, Patrice Doyon, Juliette Galonnier, Juliette Genevaz, Antoine Hardy, Jrmie Nollet, Edouard Laurent, Egor Lazarev, Liu Hanzhang, Pierre Pnet, Elizabeth Puzelat, Michel Puzelat, Mathieu Serenne, Konstantinos Tsimonis, and Yu Tinghua. My wife Julia Brouillard Soler has gone over the manuscript countless times, up to the point of dreaming about the Chinese nomenklatura, and I will never be able to repay her for the damage done.

Last but not least, I want to thank the anonymous reviewers, as well as the series editors and coordinators at both the University of Michigan Press and the Weatherhead East Asian Institute (Mary Gallagher, Sara Cohen, and Ariana King), for supporting this project and their tremendous job toward its finalization. They are in no way responsible for any of the remaining mistakes or omissions but should undoubtedly be given much credit for whatever qualities the finished product has.