A "hard-core Horn Speaker" is the common memory of generations of Chinese farmers

June 27, 2022

Recently, the horn loudspeaker, which is quite eye-catching in the epidemic prevention propaganda in vast rural areas of China, has been praised as "high-energy" and "hard-core", and it also evokes people's historical memory.

For a long time, horn speakers were closely linked with state power and were an important tool for rural political mobilization.

However, after the reform and opening up, the political function of the rural PA loudspeaker has been weakened continuously, and it has experienced a process of marginalization from "national symbol" to "advertising carrier". This role change reflects the transformation of the operation mode of state power in rural society:

With less "control" and more "governance", state power moves from the front to the background, but it is not weakened.

This shift has its positive implications, but it also leaves an important question:

How can governance continue to be sound and effective as power tries to operate in new ways?

Tweeter: Metaphors and Transmutations of Power

——Taking Mi Village in North China as an example

Introduction:

Facing the change of power structure in rural society

The research on the power structure of rural society has always been a research hotspot. In terms of practical significance, the research theme mainly involves the current rural issues:

What kind of power is the dominant force in rural society? What is its relationship with other powers? These two questions determine what means and strategies should be adopted to achieve good rural governance.

In 1987, the Organic Law of the Villagers' Committee of the People's Republic of China (for Trial Implementation) (hereinafter referred to as the "Village Organization Law") was passed by the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, which clarified the establishment, nature and responsibilities of village committees. gradually spread.

Regarding the nature of the village committee, many people do not agree that it is an organization of the state's grass-roots political power, but agree with the statement in the 1982 "Constitution" and regard it as a grass-roots mass organization relatively independent of the state power organs and grass-roots administrative organs. Autonomous organization.

Such an arrangement of grass-roots administrative systems, some people call it the "township government and village governance" model, while others summarize it as the "county government-township faction-village governance" model.

No matter what the statement is, it all refers to this phenomenon: the state power is withdrawn from the villages and ends in the townships; the townships and above are still under the direct control of the state power, while the grassroots villages are self-governed.

The term "village autonomy" can not help but remind people of the characteristics of traditional Chinese political structure.

In this regard, Fei Xiaotong used the concept of "dual-track politics" to summarize: the traditional Chinese political structure has two tracks: top-down centralization and bottom-up local autonomy. The former implements government orders but only reaches the county level. Until the yamen, the latter used gentlemen as an intermediary to reflect public opinion.

In other words, in the traditional Chinese grass-roots society, with the county as the boundary, above the county is controlled by the central administrative system, and below the county mainly relies on the gentry class and local norms to exercise autonomy.

However, there are essential differences between the two periods of "village self-governance". Under normal circumstances, the state power in traditional China is almost powerless to intervene in rural governance below the county level. In the face of the "undercurrent" in the operation of the grassroots society, the state can only resort to top-down, powerful campaign-style governance. A typical example is the "Calling Soul Case" under the reign of Qianlong in the Qing Dynasty.

On the contrary, under the current villager self-governance system, state power has already broken through the county level and extended to townships (towns), and the relationship between state power and village committees maintains a guiding and being guided, which highlights the fact that the state in rural society The presence of power. In this sense, it seems inaccurate to say that "state power has been withdrawn from the countryside".

From the perspective of institutional settings, state power is not absent, but in real life, compared with the collective economy period before the reform and opening up, the state is deliberately weakening its sense of presence in rural society.

How to explain the above seemingly contradictory phenomena, and further, how to understand the changes in the power structure of rural society, these are the questions that this article attempts to answer.

The loudspeaker standing in the vast countryside has been a metaphor of state power since its appearance. As a medium of communication, it plays a role in state mobilization similar to television.

This paper takes the loudspeaker in Micun in North China as the research object, and peeks into the operation of power in rural society from the story of the loudspeaker in Micun. From the case of Mi Village, this study attempts to gain a certain understanding of the social power structure in China's rural society.

Advertising carrier:

tweeters in everyday life

Mi Village is an ordinary village in Dong Town, Dingzhou City, Hebei Province. It is located in the east of the urban area, about 25 kilometers away from the urban area.

The village is one of the largest villages in Dongzhen. On the one hand, it has a large population. As of the end of 2016, the village had a population of 5,260 people and a total of 1,260 households. On the other hand, it has a large area.

Faced with such a "giant" village, the local village committee conducts governance through centralized management.

Specifically, as early as a few decades ago (the exact time is no longer available), the village cadres at that time planned the originally scattered dwellings to be about 1,000 meters long from east to west and from north to south, based on the topographic advantage of Mi Village’s location on a plain and flat terrain. The square residential area of meters, the residential area covers an area of about 1,000 acres.

The interior of the residential area is also very orderly, with five main streets, namely East Street, West Street, North Street, South Street and Qin Street.

Among them, Qin Street is located in the northeast corner of the village, and the other four streets just intersect to form a "cross", which just divides the residential area into four areas of similar size. center.

The tweeter of Rice Village is located at the "Cross Street".

(1) "More than one speaker": the coexistence of collective speakers and private speakers

Dingzhou is located in the North China Plain with flat terrain. The villages in the countryside have the characteristics of most northern villages, that is, the villagers are used to living together.

This provides convenient conditions for the dissemination of information in the village: it is often only necessary to build a loudspeaker at the commanding height in the center of the village, and the information can be conveyed to each villager through broadcasting, and there is no need to worry that the terrain barrier will weaken the transmission. Effect.

Generally, each village collective will build a tweeter, and Mi Village is no exception. The village committee office building of Mi Village is located on the southwest corner of the "Cross Street". A loudspeaker about 5 meters high is built on the top of the office building. 3.

This loudspeaker was built by the village collective during the "Cultural Revolution" period, and it has been used until now.

If Mi Village had only collective loudspeakers, then the village would be no different from other villages in terms of information dissemination. However, on the buildings at the northeast and southeast corners of "Cross Street", two loudspeakers stood impressively. .

These two loudspeakers are both privately built, and also set up a group of loudspeakers in each of the four directions. Compared with the collective loudspeaker, although the number of each group is one less, the power is almost the same, and the sound of the broadcast is almost the same. It can also be heard at the edge of the village settlement, 500 meters away.

Located at the northeast corner of "Cross Street" is the village's first private speaker, built by a grocery store owner. This grocery store is the largest store in the village. It mainly sells daily necessities, snacks, cooked food and daily fresh melons and fruits.

Around 2010, the grocer decided to build his own tweeter, mainly to facilitate the acquisition of saplings and to promote new arrivals.

The "tree harvesting" mentioned here means that the harvester acts as an intermediary to buy the saplings planted by the villagers on a small scale at the current price, and then resell them to the seedling dealers to earn the difference.

The reason why the villagers are keen to operate this industry is that firstly, it is easy to make huge profits by planting saplings (but the market for seedlings has not been booming in recent years). Just plant all the saplings.

In short, Mi Village has become one of the largest seedling sales markets in Dongzhen, and many traders will come to the village to collect trees. Therefore, the grocery store owner will help them "scream" information about purchasing tree seedlings:

"This common man wants to come (to collect the tree), and he doesn't charge any money. We are also old folks. I do business here. I know everyone. Serving the common people, that's what it means, nothing else." (Interview with a grocery store owner)
Sometimes, the villagers have a backlog of saplings that cannot be sold, and the grocery store owner will help broadcast.

Also for the purpose of buying and selling saplings, in 2014, a loudspeaker was also erected at the tree seed station at the southeast corner of "Cross Street", directly opposite the grocery store.

The owner of the tree seed station only deals in seedlings. In the past, when he needed to collect trees or sell tree seeds, he often went to the opposite grocery store and asked the owner to broadcast for him. Later, he went there too many times, and he felt that it would be more convenient to build his own speaker.

Like the grocery store, when other villagers need to buy or sell saplings, the tree seed station shopkeeper will help them broadcast for free.

Although they are both private speakers, the owners of the two speakers often talk about the phrase "serving everyone". In their opinion, after building the speakers, it is convenient for both themselves and the villagers, which serves two birds with one stone. .

More interesting is the construction process of these two private speakers. Whether it was a grocery store or a tree planting station, neither of the two shopkeepers ever said hello to the village committee about building a private speaker. They just went to the city to buy the speakers after they had saved enough money.

The village committee also stated that building a loudspeaker is a personal act, as long as there is relevant demand and sufficient economic capacity to build it, and the village committee will not interfere.

The question worth pondering is that loudspeakers are an important information dissemination tool in rural areas. The reason why each village collective builds a loudspeaker is to carry out political propaganda and mobilization through radio to implement the will of the country; nowadays, private speakers are allowed to Does the erection mean that the subjects capable of social mobilization in rural areas are no longer limited to village collectives or the state?

(2) "It's just advertising": commercial radio content

The emergence of private speakers has increased the channels through which the villagers of Mi Village can broadcast broadcasts, and another aspect of the Mi Village speakers that attracted the author's attention is the richness and variety of its broadcast content.

The author learned from the grocery store owner and the owner of the tree seed station that the most broadcast news every year is the news of buying and selling saplings, but it is concentrated in the spring, because the saplings planted in previous years are mature and can be sold, and at the same time need to buy new ones. Batch seedling season.

Tree harvesting brokers and tree-selling farmers gathered at the "Cross Street" and asked the broadcasters to line up outside the store. The owner and shopkeeper in charge of the broadcast shouted so bluntly that they were almost speechless.

In the season other than spring, there are occasional broadcasts of tree harvesting and tree selling, but relatively more commercial advertisements.

On the "Cross Street", there are often villagers setting up stalls to sell things, and most of them sell pork and seasonal melons and fruits. In order to sell these agricultural products as soon as possible, they will also go to the grocery store or tree seed station and ask to broadcast their products through loudspeakers.

In addition, some policy documents requested by the higher-level government, notices of village committee meetings, and missing persons broadcasts can be heard from the existing speakers in the village.

During the investigation, the author recorded the broadcast content of Mi Village speakers for 5 consecutive days in the form of audio recordings. In addition, there was a broadcast of the village director mobilizing the villagers to participate in the rural cooperative medical insurance, with a total of 30 paragraphs.

In terms of content, excluding broadcasts with unidentifiable content, the content of the remaining 28 broadcasts can be divided into three categories: government information, commercial advertisements and service information.

Among them, there are 2 pieces of government information, which are recruitment publicity and insurance mobilization; commercial advertisements account for the vast majority, with a total of 23 pieces, mainly promoting various commodities such as grain, fruit, wine, daily necessities, red bricks, etc.; 2 pieces of service information, They were electrical maintenance and private school admissions; in addition, there was a missing person notice, which was an unusual broadcast.

The above shows that commercial advertisements are the main broadcast content of the Mi Village tweeter in daily life. As for the voice from the country-government information is easily ignored in so many commercial advertisements.

(3) "Who still pays attention to it?": Tweeter that was left out

The three speakers in Mi Village broadcast an average of 5 to 6 radio broadcasts per day, which is not a small number in terms of number, but the villagers of Mi Village, who are the audience, do not pay much attention to the content of the broadcast. The author randomly interviewed several villagers on the streets of the village, and asked them if they would listen to the radio at ordinary times, and their answers were all negative.

Villagers show concern only each spring when loudspeakers broadcast information on the acquisition of saplings on a large scale.

It can be seen that, in addition to the commercialization and marketization of the content of the loudspeaker broadcast, the villagers also showed a strong tendency to seek profit when listening to the loudspeaker.

They only focus on content related to their own interests (especially financial interests) and show strong personal selectivity when listening to the radio.

As a result, the loudspeaker has become a neglected presence in most of the villagers' daily life.

From a modern point of view, tweeters are not a special thing in the countryside. As long as there is need and capital, individuals can build loudspeakers; the content of broadcasts is not only government information, but also a large number of commercial advertisements; villagers have long stopped viewing loudspeakers as a source of information that cannot be missed.

In short, although the loudspeaker towers on the top of the rural bungalow and is extremely conspicuous, it is only one of the many information dissemination media in the village. Compared with new media such as TV, computer, and mobile phone, it is more simple and ordinary.

PA Loudspeaker

National symbol:

The "glorious age" of the tweeter

Looking at it now, the tweeter is a very common thing; but more than 40 years ago, its appearance in the countryside was a kind of state behavior. Although the function at that time was also to spread information, it was more intense in nature. political atmosphere.

To understand this, it is necessary to understand the evolution of information and communication means in rural China, and here we continue to take Mi Village as an example.

(1) The horn "rises from the ground"

Before the founding of New China, the need for information dissemination was not great; after the founding of the People's Republic of China, the country urgently needed to use various means to convey decrees and conduct political propaganda, and to implement its own will to the grass-roots rural areas in order to consolidate the new regime.

In the early days of the founding of the People's Republic of China in the 1950s, limited by the technological level at that time, the means of information dissemination in Mi Village were relatively primitive.

According to the village director's recollection, when there was news in the village that needed to be notified to all the villagers, he copied the news to the blackboard newspaper outside the office building of the village production brigade, because the village production brigade was located on the "Cross Street", and the villagers came out every day. can be seen during the event.

In addition, the village is also equipped with several small hand-held loudspeakers. When there is a notice, the village cadres will walk around the streets and alleys with the small loudspeakers, shouting everywhere.

Sometimes, the notice needs to be conveyed to a specific group of people, and some people happen to have not seen the content of the blackboard newspaper or heard the shouting of the small loudspeaker. At this time, the village production brigade will send militiamen directly to the door to convey it.

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