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

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), and Walker, Kenneth R., Food Grain Procurement and Consumption in China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984).

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.

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). 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.

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.

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.

11. Ibid.

* The author gratefully acknowledges grants from the Nuffield Foundation and from the Research Committee of the School of Oriental and African Studies, which financed visits to Hong Kong and Beijing to acquire research materials.