Yen's
Ting Hsien (Ding Xian) Experiment in
Dingzhou, Hebei and
Liang's school at
Zouping, Shandong, were only the earliest and most prominent of hundreds of village projects, educational foundations, and government zones which aimed to change the Chinese countryside. After 1931, the
Nanking government offered qualified support but placed restrictions on the expansion of its work. American Christian missionaries gave their enthusiastic support. The movement was prominent in building
Chinese resistance to Japan during the latter's invasions by strengthening the village economy, culture, and political structure, including pioneering work in village health. Many social activists who participated in this movement were graduated as professors of the United States. They made tangible but limited progress in modernizing the tax, infrastructural, economic, cultural, and educational equipment and mechanisms of rural regions until the cancellation of government coordination and subsidies in the mid-to-late 1930s due to rampant wars and the lack of resources. The rural reconstructive activists advocated a “third way” between the communist
violent land reform and the reformism of the
Nationalist Government based on the respect of human rights and individual liberties for educational doctrine. After the outbreak of the
Second Sino-Japanese War, Rural Reconstruction activists formed the Rural Reconstruction Party, at first an important part of the
China Democratic League but then rendered politically irrelevant in the emerging war between the Chinese Communists and the
Chinese Nationalists. In 1948, however, James Yen persuaded the
US Congress to fund the
Sino-American Joint Commission on Rural Reconstruction. Before moving to Taiwan, the JCRR carried out the largest
land reform project carried out in mainland China before 1949, as well as health and education projects. In Taiwan in the 1950s, the JCRR was key in laying the rural foundation for the quick
economic growth of the 1960s and the 1970s. The rural reconstruction movement started by Dr. Yen continues to be active in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The
International Institute of Rural Reconstruction (IIRR) had headquarters in the Philippines and celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2010. In the 1990s, several academics and social reformers in China started a
New Rural Reconstruction Movement, with stations at
Ding County and Zouping. ==See also==