Small Groups and Political Rituals in China

Martin King Whyte’s Small Groups and Political Rituals in China examines how the Chinese Communist Party transformed Sun Yat-sen’s lament about China as a “sheet of loose sand” into a system of remarkable social cohesion. Whyte’s central argument is that political elites achieved this by embedding citizens in hsiao-tsu (small groups of 8–15 people) across nearly all institutions—factories, schools, communes, offices, labor camps, and military units—and by requiring them to participate in po...