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Book
Author Thornton, Patricia M.

Title Disciplining the state : virtue, violence, and state-making in modern China / Patricia M. Thornton
Published Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Asia Center : Distributed by Harvard University Press, 2007

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Location Call no. Vol. Availability
 W'PONDS  320.951 Tho/Dst  AVAILABLE
Description ix, 247 pages ; 24 cm
Series Harvard East Asian monographs ; 283
Harvard East Asian monographs ; 283
Contents Introduction -- Virtue and venality in the Qing -- Localist critiques of corruption and virtue -- Political corruption and the nationalist state -- Local communities and political corruption during the Nanjing decade -- Political corruption and the Maoist state -- Local variations in the "big four cleans" -- Conclusion : the moral language of state-making
Summary "What are states, and how are they made? Scholars of European history assert that war makes states, just as states make war. This study finds that in China, the challenges of governing produced a trajectory of state-building in which the processes of moral regulation and social control were at least as central to state-making as the exercise of coercive power." "The key finding is that state-making is, in China as elsewhere, a profoundly normative and normalizing process. Central leaders seek not only to impose a particular moral order, but also to make the presence of the state at the center of that vision appear both natural and necessary. This study maps the complex processes of state-making, moral regulation, and social control during three critical reform periods: the Yongzheng reign (1723-1735), the Guomindang's Nanjing decade (1927-1937); and the Communist Party's Socialist Education Campaign (1962-1966)."--BOOK JACKET
Notes Formerly CIP. Uk
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages [221]-236) and index
Subject National-building -- China -- History
Political corruption -- China -- History.
SUBJECT China -- Politics and government. http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85024153
China -- Politics and government http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85024153 -- History. http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh99005024
LC no. 2006038683
ISBN 9780674025042 cloth alkaline paper
0674025040 cloth alkaline paper