The price of persecution: The long-term effects of the Anti-Rightist Campaign on economic performance in post-Mao China

Zeng, Zhaojin; Eisenman, Joshua

doi:10.1016/j.worlddev.2018.04.013

Cited by 10 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…Genocide may increase development in the short run through property theft (Charnysh and Finkel 2017), or Malthusian channels (Rogall and Yanagizawa-Drott 2013); however, effects do not persist. Others document negative legacies, either leveraging instrumental variables (Meng and Qian 2009;Naumenko 2019;Zeng and Eisenman 2018) or selection on observables (Acemoglu, Hassan, and Robinson 2011) for identification.…”

Section: State Repression and Economic Developmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

State Terror and Long-Run Development: The Persistence of the Khmer Rouge

Grasse

2023

Am Polit Sci Rev

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Does mass repression have a long-term economic legacy, and if so, what explains persistence? I argue repression can undermine development by delimiting human capital. I study the aftermath of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. The regime implemented a campaign of violence to reorganize society, yet governing elites varied across the communist ideological spectrum. I exploit an arbitrary border that allocated villages to either the loyalist Mok or the relatively moderate Sy in Kampong Speu province. Using a regression discontinuity design, I find villages in the more extremist Southwest zone are poorer today compared with villages in the adjacent West zone, and had lower human capital immediately after the regime. Exposure to more intense repression shapes labor markets and child health, explaining intergenerational persistence. I find no conclusive evidence for other persistence channels. My findings add a novel pathway to the library of mechanisms which explain why historical coercion undermines development.

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Section: State Repression and Economic Developmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

State Terror and Long-Run Development: The Persistence of the Khmer Rouge

Grasse

2023

Am Polit Sci Rev

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“…They find a higher likelihood of poverty for households in locations with war-related casualties, and a lower likelihood of remaining out of poverty over time. Turning to Asia, China's Anti-Rightist Campaign (ARC) of 1957-58 had lasting GDP losses as late as 2000 (Zeng and Eisenman, 2018). The ARC was a systematic purge of intellectuals and teachers which affected more than 500,000 people.…”

Section: Economic Consequencesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Such mass dismissals were not an episode unique to 1930s Nazi Germany. Zeng and Eisenman (2018) study the persecution of intellectuals in China during the Anti-Rightist Campaign of 1957-58, during which more than half a million educated people were targeted and repressed. Using regional data on the intensity of this campaign, they show negative effects on educational attainment lasting into the 21 st century.…”

Section: Human Capital Consequencesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Persecution, Pogroms and Genocide: A Conceptual Framework and New Evidence

2022

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“… 3. On the other hand, it is also true that some of the campaigns during the collective era created long-term negative legacies. As Zeng and Eisenman (2018: 258) show, the Anti-Rightist Campaign (1957–1958) and the subsequent Great Leap Forward both negatively affected educational attainment and economic productivity until at least the year 2000. However, Eisenman’s other works (Eisenman, 2018; Eisenman and Yang, 2018) confirm that the overall record of rural collectives was quite successful, especially in the 1970s. …”

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confidence: 99%

The Collectivist Legacy and Agrarian Development in China since 1978

Gürel

2022

Modern China

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This article contributes to the study of the collectivist legacy in Chinese agriculture after 1978 by making five main arguments. First, it demonstrates that the construction of a robust agricultural infrastructure in the collective era enabled the government of the reform era to reduce its infrastructural spending without harming agricultural productivity in the 1980s. Second, village administrations were heavily involved in farm organization in the same period. Third, the collective-era legacy of labor mobilization was relatively strong until the early 2000s. Fourth, the degree of local self-financing remained significant until the abolition of the agricultural tax in 2006. Finally, although the “one project, one discussion” 一事一议 reform of 2008 has failed to raise a significant amount of labor and funds from villagers on a voluntary basis, it nevertheless shows that collective mobilization of labor and financial resources has not been entirely forgotten and continues to inform Chinese agrarian policy to a certain extent.

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The price of persecution: The long-term effects of the Anti-Rightist Campaign on economic performance in post-Mao China

Cited by 10 publications

References 25 publications

State Terror and Long-Run Development: The Persistence of the Khmer Rouge

State Terror and Long-Run Development: The Persistence of the Khmer Rouge

Persecution, Pogroms and Genocide: A Conceptual Framework and New Evidence

The Collectivist Legacy and Agrarian Development in China since 1978

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