In the late 1990s large parts of rural China were in a state of crisis. Households dependent on agriculture for their livelihood were enduring stagnant incomes and there was an increasingly tense relationship between peasants and local officials. Financial exactions to which village households were subject were a major cause. These included formal taxes, a bewildering variety of informally levied fees, and unregulated fund-raising among the households by local officials. Collecting these unpredictable and arbitrary levies often required severe coercion and was a major source of rural discontent. It elicited considerable peasant resistance, increasingly threatening rural stability. Beginning in the mid-l980s, when the problem first emerged into prominence, the leaders of the Chinese Communist Party and government made major efforts to ease “peasant burdens.” These efforts failed and the situation became more and more fraught with tension and conflict.

This study sheds light on the nature and extent of the burdens. They were an issue primarily in agricultural areas, rather than in those areas where rural industrialization had made significant progress. It sheds light on the repercussions of the burdens by examining peasant protest and peasant collective action. And it sheds light on the attempts made by the authorities to find effective remedies. In analyzing these issues, the study probes the institutional and behavioral sources of this concrete and practical problem, linking solutions to more deep-going reforms. The burdens were the product not simply of predatory or corrupt local officials.