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40 Years On: Provincial Contrasts in China's Rural Economic Development*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

Kenneth R. Walker
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Extract

The main contrast between official discussions of China's rural economic development that took place nearly 40 years ago and those of the late 1980s is not to be found in the identification of the problems themselves, but in the policies proposed for their solution. Then, as now, stress was placed on the problems arising from the adverse man-land ratio; on the crucial importance for China's industrial development of securing adequate supplies of grain; on balancing the latter consideration with the need to supply the light industries with agricultural raw materials such as cotton; on developing the livestock sector of agriculture (particularly pigs) in the interests of consumption and of soil fertility; and on the investment requirements of agriculture, especially in the realm of water conservation and irrigation. These have been the constant factors in discussions throughout the past 40 years.

Type
Research Article
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 119 , September 1989 , pp. 448 - 480
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 1989

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References

1. See The China Quarterly (CQ), No. 116 (December 1988), Special Issue, “Food and agriculture in China during the post-Mao era.”

2. I.e., the value of production of the “rural economy,’ defined to include “agriculture” (which itself embraces crops, livestock, fisheries, forestry and subsidiary activities), industry, construction, transport, commerce, the food industry of xiang(townships) or levels below the xiang, for example, co-operative organizations and farm households, and also the value of agricultural output of state farms. It excludes the output of rural state-run industry, construction, etc. and that of state farms, and xian(counties) and zhen (towns).

3. See Lardy, N. R., Agriculture in China's Modern Economic Development (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983),CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Walker, Kenneth R., Food Grain Procurement and Consumption in China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984).Google Scholar

4. “Dangqian nongcun jingji fazhan de jige wenti” (“Several problems in currentrural economic development”), Nongcun jingji congkan (Rural Economic Abstract), No.2 (1986), pp. 1–9.Google Scholar

5. This is defined as gross annual income net of household running costs, taxes, capital depreciation allowances and expenditure relating to collectively contracted tasks. It is the sum available for maintaining and increasing the standard of living, for carrying on and increasing production (through additional investment).

6. Bennett, M. K., The World's Food (New York: Harper, 1954).Google Scholar For empirical studies of the strategy of “Bennett's law,” see Poleman, Thomas, “Quantifying the nutrition situation in developing countries,” Food Research Institute Studies, Vol. XVIII, No. 1 (1981), pp. 1–58.Google Scholar

7. The most comprehensive analysis of rural food consumption in China during the post-Mao era is Kueh, Y. Y., “Food consumption and peasant incomes in the post-Mao era,” in CQ, No. 116 (December 1988), pp. 634–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8. These trends are explored in Kenneth R. Walker, “Trends in crop production 1978–86,” in Ibid. pp. 592–633.

9. For a detailed examination of rural employment problems and trends see Jeffrey R. Taylor, “Rural employment trends and the legacy of surplus labour,” in Ibid. pp. 736–66.

10. Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Grain and Economic Crop Development Research team, “Wo guo liangshi he jingji zuowu fazhan di yanjiu” (“Research into the development of China's grain and economic crops”) in State Council Rural Development Research Centre and Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences. Agricultural Economics Research Institute, joint authors, Zhongguo nongcun fazhan zhanlue wenti (Problems in China's Rural Development Strategy) (Beijing: Zhongguo nongye keji chubanshe, 1985), pp. 377–456, esp. pp. 413–14.Google Scholar

11. Ibid.