The Multiple Roles of Village Cadres in Women’s Divorce Cases in the Shanxi Liberated Area (1947–1950)

In the Shanxi Liberated Area, the Chinese Communist Party ( CCP ) instituted a tiered mechanism for settling divorce disputes. The process began with mediation at the village level; if mediation failed, village or district authorities were to issue a letter of referral so that the case could be handled by higher-level organs. In practice, certain village cadres refused to issue referral letters to women who rejected mediation and insisted on divorce, resulting in a substantial backlog of marital cases at upper judicial bodies. Within this process, village cadres simultaneously assumed multiple – and often conflicting – roles: executors of Party directives, guardians of local collective interests, and pursuers of personal benefit. The tension among these roles placed cadres in a dilemma that not only weakened the authority of marriage policies but also intensified grassroots conflicts. To address these problems, the CCP intensified ideological education and rectification of “problematic” cadres to foster self-discipline, while at the same time refining the marriage-registration system to diminish the discretionary power of village cadres in divorce matters, thereby facilitating the comprehensive establishment of a new marriage regime.