edited by Zhenglai Deng (Fudan University, China)

Table of Contents (38k)
Preface (141k)
Chapter 1: Academic Inquiries into the Chinese Success Story (116k)

Containing ten quality chapters on China's rural reforms and agricultural development, this first volume from the Series on Developing China: Translated Research from China emphasizes the importance of countryside, agriculture and the role of peasants in China's economy.

While the Chinese revolution has traveled a path of “encircling the cities from the rural areas”, Chinese reforms were likewise started in promoting the household contract responsibility system in the rural areas — the majority of its population living in the countryside makes it the focus of the reforms. Such structural issues that readjustment of interests entailed as urban-rural divide and poor-rich gap are closely related to the rural reform. For this, a rural study centered on the three rural issues (agriculture, rural areas and peasants), or peasantography, is actually an academic “gold mine”, which contains the richest possibilities for Chinese social science to contribute to the world.

The above mentioned chapters cover an extensive range of issues in rural reform and agricultural development in China, including property right, food trade structure, the Township and Village Enterprises, non-agricultural employment, the mobility of labor force, land distribution, taxation and saving behavior. The research approach ranges from a macro- to microeconomics level, while in terms of research methodology, property theory, game model and quantitative economics are used, in combination with historiography and empirical case studies.

• Academic Inquiries into the “Chinese Success Story” (Z-L Deng)
• Gender Inequality in the Land Tenure System of Rural China (L Zhu)
• The Allocation of Decision-Making Power and Changes in the Decision-Making Style: Systematic Thoughts on China's Rural Problems (S-G Zhang & N Zhao)
• Farmers' Tax Burden in Rural China: A Political Economy Analysis (R Tao et al.)
• Effects of Labor Out-Migration and Income Growth and Inequality in Rural China (S Li)
• Grain versus Food: A Hidden Issue in China's Food Policy Debate (F Lu)
• Saving Behavior in a Transition Economy: An Empirical Case Study of Rural China (G-H Wan et al.)
• Township Enterprises and Their Interest Distribution in Reform: A Three-Player Game Model (R-Z Ke)
• Rural Interregional Inequality and Off-Farm Employment in China (P Zhang)
• Food Demand and Nutritional Elasticity in Poor Rural Areas of China (J-W Zhang & F Cai)
• Reform in China's Rural Areas: The Changes in the Relationship between the State and Land Ownership — A Retrospect on the Changes in Economic Institutions (Q-R Zhou)