Publication Type
Journal Article
Version
publishedVersion
Publication Date
7-2015
Abstract
Since the mid-2000s, rural development and politics in China has entered a new phase that revolves around what the central government calls ‘agricultural modernization’. Transforming the once-dominant smallholding, family-based agriculture has become a focal point of the government's programme of rural rejuvenation, where a range of economic changes unleashed by urbanization and industrialization also converge. We argue that in this new context, agrarian change has become the key vantage point from which to study rural China. We review key contributions of the papers in this special issue and highlight their insights on rural differentiation, land politics and rural livelihoods. We discuss how studying the ‘Chinese path’ of agrarian transition can contribute to ongoing debates on key themes in agrarian studies, including both the agrarian questions of capital and of labour, and how agrarian political economy offers unique perspectives on the overall processes of capitalist development in China.
Keywords
Agricultural modernization, Agrarian change, China, Rural development, Reform
Discipline
Agricultural and Resource Economics | Asian Studies | Sociology
Research Areas
Sociology
Publication
Journal of Agrarian Change
Volume
15
Issue
3
First Page
299
Last Page
313
ISSN
1471-0358
Identifier
10.1111/joac.12115
Publisher
Wiley: 24 months
Citation
ZHANG, Qian Forrest, OYA, Carlos, & YE, Jingzhong.(2015). Bringing Agriculture Back In: The Central Place of Agrarian Change in Rural China Studies. Journal of Agrarian Change, 15(3), 299-313.
Available at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/1815
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Additional URL
https://doi.org/10.1111/joac.12115