Rural China Takes Off

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Publisher : Univ of California Press
ISBN 13 : 9780520922402
Total Pages : 276 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (224 download)

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Book Synopsis Rural China Takes Off by : Jean C. Oi

Download or read book Rural China Takes Off written by Jean C. Oi and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1999-05-17 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this incisive analysis of one of the most spectacular economic breakthroughs in the Deng era, Jean C. Oi shows how and why Chinese rural-based industry has become the fastest growing economic sector not just in China but in the world. Oi argues that decollectivization and fiscal decentralization provided party officials of the localities—counties, townships, and villages—with the incentives to act as entrepreneurs and to promote rural industrialization in many areas of the Chinese countryside. As a result, the corporatism practiced by local officials has become effective enough to challenge the centrality of the national state. Dealing not only with the political setting of rural industrial development, Oi's original and strongly argued study also makes a broader contribution to conceptualizations of corporatism in political theory. Oi writes provocatively about property rights and principal-agent relationships and shows the complex financial incentives that underpin and strengthen the growth in local state corporatism and shape its evolution. This book will be essential for those interested in Chinese politics, comparative politics, and communist and post-communist systems.

Rightful Resistance in Rural China

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Author :
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1139450980
Total Pages : 5 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (394 download)

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Book Synopsis Rightful Resistance in Rural China by : Kevin J. O'Brien

Download or read book Rightful Resistance in Rural China written by Kevin J. O'Brien and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2006-02-13 with total page 5 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How can the poor and weak 'work' a political system to their advantage? Drawing mainly on interviews and surveys in rural China, Kevin O'Brien and Lianjiang Li show that popular action often hinges on locating and exploiting divisions within the state. Otherwise powerless people use the rhetoric and commitments of the central government to try to fight misconduct by local officials, open up clogged channels of participation, and push back the frontiers of the permissible. This 'rightful resistance' has far-reaching implications for our understanding of contentious politics. As O'Brien and Li explore the origins, dynamics, and consequences of rightful resistance, they highlight similarities between collective action in places as varied as China, the former East Germany, and the United States, while suggesting how Chinese experiences speak to issues such as opportunities to protest, claims radicalization, tactical innovation, and the outcomes of contention.

China's Rural Industry

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Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780195208221
Total Pages : 464 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (82 download)

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Book Synopsis China's Rural Industry by : World Bank

Download or read book China's Rural Industry written by World Bank and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1990 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of papers presented at an international conference in 1987 provides a comprehensive analysis of China's booming rural non-state industrial sector, both collective and private.

Prosper or Perish

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Publisher : Cornell University Press
ISBN 13 : 0801465516
Total Pages : 231 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (14 download)

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Book Synopsis Prosper or Perish by : Lynette H. Ong

Download or read book Prosper or Perish written by Lynette H. Ong and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2012-09-15 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The official banking institutions for rural China are Rural Credit Cooperatives (RCCs). Although these co-ops are mandated to support agricultural development among farm households, since 1980 half of RCC loans have gone to small and medium-sized industrial enterprises located in, and managed by, townships and villages. These township and village enterprises have experienced highly uneven levels of success, and by the end of the 1990s, half of all RCC loans were in or close to default, forcing China’s central bank to bail out RCCs. In Prosper or Perish, Lynette H. Ong examines the bias in RCC lending patterns, focusing on why the mobilization of rural savings has contributed to successful industrial development in some locales but not in others. Interweaving insightful and theoretically informed discussions of rural credit, development, governance, and bank bailouts, Ong identifies various sources for China’s uneven development. In the highly decentralized fiscal environment of the People’s Republic, successful industrialization has significant implications for rural governance. Local governments depend on revenue from industrial output to provide public goods and services; unsuccessful enterprises starve local governments of revenue and result in radical cutbacks in services. High peasant burdens, land takings without adequate compensation by local governments, and other poor governance practices tend to be associated with unsuccessful industrialization. In light of the recent liberalization of the rural credit sector in China, Prosper or Perish makes a significant contribution to debates within political science, economic development, and international banking.

Catastrophe and Contention in Rural China

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Author :
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 0521722306
Total Pages : 16 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (217 download)

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Book Synopsis Catastrophe and Contention in Rural China by : Ralph Thaxton

Download or read book Catastrophe and Contention in Rural China written by Ralph Thaxton and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2008-05-05 with total page 16 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thaxton argues that the memory of the great famine under Mao shaped villagers' resistance to the socialist state.

Invisible China

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Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 022674051X
Total Pages : 242 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (267 download)

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Book Synopsis Invisible China by : Scott Rozelle

Download or read book Invisible China written by Scott Rozelle and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2020-09-29 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A study of how China’s changing economy may leave its rural communities in the dust and launch a political and economic disaster. As the glittering skyline in Shanghai seemingly attests, China has quickly transformed itself from a place of stark poverty into a modern, urban, technologically savvy economic powerhouse. But as Scott Rozelle and Natalie Hell show in Invisible China, the truth is much more complicated and might be a serious cause for concern. China’s growth has relied heavily on unskilled labor. Most of the workers who have fueled the country’s rise come from rural villages and have never been to high school. While this national growth strategy has been effective for three decades, the unskilled wage rate is finally rising, inducing companies inside China to automate at an unprecedented rate and triggering an exodus of companies seeking cheaper labor in other countries. Ten years ago, almost every product for sale in an American Walmart was made in China. Today, that is no longer the case. With the changing demand for labor, China seems to have no good back-up plan. For all of its investment in physical infrastructure, for decades China failed to invest enough in its people. Recent progress may come too late. Drawing on extensive surveys on the ground in China, Rozelle and Hell reveal that while China may be the second-largest economy in the world, its labor force has one of the lowest levels of education of any comparable country. Over half of China’s population—as well as a vast majority of its children—are from rural areas. Their low levels of basic education may leave many unable to find work in the formal workplace as China’s economy changes and manufacturing jobs move elsewhere. In Invisible China, Rozelle and Hell speak not only to an urgent humanitarian concern but also a potential economic crisis that could upend economies and foreign relations around the globe. If too many are left structurally unemployable, the implications both inside and outside of China could be serious. Understanding the situation in China today is essential if we are to avoid a potential crisis of international proportions. This book is an urgent and timely call to action that should be read by economists, policymakers, the business community, and general readers alike. Praise for Invisible China “Stunningly researched.” —TheEconomist, Best Books of the Year (UK) “Invisible China sounds a wake-up call.” —The Strategist “Not to be missed.” —Times Literary Supplement (UK) “[Invisible China] provides an extensive coverage of problems for China in the sphere of human capital development . . . the book is rich in content and is not constrained only to China, but provides important parallels with past and present developments in other countries.” —Journal of Chinese Political Science

Collective Killings in Rural China during the Cultural Revolution

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Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1139492462
Total Pages : 321 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (394 download)

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Book Synopsis Collective Killings in Rural China during the Cultural Revolution by : Yang Su

Download or read book Collective Killings in Rural China during the Cultural Revolution written by Yang Su and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2011-02-21 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The violence of Mao's China is well known, but its extreme form is not. In 1967 and 1968, during the Cultural Revolution, collective killings were widespread in rural China in the form of public execution. Victims included women, children, and the elderly. This book is the first to systematically document and analyze these atrocities, drawing data from local archives, government documents, and interviews with survivors in two southern provinces. This book extracts from the Chinese case lessons that challenge the prevailing models of genocide and mass killings and contributes to the historiography of the Cultural Revolution, in which scholarship has mainly focused on events in urban areas.

The Demoralization of Teachers

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Publisher : Lexington Books
ISBN 13 : 0739169432
Total Pages : 164 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (391 download)

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Book Synopsis The Demoralization of Teachers by : Dan Wang

Download or read book The Demoralization of Teachers written by Dan Wang and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2013-05-16 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The educational system in China is marked by its dramatic inequality between rural and urban schools. The challenges facing rural schools are usually understood as disadvantages in funding, facilities, and staffing, which consequently result in undesirable student performance in general. This book, however, penetrates these phenomena on the surface and brings forth a much deeper moral crisis in rural education, a crisis that is entrenched in the complicated interlocking of formal and informal institutions within and beyond the school. The Demoralization of Teachers describes the work and workplace in a rural school from the perspective of teachers who were working there. It faithfully depicts the lamentable state of teachers’ work morale in the school and, little by little as if a detective story, reveals the reasons for the teachers’ demoralization by vivid narratives. The book demonstrates the profound impact on the meanings of teaching exerted by the state curriculum reform, the formal and informal norms and regulations in the school, and the erosion of moral integrity in the state bureaucracy and the society at large. The crisis in the rural school stops to be a “rural” or educational problem in nature, but mirrors the societal-wide transformation in political economy as well as in ideology in the current reform China. The sheer complexity of the moral crisis in this ethnography calls for renewed efforts to identify and investigate the educational problems in rural China from fresh theoretical perspectives that situate rural education in broader historical and social contexts and processes.

The Industrialization of Rural China

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Publisher : OUP Oxford
ISBN 13 : 0199275939
Total Pages : 448 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (992 download)

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Book Synopsis The Industrialization of Rural China by : Chris Bramall

Download or read book The Industrialization of Rural China written by Chris Bramall and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2006-12-21 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The growth of rural industry in China since 1978 has been explosive. Much of the existing literature explains its growth in terms of changes in economic policy. By means of a combination of privatization, liberalization and fiscal decentralization, it is argued, rural industrialization has taken off. This book takes issue with such claims.Using a newly constructed dataset covering all of China's 2000 plus counties and complemented by a detailed econometric study of county-level industrialization in the provinces of Sichuan, Guangdong and Jiangsu, the author demonstrates that history mattered. More precisely, it is argued that the development of rural industry in the Maoist period set in motion a process of learning-by-doing whereby China's rural workforce gradually acquired an array of skills and competencies. As a result, ruralindustrialization was accelerating well before the 1978 climacteric. The growth of the 1980s and 1990s is therefore likely to be a continuation of this process. Without prior Maoist development of skills, the growth of the post-1978 era would have been much slower, and perhaps would not haveoccurred at all - as has been the case in countries such as India and Vietnam. This is not to say that the Maoist legacy was without flaw. Many of the rural industries created under Mao were geared towards meeting defence-related objectives resulting in inefficiencies, and there can be no question that post-1978 policy changes facilitated the growth process. But without the Maoist inheritance, rural industrialization across China would have been unsuccessful.

Resigned Activism

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Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262341107
Total Pages : 271 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (623 download)

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Book Synopsis Resigned Activism by : Anna Lora-Wainwright

Download or read book Resigned Activism written by Anna Lora-Wainwright and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2017-06-16 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An examination of the daily grind of living with pollution in rural China and of the varying forms of activism that develop in response. Residents of rapidly industrializing rural areas in China live with pollution every day. Villagers drink obviously tainted water and breathe visibly dirty air, afflicted by a variety of ailments—from arthritis to nosebleeds—that they ascribe to the effects of industrial pollution. “Cancer villages,” village-sized clusters of high cancer incidence, have emerged as a political and cultural phenomenon. In Resigned Activism, Anna Lora-Wainwright explores the daily grind of living with pollution in rural China and the varying forms of activism that develop in response. She finds that claims of health or environmental damage are politically sensitive, and that efforts to seek redress are frustrated by limited access to scientific evidence, growing socioeconomic inequalities, and complex local realities. Villagers, feeling powerless, often come to accept pollution as part of the environment; their activism is tempered by their resignation. Lora-Wainwright uses the term “resigned activism” as a lens through which to view villagers' perceptions and the diverse forms of environmental engagement that result. These range from picketing at the factory gate to quieter individual or family-oriented actions. Lora-Wainwright offers three case studies of “resigned activism” in rural China, examining the experiences of villagers who live with the effects of phosphorous mining and fertilizer production, lead and zinc mining, and electronic waste processing. These cases make clear the staggering human costs of development and the deeply uneven distribution of costs and benefits that underlie China's economic power.

Rural Policy Implementation in Contemporary China

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Author :
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317970608
Total Pages : 326 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (179 download)

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Book Synopsis Rural Policy Implementation in Contemporary China by : Anna Ahlers

Download or read book Rural Policy Implementation in Contemporary China written by Anna Ahlers and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-01-10 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the turn of the millennium, the disparities between rural and urban livelihoods, underdevelopment and administrative shortcomings in the Chinese countryside were increasingly seen as posing a manifest threat to social harmony and economic and political stability. At that time the term "three rural problems" (sannong wenti) was coined which defined the main issues of rural life that needed to be targeted by government action: agriculture (nongye), villages (nongcun) and farmers (nongmin). In turn, with the launch of the 11th Five-Year Plan in 2006, a pledge was made to shift the focus of developmental efforts to the long-neglected countryside, which is still home to half of the Chinese population. This book presents an analysis of adaptive local policy implementation in China in the context of the "Building of a New Socialist Countryside" (BNSC) policy framework. Based on intensive field work in four counties in Fujian, Jiangxi, Shaanxi and Zhejiang Provinces between 2008 and 2011, it offers detailed analyses of the form and impact of county governments’ strategic agency at certain stages and within certain fields of the implementation process (for example, the design of local BNSC programs, the steering of project funding, implementation and evaluation, the establishment of model villages and the management of public participation). Further, this study illustrates that BNSC is far more than the ‘empty slogan’ described by many observers when it was launched in 2005/2006. Instead, it has already brought about considerable shifts in terms of the process and outcomes of rural policy implementation. Altogether, the results of this research challenge existing paradigms by showing how, against the background of contemporary approaches to rural development and recent reforms initiated by the central state, local bureaucracies’ strategic agency can actually push forward effective – albeit not necessarily optimal – policy implementation to some extent, which serves the interests of central authorities, local implementors and rural residents. By tying into the larger debates on China's state capacity and authoritarian adaptability, this book enriches our understanding of the inner workings of the Chinese political system. As such, it will prove invaluable to students and scholars of Chinese politics, public policy and development studies more generally.

Performing Grief

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Publisher : University of Hawaii Press
ISBN 13 : 0824863925
Total Pages : 225 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (248 download)

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Book Synopsis Performing Grief by : Anne E. McLaren

Download or read book Performing Grief written by Anne E. McLaren and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2008-07-31 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first in-depth study of Chinese bridal laments, a ritual and performative art practiced by Chinese women in premodern times that gave them a rare opportunity to voice their grievances publicly. Drawing on methodologies from numerous disciplines, including performance arts and folk literatures, the author suggests that the ability to move an audience through her lament was one of the most important symbolic and ritual skills a Chinese woman could possess before the modern era. Performing Grief provides a detailed case study of the Nanhui region in the lower Yangzi delta. Bridal laments, the author argues, offer insights into how illiterate Chinese women understood the kinship and social hierarchies of their region, the marriage market that determined their destinies, and the value of their labor in the commodified economy of the delta region. The book not only assesses and draws upon a large body of sources, both Chinese and Western, but is grounded in actual field work, offering both historical and ethnographic context in a unique and sophisticated approach. Unlike previous studies, the author covers both Han and non-Han groups and thus contributes to studies of ethnicity and cultural accommodation in China. She presents an original view about the ritual implications of bridal laments and their role in popular notions of "wedding pollution." The volume includes an annotated translation from a lament cycle. This important work on the place of laments in Chinese culture enriches our understanding of the social and performative roles of Chinese women, the gendered nature of China’s ritual culture, and the continuous transmission of women’s grievance genres into the revolutionary period. As a pioneering study of the ritual and performance arts of Chinese women, it will be of interest to scholars and students in the fields of anthropology, social history, gender studies, oral literature, comparative folk religion, and performance arts.

Village and Family in Contemporary China

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Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 9780226645919
Total Pages : 440 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (459 download)

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Book Synopsis Village and Family in Contemporary China by : William L. Parish

Download or read book Village and Family in Contemporary China written by William L. Parish and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1980-08-15 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After 1949 the Chinese Communists carried out land reform, the collectivization of agriculture, and the formation of people's communes. The new economic and political organizations that emerged have made peasant life more comfortable and secure, but many economic and status differentials and traditional customs remain resistant to change. Focusing on rural Kwangtung province, William L. Parish and Martin King Whyte examine the rural work-incentive system, village equality and inequality, rural health care and education, marriage customs, and the position of women, among other topics, to determine what and how much of the traditional Chinese ways of life is left in Communist China.

The Transformation of Rural China

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Author :
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1315292033
Total Pages : 402 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (152 download)

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Book Synopsis The Transformation of Rural China by : Jonathan Unger

Download or read book The Transformation of Rural China written by Jonathan Unger and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-09-16 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the past quarter century Jonathan Unger has interviewed farmers and rural officials from various parts of China in order to track the extraordinary changes that have swept the countryside from the Maoist era through the Deng era to the present day. A leading specialist on rural China, Professor Unger presents a vivid picture of life in rural areas during the Maoist revolution, and then after the post-Mao disbandment of the collectives. This is a story of unexpected continuities amidst enormous change. Unger describes how rural administrations retain Mao-era characteristics - despite the major shifts that have occurred in the economic and social hierarchies of villages as collectivization and "class struggle" gave way to the slogan "to get rich is glorious." A chapter explores the private entrepreneurship that has blossomed in the prosperous parts of the countryside. Another focuses on the tensions and exploitation that have arisen as vast numbers of migrant laborers from poor districts have poured into richer ones. Another, based on five months of travel by jeep into impoverished villages in the interior, describes the dilemmas of under-development still faced by many tens of millions of farmers, and the ways in which government policies have inadvertently hurt their livelihoods.

In Manchuria

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Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN 13 : 1620402874
Total Pages : 369 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (24 download)

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Book Synopsis In Manchuria by : Michael Meyer

Download or read book In Manchuria written by Michael Meyer and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2015-02-17 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the tradition of In Patagonia and Great Plains, Michael Meyer's In Manchuria is a scintillating combination of memoir, contemporary reporting, and historical research, presenting a unique profile of China's legendary northeast territory. For three years, Meyer rented a home in the rice-farming community of Wasteland, hometown to his wife's family. Their personal saga mirrors the tremendous change most of rural China is undergoing, in the form of a privately held rice company that has built new roads, introduced organic farming, and constructed high-rise apartments into which farmers can move in exchange for their land rights. Once a commune, Wasteland is now a company town, a phenomenon happening across China that Meyer documents for the first time; indeed, not since Pearl Buck wrote The Good Earth has anyone brought rural China to life as Meyer has here. Amplifying the story of family and Wasteland, Meyer takes us on a journey across Manchuria's past, a history that explains much about contemporary China--from the fall of the last emperor to Japanese occupation and Communist victory. Through vivid local characters, Meyer illuminates the remnants of the imperial Willow Palisade, Russian and Japanese colonial cities and railways, and the POW camp into which a young American sergeant parachuted to free survivors of the Bataan Death March. In Manchuria is a rich and original chronicle of contemporary China and its people.

China in One Village

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Publisher : Verso Books
ISBN 13 : 1839761776
Total Pages : 321 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (397 download)

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Book Synopsis China in One Village by : Liang Hong

Download or read book China in One Village written by Liang Hong and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2021-06-22 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A global future in the history of a single village After a decade away from her ancestral family village, during which she became a writer and literary scholar in Beijing, Liang Hong started visiting her rural hometown in landlocked Henan Province. What she found was an extended family riven by the seismic changes in Chinese society and a village turned inside out by emigration, neglect, and environmental despoliation. Combining family memoir, literary observation, and social commentary, Liang’s by turns lyrically poetic and movingly raw investigation into the fate of her village became a bestselling book in China and brought her fame. For many months, Liang walked the roads and fields of her village, recording the stories of her relatives—especially her irascible, unforgettable father—and talking to everyone from high government officials to the lowest of village outcasts. Across China, many saw in Liang’s riveting interviews with family members and childhood acquaintances a mirror of their own lives, and her observations about the way the greatest rural-to-urban migration of modern times has twisted the country resonated deeply. China in One Village tells the story of contemporary China through one clear-eyed, literary observer, one family, and one village.

Rural China

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Author :
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317460634
Total Pages : 463 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (174 download)

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Book Synopsis Rural China by : Jie Fan

Download or read book Rural China written by Jie Fan and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-05-15 with total page 463 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book reports the findings of two field studies conducted between 1993 and 2001 in seven townships and six provinces in China. The authors describe the process of rural urbanization and its related economic, social, and political changes by focusing mainly on the zhen (town), in addition to administrative offices and companies involved in the local economy, and village committees. The authors show that the social changes resulting from China's economic reforms are occurring mainly from below, and that this process is also resulting in a weakening of the economic and political dominance of the central government. Other changes discussed in this study include the development of new ownership structures and the increasing dominance of the private sector; a shift in the functions of administrative offices as the bureaucracy becomes increasingly business oriented; the rise of a new local elite; a rebirth of traditional social structures (clans, local associations); and the emergence of new interest groups and institutions to represent their needs.