Through an investigation of the 1947–1948 campaign of remolding the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the government, which was driven by the revolutionary idea of “mass democracy,” in the CCP-controlled “old areas” in North China, this article reveals both intrinsic connections and profound contradictions between this self-directed revolutionary movement and the discursive practices of “class struggle” in land reform. It also sheds light on a significant consequence of the movement: the birth of “rule-by-virtue democracy” and its quasi-institutionalized mode of operation of “mass-involved party rectification.”
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