Depoliticisation,hybridisation and dual processes of stigmatisation: An examination of the civilising offensive in China’s rural areas through moral review councils

The concept of civilising offensive and its use in examining MRCs

The ‘term het burgerlijk beschavingsoffensief – the bourgeois civilising offensive – was first coined’ by Piet De Rooy in 1979 in reference to ‘efforts to improve the lot of the working classes in the Netherlands’ (cited in Powell, 2013). It is an adoption of Lasch’s (1977, p. 169) notion of ‘the forces of organized virtue’ (cited in van Ginkel, 1996, p. 224; see also Kruithof, 2015), in combination with Elias’s civilising process. Within the framework of Elias’s (1939/2000) long-term, blind and unplanned civilising process, this civilising offensive adds a new ingredient: attempts at steering social behaviours in a particular direction by ‘active, conscious and deliberate powerful groups’ (van Krieken, 1999, p. 303).

In many ways, ‘civilising offensive’ is a value-neutral analytical concept for assessing various activities whereby certain more powerful groups attempt to eradicate the supposedly ‘uncivilised’ behaviours associated with other less powerful groups and for teaching these groups more disciplined behavioural standards (Powell, 2013; see also de Regt, 2015; Flint et al., 2015; van Ginkel, 1996). It has been employed in examining cases of civilising offensive in urban and rural areas in China in recent years (Wen et al., 2020; Zhang, 2020; Zhang & McGhee, 2020) and also in Europe (Clement, 2015; Dolan, 2015; Flint et al., 2015; Kruithof, 2015; Mitzman, 1987; Powell, 2007, 2013; de Spiegeleer, 2018; van Ginkel, 1996, 2015; van Krieken, 1999; Verrips, 1987; Vertigans, 2015).

Yet, despite the usefulness of the concept of civilising offensive as an analytical tool, as de Regt (2015) finds, there has been a trend in the Netherlands in recent years to use the concept as part of a discourse on moral decline, which compromises its analytical power. Therefore, in order to realise the full potential of civilising offensive as an analytical concept, de Regt argues, we must return to ‘the original meaning of the concept and link it with Elias’ civilisation theory’ and ‘restrict the term to an analysis of the interventions in the life of certain groups with the aim of instilling more self-control’ (de Regt, 2015). Moreover, as Powell argues, we need to conduct more international comparative analyses for advancing the theory of civilising offensive, not only in terms of the behaviours and targets of civilising offensives over the long-term but also the spaces in which they are regulated, both public and private (Powell, 2013).

In responding to these critiques, I argue that we not only need to bring back the concept of civilising offensive as an analytical tool, but also need to examine the spatial changes associated with a civilising offensive. This can help contribute to empirically discerning the dynamics between the immediate individual behavioural changes associated with civilising offensives and the long-term civilising process. In other words, how the ‘dynamics between sociogenesis and psychogenesis’ are linked (Powell & Flint, 2009, p. 162). As I show in this article, other than the intended behavioural changes towards more self-control, there are associated spatial changes produced by MRCs as a medium in which sociogenesis and psychogenesis are exemplified simultaneously. That is, the courtyards of party and village committees – the formerly state-sponsored political spaces where mass criticism sessions were conducted in the Maoist era between 1949 and 1976, and which were dominated by monumental structures as locations for mass mobilisation and political propaganda – have been transformed into dispersed social spaces or ‘a plebian public space’ through hosting MRC meetings. This transformation involves a strategy of depoliticisation of former party spaces, which echoes the changes of Chinese society as a whole since the reform era in the 1980s.

As places where MRC meetings are held, these courtyards are turned into a liminal space, in which individual subjects volunteer to be subjected to scrutiny, monitoring and assessment, driven by the desire for a good reputation and in many cases economic rewards. Villagers’ participation in itself guarantees that the level of their civility is raised, whilst refusing to participate is a sign of their ultimate incivility, which risks setting them apart from the community. Thus, it is through examining spatial changes engendered by a civilising offensive that we are able to see ‘the linked dynamics between sociogenesis and psychogenesis’. In this sense, liminal spaces hosting MRC sessions and their repeated use can clearly demonstrate how the ‘macro level of social, political and economic structures’ and ‘the micro level of psychological and emotional orientation’ are linked (van Krieken, 2014, p. 21).

Whilst civilising processes constantly generate new civilisational problems, requiring new civilising offensives for the transformation of habitus, civilising offensives often have problematic effects that are gradually resolved as the civilising process unfolds (van Krieken, 2020, pp. 719–722). In this regard, there are also unintended effects of this civilising offensive campaign (in contrast with associated and intended effects), which is that the target population experiences a dual process of stigmatisation. That is, those uncivil segments are further stigmatised and separated from the already stigmatised peasant group in the context of Chinese urbanisation. I will examine this problem further in the penultimate section.

Methodology

Empirical data for this study were initially collected through my in-depth semi-structured interviews with more than 30 officials and councillors in both Zhejiang and Yunnan provinces in China, between October 2017 and June 2019, when my colleagues and I conducted research on moral clinics in Chinese cities (see Wen et al., 2020; Zhang & McGhee, 2020) and on the newly established village affairs supervisory committees (cunwu jiandu weiyuanhui) in Yunnan. During my visit in Zhejiang, I conducted 11 informal interviews and had talks with local party officials both in the resident committee and the street office, and also with propaganda officials. During my visit in Yunnan, I interviewed 24 officials, including 10 councillors, six local leaders of the party branch committee and the village committee, and eight propaganda officials of the county and township governments. Interviews generally ran between half an hour and two hours. I asked interviewees about issues such as their understanding of the rationale for establishing MRCs and the relationship between these groups and the other governing bodies of villages, their perspectives on the expected roles of MRCs, and problems associated with the introduction of MRCs. During this period, I also gathered dozens of official reports that document the operation of MRCs within the region. In order to survey the historical development of MRCs, I collected more than 400 Chinese national and local newspaper reports and editorials documenting MRCs from the first appearance of this organisation in 1984 until 2018.

As I have also explained elsewhere, for both my studies in Chinese urban and rural areas, I did not conduct interviews with service users, beneficiaries or the targeted population of the campaign. The reason for this is that I was less confident about the service users’ ability to give informed consent (many of whom are members of vulnerable groups). There was the possibility that local officials (and councillors) acting as gatekeepers (as my access to the field was dominantly facilitated and controlled by officials) could have compelled the service users to participate in the study. This is a valuable area of further research on the civilising offensive in terms of how targeted groups receive, resist or perceive the practices of MRCs (in the form of a civilising ‘defensive’). If I had done this, I would have determined to what extent the intended behavioural changes are produced by the civilising offensives launched by MRCs, considering they were operated without accompanying disciplinary offensives (see Zhang, 2020, p. 515).

The strategy of analysis of this study is based on the paradigmatic approach (see Agamben, 2005; Agamben et al., 2009). Given the implications for validity and reliability, I am aware that ‘newspaper data often do not reach acceptable standards for event analysis’ (Ortiz et al., 2005, p. 397). Yet, in my analysis, different types of data, such as interviews, newspapers, official reports and so on, play an equally important role, not because they are equally ‘true’ or ‘authentic’, but because I try to assemble my own paradigm by utilising a variety of types of information. They all can help me get to the logics, rationales and concerns that inform civilising offensives over time. Thus, I do not claim that my findings are universally valid, but rather aim to construct a paradigm that sheds new light on seemingly old phenomena across time and space. What is in question here is not the type of ‘objective’ data but ‘the epistemological paradigm of inquiry itself’ (Agamben et al., 2009, p. 89). Thus, I examined the data through employing a thematic analysis method, recommended by Boyatzis (1998), in order to create paradigmatic relations between things that have no apparent link.

On beginning the analysis, coding moves between the empirical data, civilising theory, and emerging analytical concepts. In this process, certain low-level codes (e.g. characteristics of MRCs members, repetitive education, pingyi is mediation and group activity, shaming through publicising bad, group criticism, etc.) were combined into a higher level and collapsed as more abstract themes that inform the current writing (e.g. authority of councillors and MRCs, public plebian spaces, stigmatisation and so on). In the end, I created a thematic grid containing four levels of sub-themes with 165 nodes that generally summed up the data and allowed me to determine and gather together the opinions of my participants and reports on the subjects explored. In the quotations, I use ‘Official’ to denote officials that I have interviewed, ‘OR’ to denote official reports and ‘NR’ to denote news reports. The numbers following these abbreviations are the coding numbers I assigned to them when I did the analysis.

Operational rationalities of MRCs

In the context of rapid urbanisation, economic self-governance and the retreat of the state in terms of providing public services, there appears to be a ‘moral vacuum’ in Chinese rural areas (Yan, 2011, p. 51). The party has addressed this problem by promoting the notions of suzhi (human quality), ‘spiritual civilisation’ and ‘qualified people’, through which the party has been able to present its members in rural areas as ‘civilising agents [who are capable of] bringing prosperity, science, morality, and social organization to the villages’ (Thøgersen, 2003, p. 201). Thus, the establishment of the MRC constitutes ‘a reaction and attempt to counter the fragile authority and weakening prestige of local officials and the local political system’ since the reform era in the 1980s (Hansen, 2008, p. 1077). Yet, in many ways, MRCs are more representative of ‘informal community governance’ in China, which complements rather than subverts formal ‘state’ governance structures and strategies (Zhang & McGhee, 2020). For example, the councillors in MRCs, who are members of the groups most loyal to the party, are often called the ‘four elderly’ (silao), and comprise veterans, cadres, communist members and role models who are above 60 years old. Institutionally, MRCs are led and supervised by village party committees, and in some cases, there are coordination groups at the township level which oversee the operation of the MRCs in different villages. As stated in a report regarding the rationale for the establishment of MRCs,

We put forward the concept of ‘ruling the village by virtue’, making full use of family bonds and friendship, with the help of prestigious [individuals among the] rural masses. The villagers’ MRCs organised by the masses fill the gap of ‘grass-roots’ democratic participation and party administration. (NR7)

Thus, councillors’ joint efforts are aimed at bridging the gap of party administration in maintaining local order. They attempt ‘to spur dynamic processes of change from within’ (Andonova, 2017, p. 5). Based on this organised virtue, the MRC acquired a form of institutional capital that enabled it to reinvent itself and engage with various actors in rural areas. In the process of its operations, the MRC sometimes acts as a court for mediating disputes between neighbours in order to avoid using the law by going to a formal court, which would burden state apparatuses. Sometimes, the councillors not only settle disputes but also educate the masses in an effort to avoid disputes in the future. In short, as a report generalises,

MRCs’ main tasks are: to promote communist morality and to carry out legal education, and to solve problems that violate socialist ethics but do not break the law, such as negligence, unreasonable absenteeism, abandonment of the elderly, harm against the legitimate rights and interests of women and children, and gross interference with children . . . as well as marriage and unethical or minor criminal acts such as fighting, damage to public property, robbery, alcoholism, gambling and so on in public places – unethical cases associated with serious problems. Conflicts over land, between neighbours, mothers-in-law and husband and wife in rural areas are particularly prominent. In general, everything, if not resolved in time, could lead to social unrest. (NR41)

As noted earlier, councillors are like the village priest or the Protestant pastor in rural European contexts centuries ago, who offer pastoral support and advice as ‘the pedagogy for farmers’ (Murphy, 2006, p. 23). The moral reviews conducted by these councillors are not only morally meaningful but can also engender serious practical consequences for the parties being reviewed. As a report notes,

The family members who receive good reviews enjoy glory as well as prestige in the village, while families with bad comments are judged by others, and it would also be difficult for their son to marry a good girl. Many unhealthy tendencies are therefore avoided in the future. (NR14)

These social sanctions imposed by MRCs contribute to the valorisation of social values, and it is expected that participants in review meetings will internalise them in order to restrain themselves from engaging in uncivil behaviour in the future. Regarding MRCs, there is a clear link between economic incentive and morality. It is recognised that the higher the level of morality, the greater the villagers’ credibility and, consequently, the more financial support they are eligible to receive from local banks.

MRCs not only use economic measures to organise social life but also assert that the self-responsibilisation they promote can retrospectively contribute to local economic development. In this regard, it can be said that there is a direct relationship between moral capital and economic capital. As a report documented,

Although X village is far from the city, and is connected to the outside world only by a 10 km-long sand road, many Korean merchants still manage to find it and have invested 400,000 US dollars to build factories. This is because these foreign businessmen believe X village has a good reputation for morality, which is attributed to the villagers’ moral review council. (NR5)

From the above statement, as in many other cases, it appears that MRCs also adopt strategies of neoliberalism and that economic benefit is linked to the level of morality. As a result, market profitability, the morality of the local community and the integrity of individuals, and the quality of products are all closely linked. Furthermore, the morality of local people and the economic profitability of industry, in many cases, are also linked to the sustainability of the local environment. Morality is about the proper balance between economic development and environmental protection. This is documented in a report:

We also combine the review with economic development and actively advocate environmental protection as essential for moral review activities. We want organically to combine the promotion of economic development with issues that affect a clean environment. (NR6)

As suggested by the above cases, the establishment of MRCs reveals that zizhi (governing the self) can encompass political, social, environmental and economic imperatives. Morality – the ability to govern the self – has become a form of leverage in the governance of local people in every aspect of their daily life. In the end, MRCs embrace a wide range of functions, acting as a bridge between the masses and the party, mediating disputes between neighbours and fundamentally educating individuals to be self-responsible.

Gender also plays a key role in the establishment of MRCs. In this regard, the MRC as an organisation dominated by older males aims to promote patriarchal interests by advocating more traditional roles for women and incorporating a ‘respect for the elderly programme’. A report documented the following regarding this role:

According to the characteristics of the majority of families in the community, the male manages ‘external affairs’, while the female manages internal ones. The MRC has clearly defined the idea of ‘emphasising the role of women’ and has formulated ten measures for the community to [use to] carry out the construction of ‘new folk customs’. The MRC quickly responded to this initiative by organising [the categories of] ‘civilised family’, ‘moral model’, ‘civilised people’, ‘good mother-in-law’, ‘good wife’, ‘good neighbour’, and electing a women’s representative as president of the council. (NR11)

In this sense, the MRC is a traditional paternalistic form of power that now facilitates state ventures in contemporary China. Thus, zizhi in China today is not about the dispersal of state power but the mobilisation of local activism in order to supplement the bureaucratic administration (Day, 2013, p. 932). Like zizhi in the past, the roles in MRCs are fulfilled by

. . . publicly recognized local authoritative figures such as gentries and headmen of clan/lineage organisations, given the respect they commanded from villagers by virtue of their special qualifications like age, wealth, learning, kin status, or personal capacity . . . to serve as their intermediate agents for local governance. (Lu, 2014, p. 59)

Although the councillors of MRCs are elected by villagers’ votes (I examine further the politics of the village election in the last section), the role of councillors is like that of the gentry in the past, who were older males and ‘functioned as “guardians of the traditional moral teachings”’, being actively engaged in teaching and illustrating moral principles (Chang, 1955, p. 63). Thus, MRCs as community anchor organisations are established in the context of fast economic development and the relative retreat of state power in rural areas in the era of de-collectivisation.

Plebeian public space formed by MRCs in Chinese villages

Indeed, ‘public life in the post-collective era has declined rapidly in many respects: political participation, public goods provision, cultural activities, morality, and sociality in general have all suffered’ (Yan, 2003, p. 29). This is also seen as an example of the weakening (or retreat) of formal authority in rural areas, in which the public theatres of villages were emptied, previously the centre of political gatherings, of endless mass meetings and study sessions in the Maoist past (Liu, 2000, p. 146). That is, there was no one who ‘could authorize the meaning of ceremonial acts or symbols for local people’ and, consequently, very little activity of any kind took place that was sponsored or organised by the community as a whole (Liu, 2000, p. 131).

The emptiness of public theatres shows a lack of collective authority to maintain and mobilise local order. Yet, this does not mean that the central state’s political power over the countryside is weakened, but rather that it governs in different ways. That is, as Thøgersen (2009) finds, ‘the state is still the major player, but traditional top-down procedures are often perceived to be unproductive when it comes to micro-level community building, so state actors are forced to find allies among village elites and social activists’ (p. 9). This is the historical and political background against which MRCs were formed by older male elites representing a ‘community-centered, extra-bureaucratic elite activism’ (Rowe, 1990, p. 321).

Furthermore, the practice of moral review meetings prevents any other social groups from launching politically uncontrollable mass gatherings. The space of the headquarters itself becomes a battlefront. In this space, in order to reach consensus on which there is an ‘ineradicability of antagonism’, councillors stress ‘nonconfrontational, discursive and quotidian modes of response’ (Ku, 2003, p. 15). This nonconfrontational and informal way of dealing with issues can be seen in the following words from a report:

We have to create a relaxed environment for review, so that the members of the MRC can truly understand that the moral review is not a place for ‘meeting for criticism’ but a platform for equal exchange, for reasoning with people, allowing people to regulate their words and deeds in the process of the moral review, so that the review can win more and more people’s understanding, support and participation. (NR24)

The role of the MRC is not only about solving disputes amongst villagers but also about review, pingyi. This is a tactic based on elaborating facts and educating people through reason rather than imposing decisions on them. In this context, moral review gatherings become a site of ceremonies, the moral space binding villagers to each other in durable relations through many activities, as seen in this statement from a report:

At least one moral review should be conducted every quarter; they ‘listen’ to the voices of the masses, ‘discuss’ disputes happening around them, ‘tell’ what is right and wrong, ‘expose’ the positive and negative, and ultimately ‘improve’ villagers’ autonomy capability. (NR18)

As reflected in these words, this process is a complex dynamic that involves ‘listen[ing] . . . discuss[ing] . . . tell[ing] . . . expos[ing] . . . and . . . improv[ing]’ the capability of self-governance on the part of village residents, which is called the process of pingyi (review) and that is a nonconfrontational and informal way of dealing issues. Therefore, ‘review’ here is achieved through an evaluation of both practices and words; it involves mutual help to identify rights and wrongs and to fundamentally supervise the process of making changes. That is, as a report documented, ‘through evaluating their own words and deeds, promoting the good and controlling evil, the MRC achieves the purpose of self-education and self-management for the masses’ (NR16). In this regard, MRCs manifest the ‘rationalisation’ and ‘civilisation’ of human behaviour in the process of civilising offensives through the ‘meetingisation’ of society (van Vree, 2011, p. 259).

Moreover, by advocating free discussion among participants, the collective review meetings conducted by MRCs become a public space, as a report suggests: ‘The purpose of setting up the council is to let the villagers complain freely, discuss matters easily and resolve conflicts in a rational way’ (OR4). MRCs represent what van Vree (2011) calls the ‘parliamentarization of the competitive struggle’, in which a regulated battle of words can take place (p. 251). In other words, they are the ‘frontlines of civilisation’ (van Vree, 2011, p. 243), in which ‘social members construct a physical or discursive space’ and the flux of contradictory ideas and meanings is valorised and codified (Qian, 2018, pp. 108–109). In this context, the place hosting MRC review meetings is like Habermas’s version of the bourgeois public sphere, in which ‘citizens are free to participate in collective deliberation and negotiation for common political projects’ (Qian, 2014, p. 603).

Yet, I argue, the MRC is more like what Rowe (1990) calls a ‘plebeian public sphere’ than a ‘bourgeois’ public sphere (p. 311). As I demonstrated above, MRCs represent a hybrid ‘model of governance that is decentralized, networked, and voluntary, and which melds [the] public purpose [of formal organisations] with private practice’ (Andonova, 2017, p. 3). Consequently, MRCs have crafted a political space for the interface between public purpose and private practice. These places have been changed from a centralised political place into dispersed social spaces. They have become the space of the popular peasant public, that is, the counter-public (Xing, 2011 p. 821), or the grassroots public (Qian, 2014, p. 625), which is in conflict with Habermas’s version of the bourgeois public sphere (Xing, 2011, p. 821). In other words, the public sphere in Chinese rural areas becomes ‘a form of life in such a way as to “focus on the moral and cultural dimensions of contemporary social transformation” rather than solely on economic and political dimensions’ (Madsen, 1993, p.184, cited in Zhao, 2009, p. 187 cited in Xing, 2011, p. 822).

Participation and moral uplift of villagers in MRCs

The establishment of MRCs is aimed at launching a ‘civilising offensive’ campaign through promoting filial piety, preventing disease and dealing with regular events such as marriage and funeral ceremonies as well as their location and timing to restrict the wasteful consumption of resources and otherwise productive labour time. It aims to encourage personal integrity, which is essential to the market (Zhang, 2020, p. 513). The effects generated by this civilising offensive campaign are such that villages are turned into a liminal space in which the lines between political and moral, economic and social, individual and collective, punishment and welfare institutions, law and rule, and inside and outside have all become blurred. As a report documented:

Some villages also introduced ‘humanistic care’ into the moral evaluation activities. For example, children of some poor families who felt the impact of sickness and natural disasters were reviewed and then supported by MRCs. The moral punishment and humane care employed by MRCs are a way of transforming intangible moral capital into a tangible moral asset, motivating the individual to store the goodness, and providing support and guidance through education, evaluation and public opinion. In the end, the ‘collective good will’ can then be confirmed. (NR34)

The storing up of moral capital, the humane ethic of care provided by paternalistic councillors and the confirmation of collective good will are in many ways aimed at the restoration of domesticity. As Turner (2017) finds, the absence of social authority that is necessary for the construction of domesticity requires more ethics of care to restore the micro-practices of individuals and the rituals of public domesticity (p. 939). In turn, familial and neighbourly relationships are implicated and incorporated into MRCs in the name of improving the morality of the local society.

The level of morality of villagers is also determined by their participation in the MRCs’ activities. As Lefebvre (1991) observes, the institutionalisation of new sedimented activities alone (that is, the invention of new rituals) cannot resolve the problems of normalisation, be they spiritual or material, mystical or aesthetic, public or private (p. 225). As community is created by the sedimented and repeated practices of the collective, the effectiveness of the MRC therefore lies in its ability to engage with the peasants on the ground and produce self-governance. Thus, the effectiveness of ritual is also dependent upon the participation of the villagers. The greater the participation, the greater the rewards they receive in return, the greater the prestige, influence, power (Lefebvre, 1991, p. 204). In turn, the courtyard where MRCs are held is a temporary, transitive space that aims to have a cumulatively transformative effect on participants over time (Moran, 2013, p. 343). In the words of Chinese officials, ‘the degree of participation of the masses is an important indicator for judging the level of folklore and morality’ (Official2). Thus, the participation of villagers determines the level of civilisation, and the level of civilisation in turn determines how effectively the villagers can educate and manage themselves through MRCs. In this regard, the authority of the MRCs rests on their embeddedness in these indigenous ceremonies that are highly institutionalised and well-designed organisational activities.

Moreover, MRCs tend to de-legalise problems in order for councillors to be able to address them without invoking formal powers. These problems represent what are called ‘blind zones’, in which laws and regulations are not used to exercise control, and village regulations are not well managed. Many cases dealt with by MRCs are beyond the reach of the security bureau and the juridical court, as seen in the following statement from a report:

There are many small things in families that can be hardly dealt with by public authorities. When dealing with these issues, public security bureaus are suffocated, while the people’s court becomes dead. There was a son who was not filial and he did not support his mother. The mother had no choice but to report him to the local party organisation. Yet it was not enough to punish him according to the law, and the party’s involvement was not effective. In this context, the local MRC relies not on pressure and punishment but on persuasion as the key. (NR5)

In this regard, MRCs act as a supplement to legal punishment, through which cases that are beyond the reach of official apparatuses can be dealt with. Moreover, as the below case indicates, even individuals who bear the stigma of having been on the wrong side of the law, can be redeemed morally through the appraisal of MRCs:

The villager Pei Xiaosan was in prison for many years because of theft. After completion of his term of imprisonment, he was released and returned to the village. One day, he found a pig and handed it over to the village committee. This act was praised by the MRC many times. Pei Xiaosan said to the village cadre through tears: ‘I didn’t expect that everyone would trust me as a normal person. I must not let the villagers be disappointed.’ He acted on what he said, his store earned a reputation for honesty, and he even made donations to the Hope Project many times after he was well-off. He donated 1,000 yuan for road repairs in the village last year. (NR36)

For villagers, to refuse to participate is a sign of their ultimate incivility, which risks setting them apart from the community. Thus, ‘anyone who refuses is cursed ritually’ (Lefebvre, 1991, p. 204). For them, the time and space given to MRCs have led them to become an intermediate zone. In this liminal space, individual subjects volunteer to be subjected to scrutiny, monitoring and assessment, driven by the desire for a good reputation and in many cases economic rewards, which ‘constitute a frustratingly repetitive, static or equilibrating form of transformation which is cumulative rather than immediate’ (Moran, 2013, p. 339).

Civilising offensive as dual paternalistic campaign and dual stigmatisation

From a historical perspective, MRCs share many similarities with what Rankin (1986) finds in the Qing dynasty (1644–1911), when there was ‘a generally recognized area of community interest in which consensual decisions were articulated by community leaders and services were managed by local men’ (cited in Rowe, 1990, p. 320). Yet, community leaders in the case of MRCs are selected not based solely on their familial background but by the vote of the masses.

At first glance, the selection of councillors closely resembles a democratic election as often observed in the West. Yet, the democratic election of MRC members is actually managed through the ‘empty’ ritual of elections and through which the rural public is depoliticised, as explained in the preceding section. A discussion of village elections in China is beyond the scope of the current article, yet it is sufficient to say that China’s leaders view village self-governance (as associated with village elections) solely in instrumental terms. It is more like a ‘process of functional democratization’ in order to balance the interests of competing groups within the society (Powell & Flint, 2009, p. 162). Therefore, village self-governance through a so-called democratic process is only a mechanism for managing local issues rather than an end in itself (Benewick et al., 2004, p. 24). As an official from a township government told us,

When we talk about villagers’ self-government, we must look at what kind of villages they are governing. With the growing number of villagers going to cities for better jobs, villages in contemporary China are what we call ‘empty shells’ (kongke cun). There is little to be governed. They are just a bunch of left-behind people looked after by rich leaders who have an interest in running for election and in controlling the natural resources in the vicinity. Do you think those who cannot even find a job in cities can win the election? In many villages, we are short of talented people. (Official5)

Indeed, elections and self-governance in Chinese villages have been used as ‘another way to control rural politics’ (Alpermann, 2001, p. 47). Autonomy in this context is a strategy for tapping resources at the lowest level without incurring extra costs to the state and a method for shedding government administrative tasks without sounding too irresponsible (Benewick et al., 2004, p. 22). They are supposed to stabilise various dynamic relations and to remain ‘parochial’ (Schubert & Chen, 2007, p. 22), morally focused and ‘paternalistic’ in nature. In this regard, the older male councillors of MRCs, in combination with the way of selecting these members, represent the dual nature of paternalism. Therefore, the civilising offensive in Chinese rural areas is a dual process of a paternalistic campaign.

Furthermore, as the concept of civilising offensive is a useful ‘tool for exposing the targeted and stigmatising projects of powerful groups’ (Powell, 2013), as seen in the words of the township official quoted above, the ‘empty shell’ denotes the place where marginalised, undesirable and disenfranchised people and communities are found. Likewise, because the villagers themselves are already stigmatised by the discourse of suzhi in China, a designation that expresses the way in which peasants are often regarded as having di sushi, or low human quality (see Kipnis, 2007 for detailed discussion), the civilising offensive in Chinese rural areas also involves a dual process of stigmatisation. The targets of the civilising offensive in these areas are those uncivil segments who are further stigmatised and separated from the already stigmatised peasant group.

The election of councillors further demonstrates that the public sphere formed by MRCs can be regarded as ‘plebian’. In this respect, disguising villagers’ participation in elections justifies and conceals the power differential embedded in social and economic inequalities. In this case, MRCs are not used for the selection of the most competent politicians but for the selection of respected moral elderly persons. Through this process, the masses are made into active subjects, not in political activities but moral and economic activities. Therefore, whilst the MRC has no legal and political authority, it sometimes works more effectively than juridical and political organisations, as a report explained:

As a moral institution of the society, the MRC cannot exercise the functions of the administrative system, the legal system and the party. It can only make decisions about people’s moral disputes. Its main working method is to persuade, educate and offer moral review. Its basic purpose is to cure moral diseases and save people. (OR3)

The curing of moral diseases and the saving of people, as declared in the statement quoted above, suggest that MRCs are more pastoral and disciplinary than sovereign and punishing. The MRC is an organisation that acts as a link between the party and the masses, and blurs the boundaries between public and private, between guan and si. It depoliticises and de-legalises rural disputes and conflicts (Zhang, 2020, pp. 518–520).

Finally, similar to the formation of plebian public spaces by MRCs, the election of councillors is also an instrument intended to minimise the threat of potential rebellion by either the elites or the masses (Takeuchi, 2013, p. 69), and to further advance the interests of the ruling party. By becoming morally uplifted, villagers are therefore to become ethical subjects of the market in the context of China’s economic development. As ethical subjects, villagers must exemplify a socialist spiritual virtue that makes social stability the main focus of rural work. In this context, village elections ‘served as a political safety valve for the villages. If there were governance problems, the centre could shift the blame back to the villages and the farmers themselves’ (Oi et al., 2012, p. 670). In this sense, then, MRCs can be seen as a collective mechanism through which governing others is channelled simultaneously into the governing of the self.

Conclusion

In this article, I show that the MRC, as an organisation of civilising offensive in Chinese rural areas, represents a coalition of ‘organised virtue’ based on male seniority, which in turn gives the MRC its institutional legitimacy and the capital to deal with disputes between neighbours as a supplement to compensate for the retreat of state power. In short, the MRC is a self-governance organisation formed by old male elites in Chinese rural villages. The authority of MRCs rests on their embeddedness in highly institutionalised and well-designed organisational activities. The effectiveness of pingyi depends on the participation of villagers. Thus, the involvement of villagers determines the level of civility, and the level of civilisation in turn determines how effectively villagers can self-educate and self-manage through MRCs. The rationale for MRCs reflects a clear link between economic incentive and improved civility. These entities use a market rationale to oversee the conduct of villagers by advocating a better morality, which raises villagers’ credibility and, consequently, makes them eligible to receive more financial support from local banks.

The main contribution of this article to the notion of civilising offensive is the idea of looking at the associated and unintended consequences produced by a civilising offensive campaign. In attempting to link the notion of civilising offensive with Elias’s unintended and unplanned ‘civilising process’, I demonstrated that we must go beyond a linear relationship between intended individual behavioural changes and a civilising offensive, to appreciate the associated dynamics engendered by MRCs and their implications for the longer-term civilising process as a whole. For example, as I show in the article, the courtyards of party and village committees have been transformed into dispersed social spaces through hosting MRC meetings. In this way, these courtyards are turned into a liminal space, through which the transformative nature of liminal spaces created by MRCs (the associated consequences) and the transitive experiences of individuals are intermingled.

Secondly, there is much to be gained by employing the concept of civilising offensive beyond Europe. For example, civilising offensives were often accompanied by disciplinary offensives in the process of urbanisation in Europe, while in China, it is precisely because of the lack of disciplinary resources – a result of the retreat of the state from rural areas following economic reform in 1978 – that the local authorities encouraged the establishment of MRCs. Therefore, in this specific historical-political context, tracing the relationship between the civilising process and civilising offensives, that is, how and where the planned behaviour changes are intertwined with the long-term unplanned civilising process, is a potentially fruitful area for future studies both in terms of understanding new patterns of governance within the dynamic Chinese context on the one hand, and for developing and refining Elias’s framework internationally on the other.

Lastly, rather than being conducted by middle-class female urbanites against rural immigrants as outliers in Chinese cities, the civilising offensive launched by MRCs is an initiative conducted by older male elites within their own communities in rural areas in contemporary China. Therefore, the study of gender difference in the civilising offensive might also help us understand how the long-term civilising process evolves around the dynamics of gender in a particular context and in turn, how the gender politics are influenced by the civilising process.