To the People: James Yen and Village China

by Charles W. Hayford

Between 1926 and 1937 Y.C. James Yen's group of scholars ran a widely heralded rural reconstruction experiment at Ting Hsien, a dusty North China county. People's schools, village health workers, farming reforms, cooperatives, village industry, and even drama were woven into a liberal form of the commune based on family farming. Yen was no slave to American ideas, as Communist critics charged, nor was he the answer to communism, as American supporters hoped, but an immensely creative man with no political solutions. In 1948 Dr. Yen convinced the American Congress to fund the Joint Commission on Rural Reconstruction. Although Yen did not join it on Taiwan, the JCRR laid the base for that island's success. As leader of the International Institute of Rural Reconstruction, Yen trained village workers for the Philippines, India, Central America, and Africa. In 1985, China's reform leaders welcomed Yen, then in his mid-90s, to Beijing as a respected elder adviser.

Genres: History

304 pages, Hardcover

First published October 15, 1990