Reconceptualize Rape in Revolution: Narratives about Sexual Crimes in the Land Reform in China

The Land Reform is recognized as a crucial campaign, orchestrated to mobilize mass participation in the Chinese Communist Revolution and engineered to dismantle prevailing political hierarchies. This transformation was fueled by the emergent power of peasants and women. During this campaign, rural women were actively encouraged to voice their experiences during the “speaking-bitterness” sessions. Narratives of sexual crimes were thus collected, constructed, reinterpreted, amplified, falsified, and widely disseminated. My research focuses on the heterogeneity of rape narratives emerging from this tumultuous campaign. The purpose of this study is not to authenticate these accounts of rape, but rather, through a careful examination of diverse cases and narratives about rape, it seeks to underscore the key role these narratives played in the CCP’s “atrocity propaganda.” This propaganda was employed strategically to galvanize peasants and women into active participation in the class struggles. In the context of the Land Reform, rape was reconceptualized as a crime perpetrated by the landlord class against the peasantry, manifesting in revolutionary dramas, comic books, interviews, and other mediums. Concurrently, rape, when framed as a crime straddling different classes, was stripped of its sexual aspect and the victim’s participation was denied. The act of rape was sexual, but it was not sex itself. This resulted in the dampening of victim blaming within public discourse, thereby creating a more conducive environment for rural women to share their experiences of rape within a newly constructed framework.

Keywords: Land Reform, Rural Women, Rape, Propaganda, Class