Farmers and the Market: Grassroots Governments and Township Enterprises in China: Grassroots Governments and Township Enterprises in China

Author: Pan Wei
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2003-09-01
Features: This book takes marketization as its framework and the rise and fall of China's rural industry as its main thread to study contemporary rural areas. The author points out that during the marketization process, China's local governments have taken on responsibilities that the state cannot, building a delicate bridge for Chinese farmers to enter the market and acting as a market intermediary. Classic political literature has long argued that the rise of market economies is related to the outbreak of peasant revolutions and workers' movements. However, until the mid-1990s, marketization in rural China did not trigger widespread peasant protests but instead gave rise to China's unique "rural industry." Moreover, the emerging rural industry did not give birth to early European and American-style workers' movements. Instead, the small farmers of the marketization era made significant contributions to China's prosperity and stability. Why? Pan Wei takes marketization as his framework and the rise and fall of China's rural industry as his main thread to study contemporary rural areas. He points out that during the marketization process, China's local governments have taken on responsibilities that the state cannot, building a delicate bridge for Chinese farmers to enter the market and acting as a market intermediary. Under the leadership of local governments, hundreds of millions of rural people, organized into small rural collectives, ventured into the industrial market, ensuring their own safety, earning the respect of global market competitors, and exchanging it for the civilization and progress of their local communities, even the stability and prosperity of the entire country. Whether a local government can act as an intermediary between farmers and the market determines the fate of the farmers in that region. The different fates of farmers in the market, in turn, determine the current state of Chinese society. Pan Wei points out that whether local governments can fulfill the role of market intermediaries depends on the organizational forms of local governments inherited before the return to family farming, the collectivist spirit, the cohesion of rural communities, and the mainstream ideology in China. Regarding China's rural issues, academia has two different approaches. One is the mainstream approach, which views local governments as the cause of peasant poverty and advocates weakening them through reforms such as "transforming the system," "popular elections," and "replacing fees with taxes." The other is the approach expressed in this book, which views local governments as the backbone of rural society, believing that farmers, rural communities, and rural local governments are an inseparable trinity, thus calling for trust, strengthening, and improving local governments. Pan Wei warns that if the backbone of local governments is removed, farmers will once again become a disorganized mass, turning into countless worms that accumulate poverty; rural society will degenerate, and even become fertile ground for instability. Inheriting the tradition of organization under the leadership of the Communist Party, organizing farmers under the leadership of local governments—farmers are countless dragons, the engine of China's modernization train.