Yupeng Jiao

I am interested in the history of Chinese popular religion, legal history, rural society, and the Chinese communist revolution. I am currently revising a book manuscript, titled “Martial Arts, Apocalypse, and Counterrevolutionaries: Huidaomen and Rural Governance in Modern China, 1919-1961.” Huidaomen, a term invented by the Communist Party that includes all local religious voluntary organizations in China, was the largest non-state actor in local governance with over thirteen million members in 1949. Relying on untouched legal documents from the public security system under both the Nationalist Government and the PRC, this book examines the role of huidaomen in local elections, collective defense against banditry, management of natural resources, and the expansion of merchant networks. My ongoing research also includes a book project on the emergence of new religions and popular science in early modern China and several articles about the reversal of verdicts in criminal cases during the early PRC.