The socialist practices in the early People's Republic of China have received ample scholarly attention in recent years. Among these works, Brian DeMare's Land Wars is a very thorough, thought-provoking study that complicates extant literature and will certainly deepen readers’ understanding of the essence of Chinese socialism.
The book's first chapter focuses on the arrival of work team members at rural villages. DeMare bases this section mostly on archival materials. For DeMare, the dispatching of land reform work teams first and foremost embodied the changing power dynamics between the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the young urban intellectuals, who made up most of the work team members after the release of the May Fourth directive of 1946. The CCP increasingly mobilized the intellectuals to join the work teams with the intention of transforming their ideology through engaging in revolutionary practice. DeMare points out that these activists were not passive targets...
