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Two Decades of Rural Reform in China: An Overview and Assessment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2009

Jean C. Oi
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Extract

China's countryside has been the target of dramatic change since 1949. The CCP directed redistribution in land reform, the transformation away from private farming to collectivization, and, most recently, the move back to household production. Throughout the PRC's 50 years, agriculture and peasants have paid for the regime's ambitious programme of industrialization, as the price scissors consistently favoured the urban over the rural producers. The state struggled with its food producers over the grain harvest, using ideology and organization to maximize both the production and extraction of the surplus from the countryside.

Type
Research Article
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 159 , September 1999 , pp. 616 - 628
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 1999

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References

1. I would like to thank the participants of the workshop held in conjunction with this volume at the Centro De Estudos Asiáticos, Universidade de Aveiro, Portugal, for their helpful comments. Special thanks go to Scott Rozelle for his critical reading of an earlier draft of this paper. I also want to thank Cai Yongshun for research assistance.

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